The Curse in Her Blood

Chapter 5

Robin

"This is insane."

We've been given a sterile white room to sleep in, with matching all white single beds. Sarah's hooked up to a heart monitor and an IV that is giving her the basic meds needed to keep her alive. Nothing that will help cure her cancer but enough to keep her lungs and heart working while also keeping her out of pain.

"I know," I tell her because I'm literally COVERED in head electrodes that are glued to me and my scalp to monitor my brainwaves while I'm sleeping. It has to be a cap type thing cause I flat out refused to let them shave my head, and when Miss. Het said that she might not give me a choice I had to literally hold Sarah back. Miss. Het didn't seem to want to get into a physical fight with the girl dying from cancer and let it go. Cap it was.

Beside me Sarah starts to wheeze, this would be the beginning of a cough if she doesn't force herself to cover it up by talking in a sort of breathless way.

"Do you think I'm this Me-jedi thing? I mean... I've always been crazy protective of you. It would make sense."

"Do you think I'm some reincarnated future Queen of the Dead?" I counter and before she could shoot a passive aggressive comment about my dead personality and lack of a social life that would make me the perfect candidate for the Queen of the Dead I add: "And do you think that maybe... just maybe it might be a good idea to do like... a little bit of treatment? Like the smallest dose you can get. Jack did say they had the ability to administer Chemo here. Maybe... it might help... you know... just until we figure this out. Then you could go on to die as scheduled."

Sarah glares at me from her bed and that right there is my answer. "It's just an idea," I offer. "Maybe we can look at it tomorrow? See if you'd be up to it."

She sighs and says nothing committal about the matter but I know I've worn her down. This whole... I may die at the end of the week... has scared us both. I don't feel like I'm cursed and dying but maybe that's because it hasn't started affecting me yet. When will I start feeling it? Would it fast and painless or slow acting and agonizing? These were things they couldn't tell me. And I'm pretty sure if she could have, Miss Het would have relished in terrifying me even more with how much pain I'd be in when it finally kicked in.

We say goodnight to each other. I remind her that if she needs me, I'm just a bed away and I will totally unhook myself from electrode dream cap to climb into her bed. And then together we drift off to sleep.

-GBB-GBB-GBB-

I'm in the dreamscape again.

One minute I'm in bed, trying to fall asleep after mentally calling out to Set to come back and talk to me. The next I'm looking out at a barren dusty land, it's not rolling hills of sand like a desert, it is literally a wasteland. Blackened trees reach for the sky, cracks run through the orange ground, river beds run dry and the sky is overcast with ashy low hanging clouds. Something about what I'm looking at seems wrong. Like it wasn't supposed to look like this. Like there was supposed to be life and something was keeping everything dry and barren.

"You called?"

Well I did, didn't I? I forced myself to turn to him and look confident.

He's changed. He looks exactly like Robert Pattinson except his hair is jet black and his eyes are still those soulless pools of ebony. He wears the same outfit as before it's just his face that's different.

"What... what... happened to you?"

He looks down at himself and then back to me. "I have chosen a visage that pleases you. The last one didn't."

"Uh... okay... but uh... that's not you... right?" I ask. "And like... what do you look like without the whole... new face situation?"

His skin melts away revealing that corpse I knew from the pyramid and I yelp and back away and his face changes again, back to sexy Robert Pattinson.

"Yeah... that's not good..." I whisper trying very hard not to vomit in my own dream. I sort of hunch over willing my stomach to go back down and something slides off my head. I stare at the gold circlet on the ground that I have no intention to pick back up. Who even thought that would look good on me?

"Is there something you wanted? Other than to critique my outward appearance?" he asks me. His hands on his hips.

"Oh. Yes. I do," I say quickly straightening and coming to stand before him. "Do you want to like... take over the world or the... what did they call it, the upper kingdom? And are you planning to wipe out humanity for your army?"

A single eyebrow sky rockets up his face. "No. Why?"

Well I mean, he could be lying to me. It's not like I know him enough to tell if he was or not. And, of course, I'm kind of desperate enough to not care even if he is lying.

"Just wondering," I say quickly and move forward. I'm now standing right in front of him. "I will agree to help you but you have to cure Sarah."

"Deal," he cries standing up and offering out a hand.

"Now."

"What?"

"You heard me. Cure her right now, right this second and I will help you," I tell him.

"How do I know that you will?' he asks me.

"Look... Sarah... she's getting worse. I'm racing against the clock here. And apparently I only have a week to live..."

"A week to live? Who told you that?"

"Uh... Miss Het. Head of the Sector Against Magic?" I offer him. "Do you know her?"

He thought long and hard before carefully saying: "No." He looked away from me, before carefully turning back to me and saying: "You're not dying. I'd know it if you were. It is my whole purpose."

Okay. Cool. Great. So, Miss Het was wrong. Lovely. That was just wonderful. Still left me with my original problem though.

"That's great. But Sarah really is, and she's running out of time. So... since we got a time limit here, I want you to do it right now. And I swear. I swear on my honour that I will do anything I have to, anything you ask me to, to get you back on this throne, just please? Please cure her?"

He opens his mouth to say something but I stop him. "I won't help you until she's cured. I won't."

And then I offer him my hand.

He stares at it. He stares and then slowly, almost deliberately takes my hand. As he does his smile widens into this terrible toothy grin, fire shoots up my arm and into my chest.

A puff of black ash escapes his lips as he says: "Deal!"

And I'm woken by a million terrible alarms screaming in my ear.