Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
QUINN
Earlier that day
Beep.
Darkness. That’s the first thing I’m aware of.
Beep.
It’s the kind of darkness that feels almost thick, something that coats my limbs and the inside of my throat.
I’m powerless to move or speak, like I’m suspended in some kind of viscous liquid.
And the silence is almost oppressive, a blanket that covers everything other than the steady in-out of my breath.
Beep.
Oh, and that incessant noise.
I can think, though. I suppose that’s something. I don’t know where I am or why I’m stuck in this syrupy darkness, but I know my name and what year it is and the current prime minister. You know, the things they ask on medical dramas to see if someone’s all there.
I know all that, and so by rights I should be all there, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not anywhere.
Beep.
Scratch that, I must be somewhere. That damn beeping is there again, perfectly steady, like it’s keeping time of something. Though for the life of me, I can’t think what it could be.
Maybe I’m sleeping. Maybe I’m in that last part, right before you wake up, when the noises of the real world merge with your dream and just for a few moments, you’re between worlds.
Maybe, a few moments from now, I’ll crack open an eye and those familiar whisky-brown eyes will be looking right back at me.
Beep.
I expect the little jump in my chest when I think of Florence. It happens all the time now. It’s soft, like a hum, but strong enough that it sometimes makes my breath catch. It doesn’t happen this time though. And, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not sure I can feel my body at all.
And I’m still not waking up. Weird.
Then there’s another noise, a scraping like the metal legs of a chair on a hard floor, and as it gets closer, there’s a voice, too. It isn’t the one I expect, though it does sound vaguely familiar.
Beep.
‘It’s working,’ the voice is saying. ‘We’re reducing the sedation gradually, but so far, he’s doing great. This next part might be a little rough, though, so it might be better for you if you step outside for a while.’
There’s a sharp breath closer to my head, and then a gruff, ‘I’m staying.’
Bram.
That’s the moment I know. Something’s happened. I’m not asleep in my own bed at all. The voice said sedation – am I in a hospital? Am I hurt? I don’t feel hurt, though. I don’t feel anything at all.
Beep.
Hold on, I actually think I can just barely feel the scratch of sheets against my heels.
A hand closes around my forearm, and I feel that too.
It’s cool, like Florence’s, but it feels bigger, heavier.
Is it Bram’s? So Bram’s here, but not Florence?
She’s probably around, though. Perhaps she’s just gone to get something.
This time the thought of her does make my chest tighten, but then before I know it, that familiar tug has turned into something else entirely.
I’m suddenly overcome by the strangest sensation, a panic that starts behind my breastbone and spreads like wildfire through my whole body.
That damn beeping speeds, my muscles contract, and I feel like I’m fighting for every breath.
Wait, no, I’m fighting to get a breath at all. There’s something in my throat which my muscles are clenching around, my hands fruitlessly grasping for something as that familiar voice says my name.
‘You’re ok, Quinn,’ it says, but I don’t feel ok. I feel like I’m being deep-throated by a giant statue. ‘You have a tube in your throat to help you breathe, but we’re taking it out now.’
The beeping speeds up even more, and the thing in my throat starts to move – slowly at first, but then it’s being pulled steadily while I tense and gag around it.
The hand on my forearm stays, holding firm against my squirming, but as my own retching slows, I hear a gagging noise beside me, and of all the things, that’s what makes me finally open my eyes. When I do, the first thing I see is my boss dry heaving next to me.
‘Sorry, man,’ Bram says, with a watery cough. ‘But that was grim.’
Someone laughs on my other side, a warm, robust chuckle, and that’s when I realise where I’ve heard that voice before.
‘I did try to warn you,’ Cam says to Bram, and then he turns his attention back to me. ‘Welcome back, buddy!’
I try to reply, but my words stick in my throat. So I don’t ask where Florence is, even though it’s all I can think about. Well, that and the fact that even air passing through my throat makes my insides feel like they’re being sandpapered.
‘It’s ok,’ Cam says in that same steady voice.
‘Speaking might be difficult for a little while. Just try to breathe.’ He pulls up a chair next to the bed and settles down in it.
‘I don’t know how much you remember, but I’ll talk you through it.
You were hit by a bus yesterday. People at the scene told the paramedics you stepped out to save an elderly couple from being hit by a cyclist, but the bus was travelling too close behind the bike and it clipped you as it passed. ’
I actually do remember the couple and my panic as I saw them step right into the path of the bike. I try to speak, to ask Cam about them, but he holds up a hand to stop me.
‘They’re fine,’ he says. ‘A little shaken up, and very concerned about you, but you got them out of the way just in time. You were less lucky. You took an impact to the hip, and to the back of your head. When you were taken to hospital, they discovered a relatively small brain bleed, but quite significant swelling, and it was decided at that point to put you in a medically induced coma to protect your brain from further damage.’
I nod. The beeping has slowed back down to a steady pace, and I belatedly realise that it’s my heart rate. It seems obvious now.
‘Here’s where it gets interesting,’ Cam says, his face pulling into a grin.
‘By this morning the pressure in your brain was almost back to normal, and a follow-up scan this morning told us that the bleeding has completely resolved.’ He pushes his wire-framed glasses up his nose with a knuckle.
‘At that point I had to intervene and have you transferred to a private facility before anyone asked any difficult questions.’
Bram huffs a laugh. ‘You can thank Elias for this fancy private room. Cam was going to hide you in the basement.’
‘The lower ground floor has perfectly adequate beds,’ Cam says, with an unrepentant shrug. ‘But this room is pretty flash.’
I glance around the room as much as my aching body will allow me to, and I can’t argue with them. If it weren’t for the abundance of medical equipment it’d look like an upmarket hotel room.
