“What the fuck are you? Get out! Get out!” she screamed, picking up the lamp from the nightstand and swinging it back and forth in front of her. “Get out of my house!”
Carlos’s face looked human once again as he pleaded with her. “Trina, let me explain...please, don’t be afraid!”
Her words were already a tidal wave slicing through his head. She had rescinded her invitation and pain ripped through him like a dull blade.
He doubled over in agony, clenching his fists as he tried to reason with her. “It’s not what you think. I need to explain.” As she stood on the bed with her eyes wild, he knew it was no use. She was terrified of him and he had no one to blame but himself. Gritting his teeth against the pain slicing through his body, he grabbed his clothes and stumbled out of the room.
Cowering against the wall, Trina followed behind him, still desperately gripping the lamp. She held her breath as she watched him. Carlos seemed wracked with pain, and it was obvious in the effort it cost him just to try to speak.
He struggled into his clothes, and even as he did, it was almost as if something propelled him toward the front door. Their eyes met for a moment, his filled not only with physical pain, but also with a sad regret. Trina’s heart squeezed even as her eyes filled with tears, but she was too afraid to do anything else.
She lurched toward the door and threw the dead bolt as soon as he was on the front step, then sank to the floor, shaking. Gulping down air, she tried to calm herself, but was frozen, too afraid to move as she shivered from the shock and the cold.
One word kept running through her mind. Vampire. Crying, she thought about calling 911 or at the very least one of her friends, but who would believe her?
Trina curled into herself, sobbing as she rocked back and forth, trying to wrap her head around what had just happened. “What the hell did I get myself into? He’s some kind of a monster, for Christ’s sake, he had fangs! And his face…what the hell was that? God help me, what have I done?”
What had she missed? There had to have been some kind of telltale sign that Carlos wasn’t all he seemed. This was New York City, with all types of crazy, underground fetishes. Her mind raced. Didn’t she just watch a show on the History Channel with about modern-day vampirism? Hadn’t they called themselves sanguinarians or some such thing?
She thought back to everything she’d experienced with Carlos over the past few days, everything she’d felt. There wasn’t anything even remotely unusual to give her pause. Her own wanton behavior was the only thing that was unusual; her own gut telling her Carlos was the one haunting her dreams. Was she really that desperate that she’d misread her own body’s alarm signals as romantic folly?
She was still on the cold tile in front of the door, her teeth chattering when she finally roused herself. She made herself get up and go back upstairs, but she couldn’t face her own room. Practically sprinting past her bedroom door, she turned instead and went into her great-grandmother’s room.
The familiarity of Nanita’s room comforted her immediately, from the soft fragrance of her lavender and vanilla sachets, to the handmade quilts folded neatly over the edge of the bed. Nanita’s own scent still hung in the air and as Trina breathed in, she suddenly felt homesick in her own home.
Trina caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror, naked and disheveled. She grimaced. Her head was in turmoil. She was afraid and angry, and though she didn’t want to admit it, somewhere inside she was heartbroken as well. Looking at herself in the mirror, she suddenly felt dirty. She hurried into the bathroom and turned on the shower, trying to wash away all traces of Carlos, but her mind wouldn’t let her. She would never reconcile it all, but at this point, she was too tired to try.
Exhaustion crept over her as she dried off, and she wrapped herself in her great-grandmother’s soft fleece robe. Curling up on her bed, she sank into a troubled sleep, hoping for the first time in weeks that it would be dreamless.
***
Trina slept fitfully. Disjointed images passed through her mind, taunting her until she woke in a cold sweat. Blinking, she shook off the last remnants of her broken sleep and looked at the clock. Three a.m. She exhaled and sat up, rubbing her face. Wide-awake she knew sleep would just continue to elude her. Not that closing her eyes at this point held any appeal.
