#deadbydawn

Nesta’s screaming in the doorway. She looks like she’s actually going to kill you, which is probably why Eris is holding her back with an arm wrapped firmly around her waist. She has a crazed look on her face, silver eyes alight with a fear so deep that it reads like the rage of a thousand wars.

“She’s been bit!” Nesta screeches, clawing at Eris in a desperate attempt to reach for anyone she can get her hands on. His soft, consoling words in her ear are doing nothing to break past the white-hot rage burning across her features. “What did he do to her?”

“He didn’t do a damn thing but fall for your sister,” Cassian bites back, voice louder than necessary. You all know what happens when you love something in a world like this. It always gets ripped away, which is why you haven’t allowed yourself to think anything more about the two men you’ve been occupying your time with. “We don’t have time to waste, they need us out there searching for them.”

Azriel’s murmuring into the walkie-talkie, trying to discern where the hell Rhysand and Feyre might be, but after a few broken responses from your friends, they stop responding.

He turns to the rest of you with a solemn look. “Their walkie died.”

Fuck. This is worse than bad.

“We need to move,” Cassian says, tone pitched with a worry he’s failing to mask. He needs Rhysand alive like he needs Azriel alive, because without either of them, he wouldn’t want to be living in this godsforsaken planer either. “Where are our weapons? We’ll find them and bring them back.”

“That’s my sister. I’m going,” Nesta growls, and your heart pinches at the sight of the turmoil in Eris’ amber eyes because you feel the exact same as him.

“Then I’m going, too,” he murmurs, caressing Nesta’s cheek. She’s stopped fighting now, and you think you catch him brushing a tear from her face. You’re not sure how she hasn’t entirely broken down yet, knowing that both of her sisters have been bitten.

The pair share an embrace so tender you have to look away.

When they return their attention to your party, Nesta’s voice is firm, any traces of her anguish long forgotten, except in the way that her fingers are white knuckled around Eris’. “One of you stays here.”

“What? Why?” Cassian asks in disbelief.

“So we know this isn’t an ambush,” Eris provides, already double-checking the weapons attached to his hips. It’s a move so similar to Azriel that it stuns you until her words hit home.

“An ambush?” You blurt your confusion. Rage boils the blood in your veins. You refuse to lose another friend out there, not after how horrible the last time any of you split up is turning out to be. “This isn’t a fucking ambush, it’s your fucking sister!”

Your anger doesn’t land. Nesta’s glare punctures a hole in your chest and it’s suddenly difficult to breathe. “Exactly. It’s my sister. I will go and see to her. Your presence isn’t needed. You’ve already done enough.”

You want to crumple beneath the weight of her words. They hang thickly in the air, the only sound filling the suddenly eerie dining room is the soft crackling from the walkie-talkie. Rhysand and Feyre are waiting for reinforcements, there’s no time to wither into the ground and cry until the house is flooded.

“Every second we waste here is another second Feyre suffers,” Azriel spits, his hand clenching yours. Cassian’s body is warm at your front from where he’s stepped slightly in front of you at Nesta’s implied threat. “We need to go.”

But Nesta is even more hard-headed than her sister. “She stays.”

You don’t like the look on Azriel’s face when he turns to you. You’re already shaking your head when he tries to speak, but you’re quick to cut him off, your hysterics taking over your words.

“No,” your voice breaks, tears spilling down your cheeks. “No, Azriel. Please, I need to be there.” This might very well be the last time you see Feyre, and you need to be there for her.

“We need you to stay,” Azriel pleads. His hand is firm where your shoulder meets your neck and his hazel eyes are stern, but it isn’t difficult to read how terrified he is. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen him so scared, not even when you’d first found each other and Cassian was on the brink of bleeding out. Maybe you hadn’t known him all that well at that point, but now, you know that his heart is much larger than you ever gave him credit for.

“No,” you protest, shaking your head, but you can tell that there’s no room for arguing this. He’s already running through ideas of how to save your friends in his head. “They’re my friends, too!”

“We need you safe.” We need you to survive.

