Author: Emily Goodwin
Category: Vampires
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“Seriously, Cal, it’s fine,” Abby presses.
“It’s late.” I step out of the salt circle and grab the bloody blanket from the couch. Abby will be disappointed to know that the couch is pretty much clean and she can’t use it as an excuse to trash the thing.
I’m aware Phil is still standing there, rooted to the spot as he watches me move about the living room, gathering up the remaining bloody rags.
“You’re still bleeding,” Lucas tells me, wincing as he reaches into Abby’s first-aid kit for a bandage.
“I’ll heal. In due time.” I ball up the blanket. “I’ll toss this and will get you another.”
“Are you sure you’re both okay?” Phil asks again. “I mean…not to be insulting, but you both look terrible.”
“It’s nothing a shower, some wine, and like a gallon of Kristy’s healing balm won’t solve.”
“Uh, okay. If you say so.”
“Callie,” Abby says. “Can I talk to just you for a second?”
“Of course.”
I follow her into the kitchen, which would be enough distance for a normal human not to be able to hear us, but not a vampire. “Hang on,” I tell her and cast a silencing circle around us. “Okay, no one will be able to hear us now.”
“Wow, that’s…that’s handy.”
“Yeah.”
She wraps her arms around herself, trying to gather her composure. Then she takes the bandage from me and wraps it around my arm. “You said Lucas’s heart hasn’t beat in over a thousand years.”
“Right.”
“Your words made something occur to me.”
“That sounds urgent.”
“It is. Or at least I think so. Lucas is still a vampire, right?”
“Yes,” I say confidently. He still has his fangs, has his ability to move with super speed, has super hearing, and still drinks blood. Yet…yet his heart is very slowly beating.
“Why would they do that? Curse him with, um, humanity I guess you’d call it, right?”
“To kill him. He’s been alive for over sixteen hundred years. Murdering him isn’t easy. Cursing him is the only way to get to him without risking him ripping their throats out first.”
“But he has you, and don’t the other witches know you’re like a super-witch and going up against you would be a death sentence?”
“Thanks for thinking I’m awesome, but no, most of the witches in my coven don’t know about my new powers, and we’re trying to keep it that way. What occurred to you?”
“If Lucas hasn’t been a human for over a thousand years, then he’s susceptible to a ton of germs that weren’t around when he was alive.”
“What?”
“Think of it like this: you take someone from Rome in the 300s and bring them here, into the modern, dirty world. Their bodies won’t be equipped to fight off certain things. I’m no expert on this, but we’ve seen it in modern medicine before. Someone lives in complete isolation, and then when they come into contact with others, they get really sick from something that wouldn’t keep most from going into work.”
A chill goes through me. “So…what are you saying, Abby?”
“I’m saying if part of Lucas has become human, a common cold could kill him.”
Chapter 5
“Are you breathing?” I fidget in the driver’s seat of the McLaren, waiting for a car to pass so I can pull out of the parking spot. I threw away the bloody blanket and helped Abby sweep up the salt on the floor before we left.
“No,” Lucas says, looking me as if I just asked if the sky is purple.
“Are you sure? You said you still inhale and exhale as a habit.”
“Most vampires do, but it’s not functional breathing. Look.” He leans back in the seat and becomes perfectly still. I watch his bare chest not rise and fall for a good two minutes. “Not breathing.”
I nod and look back at the road. I didn’t tell Lucas that Abby heard a heartbeat. I wanted to, but I couldn’t get the words to come out. Not there, not with Phil watching.
Though part of me thinks Lucas already knows. That he can feel it and can hear the faint beating coming from deep inside his chest.
“Where are you going?” Lucas asks when I go down the block toward his house on North Orchard.
“To your—Eliza’s house.”
“I told you, I don’t want her to know.” He looks at me with annoyance on his handsome face. “Let’s go home.”
Lucas officially moved in with me after our wedding, and we’re crammed into my little farmhouse as the renovations are completed on the estate he bought me several months ago.
