All Wounds (25 page)

“What are
you
doing?” Ryan replied with a question of his own. “If anyone should be in bed, it’s you.”

He turned back to the mirror.

“Ouch!” Rebecca yelped as the lit match she still held burned down to her fingers. She dropped it and it went out.

Ryan laughed and shook his head. “Now you see why my lighter is lucky,” he said, amused. “Speaking of, where is my lucky lighter? And my jacket?”

“Lighter is in the pocket of the jacket, which is hung up in the coat closet downstairs,” Rebecca said, coming to stand beside him. She looked past him to the mirror. “What are you looking at?”

“Just...seeing if it’s true,” Ryan said, gesturing to the reflection that showed only her and not him.

Rebecca slid an arm around his bare waist. The mirror showed her alone, standing with her arm crooked around nothing but air.

“It is, sorry,” she whispered.

“I know that,” Ryan replied with a snort. “Unlike you, I don’t need a candle to see in the dark. I just wanted to see if it was true. The thing about not having a reflection. Now how am I supposed to see how good I look in my lucky jacket?”

“Is everything you own lucky?” Rebecca asked as she looked up at him.

“Pretty much,” Ryan said. “At least, everything that’s mine.”

“Come on,” Rebecca said. She gave his waist a little tug. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“I feel fine,” Ryan said as he shook her off.

“Well, you don’t look fine,” Rebecca countered. She scowled at him.

“I’m tired of bed!” Ryan said, scowling back at her. “Leave me alone!” He took a step away from her and stumbled. Rebecca caught him before he fell. Ryan groaned.

This time Rebecca didn’t give him a choice. She slid a firm arm around his waist again and half-dragged him back to the bed.

Ryan all but collapsed on it, and it was a struggle for Rebecca to get him in something of a comfortable position.

She gasped when she pulled the blankets back.

Blood.

Dark patches stained the pillowcase where Ryan’s head had lain. The sheets and blankets too were dotted with dark red blotches. She looked up and saw a fine sheen of bloody sweat had broken out on Ryan’s forehead, and his eyes were so dark they were almost black. She settled him in the bed and immediately took off her robe and began rolling up her sleeve as she sat down beside him.

“No,” Ryan moaned, grabbing at her wrist. He clenched her arm hard, his inhuman grip making her wince in pain. His nails dug deep into her skin. “Listen.”

“I...I’m listening, Ryan,” Rebecca said, making sure to use his name. Syd had said that names helped, and sometimes it was the only thing a creature would respond to, or hear.

“Listen,” Ryan said again, his iron grip on her arm tightening even more. “You have to hear.”

Rebecca tried to loosen Ryan’s hold on her arm. “Ryan, you’re hurting me! Let go!”

“I want to go,” Ryan babbled. “Home. I want to go home.”

“Yes,” Rebecca agreed, prying at Ryan’s fingers with her own. “Yes, I know. We’ll get you well, then you can go home, Ryan.”

“No,” Ryan said again. “No, you don’t know. I can hear you thinking.

You don’t know.”

The wounded boy rolled his head from side to side as if trying to get something to leave his mind.

Syd had said that sometimes a turning didn’t go well. Was Ryan slipping into the insanity that came when new vampires couldn’t cope with what they had become?

Ryan suddenly let go of her wrist and sat bolt upright, grabbing her shoulders. Rebecca screamed.

“You have to be careful,” Ryan demanded. “He’s been watching. Waiting for you. Stay away from mirrors. They see through mirrors. See your soul.

He’s watching you! He’ll get you through the mirror like he did the others...”
Who? Who was?
Rebecca thought.
What mirror? Does he mean the portal?

It’s not difficult to figure out that something’s going on, and it’s making a whole lot
of beings nervous
, Rebecca remembered Denis saying.
There are already reports of
Healers missing from their enclaves. War has begun, and unless you get her under control,
there’s nothing but heartache and misery coming your way.

What was Ryan talking about? Who was watching?

“Ryan, you’re scaring me,” Rebecca said, much calmer than she felt.

“Promise me,” Ryan said, ignoring her words. “You promise me.”

“Promise you...what? What do you need me to promise, Ryan?” Ryan shook his head and fell back on the bed as convulsions overtook him. This time, Rebecca knew what to do.

