Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series)

by Rae, Nikki

  He looks taken off guard by the question. “No. Never.”

  I wipe my nose. “How do I know that?” I ask. “How do I know you haven’t been wiping my memories clean this entire time?”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  I can’t be sure of that either. I can’t be sure of anything.

  “Sophie, listen to me,” he says, moving in closer. I back away, the stool making a scraping sound. “You may not want to be with me anymore, and I don’t blame you. But I’m not just your boyfriend anymore. I’m your maker.” He inches back. “You need me.”

  My rib cage feels like it’s about to crush my organs. The thought of us not being together physically hurts, but the truth of everything he’s kept from me hurts even more.

  “You need to be able to come to me with questions about how you’re adjusting to your new life,” he continues. “How to feed whenever that comes, how to be a vampire.”

  I shake my head. I don’t need him. I don’t need anyone.

  I’m on my feet then. “Fine.” I don’t know why I say it. “I’ll call you if any of that happens.”

  He stands too, unsure of what to do next. “I also think it would be a good idea if I went on tour with you guys.” It’s so quiet I barely hear it.

  “Why?” I want to grab him by his face and shatter him. I want to set the building on fire. I want to watch as he burns inside.

  As soon as the thoughts appear, they vanish, and it’s the only thing I have to be grateful about.

  “In case those things start happening while you’re stuck on a bus with a bunch of humans.”

  I shake my head. “I’ll be fine.” I doubt the words before they leave my mouth.

  Myles takes a step closer, I take a step back. “When you start craving, it’s unlike anything else,” he says. “They won’t look like people to you. You’ll only see their blood.”

  I swallow hard. “Fine,” I repeat. “Can I leave now?”

  Maybe he has more to tell me, maybe he doesn’t. Either way, I’d rather sit in my apartment with everyone’s breathing instead of standing here with him.

  “Of course you can,” he says. “I already told you, I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

  “Will we be safe?” I spit out.

  Myles stares at me. “Yes,” he whispers. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  I want to tell him that’s what he said last time but I swallow it, deciding it doesn’t matter.

  “We’re having the bus protected as well as the venues,” Myles says. “I doubt he’s after you anymore now that you’re turned, but I’m not taking any chances.”

  Somehow, my shaking knees bend enough so I can walk to the door. My hand is on the knob before he speaks again.

  “Promise you’ll text me if you feel...off, okay?”

  “Yup,” I choke.

  ***

  At the very last possible second, I remember that there are people sleeping in my apartment. That’s probably one of the only things keeping me from slamming the door behind me. I take a second to lean against the closed door before making sure I haven’t woken anyone else up. Jade is still on the couch, breathing evenly, but Boo and Trei aren’t on the floor. I’m hoping they left.

  I can’t trust anything right now. I thought what came before turning would be the hardest part. I didn’t think I’d still be struggling to keep my head above water.

  “Fuck.” I don’t realize I say it out loud and it must be too loud because Jade stirs, turning toward me and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “Sophie?” he asks. “Where’d you go?”

  I shake my head. “Where’re Boo and Trei?”

  He stretches and sits up. “They woke up and went back to their apartment.”

  It’s difficult peeling myself from the door, but my feet move towards him. I stop myself before I get to the couch.

  “What is it?” Jade asks.

  I want to tell him everything. I want to pull myself apart so he can see it all and help me make sense of it, but all I can think about is the beating in his chest and how soft it sounds.

  “Can you sleep in my room?” I blurt.

  He blinks a few times, trying to clear his head. “Why?”

  “You’ve been sleeping on couches the whole time I was sick,” I say. I don’t have it in me to tell him the other part of the reason: that the door will muffle his human sounds.

  Jade looks down the hall to my room and then back to me. “Are you sure?” he asks.

  I nod, even cracking a smile. “Positive.”

  He’s still for a few more seconds before he gets up. “See you in the morning?” he asks, looking me over but not thoroughly.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  I watch Jade shuffle off to my room, grateful when the door closes behind him.

  Finally, I’m alone. I thought I’d hate being alone right now when everything is so different and so uncertain, but when I’m far away enough from Jade, I welcome the silence. I lean my back against a pillow that’s still warm from when he was sleeping. When I reach behind me to push it away, my hands are shaking, like I’m nervous being in my own apartment, a place where I was human.

  Myles’ words echo in my head: I’m your maker. You need me.

  I toss the pillow to the floor, taking a moment to think about what I should do next. The thought of drinking coffee, sleeping, or making food makes my stomach turn.

  I decide on sneaking into my room to get pajamas so I can at least pretend I’m going to sleep. But in order to do that, I have to get up, and when I do, I see the painting Myles made me hanging above the couch, like I wasn’t sitting beneath it this whole time.

  I can’t keep my mind from flooding with memories.

  Unwrapping the paper and seeing the painted image of my magenta hair flying wildly around, hiding my face completely. Seeing every part of my life the way he saw it: my piano, my hands moving up and down the keys, the house. Then the colors. Red, blue, yellow, all of them bursting around the image of me and my life. Parts of me I didn’t even mean to let him see.