“My purse is in the house. With my phone.”
The annoyance on Lucas’s face grows.
“It’s not that I can’t be without it,” I go on before he can make a jab about me being addicted to my phone. “But Eliza will wonder why I left it, and you two had plans to hang out. She’ll know something is up.”
“I’ll call her and tell her I changed my mind.”
“Lucas,” I start and flick my eyes to him. “She’s going to find out. You can’t avoid her, especially after we just went two weeks without seeing her.”
Lucas looks straight ahead and just nods. Eliza is a grown-ass woman and, more importantly, a three-hundred-something-year-old vampire who was raised and trained by Lucas. She’s lethal.
Yet she’s the closest thing Lucas will ever have to a daughter of his own, and while Eliza can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, he does whatever he can to protect her.
“Fine,” he huffs and lets his eyes fall shut. He needs to sleep for a few hours before we make the drive back to Indiana. We have time before sunrise.
I reach over and put my hand on his thigh. My heart is still racing, as it has been since Lucas was slashed across the stomach. I know exhaustion is going to hit me hard as soon as we get into the house, but right now, I’m still all jittery.
Slowly, I park the McLaren in the garage and rush around to help Lucas out. He waves his hand at me and struggles to get up himself.
“Let me help you,” I tell him, fully aware that some people have issues letting others help them in general. Lucas has been a big bad vampire for years. This has to be so weird to him.
“I’m—”
“Don’t even,” I warn. We get so far as opening the door to the house before Eliza comes rushing through the house.
“What the fuck is going on?” she demands, blue eyes flashing as she takes in the sight of Lucas.
“Help him in,” I tell her, struggling under Lucas’s heavy frame. Eliza pushes me out of the way and slips her arm around Lucas, easily able to hold him up.
“What the fuck is going on?” she repeats, voice cracking. “What happened?”
“Are you alone?” I ask, shutting the door behind us and taking my shoes off, realizing now just how much blood is all over me.
“Yes.” Eliza walks Lucas through the mudroom and into a sitting room right off the kitchen. She helps him onto the couch and steps back, eyes wide with fear as she looks at him. “What did you do to him?”
“She didn’t do anything but save me,” Lucas grunts, eyeing Eliza with fatherly annoyance.
“That looks like fucking witchcraft.” She points to the sigil on Lucas’s chest. Her voice is tight, and I can tell she’s on the verge of crying.
Girl, same.
“It’s angel-craft.” The words sound stupid coming out of my mouth, but I just shake my head and grab a towel from the kitchen, wetting it and rushing into the sitting room with Lucas.
“The fuck does that mean?” Eliza’s British accent gets stronger when she’s angry or scared. I kneel down and start wiping the blood off Lucas. “Callie!”
“I honestly don’t know,” I tell her and feel the adrenaline start to wear off. I close my eyes and rock back, tears pooling behind my closed lids yet again. “I don’t know.”
“Hey,” Lucas says softly and reaches for me. “It’s okay.”
�
�How the fuck is any of this okay?” Eliza throws up her hands and sounds like she’s about to cry as well. “Why are you bandaged up? You smell like your blood and hers, and someone needs to tell me what the fuck is going on right now!”
“He was cursed,” I say and push back up. “By necromancers. He’s not healing right now. I think…I think they’re trying to bring him back to life.”
Silence falls over the room, and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room echoes in my ears.
Eliza looks at me, unblinking, for a few seconds. “The fuck?”
I turn back to Lucas and wipe more of my blood off his chest.
Eliza grabs my shoulder and pushes me back, making me look at her. “Un-curse him. Now.”
“Enough,” Lucas booms, drawing his fangs.
Eliza steps back, and tears fall down her cheeks. I’ve never seen her cry before. Hell, I’ve never seen her with anything but an annoyed, cocky look on her face.
Seeing her like this is unsettling.
