Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
FLORENCE
I’m just passing the abbey when I see the figure inside, barely more than a silhouette in the moonlight.
There’s a secret, hopeful part of me that thinks it might be Quinn, here to tell me it was a misunderstanding, a near miss, nothing to worry about.
But I’ve been alive long enough now to know that life rarely works out that way.
Nevertheless, curiosity gets the better of me, and I hop the wall and make my way across the field to the abbey. As I get closer, I realise that I recognise that silhouetted mass of curls.
‘Cam?’
He turns with a knowing smile, as though he’s been expecting me all along.
‘I was hoping I’d find you here,’ he says, the breeze doing insane things to his hair. ‘Your safe place, right?’
I nod. ‘Usually.’
Cam, being Cam, does not mince his words. ‘You’ve been ignoring your messages.’
‘I turned off my phone.’
‘Right.’ His shoulder lifts in a movement, not quite a shrug. ‘I think we should talk.’
They were the words I’ve been dreading. They rarely preface something you want to hear, in my experience, but there’s something about Cam’s manner that soothes me a little.
He isn’t wearing the same expression as the last time we spoke.
It isn’t his ‘breaking bad news’ face. It’s more neutral than that. Calming, almost.
‘I’m ready,’ I say, even though I don’t think I am. He guides me to a low portion of wall where we both sit.
‘It’s about Quinn,’ he says, and though there was really no need to clarify, given the circumstances, something about it makes sense to me. It gives me the confidence to ask the question I’m desperate to know the answer to.
‘Is he ok?’
Cam studies me a moment before he nods. ‘He’s doing better than we initially expected.’
I feel my entire body relax, a wave that starts at my shoulders and gathers speed as it travels down my body. I wonder if they’ve been able to bring him out of the coma. Is he breathing on his own? Are his vitals stable?
‘But there was something else I really wanted to talk to you about,’ Cam says. ‘I think it’s important that you’re involved. Because if this thing between you is as serious as I think it is, it’s something that will affect you and your life together, too.’
Rehabilitation, maybe? Oh God, is he paralysed? I know the primary injury was to his head, but there’s no telling what other things may have come to light in the past couple of days.
‘I can almost hear you spiralling,’ Cam says, ‘so I’m just going to tell you straight.’
I brace myself.
‘Testing at the Edinburgh lab has shown that fully turning him is an option. He doesn’t have to stay in this limbo state and wait for it to happen.’
Cam’s intonation tells me that isn’t the end of his sentence, but it’s enough for a wild burst of hope to spring up in my chest. Quinn’s mortality was the last remaining obstacle between us, the last hurdle before our happily ever after.
Obviously we’ll still have to wait for him to recover from his injuries, as they’re pre-existing, but we could have a real future together.
Then Cam speaks again. ‘There’s a but.’
My eyes fly back up to meet his, the balloon of hope springing a slow leak. ‘A but?’
He nods soberly. ‘The full transition must be instigated by the same vampire who started it, or at least one in the same bloodline. The tests showed that introducing entirely new cells is devastating. The invading cells fought for dominance and resulted in the death of the host cells before either strain of invading cells became established enough to achieve immortality.’
Ah, fuck.
‘So, we need to find Quinn’s ex,’ I mutter, feeling that slow puncture in my chest grow to a gaping wound.
Cam’s mouth twitches, a sure sign that he’s holding back a grin. I don’t dare hope this time.
‘Two steps ahead of you, mate,’ he chirps. ‘I tracked her down and explained the situation. She’s on her way to the hospital right now to talk to him.’
There’s a flare of something bitter and ugly in my chest for a moment or two before Cam’s words fully register.
‘He’s … talking?’
He nods, a broad grin stretching over his face. ‘He’s been asking for you.’
Two conflicting emotions lap over each other like waves, bursts of intense relief that Quinn doesn’t seem to be dead or dying, followed by the dark pull of jealousy at the idea of him with his ex.
She might get to see him before me, I think, and the thoughts running through my mind are nothing short of uncharitable.
‘Then what the hell are we still doing here?’ I ask, and Cam beams back at me.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’
And as we hurry back to Cam’s parked car, I feel the slightest of cool breezes brush my forearm.
‘Go get him,’ Josiah whispers, only just loudly enough to hear, and I fold up the memory of his voice until it’s tiny and tuck it somewhere very close to my heart.
* * *
The drive to the private hospital just outside of Scarborough takes a little under thirty minutes, but even that feels like a lifetime. Nervous energy thrums through me the whole time, throbbing in my ears and my fingertips like a pulse.
Luckily, I have Cam’s driving to distract me.
