"Nothing is reaching for you except us," Lucien said, his voice slicing through her rising panic. "Can you feel my hand? The ice? These are real. The shadows are not."
But Lilian could feel the shadow's touch, cold and wrong in a way that was completely different from the ice, making her skin crawl. It felt like rot and decay, like something dead was touching her skin.
She tried to pull away to escape the reaching shadow hands, but she was trapped, pinned down by the ice and the hands holding them in place, unable to flee from the horror approaching her.
"Hold her still," Dante barked. "She's starting to thrash. We can't let her move these ice or she'll end up hurting herself."
More hands pressed into her shoulders and hips, holding her in place against the mattress. Lilian struggled with every bit of strength she had left, convinced that the shadow creatures had grabbed her and were pinning her down for something terrible.
"Lilian, stop! You're going to hurt yourself. Nothing is attacking you. We're trying to help you," Adrian said, his calm voice finally cracking with urgency.
But she couldn't stop. The hallucination had taken over completely, overwhelming her reality. The room spun around her, and the ceiling seemed to melt into ugly and twisted shapes. Even the vampires' faces began to melt and reformed, their handsome features stretching and warping into something monstrous.
She screamed and kept thrashing against the hands holding her down.
"Dante, we need to sedate her!" Lucien started to panic. "She's going to injure herself or us."
"No sedation," Dante replied firmly. "It could disrupt the transformation process. We just need to ride this out. Hold her steady, don't let her move. But don't hurt her."
The hallucination shifted.
Suddenly, Lilian was back in the alley where she had been attacked, but everything was wrong. The vampire who had bitten her had Dante's face, then Adrian's, then Lucien's, cycling through their features while he drank from her throat. She could feel the bite again, the agony of fangs sinking deep as her life was sucked away.
"Noooo," she moaned, trying to shove away the vampire that wasn't really there. "Please… not again~"
"Shhh, you're safe," a voice said. She couldn't tell whose anymore, as they all blurred into one sound. "You're with us. You're safe."
The hallucination only got worse, becoming more vivid. Now, she was the vampire, standing over Nancy's body with blood on her hands and mouth. Her best friend's eyes were wide and blank, stared up at her, and Lilian could taste the metallic tang of blood on her tongue.
"I killed her," Lilian choked, tears streaming down her fever-flushed face. "Oh god… I killed Nancy!"
"No, Nancy is fine! She's at home, sleeping. You haven't hurt anyone. This isn't real, Lilian. Listen to my voice. Come back to us!" Adrian's voice rang inside her head, but she felt it distant.
The hallucinations kept changing, one replacing another, each one worse than the last. She saw her apartment building on fire, flames consuming everything she owned.
She saw her mother's face melting like wax, skin sliding from bones as she screamed. Saw the restaurant where she worked filled with dead bodies and blood seeping the floors and soaking everything.
Through it all, the vampires stayed and held her, their hands were the only things keeping her grounded while her mind could no longer tell reality from nightmare. They didn't stop talking to her, their voices breaking through the worst moments, reminding her again and again of what was real.
They kept swapping out the ice constantly and checked her temperature every few minutes. They even changed her sweat-soaked underwear again. Despite everything they did, the fever just kept climbing.
"Forty-one point five," Dante said, his voice now sounding tight and stressed. "We're running out of options here."
"The ice bath?" Lucien suggested again.
"Not yet. Let's give the ice packs another thirty minutes. If she hits forty-one point seven, we're dunking her in," Dante decided.
Lilian kept drifting in and out of lucidity. Sometimes she could recognize the vampires, understand that she was in a bedroom being cared for during transformation fever. Other times she was convinced she was dying, being tortured, trapped in hell for sins she couldn't remember committing.
The worst hallucination came near the end of the seventh hour.
She opened her eyes and found herself completely alone in the room. The vampires were gone. She lay naked on the bed with no sheets, no towels, no signs of anyone, nothing but empty air and silence.
"Hello?" she called out, but her voice sounded weirdly hollow in the empty space. "Adrian? Dante? Lucien? Anyone?"
There was no answer. Just oppressive silence that felt like it was crushing her.
Lilian tried to sit up and realized she could move freely for the first time in hours. The fever felt gone. In fact, she felt fine, better than fine. She felt strong, powerful, and totally fine.
She got off the bed and stood up on steady legs and looked around the room. Everything was exactly as it should be, the fancy furniture, the expensive artwork, the crystal chandelier. But deep down, she knew something was fundamentally wrong.
Then she noticed the mirrors. Every single reflective surface in the room showed her a different version of herself. In the mirror above the dresser, her face was gone, replaced by smooth expanse of skin where her features should be.
In the window glass reflection, she was covered in blood from head to toe. In the wardrobe's glass door, she saw herself as a vampire, with pale skin, glowing red eyes, and fangs bared in scary grin, staring back at her.
"This isn't real!" Lilian said out loud, trying to convince herself. "This is just another trip. I'm still in bed. The guys are still here. This isn't real."
But it felt way too real. More real than anything had in hours. She could smell the faint flower scent of the room, could feel the cool air on her bare skin. She could even hear her own heartbeat.
She walked to the bedroom door and opened it. The hallway beyond was completely dark, with no lights at all. But she could hear familiar voices calling her name.
"Lilian. Where are you, sweetie? I can't find you." Her mother's voice echoed from the dark.
"Lil, help me! Please, I'm scared. I don't know where I am." Nancy's voice pleaded, laced with fear.
"Lilian. Come to us. We're waiting." Now Adrian's voice called, but it sounded distorted.
She stepped forward into the darkness, drawn by the voices, needing to find them to figure out what the hell was going on.
The darkness swallowed her whole. Then suddenly, rough hands were grabbing her, shaking her, and pulling her back. She gasped as reality slammed back into her at once.
"Lilian, wake up!!" Dante's face came into focus above her, his dark eyes filled with concern. "You stopped breathing. Come on, breathe!!"