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  “Kaylee…”

  “She’s not sleeping—she’s dead. She went to be with the Goddess. Well, I want to go too. Please, Jax…” She coughed and a gush of blood so dark it was almost black came from her lips and soaked her chest. “Please…” she whispered. “It hurts…”

  “Kaylee,” he whispered. “I can’t…I just can’t…I promised Mere and Pere I’d take care of you. Don’t ask me to do that.”

  “But I want to go. It hurts so bad…like fire inside me. Please, Jax, let me go…”

  It was clear to Mei-Li that Six had been fighting not to cry too much but now he lost the battle and tears poured down his cheeks. The small hope he’d been nursing that he might still save his sister snapped like a dry twig. Mei-Li felt his despair keenly—felt the pain like a knife that sawed at his soul.

  “Kaylee, no,” he begged brokenly. “You can’t leave me, too—you’re the last one left. Please, Kaylee…

  “Jax…” It was the last whisper of breath from her lungs. Then, mercifully, her eyes fluttered closed and she was gone.

  “Kaylee!” Her name from Six’s lips was a cry of pure anguish. He buried his face in his hands and his shoulders heaved. “I promised…” Mei-Li heard him groan. “Gods, I promised but I failed. I failed you all.”

  “Oh, Six…” she wanted to say but no words came from her lips and she remembered she was only here as an observer. His pain ate at her with sharp, hungry teeth. It was greater than any child his age—anyone at any age—should have to endure. It was tearing him apart inside, Mei-Li could feel it. Now she understood what Yipper had meant when he said he didn’t think Six could feel this kind of emotional agony and keep his sanity. This level of distress would break anyone—it was torture worse than any kind of physical pain and Six had put himself through it for her.

  Me—he did this for me—so I could feel again, she thought. Oh God, look what I’ve put him through! When is this going to end? We’re both going to go crazy if it doesn’t stop soon!

  “Alone.” The younger Six hunched in on himself, his arms locked around his knees, his face hidden from the awful sight of death and destruction that had come upon him so suddenly. Mei-Li watched him, aching to go to him and hold him but she couldn’t touch him—not here.

  “Oh, Six,” she said softly. “I’m sorry…so sorry…”

  “Why did you go?” he whispered brokenly. “How could you all leave me? Take me with you—don’t leave me all alone…”

  Alone…

  Alone…

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “Alone,” a low, rough voice whispered.

  Suddenly the scene melted away and Mei-Li found herself sitting in a hospital bed with Six—the full grown, adult Six, sitting rigidly beside her. His eyes were wide and fixed, as though he was staring at some horror only he could see and there were silent tears trickling down his cheeks.

  “Alone,” he muttered again. “And it is all my fault.”

  Mei-Li found that she was crying too. It was as though a dam had burst inside her—a barrier she hadn’t even know was there was now gone. She ached for everything she had seen—ached and burned inside for his pain. Her heart was breaking as she remembered the horrors he had been forced to go through at such a young age and the agony she still felt coming from him.

  “Six! Oh, Six!” Turning to him, she got up on her knees and threw her arms around his neck. The strange flexible metal device Yipper had put around the backs of their necks was knocked off and fell with a clatter to the floor but that didn’t matter—all that mattered was being close to him, sharing his pain.

  But though she held him close and cried until her tears wet the front of his shirt, Six remained rigid in her arms, neither moving or speaking. In fact, he barely seemed to breathe at all.

  Mei-Li looked around anxiously until she saw Yipper, watching warily from the other side of the room.

  “Yipper, what’s wrong with him?” she demanded. “Is he still stuck in that awful memory? Do something! Get him out of it! It’s terrible.”

  “I do not know what I can do. No I don’t, no I don’t.” The Tolleg looked miserable. “I cannot—”

  “The memory is over.” Six’s deep voice sounded rusty and hoarse. “Yet the pain remains as well as the knowledge I have gained from it. I understand now.” He turned a blank, cold stare at Yipper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Understand what? Tell him what?” Mei-Li asked. “Please, Six, just talk to me. Or at least look at me. What was Yipper supposed to tell you?”

  He turned his head to look at her and the coldness in his eyes made her heart freeze. He no longer looked…entirely sane. And yet he spoke calmly.

  “I was the agent of their destruction. The carrier that made Kaylee sick—that made them all sick.”

  “Technically the female who gave your sister the bread was the original carrier,” Yipper protested quickly. “You just happened to be the first person she made skin-to-skin contact with. That was all, that was all.”

  “That old woman,” Mei-Li exclaimed. “That old baker woman had a disease she passed to you—didn’t she? I knew something wasn’t right about her. I knew it.”

  “The Scarlet Plague,” Yipper said sadly. “It can only pass between hosts who have at least some similar DNA. In this case, after studying Six’s Memory Cache I believe she must have been a very, very distant relative from his mother’s side. It passes instantly through even minimal skin contact but it doesn’t kill the first person it touches—it colonizes them—uses them as a vector. Yes it does, yes it does.”

  “It used me. And marked me.” Six pointed to the red ring around his left iris. “I knew I felt shame for the mark and wanted to cover it up but I didn’t realize why until I saw the memory again after all these years. If I had just let Kaylee eat the hi-ni bread instead of giving it back, we would have been fine. It can only pass skin-to-skin. If only I hadn’t touched her…”

  “But it wasn’t your fault—it was that old baker woman!” Mei-Li protested. “She even said you looked familiar! Why would she do that to you?”

  “The virus can lay dormant for years,” Yipper said. “And she probably wasn’t even aware that she’d touched Six at all. The contact was so fleeting I had to watch the memories myself several times to even be sure it happened. Yes I did, yes I did.”

  “But Six used that light wand thingy.” Mei-Li made a waving motion with one hand. “I thought it was supposed to kill anything!”

  “Not the virus that causes Scarlet Plague,” Yipper said. “At the moment of contact it burrows invisibly, painlessly and almost instantly through flesh until it finds a blood vessel.”

  “It probably entered Kaylee’s blood stream almost the second I touched her.” Six rubbed his hands together in a washing motion. Mei-Li wanted to ask him to stop but she didn’t think he was conscious he was doing it. “I killed her the moment I touched her,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “The people I loved most in the world and I killed them all…”

  “Oh, Six, no!” Mei-Li tried to put her arms around his neck again but he pushed her away.

  “Stop.”

  “But, Six…” She was crying again, the tears streaming helplessly down her face. “Six, please—”

  “I need to leave.” He stood abruptly, leaving her weeping on the bed. He turned to Sylvan, who had been standing and watching quietly in the corner. “Is there a place I could be alone?”

  “Of course.” The other male nodded quietly. “Come. I’ll take you there.”

  “No,” Mei-Li protested. “No, he shouldn’t be alone! Not after going through all that! He…he could hurt himself,” she finished in a near whisper, looking at Sylvan appealingly. “Please…”

  The Kindred commander shook his head firmly. “Don’t worry—I’ll be certain that doesn’t happen. Come, Six.” And he led the other male away.

  Mei-Li watched them go feeling that Six’s family weren’t the only ones who had died. In reliving the horrible memory and r