Sun Poisoned (The Sunshine Series)

by Rae, Nikki

  “I am,” I say, looking down at my burger for the first time. The ketchup is slipping out on one side and it’s enough to make my stomach do half a flip. “I'm just waiting for it to cool off.”

  “You and Myles okay?” Boo asks suddenly.

  I look at him and rather than being greeted with the joking expression I was expecting, his face is questioning.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We're great. Why?”

  He shrugs. “Just asking.” He swipes one of my fries. “You guys are always together, and you didn't want to wait for him. Seems like a logical question to ask.”

  Trei cuts me off before I can answer for myself. “Oh come on, Boo,” she says. “Just because they're not attached at the hip doesn't mean they're fighting.”

  Boo offers up his arms in defense. “Okay,” he says. “Just looking out for you is all.” He takes a bite of his burger now, squirting ketchup out of the back end and almost making me want to vomit when it hits the plate in front of him.

  “If he ever hurts you,” Boo says in a lighthearted tone. “I'm going to have his balls as a necklace.”

  Despite whatever the hell is going on in my apartment, I forget for a minute and let myself laugh. “Good to know, Boo.” And I start eating, praying that I won't regret having a full stomach later.

  The walk home is hot, and for once, I welcome the sweat that begins pooling at the small of my back and underneath my legs and arms. I can distract myself from the uneasiness growing in my gut of what awaits me at home. Being afraid to go home is familiar, but it's so much different too.

  I open the door to my apartment, not knowing how to prepare myself, but I soon find out that there's no need. Everything's in its place. The kitchen is spotless, like nothing happened. There's a very faint smell of bleach, but other than that, no one would ever be able to guess what had gone on in this room an hour ago.

  “So what now?” Boo asks.

  “What?” I ask, fumbling with the buttons on my trench coat.

  “Movies,” Boo says like it's obvious. “Which ones are we watching?”

  “Yeah, and aren’t we hanging out with Myles and his friend?” Trei asks.

  I forgot I mentioned that when I texted them.

  Quickly, I glance at my phone, pretending I missed a text from earlier in the day.

  “I don't think she's coming anymore,” I manage to say without letting anything on. I guess that's the thing about knowing how to act normal. Since I’ve done it enough, no one thinks I’m acting.

  They seem unfazed by this. “Oh, that sucks,” Trei says as she joins Boo in front of the bookshelf where I store all of my movies.

  “Yeah,” Boo says. “Maybe some other time.”

  I let out a breath I wasn't aware I was holding in.

  My phone buzzes in my hand. Myles’s first text says: “Everything's under control. I'm at the door.” Then a second later comes, “Are you okay?”

  I'm guessing he's asking me this in a text so we don't look suspicious in front of Boo and Trei, but I can't help punching in only one question as I walk back to the front door. “What happened?”

  A second, then, “Later.”

  Then he’s knocking.

  Myles is wearing different clothes than the ones he had on an hour ago, swapping his white shirt for a black one, his jeans are now a lighter wash. I know it's probably because the old ones got dirty or bloody, but I don't want to think about it longer than that.

  “Hey,” he says casually, like there wasn't just a girl I barely know bleeding all over my kitchen floor. Like a vampire didn't just bite her in front of me.

  I don't get the opportunity to fake a hello.

  “Myles!” Boo says, getting up from the couch and coming over to us as I shut the door. “There you are.”

  “Here I am,” he says.

  And the pretending-to-be-normal-while-watching-a-movie party begins.

  I pretty much succeed, but I only make it through one comedy that Boo picks before I tell them I’m tired and the group disperses. It’s only five, but they allow it.

  Myles pretends to leave too, so it looks legit, coming back when Boo and Trei are back in their apartment.

  I barely have the door shut all the way when I say, “Okay.”

  I'm almost grateful when I turn around to see that Myles is sitting on the couch. He was expecting this. He's going to tell me what happened.

