Page 66 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

She continued, “The doctors discovered that blood flow had become blocked to her intestines for long enough that her entire digestive tract shut down. The rest of her vital organs are now doing the same. No one has been able to determine the cause, but we all know what will happen. She is dying and there is very little we can do to stop it. Her family is all on the east coast and no one at the hospital has been able to reach them. We’ve put her into a medically induced coma, because otherwise she would be suffering.”

“Tobias!” I hissed, looking at him sharply. Alarm flooded through me. Had he sensed the fact that the blood bag wasn’t enough? Was this his plan B? That I drink from someone who was already a goner? “No! We’re not doing this. I’m not doing this.”

The nurse blinked, focusing on me for an instant. She seemed momentarily puzzled by my presence there. But then her eyes went unfocused again. The freak show way she stared at us, without really seeming to comprehend that we were there, set my teeth on edge and caused the little hairs on the back of my neck to rise.

“You said you trusted me,” Tobias replied.

“I did! I do. But I’m not hurting anyone! I’m sure as hell not feeding on an ICU patient!”

Tobias frowned at me, like I’d said something strange.

But then, an instant later, his expression darkened, like he’d parsed out my meaning and didn’t like it one bit. Sorry bud, I’m a vampire—that’s where my mind immediately goes.

“I promise that you can always trust me, Bryan. I would never, ever do anything to hurt you. And I would never let you do anything to hurt an innocent person, either.”

“Oh.”

I immediately felt dumb. But if he didn’t want me to feed on this patient, what on earth did he want?

“So then, what is this?” I gestured to Annie’s room vaguely, feeling an annoying combination of foolish and confused. “What are we doing here?”

Tobias gave me a small, encouraging smile and took me by the hand. “We’re not here so you can feed on her, Bryan. We’re here so I can show you that being what you are is powerful and beautiful. We’re going to help her. If you’ll agree to let me show you how.”

I froze, staring at him.

I suddenly understood what he was implying. He was suggesting that we could do something good. That I could do something good. Disbelief welled up deep within me so quickly and fully that I couldn’t help but realize, for the very first time, that deep down I had fully accepted the fact that I was a creature that survived by preying on others, end of story. I had accepted that there could be nothing fundamentally good or redeeming about my condition.

Or… about me.

Tobias seemed to understand because something softened in his expression as he studied me. “You’re wrong about yourself. I can’t force you to see it, but if you trust me at all, trust me on that,” he whispered fiercely. The level of emotion in his voice caused hairs to rise on the back of my neck again, but for entirely different reasons this time. He added, “Also, your wall slipped again.”

I probably should have thrown the wall back up, just on principle, but I suddenly didn’t want to. Instead, I wanted, right then, more than I wanted anything else, for Tobias to be right about me. I wanted to believe him, that there was something inherently good about me.

Before what Giles had done to me, after I had first woken up from my transformation and Veronika had explained my new condition to me, I had still believed in my inherent goodness as a person. That is, until the very first time I had fed from someone. Veronika had been convinced that my qualms about snacking on random strangers would fade with time. After all, according to her, so long as I let them go about their lives after I was done, without a mark on them, and with no memory whatsoever of what had just happened to them, what could be the harm? They might be a little woozy or have a mild headache for a day or so afterwards, but that was nothing in comparison to what most other vampires would do to them.

And so that became my litmus test for myself. I wasn’t like most vampires. But my very existence was still inherently predatory. Parasitic. I was still leeching off the people I came into contact with. I was just nice about it.

But if Tobias was right…

And if he was right and we could help Annie, didn’t that mean we had to try? She was twenty-nine and dying, all alone, hooked up to a half-dozen tubes in this awful hospital wing with its too-bright lights and unpleasant smells. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

If there was even a chance that I could do something about it, I had to try.

Tobias gave me a little lopsided half-smile and I remembered, with a start, that he had access to all my innermost thoughts. He’d just had a front-row seat to that entire internal exchange. Oddly enough, in that moment, I wasn’t entirely sure I minded.

“We’ll help your patient,” Tobias told the nurse. I felt mildly startled to realize she was still there. “I promise. If there’s anything that can be done to save her, we’ll do it.”

Her brows pulled together. “There’s nothing that can be done. She’s beyond medical help.”

“True,” Tobias replied. He gave me a wink. “But she’s not beyond our help.”

The nurse nodded, but even in her dreamlike state, she still had the capacity for confusion, it seemed. Because it was perfectly clear that she didn’t believe him. Of course, I wasn’t entirely sure I did either.

“Go attend to the rest of your patients. Stay far from this room and make sure no one else comes in, either. Until we’re gone. And then, after we leave here, you’ll forget all about us. We were never here.”

“You were never here,” the nurse repeated, giving Tobias a blank smile. Then, abruptly, she brushed past him, presumably to go and do exactly what he’d just told her to do.

I shuddered.

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