Gabriel studied my lack of response. The shaking stopped, and I just stayed there, barely blinking.
Blood still ran down the walls. Searing pain gripped my body, my muscles locking up from lack of water. My fingertips started to go numb.
Gabriel was there, and then he wasn’t. My hair flitted across my face, the only proof I had that he had been with me at all. His absence was like icy water, shocking my senses into full awareness.
It felt as if the manacles were still chaining me to the ground, but finally, I was able to sit up and get off the bed. My dogs paced the room, whining worriedly.
“Gabriel?” I said hesitantly.
Why would he leave me? Where did he go?
I left the bedroom and searched the house, pretending the blood on the walls didn’t exist.
No one was there. Not even Inola and Thomas.
My throat was constricting, and breathing became difficult. Rational thought left me. The deep-rooted instinct inside of me that told me Gabriel was still there became buried.
I went to the front door and tried to open it, but it was locked from the outside. So was the back door. I pulled aside the front drapes to look for a car, but it was too black out to see. I turned the porch lights on, but the light was weak, giving no evidence of a vehicle.
The red on the walls shifted into something far worse. Pure darkness. The silver-eyed monster had left me without a trace of light, trapped like an animal.
And now Gabriel had left me in the same way.
“Gabriel!” I screamed.
No answer.
“Please, Gabriel. I can’t see. . . .”
Silence.
Blindly, I felt my way toward the kitchen. It took a few minutes, but my fingers finally touched the phone hanging on the kitchen wall. I knew Gabriel’s phone number by heart; I had spent a lot of time staring at his contact information during our three months apart.
It took several tries. My fingers were shaking bad enough that I dropped the phone twice. I dialed wrong six times because I couldn’t see the buttons.
The phone went straight to voicemail. And it was hearing his voice, but him not being there, that finally allowed my burning eyes to shed tears. I dropped to my knees and sobbed.
Immediately, he was there. My sight returned as soon as his arms went around me.
“I didn’t want to leave you. I am so sorry. Thomas said it was the only way to get you to let it out,” Gabriel said, his voice raw with agony.
He didn’t try to stop me when I weakly pushed him away. I brought my hand up and slapped him as hard as I could across his cheek.
The action didn’t seem to faze him; he only caressed my face and pulled me onto his lap.
I cried in Gabriel’s arms for two hours straight. I wasn’t strong enough like I had thought, but Gabriel shared with me his unending strength.
When I was done crying, I knew I wanted nothing more than to be connected to Gabriel once again after I got my blood transfusion.
***
My dream was not my own that night.
I knew what it felt like to be inside someone else’s dream. But of course, this dream was not Gabriel’s.
It was Elias’s.
The dream wavered around the edges and flickered precariously, warning me that the blood connection with Elias was thin and already close to fading completely.
It was nighttime, the moon full and glowing in the sky. I was terrified of Elias when I saw him, and I hid from him as he walked down a street. There were houses around, but they were so far apart it was likely the owners never even made friends with their neighbors.
I watched Elias as he looked around, something on his face I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Finally, I realized it was the face of a lion stalking its prey.
He was hunting.
His head tilted to the side, hearing something I could not. He went toward one of the houses, slinking into the backyard. I ran after him, confident now I couldn’t be seen.
“Please . . . help me,” a weak voice said.
Shock tore through me. A girl no more than eight years old was sprawled on the grass under a large tree. Her left leg stuck out at an odd angle. Drying blood covered one side of her face and neck where the skin had been scraped raw, and she was holding her torso as if she couldn’t breathe.
But her injuries were not what surprised me.
The girl looked very similar to a young Lucy. She was not identical, but she could have easily been mistaken for a sister of Lucy and Gabriel. Her hair was an inky black, tangled and matted with clumps of dirt. Her eyes were green, much darker than Lucy and Gabriel’s, and they were flecked with golden specks. Her nose was exactly the same as Lucy’s, but her mouth was smaller, and her cheekbones were a little higher.
Elias did not move. He stared down at her in almost horror.
The girl did not seem to be frightened of the pale stranger whose eyes shone like the light of the moon.
“Help me. Please h-help me.”
Elias still did not move, but he finally spoke. “What happened to you? Where are your parents?”
The little girl looked up at the tree. “My dad had to go out of town today. I told him I was big enough to stay by myself. I was flying a kite, and it got stuck in the tree. I c-climbed the tree, but I fell.”
Elias looked to the pink kite in the tree. It was way too high up for a child to climb and retrieve.
He crouched down to her. “How long have you been out here?”
“S-Since afternoon. I’ve been trying to scream for help. . . .” She winced in pain, tears streaking her cheeks. “But it’s h-hard to breathe.”
Elias knelt down next to the girl, his movements slow. Gentle. He touched her side