  He motions for me to come and join him, so I do.

  I waste no time going for the questions.”Is she okay?”

  Myles nods. “She'll be okay.”

  I sit beside him, staring at my boots. “What does that mean?” I all but snap.

  “You're really upset,” and I can't tell if it's a statement, question, or surprised observation.

  “Should I not be?” I ask, my voice shaking. Great. “Tell me I'm not supposed to be upset when someone comes to my apartment, convulses and bleeds all over the place, and then has her boyfriend bite her in front of me. Tell me how and I'll get to work on that right now.”

  Something behind his eyes shifts. Maybe he was expecting this to be easy.

  “I'm sorry,” he says, cautiously wrapping one arm around my waist and then when I don't move away, the other.

  I let him hold me for a minute. I let myself breathe the clean scent of his t-shirt. Then I pull our bodies apart so I can look at him.

  “You get that I don't see stuff like that every day, right?” It's the only way I can word it right now.

  He nods. “I know.”

  “So,” I say, calm for the moment. “Tell me what happened.”

  Myles runs a hand through his hair. “It's the infection,” he says.

  “I could have guessed that much.” I say. “Is that what it’s like,” I say, trying to remember how he explained it. “When Michael’s blood comes to the surface?”

  I let out a breath.

  He nods. “Remember I told you that Michael was the first vampire I came across after I was turned?”

  I already hate how this conversation is heading into Michael land, but I want to know this story more than I want to be left in the dark.

  Myles grabs a hold of my hand and stares down at it, maybe so he won't have to look at me. “I was. . .different then. Scared. Confused. Desperate.”

  I nod so he'll go on.

  “He took me in, taught me about what I was.” He shakes his head. “The wrong way, but he still taught me.”

  “Okay…”

  “Anyway.” He blinks a few times like he's trying to keep himself from thinking about something. “Evan came into our lives shortly after.”

  I fail to see what this has to do with Ava, but I keep my mouth shut. He's trying to tell me something big, I can tell by the way he's not looking at me and how he keeps pausing to think of how to word things. I'm not going to interrupt.

  Myles glances into my eyes for a second. “I'm not going to go into detail, because I don't like talking about it.” His attention is back on my hand in his. “Michael, took Evan and his sister a few years after I came to live with him.”

  I swallow hard. “What happened to them?”

  He closes his eyes and shakes his head.

  I swallow again. My mouth seems so dry all of the sudden.

  “Michael wanted Evan’s sister more than he wanted Evan. He wanted to turn her, but he couldn’t turn anyone because of his blood, and I didn’t want to help.” He shrugs. “So when she died,” he whispers. “Michael tried to kill Evan.”

  Silence.

  I don't want to push, but I do anyway. “You helped Evan?”

  He snorts, but there's no humor in it. “I wouldn't say that.” Myles takes in yet another breath. “I got there too late,” I barely hear him say. “There was no other way.”

  For a moment the last part just hangs there, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to reach up and take it or let him finish.

  Thankfully, I don't have to choose. “I had to turn him.”

  I gulp. “Oh.”
>
  “It's important for you to know that so I can tell you the rest. So you'll understand Ava's. . .condition better.”

  “Okay.” My voice sounds small and I doubt if I even want to really know at this point, but we've made it this far. I have to let him finish.

  “When you turn someone,” Myles says, staring at his knees. “You can. . .control the actions of the person you’ve turned.” I swallow. “It's not something I do.”

  I stare at him, trying to get those blue eyes to settle on mine for even a moment so I can see some hint of what he's feeling in them, but no such luck.

  “Michael was the one teaching me,” he continues. “So when he told me I should make Evan do certain things, I did.”

  I'm half-tempted to ask him what types of things, but I don't want to know just from the sound of his voice.

  “So when I came up with the plan for us both to leave Michael, I didn't think Evan would object. Even if I didn’t have that kind of influence over him, he didn't want to be there, in that place with him, any more than I did.”