Given that I am both immortal and impervious to motion sickness, it shouldn’t get to me the way it does, but even before we’re out of Whitby, my knuckles have whitened with the pressure of my grip. I’m half expecting to be ejected straight through a window, such is the force of some of his turns.
I’m unspeakably glad when we pull into a parking space and he cuts the engine.
He turns to say something but barks out a laugh at the sight of my face before he can.
Wordlessly, he reaches over and opens the glove compartment to reveal six full vials of blood nestled between his service book and a neatly looped cable.
‘Lucky dip,’ he chirps, and despite my not-insignificant suspicions about where he’s getting all this blood, I reach in and take the one that looks like it contains the most.
‘I have ethical concerns about this,’ I say, screwing off the top, ‘but my current need is too great to turn it down.’
I down it in one and then clamber out of the car.
I’ve worked in too many different clinics and hospitals to count, and usually the sights and sounds and smells of a medical facility feel safe and familiar. They are the old friends that help me fit in with another new role, or another new home. But today they don’t feel safe or familiar at all.
I was initially buoyed by Cam’s revelation that Quinn was talking, but uncertainty has crept in since. I need to see him to reassure myself that he’s still Quinn.
My Quinn, I think, but I don’t dare dwell on that. I need to see that he’s still my Quinn after I ran away. I hope it’s enough that I came back.
His room is at the end of a corridor on the fourth floor, the furthest possible distance from the entrance. I wonder if that’s by design, to keep him away from prying eyes. We reach the door and I have to take a moment to gather myself, to prepare myself for what might await me on the other side.
Cam stops as I do, his eyes flicking to mine. His pause is a question he doesn’t need to verbalise, shorthand we’ve developed over the last couple of hundred years. I nod at him when I’m ready and follow him through the door.
Quinn is the first thing I see. In fact, for a good ten seconds, he’s the only thing I see.
He’s sitting up in bed, propped up against a fortress of pillows, the crisply starched hospital sheets pooled at his waist. On the face of it, he doesn’t look all too different from the last time I saw him, though perhaps a little paler, with deep shadows cutting under his eyes and the shadow of a bruise edging around the side of his neck.
When our eyes meet, I feel it as tangibly as an axe forced into my chest. It registers as pain, first, a slice of it clean across my sternum that brings a lump to my throat and the sting of tears to my eyes. He needed me, I think, and I wasn’t here.
Guilt is hot on pain’s heels, pulling at the pit of my stomach.
Then comes longing.
I want to run to him, to fling myself into his arms and breathe in that complex scent of his, and to tell him how sorry I am. But I do nothing. I just stand there, paralysed by the depth of my feelings, watching his eyes as he moves through his own spectrum of emotions.
At least, I think it’s a spectrum, but the only one I can identity is shock. He clearly wasn’t expecting me.
‘Quinn?’
There’s a woman standing at the foot of Quinn’s bed, her fingers adorned with bright pink nail varnish and wrapped tightly around the bed rail. She’s saying his name with a familiarity that makes me want to throw up, even though that’s a reflex of mine which is long gone.
I suppose this is the ex.
‘Quinn,’ she says again, a razor edge to her tone now that’s totally at odds with the way she looks.
She’s pretty, that’s for sure, but in a quiet sort of way.
Her mousy-brown hair is pulled back from her face and plaited down her back.
Her oversized hoodie and leggings combination might have tricked me into thinking she was a teenager, even though from the strength of her aura I can tell she’s easily into her third century.
‘Sorry,’ he says, tearing his eyes away from me and smiling sheepishly at her. Jealousy rumbles back through me, sharp and bitter. Rationally I know he needs to keep her onside because he wants something from her, but that doesn’t make me hate it any less. It kills me that I can’t give him that.
‘This is her, then, is it?’ She almost spits it, like the question is acid on her tongue.
Quinn hesitates for a moment – just a split second, but it’s enough to make me well up again. ‘Yes,’ he says eventually, not meeting my eyes as he does.
My heart cracks clean down the middle, but I mask it as best I can when she turns to weigh me up. I stand firm, schooling my expression into something neutral and non-threatening. I can’t be the one who blows this chance for him.
She gives me one more long look, nothing but disdain in those cold blue eyes, and then she turns back to Quinn.
‘So you … what?’ she asks, hands propped on her hips.
‘Want me to help you ride off into the sunset with her?’ She rolls her eyes so hard that, as a medical professional, I’m concerned she might pull something.
‘You finally get your shit together and you expected me to be … what? Impressed? Happy for you?’
His brows twitch a little – the slightest hint of a frown – and I see him gather all his strength before he speaks.
‘I just want you to finish what you started.’