Page 12 of Love Heals
Chapter Five
Iwas tired. So goddamn tired. For most of my vampire life, I'd been getting sleepy only occasionally, my undead body far more capable of going without sleep than my mortal one had ever been, but this past week? It was hell. I didn't know if it was the physical trauma of my body recovering from the day of the explosion, or the mental trauma of the loss I'd suffered, but all I ever wanted to do anymore was sleep.
But if I went back to sleep, I would go back to the dreams. I was lucid for now, and I wanted, needed, to keep it that way. I was never going to get out of here if I spent all my time freaking out about things that weren't real—or things that I couldn't change anymore. Like wishing I could go back in time and not save Luke. If I hadn't done that—
No, I couldn’t go there.
My sire was dead. I had to accept that. He was dead and I was stuck here with the mortals. With Jared. Jared who knew things about my old life… How, though? Had he been a customer? I tried to imagine it, but the idea felt absurd.
Focus, Silas, I told myself, because my eyes were drifting closed again.
I looked around the bare room to find something that would help me keep myself awake, but there wasn't anything. Not even a mortal to occupy the chair. They'd never left me alone before—at least not that I could remember. Wasn't there some way I could take advantage of this situation?
Before I could, though, the door to the room opened.Jared? No, Crimson.
"How are you holding up?" Crimson asked, closing the door behind himself. "Elena said you could maybe use some company."
I snorted. Use some company... as if I was here of my own volition. As if they'd ever leave me without supervision for too long. "I'm okay," I lied, cutting my gaze away from the vampire by the door who wasn't Jared.
My lack of enthusiasm didn't seem to slow Crimson down, though. He sat down in the chair that Jared usually occupied and studied me. I tried not to squirm as I wondered what he thought of me. I'd tried to be friendly with him, back when he was still part of my coven, when he was my coven-brother, even. The first couple of weeks as a vampire weren't easy on anyone, I knew that. There was so much to come to terms with.
I hadn't really wanted him there, though. His presence had confused me. I'd never really thought about Nicolai siring other vampires and what that would mean for me before. I'd never had to, and I’d wanted to go back to that. I'd wanted to shut up that tiny, treacherous part of my heart that was relieved to have less of my sire's attention focused on me.
Could Crimson read any of that as he looked at me?
Probably not.
He hadn't spent enough time with our sire to understand. In fact,I was pretty sure that no one would ever understand.
"I don't need company," I said.
"That's okay," Crimson replied, non-fazed, "I can just read shit on my phone if you don't feel like talking. You look a little better, though." The corner of his lips tucked up, as if he was genuinely relieved to see that I had improved in some way. Without waiting for me to respond, he took his phone out of his pocket and started tapping at the screen, as if he had no real worries in the world. I didn't understand him. He'd been turned into a vampire, same as me, but he didn't act like one at all. He didn't act like any of what had happened over the past weeks bothered him at all.
"How can you live with yourself?" I asked, before I could stop the words from escaping my mouth.
Crimson looked puzzled. "How do you mean?"
"Do you have any idea how many people you and your boyfriend might have killed?"
At that, his eyebrows shot up. Only a fraction of a second later, his gaze sank to his lap, and I got the feeling that hehadthought about it, but it wasn't something he liked to keep at the forefront of his mind. I envied him that luxury. His part in all of this had been far more pronounced than mine, but I couldn't find any rest, so how could he?
Crimson’s throat worked.
I spoke before he could. "You may not have known many of them, but I did."
"I'm sorry," he said, finally. "Not for what I or Luke did, but for what happened to your friends, I am."
"I don't even know what happened to my friends." Truth be told, calling any of the other vampires my ‘friends’ was probably a bit optimistic, but not everyone in the coven had been horrible to me. "I don't know who made it out and who didn't, but I think about it every day." I glanced at his phone. "There's no way for me to contact anybody."
Crimson looked at his phone too, then offered it to me. "Did you want to borrow this?"
I shook my head. "It's not like I have a social media account or anything." Out in the real world, I had ways of finding other vampires, but online? No idea. I cast my gaze to the window, but it was daytime and the black-out curtains obscured my view.
"I'm sorry," Crimson said again. "I hope everyone's okay."
"No, you don't," I disagreed. "If you cared, you wouldn't have detonated that bomb."
"Nicolai had to be taken out."
