AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Cassidy pushed at him, shook him, yelled for him. “Oh my God, Dominique, wake up!”
Nothing.
With a mighty heave, she rolled him onto his back. Blisters erupted all over his face, along his neck, and across his chest, their edges quickly turning black.
Hysteria clanged against her ribs. The suppressant was gone. He was a comatose, naked vampire sprawled in a poolside lounge on a sunny afternoon. Soon to be ash.
Cassidy’s head spun as she pulled closed his shirt, then snatched at the forgotten towel crammed in between the pillows and spread it over his face and neck. She piled pillows over his groin—where the most painful sunburn in history was taking shape—and did her best to cast as much shade over his legs and feet as possible. This slowed the sun’s ferocious progress, but didn’t stop it. More and more of his still-exposed skin darkened, and wisps of noxious smoke drifted off him everywhere. She had to get him under cover, and fast.
But where? How? Serge lay buried somewhere in the foliage surrounding the alcove, but there was no way she’d be able to dig a grave in time with her bare hands. Drag him into the house? No. That would take too long and cause him too much damage.
But compared to what? Spending the rest of the day out here? Either way, he would die.
A wordless, frustrated scream tore out of her.Get your shit together, Chandler. Think, damn you!Thoughts bolted around her head like frightened rabbits.Oh God oh God oh God…
“What’s going on out here?”
Cassidy jerked around to see Samantha rush into the alcove and come to an abrupt halt, her hand flying to her mouth. “What…is that—?”
“Sam! Help me. We need to get him out of the sun.”
Samantha spun on a bare heel and disappeared. “Back in a sec.”
“No! Where are you going? Help me!” More tears burst from her eyes.
“I am!” Samantha called. Ten seconds later, she was back, carrying a stack of towels, likely everything she could grab out of the cabinet by the pool shower. “Here. Start wrapping. Then we can worry about moving him.”
They made a towel mummy of Dominique. Multiple layers of terrycloth swaddled him, corners strategically tied together. The smoke oozing out between the folds lessened but didn’t stop, and it smelled alarmingly like roasting meat. When they were sure the wrapping would stay more or less in place, Cassidy grabbed him beneath his arms while Samantha tackled the feet.
“Shit, he’s heavy,” she huffed. It was the first time Cassidy had heard her friend swear.
Stumbling and tripping, they carried and dragged his limp body to the back door of the guesthouse, which was the closest entrance to an interior space. There, they maneuvered him into a tiny blue-and-white-tiled bathroom with only one small window high up the wall. “I’ll get the shutters,” Samantha said, rushing back out. Moments later, the accordion storm shutters attached to the outside of the window rattled into place, plunging the room into a crypt-like gloom.
Cassidy turned on the vanity light. Smoke had stopped puffing out of the mummy the moment they had moved him inside, so she decided to risk unwrapping him a little. Though she braced herself, she wasn’t prepared for what she found. The oozing blisters…those were the “mild” injuries. His hands and feet weren’t blistered anymore—they were charred. And his face—Oh my God!—his face looked like it had been planted in a bed of red-hot coals. His fangs were out, thinned lips pulled back in an agonized grimace, his nose and one ear blackened. One of his eyes was swollen shut. The other was shrunken and cloudy.
Cassidy didn’t breathe. She stared at what should be a corpse. Tiny changes seemed to be happening, supernatural cells struggling to repair themselves, but she couldn’t be sure. The only thing thatwassure was that there were no flakes of glittering ash coming off him—he wasn’t disintegrating. He would—God help him—wake up tonight.
“I’m so, so sorry, my love,” she whispered, and carefully kissed the relatively undamaged top of his head. Covering him back up, she prayed that the bit of light creeping around the shutters for the rest of the day wouldn’t be too much for him.
Samantha appeared in the doorway. She had shuttered the other windows as well and now wiped at the sweat on her brow. Strands of her long, golden hair clung to her flushed face. “What happened out there?”
“The death of a dream, Sam.” Cassidy stood and leaned on the vanity. The oversize, off-the-shoulder blouse she had hurriedly pulled back on only just covered her crotch. She tugged at it a little, gave up. “He woke up when, well”—she indicated her state of undress—“he woke up. The suppressant stopped working. He was totally himself.” She glanced at the motionless heap of towels on the floor. “He still is.”
Samantha’s eyes glistened. “So he can never be awake during the day and know how special that is for him, can he?”
Cassidy stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She opened her mouth to speak, but there were no words. All she could do was fall into her friend’s arms and sob.
12
Consequences
J’aivulesoleil!
That was the only thought that kept Dominique from losing his mind the following evening, when he awoke looking and feeling like a patient in a burn-care ICU.
I have seen the sun!
True, it was only a moment, a singular, sublime moment of feeling the sun’s warmth on his face—before it turned into a kiss from a blast furnace—but that moment would be seared into his mind for years, decades, centuries. And the woman who took him there—the one he thought he couldn’t possibly love any more—her he would worship for the rest of time.