She looks at Lucas again with a trembling jaw and then drops down to her knees, hugging him as she cries. Lucas wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head.
“It’s going to be all right,” he soothes and looks up at me.
“It is,” I say. “I’ll figure out a way to break the curse.”
“Figure out?” Eliza jerks her head up and zooms to her feet. “You mean you don’t know?” Her fangs slide down, and she angrily wipes away her tears.
“No,” I say and feel like the ground is slipping out from under my feet. “I don’t know. Not yet. Which is why you need to rest,” I tell Lucas. “And then we need to go home. There are a few curse-breaking spells in my Book of Shadows, and I’ll get ahold of Evander. The Academy has a section in the library devoted to breaking curses.”
“We should go now.” Eliza reaches up and starts undoing the system of complicated braids she has her hair wrapped up in.
“I think Lucas should take a nap first.”
“A nap?” Lucas scoffs. “I’m not a baby, Callie.”
“You lost a lot of blood, and you’re not healing. You need to rest as much as you can, and when you wake up, you’re eating again.”
He shakes his head. “I already took enough from you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say.
“You won’t die from blood loss, but you will be weakened,” he counters. “Even when I’m not cursed, we all know you’re the most powerful one in this room. I need you at full strength since I’m not.”
“I’ll order dinner,” Eliza says, and I know that means she’ll call a service that sends someone over to be willingly fed from. Abby’s warning rings through my head. I have no idea what kind of screening “to-go meals” go through. Probably none, since viruses and diseases don’t affect vampires.
And what if they have a cold?
“No,” I rush out.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?” Eliza spits out, rounding on me. “I know you two are exclusive or what-fucking-ever, but make a fucking exception, princess.”
“Eliza,” Lucas scolds again. “Stop saying fuck.”
She glares at him and turns back to me, hand going to her hip. Everything about Eliza is soft and delicate. She’s insanely pretty, with sky-blue eyes, cream-colored skin, and long, thick blond hair. She’s a few inches shorter than me, thin, but has an ample ass and chest.
And somehow the rage in her eyes enhances her beauty, making her look all the more dangerous.
“If you love him, you’ll go get someone yourself,” she sneers, and I have to remind myself her anger is a result of her fear.
“He does need to eat,” I start, stopping to close my eyes for a second as everything whirls around me. I can’t keep Lucas’s fate from him, and suddenly I get why he didn’t want to tell Eliza what happened.
It’s awful telling someone you love bad news.
“If part of Lucas really has come back to life, then he could get sick. And drinking unfiltered blood is a really good way to get a terrible disease.”
Eliza purses her lips, and more tears fill her eyes. She blinks them away, but a fat tear escapes, streaking mascara down her cheek. “Fine. I’ll…I’ll be right back then.”
Without another word, she speeds out of the house, slamming the door shut behind her.
“Where is she going?” I ask.
“A blood bank,” Lucas mumbles, eyes falling shut.
“Oh.” I don’t want to ask if she’s breaking in or murdering everyone inside in order to steal bags of filtered, safe-to-consume blood. “You should try and sleep until she comes back.”
“So should you.”
“I’m going to keep watch over you. I’ll sleep when we get home.”
Lucas takes my hand and tugs me to him. I perch on the side of the couch, eyes going to the bandage on his stomach. It’s not stained with blood, which is good, but I’m too scared to look at the wound. I don’t want to see his skin torn and bruised.
“You’re always covered in blood.”
I look down at my shirt and nod. “At least this time it’s not mine, right?”
“Take a shower.”
“Not until Eliza comes back.”
“Wrong answer.” He smiles. “You’re supposed to say not without you.”
“Normally, I’d be all over that. But I don’t think you should get your stitches wet yet. I’ll give you a sponge bath or something to clean off most of the blood. And don’t even think about it. We’re not having sex tonight. You need to rest.”
“You are my new wife. We’re having sex.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
He slides his fingers up my wrist, finding my pulse point. “I can make you in the mood.”
