Chapter 6 #3
“Only fools refuse a helping hand. Come.”
Mal wasn’t sure what possessed him to volunteer for the manual labor of moving a commune.
It certainly wasn’t because he enjoyed moving heavy things, that’s for sure.
Within minutes he was put to work. He was presented with a top-floor landing full of possessions and the words “to the truck.” Words that he repeated in his head as he struggled down narrow stairways with heavy object after heavy object.
For every one thing he moved, he saw dozens of vampires move two things, twice as fast. He smiled at them in passing on the stairs as they chuckled watching him struggle with something they could do without breaking a sweat.
He gathered a small concerned audience when he took a sweaty, wheezing break after only an hour of shifting things.
But he assured them he was fine, and he was fine; he just wished he were fitter—it would have been slightly less embarrassing.
The work had distracted him. He couldn’t help but feel responsible for everything terrible that had happened.
Des being hurt, the commune having to move.
While Mal hadn’t blasted her with lightning, and while he had no control over the Order—quite the opposite in fact—he still hated the role he’d played in all this.
He didn’t even know if saving Des was the right thing to do.
It felt right at the time but she might think differently.
Maybe she would have preferred to die than become a vampire.
Who was he to make that decision for her?
They weren’t even that close and she had been nothing but a huge pain in his arse for days, but that didn’t mean he wanted her dead.
Far from it; her persistence was growing on him.
He liked that she was interested in him.
Though he wished it had been for reasons other than a secret power he hated.
And there it was, the simple pervasive truth of his life: If he didn’t have this stupid power, everything would be so much simpler.
His parents would be dead (would have remained dead), but he wouldn’t be hurting people he liked and uprooting families with his incompetence.
He had always wished to be normal, and this was exactly why.
The hauling was literally the very least he could do, even if it was starting to hurt his arms.
After a few hours Des was stable. She was sleeping the sleep of the dead and her caregivers said she would stay that way for at least twelve to fifteen more hours.
She seemed paler, but she wasn’t in any life-threatening danger.
Her shoulder had started to heal and Mal could see that down her right arm was a spiraling fractal pattern, emanating from the shoulder wound.
Guilt and shame sank Mal’s stomach. She’d saved his life and now he’d ruined hers.
He felt an anger rise from his shoulders.
Whoever was doing this wasn’t going to get away with it.
His powers were evil, but he’d use them to stop this from ever happening again.
He had never been more grateful that someone other than him was around to save her.
For his money, being a vampire was better than being a zombie every day of the week.
They put Des on a floating stretcher, gave Mal his blood bag, and offered to warp them where they needed.
Mal thanked them while apologizing profusely.
Mal braced himself for the warp and held on tight to the end of the stretcher.
His world swirled and the ground disappeared beneath him.
He appeared, as if emerging from a fog, at the front gate of his family home, Des floating before him.
It was a large but quaint house, surrounded by nothing but forest and countryside.
No nosy neighbors, no busy high streets.
It was as far out as far out could be while still having workable internet.
He opened the gate and walked up the grassy hill the house sat atop of.
He walked round the side of the house and forced open his bedroom window, forever grateful for his bedroom being on the ground floor.
His room was piled with boxes and rubbish from his family, but his bed was clean and made.
He pushed the floating Des in, then followed, shutting the window behind him.
He removed the covers and positioned her floating just a centimeter above the bed, then pressed a collapsing button on the side of the stretcher.
It shrank down to a cube the size of a Post-it and Des fell into the bed.
He covered her up, and thought about how if this was a TV show or a book, the person putting them to bed would change the person in bed into some kind of pajamas.
Mal thought that was hideously creepy and decided she was best left well alone.
He wrote a little note on the bedside table and quietly left Des to recover.
Now he just had to figure out what he was going to tell his parents.