Envy (Dark Waters Book 1)

Chapter Twenty-eight:

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I looked down at my hands. I barely felt my fingers, yet I was aware of the pain in my lungs. Each breath was as if my chest filled with liquid, yet I was so thirsty. Despite my requests, the physician assigned to this horrid hospice refused to give me water. The nuns who assisted him pleaded, for days, for him to provide me with anything, but he and others had known that I had become a waste of space.

I was going to die. No one caught the plague and lived.

"Boy..."

I couldn't lift my head from the uncomfortable hard, stone cot I was forced to sleep on, but I turned and looked toward the voice that spoke. I thought a different physician, perhaps an apothecary, would've heard my thoughts and come to my rescue. But the man in the doorway wasn't a doctor. Hell, he looked too large to even be a man.

"Do... do I know you?" I coughed, then closed my eyes.

"No," he said, "you don't."

"All right, then," I coughed again, "you should leave. I am embodied with death and waiting for the vile demon to enter that door."

The man in the doorway chuckled, then passed his hand through his full beard. "Would it make you feel better if I say I'm always walking in death?"

I glanced at him. "Do you frequent hospices?"

"No." He shook his head and approached my cot. "I don't. But I am today."

He had my attention. With the strength I had left, I pushed myself up on my elbows to get a better look at him. The top of his head grazed the ceiling, his beard a mess, and there were rips in his cloak. Yet, I saw his kindness in his eyes and couldn't look away. No one looked at me like that anymore. Everyone ran, afraid they'd die because of me.

"I've come in here to tell you, you're too young to die," the man said. "And I have a way for you to beat this illness and live."

I patted my lips and attempted to lick them as they were cracked and aching for moisture. "Do you have a cure for the black death?" I asked.

"No." He shook his head again. "Not the black death. All death. After this, you'll never die."

My brows raised. "Never?"

"Right." The man approached my cot and placed his hand on my shoulder. I attempted to shake him off, to save him from this disease, but he squeezed my peeling skin instead. I hissed in discomfort, looking back up into his eyes. He smiled under his beard. "If you come with me, you'll never die. You'll live, forever, with a family who values you on their side."

"I will?" I breathed.

He nodded. "You will join the darkness as a vessel for sins."

My eyes widened. Immediately, I dropped back down on the cot and shook my head. He had my attention until he spoke blasphemy. Words of the devil. I wanted to be cured and saved, not banished to Hell itself. Who would want that? I wasn't an honest man, and I'd done many things, but to accept what I'd done as a prize for life... that went against what I'd learned.

"I will not be a vessel." I wasn't strong enough to push him away, so I leaned back and prayed he'd leave. "I will not. No."

"You will keep who you are," the man said. "You won't lose yourself. Your body won't change physically, except for this disease. It will leave you as quickly as it came."

A nun passed by the open door. I thought she would save me. "Ma'am, please!" I tried to shout at her. "There is sin in my room! Please!"

She either didn't hear me or didn't care to stop. She continued down the dark hallway, leaving the man beside my bed to continue. "It's funny that you know I am sin," he said, then he scanned the other four cots around me. "And I can tell you that the other people in this room can see me, hear me, and are cursing you."