Bring Me to Life

by Scarlett Parrish

  "Something like that."

  "Handsome. A sergeant, no less, even if you do have that dodgy leg. You could have any woman you wanted."

  "Maybe I don't want any woman---" Shit. I would have snatched those words back immediately if I could have unsaid them. "I mean, not like...Who just goes out and grabs a woman, any woman?"

  "Plenty of people do. There's a war on, you know. Got to enjoy life while it lasts, correct? Instead, here you are. With me."

  I couldn't work out if his words were a threat, mockery, or simple observation. "What did you do all that for anyway?" I asked. Anything to get the focus of his attention off me and back onto...well, just about any other thing would suit me.

  Another shrug, and fabric rustling against itself. He stepped closer, and I edged into the wall, or tried to.

  "Felt like it. Honestly, Nathan. Or do you prefer Sergeant Stephenson, under the circumstances, I wonder? Create a little distance?"

  Distance, was it? There was barely any air between us. So much for distance. If he inched any nearer, my feelings would become all too obvious.

  I kept praying for nerves to stop me growing hard in Adam's presence, but adrenaline sometimes had a strange effect on the human body.

  "So formal, after the time we've spent toge the r ? " Good Lord, Nathan; have you suddenly developed a sense of humour? Are you teasing him?

  "First name terms it is, then. Nathan, sometimes I get so bored. Don't you? Don't you ever just want to...oh, how can I put this...do something you shouldn't?"

  "I'd hardly call getting yourself run over 'doing something you shouldn't.' That is, it's not exactly a bundle of fun. Wait, you seem to enjoy it, but you're an unusual character. Not like the chaps I usually meet from work, and come to think of it, where do you---"

  He kissed me.

  It took me a split second to realise what the hell was going on :the slight oof of breath out of me as he pressed me up against the wall with his own body weight; the feeling of being held---no, grabbed---as he clutched my lapels; and the breathless, mindless "oh my God; he's doing it. He's finally doing it," as his lips met mine.

  The night air had chilled his mouth to such a degree, there was a strange mixture of cool and warm in his kiss. I think I gasped. Maybe it was a moan. Whatever sound I made, Adam's lips curved still more, and he laughed against me. I longed for him to part my lips with his tongue, would have welcomed it, in fact, but this first kiss was more gentle than that. Partly an invitation, partly a reserved way of asking, "Is this all right?"

  "Now do you know what I mean?" he asked.

  "That, um...that was something you shouldn't have done, was it?" He and I both knew where the law stood on matters, but quite aside from that, there were societal pressures to do the right thing.

  Not just in wartime, but men of my age were expected to find a nice girl, settle down, carry on the family name. My landlady wasn't the only one who had voiced such expectations. "I mean, besides lying down in the middle of the road and ---"

  "Nathan, Nathan, Nathan," he sing-songed, as if tonight was the first occasion on which he'd used my name, and he was just getting used to the sound of it, the feel of it on his tongue. "That was just me being a little cheeky. That's far from the worst thing I've ever done."

  "I can only guess."

  "Oh? Would you care to?"

  I lowered my voice still further when I spoke again. "Black marketeering?"

  "Oh, pfft." The vaguest shadow of black on black; I presumed it was him waving a dismissive hand, casting off my worries and pseudo- accusations as if they meant nothing to him. "Can't you see, Nathan?"

  "Not in this darkness, no; I---"

  "Not literally. Honestly, for such an intelligent man, you can be unbelievably obtuse. I've been trying to tell you about me for an age."

  "I got the message loud and clear tonight, don't you worry."

  "The kiss? Oh, no; that was only part of it. That's only part of what I am. There aren't many men like me around. And no; I don't mean that. I mean lying in the middle of the road. You couldn't hear me breathe?"

  I nodded, wondering if there'd be any way for him to see, or detect my agreement in any other way. To emphasise the point, I said, "That's right."

  "That's because I wasn't. Nathan, I wasn't breathing because I was dead before I even hit the ground."

