Release Me When the Sun Goes Down

My vision swam with tears.  Rob couldn’t be dead.  I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.  Almost tripping over the morgue attendant again with my sluggish legs, I stumbled to the two other tables in the room that held bodies on them.  Ripping the covers off fast like a Band-aid, I steeled myself for the worst, nodding in relief when neither of the bodies were his. 

That left the freezer, and I started at one end, methodically working my way through the ten doors until I found him on the fourth try
.  A broken cry escaped me as he slid into view.   “No…” slipped out, my hands shaking as I touched his cold, pallid cheek.  He couldn’t be dead.  The wound at his neck was crusted over, but healed.  Despite the pale skin, his lips were still a ruddy color, not blue from the cold like some of the other corpses. 

“You can’t die,” I whispered, feeling the rasp of stubble under my hand as my eyes blurred with tears.  “I need you.”

Thump
.

I almost missed it, the sound covered by my snuffling, but I felt it right enough
– a single heartbeat, much too slow to be a sign of life – and I froze in place, half convinced I’d imagined it. 

“Rob?” I sniffed, checking him for any possible proof of life, but he lay there completely unmoving, unbreathing… utterly still.

Until he sucked in a great, gasping breath, his eyes flying wide with panic. 

“Rob!” 
I can’t adequately express what I felt in that moment, relief so sharp it stole what breath I had left in my lungs.  I’m not sure if I made a sound or not as I collapsed on his chest, the gentle weight of his hand on my hair the sweetest gift.  “Oh, thank God, you’re alive!”  Well, mostly… his heart still beat much too slowly to be normal – that could only mean one thing. 

“
Don’t have to yell, I’m right here.”  A sound that might’ve been a chuckle but came out as more of a wheeze escaped him and I stopped leaning across his chest, afraid I was cutting off his air supply.  His gravelly voice didn’t improve much.  “What happened?”  He blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights, trying to sit up, but his limbs were slow and sluggish.  I remembered the feeling all too well.

“
Don’t you remember?”  Gently, I helped him pull his legs out from the refrigerated drawer to dangle over the side as he got his bearings. 

“
I remember a crash. The rest is a bit… dim.” 

I didn’t want to spell it out for him
. I didn’t want to think back to the horrible exchange with Lodinn or the fact that I didn’t know if Mason had survived.  Instead I took his hand, more than a little disturbed by the lack of heat there.  “I’m sure it’ll come back to you in time.  How do you feel?”

A deep furrow appeared between his brows as he puzzled his way through what should’ve been a simple question.  “I feel… off
.  Wrong somehow.”  He swallowed, a frown settling there as his fingers flexed in mine. 

“It’s okay, that’s perfectly normal for everything that’s happened to you.  Do you think you can stand?”  As much as I wanted to give him time to acclimate, we needed to get on the move before someone else came into the morgue and I had to explain the dead guy on the floor. 

Rob hopped down, no trace of his normal agility in sight as he plowed into me.  “Sorry,” he mumbled, bracing against the wall of drawers as he overcompensated while backing away and nearly cracked his head in the process.

“
Careful, easy now.”  I took hold of his elbows until he steadied.  “Your balance is bound to be a little wonky for a while.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

Overall, he didn’t seem to be in too bad of shape.  They obviously hadn’t done much more than stick him in the drawer because his clothes were undisturbed and his shoes still on.  The crust of blood at his neck and the dried stains on his shirt (mostly mine from my frenzied attempts at giving him my blood) were the only indicators he’d been hurt.  Even the knock on his head from the crash was nothing more than a faint bruise. 

“Are you okay now?  We
seriously should get out of here.”  I waited to see how steady he was on his feet, relieved when he replied with stoic determination.

“I can manage.”

“Good.  Do you think you could help me with him?”  I let go of him to stumble toward the morgue attendant’s body, my legs stiff and jerky.  I could walk, but there was no fluidity of movement, as though there was a delay between my brain’s command to move and my legs carrying out the order.  Even with drinking everything the morgue attendant had to offer, I was still far too weak to manage on my own.  “I think between the two of us we can get him into the empty drawer.  We’ll have to call someone to take care of him, but for now we’d better just move him out of sight.”  Looking back when Rob didn’t join me, I found his scowl troubling.  “What’s the matter?”

“Are you hurt?” he frowned, blinking as though trying to sort through his jumbled memories. 
 

“It’s fine,” I said with a shake of the head.  “I just need more blood and some time to recover.  More time than we have here.”
It was amazing how quickly I’d healed in the first place after losing so much blood.  Too bad the morgue guy had been the one to pay the price.  I leaned down to wrestle him out of his white coat, taking note of the name on his badge.  Oliver Bassett. 

