“Melanie!” he called after her, but shedidn’t reply.
He listened as she made her way through thehouse and out the door. She returned a few minutes later with thesheet from the couch and one of the guns.
“The other guns are downstairs,” she said asshe set the rifle against the wall.
Once he saw her again, some of the straineased from his body. “Don’t wander off like that again.”
Melanie frowned at him, but the growing firein his eyes and the set of his jaw silenced her reply. They’d allbeen through enough without her adding more stress, even if shedidn’t mean to.
“I won’t,” she assured him and smiled whenhis shoulders relaxed.
She walked over to Lucy and, careful of herwound, opened the sheet and laid it across her friend.
“None of the water works,” she said. “I’dlike to clean her up.”
“I’ll figure something out,” he assuredher.
She sat on the bed beside him and rested onehand on Lucy’s leg and the other on his knee. “I’m sorry for whathappened to you in there,” she said.
“You didn’t do it.”
“Maybe not, but…” her words trailed off, andshe shrugged. “But I knew what was happening there and did nothingto stop it.”
“What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing as I believedthey were all monsters.” She tore her gaze away from Lucy to focuson him. “Untilyou.”
“Some of us are, but not all.”
“I know that… now. But then…” She shruggedagain. “The only thing I knew then was that I wanted to get free,go to college, and never look back. Ineverwanted to goback there. Turns out, I didn’t have a choice. Do you hate me formy role in all this?”
“I could never hate you,” he saidhonestly.
“But… but my father did horrible things toyou in there. I know he did.”
“Youdidn’t do them. Do you hate mefor what I am?”
“No,” she said and then, with a smile, added,“I could never hate you.”
“Good. Did you know they were going to takeme?”
She recoiled as she vehemently shook herhead. “No! I didn’t know what you were. I didn’t even know he wasstill in the city or following me, which they must have been doing.And if I had known you were a vampire….”
“What?” he prodded when she stoppedspeaking.
“I couldn’t have done that to you. I wouldhave been so angry with you for keeping this from me, and I was,but I couldn’t have handed you over to them.Noonedeserves what happens in there.”
Kyle studied her pale features, the shadowsunder her eyes, and the gauntness of her cheeks. She’d lost weightin there, and he didn’t like the haunted, lost air envelopingher.
“What happened toyouin there?” heasked.
Melanie shifted her attention back to herfriend. “Nothing as bad as what happened to you.”
When he cupped her cheek, her eyes shiftedback to him. “But something bad did happen.”
“I grew up in that place; nothing they did tome this time could be any worse than that.”
And she meant that. The confusion, drugs,interrogations, uncertainty, and starvation she endured, as well asthe week she spent locked in her room, were nothing compared togrowing up in that isolated, desolate place.
