by Cara Coe
I dragged myself the last several feet into the study, grateful that this endeavor didn’t include the stairs. I picked up the receiver. I didn’t even know what time it was.
Nine?
Midnight?
Four in the morning?
When the minutes felt like eras, keeping track no longer seemed important.
I dialed the number knowing full well this may have all been for nothing. I hadn’t called him in over a week. It was the middle of the night. He may not even be in the hospital anymore.
Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-ni-ye-ine.
For a second I thought I was singing the jingle as the phone rang but then I realized my lips were just moving and no sound was coming out. I rubbed them together. They scratched each other.
Still ringing.
The crying was close. So close.
I clutched the receiver. No, not close. Here. I was crying. I could feel the wet. A drop of it dangled on my nose, taking its time to fall. I lay on my side. When it fell, I’d hang up.
It fell.
I waited.
Still ringing.
I scrunched my eyes closed.
Still ringing.
I felt the loneliness well up inside me and swallow me like a Venus fly trap. It engulfed me fully. It stole all the air and suffocated me.
“Hello!”
His voice filled my head.
“Oh, my God, hey! Talk to me. Please.”
He sounded out of breath. Like the first time I ever called him.
My lips moved. Still no sound, just scratching.
“I know you’re there. I know you’re mad.”
“I need you.” I tried to make my voice strong, but all my effort could only produce a wispy sound.
Even so, he heard it like I shouted it in his face. I heard his franticness go still and his voice became grave. “Where are you?”
“Tucson, Arizona. House. Corner of Park and Windsong.” I coughed and drew the strength for a few more words. “My name is Tasha.”
“Tasha, I’m Alex. And I’m coming to get you. Don’t die.”
Chapter 17
Him
Shit.
I tore through the office door and down the hall to where I’d set up my living space. A set of three hospital rooms, one as my bedroom, one as an office, and one as a place to put my feet up, listen to music, and not think for a while. I made for my makeshift bedroom. I was in nothing but boxers and pajama pants.
I didn’t expect a call from her at two-thirty in the morning.
I didn’t expect a call from her ever again.
The ringing almost didn’t wake me. It was a foreign sound to hear in my sleep and just like the first time I heard the trill through the hallway I responded to it this time just as bewildered and confused. Only this time it was because it was wrapped in foggy sleep. Once I realized what it was, I leapt from my bed and nearly fell trying to get to it. I loved that sound. It squeezed my chest and thumped on my heart whenever I heard it.
I could tell she was in serious trouble as soon as she spoke. She sounded sick. But not regular sick. I’ve worked with patients on the brink of passing. There’s a giveaway in their voice, a resigned knowing that even they’re sometimes not aware of that carries in their tone.
She didn’t have long.
I hastily threw a bag together, stuffing in an array of antibiotics and antivirals.
On the way down the staircase, I hesitated in front of the floor that housed my lab. If I adjusted a few settings, the work I’ve put in over the past two weeks would be saved. The adjustments would take about an hour.
She needed me. I didn’t have an hour.
I was in the parking garage in record time. I snatched my helmet from where I kept it on a hook right inside the door and raced to where I parked my preferred mode of transportation. I put on my helmet and revved up the motorcycle before peeling out into the purple dark that comes from the still hour of the night and lack of the Houston skyline that once upon a time would have chased it away. I’d been to Tucson once before if you count stopping at a Waffle House on the way to Phoenix as “been to.”
I got on the exit for Interstate 10 and kicked the bike into the next gear. The freeways were mostly clear of cars so it would be a straight shot. All she needed to do was hold on a little longer.
Chapter 18
Him
I’d heard about the dogs but they were something else up close and personal. Three German shepherds circled around her. The tufts on the back of their necks ruffled and low growls were emitting from their throats.
The lowest kind of growling. The kind that meant business. Not the loud, distractive barking of a bluffer. It was a warning that the next step I took meant sacrificing my jugular. I backed away slowly, frustrated. I could see her lying inside the doorway to the room on her side. Her face was halfway smushed on the floor, bending her nose. That’s how I knew she was out out and not just sleeping off some painful headache.
I growled my frustration back at the dogs, then turned on my heel and stalked out of the house. I remembered seeing a sign for the zoo at the South Kino Parkway exit and I hopped back on my bike and backtracked to that street.
The Reid Park Zoo wasn’t terribly big and it wasn’t long before I found what I needed. Tranquilizer gun.
I filled my pack with some darts, slung the gun across my back and drove back to the house.
Once inside, I was able to take the first two dogs down easily but while reloading for the third, he leapt at me and his razor teeth sunk into my arm. My cry of pain was inhuman. It was even invamp. The beast literally ripped a chunk of my flesh out with his mouth. I used the force of my leg to land a foot in his neck, aimed, and shot a dart into his shoulder. He still wasn’t down, so I scrambled backwards. There was no reloading. I couldn’t feel my left arm.
Luckily, he staggered before he could reach me a second time and then slumped to the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I untied a bandana from my pack and tied it off on the wound to staunch the bleeding.
