Dax was back pretty quickly, and we sat in silence, watching Tara sleep with only a few words between us. It was around 1:30 when Jamie was awake enough to check on Tara himself. I watched him carefully, even though I realized he’d been doing this since before the turn of the last century. Still, I didn’t want him collapsing on my watch. He said she was healing nicely, but it wasn’t clear yet whether or not we’d acted in time, and I nodded, though it didn’t really make all that much sense to me. I didn’t quite understand how she could hold on for this long, be healed, and still potentially expire.
Jamie went back to sleep, and I started to nod off. “Hey, Cass?” Dax said, shaking me lightly. “Why don’t you go back to your apartment for an hour or two and rest? I’m really not tired, but you’re not going to be any good to anyone if you’re exhausted.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I realized he was right. “Do you have your cell?” I asked.
“Yeah. Give me your number, and I’ll call you if something changes.”
Glad he’d thought to grab his phone when he went back to shower, I gave him my number and punched mine into his before I staggered out the door.
My bed welcomed me home like a mother and her long lost child, and I was asleep in minutes. I knew my alarm, which I’d set for 4:00, would go off way too soon, but two hours was better than nothing. I dreamt of Mina and Bonnie, of how they’d tricked me, and when I awoke to the sound of “Radar” on my iPhone, I was angry. I did a quicker version of my morning routine, and went to the kitchen to make some more coffee before I headed back.
When I opened the trashcan to put the used K-cups in, I noticed Aaron’s shirt was in there. As macabre as it seems, I reached in and picked it up for some reason. I remembered that my sister had gotten him this shirt recently, that she loved it, and even though I was pretty certain he wasn’t too big of a fan of lavender, he wore it because she liked it. The whole front of it was coated in blood. It had dried hours ago so the fabric was stiff and rusty flakes fell off whenever I moved it. “This is my fault,” I muttered, dropping it back into the trash and moving to the sink to wash my hands. I’d allowed Mina and Bonnie to use me in such a way that a lot of people had suffered, bled, and if Tara didn’t make it, died, because I wasn’t sure of my own identity.
Thinking about that made me sad, but just like the dream I’d awoken from, it also made me angry. It made me determined. I needed to find out who was behind this, how they were manipulating the other Vampires, assuming that’s what was happening, and put a stop to it. Most importantly, I needed to make sure they never manipulated me again.
Jamie was up when I got back to the operating room. I crossed the room quickly, wanting to hear what he had to say about Tara now. He was feeling around on her neck, and the expression on his face told me it wasn’t quite what he was hoping for. “I’m still feeling some inconsistencies in the healing here,” he said quietly. “I’m going to see if I can fix it, but it’s probably going to wipe me out.”
“Okay. Is there anything we can do?” I asked. Dax was standing at the foot of the bed now, having hopped up when I came in.
“No, just help me get back over there if I can’t make it on my own,” the doctor replied gesturing at the bed. “Cale is here now, so if something does happen, you can call him. He doesn’t know about our little experiment though.”
I nodded in understanding and watched Jamie carefully while he manipulated whatever it was he was trying to do in Tara’s neck. I thought it was sort of like watching a device that is only powered to about twenty percent try to charge another device. He was depleted really quickly, and by the time he finally pulled his hands off of her, Dax and I both had ahold of him. “I’m not sure that fixed it,” he muttered as we moved him back toward the bed. “I hope so.”
“Me, too,” I said, helping him up onto the mattress. “Do you need anything.”
“Sleep,” he said, yawning. Dax pulled the sheet up and I tucked him in, patting him on the arm like he was a child.
Tara’s heartbeat seemed slower to me then than it had when I’d been there earlier. I’d hear it reverberate around the room through the monitor, and then it seemed like half a minute sometimes before it would thump again.
“Seems slow, doesn’t it?” Dax asked as we both sat back down.
“I think so.” I knew there was nothing I could do, though. I crossed my knees and tried counting between beats.
I’d been doing that for at least half an hour before Dax said, “Oh, your boyfriend came by while you were gone. I told him you were taking a nap, and he said he’d come back later.”
“Oh.” I turned and looked at him and then nodded, surprised but happy. At least Brandon was concerned about me still, even if he was angry or upset or whatever else he was. We returned to our silence for a long time before I asked, “So… what was your first encounter like? Back in California?”
Dax looked a little caught off guard, like he hadn’t expected me to ask that question. “Intense,” he replied. I nodded, and he cleared his throat, as if he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to talk about it or not. “I, uh, used to be a park ranger at Angeles State Park, near Los Angeles.” I nodded, having some idea where the park was. “I was doing my usual thing, sitting in the cabin and manning the radio one night—I guess it wasn’t really that long ago. Seems like a million years ago. And I just had this feeling, like something was wrong. My grandma always talked about Vampire Hunters and Vampires, and we all thought she was a little kooky, but it turns out she was right, I guess. Anyway, I decided to go do a quick patrol, and I came across this girl in the road. She probably wasn’t much younger than you. And there was this horrible monster on top of her. White skin, long, black, scraggly hair. I got out to try to help her, and the thing ran off.”