Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) (27 page)

“Soon as you came in, all the beasts went away.”–Deftones

I meet them at the elevator but Sophie is too out of it to notice me.

“
Found her behind a restaurant a few blocks down, “Adrienne says. He wants to have Sophie lean on me but her face is already hidden in his shirt and I don’t want to risk anyone seeing her like this. Her face will give everything away.

“
Can you carry her?” I ask.

“
She won’t let me.”

I motion with my head for him to follow
me.

It’s only a short distan
ce from the elevator to my room but we have to walk slowly. Sophie can barely move. I want to hold her, help her. But I don’t know how anymore. Everything is so different now.

I let Adrienne step in front of me so I can shut the door behind us.
He doesn’t say anything and he barely thinks when he tries to lie her down on the couch.

“
No,” Sophie says.

“
Let her sit,” I suggest. I can’t stop myself from moving forward.

Adrienne helps her back up
and though she’s unsteady, she holds a sitting position.

He slowly ba
cks up so I can sit next to her but I make sure I’m not too close.

“
Do you need me to stay?” he asks.

Sophie is staring out the window. It’s closed. The shades are drawn. I wave a hand in front of her face and she doesn’t respond.
“How long has she been like this?” I ask.

“
I don’t know,” Adrienne says. “I saw her walking around aimlessly and then…”
Then she pounced on a stray dog and nearly drained it.  

That can’t be right.
I wave my hand in front of her again and this time she blinks.

Something
isn’t right, that’s for sure,
he tells me
.

“
You don’t have to stay,” I tell say. “I’ll be alright.”

He looks unsure. His thoughts are even worse.
What if she lashes out and hurts him? What if she can’t drink
any
kind of blood, what then? That’ll kill him.

“
Adrienne,” I say loud enough to draw his attention but not loud enough to bring Sophie back from wherever she is. “I said I’ll be fine. Go.”

He nods once before turning to the door and shutting it behind him.

I brush some hair away from Sophie’s shoulder. Goose bumps rise on her skin. I take in her appearance for the first time. One of the buttons of her coat has come undone and underneath, I can see her shirt is stained red and brown. Her neck, lips, and face have the same stains as well.

Though I don’t want to, I stand to get a washcloth from the bathroom and return to Sophie, still unmoving on the couch. I know she can hear me, so I speak gently.

“I’m just going to clean you up a little bit, okay?”

She doesn’t say anything
but her eyes move the slightest bit in my direction. It’s an improvement.

I slowly unbutton her coat the rest of the way. It falls from her shoulders easily a
nd it doesn’t take much to move her so I can place it over the back of the couch. I can tell by where the stain on her shirt is located and how old it looks that her collar bone was bleeding earlier. That must have been how the blood escaped this time.

I begin at her throat, wiping away dirt, sand, and blood.

“There,” I say, and I’m not entirely certain I say it for her or my benefit. “Isn’t that better?”

She starts crying. It’s silent, the tears slowly trickling down her cheeks.

“It’s alright,” I say, knowing full well that everything isn’t. That if she could speak right now, she’d tell me just as much. “Okay,” I admit. “It’s messed up right now.” I wipe a few tears from under her eyes, but only more come. “But we can fix this,” I say, knowing full well that maybe we can’t.

“
Did I kill it?” she finally whispers.

She takes in a long, trembling breath and squeezes her eyes shut. She lets a few more tears fall before turning her head toward me. When she blinks
, her eyes, which are usually bright green, have lightened to almost blue.

“
I don’t know,” I say. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

She starts rocking back an
d forth then, breathing heavily and placing her head between her knees.

“
Do you feel sick, Sophie?”

She nods. And before I can help her, the blood is coming back up on the area rug in front of the couch.

This makes her cry more. She’s hysterical, gasping for air that her lungs still need. Her heart is pounding with blood her body cannot let go of. I place a palm on her back, trying to comfort her when there is no way I possibly can.

“Shh
,” is the only safe thing that can come out of my mouth. I can’t tell her it’s okay. I can’t tell her to calm down. I can’t make this any better and it kills me.

“
I can’t,” she’s saying. “Just kill me,” she whispers. “Just let me go back where there’s water and Stevie and not this. Not Michael or Jack telling me that Michael made him do all of that shit to me. Not you and me worrying about how I should feel about you. If I should hate you or love you or want to kill you myself.”

She
’s rambling. I know this, but every word punctures through me. Should I have let her die?

“
You don’t mean that,” I whisper, knowing that she most likely cannot hear me. I rub my hand up and down her back. “What do you mean about Jack?” I try to keep my tone as calm as possible.

Her breath shakes into her lungs when she inhales almost as much as when she exhales.
“I talked to him,” she says. “He found me.”

She tries to stand up but she
’s too weak and falls to the ground. “There’s too much shit,” she says. “I can’t...” She pauses only long enough to take in another trembling breath. “And my Dad...This whole time.”

I kneel down next to her, narrowly avoiding the blood soaking into the rug. I take her in my arms just long enough to place her back on the couch, not wanting to upset her more.

Sophie doesn’t continue the thought she hasn’t finished. Instead there’s a long stretch of silence where I think she’s trying to calm herself, to make the tears stop flowing long enough so she can concentrate. “I’m going to die,” is what she finally says.

The tone of her voice echoes all around me, yet it is a hollow, empty sound. She says it as if she
’s already accepted it.

