Page 46 of Blood Secret

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I warned.

“But I am. It was all I could think to do. I couldn’t let you die like that.”

“I wish you had.” I turned away from him and slammed the bathroom door between us.

The bastard. The evil, stupid, monstrous bastard.

I looked at myself in the mirror—aside from the dirt and blood, my eyes got my attention first. They had the same red rings his did.

I closed them and wept. I wept for everything I would never have, never feel, never be. I might as well have died in the dark, against that brick wall. I should have. It wouldn’t be any worse than what I was facing for the rest of my life. All of eternity.

I had to wash myself off and think clearly. The shower was hot—I saw steam rising from the water as it poured out of the shower-head, but it didn’t burn my skin. Right. I wouldn’t feel it the way I used to, just the way he didn’t.

I tried to remember everything he had told me about the differences between us, but it was all a jumble in my brain. No sunlight—I knew that much. Nobody had put a spell on me the way my mother had on him.

Water swirled around my ankles, black and rust red, and I stood there as long as I could before the water pressure went low.

I had to face him eventually. What was I supposed to say to him? Should I thank him for condemning me to misery? To always being thirsty? I wrapped a towel around my body—I was stronger, firmer than before, like I had gotten in a year of daily gym visits in a single night—and went back out.

“You look more like yourself,” he observed.

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I noticed that he had cleaned the blood and dirt off the floor and emptied the bucket. “Thank you for cleaning up.”

“Of course.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, hands in my lap. “I hate you for doing this. I think I should tell you that right off.”

“I expected that, at least at first.”

“At first? I’m supposed to be okay with this over time?” I looked up at him and wondered if the lines of his face had ever looked so sharp, if the stubble on his cheeks had ever been so defined. Of course not, not when I was looking at him through human eyes. I could even see the pores along his nose and forehead. I could make out individual hairs on the nape of his neck, even from across the room.

“I think you’ll become accustomed to it.”

“How is that possible? How can you even say that?”

“I did. I felt much the same as you do now, but I became accustomed to being what I am. What you now are.”

“I never will.”

“I thought that, too.”

“Stop telling me what I’m going to feel, all right?” I held my head in my hands. It was splitting, but not the way it used to when I’d get a migraine. I would never feel one of those again.

Small blessings. Even so, pain was starting to spread.

“You need to feed,” he explained.

“Bullshit. I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll die if you don’t feed, but not for a long time. You’ll suffer first, and it’ll make what you just went through look like a day at the park.”

“I can’t just go down to the corner and pick up blood, can I?”

“No, but I have a supply with me.”

I looked up at him again. “No. Not her blood.”

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