Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) (21 page)

I keep going, cup
after cup. None of them stay down for long before they come back, into the cup and out of my body. By the time I get to the one with water in it, my eyes are swollen and my brain feels like it will dribble out of my ears at any minute.

“
Can I please stop now?” I ask.

Myles
’ hand is on my back, but with his free hand, he pushes the last glass over. “Just one more,” he says. “I want to try something different with this one.”

The words, combined with the red liquid spreading into the pink in front of me make me jump.
I lean over until I’m on the floor, kneeling in front of him, begging.

“
You have no idea how this feels,” I say. “You may think you know. You may think you’ve felt every possible form of pain or confusion, but you’re
wrong
.”

I hear Myles take in a breath. He lets it out, and when I think he
’s about to speak again, he’s taking in another sharp breath. He’s angry.

“
I have no idea?” he asks, and the calmness in his tone makes me more uneasy than if he were yelling. He takes in yet another breath. This time, it seems to steady him. He kneels down in front of me and stares me directly in the face.

“
I know what you’re going through is horrible,” he says, letting out a gust of air. “I know that I can’t possibly fathom what it’s like for you because no one has ever turned and changed the way you have.”

What happens next surprises me
most of all. His face twists up as if someone’s hit him in the side of the head or punched him in the stomach. He runs a hand through his hair and takes an extra long time when he blinks.

“
But...” he says, just above a whisper. I can barely hear him. “But one of my vampires is slowly dying, and so is one of my best friends...and when they’re both gone, all I have left is you. And you hate me.” His voice cracks at the end of the sentence.

I open my mouth to speak, but he holds up a hand.

“You’re
supposed
to hate me,” he says. “You shouldn’t have to be stuck to me, to have to depend on me because I made you.” He swallows. “But that’s how whatever this thing is works...and I’m not going to watch you die.” He moves closer. “I can’t watch you die when everyone else around me isn’t going to live to see another year.”

I open my mouth again, but I can
’t seem to find any words to let out. I can’t find the strength in me to scream anymore. I just can’t.

“
So,” he says, the tone weaker now, fading almost as much as I am. “If you don’t want to drink the blood, that’s fine. And if you don’t want a donor, okay. But you have to try to get blood in you somehow. I’m not going to let you waste away and I won’t watch it.”

He gulps.
“I
can’t
watch you die again. Please don’t make me.”

Suddenly, the tension in my hands and arms is gone. My jaw is unclenched. My heart has stopped pounding so loudly.
“Myles,” I say. “I–I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he says. “I’m the one who did this to you.”

Suddenly I remember what Evan said to me at the club:
Do you feel your maker in your bones and your blood? Do you feel his pain over your own?

The truth is, I hadn
’t even thought about what Myles was going through. I hadn’t even thought it was possible for him to be feeling the same things I was. For him to be hurting the way I’ve been. Maybe he isn’t, not in the same exact way. But who am I to say whose pain is worse? It’s true. He did do this to me. Maybe if we had never met, I’d still be human and not going through any of this right now. But it isn’t his fault that he did this to me. How can you let someone’s head slip beneath the waves when they’re drowning? How do you let them stay under when you can save them?

My hand finds his, which is cold against the already cool floor. He doesn
’t flinch away when I squeeze his fingers. After a little while, I let go, sitting back in the chair. He sits down too, facing me. Before I can talk myself out of it, I take a huge gulp of the last glass of blood. As soon as it hits my tongue, I want to spit it out. When I get it down my throat, it burns, and my body threatens to choke it back up. As soon as it hits my stomach, I feel it. It’s cold and horrible. My body wants nothing to do with it. I only get a quick glance at Myles before he grabs my face. He stares into my eyes, and something behind his is different. When his pupils dilate, I can almost see into him.

“
Listen to me,” he says quickly, but with the most authority I’ve ever heard.

The blood is coming back up slowly. My eyes start burning from the effort of trying to keep it down.

“You’re not going to vomit anymore,” he says. “Do you understand?”

The blood sits still, but that doesn
’t mean it isn’t angry where it lays.

“
Sophie,” he says, his voice softer, yet still commanding. “You’re going to hold onto that blood until it filters through your body, understand? You have no other choice.”

I swallow. He can’t be doing this. He
can’t
. “Myles,” I whisper. “Please don’t do this.”

“
Just a few hours,” he says. “That’s all your body needs.”

I start breathing heavily, my heart hammers in my chest.

“You’re going to keep it down.”

I nod, but it’s just so he
’ll stop talking. Every command he gives me causes the blood to become thicker, like lead is forming in my stomach. Then it’s quiet. So quiet that I can hear my heart slowing down. I can hear everything slowing down.

“
You okay?” Myles asks after a long time.

“
I don’t know.” I don’t think I’ll ever know.

“
Do you feel better?” he rephrases.

I blink a few times. My head and muscles still hurt, but at least I can move now. When I test
outstanding, my legs lock into place and allow my full weight. I feel heavy and it’s hard to adjust. “No,” I say. “Not really.”

He studies me for a few seconds without saying anything.
“You’re not as pale anymore,” he notes. “Your hair is back to normal.”

I glance at the ends and he’s right.
Nothing but magenta. No white. “Well, great.” My voice is flat. “As long as I look okay, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“
We can try something else,” Myles says. “If you’re uncomfortable with me controlling your body like this.”

