Page 60 of Don't Bite the Botanist
Ethan screamed as he pounded on the space where the door had been only moments before. Just a smooth expanse of wall, as if no exit had ever existed.
“Let me out,” he shouted as he backed away from the missing door and bumped into a shelf of test tubes and petri dishes. “I want to go home.”
He grabbed the neck of a nearby beaker and smashed its base on the edge of a worktable. He held so tight to his improvised weapon, he feared it might fully shatter in his grip.
The voice chuckled softly. “But Ethan, you’re already—”
He didn’t hesitate that time. When the voice started speaking, he whipped around. “I will fucking end you!” he screamed as he plunged the broken glass into the chest of the vampire.
“—home.” She grinned at him, blood spilling from her mouth in a thick crimson waterfall.
And then she started to change.
Flash of red. Her nose straightened.
Flash of red. Her eyes lightened.
Flash of red. Her skin darkened.
Flash. Flash. Flash. Change. Change. Change.
Until Tressa stood before him, staring down at the glass jutting out from her chest.
“No,” he whispered, rushing forward to catch her. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” she whispered, lifting a hand to brush back the hair dangling in front of his face. “Everything… is going to be… okay.”
Then she died in his arms.
Chapter thirty-three
Tressa
“I want to go home,” Ethan shouted, and Tressa jumped up from the chair she’d been sitting in for the past couple hours, holding Ethan’s hand and waiting desperately for him to come back to her.
She’d learned her lesson from Cora’s transition. They had the lights dimmed, and the entire wing of the compound was empty save for whoever was with him.
“No noise, no light, and for Lilith’s sake, remember that he is going to be disoriented at first,” Eliana had instructed her.
Tressa grabbed for the ear plugs on the nightstand, nearly knocking over a vase of sunflowers in her hurry to get them into Ethan’s ears. If he was talking, that meant he was waking up and would need them to muffle his new hyper acute vampiric hearing.
His eyes were still closed, but he thrashed and screamed.
“Ethan,” she whispered, trying not to overwhelm his newly heightened senses. “Ethan, it’s Tressa. You’re going to be—”
Ethan bolted upright in bed and grabbed the heavy crystal vase from the nightstand. Before Tressa realized what was happening, he smashed it on the table and screamed, “I will fucking end you!”
Then he plunged the jagged shards deep into her heart.
Agony tore through Tressa, and she stumbled away from the bed. When her back hit the wall behind her, she stared down at the glass protruding from her chest, blood flowing down its fine etchings. She could feel her heartbeat growing weaker as it struggled to pump around the foreign object embedded in it. Slowly, she dragged her head up, searching for her mate.
His eyes were still vacant, like he was looking but not truly seeing. He stepped forward. “No,” he whispered, rushing toward her. “I didn’t mean…”
Her legs gave out, and she slumped against the wall, fingers fumbling on the blood-slicked hunk of glass. All the oxygen seemed to vanish from the room, and she struggled to breathe. Struggled to think.
It was a bad idea. She lived long enough to know it was the worst possible thing you could do. But she didn’t care. She finally found purchase on the vase and yanked it from her chest. If she was going to die, she was going to do it in her mate’s arms with nothing between them.
She looked up at him, saw his glassy eyes running over her body. Was he even with her? Or was he still trapped in the hell of the transition?