  “So,” I say, just because I think I've been quiet for too long and I don't want Myles to think he's making me uncomfortable. “When you tried to get him to leave, he went with you?”

  Myles shakes his head. “It wasn’t that simple.”

  “But you just said that if a vampire makes a new vampire, he can control him.”

  “That's true,” he says. “But Evan was only half mine.”

  This seems like a conversation that I need to push him in so he keeps going, so gently, I do. “What does that mean?”

  “I'll tell you,” he says, glancing at me for the first time in a long while. “But you can't let anyone else—Ava, Evan, Alex, or Adrienne—know that I told you this.”

  I lean in closer, crossing my legs and staring directly at him. For a second I think he's going to do the same, but one look at me and he loses his nerve, his eyes shooting to the coffee table.

  “There are a few ways to change a human into a vampire,” he begins. “The way I've done it was always the same.” He seems to be trying to find as many words as he can to put between me and the thing he’s really trying to say, but I let him.

  “A vampire needs to bite a human and drink almost all of their blood,” he practically whispers. “Then the human has to drink the vampire's blood.”

  That sounds familiar, like it was done in a book or movie I've seen, so I'm not as freaked out as he thought I would be.

  “Then,” Myles says. “The human eventually dies and the vampire has to bring them back.”

  “Bring them back?” I blurt out. “How?”

  Myles thinks for a little then shrugs. “It's not something I can explain.”

  The way he says it makes me certain that he means it's not something he wants to talk about, so I leave it be.

  “Anyway,” he breathes, running his hands up and down his legs. “It was never in the plan to turn Evan.” Myles clears his throat. “I don’t know what Michael was planning to do to him, but turning? Never.”

  He glances at me, maybe to make sure that I want him to go on. I nod so he will.

  “Usually it's only one vampire that turns a human. It's a very personal and intimate thing. . .sharing blood like that.”

  “Okay.” And when I say that, what I mean is, keep going because I'm about to freak.

  “Michael bit him,” Myles whispers. “I’m guessing he was going to keep Evan around to feed on until he got bored. Once, he got carried away. He took too much but not enough.”

  I take in a deep breath.

  Myles glances up. “You okay?”

  “Keep going.”

  “Michael locked Evan in my coffin with me. . .dying and begging me to finish it.”

  My throat grows tight. “So,” I say, but I can't finish a thought right now.

  Myles doesn't look anywhere but the space between us, lost in memories of his monsters.

  “Evan begged me to kill him. He didn't want to be like us. But I couldn't. I don't know why; I just couldn't.”

  He looks like he's going to cry, but he holds himself together.

  “And after I gave him my blood…I was going to let him go. Not bring him back.” He practically gulps. “But Michael thought this was the perfect opportunity to show me how to create my first, so he was the one who brought Evan back.”

  Even though I don't know what exactly being “brought back” means for them, I can say with absolute certainty that being “brought back” from death by someone like Michael must have been awful. I squeeze Myles' shoulder when it looks like he's not going to continue.

  “So what does this have to do with Ava?” I say as gently as I can.

  He nods like he himself forgot what he was trying to explain. “Evan left when I asked him to, no questions asked. And Michael let us go. Neither of us were human, so he saw no real need for us.” He takes in a breath. “At least that's what we thought.”

  Myles takes my hand and holds it again. “It was years—centuries before we heard anything about Michael. Evan became a children's doctor at the hospital, and I had just bought the club.”

  “So what changed?”

  He shrugs. “I have no idea,” he admits. “One day everything was fine, and the next, Evan was begging me to not let him go to Michael.” Myles shuts his eyes for a long minute. “I tried my best. . .but he was gone.”

  It must be awful to do something so terrifying to someone that they never asked for in the first place. He was trying to help Evan, to make things better, and then it slipped through his fingers.

  “I'm sorry, Myles.”

  If I had known he was going to have to split himself open in order to explain, I would have stopped him.