  The words buzzed around in my head. I heard him but couldn't arrange them in the correct order so that they'd make any sort of sense.

  "I was dead before the car hit me. I was dead before you finished work this evening. I was dead before we met. I was dead before you were even born."

  Chapter 7

  OF COURSE, I DIDN'T JUST ACCEPT it straight away. I didn't listen to Adam saying, "Oh, by the way, you know vampires? They exist, and what's more, I'm one of them," and blindly accept it. I'd witnessed proof, but it wasn't enough. He'd let himself be run over by a car, but it wasn't enough.

  He stabbed himself in front of me one evening ---nailed his hand to a table with a kitchen knife while I threw up quietly in the corner. By the time I'd finished emptying my stomach into a bucket, he'd pulled the knife out, freed his hand, and was well on his way to recovery.

  Self-repairing flesh and blood ate up the hole in his hand like magic while I watched.

  I didn't have to come up with too out-there an excuse for Mrs. Hudson; the blade had penetrated Adam's hand but not gone too far into the wood. "I dropped a knife, blade down," did the trick. Not that she came into my room that often; she trusted me to keep things clean and tidy, and my army status afforded me the privacy given by respectful observers---"I don't want to interfere in your work, dear. I know you're supporting king and country." She worshipped George and despised his profligate brother and that woman.

  "If she had a daughter, I'd suspect she wanted me to marry into her family," I commented to Adam one evening. My rooms---a small sitting room and even smaller bedroom---were at the opposite side of the house from Mrs. Hudson's.

  She gave her tenants---me and another gentleman of approximately the same age---all the privacy we desired. She was the perfect landlady. Fussing and feeding us at mealtimes was as far as her interference went.

  I appreciated that, but it scared me. I knew there was no chance of anyone walking in on Adam and me even before the time we began getting up to anything. After that car "accident," after that very deliberate kiss, there was a tension between us I would have been a fool to deny, just as I would have been foolish to deny we were destined to go somewhere. It couldn't stop at one stupid kiss.

  I'd been nervous of bringing Adam here but had gotten over those nerves enough to invite him across the threshold. It was either that or let him remain loose on the streets. Lord knew how many cars he'd throw himself under just for jolly. I wondered if he'd ever read Anna Karenina. I hoped not. He might get some nasty ideas.

  "You must have wondered why you only ever see me at night," Adam said one evening.

  My sitting room consisted of a two-seater sofa, an armchair, a table---the one he'd speared his hand to---and various knick-knacks. It was the sofa Adam commandeered. From the moment he'd first entered the room, he marked it as his by planting his body firmly on it. There was room for me too, a fact he pointed out many a time, patting the seat beside him like an invitation, but I favoured the armchair, which was where I sat now.

  "I assumed it was because I'm at work all day." Tapping the arm rest, I couldn't bring myself to look up at Adam. I'd seen amazing things, wrought by his hand, but the most difficult thing to see was the look in his eyes when he stared straight at me. At times like that, I knew he was thinking of the kiss. I knew he wanted there to be another. As did I.

  "No, Nathan, it's not because you're at work all day. It's because I'd burst into flames if I went out in daylight."

  I snorted with laughter. "Come on; couldn't you think of a better excuse than that? A more realistic one?"

  "You know, it's our greatest protection, that people don't believe
we exist. It does rather cause a few problems when we want to reveal ourselves, though."

  "There are more of you?" At last I looked at him, raising my eyebrows in incredulity.

  "Of course. You didn't think I was the only one in the world, did you?"

  "I'm not even sure you are one of them. No matter how much you'd like to pretend."

  "When was the last time you saw a normal man put a knife through his hand?"

  "I've seen a lot of things. Things that would make your hair curl. I didn't get my stripes through sitting behind a desk all through the war, you know."

  "I'm sure. But that knife blade could have been a bayonet, and I'd have mended just as quickly. All right, maybe not quite that fast; the severity of the wound does have an effect on recovery time, but blade, bullet, you name it. I don't suppose you have a gun?"

  "Yes, I do, and no, you're not using it."

  "Only on myself."

