Page 66 of Fanged Embrace
I couldn’t feel anything at all.
It was dark in the guestroom, only the tiniest sliver of light slicing through the cracks in the blinds. I wasn’t sure what time it was, whether a day had passed since I stood face-to-face with the Doctor, or a week. It felt like years. I recalled the event with perfect clarity, everything from the electricity pulsing from his palms down to the small, disbelieving glimmer in his eyes at the very end.
And I was numb. I felt nothing. I watched those memories on replay and I felt nothing at all.
I stretched out on the mattress, vaguely aware of a tingling sensation in my limbs, like I’d been lying down for too long. But just as quickly as I felt that slight ache, it was gone again, and my mind untethered from my body. Another memory floated to me as I lay there, flat on my back and feeling nothing. I remembered River beside me, the cool press of her forehead against mine. I remember the scent of her and the way it enveloped me, lulling me to sleep. I remembered her request.
She had asked me to wait, for now. She wanted me to delay my tidy exit strategy and give her some time—time to find a solution.
I had been half-asleep and bordering on delirium when I’d agreed, but I had agreed. Now that I could really consider what she’d said, her suggestion that the answer might lie in magic, I wondered if it had been wrong to relent to her wishes. To give her hope. I didn’t have much faith in magic or the supernatural—so far, it had done nothing but hurt me. The supernatural world had been nothing but hostile toward me. Until her.
But she was an outlier, she was not like the rest, and I couldn’t picture a world where everything turned out all right, even with the use of magic. What magic could possibly fix any of this? Unless she had a time machine, or some other way to send me back—back to before I had lost everything. But even then, what would I be going back to? Life before the facility hadn’t been all that great either.
It should have made me sad, knowing that I had so few good memories to look back on. There was not much from my past—before, during, and after the facility—that I could look back on fondly. It should have made me cry, that I could find nothing to feel nostalgic about, nothing to yearn to return to. I still felt it sometimes—that deep, desperate ache to simply go home, but there was no home. There had never been a home to begin with. It all felt so unfair. So incredibly unfair.
So, no. I wasn’t all that optimistic about River’s potentialsolution. But maybesheneeded this. Maybe it would make her feel a little better, when this was all over, knowing that she tried her best to prevent it. And maybe I could enjoy a few more quiet moments with her. Maybe I could allow myself that slight comfort before the end.
I tilted my head to squint at the clock on the wall. It was early, which explained the sharp lines of sunlight cast through the blinds. I’d slept through the rest of yesterday, and all the way through the night. How many hours was that? I couldn’t get my mind to do the math. All I knew was that it was far too long—but I still couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed.
I closed my eyes.
A long while later (or was it only a few seconds?) I heard a knock on the door. River didn’t wait for a response (which was good because I couldn’t seem to summon my voice) she simply creaked the door open and peeked in.
“Hey.” She kept her voice low and even, but I saw the crinkle in her brow and the concerned set of her mouth. “I made breakfast—you hungry?”
I stared at her, waiting for her words to click. I didn’t feel particularly hungry, though I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. My stomach felt empty, but it was a welcome kind of emptiness. And besides, eating breakfast would require getting out of bed—and getting out of bed was impossible.
Eventually, all I managed was a slight shake of my head.
River looked like she wanted to say something else. Her lips parted and her slight intake of breath indicated some kind of concern, but in the end, all she did was nod. “All right, I’ll be just down the hall if you need me.”
When I said nothing in response, she nodded again and gently shut the door.
I closed my eyes.
A few seconds later, another knock on the door. Only, it couldn’t have been seconds because the sliver of sunlight wasgone from the blinds and the clock on the wall said it was close to midnight. I blinked up at the ceiling. Had I slept all day? I couldn’t remember sleeping, but I couldn’t remember the past few hours either. It was an odd, disorientating feeling, like time was twisting and warping around me.
I couldn’t ground myself in reality. All I knew was that I still felt empty, hollowed out, but still somehow heavy. My body was stuck firmly to the mattress, weighed down by an invisible force. My muscles refused to cooperate, and my mind was much the same.
The door creaked open again and River stuck her head in, only this time her hands weren’t empty.
Again, she didn’t wait for a response. This time she stepped fully into the room and set a tray laden with what I assumed was dinner down on the nightstand beside me. “You should eat something.”
I inspected the spread as best I could from the corner of my eye. Some distant part of my brain registered the scent that wafted from the plates and worked to fill in the blanks.Food. It smells good. Your stomach is empty. You should eat.
I couldn’t move. My empty stomach gurgled, but lifting an arm seemed about as doable as lifting a forklift.
When River asked, “How are you feeling?” the answer scraped up my throat like broken glass.
“All right,” I croaked. A lie so thin we both heard it tear.
River tilted her head toward the tray. “Do you want to try…?”
“No.” The single syllable weighed five hundred pounds.
“All right.” Concern pooled in her eyes again, but instead of pleading, she simply toed off her slippers, lifted the blanket, and climbed onto the mattress. Springs dipped, her shoulder brushed mine.
The slight contact was enough to startle me back into my body. “What are you doing?”