You shake your head, fingers fisting into his shirt. Azriel ducks down and captures you in a kiss so desperate, filled with so much love and pleading and finality that you can’t raise your head when he pulls away from you and Cassian takes his place.

“Please…” It’s all you can do to beg, falling into Cassian’s strong arms, but at this point you know it’s futile. They’ll be going without you, and you’re to stay here so that Nesta and Eris know they won’t try anything. It’s smart, protecting themselves, but it doesn’t make you like them.

“I’m sorry,” Cassian whispers, cradling you in his arms and pressing light kisses to your hair while Eris doles out weapons to Azriel. Nesta watches with a menacing look on her face and arms crossed over her chest like she’d rather let the two men you’re falling for on a recon mission in the woods without any protection.

In this world, being bitten means you have hours. If Feyre isn’t already showing signs of the infection taking hold, she will be soon. Realization strikes you down like a fucking semi-truck, tightening your throat and prickling your eyes. Your best friend, the one that you’ve stuck with for the better part of the last year has been bitten, and you’re all arguing about playing savior.

Fuck. As much as you want to be out there finding your friend, one of you needs to stay. Because Azriel and Cassian want you safe, because Nesta and Eris are scared out of their minds, because if something goes wrong, there is nothing worth fighting for anymore, but if everything goes right, this place could be your haven.

You saw the way Cassian’s eyes lit at the mention of the underground bunkers, at the sight of the healthy greens on your plates. He’s been dreaming of a place like this, a place to take root and utilize the seeds he’d so carefully traveled with all this time. This place could be his playground, and you want nothing more than for him to have something positive to latch onto in a world of the undead.

And Azriel. Somewhere hiding behind the walls he’s so carefully constructed, he cares. He cares about finding someplace safe for everyone he loves to set up camp for a prolonged period. He’s tired of running, tired of searching for something that he’s given up hope on a long time ago. Everyone he cares about now is here, or almost here, and he doesn’t need the weight on his shoulders of searching for safety.

“Go,” you choke, clutching Cassian’s forearms so tightly your nails dig into his skin. His eyes flicker between yours, searching for any sliver of indignation. If you truly don’t want him to go, he won’t. There’s no predicting what will happen out there, and you’re just as important to him as the rest of his friends. “Go,” you urge again, softly. “Find them and bring them back.”

“Yes ma’am,” he agrees, before smashing his mouth against yours. It’s desperate, a promise of so much more, and then he’s pulling away and taking the knife Azriel’s handing him, and then they’re all out the door and you’re standing in the doorway of a silent home, with only the distant coughs coming from a bitten girl upstairs to keep you company while the men you’ve fallen completely in love with leave to save her bitten sister.

“We’re coming back to you,” he calls over his shoulder, determined.

It's all you can do to keep yourself together until they’re out of your line of sight.

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Minutes pass. Then hours, and there’s no sign of your companions.

You try not to worry, but it’s inevitable. Cleaning up the abandoned dinner does nothing to ease your nerves. Snooping through cabinets and the pantry and the rest of the main floor does nothing to stop the haunting scenarios of everything that could go wrong from playing in your head. You eye the staircase leading upstairs, but knowing what’s up there, who’s up there, you refrain.

For now.

There is no peace in knowing that their group of four is searching for your lost friends. None of you hardly know Nesta and Eris, and as good as Azriel is at tracking, they have no clue where the hell Rhysand and Feyre are. They must be closer than you think, because they were in range of the walkie-talkies, but that could span for miles, and the sun is shining brightly through the large, front windows of the house. They have hours before night falls completely.

It's Lucien who finds you in the front room. You’ve barely moved from one of the large chairs you pulled in front of the window because you can’t find it in yourself to leave.

He takes the free one across the room, and it looks like he’s sat there many times, pondering Elain’s health.

He hasn’t been taking very good care of himself, either, from what you can tell. It looks like he hasn’t been far from her bedside in ages, his auburn hair is a tangled mess, and you know you’re no longer filling out your clothes the way you used to, but with the food you now know they have around here, you know he hasn’t been eating well.