  "No. I dread to think what Mrs. Hudson would think about having to scrub blood and brain matter out of her favourite rugs."

  "Oh; not that you're worried about me or anything?"

  "You seem like the kind of man who's more than capable of taking care of himself," I shot back, trying and failing not to smirk. I didn't know what it was about Adam, but he had a talent for flirting his way out of difficult situations and conversations. Here we were, talking about him being impossible to kill, and we were joking about getting bloodstains out of the carpeting.

  "Besides---" he shrugged, and leaned further back into the sofa "---I wouldn't shoot myself in the head anyway; that would be foolish."

  "Oh, quite. Yes. I can see how throwing yourself in front of a car and sticking a knife in your own hand would be far more mature than shooting yourself in the head."

  "The brain matter might stain your wallpaper anyway---"

  "What?" I'd been thinking the same thing, but in an almost half-hearted way. He spoke like it was a valid option.

  "Ha!" Adam burst out laughing. "I can't believe I got you on that one. No, seriously. The brain matter would grow back eventually, but until it did, I would be, for all intents and purposes, a vegetable, and I'd need someone else to look after me until my faculties returned. Day and night. Hopefully through the day, I'd be secreted somewhere I wouldn't come to any harm, because the last thing you need when your brains have been blown out is to get sunburn as well, am I right?"

  I merely gaped at him, a reaction which he took for encouragement.

  "Nah; I'd try it in a limb. In the stomach, if you wanted a bit of drama. Messy drama, but interesting nonetheless?"

  "No. No, thank you. There'll be no shooting in this house. I dread to think what my landlady would---"

  "Outside, then? Mind you, if anyone overhears, it could lead to trouble."

  "You think?"

  "Only kidding. You've seen enough evidence, haven't you? Look." Adam adjusted his posture yet again, leaning forward, arms on his knees, gazing at me intently. "I wasn't breathing after I let myself be run over. You know that. You weren't imagining it. I'm not breathing now. Want to listen?" He made as if to pull his shirt open, but I waved away the notion---reluctantly, I had to admit. "You watched my hand heal itself in minutes. In between retching, of course, but how did you explain that one?"

  "I emptied the bucket into the toilet outside and told Mrs. Hudson I'd picked up a touch of food poisoning at work. Anyway, look, Adam, I don't know what I saw, but..."

  "Oh, it always goes like this." He threw up his hands and slumped back on the sofa. "I really don't know why the others spend so much time hiding when no one believes me when I do confess. It's like...it's like being...well, you know." He winked at me. "That other thing that we both are that you don't like to talk about." He avoided saying the word but made it pretty damn obvious what he referred to.

  And I didn't deny it.

  "The others?" I repeated, concentrating on the possibility of Adam having associates.

  "Yes, Nathan---others. I've already pointed out that you can't possibly think I'm the only one of my kind in the world. We help each other out occasionally."

  "How?"

  "Providing places to stay, that kind of thing."

  "Where do you live?"

  "I don't live at all if you want to be pedantic about it, but I move around. Just now, I'm bunking with a friend of mine, called Will. Exactly the same as me in all respects, if you follow me..."

  A wide grin, and against my better judgement, I found myself looking for fangs. Silly of me; I didn't want to believe it, but then again, after everything I'd seen...

  "Not that we've ever, well, you know. We're not well-suited. He's very staid. Studious. Bit boring, to be honest. Insists on doing the right thing."

  "And you don't?"

  "Clearly."

  "If you're so unalike, why do you live or stay with this person? William, did you say?"

  "Will. You must, if you ever meet, call him Will. He insists on it. Someone called him Billy once, and..." Adam fake-shuddered. At least, I hoped it was fake. "Anyway, we look after our own. We're in the minority, and sometimes, there are clashes of personalities, but he's ultimately loyal. What's the alternative? Seeing me turn to a pile of cigarette ash like Lot's wife, come daylight?"

  "Salt."

  "Pardon me?"

  "The wife of Lot was turned into a pillar of salt, not cigarette ash."

