Wicked Sunset (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 4) (20 page)

Kat, please forgive me.

Grasping the bannister, I laboriously climbed each stair step, often pausing to catch my breath. It felt like an eternity before I finally reached the top landing.

Slowly and using the wall to lean against, I made my way into the west-facing bedroom that had been assigned to Bonnie.

I staggered inside as quietly as I could, hoping nobody heard me downstairs.

I closed the bedroom door behind me.

With pain coursing through my body, barely able to get my legs to move, I willed my body toward the heavy curtains before the window.

I parted the curtains, and despite the closed blinds, the skin across my face, arms, and hands tingled furiously.

Reaching out to the pull cord for the blinds, I paused for only a moment.

Kat, I’ll love you forever.

Mustering the remaining strength in my upper body, I yanked upon the cord. The blinds rose upward and blinding light burned into my eyes and across my skin.

I wanted to scream and barely managed to contain the pain coursing through my head as I gritted my teeth.

My body shook and trembled and the combined explosion of fire and electricity roared through my head and down my spine.

I felt myself falling backward, as if into an endless chasm, but I maintained a death grip onto the cord as if it was my lifeline to sheer existence.

Something crashed to the floor.

I bounced on something soft but my body continued to burn.

Acid flowed in my veins!

I tried to scream but had no breath in my lungs. Gasping for air but finding none, my chest felt like it was imploding in on itself.

Writhing in agony, my heartbeat pounded in my ears until it sounded like thunder. I thought my head was exploding!

Then it stopped.

Faint ringing formed in my ears, distantly at first, and then built to a high-pitched crescendo.

A great white light formed before me, and I felt myself being drawn toward it.

My body no longer felt pain; I felt strangely numb and comfortable.

I was finally at peace.

Blissful.

I wish you were here, Kat.

I love you…

Chapter 16

Katrina

“Close the shutters!” Bonnie screamed from somewhere upstairs.

Almost by instinct, and despite the shock I felt from the shrill impact of her voice, I rushed to the nearest wall-mounted security console to activate the estate’s reinforced emergency shutter system.

Immediately, heavy metal barriers locked into place before all exterior doors and windows, sealing the estate’s most vulnerable access points.

Alton had already rushed upstairs, but I heard him shout, “Katrina!”

I raced upstairs, pushing my strength to its limits. Within seconds, I stood in the doorway to the upstairs bedroom where Bonnie was giving CPR to…Caleb!

I rushed to the bedside to see a bluish pallor on his face, which sent a cold stab of pain into my heart.

Oh, God, no…

Then I noticed that his arms, hands, and neck looked reddened, almost burnt.

With a single, wane gasp, I heard his heartbeat; irregular at first, then more rhythmic.

I gasped, realizing that I, too, had stopped breathing for those brief moments.

“What happened? How did he get up here?” I demanded.

“Hush,” Bonnie said as she held his wrist and placed her ear against his neck and then to his chest.

I waited as precious seconds ticked by.

She checked his pupils with a small penlight, and then sat upright on the edge of the bed. Marla stood to one side of her, an uncustomary expression of shock on her face.

“Ethan, we need you here now,” Alton spoke into his mobile phone.

My mind felt numb as I stared into Bonnie’s eyes, her expression one of shock. Alton’s continued dialogue was quickly drowned out by my own desperate musings about what had just happened to Caleb.

Why wasn’t he rousing?

“I found him basked in sunlight from the open window, and he wasn’t breathing,” Bonnie said. “The sunlight was too intense for me, so the shutters were faster…”

“You did the right thing,” I said. “How is he?”

She shrugged. “We won’t know until Dr. Reynolds gets here, but at least he’s breathing on his own.”

It seemed as if she was masking something further.

“Tell me,” I said.

“He’s not waking, so I’m a little worried about brain damage,” she said.

That was almost too painful to contemplate after having just restored his heartbeat and breathing.

“I understand,” I managed to say, though it sounded like some else’s voice rather than my own.

Alton’s dire expression conjured similar volumes of dread in me.

“Can you open the access to the doors of the house?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ll take care of that,” I said.

“I need to inform the two guards outside about what’s happened,” he said, turning to leave.

I was numb inside as I made my way to the nearest security panel.

* * *

Ethan and Paige arrived by motorcycle in what must’ve been record-setting time. Paige looked on the verge of tears as we watched Ethan examine Caleb. Together, he and Bonnie were able to perform some basic reflex tests so one could feel for muscle reaction while the other watched eye movement and listened for changes in heartbeat.

I thought Caleb stirred at one point, but Ethan discounted it as a breathing-related anomaly.

“Coma?” Alton asked.

I’d been too afraid to ask that.

“Perhaps,” Ethan said. “But it’s not a deep one, if it is a coma.”

A faint glimmer of relief attempted to foster itself in the back of my mind.

That’s when I noticed that Caleb’s arms no longer appeared as red as they had earlier. And though his face looked pale, at least it was better than its former bluish hue.