“You’re the one that helped Cassian, right?” He asks, and your head snaps in his direction. How could he have known that? Cassian’s hardly limping these days at all, but it’s the desperation in Lucien’s eyes that keeps you from shifting further into your seat. He blushes at your surprise, a sheepish look overtaking his handsome features. “I noticed the wound on his leg. I was hoping that you would be the one to have fixed it.”

“Why would you hope that I was the one to fix it?” You all but whisper. Your heart is jackhammering in your chest, but Lucien doesn’t look like he’s going to attack. The only crazed thing about him is the circles under his eyes from lack of sleep, and the despair weighing his shoulders down.

“Because I want you to take a look at Elain.”

His words make the earth shift.

“She’s bitten,” you breathe. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Please,” he begs, “I just—I can’t give up on her yet.”

The utter rawness in his tone, the way he’s looking at you like you’re the one who could save the woman he loves…it’s too much to say no. You know that if it were Azriel or Cassian, or when Feyre arrives, you’d be doing anything that you can to help.

You nod, and Lucien’s shoulders drop so hard that you think he might faint. You refrain from telling him that what you’d done to Cassian was done in haste, that you really don’t know all that much about treating wounds or diagnosing zombie bites, only things that you’d picked up from your mother after her long shifts at the hospital when she’d come home exhausted and grumbling about her work.

She had been one of the first to go, hoping to help people get through the infection.

It’s the least you can do.

You follow Lucien up the carpeted staircase. It has an intricate design, crimson leaves and brunt oranges tangled together. It matches the color of the walls, the creamy trim lining the top and bottom. This would have been a mighty fine house to grow up in, you think as you follow him across the hall, past photographs of several young boys, all with the same-colored hair. There are several frames missing from the sunspots on the wallpaper.

You hesitate at the door Lucien slowly opens, suddenly nervous. You hadn’t caught much of a glimpse of the middle Archeron sister, from what you had seen, she hadn’t looked good.

“Come, please,” Lucien says, opening the door wider and gestures you inside.

Azriel and Cassian would be furious with you if they knew you were about to put yourself within inches of someone who’s potentially infected, but they’re the ones who left you here, so you follow Lucien inside.

The room is warm and damp, dusty, like the curtains haven’t been pulled back in ages. It’s dark, but you can still make out the lump in the middle of the large bed, the indent on the sheets from where Lucien must lie beside her, holding her through this pain.

You move closer to the bed, blinking the light from your eyes when Lucien lights a battery-powered lamp on the table beside the bed.

Your breath catches in your throat.

She looks worse in the dark than she had in the dining room downstairs, but maybe it’s because you stand closer now. With the lamplight shadowing her face, her cheeks and eyes look even more sunken, what you imagine were once pink, plump lips are chapped and dry to the bone.

“Has she been eating? Drinking?” You blurt, already concerned for the girl. Normally, you’re weary of strangers, and you don’t know if it’s because she’s Feyre’s sister or she looks like she’s fighting through hell to stay alive from this bite, but the urge to help her in any way that you can is great.

“She eats bites, at most,” Lucien offers sadly. There’s a plate on the bedside table with a can you’re all too familiar eating from. “Soft things she’s able to get down. And I have to drip water in her mouth while she’s sleeping because that’s what she does most.” You can hear the sadness in his voice, the thickness of his throat when he speaks. He stares at Elain with so much devastation in his eyes that it’s difficult to look at.

You focus on the girl in the bed instead. Her breath is a brittle rattle in her chest, but Elain looks at peace. At least, while she’s sleeping.

“How long has she been like this?” You ask, silently asking if you can touch her. Lucien nods wearily, allowing you to get to work. You gently move the damp compress from her head to press the back of your hand to her forehead. She’s warm, cheeks a ruddy red that is the only sign of life against her pale skin.

Elain’s lashes flutter when you touch her, mumbling something uncoherent under her breath, but doesn’t wake.

“Weeks now,” Lucien admits, worried. “I’d say nearly four.”

Four weeks ago. Your stomach curdles, even though it’s empty. She’s been like this for four weeks.