  It wasn’t even that long ago, was it?

  I want to tear it off the fucking wall. I want to set it on fire and watch the paint drip onto the sofa. Before I can stop myself, I’m standing on top of the couch cushions, my hands tracing the brush strokes in my hair. They’re rough and thick under my hand. The waves of color are smooth, and the house is gritty, like sand. For a second, I can’t decipher if the painting really feels like that or if it’s me, feeling things I shouldn’t be feeling.

  My fingers curl up, framing the painted image of myself, right around my head.

  Punching through canvas should be harder. It shouldn’t be so simple to let my fingers sink in through the paint, and I don’t even feel it until they’re grazing the wall behind the frame.

  I blink a few times. My hands are embedded in the waves of color. I’ve destroyed the painting. And I’m sad about it, so sad that I can feel tears welling in my eyes, only to be made worse when more memories crash into me.

  Your blood is the antidote for vampirism...your father was just like you...Michael found him.

  This whole time, everything could have been a lie.

  That can’t be right, can it?

  I know what I felt. Like I was me again, only better. I didn’t have to hide myself or any of the monsters that followed me around my entire life. When he kissed me I melted into him. When he held me, nothing else mattered. When he bit me, we were one entwined, beating being. How can something so complex be reduced to something so small? So ugly?

  That’s when the tears break free, and once the first one is loose, I can’t catch any of the others. My hands clench into fists with pieces of the canvas still separating my fingers. I can’t see the colors clearly anymore. They’re blurred and runny. When I pull my hands down, I can hear the tear, feel the wooden frame protest, but it comes away in my palms like it’s made of nothing more than tissue paper. When it falls from my hands, my a
rms only lunge forward again, pulling at even more.

  I want to destroy it and put it back together at the same time. I want to leave New York and Myles and stay with him. I want to melt into him again. I want to feel his hands in my hair, his voice next to my ear telling me it’s okay even though those words have come to be my least favorite ones.

  I try taking a deep breath as the colors begin to rush into my field of vision again, but it’s no use. Everything in front of me becomes saturated before it turns white, before I don’t remember where I am or what I’m doing.

  Chapter 7

  Saying Goodbye

  “Oily marks appear on walls where pleasure moments hung before.”–Imogen Heap

  I’m in a filthy room with two men who look terrified of me. That’s the first thing that tips me off that this is a dream.

  “Do you want to be cured, my friend?” I ask.

  It isn’t my voice, it isn’t my body.

  One of the men has a scraggly beard and wears dirty jeans. He looks at me like I hold a golden key that will unlock his future and at any moment, I could swallow it and everything would end for him. “Yes,” he says, his voice coarse. “Please.”

  I turn to his friend, the one with the hat covering most of his eyes. “And what about you, over there?” I ask. “Do you want to be cured of your infection as well?”

  It’s now that I recognize the voice. Michael.

  This may be my nightmare, but this is his memory.

  The man with the hat looks up at me and he is not as afraid as the other one is. He is not grateful for the gift I am offering him, either, and it makes me angry. In moments, I am by his side. “Did you hear me?” I ask, my hand already finding his throat.

  New vampires are easy enough to control. One wrong move and I could snap his neck without any resistance. He probably wouldn’t even feel it if I did it quickly enough but that is not my way. If I want to kill someone, they are going to feel every ounce of it. They will know what the touch of death is like before everything turns black and they fade into nothing. I am their God now and I can give them life or take it away.

  The man does not flinch and he tries to build up walls around his mind that are thin and useless against me. I can see the fear inside of him, blooming red in the center of his chest. He does not want to die by my blood or hands. He is thinking about how easily I can break him, wondering if I will actually let him go in order to seek out his cure. He wants to know at what cost he would have to take his antidote, not wanting to hurt anyone else in order to end his suffering. Outwardly, he does not show any signs of this internal struggle. I almost admire him for it.

  “Why did you infect us in the first place?” he finally asks. “Why not just kill us?”

  I glance at his friend, who is staring intently at both of us, wondering vaguely if I will kill just him or both of them. He is trying to figure out how much time and strength it would take out of him if he tried to escape.

  I turn back to the man with the hat. “Because it is what I wanted,” I say. “I wanted to make sure my blood was still as dangerous as it once was. To humans and vampires.”

  The expression of the man I have a hold of changes.

  “I assume the third one of you is not coming,” I say. “He’s dead?” I form it in a question, yet I know he is no longer alive. Wording it this way hurts more. There is hope in questions and I’ve known that for a long time.

  Neither of the men answer.

  I do not know much about their relationship. I knew where to find these new vampires, in a bar, socializing with humans as if they still belonged to that group. They had a donor already. Even if I could not read their thoughts, I would have been able to guess that they knew him from when they were alive. It was too easy to pick the three of them out. I lied to them, of course. I know how deadly the substance coursing through my veins is. How toxic I am just by being alive, and how I can infect and spread my poison to whomever I wish. I am darkness. I choose where the light floods through and who goes blind. My blood is a hole in the ground, and I choose who to place into it. And now I can choose who will crawl out.

