Keeping her alive was his mission now.
Maya was cold. A shiver racked her frame. She tried to curl into a ball to preserve her body’s heat, but all her muscles felt stiff and unresponsive to her brain’s demand. She felt paralyzed. When she sensed a movement next to her, she realized she lay on a bed. As the mattress depressed next to her, heat reached her. Whoever or whatever was next to her provided warmth, and she craved it.
Trying to move the millstone holding down her chest, she fought against the heaviness of her body and shifted herself ever so slightly to her left. As if the heat source knew what she wanted, it came closer and a moment later it pressed against her side. Suddenly warmth flooded into her, and she let out a content sigh.
But the moment she tried to take a deep breath, her lungs stung from the effort and a bolt of pain shot through her body. Pressure built in her lungs as they were unable to expel the carbon dioxide. She felt like drowning.
She opened her mouth to force herself to cough, to push out the used air, but before she could do so, she felt a hand at her mouth holding it open. Then drops of warm liquid hit her tongue. She wanted to scream.
But all she could do was to swallow before the liquid would drown her.
The more she swallowed, the more liquid entered her mouth. She couldn’t taste anything, but she knew it wasn’t water. It was thicker, almost creamy. And to her surprise it eased the pressure in her chest.
Then she knew it was medicine. Somebody was giving her medicine. So she opened wider and arched toward the source of the liquid.
“Slowly, slowly,” a deep voice cautioned.
Softness touched her lips. Warm skin – and from it came the liquid that eased her body’s pain. She didn’t care what it was, didn’t even want to speculate. All she knew was it was helping. Greedily, she sucked, wanting more and more before somebody would deny her and stop the flow. She had to get enough before there was no more.
The more she drank, the more aware she became of her own body and the source of heat next to her, the way it cradled her, protected her.
Now that the burning pain in her body started to subside, she recognized the heat source as a man’s body, a very large man’s body. Who was he?
Her eyelids felt as heavy as an iron door. Nevertheless, she tried to lift them. She succeeded just enough to see the shape of the man beside her – the man whose wrist she was still drinking from.
Shock coursed through her. He hadn’t given her medicine – he’d fed her his blood!
Maya tried to pull away from him, but her body wouldn’t obey. It stayed close to his broad chest that warmed her and his wrist that fed her. She forced herself to lift her lids further to look at his face and wished she hadn’t.
With horror, she stared at his disfigured profile with an ugly scar from his chin to his ear. At this close a distance, it throbbed menacingly.
His long brown hair was swept back in a ponytail. Some strands had struggled free of it and framed his square face.
She squeezed her eyes shut. No – she was not lying in bed being fed blood by a monster. It had to be a bizarre dream. There was no other explanation. More than eighty hours of work a week could do that to anybody. Long shifts, then nights of calls after calls would bring anybody to the point of complete and utter exhaustion. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened to her.
During her three-year-residency, she’d broken down a couple of times and had needed twenty-four hours of sleep to recover. She would call in sick tomorrow. Yes, her body was definitely telling her she needed rest.
If she was making up bloodsucking monsters, then it was time for a little downtime.
She sighed deeply. Now that she’d made the decision to take a day off, she suddenly felt better – it certainly couldn’t be because she still felt the warm body of the scarred man pressed against her. No monster would have this kind of calming effect on her. And for that matter, maybe it was time to change her movie rentals to romantic comedies rather than horror flicks – since clearly she couldn’t handle the latter.
Had she watched a romantic comedy on the weekend rather than the latest B-movie in the horror genre, surely the man in her dream would have been handsome and not so horribly disfigured. Maya shuddered at the memory of the man’s face.
Four
“How is she?” Samson’s voice came from the door.
Gabriel looked up from Maya’s sleeping body and gestured for Samson to come in. He’d let her keep her clothes, too worried that once she woke and found herself undressed, her panic would be even greater.
She would have enough to deal with – thinking a stranger had seen her naked wouldn’t help the situation. “She has a chance now.”
“You look tired. Here, I brought you some blood. You need to replenish.” Samson handed him two bottles of red liquid.
Gabriel looked at the labels – O negative – and made an appreciative grunt. “The good stuff.”
“Only the best for my people. Listen, I wanted to apologize for what happened earlier. But you know what I think about creating new vampires against their will. And I thought you felt the same.”
Gabriel looked at him and saw the concern in his boss’ eyes. “I do.
But there are times when we have no choice about what to do. It’s a life
