DRINK.
That was the first thing he said to me.
I opened my eyes. Naked save for a bloodied white sheet, my tender skin covered in sticky red blood. My broken body somehow, impossibly, repairing itself.
I felt something warm at my lips. Blood.
I tried to turn my head to the side, to see where I was, and groaned in pain. Staying still felt better. I was sticky and bruised. My body was fighting hard to mend all the deep gashes and crushed bones. I lifted an arm and gently felt my eye where I had taken the impact of the unforgiving ground. It was excruciatingly painful to the touch—but it wasn’t shattered anymore. It was in one unbroken piece, as if my fall had been a terrible dream. The oddly comforting metallic taste on my lips told me otherwise, though.
I reached out with my hands, touching stiff sheets. I was burning up, but I was shivering, goosebumps lining my arms.
It was so hard to keep my eyes open, but I fought to stay awake. I wasn’t dead. I still had something left inside of me. I couldn’t give up yet.
A face appeared above me. Something warm and coppery breached my lips.
“Drink,” he repeated.
I did.
Time passed—how much, I have no idea—and I stayed in the same spot, and I slept off death.
Later, I heard the words again.
Wake up.
Night time. It could have been days, weeks, months—or just a single hour since I’d last been awake. I had no idea. I felt a little clearer, and I found I could move my head without wanting to scream.
“Get up and take a shower.”
I got up. I walked to the bathroom on shaking legs.
Standing under the hot water (how long had it been since I’d had a long, hot, uninterrupted shower?) was bliss. Bliss that soon ended up with a pile of questions. I started to hyperventilate at the sheer impossibility of what was happening. I was trying not to think about it—but who was I kidding? I knew why I was ‘magically’ all better. And I knew it wasn’t Starbucks Gingerbread Lattes that I’d been drinking every time I was woken up by soft words and warm, soothing liquid that slid down my throat like—well, like Gingerbread Lattes at Christmas time. It had been blood. Vampire blood.
As I watched the dried blood start to flake off and dissolve into the steamy water, a wave of dizziness hit me. I sank down to a sitting position on the side of the narrow tub, the flimsy shower curtain resting against the film of water on my back.
How could this be possible?
How could I be alive?
I tentatively massaged shampoo into my long, dark brown hair, picking out little pieces of glass and clumps of dried blood and thick knots. One of the pieces of glass gouged the tip of my finger and I flinched. A drop of blood appeared, then another, and I rinsed it underneath the water.
I looked at it again. The cut had completely disappeared.
I held my hand to my mouth to stop myself from crying out. This could not be happening.
And I could not believe how, from a snow–filled parking lot five minutes from home, it had ended up like this.
A knock at the door made me jump.
“You okay in there?”
“Yes.” My wavering voice sounded like a stranger’s. How long had it been since I’d spoken?
I shut the water off, swallowing a painful lump in my throat. I may have been ‘rescued’, but I still felt like I was a prisoner—I’d just switched one cage for another.
And now I was alone with him.
Thunder rolled overhead, and I heard rain. The whole room shook in the wind. Blinking wearily, I reached for one of the folded beige towels on the sink and wrapped it around my dripping hair. I wrapped the other towel around my torso, took one last look in the filthy, foggy mirror, straightened my shoulders, and ventured out of the bathroom.
Ryan had taken the bloodstained sheets off the bed while I was showering. They were balled up in the corner of a room that was the size of a postage stamp. A double bed on one side, a small sofa and an ancient–looking TV set bolted to the wall on the other. In between, a door that led to the outside world.
“I got you some clothes to wear.” He gestured to the neatly folded pile on the end of the unmade bed. I took them back into the bathroom and quickly slipped them on—a black fitted camisole, dark denim jeans and a pair of bright red Havaianas that were two sizes too big for my feet. No bra or underwear, but the camisole was thick and supportive enough to leave something to the imagination. I refolded the damp towels and closed the bathroom door behind me.
“Someone is on the way to get us.”
I nodded.
“Are you—thirsty?”
I walked gingerly to the sink, filled a tumbler with water, and gulped it down.
Then refilled it.
“No,” I said.
“Hungry?”
“Nope.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, then got up and looked out of the window. We were on the ground floor of what looked like a horseshoe–shaped arrangement of motel rooms. The plastic sign out front read La Guena Mexica.
Where the hell are we?
“Mexico.”
I dropped the glass, startled. It bounced on the thin carpet but didn’t smash, water sloshing onto my feet and the ground.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“How did you –”
He started towards me, but stopped in the middle of the room. I can’t say I had the most receptive expression on my face.
“We’re linked,” he explained softly, pointing to his head, then mine.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I scowled at him.
“Think of something,” he offered.
I threw out some random thoughts. Cheese. The Eiffel tower. My cat.
“I prefer mozzarella. I’ve been there many times. I’m more of a dog person.”
I sat back, stunned.
“I don’t want you to do that anymore,” I said. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“Okay” he said. “I’ll try. But it’s kind of like a two–way radio. Sometimes I can’t help but pick up the signal.”
“Well, maybe you should try harder,” I replied.
I heard a faint thumpthumpthump and looked around to see where it was coming from. Sure enough, my eyes landed on the large mason jar from Caleb’s room, the jar that contained the human heart. The still-beating human heart. It was sitting neatly on the sink, as if it belonged in the room with us. I felt bile rush up in my throat and fought to swallow it back.
Ryan saw my face and grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed, draping it over the jar.
“I can still hear it,” I said quietly. He didn’t answer me.
“You want to go grab something to eat? Our lift is still a few hours away.”
I looked around helplessly.
“What is it?”
Thanks for not reading my mind. “What are we going to eat?”
“Food?”
“It’s just –”
“I can give you more blood if you think you need it. Try listening to your body.
Do you feel like a burger? Or do you feel like something else?”
Ugh. I could guess what the something else was. The same something that had been fed to me as I fought off death. My stomach rumbled loudly. “Burger,” I decided.
He opened the door with one hand, and passed me a pair of dark sunglasses and a baseball cap with the other. “Here. Put these on. It’s pretty bright out there.”
And I stepped willingly into the day, a walking dead girl with an ache in my belly and trepidation in my heart.