She went downstairs to the kitchen, purposefully skirting the door to her bedroom as she passed. She filled the teakettle, lit the burner, and stood numbly waiting for it to boil. She hadn’t even bothered to turn on the light, and as the kettle whistled, she fumbled with the teabag, burning her fingers as she poured. She sat down, stirring honey and a little lemon into her mug, too dazed to do anything else but stare into space.
She sipped her tea and glanced at the phone, almost as if she expected it to ring. When it did, she practically jumped out of her skin. For a split second, she thought it might be Carlos, but she’d never given him her home number. Looking at the clock, she was suddenly apprehensive, knowing at this hour it was probably someone calling about her great-grandmother.
“Hello?” she answered, her voice slightly panicked. “What’s happened?”
“Ms. Markham? It’s Jeannette. I’m sorry to call you this late, but it looks as if your great-grandmother has had a stroke. She’s unconscious right now, but responsive. The doctors are doing tests to determine the severity of her condition and said they would explain things further once you arrive. As she never signed the Do Not Resuscitate order, they need to know what you want them to do in the event that she…” Jeanette trailed off, her voice thick with emotion. She dropped the professional nurse persona and started to cry. “Trina, honey, how quickly can you get here? I think she’s waiting for you. She’s hanging on for some reason and I think it’s because she wants to say goodbye. Please get here as soon as you can.”
Trina just stood there mutely, holding the phone to her ear.
“Trina? Did you hear me? Do you understand?” Jeannette asked, her voice urgent.
Trina’s throat worked as she swallowed back her tears. “I understand. Thank you, Jeannette,” she answered, her voice breaking. “I’m on my way. Please…tell my…tell Nanita I’m coming.”
She hung up the phone, all thoughts of Carlos gone as she flew up the stairs. Rushing into her room, she threw on the first clothes she could find and was out the door in minutes, her great-grandmother the only thing on her mind.
***
She flew out of the cab in front of the facility and rushed through the double doors. The night guard nodded to her as she hurried past toward the elevators. It seemed an eternity for the lift to reach the right floor, but finally the doors opened, and Jeanette was waiting there for her.
“Where is she?” Trina asked as the two walked quickly down the silent hallway.
“She’s in her own bed, Trina. They moved all the monitors in there to try to make her as comfortable as possible. She’s quiet and she’s breathing on her own. She’s responsive to the stimuli tests and her heart and brain waves are strong, yet the doctors can’t seem to figure out why she’s comatose. It’s almost as if she’s made up her mind that it’s her time to go.”
Trina looked at Jeanette in shock as they continued down the corridor. She tried to process the woman’s words, but she couldn’t believe what she was saying. There was no way it was possible. The two had just had a spa day together and had torn around town shopping for her date with Carlos. Trina swallowed at the thought of him, then forced his image from her mind.
When they reached the door, her hand froze on the knob. She wasn’t sure she could deal with whatever she found on the other side.
“Go on in, honey. It’s okay. Just talk to her. I know she’ll hear you. It’s what she’s been waiting for,” Jeannette said with a reassuring smile.
Trina nodded and took a deep breath as she turned the knob, pushing the heavy, wooden door open. The room was dim and the only sound the hum of the machines monitoring her great-grandmother’s vital signs. Quietl
y, she closed the door and took a couple of steps into the room.
“Nanita, it’s me. I’m here,” she said tentatively, walking up to the bed. She looked at the old lady. Jeanette was right. She looked perfectly at peace, as if she was sleeping. Tears formed in Trina’s eyes as she watched the old woman’s chest gently rise and fall.
This was impossible. Just the day before she was laughing, forcing Trina to try on dress after dress and teasing the hairdresser till he blushed pink enough to match his hair. She put her hand on her great-grandmother’s forehead. It was cool and the skin smooth. The old woman sighed at her touch and Trina jumped at the unexpected sound.
“It’s actually amazing that she does that. She’s quite an anomaly, your great-grandmother. She’s confounded everyone around here.”