Making my way to her quickly, I knelt beside her and repositioned her head so she could breathe easier. It didn’t help. Her breath still sounded labored. The left side of her face was drooping significantly. I felt her forehead and skin. No fever. There were vomit stains down the front of her shirt. Her elbows and arms were crusted with blood. So was her back, I could see, when I lifted her shirt.
I glanced down and saw thin lines of blood trailing from the door to where she lay.
She dragged herself here. To call me.
I tried to breathe through the grip that tightened my chest.
Focus, Alex, I thought. It had to be something she ate. All the symptoms pointed to botulism. Which meant her muscles were slowly paralyzing. I needed to get her on oxygen and back to Houston as soon as possible. My antibiotics and antiviral meds were useless. I knew the hospital I was in had some antitoxins.
The next hour was painfully excruciating. I found a truck to hotwire with enough gas to make it at almost halfway back to Houston. I siphoned the rest of what I would need into several large gas cans. I raided a clinic and got a breathing machine on a battery pack that still had some juice. I found three dog cages big enough to house the loves of her life, a fact which kept me from unloading the rest of the tranquilizer darts into their snarling hides. The whole time, I kept her next to me, constantly checking to make sure her vitals were still up. Every errand made me nervous. I itched to get back on the road and get her to the hospital where I knew I could help her.
When we were finally departing, once everything was loaded onto the truck, I stole a few moments to look at her. Yeah, her droopy eye gave her a Quasimodo vibe but I could still see the girl underneath the temporary deformity and it fit. It fit her voice. It fit her fire. Her hair was as described, cut in a short crop. I could see streaks of red in the top from the dyes she told me she’d been playing with. It looked good against the caramel of her skin. She was tall
, almost as tall as me. I wanted to see her eyes. It would finish the picture, make her real. But they were closed and if I lifted her lids, they’d be lifeless to me anyway. I could wait for that last piece.
I climbed into the driver’s seat and, with a fleeting moment of sadness for the motorcycle I had to give up and leave in Tucson, I sped onto the highway and headed back. I glanced in the rearview mirror at her asleep in the back and the wistful sadness dissipated. She was more than a fair trade for that motorcycle.
Chapter 19
Her
My mind flipped through images, like watching snatches of late night television during a night of staggered sleep. I was delirious and tired and in that fuzzy state between dreaming and awake. I was lying on a plastic mat in the corner of a large room. I saw a figure hauling a large cage across the space. One of those cube cages for animals made of wire and metal. The face was hooded but I could tell it was a male. He was built like one, limbs pieced together on a larger frame, no softness or curves. He turned to a table and picked up a gun, leaning towards it. Checking it for something. I fell back asleep.
* * *
The next time I came to, my body was bouncing. It was a soft bounce like rolling over a speed bump. My head rested on tan fabric. A plastic cup covered my mouth and nose. A mask. The air it pumped smelled stale. My eyes could make out seats in front of me. A driver’s seat. A passenger seat. A nervous hand tapped on the gear shift in the middle. After the bumps subsided we sped up. Enough to where I felt the pull backwards. The humming of the engine began to pull me back under. My eyes hooded. Before they closed, they met a foreign pair of eyes in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t enough to keep the sleep from taking me, those eyes. But it was enough to make me dream about them afterwards.
Chapter 20
Her
My eyes opened slowly. They blinked slowly, too. Colors and shapes blurred and sharpened in front of me as I looked around and tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Of where I was.
It was a hospital room. I heard a beeping noise and I craned my head to the left to see a monitor. It was in time to my heartbeat. The monitor was monitoring me. I looked down at my arm and saw a needle sticking out of it, leading to a line that lead to a bag of fluid.
I pulled the mask off my face and took in a deep breath of air. I felt weak but it was a strong weak. One that I knew would wear off as I healed. I worked my jaw from side to side. Sore, but moving.
I sat up a little and it made me dizzy. Instantly, my head fell back on the pillow.
“Don’t move around too much yet.”
It was the voice. His voice.
I turned my head to the right. He was leaning in the doorway with his hands stuffed in his pockets. His body was hunched forward like he was about to walk towards me but I could see the restraint in the rest of his stance. He stayed where he was and his hunch relaxed when he saw I wasn’t going to attempt to get up again.
“Alex,” I said.
“Tasha,” he answered.
He had described himself with typical features. Black hair. A little taller than me. Kind of lean. Brown eyes with the telltale almond-shaped eyes of his race. His description didn’t even come close to what I was looking at. Yes, he was all those things. But he didn’t mention how deep his brown eyes went. Looking into them felt like falling. And he didn’t talk about how spiky his hair was off his forehead. A natural tuft type of a spike. I wanted to touch it. He didn’t tell me that he had broad shoulders and a long nose with a flat bridge.
My fingers curled in the sheets. I was afraid of one of my traitorous hands reaching out for him against my will. He was still a vamp. He was the reason the human race was next to extinct.
