Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  He can smell my blood.

  “Mia?” he called, a little more urgently this time. He approached the bathroom door. “Everything okay in there?”

  “Fine,” I managed in a voice barely above a whisper. “Nearly done.”

  I saw the concern on his face grow. He could definitely smell my blood. I saw it in the way he shifted his stance, the way he was literally drawn to it. And there was plenty of it. My wounds were in no danger of healing around the noxious Asphodel that stung my skin and set fire to my veins. There was so much blood, I felt like I was drowning in a river of red.

  I asked you to leave me there to die.

  “Mia, open the door!” He tried the handle, which I had locked.

  “I’m coming in,” Sam said, and I heard the door handle crunch as he easily broke the lock with his vampire strength.

  Damn. Through my hazy eyes I could make out a pair of shoes, blue jeans, and then I was being picked up by my shoulders, and shaken.

  “Mia?” Sam yelled. “Mia!” I saw as he surveyed the room, taking everything in. The razor blade on the floor beside the tub. The poisonous blue goop that I had squeezed from the sleeping tablets. And the blood. It was everywhere. I saw him go pale and wondered if his bloodlust would resurface after so many years. Maybe he would finish me off.

  “What have you done?” he asked me. More shaking. I was sitting up now, propped against the side of the bath. Sam grabbed towels and wrapped them around my bleeding wrists. “No,” I said, trying to stop him.

  “Mia,” he said desperately, his eyes boring into mine. “Why would you do this?”

  “I have to get it out,” I gasped. I started to sob. My head bobbed and black dots started to take over my vision.

  “Get what out?” he asked, a look of dread spreading across his face.

  I realized I wasn’t going to win here. He was going to stop me from dying, and this thing would still be inside me after they stitched up my wrists and washed the blood away.

  “Please,” I whimpered, grabbing at his shirt I pointed to the positive test on the floor. “Sam. You have to get it out of me!”

  His face fell when he saw what was in my hand. “I was right,” he murmured.

  And then, “Oh, Mia.”

  I passed out.

  FORTY-TWO

  I drifted in and out. The asphodel tablets were causing some wicked hallucinogenic nightmares, so I was trying to stay awake now that Sam had foiled my suicide attempt. He carried me to the car and folded me rather awkwardly into the passenger seat, then ran around to the driver’s side. We were on the road and heading west before I could say or do anything. I rested my forehead on the cold glass as we drove through the sleepy night streets of San Rosa. We were a long way from home, at least a ten hour drive even if Sam ignored all of the speed limits. I didn’t see how I was going to survive the journey. Perhaps that was a good thing.

  My wrists throbbed in tune with my hummingbird heartbeat. I had lost a lot of blood. I felt freezing cold and thought that I would probably slip into a coma in a matter of minutes unless I got a transfusion. How does a vampire even get a blood transfusion?

  Sam was driving and talking on the phone. I could hear the panic rising in his voice.

  “I need your help, man!” he yelled into the phone.

  Ryan’s cocky voice replied clearly, “Oh, so now you need my help?”

  “Listen to me,” Sam said, deathly serious. “Mia has hurt herself. I think she was trying to kill herself. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Bring her to Barbados hospital,” Ryan said immediately. “It’s in your GPS.”

  Sam looked despondent. “Mia and I aren’t in California,” he said carefully. “She decided to drive back to New Jersey this morning and I accompanied her.”

  “What?!” Ryan’s voice boomed through the line. “Shit!”

  I heard the beep of a life support machine and was amazed to be able to clearly see Ryan’s surroundings even though I was hundreds of miles away. The bond apparently worked through a phone line as well. He was in a plush-looking hospital room, sitting beside a comatose, vampire Clair. So she had been Turned. She looked a hell of a lot more comfortable than I had when I had become a vampire.

  “She’ll heal,” Ryan said. “She’s a vampire.”

  “Negative,” Sam said. He pulled the car onto the side of the highway and glanced at me. “Something has gotten into her bloodstream. Her blood isn’t clotting at all. I’ve never seen a vampire bleed like this.”