Startled, Trina’s head whirled around at the quiet, female voice behind her. “Dr. Harris! Are you practicing stealth as part of your bedside manner these days?” she said with her hand on her heart.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t want to disturb you, but Jeanette told me you were here. Did she fill you in on what’s been happening?”
“Yes, sort of, but she said you would explain it further when I got here.”
“Well, the bottom line is there’s no concrete medical reason, short of extreme old age, to explain the comatose state your great-grandmother is in right now. There was no stroke as we originally thought. CAT scan and MRI images show no damage to her brain tissue, and her brainwave function is perfect. As you just saw yourself, she responds to touch. She also responds to voices, as well as to all the stimuli tests we’ve done. But we still can’t figure out why she’s unconscious.”
“Jeanette said it was almost as if Nanita decided it was time,” Trina said in a whisper. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“At her age things can change from day to day, sometimes even minute to minute,” the doctor said, putting her hand on Trina’s shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Talk to her, Trina. Tell her everything you want her to know. I can’t prove it medically, but my gut tells me she understands, and she’ll hear everything you have to say. If nothing else it will make you feel better,” she said with a final pat before leaving the room.
Trina pulled Nanita’s soft chintz bedroom chair over to the side of the bedrail and sat down. She took the old woman’s small hand in hers and ran her fingers over the delicately wrinkled skin. It was just as soft as she’d always remembered. For some reason the memory of holding her great-grandmother’s hand on her first day of kindergarten flashed through her mind, and a single tear fell from the corner of her eye. She wiped it away with the edge of her knuckles and as she sniffled, she caught the faint scent of her great-grandmother’s perfume.
“Nanita, you have to wake up. I need you. There’s so much I have to tell you, so much I need to ask, and I don’t have anyone else I can talk to. Please, Nani, if you can hear me…” Trina stopped and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Falling into hysterics wasn’t going to do either of them any good.
“Dr. Harris says you’re a mystery. She says they can’t figure out why you’re…sleeping like this.” She couldn’t bring herself to use the term comatose. “But that’s nothing new to us is it, Nani? You’ve been a mystery all your life. I know how much my mother and grandmother hurt you—that they could turn their backs on you simply because they thought you too eccentric.
“The things you believed embarrassed them. And to some extent I’m just as guilty, and I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, especially since now I know you were right. But I need to know how you know. I’ve found some of the things from your past, the things you were forced to leave behind, but I’m as much in the dark now as ever and twice as confused.”
Trina gripped her great-grandmother’s hand so hard she could see her fingers turning white. She exhaled, and released the pressure on the old woman’s hand, bringing it to her cheek. She rubbed the slightly gnarled fingers against her skin.
“It’s just like you always told me. Things aren’t always what they seem in this life. I just never understood what you meant, never believed you—until now. I don’t know what happened in your life that made you realize there are things out there beyond our comprehension, but something happened to me, Nanita, and it happened tonight. You’re the only person I know who will believe me, the only one who won’t think I’m crazy. I need you to help me to understand.”
The old woman sighed again and this time her eyes opened for a fraction of a second. In that instant, her gaze fell on Trina, and as their eyes met, they held for that split second before they closed again.
“Nanita!” Trina jumped up. Searching her great-grandmother’s face, she looked for any sign of lingering sentience. But the old woman had slipped back into unconsciousness just as fleetingly as she had left it.
Trina ran to the door to call Jeanette, but she wasn’t there. Glancing back at her great-grandmother, she hesitated, afraid to leave her for a moment before she rushed down the hall toward the nurses’ station. Finding it empty, she darted around, but soon realized all the rooms on the floor were dark.
Annoyed, Trina headed back to Nanita’s room. This was bizarre. She looked up at the fire alarm strobe, thinking maybe she’d missed some kind of a drill, but it too was silent. She shivered, and gooseflesh began to spread across her arms. Even beneath the sleeves of her blouse, the hair on her arms stood on end. The air around her seemed to shimmer with faint electricity, and she began to sense something wasn’t right; something beyond the fact the place seemed deserted.