I can’t lose him.

I can’t bear it.

“What the hell was he thinking?” Paige asked.

“I can’t say for certain,” Ethan said. “But it might’ve been ingenious, if not poorly executed.”

My eyes locked onto the good doctor’s. “What?”

“You think he was trying to neutralize the vampire cells?” Alton asked.

I stared at him as if he were insane.

“It makes sense at one level,” Ethan said. “He was still half-human, so he may have gambled it would give his white blood cells a better chance if they didn’t have to fight the vampire cells.”

He was killing the part of me that was killing him?

Oh, I’m desperately going to need therapy after this.

“That was rash,” I said.

“He’s an idiot,” Paige said, though she was furiously rubbing at her eyes with her knuckles.

“He was dying anyway,” Alton said. “There was little to lose.”

I glared at him. “Well,
that
was a convenient omission on your part; you never shared that opinion with me.”

“I said I hoped he’d survive,” Alton said. “And that was absolutely the truth.”

Maybe I merely wanted the opportunity to focus my anger at someone or something, but I had a hard time stomaching his nuanced explanation.

“But why won’t he wake up?” Paige asked.

“Possibly shock,” Ethan said. “His body might be resetting itself. We should know more in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Are you sure it’s not brain damage?” I asked.

“I think we restored his breathing quickly enough,” Bonnie said. “I heard a commotion upstairs from the kitchen, and I was at the door in a matter of seconds. It was less than a minute later when I was able to give him CPR.”

“I concur,” Ethan said. “There likely wasn’t enough time for significant brain damage to set in.”

“But what about his brain injury?” I asked.

“Somehow, I think we’re okay there,” Ethan said.

“You’re not sure, though, are you?” Paige asked. “Shouldn’t we get him to the hospital or something?”

“I’d rather not move him, for now,” Ethan said. “But no, it’s difficult to be certain about a diagnosis in these circumstances, especially in this early stage.”

“So, we wait? For how long then?” I asked.

“As I said, let’s give things twenty-four hours,” he said. “Then we’ll reassess.”

More waiting.

Shit.

This is going to be the death of me.

The emotional strain in my body felt nearly unbearable.

I realized, of course, that I’d gladly trade places with Caleb, the love of my life, if only I could rest assured he’d survive.

Chapter 17

Caleb

Self-awareness.

I am me. I am here.

Then I heard faint voices of those I care most about, the people I love.

They sounded like they were at the end of a long tunnel in the distance.

What happened?

Where am I?

A nothingness of numbness and haziness; not disconcerting, but more like a peaceful blanket.

If this was heaven, I was sorely disappointed.

Where are the clouds and harp music?

Wait, I remember the sunlight.

It burned so much.

I wondered what I might do next, though part of me didn’t care. The nothingness was soothing and oddly reassuring.

I could stay here forever, compared to where I was before.

Time had no meaning; though I occasionally heard what I thought were the distant whispers of voices.

I floated and floated in a comforting sea of sheer weightlessness.

* * *

“Caleb?” someone asked.

It was…Ethan.

Then bright light, like standing before a spotlight; it engulfed my nothingness, though there was no heat accompanying it.

Sensations of feeling and physical awareness assailed my senses all at once; smells and sounds tingled across my skin.

My eyes fluttered. I felt them.

My first sight was bright green eyes staring back at me. The scent of cherry blossoms permeated the air.

Kat.

“I missed you,” I said, though my voice sounded hoarse and not quite my own.

“Welcome back, my love,” she said softly.

Oh, how I missed her.

My eyes scanned the room from where I lay on the bed. Ethan looked down at me from behind Kat.

The air was filled with a series of swishing sounds, each followed by the appearances of Paige, Alton, Marla, and Bonnie, each looking down at me with expressions of relief or wonder.

My friends. My loved ones.

I missed them all.

* * *

Days passed quickly, during which time I basked in the warm affections and attentions by those around me, though occasionally laced with moments of disapproval over the fateful decision that brought me to this point.

Kat was particularly a dichotomy of both love and a degree of wrath, so torn in her emotions over what had happened. Thankfully, the moments of love outweighed those of her ire.

She told me that she understood my decision, but I didn’t have to be a mind reader to realize she was profoundly hurt by my abrupt decision. A rare bout of tears on her part emphasized that point.

It made me feel rather selfish.

To my credit, I apologized profusely while hugging her to me, all the while at a loss to know exactly the best thing so say or do.

So, I quietly held her for a time. Honestly, I think it may have done as much for me as it did for her.

At least, I hoped so.

Paige gave me an earful, though Ethan and Alton were surprisingly accepting. Following her initial rant, Paige had conceded, “Well, I’ll be damned. Our boy came up with a cure for early onset vampirism.”

Kat had groaned at that.

I endured it all in stride, merely happy to have returned to ‘the living’…and as a human, no less.