“
No,” I say, realizing my fingers are now wrapped around both of her shoulders, squeezing slightly like it can bring her back. “You’re not going to die,” I say. “I won’t let you.”

She finally looks at me,
though there is little life behind her eyes. “Even if I get the blood in me,” she says. “Michael is going to kill me. There’s no way around it. He’s going to find me and kill me.”

Her voice is tak
ing on the tinge of panic again and I don’t know what I can do to stop it before it begins. It would be easy to tell her that Michael won’t kill her. That he won’t find us or hurt anyone anymore. That we’ll figure out a way to be safe. But I don’t have it in me to say any of these things. Every word would pierce through her and break her apart even more. I cannot help the process. I just can’t.

Just then, there
’s a knock on the door and at first, I’m nervous that it’s someone from the hotel staff or maybe someone who heard Sophie. But when I expand my mind farther than the door, I can hear Evelyn on the other side.

I make sure Sophie is somewhat settled down before I get up to answer, passing the needle on the coffee table I set out when I sent Adrienne to get her. I would have gone myself, but sh
e would have sensed my presence and I would have only made things worse.

I knew there was something wrong this morning. I woke up with my wrist aching, my temples throb
bing. I could feel her slipping and I didn’t want her to be alone when it happened.

I called Evelyn just to be safe. I know this isn’t what Sophie wants, but we’re running out of things to try out. Suddenly, it’s like we’re back in Evan’s basement and Sophie is still dying in front o
f me. There are so many choices but none of them work.

Adrienne’s right. This will kill me.

Evelyn is cautious when she steps into the room. She smells too clean. Like she tries very hard to smell nice. I’ve always disliked that about her. But she’s a donor that Alex and Adrienne trust and the only one I could get here on such short notice because she traveled with them.

“
Thank you so much for coming,” I say.

“
No problem.” She smiles as I shut the door behind her.

She spots Sophie right away. She spots the blood on the floor a second later.

“Is…everything okay in here?” she asks.

I can’t find it in me to lie. I just take her arm and lead her to Sophie. Evelyn sits down next to her, studying what could possibly be going on
in front of her.

“
She’s sick,” I say, causing Evelyn to jump a little. “She hasn’t fed.”

“
Oh.” She seems to understand. “Sorry,” she says, “I’ve never seen one of you guys like this before.”

I can only answer her with an uncomfortable smile.
“She’s new,” I say quietly, though Sophie’s taken to staring blankly again. “It’s…hard for her.”

Evelyn holds up a hand.
“Say no more. What do you need me to do?”

I take the needle from the coffee table and put on a pair of rubber gloves.
“She doesn’t have fangs either...I don’t think,” I say as I tear the plastic from the needle.

She nods, holding her wrist out in front of me as I kneel on the floor. I concentrate on making it so she won’t feel anything as I drag the metal across h
er skin. Maybe if she smells it when she’s not thinking so clearly, she’ll be able to take it. If not, I’ll have to try injecting it into Sophie’s bloodstream, and judging her previous reactions to human blood, that method could turn out even worse.

As soon as there’s a decent amount of blood on the surface, Evelyn pulls away, bringing the open wound closer to Sophie.

At first, she doesn’t react. So Evelyn moves closer.

“
No,” Sophie says, turning her head away.

I carefully sit on the other side of her, placing a hand on the back of her sweaty neck.
“You have to try,” I say. “You can’t go on like this.”

She sniffs with more tears.
“I can’t,” she says. “I don’t…” She looks up at me. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“
You won’t hurt me,” Evelyn says from behind her. “I promise.” She’s trying to coax Sophie into it, but I know it’s not going to work.

“
What if…What if I’m not meant to be this way?” she asks me. “What if I’m supposed to be dead and that’s why none of the blood is working?”

I shake my head despite the point she’s made. That can’t be true. I won’t allow it to be.

“No,” I say. “It’s just different for you, that’s all.”

“
Because of my blood?” She whispers. Her face is against my chest now, her neck too weak to hold her head up. My
blood
is too different?”

“
Wait,” Evelyn says, inching back a little. “What’s wrong with her blood?

Sophie doesn’t move
and I stare Evelyn dead in the face.
Nothing.

“
But—”

Nothing.
 I’m more forceful this time; it causes her to jump.

She swallows. I’ve scared her
but I can’t be concerned about that now.

I turn my attention back to Sophie. Her eyes are watering, and it could be from crying or it could be from the pain of starving her body of blood for so long. They
’re rimmed in red, the same mine were when I tried to stop drinking blood. I don’t want her to go through what I had to go through.

When I met Sophie, when I realized how I felt about her, I stupidly decided to stop drinking blood. I thought that if I could prove to myself that I didn’t need blood for longer and longer periods of time, I could prove myself worthy of someone li
ke her. I fought it for months until my hair turned white, my eyes lost their color, and my body ached. I did it because I was desperate to just be human, never once thinking that if I wanted it badly enough I could just take it–from her.

Seeing her suffer like this is my punishment for entering her life when I promised myself I would leave her alone.

I want to kiss her forehead. I want to make it better.

“
Do you think she’ll even take it?” Evelyn whispers.

“
I don’t know,” I answer. “But please, just try.”

It would be so easy to make Sophie do
it. As simple as just changing my tone of voice. But I can’t do that to her again.