My Precious Nightmare

Chapter 52: Half-Breed

Lea thought when she died there would be more pain. Or at least, more fear. But the tingle that ran up to engulf her came strong and quick, but gently, as though it were arms scooping her legs out from beneath her rather than her body collapsing and vanishing.

But the rush of regret she had expected.

In the split second before the black swallowed her whole, she thought of her mother and grandfather. She thought of Sky and all her classmate friends, and a sharp pang of longing ran through her. She wanted to taste her mother's homemade waffles again. She wanted to see her grandfather laugh at some blunt, teenage truth she'd spouted. She wanted to see Sky rock back and forth as she told Lea about her date with Tyler while she insulted Jacob, who flirted with her like a fourth grader. She wanted to see how they all turned out: both her mom in her dreams, her grandfather when Lea proved all his hopes and faith in her right and true, and Sky when she finally graduated and proved the world wrong about her heritage as white trash.

And Husani. Him she hurt for most of all, because if she died in his arms...in the arms of one who'd run with all his might to save the overdosed young mother and had handled her children so gently, he'd have that look on his face, the one she'd seen in the dim dawn light behind the dumpster, drawn and open with something more terrible than horror and more destructive than guilt. The scar on his chest, when he tried to tear out his own heart, would never heal. Nor could Lea return to catch his wild head when he crashed to a hoped-for death.

When she woke and saw no tubes, no oxygen mask or hospital white, just a plain, popcorn ceiling lit by a thin square of morning light, she sighed and waited for a sign she was no longer living. She had never stopped believing in an afterlife, but she didn't think heaven had to be something grandiose and bright to be paradise. A warm room in the morning worked just as well.

But then a hungry growl from her stomach brought her weary head about to what was not just any cozy morning, but the familiar humble studio apartment of an herbalist vampire.

Said vampire stood at her head next to the window, slumped against the wall, eyes closed, and mouth slack in steady, sleeping breaths. As it so often was, his chest was bare, but he wore sea foam scrub pants rather than his usual black. His skin was paler than ever. What caught her off guard was the IV taped to the inside of his forearm and connected to, not the usual IV bag (one of which lay on the floor, forgotten and half filled), but to a tube as thick as her finger which ran through a little square machine then to the inside of her arm, filled with something too dark to be ordinary blood.

A chill shot up her spine. Her fingers flew to her mouth, but her canines didn't seem any larger or sharper than normal. Nor did she particularly crave blood. Though, as her stomach gave another grumble, she did want a large bacon ranch burger with layers of homemade potato chips. They were her grandfather's specialty, and it showed in his girth.

Gingerly, she untaped her IV and pulled it out, quickly pinching her arm closed as blood, equally dark, threatened to drip out. With her other arm she began the arduous process of clawing her way out of the man-eating black bean bag.

No sooner had she even begun to shift then Husani woke with a start.

"Lea," he gasped, blinking hard before focusing on her. Dark shadows framed his eyes and the red in the iris already glowed. His lower jaw loosened, probably as his canines lengthened; she'd already noticed they tended to do that when he was hungry.

Her mouth went dry and her throat clenched. Her hand caught on to a handful of beanbag and yanked her free, eyes never leaving the vampire.

"Lea," he repeated. "You're...I'm awake, right? This isn't a dream?"