But the cold, remote look on Alastair Breedlove’s perfect features remained. I thought he looked like a marble statue of a god. One so far above me I would never be able to reach him or his family again.
“I’m sorry, Kaitlyn, but there is no going back once a human has been turned,” he told me. “Please don’t try to contact us or see any of my family again—especially Allegra. If you do, I’ll be forced to cut off your funding. Good day.”
And he turned and walked out of the Healer’s office, as casually as though he was leaving a mildly boring business meeting.
He had discarded me like trash—like the mistake he had named me. But it wasn’t his abandonment that hurt me so much—that stabbed me to my core.
I thought of Allegra’s chubby little arms reaching for me, of her calling my name and crying for me in the night—having a nightmare with no one to comfort her…and I dissolved into sobs.
The Breedloves hadn’t been a real family to me—I hadn’t had one of those since my parents died—but they were something. And Allegra was everything to me. I’d been watching her since she was a baby. Losing her forever was like ripping my heart out.
“Oh, Katydid!” Avery exclaimed, sitting down on the cot beside me and putting an arm around my shoulders.
“I’m so sorry, hon,” Megan murmured, sitting on my other side.
Emma stroked my hair and Griffin stood helplessly by, a look of disbelief and uncertainty on his face. Clearly this had been the last thing he had expected—he’d truly thought that Mr. Breedlove was abusing me in some way. He’d had no idea I would be stupid and naïve enough to let myself be bitten repeatedly by a Nocturne child.
The tears rolled down my cheeks and pattered onto my scarred hands. As I looked at them, I realized that they weren’t normal tears at all—they were red. Red tears…blood tears.
I was crying blood.
Suddenly my stomach turned and I knew I was going to lose every last bit of the big cup of blood Griffin had given me.
“’Scuse me,” I gasped and pushed my way off the cot and past my concerned friends.
Having been to the Healer’s office before, I knew where the restroom was. I got to it just in time and barely had a second to bend over the toilet before a gout of bright red blood shot from my mouth and into the water below.
I looked at the gore coating the white porcelain bowl—it looked like a murder scene. The thought turned my stomach and I was sick again…and again and again.
Finally, when I had no more in me to throw up, I rested my forehead on my crossed arms and cried. Cried for Allegra and my place in her heart and home and for all I had lost in the blink of an eye. It was like The Fire all over again—the people I loved being torn from me by some outside force I couldn’t control.
Only this time, the force wasn’t outside—was it? It was inside me and there was no getting rid of it…ever.
I bent over the bowl and was sick again.
31
Kaitlyn
“There must be something wrong with her,” Megan said worriedly, after I had finished my third round of puking. Her face was pale and worried but that pretty much applied to all my friends. They were standing around me in a semi-circle—well, except for Emma who can’t be around someone puking without having to puke herself.
The Healer was there too, with a grim look on her face.
“What kind of blood was that you gave her?” she asked Griffin, who was still looking stunned at the sudden turn of events.
“Just animal blood—beef blood,” he said at last. “I ran over to the Dining Hall to get it. It’s the same kind of thing she’s been eating all week so I thought it would be the easiest for her to digest.”
“You thought wrong,” the Healer said, frowning. She sighed and shook her head. “It’s been a while since I studied Made Nocturnes but if I remember correctly, once the initial transition is past, they can’t live on animal blood.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Megan demanded. “I mean, Kaitlyn has to live on something. If she can’t drink animal blood, what can she drink?”
The Healer’s face got even grimmer.
“Human blood,” she said shortly. “Hang on—I have a stock of it in the cooler in case of injuries.”
She went and got another big glass of chilled blood and handed it to me.
By that time I had gotten shakily to my feet with Avery’s help and rinsed out my mouth at the sink. The glass filled with crimson liquid didn’t look very appealing to me and the fact that it was cold was even less so, but I took it from her anyway and took a tentative sip.