The Voice

That week was actually a pretty good week. Honestly, I didn’t think it would be, considering my three great friends from the show were gone and Niall was sick as a dog, but it went surprisingly well. Niall never suspected a thing, and he really thought I was doing Love Alone.

When I got my version of the song done and the band actually got it learned, the first time the guys heard it, they just stared at me with mixed expressions. Harry was grinning from ear-to-ear, nodding at me. Zayn and Louis gawked at me, and Liam just twitched a little.

“How the hell are we supposed to ever sing this again?” Liam finally complained, being the first to speak up.

I snorted. “Come on, guys. It’s not that good. Besides, you did the original. I just made it more my style.”

“Ev, that’s incredible!” Louis exclaimed. “Damn you!”

So that was interesting. Everything was just going by nicely. Brinley tried to start crap, but I just ignored her and went about my business. Jesse, Emma, and I hung out a lot, rehearsing and just goofing off. Honestly, if I was going to make it to the finals, I wanted them to be with me.

It was just a good week until I started feeling really bad, too. Like, showing the same symptoms Niall was showing at the beginning of the week. That struck me as very odd, and it got me thinking. When I thought about one thing, everything else that had come to my mind at any point in time came rushing back. It got me beyond worried.

Niall wasn’t sick with any disease anyone could even find. There was physically nothing wrong with him, no virus or bacteria or anything. He was literally healthy as far as all of that went.

Yet he wasn’t healthy. There was something wrong with him, and I had no idea what it was. I laid in bed Sunday night, the night before our performance, and I couldn’t sleep. Niall’s coughing echoed in my mind, making me shiver and freak out.

Any time I was around him . . . he was better, almost felt good enough to leave the room, but he was gradually getting worse when I wasn’t there. Yesterday, the guys all came to me and made me swear to them that he wasn’t dying.

I told them all I could. He wasn’t dying if I had anything to say about it. If we had to finish the bonding process, fine. I didn’t mind, and if he did, he would have to get over it.

That didn’t make sense, though.

As I laid there, I continued listening to his strained coughing. Cough after cough sounded worse and worse, but suddenly, I heard a loud thud after the cough. The guys all began freaking out, so in a flash, I was down in his room, my hand over my mouth.

Niall was on the floor, coughing up blood.

When he looked up and saw me standing there, he managed to stop coughing and looked up to Harry. “Get her out of here.”

“No,” I whispered, and I shut the door behind myself to add emphasis. “I think I’m the only one who can help you.”

“How?” he asked, and he let out such a weak laugh . . . so weak that my heart broke. “Do you know what’s going on?”

I knelt down in front of him and placed my hand on his head. His fever was so hot that it actually burned my hand to hold it there, so I pulled it away carefully—so he wouldn’t get alarmed, of course.

“I have no idea,” I admitted, my voice a bit choked and struggled. “I . . . all anyone ever had were guesses. No one ever guessed anything like this could happen.”

He looked right into my eyes, and what I saw scared me. His eyes were still red, but they weren’t glowing. Honestly, the life looked it was literally leaving him. Slowly, he . . . he really was dying if I didn’t figure out what to do.

When tears started pouring down my cheeks, his eyes widened. “Evie, what’s wrong?”

“You could be dying,” I managed to get out, and that only made me cry harder. “And I don’t know what to do! I mean, maybe finishing the process would help, but who knows?”

“We could always try,” he suggested, and despite the fact that he looked worse than hell, he managed to give me a mischievous smile.

“Yeah, in your state, that might just kill you,” I snorted. “Not to mention . . . you could get wings, and it’s pretty hard to figure all that out.”

“How to hide them, you mean?” he murmured.

I nodded. “Precisely. Look, lemme just think a minute.” I turned myself so that I wasn’t facing him and leaned against his bed.

If this was a bonding thing, wouldn’t I be sick, too? Why was I just now getting sick? I mean, I got his body fluid. He got mine. We kissed just the same, got the same . . . .

Oh. Oh my freaking . . . .

I surprised all of them, I think, when I stood up and walked right out of the room, my fingers knotted in my hair. I couldn’t look at anyone as I thought about it, went through everything once again to make sure there wasn’t something else I was missing. When nothing else came to mind, I started hyperventilating.

Seriously?!

“No, no, no,” I stuttered out, and before I knew it, I was pacing around the island in the kitchen, eyes wide and hands over my face.

Niall never tasted my blood. He never drank any of my blood, and I had gotten a small bit of his a couple of times.

Harry was the one to follow after me, his eyes wide. “Ev, what’s going on?”

My lips were trembling. “I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m just now starting to feel sick, what the difference is . . . .”

He looked confused. “And that is?”

I did something that I think both shocked and disgusted him. I went and grabbed a cup out of the cabinet, one with a straw, and then, I bit my wrist so hard that it drew blood. When I did, I began dripping a good bit into the cup, enough that it would fill a shot glass.

“I think this is the only way for us to survive,” I whispered, and what I saw on his face was a mixture of disgust and fascination. “Something we have to do every so often to live.”

His face was very pale. “Are you gonna tell him?”

“If he wants to know I will,” I said, and I knew damn well he could hear and was probably listening.

Very slowly, Harry turned and walked into the room. I could faintly hear him telling everyone they might want to leave for a bit. His tone of voice and facial expression worried them, so they actually took his advice and came into the kitchen to ask me what was going on.

