Page 5 of Love Heals
Chapter Three
Six days after the explosion
I was tied to a bed. Not fully tied down, no, but my left arm was shackled to one of the bed posts with an uncomfortably cold chain, limiting my range of movement. That was new. The chain hadn't been there yesterday. Or had it? I frowned to myself, finding my memory of the past day more than a little hazy. Everything that had happened since the fire was.
I wasn't even completely sure where I was.Some sort of safe house. Was that what the mortals called it? If they were mortals. I wasn't so sure about that either. Somehow these mortals had managed to kill Zenon, after all. My sire's sire.
And then they'd killed my sire, andI'd helped them do it.
What did that make me?
A traitor of the lowest kind.
I pulled a little on my chain, testing the give. Plenty of slack, but I wouldn't be able to get out of bed. Considering everything that had happened, I probably deserved ending up here.
This was what I got for breaking the rules.
Bad shitalwayshappened when I broke the rules.
I should have known.
Blankly, I stared at the wall ahead of me. The walls were all white. Off-white. A little bit darker than they'd been in the basement.
No, a voice in my head reminded me.The walls in the basement are a lot darker now. Charred.
A sound lodged itself in my throat, but I didn't let it escape.
Had Leandra made it out?
Had Teslo?
Their faces appeared before my inner eye. I knew my sire was dead, but what about the other vampires who’d been down there that night? If any of them had burned, that would be on me as well.
Movement registered in the corner of my eyes.
The mortal who was in the room with me had shifted in his seat. Jared. His name was tucked away in a corner of my mind. I couldn’t remember when he’d introduced himself, but he was here a lot. He had…
My cheeks heated as a piece of a memory came to me. Jared had comforted me, and I’d let him, even though he was a total stranger. Even though he was mortal and I was supposed to be a scary vampire. Not that there was anything scary about me right now. Or ever, really. I was a disgrace to my race, seriously.
Jared made a very fine mortal, though. He was broad-shouldered and tall. Taller than Nicolai had been.
And he was attracted to me.
That wasn't just a guess on my part, either. As broken as things were in my brain, my senses worked fine, even the extra one I'd gained upon becoming a vampire. I always knew when somebody had less than pure thoughts about me. It was like invisible fingers reached out from them to me, stopping just short of touch, near enough for me to sense the static in the air. It was a feeling I'd grown used to. People glancing at me and touching me with their thoughts.
With this mortal, though, it was a lot of stop and go. I remembered that now too. The way he clamped down on his attraction the moment it started to form. My skin would prickle, and then the sensation would be gone, like a short burst of electricity, a barely noticeablezap.
It was odd.
Jared didn'tlooklike someone who didn't have his emotions under control.
At least he wasn’t trying to act on them, which was good.I wasn't sure I could have overpowered Jared if he'd tried anything. I was too low on blood. And I wouldn't have minded a beating anyway. I certainly deserved one, for what I'd done.
But everyone was soniceto me.
Because I'd helped them carry out their murderous plan.
Jared didn't look like a murderer.
