A Mad Zombie Party

Is this what Chance experiences every time he touches Love? What Cole experiences with Ali? What Frosty used to experience with Kat?
I try to draw my hand back. I hate the thought of being enraptured by him while he feels nothing for me. But he tightens his hold, surprising me further, and draws me deeper into the basement, a room that has been utterly transformed. Three plush black recliners surrounded by a vast array of medical equipment and several rolling trays.
Tiffany is strapped to one of the chairs and sleeping soundly. Ali rests beside her, wide-awake and without straps. Cole stands behind his girlfriend, an avenging angel ready to protect the reason his heart beats at any cost, and a pang of envy shoots through me. Reeve and Weber are here, too, arranging needles and vials on one of the trays.
“Here.” Frosty leads me to the only available chair. “Reserved just for you.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, easing down.
He stays beside me, but he will no longer meet my gaze.
“What’s wrong?”
“He doesn’t want you to do this,” Ali says.
I frown. “We’re just filtering my blood, right? No big deal.”
“It’s a little more involved than that.” Reeve putters around the equipment. “We know that what affects the spirit affects the body, so whatever is going on inside your spirit will manifest in your blood, even in the smallest way. So, we’re going to put you on dialysis and filter out as much Z-toxin as possible and hopefully rid you of thanatos. Afterward, we’ll inject you with a serum we’ve been working on, one that should strengthen dynamis.”
Should. My gaze slides to Ali. “Has the serum not been tested?”
“No. You and I are the lab rats.”
“Something I object to,” Cole says.
Frosty nods. “Agreed.”
Too bad. “I’ll go first.” Let me suffer the effects if something goes wrong. “If I survive, and it works, Ali can be next.”
“No,” Frosty says, sharp and stinging. “Why don’t I go first?”
“I’ll go first.” Cole crosses his arms over his chest.
Ali shakes her head. “You guys aren’t the yin and the yang, so you can suck it. Us girls got this.”
Before a word war can kick off, I ask, “Why is Tiffany sedated?”
“We took a sample of her blood, wanted to know if she’s tainted like the rest of you. The results were inconclusive.” Reeve taps the belly of a syringe and squeezes out excess liquid. “As for the slayers, everyone but you has lost every ability except the one to separate spirit from body. I blame whatever poison Tiffany used.”
Anger rises—Tiffany!—but I beat it back. I don’t want to accidentally unleash a stream of energy.
Cole meets my gaze. “You’re one of us now, and if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to do it.”
I’m one of them? Seriously?
A smile breaks through, and I can’t stop it. I catch myself rubbing the Betrayal tattoo, not because I feel guilty but because the word has lost its power over me.
“I want to,” I say. “What are you waiting for, Reeve? Let’s get this party started.”
  
  
I hate this. I hate this so freaking much I’m close to snapping. How can I stand here while Milla is turned into a test subject? What kind of man does that make me?
The kind who wants to save his friends, who knows this might be the only way to return them to their former glory.
Right. But is that a good enough reason?
I sweat bullets as Reeve pushes the tray closer to Milla then sits beside her. It’s time for dialysis, and that’s fine. People do that every day without complications. Kat did it four times a week. It’s the serum I’m worried about. It’s uncharted territory. Milla could be hurt. Or worse.
Panic nearly overwhelms me, but I remind myself Ali has gone through something similar. When she was infected with massive amounts of zombie toxin and the antidote couldn’t save her, she was certain dynamis was a cure-all. We refused to try. We’d never used our fire on another slayer, had only seen what it could do to agents—the same thing it does to zombies—and we didn’t want to risk her life; she continued to grow worse until the zombie side of her completely took over the human side and only then, when faced with losing her anyway, did we relent. In minutes, it worked.
Had we used it in the beginning, we would have prevented months of suffering for Ali.
And yet, as Reeve ties the tourniquet on Milla’s arm, I say, “I think we should come up with another plan.”
Milla peers up at me with a hefty dose of confusion. She looks so tiny in the leather chair, so vulnerable and in need of a protector.
I have to step up and be that protector. I will.
In the past few weeks, I’ve learned so much about her. I know her in ways she may not know herself.
As a child, she failed to save her sister from her father’s wrath. At least in her mind. Four months ago, she failed her brother, her entire crew. Now she’ll do everything in her power to help—even if it means harming herself in the process.
“You aren’t a lab rat,” I tell her.
“I am today. If it hurts, it hurts. I can handle pain.”
“You handle it better than anyone I know, but that doesn’t mean you should have to.”
She links her fingers with mine. “I want to do this. I have to. The problems started with me, and they’ll end with me.”
“Besides, there’s not much risk involved,” Ali says. “Because of the vision, we know Milla lives long enough to save you...which means she’ll live through this.”
Always we come back to the vision, and I’m sick of it. She might not die today, might only wish she did.
Milla releases me. “You heard her. I’ll live.”
There’s a bitter quality to her tone I don’t understand. Does she think I care only about using her as a shield? That the only reason I want to save her life is because she’ll one day save mine? That has never been the case, and it never will. In the beginning, I tolerated her presence for Kat. But now...hell. I just don’t know.
I don’t know anything anymore.
Kat’s death broke my heart into a million pieces. Her insistence that I date other girls broke the pieces. I had nothing, was nothing, and had to put myself back together; whatever mortar I used changed me. I’m not the same. I’m a different guy, with different needs...and different desires.
And right now those desires revolve around a punk-rock Barbie with a bad attitude and a heart of solid freaking gold.
“I don’t care about my future,” I say. “I care about yours.”
Her eyes widen. She shakes her head as if she’s certain she misheard. “You...you...what?”
Ali rubs the bridge of her nose. “Can’t say I’m surprised by this. We’ve all noticed the vibe changing between you guys. And we need to talk about that, we really do.”
“We really don’t.” My love life isn’t her business.
“But whatever’s going on,” she continues, unabashed, “you can’t stand in the way of answers.”
I ignore her. “Milla, I would rather you—”
“No. I’m not playing I would rather with you,” she says, her features soft and vulnerable, beseeching me. “I have to do this. We’ll talk about the other thing later.”
If I continue trying to stop this, she’ll fight me, really fight me, and maybe even hate me. So I do the only thing I can. I step back, allowing Reeve and Weber to get to work. Milla is poked and prodded, her blood filtered for hours, and finally she is injected with the new serum.
We wait, tense, as one minute bleeds into another and she has no reaction. I begin to breathe again.
“I don’t—” Suddenly she gasps, her back bowing. A scream rips from her. Then, just as suddenly, she goes limp and quiet, her head lolling to the side.