Deathfever
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Beryl is sick. Yesterday he was only a little sick; Amber had to make him take a nap because he was tired, but mostly he played like he always does, running around and making trouble. This morning, it was lots worse.

He said he was thirsty, but he won't drink. He said he was hot, but he won't take a bath or let their Grand-da wipe his forehead with water like he wanted to. He didn't eat his breakfast; he forgot to give Amber his wake-up kiss, and he didn't even bounce on the bed before he went out to tell Da good-morning. Worst of all, his purple bunny is still laying on the bed at home. Beryl never forgets to bring his bunny in the car for trips.

Grand-da says he'll be okay, but Amber doesn't think so. He doesn't say it; it would be rude, and maybe make Beryl upset if he's paying attention enough to even hear. Right now he's too busy crying to hear anything, curled up in a ball with Amber on Grand-da's sick-person bed while the grownups talk in quiet, upset voices, huddled across the room from the twins. Grand-da and Talé Hemlock are telling Da something, something about Beryl, and Da is almost crying. But it's not that making Amber worried.

Amber's twin smells wrong. He doesn't smell like Beryl anymore, just like sweat and sickness, and his scent tastes like sour milk on Amber's tongue. He doesn't act like Beryl, either. Beryl wouldn't scream like that over something he didn't want to do, not even when he's grumpy, and he doesn't cry unless something's really hurting him, or he's really scared, like when he thought zucchinis were green beasts bigger and stronger than Amber with sharp teeth that carried little cub-bearers into mountains and ate them with spaghetti sauce. Beryl is mostly brave, and only scared of things eating him. Amber doesn't know what to do.

But he can't be scared. Beryl needs him to not be scared. He thinks maybe he'll be scared later, when Beryl is better...

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They had gotten so stirred up by the time Hemlock finally got back that the knock on the closed kitchen door made both Sineult and Lupin jump, and Fern let out a little squeak. After the cookies were put in to bake there was nothing else for the cub to do in the silent, worried lethargy of grownups waiting for news, and the sound made Onyx snap back to himself with a guilty glance at his son's startled green eyes. He should have been paying more attention.

Sineult looked guilty too and scooped the cub out of his chair to sit in the blond's lap, which made his husband feel better. Fern wouldn't be scared with his da; Sineult was very good at calming little ones down and making them comfortable. Onyx got up and went to the door.

It was Hemlock back again, and the look on his face caused Onyx to go out with him into the hall instead of pulling him into the kitchen as he had been going to, his heart throbbing sickly up into his throat and the sweat that had already been washing all over him trying to go cold even in the stifling heat. He shut the door behind them before Sineult or Lupin could protest.

"Beryl has a fever," Hemlock started without prelude, "and he's not too sick right now, as things like that go, but it doesn't look as simple as Da thought either. They tried to give him a bath, and that's what all the fuss was about before. He didn't want to get in. Neither will he drink, and Jade said he's been looking a little pale since late yesterday morning; Amber wouldn't say anything, but he looks just as worried as anybody else, which is never a good sign with those two." He bit his lip. "That noise before; you felt it, right?"

Feeling inexplainably reluctant, Onyx nodded.

"He shouldn't be making that sound yet, not until he's much older," Hemlock said, unnecessarily but with a sense of desperation in his voice that made Onyx listen in spite of knowing it all already. "Amber should be enough for him now, not to mention Jade's right there with him.

"I guess I just don't know how to say it. Da thinks he might have the fever."

"The fever," Onyx repeated slowly. He felt his breath escape in one long rush as he leaned back against the wall next to the door, but all he heard was the steady thud of his heart against his ribs. Sineult and Fern... in this house with that.

"Where would he get it from?"

Again, Hemlock shook his head. "I don't know. Da doesn't either, and it's been so long since there was any around to study that I doubt anyone does."

The dark-headed Kindred sagged next to Onyx against the wall, out of things to say and looking more upset than Onyx had seen him since the morning he and his then mate-to-be had showed up at the old apartment with news for Sineult. He had been fearful then of losing his intended: Onyx wasn't all that sure that now was very different. Just hearing about it felt like loss already.

The Kindred didn't give out scientific names or any of the things that humans did with sicknesses; for a Kindred, a sickness was what it did. The Lonely Sickness was a prime example, but even the fear which that caused wasn't comparable to the other. It had been named, simply and appropriately as usual, the Deathfever. That was what it was. In the old days, when it had occurred once in a while, it had been common knowledge that anyone who came down with it was destined for death, and though many healers had tried to find a cure, there really wasn't much of a way to get close enough to its victims to study anything.