  “In about an hour,” I finally let go of the man’s neck, just so I do not accidentally kill him before anything has even begun. “There will be two people coming into this house and walking down those stairs.” I point to the door which leads to a basement. “You are the ones who lured the boy, of course,” I tell them. “But you do not remember.”

  I let that information sink in.

  “There will be a girl with him,” I continue. “One with pink hair. She is the one who will cure you.”

  The man sitting in the corner speaks quietly. “And the boy?”

  “He is only a bystander,” I explain. “You do not have to harm him.”

  The man in the hat speaks next. “How do we know you aren’t lying?”

  He thinks I cannot see but he has tears in his eyes. He is still thinking about the human friend who died; he was with him when it happened and there was a lot of blood, a lot of pain. He does not want to die the same way.

  “I suppose you cannot be certain,” I say. “But is it something you really want to risk?”

  They look at each other now and I stay out of both or their minds purposely, just so taking in their exchange will be more entertaining. “It’s only one girl, Josh,” the one sitting down says.

  The one in the hat is silent.

  “Alright then,” I say as if we are a team. I quite like that idea. “We will need to hide upstairs until they arrive. Agreed?”

  I look to both of them individually and they nod and follow me up the stairs minutes later to hide in the darkened room.

  They say nothing. One looks to the floor and the other stares straight ahead, as if he is trying to convince me that he is not afraid. We both know that is a lie.

  “Only one of you will be cured,” I continue. “And that will be whoever takes the most blood.”

  A long stretch of silence follows and I bask in it as if it were an afternoon sun shining on my face and warming my skin. I could feed off of their fear if I needed to right now but I am prepared to stay in this place for a while, so fortunately for these two, I do not need to use their blood or energy. Besides, watching them destroy the only surviving antidote for my poison will not be as enjoyable if they do not have an optimal amount of energy. They will fight over her like dogs that have not eaten in weeks. And I will listen to her scream and plead with them, with me. It would have been easy to kill her. Painless, if I chose it to be, but Myles has made my job much more difficult.

  He will pay for what he has done, and now so shall she. I can control their pain more than I can control their deaths and I love that idea even more than just simply killing them. The cure would have to be destroyed no matter the situation, but now, now I can take away what Myles has taken away from me. He will know what it is to love someone and have them ripped from their arms. If I cannot watch her die by my blood, he will.

  ***

  A door opening wakes me up and it takes me longer than it should to roll over. I’m on the floor in the living room and when I look to the space above the couch, there isn’t anything left of the painting but a few scraps of torn and mangled canvas hanging from the bare wooden frame.

  Jade. I almost forgot he was here.

  I freeze until I hear the bathroom door open and close behind him. Then, without any hesitation, I take the painting–or what’s left of it–off the wall, not even feeling the weight of it as I stash the frame behind the couch, throwing out the remaining shreds that were littering the carpet before Jade comes into the living room.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I wish he knew what a loaded question that is. “Uh,” I say. “Sure.”

  “God, it’s early,” Jade says to himself. “It’s like, ten.” He cocks his head to one side, noticing the missing piece from the room.

  “I didn’t want to look at it,” I say. I think about explaining how the colors were bo
thering my eyes or how it reminded me of Myles, but I don’t want to lie, and the truth is too scary, so I let the thought remain unfinished.

  Jade nods to himself. “Okay. You want coffee?”

  I let out a breath. “Yeah.”

  I watch as he sets to work, pulling mugs from the cabinet and scooping grounds into the coffee maker. I take the opportunity to go into my room and change, afraid that being alone for the time it would take me to shower would be too much time to think. It’s hard enough going back into the kitchen.

  “You got a text,” Jade says without looking away from pouring our coffee. “I heard your phone go off a few times.”

  “Thanks,” I murmur, swiping my cell from the floor. It must have fallen out of my pocket during the night.

  The first text is the newest, from Manny a few minutes ago: You busy today? So stoked you’re touring! Come meet me at Midnight to see the bus.

  The next is from Boo, about an hour ago: Yo, get up. Manny’s giving us a bus tour of our tour bus...heh, try to say that ten times fast...so let’s go!

  The last few are from Myles, who sent them early this morning.

  Five: Are you okay? I thought I felt something before.

  Six-thirty: Sophie, please. If something’s going on, don’t shut me out.

  Seven: I’ll see you tomorrow. You probably don’t want to see me, but I need to see you. I hope you’re okay.

  And then, at Seven-sixteen: I love you.

  “Everything alright?” Jade says, coming to sit next to me on the couch. I nod, unable to say anything, too focused on the last text.

  I clear my throat, tearing my eyes away from my phone. “Manny’s showing us a bus, apparently.”

  Jade sips his coffee as he hands me mine. I let it sit in between my hands, having no desire whatsoever to drink it.

  We meet Manny behind Midnight, where there’s a small parking lot. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses and leaning against the wheel of an enormous shiny black bus. He stands up straight when he sees Jade and I.

  “Wow, Pinky,” he says, taking in my appearance. “You really did it, huh?”