  “Fuck,” Ryan swore. He paused for a moment. “Okay, you need to get her somewhere safe. You cannot take her to a hospital, do you hear me?”

  “I know that!” Sam exploded. “Why do you think I’m calling you?”

  “Where exactly are you?” I heard Ryan pacing.

  “Santa Rosa, New Mexico. On the interstate, five miles east of The Majestic Motel.” Sam’s jaw was clenched so hard I thought his teeth might shatter.

  “Shit. Okay, hang on, I’m thinking. There’s a small medical facility there, should be able to accommodate a blood transfusion.” He sighed. “Jesus Christ, Mia.”

  “Address?” Sam enquired impatiently.

  My chest was getting very tight. I started sucking in great lungfuls of air.

  Vampires don’t need to breathe.

  Well, we do when we have no blood left in our bodies to transport the oxygen around.

  My eyes fluttered shut and my head fell forward, hitting the dash with a dull thud.

  “I’m losing her, dude!” Sam was peeling me off the dash as he spoke. “Hurry up or I'll take her to a regular hospital.”

  “Don’t do that!” Ryan yelled.

  “Ryan!”

  “Okay, okay, I found the address. 67 Villiers Street. It’s called Greenmount Medical Supplies. It’s a feeding house with an infirmary attached. Go around to the service gate and ask for Valerie.”

  Sam tapped the address into his GPS and pulled back onto the highway, driving slowly as he watched the red dot on the bright screen.

  “Sam, give her as much of your blood as you can spare. Human blood won’t work. Ivy and I will helicopter out to you in the next few hours.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Wait, Ivy? Don’t get her involved, man!”

  “I have to!” Ryan answered. “Do you think I know how to fly a helicopter?”

  That was the last thing I heard before I passed out again.

  FORTY-THREE

  I woke up in the infirmary the next morning, in a small hospital–type room. There were clean bandages on my wrists, and my skin had been scrubbed clean of blood. Ryan sat next to the bed where I lay. A thin plastic tube carried his blood from his arm into mine. He looked terrible, and I wondered how much blood he had given Clair before arriving to bleed a little more for me. It was as if he had aged ten years in the space of a day.

  I sat up and ripped the cannula and needle from my arm. It hurt, but not as much as ripping my wrists open with a razor dipped in asphodel root had. The small hole in my arm disappeared almost instantly.

  So I’m healing again. I must be all better. Goddamn it and fuck it all to hell.

  I couldn’t bear to think about the fact that a creature had taken up residence inside of me. I didn’t think of it as an innocent child. I didn’t even think of it as mine. It was an invader, a parasite clinging to my insides and sucking the life out of me. It was evil. How could anything good come from a vampire like Ryan?

  I wondered if Ryan knew yet. Of course he did. Through the bond, I felt his fear, his need to protect me and whatever it was growing in my barren womb.

  I immediately put up the walls inside my mind, refusing to let him probe my thoughts any deeper. He jerked back, obviously feeling my rejection like a slap in the face.

  “How are you?” Ryan asked, breaking the tense stand–off. “Do you need water? Something to eat?”

  “I’m fine,” I replied icily, tossing the plastic tubing on the floor at his feet. I decided to get strai
ght to the point. “Why are you even here?”

  Ryan scowled and shook his head. “Because I care about you.”

  I laughed coldly. “You don’t care about me,” I said. “You don’t care about anyone, or anything, except yourself.”

  “I do care about you,” Ryan argued. “I want to know why you felt like you had to …” He stopped mid–sentence, apparently having difficulty speaking.

  “… do this,” he said finally.

  I just stared at the scuffed linoleum floor.

  “Why would you do that to a baby?” he asked finally. “An innocent child who hasn’t even lived yet?”

  I whipped my head up and glared at him with every ounce of rage that I could muster. I wanted to reach out and rip his heart from his chest.

  “Nobody’s truly innocent,” I said quietly. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “A child,” Ryan pleaded, “is the most innocent thing in the world!”

  I shook my head. “I want an abortion. I want it out of me. Then I’m going home.” I said the last part with plenty of emphasis.