Rushing down the corridor, she picked up her pace as anxiety and adrenaline flooded her system. She pushed open the door, half-expecting to find her great-grandmother sitting up, and the other half expecting the monitors to be flat lining. Everything was as she left it—a peaceful yet eerie quiet, like the kind that always comes before a storm.
***
Carlos drove in a black rage, pushing his Jaguar to the limits as he flew up First Avenue. “Stupid ass,” he muttered to himself as he blurred past the buildings lining the streets of pre-dawn Manhattan.
He’d put too much trust in merely satisfying his thirst before spending time with Trina. There was something more to this than he had anticipated. The force of his initial reaction to her should have tipped him off that this ran deeper than just a craving for blood and sex. He had disregarded it.
In more than two hundred and seventy-five years he’d never felt like this. He craved Trina, all of her. Even his feelings for Isabel had paled with the advent of his preternatural life. In the beginning, he still loved her, but it was more akin to nostalgia than anything else. The memory of her had brought him both solace and pain, but never once had he craved her existence.
He had never used their blood tie to try to interfere with Isabel’s life. He had buried it, along with most of his human memories, so much so that any link they shared was long gone. Isabel had survived the injuries he had inflicted, that much he knew—but beyond that he had no clue of her life, and she hadn’t crossed his mind until just a few days ago when he’d tasted Trina’s blood.
He pulled up to the steel gate adjacent to his townhouse and hit the remote. He drove into the courtyard hidden to the side of the building and parked. The house was dark, and he wondered briefly if Julian and Melissa had stayed the night or had headed back to the main house. Either way it didn’t matter, he wasn’t in the mood for company.
He silently made his way up to his room, his expression making it clear to anyone that it would be best if they kept their distance. Walking straight into the bathroom, he stripped, turning on the shower. In the stillness, the jets of hot water sounded like a roaring waterfall as it cut through the silence. Steam curled through the air like misty tendrils coating everything in dampness.
Carlos picked up his shirt to wipe the mirror and caught the scent of Trina’s perfume still lingering on the fabric. He buried his face in the soft material and inhaled, his body r
eacting immediately, growing hard at the scent and his teeth tingled in unspent need.
“Jesus Christ!” he swore, tearing the shirt in two and crumpling it into a ball. He threw it at the door, and it hit with a soft whoompf. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
With a scowl, he pulled open the seamless glass door and stepped into the warmth of the shower. Closing his eyes, he let the hot water pound on his head while he tried to relax and think.
“Carlos?”
His eyes flew open at the sound of the soft voice in his head. It was very faint. He closed his eyes again and listened, focusing his senses.
“Carlos…your promise. You said you’d come if I called…”
He rubbed his eyes. Surely, this was some trick of memory. There was no way on God’s earth that Isabel could still be alive.
He reached out with his thoughts. “Isabel?”
“Yes…come quickly, Carlos. I haven’t much time.”
“How? Where?” He voiced out loud as he flew out of the shower, his mind spinning with the improbabilities.
Half dressed, Carlos raced out of the townhouse, throwing the rest of his clothes onto the passenger seat of his car. It was near morning, but he didn’t care. If it took all day, he didn’t care.
For the first time in centuries, he focused his vampiric senses on Isabel’s trace. It was faint, he could barely taste it, but it was enough for him to follow. He flew up the FDR Drive, alert to every nuance inside his head as the weak thrum guided him. As he neared the hospital facility, it suddenly grew stronger, like the pulsating beat from a racing heart.
Running through the lobby Carlos was nothing but a blur as he passed security. With a flick of his hand, he threw up wards obscuring everything, and took the stairs at preternatural speed, pushing his way through the doors to the resident’s floor. Wards in place, he walked slowly down the hallway, reaching out with his senses. She was here. The pulse of her trace beat loudly in his head.
The Cursed by Blood Saga Page 60