All of a sudden Rob was by my side,
staring down at the corpse.  There wasn’t much spilled blood, my need had made me a fairly tidy eater, but I knew the scent of it must be bothering him. “Heal from what?  How did we end up down here and why do I feel so barmy?” 

I’d been hoping to wait, but
who was I kidding?  There wasn’t ever going to be a good place or time to tell him that he had two choices – feed on human blood and become a vampire, or die by nightfall.  “There was a crash, like you said, and we survived.  But it was Lodinn who pulled us from the wreckage.  He snapped my spine and made me watch as he…”

“
As he bit me.”  His eyes grew hooded as the memory returned.  “I remember.  He made you watch and then…”  He shook his head.  “It’s all blackness.”

I licked my lips
.  How do you tell a guy that you turned him into a vampire without finding out first if it was something he wanted?  “You were dying.  I did the only thing I could to save you.”

“
Then I’m...”

“Not yet, but you know the drill.”  He knew better than most what to expect, but I could see from the look in his eyes that the reality of it was discombobulating.  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice falling as he looked like he might keel over.  “I didn’t know what else to do.  I couldn’t let you die like that, I couldn’t stand the thought of…”  I couldn’t even say it.  But I didn’t have to as he gathered me into his arms, offering strong comfort even though he was the one going through the life altering changes. 

“Shhh, it’s alright,” he soothed.

“
Is it?”  Somehow I wasn’t sure it’d ever be alright again.  I was his Sire now, and that put us both in a precarious position.  I didn’t sweat the paperwork, being the Elder was good for something, but there were other things to consider.  What if Jakob flipped his lid and killed us both?  Plus, I wasn’t ready to be anybody’s Sire, especially when I was still figuring out my own undead life.  What if I utterly botched it?  What if he had the same trouble Ellie had in feeding?  I didn’t think I could ever give the order to put him down like that. 

If Rob shared any of those doubts, he didn’t say so.  He only stroked my
back in gentle circles, and I could feel him sniffing lightly at my hair.  “We’re both still here, that’s enough for me.”

He was right.  There would be time enough to
worry about the future, all we could do was try and minimize the damage.  That meant I had to let him go and focus on the problem at hand.  “Let’s get him into the freezer,” I said.  

It was harder than it should’ve been, but we both weren’t up to full strength and the guy was so… floppy.  Plus, I think Rob
held his breath most of the time.  I know for sure I saw him lick his lips once when we first picked him up, but any urges he had about the blood were kept tightly under control until we had him tucked away and the mess swabbed up. 

“Here, put his coat on, it’ll cover the stains on your shirt,” I said, offering him Oliver’s white lab
coat.   Rob donned it without question and then we shuffled out of there, hoping like crazy no one stopped us.  By the time we reached the elevator around the corner, the stiffness was mostly gone from his steps as the blood started flowing again, but I had trouble keeping up. 

I needed blood badly, but before I could risk feeding without killing again I had to find out what was going on.  That meant finding a phone and some privacy.  Thinking the hospital might be laid out
in a similar way to Bridget’s, I pushed the button for the third floor.

“Why we going up instead of down?” he asked.

“Because we don’t know what we’d be walking into.  We’ve got no phone, no car, and neither one of us is up for any kind of conflict right now, not with the shape we’re in.”

Rob rolled his shoulders as if I’d stuck a knife between them.  “Speak for yourself.”

“I’m speaking for both of us,” I said in a tone that brooked no argument.  “First order of business is finding out how bad it is out there.  For all we know, Lodinn followed up our accident by killing Jakob and burning down our house.  And I don’t know if I can compel anyone in the state I’m in.”  The last time I’d been so weak after getting shot in the chest with an arrow I’d completely lost the ability.

His eyes searched my face carefully.  “
Is it as bad as all that?”

“
I told you, I’ll be fine.  I just don’t want to take any more chances, not with everything that’s at stake.”  I didn’t think I could survive watching him die a second time.

T
here was all kinds of activity there when the doors slid open and the scent of blood in the air was enough to have us both clenching the railing a smidge too tightly. 

“That’s blood,
ain’t it?” Rob mumbled, eyes squeezing tightly shut.  “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“I
t’s okay, you can do this,” I soothed, catching up his hand.  “Look at me, breathe through your mouth, it’ll pass in a moment.”  He obeyed, hazel eyes locking with mine until the elevator doors slid shut and he drew in a shaky breath.  “That’s it, just breathe, in… and out.”  Reaching blindly behind me, I punched the rest of the buttons, hoping another floor would yield a better result, and we got lucky with the sixth, which opened up to a mostly deserted level.