I pull my hand out of his, knowing he can. Easily. “Sleep,” I tell him, but he starts to get up.
“This isn’t comfortable,” he tells me, and I help him to his feet. We slowly make our way up the curved staircase and onto the second level of this huge house. The master bedroom is right off the landing, but Eliza has taken it over. There are a handful of other rooms, and I start for the closest one.
Telekinetically opening the door, I conjure a ball of white light so I can see. Something squeaks and scuttles away. I blink rapidly, trying to make sense of what’s in front of me.
The bed has been taken out of the room, and several large cages are against the wall. A large metal pen is set up in the middle of the room, and two little guinea pigs peek out from under a fleece blanket at me.
“Miss Piggy,” Lucas starts. “You’re still alive. I’m surprised.”
I increase the magic in the ball of energy, lighting up the room even more. It’s been completely converted to what I can only describe as a luxury guinea pig hotel.
Literally.
There’s a tiny bell hop station complete with a luggage cart. Pictures of guinea pigs dressed up in little outfits hang in framed photos on the wall, and another guinea pig squeaks and runs away.
“Never in a million years would I have guessed this,” I say slowly, feeling almost as shocked to discover that Eliza is a huge guinea pig lover as I was to discover necromancers cursed Lucas.
If she ever brings up how I gush over my familiars again…
“I told her I didn’t want a puppy,” Lucas starts. “So she got a guinea pig. That was two hundred years ago.”
“Wow.” I look around the room again, impressed with how clean everything is. There’s hardly any rodent odor at all. We step back, and I close the door. “I didn’t know guinea pigs were kept as pets back then.”
“The Incas domesticated them before I was even turned.”
“The more you know.” I shake my head and keep a steady hold on Lucas as we go into the next room. I’ve only been in here once, when Kristy stayed the night after we fought a demon in an abandoned building. It hasn’t been redecorated and looks exactly the same, which is oddly comforting.
“Lie down,” I tell Lucas. “
I’m going to get some more towels and try to clean you up the best I can.”
“My sponge bath ends with a happy ending, right?”
“That only happens with massages.”
“Damn.” He winces as he falls back onto the bed. I take off his shoes and undo the button of his jeans.
“Don’t get excited,” I say with a half-smile. “Take a nap and then we’ll discuss happy endings.”
“Yes, Mother,” he retorts and helps me take his jeans off. I toss them on the floor in the bathroom and come back with several bath towels and a handful of damp washcloths. I tuck the bath towels under Lucas to keep the bed from getting wet and then gently clean the blood from his torso the best I can.
He watches me for a few minutes but then shuts his eyes, falling asleep almost instantly. I take the washcloths into the bathroom, rinse them off, and go back, repeating the process over and over until all the blood has been washed away.
Grabbing all the dirty towels and Lucas’s bloody jeans, I quickly carry them to the laundry room and then go downstairs into the kitchen for a drink of water. Out of curiosity, I open the fridge and find that it’s been cleaned out.
I look in the freezer next and smile when I see several frozen pizzas and two tubs of ice cream in there, and I know I didn’t buy those. And there are new bottles of wine in the wine chiller.
Eliza is a softie after all.
I down a glass of water, go to the bathroom, and then go back to Lucas. He’s still dead asleep, looking peaceful. I carefully peel my blood-soaked jacket and shirt off and sit on the edge of the bed, taking his hand.
Goosebumps have broken out over the flesh on his arms for the first time since he was a human. The lump is back in my throat, and I have to swallow hard to push it back down.
I try to untuck the blankets but stop, not wanting to disturb and wake him up. I have no idea if there are extra blankets in the linen closet. Vampires don’t get cold unless the temperature has dropped enough to freeze them—like literally freeze them.
I look anyway and find the electric blanket we used to use neatly folded on the bottom shelf. I plug it in and cover Lucas up. I tuck him in and kiss his forehead. He doesn’t even move.