The Key to My Hart

Chapter 21

Fuck. I had a raging headache. It felt as if someone had split my skull in two. I groaned, prolonging opening my eyes. Someone was shaking me. One of guys, probably.

"Just a few more minutes." I grumbled.

"It talked!" A little girl squeaked.

My eyes popped open, and I sat up only to clutch my head in agony.

"Here." Another child shoved something into my hands. "Hurry up and eat it. Your hands are turning back."

What? I pulled one hand in front of my face and gasped. My nails had turned solid black, and black veins were popping up starting from my fingertips and traveling up to my wrist. They were writhing, slowly creeping further up.

Panic set in. What the fuck was happening to me? I pulled my other hand to my face. Same thing was happening. There was also a stick of beef jerky grasped in my fingers. What?

"Hurry up and eat it." I lifted my gaze and saw a young boy crouched in front of me. There was fear lurking in his green eyes.

I twisted around, noticing that we were in a small cabin of some sort. There was a little girl cowering in the doorway of a bedroom. I didn't spot any immediate danger.

The boy snatched the jerky from me and shoved it into my mouth. I fell back with him landing on top of me. He kept his hands on my mouth. I was too confused to do much more than eat and swallow the dried meat. I was a bit hungry anyways.

After I finished, the boy climbed to his feet and back away cautiously. My headache began receding. And so did the black veins. Although, my fingernails remained black. I took the chance to study the two kids. They were both redheads, although the girl may have been considered strawberry blonde. The boy was covered in freckles. They had the look of innocent youth, but their eyes told another story.

"Where am I? And who are you?" What were two children doing out here alone.

The boy was the braver of the two. "You're at our vacation cabin. And yesterday, you were one of those creatures, but we found you asleep this morning and you looked different. And now you can talk."

I held up a hand to pause his rambling. I had turned into a biter? I needed to try to remember. I had met up with the Thinker that had been following us. Did she do this? No. That didn't seem right.

A decapitated head flashed behind my eyes. The thinker from the attack on the fort. Right. I was bitten. I told Ryder to shoot me, but he refused. So I ran. I can't remember much after that. Maybe these children could help fill in some of the blanks.

"Tell me everything you know." I tried to run my fingers through my hair, but it was a tangled mess.

"We were hiding under the bed yesterday, waiting on our dad to get back, and you showed up." The boy began.

"You were naked." The little girl sounded disapproving.

I looked down and saw I was wearing an old tattered shirt and some sweat pants. No boots. What the hell happened to my boots?

"Go on." I urged.

"You saved us from another creature, but I think you still wanted to bite us. Eating jerky and drinking some water seemed to help." The boy shrugged. So that's why he shoved the jerky down my throat just now.

I stood up, and had to quickly throw a hand out to steady myself. The room spun. I concentrated on the floor. There was a small blood stain near where I had been laying. Another on the wall near my hand.

Think, Hart. Think. Doc's words flashed in my mind. Sleep. Sleep was restorative. It must have worked for me. Doc's transition to a biter had been slow due to the diluted infection in Azrael's blood, and he hadn't fully turned into a biter. I had been bitten by a thinker, and I had fully turned into one.