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I had a million questions. The least being, where have you been and who did this to you, but I saved them for later, set the damp towel aside, and tried to help him to his feet.
“No. Stand back.”
“If you try on your own, you’ll fall and break your neck.”
He chuckled weakly, but upon glancing at the stairwell to the basement, he clamped his teeth in a vice and took my hand.
“How about upstairs? It’s more comfortable.” Plus, I knew what awaited him below, and I wasn’t keen on delivering him to a wooden casket.
“No. I require my soil.”
“Your… Okay.” More questions stirred, but I didn’t argue.
Together we maneuvered the basement stairs. I used my phone to guide me, since the subterranean level was an inky abyss. Assisting him into what amounted to a coffin left me physically ill, and a protest formed on my tongue, but I swallowed it.
The effect was instant. Mordecai transitioned from awake to asleep in the blink of an eye. Although the word sleep didn’t quite fit. He entered what I assumed was a coma-like state that eerily mimicked death. I kept waiting for his chest to rise and fall, but it didn’t, and I knew without feeling for it that his heart didn’t beat. In fact, not a single outward sign indicated he was alive. He could have been a corpse, and the thought unnerved me.
A mangled corpse. Under the harsh beam of the flashlight, his face was grisly, and I was reminded of horror movies and spilled acid.
I had the urge to adjust his clothes or fix his hair, so he appeared less disheveled and more like the man I’d been…
Not dating. Were we dating?
Christ, I had no idea. He’d said it was impossible. Yet, despite all I knew, I was more inclined to hang on than let him go. It figured that the first man I felt connected to in a decade happened to be a vampire. I would have laughed under any other circumstance because it sounded like the plot of a novel, a gothic fantasy, but it wasn’t.
What was wrong with me?
Mordecai wasn’t human. He wasn’t dating material. He couldn’t be healed with stitches and bandages.
Christ. He slept in a freaking coffin and subsisted on a diet of blood.
I shivered, teeth chattering, goose bumps pebbling my skin.
Unsure where to put myself, I sat on the cold, unforgiving ground in nothing but underwear and watched him, much like I’d done the previous night. The damp basement sank into my bones. The scent of rotting wood and moldering earth made my nose twitch. My nerves popped and jumped at every unusual sound until I was certain I was losing my mind.
A steady ache in the bottom of my foot reminded me of the shattered ceramic in the front hall and Mordecai’s reaction to the injury.
I smell your blood, he’d said. My control is compromised.
It wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned such weakness and lack of control. Why had he allowed himself to become compromised? Why didn’t he… feed?
More questions upon more questions.
An hour into my vigil, I couldn’t take it. Mordecai’s slack expression and aged features, coupled with his lack of a heartbeat or any other indication of life, convinced me he was dead and gone. I was sharing space with a corpse.
Bordering panic, unable to remain in the basement any longer or peer upon his waxen, damaged face, I promised to return at nightfall and scampered upstairs, desperate for fresh air.
After finding my clothes in the bedroom and cleaning up the broken pottery, I went outside, intent on waiting for the taxi at the end of the driveway, since I hadn’t driven to the mansion the previous night.
The house sat eerily in bleached morning light, taking on a tragic stillness. Birds chirped cheerily in high branches, their few remaining leaves shivering in the wind, rusted gold and burnt sienna.
The air was cold in my lungs, waking me up from what felt like a nightmare.
Hustling down the overgrown drive, I pulled out my phone to arrange a ride. My days were scrambled. When I discovered three missed calls from Dany, another two from my mother, and a handful of texts from Mars, Ziggy, and Poet, I checked the date.
Thursday the twenty-ninth. How was it Thursday? What happened to Tuesday and Wednesday? My obsession over Mordecai was taking its toll.
Referring to my calendar, I winced. I’d missed two house showings, a phone date with my mother—who’d been growing concerned over my mental health—a scheduled ten-man raid on Tuesday night, and DnD on Wednesday.