Speaking very simply, it drove the sick one insane. There were little differences between individual cases, but that was the basic outcome of them all. The biggest problem with the illness was that it made the sick person averse to liquid, allowing the fever that accompanied it to expand until it affected the mind, or so Onyx had heard; there had been no documented cases of the Deathfever for ages and ages, even longer than it had been since the last case of Lonely Sickness before Sineult's brief encounter with it, so all of the people who might have actually known were long dead even by Kindred standards. All there was left was speculation.

Hemlock shifted tiredly. "Da thinks it might not be as bad for us as it used to be," he announced out of nowhere, catching Onyx's attention once more. The redhead turned hopeful eyes on him.

"He didn't say it just now, but he's said it before. He's always thinking about something... But he's right. The world has changed, and the things we do, so even if... even if Beryl can't fight it off. He won't pass it on as easily as it passed on before, because we're closer to human now than we were then. We were pulled into civilisation."

Swallowing hard, Onyx nodded. That did make sense. In old times there had been a lot of animalian activities, including licking as a common form of comforting, cooling off, or proving love, but nowadays that wasn't an everyday occurance. As far as anybody had been able to tell, the illness was passed on from the first victim primarily by saliva, so if they were careful and only let healers close it might not go anywhere.

'Might' was suddenly a very painful word.

"How... how is Jade doing?" he asked dully, still trying to wrap his mind around the split-second falling of everything he and his family had just been planning. His brother would be hanging on; Jade had gotten plenty of practice in hanging on. But it had been forever since then, and Onyx wasn't sure how long that could last, or even how long it should last. Jade's skilled suppression was like a spider's web, and the longer he had to scrape by on what hope he could fake, the deeper he tangled himself in it.

Hemlock shook his head and straightened against the hard surface behind him, the light flooding in from outdoors looking nearly like a parody of itself on the stiff, weary surfaces of his face.

"He didn't say anything, but he looked too quiet. He's thinking, and that's not good... There's got to be a way he can let go of that, before we really get into things." The dark-haired Kindred rubbed a dispirited hand over his eyes. "Somebody should get a hold of Spruce too, before he gets home and finds them gone. Jade would probably do better if he was here."

"I've got to tell Sineult and Fern, and Lupin." He found himself turning a questioning, almost pleading eye on his friend. "Do you want to tell him? I could call Spruce. Sineult knows the number... He's been memorising as many of them as he can." The redhead managed a wan smile at the thought of his mate's frenzied self-teaching, but it dwindled again at the thought of what he would say to him.

"No, that's okay. I can tell both of them," Hemlock accepted quietly, pushing off the wall with his elbows. "Lupin will be... upset. Spruce will want exact details, as much as there are, and you haven't seen Beryl yet. Besides, you have Fern to explain things to... And Da won't need me for a while. There isn't all that much we can do right now that he can't do alone. Just tell Lupin to come in the den, and I'll do what I can."

"All right," Onyx sighed finally, biting his lips. He pushed away from the wall too and started off toward the kitchen, the sounds of Hemlock moving off in another direction fading at his back as he pushed open the door and went back in.

Two sets of worried eyes met him instantly. Fern's drifted uneasily up from his perusal of a cookbook on the counter, but he did not offer a word. The cub-bearers, on the other hand, launched into a series of questions so rapid and jumbled that Onyx couldn't have answered them if he had wanted to, and he had to hush them both loudly to get his message out.

"Lupin, Mem says you need to meet him in the den," he was at last able to say when the noises had drained away from the room. Lupin nodded hesitantly and slid out the door, leaving Onyx facing his nervous husband and the job of telling him everything.

"'Nyx, wha's wrong?" Sineult ventured unhappily after several minutes of strained silence during which Onyx had torn his brain to pieces trying to think of a good way to say that Beryl, who as far as they'd been concerned that morning had been fine, could be dying. That didn't even include how he was supposed to say it in front of his son.

"Beryl's... very sick," he drifted lamely after a little more thought. Fern's ears perked up visibly, making his father's heart sink, but he plunged on as steadily as he could under the circumstances.

"Jade and Jessamine are with him now. And Amber," he added. He didn't know that, but it seemed more likely than not. "They've had a look at him, and it's not as simple as Jessamine thought it was at first."

"'S 'e goin' t' be okay?" Sineult interrupted desperately, clasping his small hands together so tightly that the knuckles turned blind white, and Onyx grimaced.

"I don't know," he said simply.

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