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“Yes. I’m hurt. I’m very, very hurt. ” I pressed my palm to his cheek. “What has he done to you?” His skin felt so thin I worried it might turn to dust under my fingertips.
“No…food. ”
He’d been starved for nine days.
I let out a sigh of relief that gutted me. I was happy. He was starving to death, and I felt good about it. But compared to the things I imagined being done to him, starvation was a slap on the wrist. They’d literally done nothing to him except leave him alone in the dark.
“You?” he wheezed.
“No. ” I shook my head and grabbed his hand. “We don’t need to talk about that. ”
A tick in his forehead suggested he was trying to frown, but he couldn’t manage the gesture.
“Hurt. ”
“We aren’t going to talk about it. ” With him in this condition, the rage would just eat him from the inside. His worry had probably done a number on him already, but I tried to put myself in his shoes. If I’d been left alone for nine days, fearing the worst, only to find out the worst couldn’t even begin to cover what had happened to my loved one?
He’d want to kill them. And his inability to make it happen would gnaw away at him until he was an empty husk inside, destroyed by his own hatred and thirst for revenge.
No, I wasn’t going to put that on him.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, finding new resolve to lie now. It was a lie I wanted very badly to believe. I sat down beside him, the cold, rough floor shocking my bare legs. I pressed my left side against him and squeezed his hand lightly, trying not to accidentally break any of his bones. “It’s going to be okay,” I repeated, wondering if it might sound more believable a second time.
It didn’t.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” The Doctor scolded from the doorway. “We still have two more stops to make before it’s time for your end of the bargain. ”
“Feed him. ”
“Absolutely out of the question. ”
“Feed him or I won’t show you anything. ”
This gave The Doctor a moment’s pause. I couldn’t make out his features with the light of the hall behind him, but he seemed to be contemplating my words. “You’re sure you want to ask for favors so soon? I’ve told you we’re not yet done. ”
It didn’t matter what he had to show me. I needed to help Holden, and if that meant cashing in whatever chips I had to play here and now, I’d do it.
“Feed him. ”
“I want you to remember this, because I think in a few moments time you’ll feel quite foolish. ”
I’d regretted a lot of things in my life, but getting Holden food wouldn’t be one of them.
Recalling what The Doctor had told me about blood laced with silver, I added, “No tricks. No experiments. You give him good blood. Untainted blood. ”
Through the darkness I saw his smile. “Such a clever girl. ”
Minutes later someone entered the room, giving me and Holden a wide berth, and threw a packet of blood at us. Knowing Holden would be unable to open it himself, I raised the packet to my mouth and gnawed through the sturdy plastic with my regular teeth. I needed blood too, and my fangs weren’t reacting the way they ought to when I was hungry.
My stomach growled in protest as I removed the bag from my mouth without drinking and placed it at Holden’s lips. At first it sat, trembling in my awkward left-handed grip, then he licked the opening. Once the first taste of blood hit his tongue, he drank the contents of the bag with greedy ferocity, yanking it from my hands. I’d thought he was done until he tore the plastic open and began to lick the inside of the bag.
Why hadn’t I thought to do that?
It wasn’t enough to fully restore him, not even close, but as the blood coursed through him his face lost its skull-like visage, his eyes became less black, to the point I could see their natural brown again, and he became more like Holden.
A weaker, less robust version of the vampire I knew and loved, but Holden nevertheless.
“What did they do to you?” he asked once his mouth worked properly. “What happened to your arm?”
