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“Nate. You’ve got to wake—”
“I can’t stay anymore. She’s dead…mahmenescaped, but she’s dead… can you help me… take me… with you…”
He started crying in his sleep, the tears squeezing out of his lockeddown lids. “They hurt me… my stomach this time… help me… the humans won’t stop…”
As horror dawned on her and squeezed the air out of her lungs, Nalla tried to soothe him with touch. “You need to wake up, Nate, you’re safe—”
“Not… safe… humans won’t let us go… the men in white coats are going to kill me.”
All at once, his halting words melded with stories she had heard, of vampires taken by humans into labs and experimented on, viruses and diseases like cancer and Ebola and polio injected into them, their organs removed or dissected, their bodies violated in too many ways to contemplate.
There was no way someone dreamed of this randomly.
No way.
Trying to sharpen her voice, she said, “Nate, you’re not in the lab. You’re in your basement, under the cabin, on your property. You’re safe and you’re with me, Nalla.” She stroked his muscled forearm desperately. “Can you wake up for me? Nate, please… just wake up…”
With an abrupt spasm, he threw his head back like he was straining at a set of bars, and on his torso, the skull undulated with the movement, the ivy, and the snakes, and the—not clouds, she thought with terror. Gas. She’d gotten it all wrong. The elements of the design that she’d thought emanated to all other parts of him… they weren’t flowing from the skull—oh, God, they represented things forcing their wayintothe eyes and mouth, flooding, choking… bringing pain and suffering.
As he thrashed and kicked, she couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’ll take you with me,” she said in a rush. “I’ll take you out. Here, come with me…”
Her voice broke as she stifled a sob. But at least he stilled.
“You won’t let them hurt me?”
It was a little boy’s voice coming out of a grown male, someone who was powerless begging for mercy.
“No,” she said hoarsely as she blinked away tears, “I won’t let them hurt you. You’re safe, with me. Come away… with me.”
Giving up the fight, Nate curled into her, and she felt him trembling, his huge body shaking so badly, the mattress vibrated.
“Help me…” he whispered. “It hurts…”
Leaning over him, she rubbed his back, her eyes locking on the far wall. Then she looked around the room. She had thought it was neat before; now she saw the space for what it really was: Barren. No pictures or knickknacks, no mementos of vacations taken or fun nights out. Nothing personal, at all.
Because there was nothing personal in his own life.
She pictured him standing apart at the club—and standing apart at festivals and celebrations. If he came to them at all.
How did someone who had seen what he had of cruelty and calculation ever relate to anybody? He must always be jumping a divide when he was interacting with other people, ever on the far side, looking in… because the torture he’d been subjected to had broken something precious within him: His belief that there was kindness in the world that would safeguard a young when they could not safeguard themselves.
Instead, he’d been surrounded by humans who had tortured hismahmenand hurt him, over and over again.
Running her hand over the top of his head, feeling the new growth of his dark hair, she whispered, “Now I understand why you don’t want to talk about yourself—”
With no warning, Nate shoved himself away from her, his arms punching out, his eyes wide open and terrified as they looked at her,and yet didn’t seem to see her at all. And then he pushed himself all the way off the bed and crab-walked backwards into the far corner, keeping that vacant stare on her as if he expected to be flayed alive at any moment.
Her heart pounded and fear struck her in the center of her chest. What if she couldn’t get him to wake up?
“Nate, it’s me. Nalla.”
He was shaking again, his teeth rattling, and he drew his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and holding himself. The way he lowered his head so that most of his face disappeared behind the fortification he’d created with form, only his wide, wary eyes showing, was a young’s way of hunkering down.
He had done this before, she thought. Tried to disappear, while knowing he couldn’t hide from his captors.
“What you must have been through,” she said softly.
And she needed to help him snap out of it, but she had no idea how to get through to him—