She didn’t panic. Grabbing her nana’s old healing case, Rebecca found the tincture her nana had made especially for Ryan’s bite and seized the waistband of his pajama bottoms. The liquid hadn’t been working fantasti-cally well, but it was better than nothing. It was all she had until she could figure something else out.

Rebecca gasped as she saw his wound smoking and hissing. She ripped the cork from the bottle and dumped most of the bottle into the festering blackness that was Ryan’s hellhound bite.

What is going on? Why is it getting worse?

Ryan groaned and writhed in pain. Rebecca laid her wrist over his mouth in an effort to calm him, and Ryan instinctively bit down hard. She yelped as his fangs pierced her wrist. Instead of pulling away, Rebecca forced her wrist even harder against his fangs, pushing him firm against the bed.

With her other hand, Rebecca pinched the sides of the hellhound bite closed and leaned into her elbow along Ryan’s thigh. The wound hissed and bubbled more as the potion she’d poured into it couldn’t find much of an escape and tried to do its work.

Rebecca whimpered and closed her eyes against the pain.

Almost immediately, the image of chains and spiked bars assaulted her. The same over-rotten stench she’d been aware of last time invaded her nostrils, making her retch.

This time, she could hear someone—more than one person—screaming. Nearby there was sobbing. The sound of panicked, hysterical crying echoed off the thick stone walls.

“Hello?” Rebecca called. “Who’s there? Can anyone hear me? I hear you...”Nothing replied to her.

She was so focused on keeping her eyes closed and the picture clear in her mind that she didn’t feel it when Ryan’s thrashing stopped.

His fangs disengaged from her wrist, taking the images behind her eyes with them.

Oh, cripes. Did he die? Oh, please...don’t let him die...

But she didn’t smell anything, and Ryan’s body was still there. Rebecca breathed again.

“Mind getting off me?” she heard Ryan say in a weak voice. “Your elbow is really starting to dig into my leg.”

Rebecca lifted herself up. Ryan groaned, and Rebecca smacked his stomach.

“You scared me!”

“Sorry!” Ryan defended, holding his hands over his face.

Rebecca swatted him again anyway, sighing through gritted teeth. “Oh, hold still and let me have a good look.”

She grabbed the candle in the holder off the night-table and brought it close to his leg, trying hard to see.

“Hey, bite me again,” Rebecca murmured, thrusting her bleeding wrist back toward Ryan’s mouth.

“What—?” he began.

“Just do it!” Rebecca ordered.

Ryan shook his head and brought her wrist to his mouth. She didn’t flinch this time as his fangs slid into the punctures they’d just made.

“Mmm?” Ryan made the noise a question.

“Drink,” Rebecca said, keeping her eyes on his wound.

“Mmm.” He rolled his eyes and did as he was told.

Rebecca’s vision changed, just as it had before. She saw Ryan’s wound clearly in the dark, and suddenly the candle was too bright. She moved it and studied the hellhound bite carefully.

Glowing, pulsing flecks of black and gold wriggled inside the wound, but something bright green—Rebecca could only guess that it was the potion she’d just poured into it—made the black and gold flecks go out as it touched them.

“Mmm?”

She was tempted to close her eyes again, just to see if she could see—or hear—anything more from whatever she’d seen.

But Syd wasn’t there to keep her safe, and Rebecca didn’t want to chance doing something she didn’t understand without him there.

“Good,” Rebecca said, pulling back a little. “You can quit now.”

“What’d you do?” Ryan asked as he lifted his mouth from Rebecca’s wrist.“Nearly every time I’ve fed you, I’ve seen things,” Rebecca said, shaking her head. “And last time, when I opened my eyes before you finished, I could see in the dark as though it were daylight. I thought maybe if I looked at your bite while you were doing that, I might see why it’s not healing.”

“See anything useful?”

Rebecca shook her head. “Bits of hellhound drool and the medicine I just dumped in there. It’s working, sort of. Other than that, not a thing.

It’s so frustrating!”

She deliberately avoided telling him about the...other things she could see when he bit her. She didn’t want to sound crazy, and something inside her told her not to mention it to him. She shrugged and looked down at the inside of her wrist.

“Now that you’re awake, do you think you could eat more?”

“What?”

Rebecca held out her bleeding wrist again.

“Eat more,” she repeated. “You look horrible. This should at least make you feel better.”

“What are you doing?” Ryan asked, edging a little further away from her.

Rebecca frowned at him. “You need to eat, and it’s not like I can bring you a plate of bacon and eggs.”

