“I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS,” I muttered, fighting back tears. I slid off the table and trudged sticky red footprints all the way down the hall and through my bedroom to the adjoining bathroom.
The first thing I did was stumble over to the bath and turn the hot water on full, fumbling around until I finally got the plug to stay in the drain hole. I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. I purposely left the exhaust fan off, and the mirror fogged up instantly. I had to peel my dress from my skin, it was so sticky with my blood. I balled it up and threw it in the hamper in the corner, refusing to acknowledge the self–hatred that was screaming inside my mind.
Autopilot. One foot in front of the other. That was easier than the truth.
Don’t think. Don’t think. Just breathe.
Thick steam swirled through the room as I hauled myself over the edge and into the scalding hot water. It burned, but not as much as my neck had burned when Ryan bit me. I started gently washing the wound at my neck, wincing as the water aggravated the smouldering sensation. I stopped and leaned back as a wave of dizziness hit me, and I realized how foolish I had been to wander off, drunk, bleeding and out of my goddamn mind. Silly me wasn’t nearly as worried about my ravaged neck as I was about Jared—and something told me what I had just done could cast me two steps back in my struggle to get back to my human boyfriend.
I fucking hate you, I thought bitterly, hoping Ryan could hear me mentally abusing him through our bond. If screwing him had inadvertently screwed my chance at getting back to Jared, I would stake him again, only this time I would get him square in his cold, dead heart.
I really had no idea what had just happened. And I didn’t want to think about it, let alone start analysing it in my over–imaginative brain. I had the tendency to overthink things—relationships, grades, sex—and becoming a vampire had obviously not quelled that nasty habit. If anything, it had made it worse. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to throb with the pain of invisible bruises where Ryan’s fingers had pressed into my flesh. I just wanted to be clean, to wash the blood and the vampire scent off my skin and pretend the last hour had never happened.
Mostly, I never wanted to feel that unrelenting hunger again. It terrified me.
I gasped as another rolling wave of vertigo slammed into me, and I stopped being able to hear my surroundings. I breathed out in a choking little sob, my fingers losing their grip on the high sides of the tub. My vision turned to twin tunnels that were being rapidly eaten away by blackness. Soon, there was no light at all, only darkness.
I think I hit the back of my skull on the rim of the bathtub as I slipped under the water.
Are you okay? I heard Ryan’s voice in my mind. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. No thoughts or images formed in my still mind. No emotions tugged at my heart. For those precious moments I was under water in the tub, for all intents and purposes, I ceased to exist.
“Hey!” A hand reached into the water and pulled me upright.
I opened my eyes slowly, taking a moment to focus. “Don’t,” I snapped, pushing Ryan’s hand away. He didn’t answer, just grabbed a towel and held it out impatiently.
“Can you, like, turn around or something?” I asked, irritated.
You didn’t mind me seeing it all hang out before.
“Excuse me,” I said, my tone like acid. “Jesus Christ. Nothing hangs out over here, thank you very much.”
Bad choice of words. Sorry.
“You’re talkative,” I said caustically, still entirely more comfortable with using my mouth to speak rather than my freaky mind. “You always make a girl feel this special after you bite her during missionary?” I was being a sarcastic bitch, but in reality I was crushed. I had only had sex with one other person before. Someone I had loved. Someone who I thought might be The One.
I really felt like a major slut.
“I think I passed out,” I said, taking the towel.
“No shit,” Ryan replied, turning around to give me some privacy. “You’ve been dead to the world for almost an hour.”
I stood up in the tub, goosebumps immediately erupting on my cool skin. I wrapped the towel around myself and tucked it in tightly, stepping out of the tub onto a thick white bathmat that was spattered with my blood. “I hope Ivy has bleach,” I said weakly, studying the stained mat. It took me a few seconds to realize what Ryan had said.
“Wait, I was sleeping underwater for that long?” I looked at the pink bathwater incredulously.
Ryan nodded. “I came in to check that you were okay.” He looked at my neck sheepishly. “And to say sorry about that whole … situation.”
I covered the bite with my hand, suddenly self–conscious. Ryan looked pained.
“You got any sleeping pills?” I asked abruptly, changing the subject. I was sick of talking about blood and I sure as hell didn’t want to reminisce about the disturbing sex we’d just had.
“Sure,” he said, clearly relieved to talk about something else. He left the room with vampiric speed and I used the pause in conversation to wrap my dripping hair up in a towel.
Ryan returned to the room with a bottle full of bright blue capsules that smelled a little like marijuana. “I don’t want to get high,” I said hesitantly. I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I settled for the ground.
“You’ll be fine,” Ryan said impatiently, pressing the bottle of pills into my palm.
“What are they?”
“Asphodel. Ground down from the roots of the flower.”
I wanted to ask about the pills but couldn’t be bothered spending any more time with Ryan. “Okay,” I said quickly. “You can go now.”
“They’re like vampire heroin,” Ryan warned. “Don’t take any more than two at a time. You can easily overdose on these. And these will kill a vampire”
Suddenly, I was intrigued. “Really? Why?”
Ryan’s face got all serious, like he always got when he was about to ‘teach me something’.
“It’s from The Underworld,” he said. “The fields of asphodel flowers are what keep demons from leaving The Underworld. It’s like poison to them.”
“And vampires were made by demons,” I added suddenly.
Ryan smiled. “You have been listening.”
I snorted. “I’ve been listening. I never said I believed any of it.”
But I did believe it, all of it.
I cried for half an hour after we did, well, it. At least, for the thirty minutes after Ryan had roused me from my sleep underneath the water in the bathtub. Turns out I really didn’t need to breathe after all. While a human would have drowned, I was perfectly fine after spending forty–five minutes unconscious under a foot of water and lavender–scented bubble bath.
I made a mental note to ask again about my alive versus dead status.
I would have cried for longer, but I was so exhausted I just cried myself to sleep. I hid the sleeping pills in my nightstand. I could definitely see vampire poison coming in handy one of these days.