12. Maria #2
I hide my surprise. He read to my daughter. I think about how such a small bit of normalcy must’ve calmed her when I wouldn’t wake—she loves her storybooks. The hard knot of anger I feel loosens a little.
She twists in my arms and hugs me. “Please, Mommy?”
I bite my lip. She’s my daughter, not his. But I won’t deny Zinnia if it’ll help her sleep in this unfamiliar place. “Okay.”
Chris heads for a closet in his bedroom. “Let me put a clean sheet on the couch first. The one Zinnia used last night is now covered in sand.”
Fresh, clean sheets. A miracle.
Once she’s settled, sitting on the couch, I lean against the doorframe while Chris reads to her. His voice is melodic, full of expression, as he tells Alice’s story.
Wolfie isn’t pestering the four rabbits Zinnia has claimed as pets, so Chris lets the cat stay indoors.
Wolfie makes an odd sound, then struts right past me, tail straight in the air.
I hold my breath when the animal curls up in Zinnia’s lap.
I’ve encountered feral cats when scavenging the neighborhoods near the silos, and they aren’t friendly. But Wolfie seems all right.
Soon, my little girl falls asleep against Chris and he stands. Moving the cat aside, he gently stretches Zinnia out and covers her.
He’s careful with her. A small warmth blooms in my heart.
Wolfie grumbles but settles down next to her legs. Then Chris turns off the lights and joins me in the bedroom doorway. “First time Wolfie has had something warm to lie on,” he whispers. “We, uh, we run on the cooler side. Did you hear the way he purred?”
“I did. I’m surprised the noise he makes doesn’t wake her.” I take his hand. “Are you going to bed now?”
He drops his gaze to our hands and I immediately release his. What the heck has gotten into me? I know nothing about this man…er, vampire. I still don’t trust him. Why did I touch him?
He wrinkles his nose. “I’m not getting back into bed until I’ve had a shower. Do you want to go first?”
I look down at my clothes. Even though I pulled on fresh sweats after putting the rabbits through decon, moving them inside and into cages has covered me with fur, and the decon residue on my skin isn’t pleasant. “Yes, thank you.”
My clothes go into the laundry hamper with Chris’s. The luxury of a long, hot shower leaves me more relaxed than I’ve been since my husbands died.
When I leave the bathroom with a towel wrapped around me, Chris edges past, closing the door behind him.
A clean, knee-length nightshirt waits on the bed.
He must have dug into his supplies while I showered.
I slip into it and hang the towel on a hook by the bathroom door, then I look in on Zinnia again.
She’s sleeping soundly, Wolfie curled up against her.
I want to curl up next to her, to hold her and feel she’s all right, but Chris’s warning echoes in my mind.
I can’t risk hurting my baby girl.
Emotion surges through my chest as I return to the bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed.
A tear forms, and I try to sniff it back, but another follows, and I lean into my hands and sob.
Chris is right about one thing: being a new nightcrawler—I mean vampire—has my emotions swinging abruptly.
Intense shifts I can’t control. Grief, anger, sadness…
“Hey, Maria, what’s wrong?”
I lower my hands and, through blurry eyes, look at Chris’s bare feet standing in front of me. He’s wearing red-and-green plaid pajama pants.
“I just want to go back to the way it was. Me and Zinnia. As happy as we can be in this shithole of a world.”
He lifts my chin with one finger. “I’m sorry, Maria, for how hard it might feel right now. But were you really happy? Didn’t you worry what might happen to Zinnia after you died?”
Pain stabs through me. My worst fear spoken aloud. “I did.”
“Well, now you have a chance to spend your whole life with her.”
I nearly didn’t.
When he shot me, I nearly lost watching her grow up at all. I nearly left her all alone.
The thought breaks through my sadness. “Thanks to you, I’ll spend my whole life with her as a vampire. I died sooner because of you.”
“Technically, yes. I shot you instead of finding another way out. I should have tricked you into running out of arrows. Jumped off the platform, scaled down, moved at vampire speed, forced you to fire wildly. But I didn’t know how many of you lived there, or how big your stockpile of arrows was.
So I reacted and shot.” He gives a sympathetic stroke of my hair.
“The good news? Zinnia will have a far better life here than if you’d stayed in the silo.
And you’ll live longer because of me. In fact, you’ll live longer than me. ”
“Very funny.”
“I’m not joking. I kinda sacrificed my life to save yours.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I shoot to my feet, angry again. Is he making fun of me?
He steps back and his lower lip trembles. “I didn’t have permission to turn you. The standard punishment is staking. As your maker, the decision—which of us is staked—remains with me.”