“How long was I out?” I kept my voice cold.
“Three days. I had to hook up an IV bag to keep you hydrated.”
I turned my arms over to inspect the inside of my wrists. My fingers brushed the sides of my neck.
Alex’s face hardened. “I didn’t bite you.”
My expression was equally hard. “I had to check.”
“I’m the same guy you’ve been talking to on the phone all those months.”
“Who neglected to mention the fangs and penchant for fresh blood.”
Alex threw up his hands. “Do you see why?”
“This is why I didn’t tell you anything about me!” I yelled. Boy, was I angry. It was excruciating on my throat to yell and my head throbbed painfully but anger trumped pain. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”
Alex’s eyes were on fire. “Oh really? Yeah, maybe you withheld your name and location but you told me a lot more than that. I know you ached for your mother despite the fact that you acted like her jetting out on you didn’t matter. I know you wonder when and where she was when The Sweep got her and if she had someone with her when she died. Even though you’ve never even admitted that to yourself, much less voiced it to me. I know your dad was your everything and it almost broke you when he died. I know you’re strong. Lesser people would have killed themselves. Lesser people did kill themselves. I know you’re crazy scared to get close to someone and you dress the notion up in rules and games over the telephone so you don’t have to stare intimacy in the face. I know that you needed me. And I was there for you. In a heartbeat. Because I don’t care that you’re a human and I’m a hybrid. The only thing I care about is you.”
He turned and began to stalk out of the room. His outburst deflated some of my anger but I still scowled and yelled at his back because I wasn’t sure what to feel at that moment.
“Where are you going?” I shouted as he disappeared out of the door.
His head popped back into my field of vision from the doorway. “I’m hungry and if you keep glaring at me like that, I’m going to fucking eat you.”
And then he left.
Chapter 21
Her
The funny thing about loneliness is that is has nothing to do with time or how many people surround you. You can be in a throng of a crowd and feel like the loneliest person on earth or you can be completely alone in your room and feel saturated with presence. The year I spent looking for another face was a pretty low point for me. I had a dull ache as I searched, each day growing more disheartened to learn that I was it. There was no one else. I carried that ache around like a wound on my chest. Always present but bearable.
And then I wasn’t alone. Alex’s voice kept me company every day for over two months. Tarzan, Sherlock, Big Bird (I had demanded to be Snuffleupagus, the forgotten puppet), Garfunkel, Clyde – his name changed every day but his voice didn’t. His laugh didn’t. His like humor, the breath he sucked in when his realized I was about to reveal a secret, his light teasing, the quiet when he was listening intently, and the way his voice dropped and sounded faraway when he described something from The Before didn’t. Those were constant. Somewhere in that time, my wound healed. It didn’t go away completely. The effects of the last six years I wore like a scar. But I didn’t hurt every day.
He didn’t come back for a while. As I lay there on the bed as time passed, the ache of loneliness transformed into a sharp pinch. The thought of not talking to him anymore was like a jab in the heart. All this agony over a vamp. A cute, angular, just taller than me, bottom-lip-biting vamp.
The dogs came first. Mowgli, Baloo, and Bagheera came bounding into the room and pawing at me with tongues lolled out. I laughed as I hugged them.
“I missed you stupid furballs,” I said excitedly into the scruffs of their necks. When they milked all the petting out of me in our reunion, Bagheera and Baloo took to exploring the room with their noses and Mowgli awkwardly jumped onto my bed and gingerly situated himself at my feet. We slept on a mattress on the floor at home and this height was unnerving to him.
Alex appeared warily in the doorframe then holding a steaming bowl. “Is it safe?” he asked.
“Safe from what? Me or the dogs?”
“Both. You guys bite in different areas but the pain is equal.”
It was then that I noticed a large wrapping on his forearm that I missed before. “Who got you?” I asked.
Alex pointed to Baloo. “The one with the funny leg. He ripped a chunk out of my arm.”
As if sensing he was the topic of conversation, Baloo let out a low growl.
“Baloo! Be nice,” I ordered and he lowered himself to the floor.
“I’m sorry, I had to tranquilize your dogs. When I got to Tucson they wouldn’t let me come near you and we certainly couldn’t share the front seat on the ride back to Houston.” He inched into the room. “They’ve been in cages for days. So they’re a bit restless.”
I looked at him curiously. “It was very thoughtful of you,” I admitted. “You didn’t have to go through all that to bring them, too.”
“You’ve already lost so much. I know what they mean to you.” He held up the bowl in his hand. “Vegetable soup.”
My stomach growled at the smell. I reached for it and he came into the room enough to hand me the bowl.
“They’ll behave while I’m awake,” I promised him and he nodded and leaned against the counter that spanned the wall in front of me but I saw that his body didn’t completely relax.
“This is good!” I exclaimed in surprise after a bite. Or half a bite. Part of it dribbled down my chin. From the bit I tasted, the broth was rich and the mix of vegetables complimented each other. Campbell’s is good but there’s only so much a canned soup can offer.