For a moment, I couldn’t see the scene any longer and I strained to focus. Then I suddenly realized I was no longer watching.
Somehow I was back in my own body. I was reliving the experience.
I couldn’t get up. A trickle of blood crept past my vision and I tried to move my hands to my head but my arms were like bricks, dead weights down at my side. I heard the thick clanking of the chain fastened to the hook that was dug deep into my back, and he began dragging me across the ground at an accelerated speed. I screamed as I felt the hook etch through my skin as he pulled me along callously, the laceration traveling up toward my neck. I convulsed as it ripped through my nerves, tearing through the muscle.
He stopped running and I was facedown in the dirt. Only then did he stoop down to my level, and I watched the flames whirl around his prodigious pupils. This was the first time I could remember knowing and experiencing the cold brutality of the species known as Vampire. His razor-sharp fangs baring over me, he hungrily tasted the trail of blood from my forehead staining down to my cheek, but restrained himself from furthering his desire. I gasped for air. The blinding pain floated in a cloud, above me, outside my body.
Abruptly, his confident and malevolent expression changed. Snapping his mouth closed, hiding his gleaming fangs, he receded like a wild animal that had inadvertently woken a far greater beast. He shriveled and stumbled and then from the emptiness I saw her, moving straight for him. Her jet-black hair flowed loosely, cascading down her back. Her shriek filled the air. It was so dark that I could barely make out her silhouette as she circled around Frederic. Her chin tilted up, her face still covered with night. The red furnaces that replaced her eyes instantly blinded me. It was her, the girl in shadow.
Blackness. Darkness. Nothingness.
Excruciating, intolerable pain streamed down my back. My eyes flew wide open. I couldn’t move, unable to speak, scream, or cry. I was trapped, suspended in time, halfway between memory and reality. I needed to vomit.
I was sure Gabriel was trying to break through, but I was alone; he had left the tunnel a long time ago. I struggled, willing myself to return. Gabriel’s eyes were suddenly fixated on my own, his words falling over themselves to reach me, but it was like watching the TV on mute. I almost laughed; it was comical. Laughing, yes! He was funny. I think he’d always made me laugh. I wanted to be with him. He felt so warm, so easy, his arms so protective.… Oh, to be in those arms, so safe. The room seemed to be displacing, spinning behind him. That was odd, bedrooms weren’t supposed to spin.
I didn’t know what was happening to me, my brain was jumbled, the waves weren’t connecting, everything was wrong. This was wrong! Panic rising, my throat tightened and I struggled to breathe. I had to calm down. Yes, that was it, I had to just stop, stop trying, stop everything! I wasn’t in France, I wasn’t with Frederic, and I wasn’t dying.
And just like that the whole room curved and then popped in; like a large bubble, it burst. My agony subsided along with it.
“I’m here! Can you hear me?” Gabriel was on me, with me, all around me. An aura of light exuded from his skin, caressing and holding me, like a blanket wrapping around my soul.
I trembled as I grappled for the pillows and hoisted myself up. Automatically I reached for my back; Gabriel’s strong arm was already steadying me. A disobedient tear smeared across my cheek.
“Is it gone?”
He stared intensely at me, a bewildered and terrified look smacked across his face.
“No.” He paused. “I lost you, Lai, I lost you to the darkness. You disappeared.”
“I thought maybe you were detaching it somehow.” It was my only explanation for the pain that was as real as it had been the first time I had endured it.
“I would never hurt you like that.”
I believed him.
I jumped off the bed, tripping as my legs woke up. I revolved in front of the mirror. My skin was unchanged, the same violent damage marked me as it had for the last few years. My head lurched heavily and I felt dizzy.
I glanced back to the mirror and watched, astonished, as a trickle of blood drizzled down my forehead. I felt disoriented, woozy. I placed my hand across my head and presented the palm to myself, smeared with my blood.
I staggered back to Gabriel before my legs could crumple underneath me. I halted as I reached him, as if I had hit an invisible wall. I could see it now; he was caked in crimson red. All over his hands, his arms, his shirt, even smudged across his temple.
My blood.
I was going to faint; Gabriel caught me as I dropped to the floor.
SEVEN
STARTLED, I bolted upright.
Gabriel was at my side, dumbfounded. I was back on the bed. “It’s okay, I’m here.” His words washed over me and I felt reassured.
I wiped the stain from my cheek while he watched as the cut to my head began to recede. He was still immersed in reds. I sat motionless, trying to acclimatize back to reality, managing only shallow breaths. My heart was still pounding against my chest, my hands shaking uncontrollably. “Sorry, I’m squeamish. The sight of blood makes me…” I tried to explain.
Gabriel looked down at himself, peeled off his shirt, and threw it out of sight, exposing his toned torso. My eyes lit up and my cheeks burned a little in response. He must have thought I was embarrassed as, self-consciously, he leaped off the bed. I automatically reached for him, grazing his arm. I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t have to ask; he was already sitting back beside me.
“I don’t know what happened. I’m so sorry,” he began.
“It’s all right.”
“I had to see it play out so I could reverse it, but you stopped remembering. Everything fell into darkness,” he continued, confused.
His face was strained, its glow dulled, as if the sun was setting, casting him in shadow. I knew then that the moment I stopped watching and inadvertently transported back into my body, he had lost the connection.
“How exactly does it work?” I asked.
“I’m not of this world. I have certain gifts here; they are very strong in this dimension. I had willed my powers away when I returned to Earth. My desire was to fall, to become mortal.” His words cut through me, stinging, to the core.
“You wanted to die?” The very idea caused a lump to form in my throat. “Why?” I whispered.
“It’s complicated. But I welcomed death, if that’s what you’d call it. They would not grant me mortality for their own ends. But then from nowhere, there you were, lying in my arms. And I was thankful to them for refusing me in spite of their motivations.”