“Where is the bite?”

Lucien doesn’t look like he wants to show it to you. Reluctantly, he carefully removes Elain’s arm from beneath the thick blankets and pulls up the sleeve to the loose-fitting shirt she’s resting in.

When he removes the wrap around the wound, you can’t help but gasp, stepping closer out of a horrific curiosity. Sure, you’ve seen zombie bites before, but you’ve never seen something quite like this.

 The bite is near her elbow. It’s red and raw, and the wounds haven’t seemed to heal all that much in four weeks, but it’s not…decaying either. Her veins are blackened where the infection has leeched into her blood. They crawl halfway up her arm, and almost to her fingertips, where they disappear.

“We tied a tourniquet around her arm when she was first bitten,” Lucien explains, swallowing thickly. His fingers caress her arm, careful to avoid the plague-looking bite. “They say that the infection takes hold within hours, and when the electricity was still running, it was said that the longest surviving bitten person lasted twelve…” He trails off, and you can’t help but notice the soft glint to his eyes, the upturned corners of his mouth as he stares down at the woman he loves. When his gaze finds yours again, there’s a strength to his tone. “Elain hasn’t showed any progressing signs, and it’s been weeks.”

“Just because it’s been weeks doesn’t mean that it won’t happen,” you say, and you hate that you have to. Her case is convincing, but not all infections progress as rapidly or as violently within each person. It’s a case-by-case basis, though most tend not to last more than a few hours. You must admit, Elain is doing well.

Lucien doesn’t say anything in response, and you know he’s choosing not to believe it. You don’t want to believe it either, especially for Feyre’s sake, but you need to be realistic right now, things don’t last forever.

“We should clean the wound,” you continue. You want to help Lucien and Elain, you truly do, so you’ll do what you can. “It’s looking a little…”

“Festered?” Lucien offers with a soft smile.

You can hardly manage one back. “Yeah.”

“There’s a bag of supplies on the bathroom counter,” Lucien nods toward the ensuite. “There’s disinfectant, though I don’t know how well it will work because it’s been expired for months. You can look through the rest, see if there’s anything else that might be of help.”

You nod, removing yourself from their sight. You take another flashlight that Lucien hands you, and when the door closes behind you, you release a harsh breath that you didn’t know you were holding.

Elain doesn’t look like she’s in good shape, but the wound doesn’t seem to be spreading, and if she had a fever, it’s broken since then. You remind yourself to ask Lucien about it when you return to the bedside, but for now you take the time to scour the bag of medical supplies they’ve seemed to haphazardly throw together.

In it you find fresh bandages and the peroxide Lucien mentioned was in there. There’s about a half bottle left, and you don’t like the looks of that, but you can use it sparingly. You find painkillers, though you don’t expect Elain to wake for long enough to swallow them down.

“Has she been coughing a lot?” You ask when you return. Lucien sits on the bed beside Elain, gently stroking her hair. Her injured arm is propped in his lap, and he watches you carefully as you take the empty spot on the sheets, setting your supplies down.

“Not as much as when it began,” he answers.

“And has there been any mucus?”

“Yeah.”

“What color?”

He grimaces, and your muscles tense, awaiting his response. “Black, to begin. Now it’s cleared up. Almost clear.”

That’s a good sign, you think.

The peroxide bubbles softly, cleaning the wound. For the most part, it seems to be fine, and as much as you’d like to poke and prod at it, you don’t want to disturb what seems to be a peaceful sleep for Elain.

Which is perfect, because the door to the house crashes open downstairs and shouting ensues.

You and Lucien startle, both jumping from the bed. He’s already reaching for the knife at his hip, but when a shout drifts up the stairs, he relaxes slightly.

“Lucien?”

He looks at you. “I think they found your friend.”

Your heart rate skyrockets, and it’s all you can do to give him final instruction before you’re bolting from the room. “Dab this on the wound before you wrap it with fresh gauze.”

You’re not all that sure you want to see the condition Feyre is in, but your legs don’t stop moving. You skip the steps down the stairs and go crashing into the dining room where Rhys is gently laying your best friend down on the table.

