I set my papers down on the floor and turn around. I slowly walk back towards the crate, worried about what I’ll say, what he’ll say to me with what I’m about to do. Then the crates abruptly shift slowly and he pushes himself to his feet, standing tall with his back towards me, like he knows what I’m about to do. He doesn’t have a shirt on and his dark hair is matted to the back of his head.
I carefully walk up behind him, wondering if he knows, if he understands. I almost back out; however, I swallow my feelings as I take in the sight of his skin that hangs loosely from his body with open wounds which are bleeding.
Elevating the knife above my head, I aim it at his back, ready to plunge it deep into him, end him and help his suffering. But he spins around, his dark eyes focusing on the knife I hold in my hand. He looks scared. Before I can change my mind, I quickly thrust my arm downward towards him.
His eyes widen, his arm snaps up and he grabs hold of my wrist, stopping the knife just a fraction before it clips his skin.
“Kayla, stop.” He tightly grips my hand and I struggle, trying to break free, twisting my arm. “Kayla, look at me.”
I’m not sure what registers first. His command, the change in his voice, or the calm feeling being throw at me. I stop fighting and look up at him, meeting his gaze. I gasp when I see him and he lets me go. My hand falls to my side and the knife slips from my fingers, landing on the floor with a clink. It can’t be.
Yet the more I look at him, the more I know it’s true. The cold, dark eyes that are looking back at me don’t belong to Aiden, they belong to Sylas.
Chapter 16
It’s quiet for a while. Neither of us can speak. Or maybe he’s just waiting for me to say something, but I’ve lost my voice. He looks so different, still him—black hair, eyes like charcoal, a slight cocky expression—but beneath it is pain. Pain from his flesh rotting. He’s changing. Still?
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he finally asks, stretching out his long legs.
Say what? I’m too speechless to speak. “Why… I mean how are you changing, just now… when I saw you last, you were so close and that was a while ago?”
He shrugs nonchalantly but there’s emotion in his eyes, though I can’t tell exactly what. “I did turn. I turned into one of those horrible monsters. It was like being stuck in a bad dream…” His forehead creases in puzzlement as his head cocks to the side. “Until I bit you.”
“What? You changed and then you changed back?” I ask, shocked, wanting to pick up my knife so I can maybe be comforted by this lost, helpless feeling inside me; one I’ve never felt before. “I don’t understand, Sylas. Aren’t the effects of the bite permanent?”
He sighs tiredly then steps backward to the crate and hoists himself up, his arms wobbling, then he sits on it with his bare feet hanging over it. “Oh, the effects were permanent. Well, at least they were supposed to be. But when I bit you, I could feel something in me start to change. The instant my teeth sunk into your skin, something ignited inside me and I knew I had to stop hurting you, like it was an instinct.”
“So, you bit me?”
He shrugs again, but there’s a hungry look in his eye that make my skin feel hot. “Well, do you really blame me?”
I try my best to shake it off, but the fact that he’s sitting here, not hurt and almost not an abomination, is making it hard not to want to do anything except hug him and tell him that I’m sorry for leaving him. “So do you think my bite cured you?”
“Maybe… Monarch did make you special after all, but then again we know little about the abominations,” he says with almost a thoughtful expression as he assesses me. “The one he wanted to be perfect.” He pauses, glancing down at his skin, amazed at the sight of it healing.
I walk closer to him and pick his arm up. I’m not even sure why I do it other than I feel this need to touch him, to feel that he’s real, so I trace my fingers over one of the open wounds on his arm. The bleeding is barely noticeable as the skin works to stitch itself back up.
“This is amazing.” I say. “You’re really changing back.”
“Yeah, it is.”
I look up and meet his eyes. The hunger is there again and instead of wanting to run away from him, I want to get closer to him, like I did when I thought he was dying. I place my hand on his cheek. His skin feels cold and sort of rough, unnatural almost, yet I don’t pull back.
I’m not even sure what the point of my touch is, but before I can rack through my thoughts and figure it out, he grabs my hand and jerks me into him, eliminating any space left between our bodies. He slams his lips against mine and kisses me with passion, his hands wandering to my back as he presses me closer to him. He tastes strange, like rust, yet at the same time, he tastes good, and I realize how much I’ve worried about him while we’ve been apart.
What does that mean? About my feelings towards him? Something… I can feel it… this is so much different than with Aiden… so much more… sweltering and hard to breathe.
He pulls back abruptly, his lips a little swollen, giving me barely any time to react as I stumble back from the disconnection. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he says.
“Why?” I frown because it doesn’t sound like something he’d say at all.
“Because…” He drags his fingers through his hair roughly, looking stressed out and Sylas never looks stressed. “It may not be safe; I may not be safe. I mean, we know nothing about this process… changing back.” His gaze encounters mine. “What if I hurt you or infect you?”
I’m not sure how to respond. Part of me wants to be irrational, but the other part wants to rationalize that it could happen; that we know nothing about the abomination or the process. “There’s something that I don’t get,” I say. “Why are you healing after biting me, but vampires have bit me before and haven’t changed back?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know, other than maybe there’s something different about the process of an abomination then a vampire. I mean, I know they’re different...” He trails off, lost. “I just wish we had the answers.”
“So do I.” I glance back at the papers. “But hopefully I can get some now.”
“Is that why you came back here?” he asks and then a playful, arrogant look crosses his face. “Or was it to save me?”