Vampiric: Chapter Eleven, Part 2

“I will tell her,” Drei said when I started coming to again. I felt different; I was just as close to death as I had been, but I felt emptier now…less like a person.

Opening my eyes, even Drei was blurry, and his voice was beginning to drift away from me. He bowed his head to kiss my hand, his cheeks shining. “They removed the bullets…but you have suffered a great deal of internal damage and blood loss, and…” His voice trailed off. What feeling I had left told me his hands were trembling. “Your condition has been stabilized, but they cannot be sure for how long.” Even without the air to tell me, I knew he was in an immense amount of pain, and I wanted to stop him from hurting. As much as he had put me through, I didn’t want that for him.

A spot of blue showed up and pulled Drei’s attention away. He whispered at it to leave him alone. To go away. Slowly, he turned back to me. “I cannot live without you, Abriel,” he murmured, the words barely reaching me. “The past months have been so incredibly difficult—I am immeasurably sorry. I left you alone and—”

“I love you,” I somehow managed, feeling wetness on my hand, though that might have been my imagination. My lips formed the words, but I couldn’t be sure they had been said.

“Abriel, no. Please stay with me, please—”

“Take care,” I mouthed, closing my eyes. There was no more time to stall. It was done.

“You cannot leave me—Abriel, stay with…”

Everything was done.

I had failed.

Vampiric: Chapter Eleven, Part 1

Chapter Eleven: Tear Stained

I couldn’t tell if I was in pain. It might have been so intense I couldn’t recognize that’s what it was; but it might have been nonexistent, and my brain was just trying to find it.

On the ambulance ride, the EMT kept talking, kept saying the same things Caroline had. She was there, too—still hysterical and panicking—demanding he do something while he argued he was trying and needed her to calm down. As they fussed around me, trying to stop the bleeding in my back, everything started blurring on the edge of my vision. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t make out any of his features, but Caroline was easy to differentiate; her hair was flaming, almost as brilliantly as she was. Her element seemed to be wrapped around her in bright crimson ribbons. Even after I blinked, trying to clear my vision, the ribbons were still there.

The blurriness didn’t go away as another group of nurses and doctors swarmed me. They were all talking, reading stats and asking questions. None of them seemed to have faces, though a few had blue or green ribbons wrapped around them. The only thing that made sense was trying to stabilize my condition—at least until they figured out the extent of the damage—and whether it would be better or worse to remove the bullets.

One thing that scared me was the stale air they kept forcing into my lungs. It wasn’t the air I was afraid of; it was how it didn’t feel right in my system. That, and the fact I didn’t seem connected to the air around me anymore. Before I could have improved my hearing, picked up on other’s emotions and thoughts. Now, I couldn’t do any of that. And, worse yet, it felt like I was going deaf. All of the chatter from the nurses was dying away into oblivion. Even Caroline’s screaming voice was being pulled away until it was barely a whisper.

“Let me through,” someone was saying, his voice coming across clearly despite having lost all of the others. It rang in my ears, startling, comforting, and familiar. “Abriel,” he whispered, his voice drowning out all of the other noise.

“Drei,” I breathed shakily. A blinding pain shot through me as if talking was against the rules. It died away and I could feel his hands wrapped around mine, his lips brushing against my knuckles.

I couldn’t begin to explain how strange it was to see him, for him to be there. He hadn’t spoken to me in almost eight months. In two thirds of a year. Yet here he was, as if nothing had ever separated us. Though I couldn’t feel anything inside me, I was willing to bet my heart was racing.

A white shape passed by the door and Drei followed it, demanding to talk to whomever it was.

“What are you planning to do that will heal her?” he demanded, leaving no question they would do otherwise. I couldn’t make out what the white shape was saying, but Drei responded, “I am the closest to family she has. What are the options?”

It was a long time before Drei answered whatever babble the shape had spilled. I had closed my eyes, trying not to think about dying. Even if everyone else would like to think they could delay it, I could feel it setting in. It was why the air wasn’t responding to me anymore. At this point, it was inevitable but I seemed to be the only one aware of it. What was worse wasn’t that I was dying; it was I still hadn’t done the one experiment I had wanted to try.

But he was here. If my heart stopped beating in the next moment, I would be okay with it. As much as I disliked her way of bringing him back to me, she did. And for that, I was eternally grateful.

“So if I say yes to the procedure, she may live?” Drei asked, still conversing with the white shape. There was more soft murmuring and then he replied, “Do it. Whatever it takes, do it.”

When he returned to my side, I wanted to tell him no. It wasn’t worth it. He was only putting off what was bound to happen.

“They will take you soon,” he whispered, brushing my hair back. “I shall be waiting here when you wake.” I wanted to promise I’d wake up again, but I couldn’t guarantee it; I couldn’t even force the words out. “You will wake again.”

He followed them as they prepared to take me into the operating room. Part of me knew he couldn’t be there with me, but it didn’t stop me from wishing he would be. Just in case I wasn’t able to see him again.