Everything seems to come to a screeching halt.

Eris is by the front door, locking it shut. He’s looking in your direction frantically, probably wondering why his brother hasn’t called back to him. You barely notice him brushing past you as he makes his way upstairs.

Your eyes are locked on her.

Nesta and Cassian are shouting at one another while Azriel helps hold Feyre to the table. Rhys looks like a mess, tears streaming down his cheeks, and the sight breaks your heart. It gets your feet moving, and you almost slam into him as you make it to Feyre’s side.

The bite is deep and raw, new. You can’t help but compare it to Elain’s, and unfortunately, Feyre’s looks much worse. Elain’s was a clean bite, like as soon as the zombie broke flesh, its jaw had unhinged. Feyre’s looks like the undead bit into her and latched on like a feral beast, almost ripping an entire chunk out of the back of her forearm.

Rhys shouts your name and you jump, turning to him. His cheeks are stained with tears, his voice is a ragged mess from the crying a pleading. “Please, you have to help her,” he says frantically, “You have to save her.”

And fuck, if that isn’t a heavy weight to put on your shoulders.

You spring into action. As soon as Eris reenters the room, you’re screaming for him to get all the supplies that he can find that might help. He follows your direction, sprinting back up the stairs. Next, you shout the same thing to Cassian, telling him to fetch your bag from downstairs.

Feyre’s a moaning mess. She’s sweating profusely, hair matter to her head as she writhes on the table. Her fingers claw into the wood as she moans in pain and your heart breaks for her.

“It’s okay, Fey,” you say, brushing some of the sweat from her head. Fuck, her skin is on fire. Her frantic eyes meet yours and she’s groaning your name, pupils consuming the blue of her eyes. “I’m going to help you.”

Cassian makes it back first and you ask him to dig out the painkillers. “You have to swallow these,” you tell Feyre, who’s quickly fading into unconsciousness. You wonder how long she’s been awake.

Rhys takes over as Cassian pins her injured arm down, trying to coax her into swallowing the painkillers. From across the table, Azriel watches on, but his face shows nothing. He’s watching you, you realize, watching you do what he knows you do best. Nesta stands beside him, ready to assist in any way that she can now that she’s not bickering with Cassian.

“How long ago was she bitten?” You ask Rhys, who’s petting Feyre’s hair gently. He’s murmuring to her softly, something about keeping her eyes on him, but he lifts his gaze to meet yours when he answers.

“A few hours ago. Maybe three.”

How did you not realize how long it’s been since they’ve been gone? The sun has fully set and darkness pours in through the windows. You don’t have the time to wonder if any zombies have followed them back.

“Okay,” you breathe, taking in the state of the wound. It’s bleeding, oozing black blood that’s beginning to creep up her arm in the same way as her sisters. There’s a poorly made tourniquet fastened around her bicep, and that’s the first thing you fix.

Eris arrives with the bottle of peroxide you used upstairs and his arms chock full of supplies. This place is a haven, alright, and you’re more than thankful you might have the supplies you need to help your friend.

You uncap the bottle and douse it onto Feyre’s arm. She moans as the liquid works its magic, trying to clean the wound. You repeat this step until the bubbles that fizzle off the wound are no longer muddy with black.

There’s not much that you can do, you’re afraid. From what you’ve seen, the infection needs to run its course. She’ll be in pain for now, but there’s nothing you can truly do for your friend.

Which is probably why Rhysand begins freaking out when you pull out the gauze to wrap her wound in.

“That’s it?” He shouts, rounding the table. Fury is written on his face like a tattoo. Feyre’s slipped into a less than peaceful unconsciousness, whimpering and twitching. “That’s all you’re going to do for her?”

Cassian leaves his post at Feyre’s arm to stop his friend.

“There’s nothing I can do, Rhys,” you reply just as sadly. You hold your breath, unsure if you should speak what’s really on your mind, but with the way Rhysand is struggling against Cassian, you blurt, “I think the cure is in their blood,” and the room plunges into silence.

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