Chapter Six - Thomas
I’m screaming as I plummet through the sky.
Something iron-strong wraps around me.
I hadn’t even realised my eyes were closed until they open to find I’m buried in Ketill’s chest.
He spins us, and when we SMASH through a sheet of solid ice and plunge into freezing waters, it’s his back that takes the full unforgiving force of the impact.
The shock of cold steals my breath. Ice pierces through my senses.
I try to suck in air. Only for my nose and throat and lungs to burn in this place of dark confusion and masses of bubbles, where I’m falling or floating. Or dying.
Am I dying?
It’s a shock when I’m somehow thrown onto a frozen surface. I cough up water, coughing harder when I instinctively try to fill my straining lungs.
Someone is speaking—yelling. The sound is fuzzy. My body won’t move—or can’t move; I’m not sure yet and terrified to find out.
I’m losing feeling. But everything hurts.
I’m scared.
I want my big brother Kai.
I want Ketill.
“Get the fuck off the lake!”
Ketill. I’d know his voice anywhere. Anywhere.
“Thomas, you will move!” his voice is harsher than I thought possible, turned into a command I have no other choice but to follow.
I stand on shaky, rigid legs, choking out puffs of clouds, struggling over the slippery and creaking ice towards land.
“Don’t you fucking stop, Thomas! Move!”
My gaze unfocused, I shamble until my shoes squelch when meeting hard mud, and I fall to my knees, crushing crystallised grass.
I look back for Ketill.
He’s close, on his belly and dragging himself across the ice with his forearms, face pale, hair wet. Soon, he reaches me, grunting as he struggles to sit up. The ice behind us cracking and snapping.
Ketill reaches for me, and I let out a pained cry as he rips my clothes off. I don’t have the energy or brain cells to ask what he’s doing, just let him get me naked before he shoves the warming dragon egg into my arms.
“You will not let go of this, Thomas.”
I nod, shuddering and clutching the egg even though the scales scrape against my naked chest.
Ketill waits, his fierce eyes locked on me, then drops to the ground with a thud. His lips twisted, and each breath leaves him like it’s forced out. The creaking and snapping are only getting louder.
“Y-you need to get warm, too…” I try to give him the egg, but he just shakes his head, wincing.
“I don’t need it.”
“But you must be freezing—”
“It isn’t the cold.” He swallows, his brow tightening. “My back’s broken.”
“WHAT!”
“It’s healing,” he grits out. “Don’t worry.”
Which is when I realise the cracking and snapping isn’t the ice…it’s coming from Ketill. His bones…
“O…Okay…”
Ketill winces again, his fingers digging into the soggy mud underneath.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Ketill doesn’t reply. “Tell me!” I demand, my voice coming out brittle.
He lets out a long breath. “I need blood.”
“Too…?”
“Help me heal.”
“Because…?”
“I’m a vampire, treasure. It’s kind of our thing,” he tries to joke, but it lands flat while the bones in his back scrape and crunch.
I saw his fangs and the blood. I knew he was something supernatural. But I wasn’t expecting a vampire, not that it matters right now.
I don’t think, I just move, so I’m lying on top of him, the dragon egg clutched to my side. His clothes are wet and scratchy against my bare skin. I don’t worry about that as I expose my neck.
“Thomas?” Ketill whispers, voice hoarse.
“Can you drink my blood like this?”
He’s quiet for so long I’m concerned he’s passed out, and look down into his pale grey eyes—always so strangely familiar—to find them wide open.
“I can’t feed from you after you were seconds away from hypothermia. Shit, you could still get it. No, treasure. Thomas.” His expression is serious for a man who is a terrible flirt and is way too comfortable surrounded by enemies. “Anything—everything—is worth it to keep you safe.”
I cup his cold cheek. “But if you don’t heal, then I’ll most likely end up dead anyway.”
He nuzzles my wrist. “I’d never let that happen, my love, my heartbeat…”
I drop my forehead onto his, needing to be close. “Then let me protect you, too.”