Dizziness overwhelms me. The betrayal causes a sharp spike of pain in my chest. He saved me only to…kill me later?
He grips my arms, steadying me. “Listen. You’re safe. I…I can’t do that to you. Not just because Zinnia needs you, and she does, but because I’m your sire. I can’t sacrifice you. If I can’t find a way to save all of us, I’ll take the stake myself.”
I breathe deeply and steady myself against him. “How will anyone know? Don’t tell them and we’ll hide here. Then no one has to die.”
“I have to file a report tomorrow about the Titan 2 silo inspection. I’ve been hoping I’d come up with a solution, and I haven’t. But it’s best if I tell the Lux the truth.”
He releases my arms, climbs into bed, and motions for me to join him, but my feet stay glued to the floor. I can’t believe what he’s telling me.
He sighs. “If you stay here, they’ll find out anyway. And I can’t send you back to the silo—not with Zinnia. You’d end up killing her.”
A chill runs down my spine. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“A starving vampire? You’d see her as food.”
I bury my face in my hands. “I didn’t believe this world could get any worse. But it has.”
“I’m sorry.” He sighs. “It’s my fault, really.”
“Not all of it. I wish I’d given you an opportunity to leave.”
“You couldn’t know I wasn’t a real threat. You were just defending your home.” He shakes his head. “I was trying to steal a pair of bunnies. The consequences are all on my head.”
He sounds sincere, and he could have left me for dead once already.
The last of my anger dissolves. It’s a messed-up world, and we were both just trying to survive.
He pats the bed, the place next to him.
I feel a bit wobbly climbing in. He’s going to die and I’ll be left alone to figure out this life with Zinnia.
Lying on my side, I stare at his naked breastbone, unable to meet his eyes. “I want to say I’m sorry for wounding your shoulder, but I can’t. The other vampires…the renegades—”
“Are desperate, I know. You couldn’t trust me.
At least now you and Zinnia have a chance.
I hope I can convince the Lux to take you and her to a mixed dome after they sentence me.
One where she can go to school, and play with other children, and have a chance at finding someone to love when she grows up. ”
My chest swells—that’s exactly what I’ve always wanted for her. “But you—”
“Look. It might be best if I’m not around. They’d keep us together otherwise, and I’m not exactly the father type.”
“What? You’re so good with Zinnia.”
He rolls over on his back, his gaze focused on the ceiling. “My father abandoned me when I was a few years older than Zinnia. His last words before he left were: ‘Never have children, son. They’re a burden you don’t want.’”
I shake my head. “That’s terrible.” I feel sorry for him. Even with the limitations Lehm, Gabriel, and I had, we were better parents than his father.
“Yeah, well, his lesson stuck. Children are a trap. Mom lived it. She couldn’t leave me the way he did.
She had to get a job in an era when women had limited access to education and the available jobs paid poorly.
My mother looked drained most days, exactly how my father said I’d been draining him. ”
I know that feeling. After my husbands died, and all the work fell on me, I felt exhausted all the time. But the love I feel for Zinnia, the joy she brings, is worth every minute of it.
He sighs. “And then my maker turned me and dumped me.”
“Oh, Chris. I’m so sorry.” I run my hand over his chest, wishing I could comfort him. “Are we a burden to you, then?”
“No. I made my choice to save you for your daughter’s sake. We’ll find out tomorrow what the Lux decide to do with me.”
I grab and kiss him then. I surprise myself with the bold move as much as I surprise him.
But the fierce way he’s decided to protect me and Zinnia with his own life has moved me.
We’re strangers to one another, despite what this tugging in my chest suggests.
Yet he saved me. I might hate being a vampire, but I don’t hate him. I can’t.
Chris melts into the kiss, and his arms wrap around me, holding me tight. His tongue slips between my lips. A luscious back-and-forth glide that goes on forever.
When we break, his face is almost as red as the stripe in his hair.
“Would you hold me?” I ask.
He opens his arms wide as his blush fades. “One shoulder, no waiting.”
The feel of his arms around me stirs my desire deeper. I want him. Yet I can’t let him too close. The Lux won’t allow him to stay with me, even if he’s a better man than I thought.
He buries his face in my hair. I shift closer against him and sigh.
I can’t imagine what I’ll do if they kill him.
So much loss in this world. My parents, my husbands, and now this man—who didn’t even know me—will all be dead.
To let me remain with my daughter, he’s willing to sacrifice his life to save mine.
For the first time ever, I care what happens to a vampire.