  “You’re insane,” Ryan said, his face getting redder. “You want to kill the first born vampire in hundreds of years?”

  “You did this to me,” I accused.

  “Jesus, Mia,” Ryan seethed. “I didn't do anything to you. We did this together. The fact that this is happening is kind of impossible.”

  And then, just to be an asshole, he added, “You threw yourself at me, remember?”

  I shook my head in disgust. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

  “No,” he argued. “Your wrists won’t stop bleeding, and I want to know why. What did you do?”

  “Get out!” I snapped.

  Faster than a human eye could follow, Ryan was standing over me, both hands on my head. I felt that familiar drag and tried to push him away. “No!“ I yelled, struggling against his fiercely strong grip. But it was useless. He was my maker and, therefore, had a direct link to my mind. I swallowed back tears as I felt him probe into my memories, finding the one at the motel, where I had cut my wrists. It was sickening.

  “Stop,” I begged. I wailed. “You’re hurting me!”

  He ignored me, surging deeper, until the whole horrific scene had played itself out again. I jerked back, and he finally let me go. My crying bordered on the hysterical. I had never felt so violated in my entire life.

  “Asphodel,” he breathed. “You could have killed it!”

  I glared at him through salty tears. “You mean, like you killed Clair? I bet it wasn’t like she thought it would be. I bet she hates what you’ve done to her.”

  “I saved her life,” Ryan said quietly, furiously.

  “You ruined her life. It’s what you do.”

  “No, sweetheart, the cancer she was dying from ruined her life. I was merely trying to prolong it. I owed her father a favour after he saved my ass years ago. That’s why Clair is a vampire. Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”

  That knowledge slammed into me like a freight train. He wasn’t lying. I thought that he was dooming her, when in fact he had saved her from dying a painful death.

  I think I’ll keep you. I wasn’t convinced of his chivalry, not for one minute.

  “You ruin everything you touch,” I said. “Get away from me. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  The sullen smirk across his face made me want to stab him in the eyes. “You’re having my child, dear. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I growled. I hated him, despised him, just wanted him out of my space and out of my mind. “I’m not keeping this baby. You can’t make me!”

  Faster than I could react, a hand whistled through the air and Ryan’s fist struck my cheek. I flew back, off the bed, and my skull slammed into the wall behind me. I staggered to my feet, blind with white-hot pain, feeling like my head was going to topple from my shoulders.

  When my vision cleared, it was him, still there, trying to compose himself, trying not to beat me to death. “Just do it,” I slurred, wiping blood from my mouth with a clumsy palm. “Kill me. Go ahead, hero.” And I started to laugh. I felt like I had finally gone insane, finally hit absolute rock bottom, and that it was okay because I truly couldn’t sink any further than this.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Ryan said, with a look of disgust on his face.

  “Doesn’t matter” I shrugged, still smiling the wretched grin of insanity. “I’ll kill myself. You can’t watch me forever.”

  His eyes flashed black and stayed that way for several seconds. I’d never seen him do that before, only Caleb. It scared the shit out of me. And I had his offspring inside me?

  “You wanna bet?” He snarled. “I will lock you up and throw away the key, Blake.”

  I snapped. Before he could stop me, I leapt forward, clearing the bed between us with ease. I lashed out with my hands, grabbing his shirt collar and throwing him at the closed door. He slammed into the door, his skull smashing the rectangular glass window and his shoulders splintering the wood. I had gone from weak and pathetic to strong and murderous in the space of minutes after being transfused with fresh vampire blood. The feeling of swift recovery and supreme invincibility left me hungering for more. I lunged forward, snapping at Ryan’s exposed throat.

  The look in his eyes was priceless – he realized that I was stronger than him, even if it was only temporary, and that scared him. I doubted very much that he had ever been scared of me before. He fought with me as my mouth got closer to his neck, and he held me off with dying strength that I knew I could outlast.

  “Stop!” Ryan shouted, using our bond to send shockwaves of pain through my head.