There’s a beat of silence, where I think he’ll refuse again, and then pain slices into my wrist. I gasp, but that pain is quietly soothed away by a pleasure that wraps around my body, pushing away the ice to be replaced by…him. His breath, his touch, his heartbeat.
Ketill. Ketill. Ketill.
I snuggle into him, losing myself to the oddly satisfying way he gulps my blood and the warmth of the egg.
Sheltered by a tree that rustles in the storm, raining leaves that land in Ketill’s hair.
From where we are, I can see the train up on the bridge, only a meter away from falling into the blown-up end.
“Do we need to worry about shifters?” I murmur.
Ketill takes a final gulp then pulls away, his tongue dancing across where he was sucking, and a shiver runs down my spine.
He flicks his thumb over a fang.
“What are you doing?” I ask as he rubs the bleeding tip across my wrist.
“Vampire blood heals. And you’re right, we should start moving.” We don’t move. We’re so close that the tips of our noses brush, and I’m suddenly very aware that I’m naked. “But you’re making it very hard.”
“To do what?” I whisper, our lips nearly touching.
“Nothing, you’re just making me very hard.”
Huffing, I roll my eyes and climb off him. “You’re impossible,” I say, pulling my disgusting clothes back on.
“Keep hold of that egg,” Ketill tells me. The smile is back in his voice.
Sitting upright, he moves his back from side to side, stretching as if he’d just finished a good workout.
“Is your back really healed? Just like that?”
“Wanna test it? Hop on.” Ketill jumps up. He slips off his satchel and opens it, nodding inside.
“Hop on?” I repeat, confused as I carefully place the egg into the bag.
“The shifters could be coming at any moment,” he tells me as he hooks the bag over my shoulder. The warmth from the egg isn’t as nice as when it was pressed to my skin, but it’s better than nothing. “It’ll be faster if I give you a piggyback ride.”
I glare at him. “Are you kidding?”
Eyes glinting, he turns his back to me. “Tick-tock, we don’t have all day. Or night.”
Reluctantly, I climb on. “Is this really a good idea? Aren’t I heavy?”
“I’m a mighty vampire, treasure; you might as well be a feather.” Then he starts running. No, sprinting. As if I really was just a feather stuck to his shoulder.
Cold and wind and rain rush past me, but unlike the lake, I don’t feel like I’m dying—I’m full to bursting with life.
“How long have you been a vampire?” I shout over the wind, curiosity getting the better of me as my lips brush against his ear.
“About a thousand years.”
I gasp. “The history you must’ve seen…”
“Mostly I saw the inside of brothels.”
I scoff, shaking my head. “A thousand years old and yet he acts like a teenager.”
Ketill’s back vibrates with laughter. “A few miles ahead is a hunter’s cabin, near the village where I’m meeting the owner of that egg. We can rest there for the night and find you some dry clothes.”
“How do you know about that?” I ask, burying my nose in the crook of his shoulder as Ketill speeds through valleys.
“I’m not just a pretty face. Always know your escape routes and locations you can hide.”
“Who are you…”
“The man you’ll fall in love with,” he replies, half-teasing.
“You’re an idiot.”
His back vibrates again.
We dash further and further away from the train and everything I brought with me.
I’ve never been in this situation, not even close, but there is something so familiar about being this close to Ketill.
Like a memory of something that hasn’t happened yet, like I was always meant to find myself on the back of a crazy vampire in the middle of the Scottish countryside.
“I should’ve known when you threw me over your shoulder, you weren’t a normal human.”
“I’m not a normal vampire either. I’m much better.”
“I haven’t met other vampires yet, so by that standard…”
His chuckle is caught by the wind and brushes past my ear.
“Thank you, Ketill, for everything,” I say gently. “I don’t know how I could even begin to repay you.”
“Maybe on your knees?” he quips.
“Idiot,” I whisper, keeping my face buried in his neck.
Lightning streaks across the sky, thunder crashes within the grey clouds like two rams colliding, and there is nowhere else I’d rather be.