Chapter 10 Respiration
CHAPTER TEN
RESPIRATION
If a Feeder no longer wants to be a Feeder, Bleeders must find them a settlement they can join, as well as ensure they arrive there safely.
— Serun’s Law
I forgot Emily wanted to visit Dan tonight.
Every question I have for Jax fizzles as I watch Emily scramble through the vent.
After she’s out of sight, I sigh, mutter my complaints in tormented silence, and lie back, resting on my pillow.
It sinks, and a wave of prickling nerves tingles on my scalp at how deflated the pillow is.
As I close my eyes to try to sleep off my annoyance, a low grunt stirs from beneath me. I grip the edge of the mattress, lean over, and peer down. Cole is tossing and turning, his brows knitted and his face contorted in pain.
“What’s wrong?”
Cole opens his eyes and focuses on me. “My shoulders hurt.”
I hop off the top bunk and sit on the edge of his bed. “Show me.”
Cole sits up, turns his back to me, and removes his shirt to reveal an angry line of red wrapping around his neck.
“You shouldn’t have stepped out of the shade,” I say as I stand. “You’re sunburnt. Our skin doesn’t take well to the sun, you know that.”
“I don’t like it when we talk about nightwalkers. It’s stupid,” he mutters as I reach up to my bed and remove my pillowcase. “There’s nothing we can do about it. Why talk about how to kill them when we can’t kill them?”
Manni sits on her bunk, her head bowed, fingers toying with the lint on her pillow, but I know she is listening.
I walk towards the toilet. “There might come a time when we have to face one. It’s useful to try to learn how to deal with them, you know?”
“I guess…” he mumbles.
I lift the lid to the cistern at the back of the toilet and dip the pillowcase into the clean water. Bubbles rise to the surface as I swish the fabric around until it’s soaked through. Lifting it up, I squeeze out the excess water and make my way back to Cole.
“Lie down,” I say.
A sigh of relief escapes him as I lay the damp fabric over his reddened shoulders.
“I rely on you too much,” Cole says as I reach for the railing leading up to my bed. “I need to get stronger for you. Bleed better.”
“Don’t dwell on it, Cole,” I say, following his gaze to my puncture marks and mottled flesh from giving blood. “I’m your older sister, and I’ll always be here for you.”
“And as family, we should be there for each other,” he counters. “Look out for each other so it’s not always so one-sided.”
I lean back against one of the metal poles connecting the top bunk to the bottom bunk. “Okay, then. Can you tell me what Jax spoke to you about?”
“He started rambling about slayers, so I stopped listening,” he admits. “There’s no such thing as slayers. If there were, they would have saved us a long time ago.”
He is right. I’ve never seen a slayer, only heard about them from people who haven’t seen one either. But I don’t want to have this conversation again and fuel the fire in Cole when all I want is for him to trust Jax enough to get us out of here.
I smile and hope it’s convincing. “Sleep, Cole. You will feel better tomorrow.”
With a soft groan of pain, he murmurs, “Thanks, Saya. I don’t remember Mum, but you remind me of her.”
My throat tightens at the memory of how she used to look at me with disdain. “I’m certain she misses you.”
He grunts his response.
I scramble back onto my bunk. Grabbing my pillow and rolling onto my side, I look over at Manni. She’s asleep.
With a deep breath, I curl my body up, pressing my knees up to my chest to get as comfortable as I can as I wait for Emily to return.
I’m not sure how much time has passed when a sudden weight lands on my bed. With a groan, I kick my leg back and mutter, “Softer next time, Em.”
The pressure near my feet creeps up towards my head.
Now that Emily is back, I curl fully into a ball, my hands resting against my chest and fingers bundled in the blanket covering me. My thoughts sleepily drift to moonflowers. I’m lying among them with my white hair twisted in the blades of grass.
I look at the stars above the valley and reach up to them when a cold chill shudders down my neck, pulling me from my dreamlike state.
I bury myself completely under the blanket to ward off the chill when fingers of pure burning ice brush against the side of my neck.
Ripping the blanket down, I roll onto my back and stare up at the vent.
It’s open.
A shallow breath escapes me, and my attention slowly moves towards where Emily should be sleeping.
She isn’t there.
My focus snaps to movement near the toilet. A darkness too deep to be normal looms in the corner, dripping over the open toilet seat.
The same darkness from the delivery room.
My throat constricts, leaving it parched, and cloudy wisps curl from my mouth as I breathe through parted lips into the suddenly frosty air. I grip the sheets, contemplating hiding underneath them, irrationally hoping it might stop the darkness from advancing.
From hurting me.
Cole!
With a shaky breath, I lean over the edge of my bed and peer down. Cole is sleeping soundly, flat on his stomach with the damp pillowcase still resting over his shoulders.
I sit up and look back to the darkness. It’s gone.
Am I losing my mind?
A wave of frustration washes over me, and I slap my hand over my face and rub, groaning at today’s talk of nightmares clearly playing tricks on my mind. So stupid.
As I lower my hand, a delicate touch—like a fingernail—glides down my neck to my collarbone. My eyes fly open, but the rest of my body is frozen in place.
Paralysed by fear.
The touch at my collarbone slides up my throat and beneath my chin, lifting my head. Cold spreads across my jaw as my head is tilted to the side, fully exposing my neck.
I can’t move.
I can’t scream.
I can’t fucking do anything.
It has to be the nightwalker from the delivery room.
I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for the sting of venom-filled fangs, when the touch moves away from my neck and brushes against the tattoo inked along my shoulder.
My gown is slowly drawn down, sending me back to thoughts of the moonflower vale, and I suck in a tight breath as panic flares.
The icy touch doesn’t pull the gown any lower. A steady burn of cold prickles the hairs on my neck.
I should peek and see what it looks like. Does it look like me? All I have to do is open my eyes and turn my head.
I desperately try to conjure the will to open them. Just a peek to prove this is real and I’m not dreaming.
My eyes open a crack just as something collides with my face. I bend forward, cupping my nose over the spot that pulses with pain.
“Shit, sorry!” Emily says as she crawls out of the vent. “I didn’t think you would still be awake!”
As I rub my nose where her heel smacked into me, I scan the room, but neither the darkness nor the unnatural cold is present anymore. I want to believe it was just my imagination, but I touch my neck where the tingling sensation lingers.
It was real. A nightwalker was here.
But…they didn’t bite me. They didn’t kill me. Why? Does it follow Serun’s Law?
Emily gently touches my arm. “Are you okay?”
I brush my blonde hair over one shoulder and glance up at the now-closed vent. “Yeah…” I turn to her. “How was your trip to Dan’s room?”
She shrugs. “The same. The lights annoyed me, though.”
“How so?” I ask as she scrambles off my bed and into her own.
“I always seem to bump into them,” Emily says with a yawn.
Either she was lucky enough not to encounter the nightwalker, or it wasn’t interested in her.
Could it know what I am?