  “Ow!” I yelled. It hurt. A lot. That pissed me off. A lot. I summoned all of the pain and rage that was swirling in my chest and my stomach and I directed that through the bond, back at him. I wasn’t sure if it would work, I had only ever tried communicating via the bond using words and pictures, but it worked alright. Ryan dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. He clutched at his head and began to scream.

  I smiled.

  Ivy rushed into the room. I guessed straight away that she had been listening to everything. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw my face, and I imagined how I must have looked – electric blue eyes, wild raven hair in bloodied tangles, mascara and tears streaked down my cheeks and blood under my fingernails where I had scratched deep gouges into Ryan’s face.

  “Stop it,” she pleaded. Worried, all of them worried about me and what I might do to the precious monster that he had cursed me with.

  Ryan continued to twitch and moan.

  “Or what? What will you do?” I asked. I was genuinely curious, and a little bit crazy. Would she strike me down with powerful magic? Her eyes darted between Ryan and I.

  “You won’t do anything, will you?” I was pleased. “You can’t hurt me without risking hurting this parasite inside me.”

  Her face confirmed my suspicion.

  Suddenly Sam appeared in the room, and I jumped. Another worried face. “Mia.”

  “Sam.” I mimicked his pitiful tone.

  “Stop it.” He gestured to Ryan, limp and moaning on the ground. “He deserves it, but not like this. You’re better than this. Stop whatever it is you’re doing to him.”

  I tried to stop the flood of black waste that was pouring through the bond from me to him, and choked. “I can’t.”

  It was true. Whatever gate I had opened, I couldn’t close it. Hate and rage poured through the bond, making me shiver and making Ryan suffer. The black sludge that was pouring from me into him was starting to make my head hum as well. Panic rose in my throat like bitter bile. “I can’t stop it!” I cried. I clawed at my own throat as it started to close and I was gasping for air. Air might not have mattered to me, because I was a vampire and vampires didn’t need to breathe, but it still felt like I would smother if I couldn’t suck in lungfuls of the stuff.

  “You can,” Sam said firmly, squeezi
ng my shoulder hard, not enough to hurt but enough so that I had to look at him. “What is it you’re thinking about? Is it Caleb? Is it Ryan?”

  I shook my head no. Sorrow engulfed me then, and shame. Oh, the shame! I was blaming Ryan for all of this, and he was hardly innocent, but he hadn’t forced me to do anything except get in that van three long months ago. And he’d been apologizing for it ever since. Only I’d never been able to forgive him.

  It was hate, I realized. All the hate I felt, for Ryan and Caleb and myself – it was killing me. And right now, it was killing Ryan.

  “You can stop it,” Sam said urgently. “Tell me what’s happening in your head right now. What you’re feeling.”

  “I hate them,” I responded. “I hate this life. I miss everything that I used to have! He’s taken it all from me. And now –”

  “And now what?” Sam pressed.

  “And now I just wish I could die,” I said numbly, the fight going out of me. The black sludge disappeared, replaced by a hollow ache that settled in my womb like a cold, heavy stone. I stumbled back, returning to the bed. There was no fight left in me. Ryan scuttled away, still holding his head with both hands, without so much as a backwards glance. Ivy followed, casting a worried look at Sam before she closed the damaged door.

  “I want to show you something,” Sam said quietly, once we were alone. I didn’t argue. He wheeled a large portable machine next to the bed. I realized immediately what it was and baulked.

  “You can trust me,” Sam said. “I promise.”

  Part of me did want to see what could possibly have developed inside me over a few short weeks. And knowledge was power.

  “Alright,” I said dejectedly. How much worse could it get?

  I sat on the bed, waiting patiently as Sam fiddled with buttons and switches. “Do you even know how to use that thing?” I asked.

  He smiled, as if to say, There you are. I didn’t smile back, though, instead focusing on the grainy screen in the centre of the machine.

  “Shirt up,” Sam instructed. I reluctantly pulled my t-shirt up to expose my bare stomach. The gel he squeezed onto my skin was cold and felt gross. He made one final adjustment to the machine and then placed a plastic probe on my stomach.