“
What else is there?” I have to lean my hands on my knees because I suddenly feel dizzy, like I have to throw up but it won’t happen.

“
We could try a donor,” he says. “You could feed directly from a donor.”

I shake my head. The thought of putting my mouth on a human being as their blood fills my mouth causes my stomach to lurch.

“I can’t do that.” It’s not fear, it’s a fact. If I do, I’ll become what I fear the most: a monster.

“
I won’t force you,” he says. “And if you want me to take the hold I have on you away, I can do that too, just wait a little while, at least the rest of the trip to Georgia.”

So that’s where we are now...or where we’re going, at least. I sniff up the last few tears pinching the backs of my eyes.
“Am I okay now?” My voice is tight.

Myles stands too.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t tell anymore.”

I think I’m supposed to be angry with the words, but how can I be when I can’t answ
er that question anymore either?

Chapter 12

Learning How t
o Crawl

“
There is nothing in the world that we can count on. Even that we will wake up is an assumption.”–The Dresden Dolls

It’s dark when I open my eyes but I already know I’m not awake.

I can
’t see too well in this dark, but I can feel. The walls are cold, damp, and crumble at my touch. It’s dirt, I realize. The smell fills my nostrils.

I can hear my own breathing, coming out in hot, wet bursts.
“Please,” I say. But my voice doesn’t belong to me. It’s the voice of a young boy. I also recognize the word is in some language I’ve never heard before instead of English. One where the vowels stretch on too long and the consonants crash into one another. “Please let me go,” I say in the same strange language. I search the space I’m in again, turning around over and over, smacking the back of my head hard into the wall behind me.

A voice comes from above me.
“Quiet down there,” it says. An adult. Mother. It’s my mother speaking. “You’re breaking my concentration, Micaiah.”

I can smell her.
The familiar scent of long burned wood, rain, and sage. She is making something up there, in her room. I remember when she dug this hole in the bottom of our hut. It was a few nights passed.

She used her bare
hands and made me sleep under the stars as she worked. When I asked what she was doing, she told me that it was a gift. A gift that was given to her that she was going to soon return. But she couldn’t reach the person the gift had come from. She had to have
me
return it. When she called me back inside, she pushed me down into the hole without any words between us. She dug it deep enough that I wouldn’t be able to dig out. She made it wide, so I could lie down, but it was so dark that I couldn’t see where she was. Where I was.

I don
’t know how long I’ve been down here.

“
Mother,” I cry. “Please let me out.”

“
Hush now,” she says. “In time, you will thank me. Once I am finished and you are a man, you will rule over all.”

I
’m confused. I don’t want to be this person she says I will be. I don’t know how she thinks this will be possible. “Mother–” I start again.

“
Silence!” Her voice makes me jump.

I hear her footsteps fade away above me, and I wrap my arms around myself. It
’s so cold here. I just want Mother to hold me. I won’t disobey her ever again if she just promises to hold me and make the cold go away.

It
’s so quiet for the longest time except for a gust of wind outside once in a while. My hands begin to tingle. The darkness is coming.

Yes. It will b
e as dark as this hole inside me soon.

I don
’t want it.  

But I also
do
. More than anything.

Darkness means Mother will have succeeded with her spell. Darkness means I will be whomever she wants.
This warrior who will save our people. The one who will rule all. Mother will let me out when she sees the shadow inside me begin to grow. She’ll hold me and make the cold go away.

The bus hits a bump and I’m jolted out of my thoughts, out of the empty, dark hole. I’m not exactly wide awake, but I don’t think I’ve felt completely awake since I came back.

I roll onto my side before I bother to turn on my light and
clutch the pillow to my chest.
Just a little bit longer
, I think. A tiny bit longer in bed in that time between waking and sleep where I have no thoughts or problems. I would give anything to hold onto that and let it surround me. I don’t want to think of this memory, these things that happened to the person who is trying to kill me. But another bump in the road jostles the bus again, nearly throwing me out of the bunk and onto the floor.

It was nice while it lasted.

“Sophie.” I hear my name, but I can’t grasp onto it. My nose and mouth fill with dirt. I can’t breathe.  Hands on my shoulders. “Sophie.” It’s Trei’s voice. Are we on the bus or somewhere else? Are we in the dirt or in a room?

“
She won’t wake up,” she says to someone, her voice on the verge of panic.

New hands on me.
I need to push them away. I cannot become a part of the earth. I cannot become a part of the darkness when there are hands on me, pulling me up and out of the hole mother has dug for me. Such a good mother, making me strong. Making me a warrior who will rule all.

“
Sunshine,” Jade says into my ear. “Come on,” he says. “It’s not real.”

Those words break me free. When I was having nightmares about Jack, when I was screaming in my sleep and unable to move, he said those words. He pulls me back into reality. I
’m in the bus again, in my bunk, and Jade’s hands are locked onto both of my shoulders. I put my hands up in front of me protectively, just in case I get sucked back into the dream. In case I’m still stuck in the hole in the ground.

“
Jade?” I whisper, and my throat hurts.

“
Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

The grip on my shoulders loosens, but he doesn
’t let go of me completely until I nod my head.