  Myles waves a hand dismissively but doesn't look up. “Michael always knew he had more power over Evan. He just tortured us both by making us think it was me.”

  I want to hug him so badly, but I can tell he’s not ready for that.

  “Five years ago, he called on Evan to help him,” Myles says. “He took Evan from me and he took Ava away from her normal life.”

  “It was only that long ago?”

  He nods. “I helped them both escape. Michael never forgave me for it. . .”

  “You can skip the parts I was there for,” I interrupt while attempting a little humor, but I'm not sure if it works.

  “We didn't know Michael had infected Ava.”

  “Wait,” I have to interrupt again. “Why did he just let Ava go?”

  Myles looks uneasy. “He had a set of rules that he lived by, especially when it came to her.”

  He sighs like he's running through them all in his head. “One of them was that if a she could escape without being found—for how long, I don’t know—then she would be free from him forever.”

  “Weird,” I blurt out. But it is weird for someone who can do something so horrible as torturing and killing people to have all of these rules for themselves when it's clear that he'll do whatever he wants regardless of the game he creates.

  “Yeah, we didn't exactly buy it either,” Myles says. “We found out that she was infected, and that was the way Michael would win. If he couldn't have Ava, no one would.”

  “Wow,” I breathe out.

  “So what you saw today. . .” Now he seems fractionally more comfortable with what he's talking about. Now that we're talking about the present and not the past. “I'm sorry you saw that,” he says. “We thought she would be alright for a while. It had been so long since the last attack and everything.”

  “How is she?” I ask.

  Myles is finally looking at me. His lip twitches in an unsure smile.”She’s embarrassed, but she'll be okay.”

  “Embarrassed?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” The tone of his voice becoming lighter. “She wants to try to hang out again,” he says. “If that's something you want to do.”

  I want to say no, just so I don’t have to deal with one more odd element in my life, but it’s not A
va’s fault this crazy crap happened—is still happening—to her.

  “Sure.”

  I sigh again. I don’t want to ask what I have to ask next, but I need to. “Have you found out anything about Jack?”

  Myles nods like he knew this question was coming sooner or later. “A little,” he says. “Very little.”

  “And?”

  “He met an ex-donor in that mental hospital he was at.” He stretches his arms out in front of him. “I’m still trying to find out who it was.”

  “Why would he come tell me?” I ask no one in particular.

  Myles shrugs. “Maybe he thought you didn’t know?”

  “He implied that what he did…” I gulp. “Wasn’t him.”

  “It was.” He’s emphatic about that.

  Yeah. I know it was. I can’t forget those eyes that night. Maybe I was just hoping there was a small possibility that someone I thought I loved wouldn’t do that.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Myles says when he notices me staring off into space.

  “I just…” I take in a breath.

  “I’ll have him watched if you want,” he says suddenly. “So he doesn’t bother you anymore.”

  I blink a few times before nodding. Maybe being in a situation like this can come in handy, like Ava said.

  Myles and I sit closer than usual, both exhausted from talking about our past lives. His hands linger on mine for longer periods of time. We drift off. Separately, together. He doesn’t let go of me, and I don’t let him go either.

  Heart Murmurs

  Chapter 7

  “You’re the only thing I ever want anymore”—The National

  So, weird crap is definitely happening in the life of Sophie Jean again. Between the Jack thing, and then the whole Ava scene, I’m not sure what to obsess over more.

  Luckily, I’ll be practicing with Boo and Trei all day, so the most I’ll have to worry about for five to eight hours is how to explain myself while simultaneously not trying to rip Boo’s throat out while he tries not to claw at my eyes.

  Well, that, and Myles invited me to his apartment for coffee before I have to get to the basement.

  So it should be a good day. As long as nothing else supernatural pops up.

  “Hey,” I hug Myles when he opens the door for me. I don’t know what compels me, but I ask, “Are you okay?” as I pat Malakhi’s thick white fur.