Page 51 of Her Eternal Mate
“He’s asleep. I applied some herbal balm on his wounds to make them heal faster, doctor, but we’re going to have to come up with something new, a more potent remedy, if we want him to recover fully,” I said.
Dr. Monroe took off his glasses, then looked at me first and then at Vince. There was a joyfulness in his eyes that made him seem friendly.
“Will is by far the strongest werewolf I have ever come across, Alexis,” he said. “He will recover in time. Those injuries are special. His body will need a while to adjust to this new paradigm shift. White blood cells, antigens, antibodies, all those healing components are already present within him.”
“But surely there must be something we can do,” I said. I liked having contingency plans in case things went south. It was one of the downsides of being a classic over-preparer.
“There is nothing in all these books as well as in medical research all over the world, that covers the topic of genetic mutation-based supernatural injuries. It’s not an exact science. Hell, it’s not even a science at all. Blair’s meddling with forces beyond anyone’s understanding. You want an antidote? Get me one of those soldiers alive so I can take samples from them. That’s the best I can promise yet.”
At least that was something tangible, something achievable.
“You’ve got it,” I said.
“Are you sure, Lexie?” Vince asked.
“Yes. And I know what you’re afraid of. Don’t worry. I will trust Will this time and tell him before doing anything,” I said.
Chapter 24
Will
The bandages on my body felt stiff, dried with the blood and puss that had dripped from my slowly healing wounds. Dr. Monroe had insisted I wear them for another day to let the wounds close. In the meantime, I could wait and watch. Surprisingly, there was no pain in those wounds. Alexis’s balm had worked wonders.
Her presence beside me was far more therapeutic and healing than any bandages that I was wearing. She stood wordlessly by me at the gate’s watchtower. Both of us were looking at the city.
It reminded me of the pre-war silence back in Germany. The calm before the storm, as it were. The city was unusually quiet, its roads starkly deserted, as if every person somehow knew in their heart that some calamity was on the horizon.
Knowing Blair’s vantage point, at the very least, granted us a rough idea of where he would attack from.
“If he’s going to come from the south, that big field beyond the graveyard is where he’s going to gather his soldiers,” Alexis pointed at the ground in the south.
“Would it be enough to hold all his soldiers?” I asked. After seeing what I had seen, it wasn’t a reckless guess to say that he had thousands of soldiers at his disposal.
“Somehow, we will have to contain the fight to the south. Otherwise, his soldiers will make their way to the town. I don’t even want to imagine what happens in that case,” Alexis whispered.
I could imagine what would happen to it if Blair’s forces were unleashed upon those unsuspecting citizens. The town square would crumble. Blair’s old tower would fall and cover downtown in its rubble. The suburbs would be filled with the sounds of screaming people trying to run away from those mutated soldiers. The fabric of reality would tear, and only madness would prevail.
The wounds that had recovered over the last few days had formed stubborn scars that made their presence known every time I moved. My previous litheness was compromised, but the doctor said it’d only remain compromised for a few more days.
The trouble was, I did not have a few more days.
But even as I stayed put atop the commune, watching everything from afar, the pack had been dispatched all over town, seeing to it that all the stray soldiers were wiped out.
“Will. The doctor, Vince, and I had an idea. Do you want to hear it? I want to share it with you this time around instead of, you know, going behind your back,” Alexis said. We had been standing here idly for a long time, neither of us talking. While I had been brooding, Alexis, it seemed, had been building up the courage to talk to me about whatever was on her mind.
“Tell me. I promise I’ll hear it out,” I said, trying to compensate for the rudeness that I’d exhibited a few days ago.
“We need one soldier,” Alexis said.
“But we already have a barn full of dead bodies,” I said, turning to face her. She was looking quite eager and excited. I, on the other hand, was plain confused.
“We need an alive one. Someone whose blood and body we can use to study the kind of serum Blair injected in him and all the other soldiers. Think of it as research. It will help us understand what Blair’s been doing. With that information in our arsenal, we can do several things. Off the top of my head, we can come up with an antidote that renders you immune to these soldiers. Secondly, we can use what we know about those soldiers and their altered chemical makeup to create something or do something that ends this madness without going to war,” Alexis said.
I had to give it to her; it was a very well-thought-out plan, and she had covered her bases, making it impossible for me to say no. It surprised me why this suggestion hadn’t occurred to me before. It was not like there was a lack of soldiers in the area. The more we seemed to kill, the more appeared out of the woodwork.
“Fine. I am with you on this,” I said, this time really meaning it instead of just being accommodating to compensate for my prior behavior. She had come up with a good, followable, and mature plan. This was the version of Alexis I liked best. Someone who used her mind rationally.
“That day, when you went off to find Blair, I couldn’t help but think what I’d do without you if I lost you. You don’t know how much I have grown to love you and cherish you in these past months,” I said, holding her hands and putting them on my chest so she’d hear my heartbeat and feel my earnestness.