Bait
Page 83
The next time Bay-Lee opened her eyes she was in a sterile white room. It didn’t take long to realize she was in a hospital bed. Everything hurt, especially her head. Fear kept her from moving. Maybe her bones were broken. She blinked a few times, and a face swam into focus. Nick?
No, it was Van.
How was she still alive?
Hovering over her, Van laughed and cried at the same time in obvious relief. His hair was a mess and his suit was rumpled as if he had slept in the chair near her bed for several nights. In a disturbingly quiet voice he asked, “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
Scared. Memories of the car accident flooded her mind and she cringed, experiencing the whole thing again. The memories were so fresh they actually hurt. Was Nick okay? That was her second question. She wanted to ask, but her vocal chords refused to comply. Her gaze rapidly swept the room, searching for the one she wanted to see the most. She was about to give up when she noticed a figure standing in the far corner. Nick approached with deliberate steps and a troubled expression. He was obviously worried about her. Now she could relax. The two of them had somehow managed to survive a high-speed car accident.
“Nick,” she said, wanting him to come closer.
He shook his head hard in warning and waved his hands. “No!”
She winced. “Nick?”
In his rush to stop her from saying another word, Nick stumbled forward. His hand passed through Van’s body. Van didn’t notice, but she did. The truth pushed its way to the front of her brain, and she shook her head with slow jerky movements. Horror chilled her to the bone. This could not be happening. A reassuring inner voice told her she was sleeping, dreaming. This was a nightmare, nothing more.
Van wore a sad smile, and his eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, little one, but Nick didn’t make it. He was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident.”
“That isn’t possible.” Bay-Lee shook her head hard, sobbing louder and louder with each passing second. He couldn’t be dead. “No, no, no.” Her hands dug into the bed, grasping fistfuls of sheet and she screamed. “Noooo!”
Van carefully wrapped her in an embrace. He hesitated in sitting on the edge of the hospital bed. It was obvious he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to comfort her, but was afraid of hurting her. Eventually he settled next to her and held her tight while whispering soothing words against her hair. She stopped screaming out loud, yet silent screams continued to tear through her soul. Ironically, they were the loudest.
With the side of her face resting against Van’s shoulder she could see Nick’s ghost. Or was it a wraith?
What happened?” Her throat felt scraped raw as if she hadn’t had anything to drink for months. “Why didn’t I die?”
“That is the million dollar question. Everyone is baffled, the local authorities and the entire medical staff here at the hospital. The car flipped several times and Nick... but you only have scrapes and bruises. You should be dead by all accounts. You’re a miracle. Of course, you have a concussion, and that’s why you’ve been unconscious for so long. But you’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
The car accident returned in vivid detail. “Wait a second.” She pulled away from her pretend-father, one hand on his damp shirt. “I saw my mother standing in the middle of the road. She made us crash. But there aren’t supposed to be any more wraiths. Gavin is dead.”
“Do you honestly believe Gavin was behind the wraiths, honey? He didn’t have the power. Someone else is doing it, and they are still out there.”
Reality crashed down on her. “Then we didn’t stop anything. We failed.”
“Don’t worry about it. You need to sleep so I am going to go home long enough to change and shave. We’ll talk more later.”
They said their goodbyes and Van left her alone in the hospital, or at least he thought he’d left her alone. He didn’t know about Nick’s ghost. Her body quivered beneath the sheet. “Go ahead,” she said. “Kill me.”
Nick blinked at her. “What?”
“You’re a wraith.” Turning her head on the pillow, she closed her eyes on fresh tears. “I’m not going to fight you. I don’t care if you kill me. I want to be dead.”
“You don’t mean that.”
When it became apparent the thing wasn’t going to kill her, she opened her eyes again. “What are you waiting for?”
A wry smile touched Nick’s mouth, achingly familiar. “It isn’t your birthday anymore.”
“It’s not?”
“You’ve been in a coma for four days.”
Well, that changed things considerably. Wraiths wouldn’t be able to kill her for a whole year. “What do you plan to do? Hang out with me until my next birthday rolls around? I might not be so easy to kill by then.”
“Good.”
“Are you really Nick? Or do you just look like him?”
“It’s me. Go ahead and ask me anything. I’ll prove it to you. I am the one and only Nick Gallos slash Tyler Beck.”
“So you have all your memories?”
“I do.” He paced in front of her hospital bed. Glancing out the open door, he warned, “You’d better be careful. If they hear you talking to yourself, they’ll move you up to the psych ward.”
She didn’t care. Nick was dead, and she was alone. She didn’t care if they locked her away, didn’t care if she died. Another disturbing thought occurred to her. “Where is Connor?” More tears. She hated to cry in front of people, even ghosts, but she felt undeniably vulnerable like a lost little girl sobbing for a missing parent. “Doesn’t he know I’m here?”
“He knows.” Nick moved like a trapped animal, too big for the cage. “Connor was here for days after it first happened, but the doctor told him you might never wake up. He had to get back to work. I’m sure he’ll drop in on you tomorrow or the next day, as soon as Van let’s him know you’re awake.”
A sudden wave of dizziness made her eyes roll back and she squeezed them shut. Nick immediately moved to her side. “Hey, are you okay?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you need to sleep.”
Without opening her eyes she asked, “Will you be here when I wake up?”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Will you talk to me until I fall asleep?”
There was a pause and for a moment she thought he’d disappeared. Then his husky voice reached out to her. “What about?”
“Anything.” Her mind began to wander. “Just talk.”
“Did I ever tell you about Stephanie?”
She mumbled, “No.”
“Van Helsing got tired of my wild living. I was with a different woman every week. Actress, model, musician, I went through every pretty woman I got near except for the married ones, of course. Even I had to draw the line somewhere. I just saw it as my right to date every eligible woman I could find. Van saw things differently. He decided to pair me with a hunter who was using modeling as a cover.
“She didn’t like the idea any more than I did, but it worked for a while. The media loved us as a couple. I toured the world and killed vampires while she went to places like Paris and Milan for modeling gigs. She killed her fair share of fangs. We made perfect sense on paper, but I didn’t love her. Maybe Van was hoping I would fall hard for her so I wouldn’t be available once you made it to school. It didn’t work.” His voice dropped to a barely audible status. “I only loved one girl in my whole life. You.”
She smiled in her sleep, already caught in the snare of a dream.
Nick was sitting next to her in the car. She drove faster at his insistence. A flash of her mom’s face startled her. The car flipped. The sound of crunching metal and breaking glass ripped a scream from her dry throat.
Gasping for breath, Bay-Lee turned her head in time to see a black robe floating by. Was it a wraith? She saw a skeletal hand reach f
or her. She heard Nick yell a warning, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t get away from the thing. She screamed again.
“Take me!” Nick shouted. “Don’t touch her! Leave her alone and take me.”
Take me.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A FUNERAL