‘Anyway,’ Cam continues, labouring the word even as his grin returns, ‘since you were transferred here early this morning, we’ve been doing a number of tests on you, and it seems that the change in your blood that we’ve been monitoring has had somewhat of a protective effect on your brain.
The speed at which the damage has resolved itself is beyond the limits of what we would expect in a human. ’
I open my mouth to speak, but Cam cuts me off again.
‘It’s not immortality,’ he says, before I have the time to even think it. ‘The protection seems to be limited to your brain at the moment, but it probably saved your life yesterday. It was touch and go back there for a while.’
A cold shiver ripples down my spine. I can’t imagine how that would have felt for Florence, watching yet another human she loved circling the drain. She must have—
Fuck.
That was her dealbreaker, her one condition. And she’s not here now. There’s a small piece of my brain clinging to a floating scrap of hope, but a much bigger piece is drowning in the churning waters of my realisation.
She’s gone.
‘Florence,’ I manage to scratch out, and they exchange a look that makes my heart hit the floor.
‘I’m sorry, man,’ Bram says, his hand back on my forearm. ‘She’s not here.’
* * *
I sulk for much of the day.
Bram assumes it’s because I’m tired and traumatised and strung-out on all the drugs still in my system, and of course that’s true.
I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus, because, well, you know.
But I’m also definitely sulking. Apparently, they told Florence about the accident and then she bolted and no one’s seen or heard from her since.
The worst part is that I can’t even blame her. She spelled it out. More than once. She said she didn’t date humans. She said she couldn’t handle losing anyone else. She told me over and over and over again, and I naively thought … what? That I was different?
So yeah, I’m sulking. I really want to scream and break things and sob until my throat is raw, but I very recently awoke from a medically induced coma, so I’m settling for pretending to nap while my heart breaks silently into a thousand pieces in my chest.
Bram is stubbornly refusing to leave my side, and Cam is popping in every half hour or so to do obs on me, and I suspect that neither one of them believes I’m actually sleeping, but to their credit, they’ve gone along with it.
That is, until Cam walks in and instead of checking my vitals, pulls a chair up next to the bed and plops into it.
‘Quinn, stop pretending to sleep,’ he says, his voice even more animated than usual. ‘I’ve got an update that might be of interest to you.’
I open one eye. ‘I’m listening,’ I croak. It’s a little easier to speak now. I’m hoarse, but that’s probably to be expected, all things considered. But I can’t deny that an interesting update has piqued my interest. Am I hoping it’ll be about Florence?
Obviously.
Cam pushes his glasses up his nose. ‘I just spoke with the lab who’s researching your case, and they’ve confirmed what you already suspected – that you are turning, but at a rate far slower than usual.’
‘Ok,’ I say, trying my hardest to mask the twang of disappointment.
‘They’ve also confirmed that there’s an option for you to be fully turned sooner rather than later. There is a bit of a catch with that one, but the consensus there is that that would be the recommended course of action.’
That makes me sit up and take notice. If you’d have asked me a few months ago if I’d be interested in becoming something that primarily feeds on blood, I’d have laughed in your face. But somewhere along the line, I found something that scares me more than blood: losing Florence.
‘I have to say, I agree,’ Cam continues. ‘Obviously you could choose the timing and so on, but I’d suggest it be soon, before the strain on your body becomes permanent.’ He motions to himself with a self-deprecating smile. ‘Far better to be forever thirty than forever fifty-five, take it from me.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I say, before I have time to talk myself out of it. ‘Quick, one of you bite me.’
Cam frowns. ‘You don’t know what it entails yet.’
‘I don’t care,’ I counter, puffing out my aching chest. ‘I’ll do it.’
I look between the two men on either side of me. Bram is watching me closely, his brows pulled tightly in concentration. Cam shifts awkwardly in his seat. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look awkward before.
Bram clears his throat. ‘Quinn, I think you should at least hear what the catch is.’
But I have a single focus now, and that is doing whatever it takes to win Florence back. I would walk through fire for that woman.
‘I’m telling you, I don’t care what it is, I’ll do it.’ I shrug, feigning confidence. ‘I’ll drink a pint of blood, whatever. I mean, I’ll probably be screaming and shaking while I do it, but I will. She’s worth it. She—’
‘It has to be Abby,’ Cam blurts out. ‘Who turns you, I mean. In the experiments they did at the lab, it only worked when the host ingested blood from the same sire. When they introduced blood from a different vampire, the invading cells attacked each other and killed the host before either could establish dominance.’
It’s like a slap in the face. I’m pretty sure the last time I saw Abby, she told me that if she never saw me again, it’d be too soon. I told her I wanted to marry her and then hours later I said we should break up. Yeah, I might have burnt my bridges there.
‘You want me to call a girl I broke up with four years ago,’ I say slowly, ‘and ask her to turn me into a vampire?’
Cam squirms even more. ‘You don’t need to call her. We’ll do it.’ He brushes his hair off his face and tries not to look me in the eye. ‘But essentially, yes.’
All the air in my body leaves in one big sigh. ‘You know, we didn’t leave things on particularly good terms.’
‘It’s up to you,’ Bram says from my other side. ‘You don’t have to decide anything now.’
The coward in me wants to take that and run with it. I don’t have to decide now. I don’t have to grovel at Abby’s feet. I could choose to do nothing for a while – to wait and see. But if I do choose that, it could also be a death sentence.
Cam shifts in his chair. ‘If we could at least find out who her sire is, we could ask them instead. Anyone along that bloodline would do, actually.’
I don’t listen to the coward in my head. He doesn’t speak for me. Not anymore. I’ve escaped death once already this week, and I’ll do anything I can to stop it coming for me again.
‘Call her,’ I say, bracing myself against the knot of unease in my throat. ‘It’s worth a try.’