No words could come out, so I ignored them and walked in there with Niall, who was sitting on the bottom bunk with his hands over his mouth. “You wanna know?”

“Not ‘til I drink it,” he murmured, and he took the cup out of my hands. He was grateful for the lid and cup that you couldn’t see through, and the straw. “You sure this will work?”

“This is the best lead I’ve got,” I admitted.

He nodded and took the first sip. Just like that, no more questions. Luckily, I couldn’t tell it was blood through the straw, so I could stomach this. I couldn’t stomach that I would need to do this as soon as he started feeling better, but that was a bit in the future. At the moment, he was my only concern.

This had to work . . . .

It surprised me how easily he drank it, and when he was done, with a red mouth and red teeth, he actually smiled a bit at me. “That wasn’t bad, really. I thought it would be, like, acid or something.”

I let out a soft laugh and shook my head. “No. It’s slightly basic.”

This confused him, but when I looked up to his eyes, I saw something that brought tears to my eyes again. They were different tears, though.

There was a glow in his eyes again. It was faint, but it was growing, and the longer I looked, the more it grew.

I surprised him when I actually tackled him in a hug, and the two of us fell off the bed. I didn’t care, though, because it worked! Niall wasn’t dying!

He laughed. “I know, love. It worked. I can feel it. Wanna tell me what it is?”

I pressed my lips together. “I kinda have to, ‘cause I need yours. I started feeling sick a little bit ago.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. “Niall, that was my blood.”

Now, his eyes were as wide as they could go, and very quickly, he jumped up to look down at me. “Wh-What?”

I stood up as well with a wince on my face. “I realized why I was just now getting sick and why you were near death. The only difference is that I’ve bit your lip a couple of times and tasted your blood. So, I figured out that we have to have each other’s blood every so often in order to survive.”

He had to swallow, but slowly, a tiny smile pulled across his lips. “Well . . . I guess we’ll get used to that eventually. Uh . . . how are you gonna get mine?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, and I quirked my lips to the side while I held my wrist up towards him. “I bit myself.”

His eyes were wide. “Why on earth did you do that?”

“I was panicking,” I admitted. “I thought you were dying, and I just did it without really thinking. It doesn’t really hurt that bad.”

He surprised me when he brought his wrist to his own mouth and bit it, just like I had. In an instant, there was blood running down his wrist and dripping into the cup. I didn’t even see him pick it up or open it, but it was open waiting on blood.

There was a small wince on his face when he began squeezing his arm to get more blood out.
“Alright, Evie. Just lemme know when you’ve got enough.”

When there was about as much as I put in there, I stopped him and swallowed. “I think that’s good.”

He stopped dripping it and stood up to go wash it off in the bathroom, more than likely. While he did that, I manned up and just drank his blood—through the straw, of course, because that made it easier on me. I didn’t slow down, just drank it all as fast as I could.

The guys came back in at the wrong time. They came in right as Niall came out with red on his lips and bloody toothpaste, and of course, my mouth was pretty red.

Liam’s eyes were the widest. “Did . . . did you just have to do what I think you just did?”

I looked down to my feet. “Uh . . . no?”

“That’s pretty sick,” Louis laughed, and that surprised me. He was laughing? “Warn us next time so we don’t come in before you’re all cleaned up?”

Niall began laughing himself, something that surprised them all enough that their disgust immediately disappeared.

Harry’s eyes were wide and on me. “It worked?”

I smiled as big as I could without showing teeth, and when I began to talk, I looked down. “It worked. His eyes are already getting their glow back, and he seems to be feeling better.”

Niall took his toothbrush out of his mouth and made a face. “The taste is noticeable again.”

I scrunched my nose at him. “Well, that’s part of life now, my dear. I’m just glad you’re not dying.”

“How do you know I was gonna die?” he muttered, but he didn’t wait for me to answer because he walked back in the bathroom to rinse his mouth.

“You didn’t see the look in your eyes,” Harry told him for me, when I couldn’t really find words. “I’ve never seen them look so lifeless, and each and every day only got worse and worse. Death is inevitable when that’s happening, Niall.”

Niall, in an instant, was standing in front of me with a bright white smile and shining red eyes. “It’s twelve oh one. Know what that means?”

My eyebrows furrowed. “It’s Monday?”

He let out a delighted laugh. “No, silly girl. I mean, yes, it’s Monday, but it’s also something else.”

I was still very confused. “I don’t understand.”

He sighed and pulled me into a tight hug, something he wasn’t able to do just last night. It made my heart start racing in my chest, to get this warm and loving embrace again and know it wasn’t going away any time soon . . . this was the happiest moment I had experienced in a while.

“Happy eighteenth birthday, beautiful girl,” he whispered in my ear, and my eyes shot wide open in surprise.

Holy crap. I was now eighteen.

Notes

The lyrics are from Life Starts Now by Three Days Grace. :)

I didn't realize when I decided to post this chapter tonight that it ended on Everit's birthday. That's ironic because it happens to be my birthday. :3 No big deal, just ironic. x3

Anyways, hope you guys enjoy! I know, it's a bit odd, but really, nothing about this story is usual or typical. At least as far as I know . . . .

Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think. :)