  "I'm sure that's only because cigarettes weren't invented then."

  "It was because salt is a preservative, and her punishment for looking back with longing was supposed to stand as a remembrance of---"

  "I'm sure that's very interesting to people who aren't trying to tell you they're undead, but given that I am a vampire, like it or not---and yes, that's the word, and I'll say it as many times as necessary to get through to you. Good God, Nathan, why won't you face up to the two things that are staring you in the face?"

  I cleared my throat and, though I knew I'd regret asking, did so anyway. "And what might they be?"

  "One, that I'm not quite human, and two, you want me anyway."

  "I can't do this."

  "Yes, you can." Adam's reply came in an instant. "You already are."

  "We're not..." We weren't actually doing anything; not really. Not yet. Just lying on my bed.

  Fully dressed. Adam had sprung off the sofa and hauled me to my feet, kissing me like his life depended on it.

  His life. Of everything he'd said, that wasn't even the hardest thing to take. It sounded ridiculous, but I attempted to convince myself it was just a joke. He wasn't serious. He hadn't really been run over and survived it; I'd had a few days to convince myself since that it hadn't happened. I hadn't seen him with a blade pinning his hand to a wooden table. I hadn't watch the skin sew itself back together over quickly-mending flesh and other bloody tissue.

  All I knew for certain was that my hands were in his hair as we kissed, and though I gasped for breath occasionally---with half an eye on the door just in case we were discovered---I never heard Adam gasp either. I'd never noticed it before but was now hyperconscious of the fact that he didn't breathe.

  "What?" Adam blinked once or twice when I pulled back, studying him.

  "You don't breathe."

  He never broke a sweat, either. And his skin was cold. Not deathly so; much as he claimed to be a living corpse, he didn't feel like the grave. At most, he felt like a man who'd just walked in from the cold, winter still dusting his skin. His mouth was warm, though, and lust soon melted away any feelings of guilt. I could have died happily after feeling his tongue tangle with mine. The realisation o f this is what I always wanted made me harder still, and Adam grinding against me showed he knew what he did to me. He laughed from time to time---quietly so, respecting my wishes in this one thing---at each new discovery on my part. What it felt like to kiss a man. What it felt like for those kisses to deepen. What it felt like to be pressed against a male body and to be met with only hardness, rather than soft feminine curves, which had n
ever done anything for me.

  Adam was the one to pull away. "If I had any breath left in my body, you'd take it away. You're kissing me like a dying man who's just discovered water."

  "Or poison," I replied, and he frowned.

  "I wish I hadn't said that."

  Adam leaned in to kiss me again, but I whispered a near-silent why against his lips.

  "There's a war on, you know." He was trying to make a joke of it, I could tell, half-smiling and running the tip of his thumb along my jaw, almost tickling. But he failed. There was a sadness in his eyes.

  "Isn't that supposed to be my line?"

  "It's just wartime. The blackout's bloody handy for me for obvious reasons, but it's all about..."

  "What?"

  "Death."

  He wasn't joking now. Usually, he was full of what he claimed were true facts and information about his "kind," as he called them, but that simple syllable clearly discomfited him.

  "We deal with it every day," I said, trying to conjure up some sort of camaraderie, some reassurance we were on the same level.

  "In different ways. You've seen colleagues die, right?"

  I nodded, or tried to. It was awkward, being in this horizontal position, wrapped around another man, but he understood my affirmation.

  "I've seen people die too."

  "Who?"

  "Too many to mention." The hand at the side of my face crept up, fingers tangling in my hair so our postures mirrored each other. In that moment, I felt like he didn't want to let me go. "In war. Of disease. Old age."

  My heart skipped a beat. I wondered if Adam heard it, as he flinched too.

  "Never mind," he said dismissively. "Where were we?"

  The kisses weren't enough. Now that we'd crossed that line of being alone together, indoors, even if the "indoors" were my rented rooms, I couldn't see us stopping there. I didn't want to stop, even if the thought of what lay beyond pseudo-chaste kisses and two fully-clothed men grinding against each other scared the hell out of me.