“You’re not...I won’t...” he stammered, looking very afraid again.

“You will too, and you have been,” Rebecca said, gentle but firm.

“You’re a vampire now, and you’re still badly hurt. You can’t hunt yet. That’s why you’re here, Stereotype. You need healing and guess what? I’m a Healer.”

“Yeah, but...” Ryan eyed her wrist, unsure.

“Come on,” Rebecca said. “You need your strength, and for the moment, I’m all there is. Don’t get all snobby on me like Marla Thompson. She wouldn’t take my blood if I were the last human on the planet. Now, come on. I know you need this.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to drink your blood, Rebecca,” Ryan said with a scowl.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want you to either. I mean, how do you think
I
feel? I know guys are only supposed to be interested in one thing, but it’s a little creepy when it’s your blood. Still, it’s what I do and what you need, so, get to it, would you? I can tell by your eyes that you’re practically starving.

You’re over the worst, so I don’t think you’re not going to go all crazy on me.” She gave her arm a meaningful shake. “It’s okay, really. You’re not going to hurt me,” she coaxed.

Ryan took her hand, unsure, and brought her wrist to his mouth. He looked to Rebecca and, at her nod, closed his eyes and bit down again.

She, too, closed her eyes and tried hard not to flinch for his sake. If he thought it hurt her, he might stop feeding, and not take her blood again.

He needed to eat, and she needed to help him.

What’s more, she
wanted
to help him. So what if it hurt a little?

She opened her eyes and caught him studying her face. She smiled for him, hoping it looked like a smile and not a grimace.

He winked at her and her smile broadened. Rebecca blushed and turned her head, hoping he hadn’t seen that he’d flustered her.

“Not too much, now,” Rebecca cautioned after a long minute. “You’re still turning, and too much is just as bad as not enough according to Syd.” Ryan continued feeding from her for another moment or two, then lifted his mouth and let go of her hand. He tilted his head back, and Rebecca saw red glistening along his white fangs.

He closed his mouth and swallowed a few times.

“It’s...it’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” Ryan said after a moment.

“Gee, thanks. I’m glad my blood meets your standards,” Rebecca said with a giggle. “Now, could you finish?”

Ryan looked at her, confused. “What?”

Rebecca held out her bleeding wrist again. “You’re the vampire,” she said. “Don’t you just
know
how to do this? Why am I the one teaching you how to suck blood?”

“Because he is a fledgling, and untrained, just as you are,” Syd said, placing his hands on her shoulders as he appeared behind her in silence.

“Allow me.”

Syd brought her bleeding wrist to his mouth and, looking pointedly at Ryan, ran his tongue along the wound Ryan had made. The punctures sealed shut, and Syd licked them again, removing any stain of blood or trace that she’d been injured.

“Thanks,” Rebecca said, looking up at Syd. His blue eyes glowed and pulsed in a gentle rhythm that reminded Rebecca of a heartbeat.

Syd released her wrist, letting it fall to her side without care. “The young fledgling has fed well, I see. Well done, Acolyte.”

“I’d take that as a compliment if you didn’t sound like you were making fun of me,” Rebecca replied, hesitant now as she rolled her sleeve down again.

Why is he acting like...? Why is he so different when we’re alone?

“Perhaps you are overly sensitive, as you’re accustomed to being mocked,” Syd replied as she stood up. “Or so Ryan tells me.” Rebecca just looked at Ryan.

“What? We talk,” Ryan defended. “You’ve come up on occasion.”

“Why? Have you guys been spying on me or something?”

“Yes.” Syd raised an eyebrow and smirked down at her.

“No,” Ryan said at the same time.

Rebecca caught Ryan glaring at Syd.

“Why can’t I see?” Ryan asked. “I mean...like normal?”

“It’s the light,” Sydney answered. “And you no longer have human eyes.

Come nightfall, or in darkness, it will be different.” Syd gestured with his hand and the candles in the enclave went out.

The room fell into instant darkness.

“You see?”

“Cool,” Rebecca heard Ryan murmur. “Wow...hey this is neat! Is it always like this? Your hair looks like fire, Hot Stuff, and your eyes—” The candles illuminated again, making Ryan squint against the sudden harsh light.

Rebecca glared at Syd. “We want him to feel better, not worse.” She really wanted to be angry with him, but just looking at him made her stomach all jittery.