“Tom Trainer’s calling for you again. It’s his fourth call tonight. I tried to tell him you weren’t available, but he insisted on holding.”
Sara sighed. “He’s no longer a patient here. Tell him you’d be happy to recommend a doc outside the hospital, but I won’t be speaking to him now or ever.”
The young woman nodded. “Okay.”
Sara walked away from the nurse’s station. She needed to see Gray, see if he was all right and in the room she’d left him in. The hallway was quiet, with most of the patients asleep. She grabbed his chart from the wall and entered his room. When she saw him asleep on the dormitory-style bed, a single white sheet pushed down to his knees and no restraints at his wrists, she sighed with relief.
She watched him for a few moments, the shaft of light from the hallway illuminating his pale face. Her little brother was twenty-seven in real time, but to Sara he still looked like the boy who used to chase her around the house pretending to be a hungry sister-eating dinosaur. Now he was as much a prisoner of the hospital as he was of his mind.
Sara went over to the bed and sat down beside him, laid her perfectly smooth hand over one of his fire-ravaged ones. The fire she’d caused—the fire that had not only destroyed her family, but her brother’s mental and physical health, as well, the summer he’d turned eight.
The fire she’d run from and come out unscathed.
It took every ounce of self-control she had not to lie down beside him and weep against his shoulder. But she didn’t deserve his care, not until he could offer it to her himself. Because the truth was, no matter how hard she worked, she’d never truly atone for her sin until she brought her brother back to life.
2
In the indigo light of predawn, Alexander Roman rounded Hudson Street and came to halt on 11th, sniffing the bitter November air like the animal he’d become. Too many to choose from, he thought, his fangs elongating, vibrating as hunger gnawed at his belly. He’d tried it their way, his brothers. Every hour on the hour, they’d had him feed from the stock at RB Beef Company, one of the many businesses he and his brothers owned and operated in the city. But for Alexander, the desire to find another female, human or vampire, and sink his canines into the sweet spot below her breast, drink deep and long until her heart stopped, was impossibly strong.
His father’s DNA had finally shown up, two hundred years after it had been rooted in his mother’s womb. Was this the kind of Pureblood male—the kind of paven his mother had been forced to lie with to create him? A rabid beast on a mission, pounding into her? If so, Alexander couldn’t help but understand her need to despise him.
Delicate snowflakes fell around him, so white and pure until they hit the ground. The wind picked up and Alexander cocked his head to one side, the scent of blood assaulting his nostrils. Ahhhhh . . . It was human female, a delicacy, easy prey, something he’d rarely allowed himself to sample until the hunger had hit. Now the hunger ruled, and he was off, flying full speed down the snowy street, his fangs curling as his mouth watered.
Then suddenly, halfway down the block, something halted him like a truck jerking on its breaks. Panting, he stood immobile on the sidewalk, an odd tingling sensation building in his fingertips. He shook his hands to get rid of it, then took off running again. But seconds later, midstride, he was hit by a rod of pain that stole the very breath from his lungs.
What the fuck?
His body began to shake and heat up as the pain traveled lightning quick up his wrists, forearms, biceps, and shoulders. Instinctively, he reached out for something to steady himself. His hand clamped around a thick metal pole and he pressed his body against the hard coolness as if it were his lover.
What the hell is happening?
First hunger, now pain.
His head began to pulse like the bends of an accordion and he could feel his pupils shrink until all he could see were shadows. Panic erupted in his chest at the sudden, ugly blindness.
Get home. Get the fuck home now!
From behind him came the steady and familiar hum of the delivery truck that always passed by at this time. Alexander heard the catlike screech of brakes and a male voice call out, “Look at that asshole.”
The yeasty stink of fresh bread filled the air, intermingling with the sound of shared laughter.
“I haven’t been that hammered since the Mets won the play-offs,” another man said. “Careful there, buddy. Don’t piss yourself.”
Blind as a wolf pup, his head pressed against the dirty metal, Alexander hissed, his fangs tingling with a need to strike. If you want to remain alive and intact, keep driving.
“Sleep it off, buddy,” one of them called before hitting the accelerator.
Something that felt like oil snaked down Alexander’s throat. It was thick and purposeful and heading for his lungs. Suddenly there was no air.
No air in. No air out.
The pressure was excruciating, and Alexander dropped to his knees, his hands locking on to either side of his head. This wasn’t another symptom of hunger. This was something altogether different.
His ears felt stuffed with something . . . rags—rags that housed a hundred pissed-off flies. Panting to supply his aching lungs with even a whisper of breath, Alexander started crawling toward what he hoped were the brownstone’s stairs. He knew that most of the brownstones on this block had garden apartments. If he could reach one, he’d have the shelter he needed. Daybreak was near and he was fifteen blocks from home and four blocks from the tunnels.
Daybreak.
Something he’d never feared in all of his two hundred years. Not until this very moment.
It should’ve been impossible, he thought, feeling the edge of the icy stone steps beneath his fingers. It was too soon, too early. But with every shock of pain, every instinct warning him to find shelter, he knew it was true. The change was upon him, and he had only minutes before the sun caught and seared him.
As he scrambled clumsily down the steps, a quick wind picked up, sending a tornado of forgotten winter leaves whirling around him, their sharp, crackled edges stabbing at his sensitive skin. Like the tide rushing toward the shore, his vision came back—but in a binocularlike fashion, tunneled and unfocused. He squinted, caught sight of the minishelter before him. His muscles continued to tremble with small bone-aching seizures as he got to his feet and stumbled down the rest of the stairs and into the covered entryway of the brownstone’s garden apartment.
He needed to get inside. He needed full protection.
On his knees, huddled against the door, he reached up and gripped the handle, then cursed when he found it locked.
What street is this? Where are the tunnels?
Suddenly it hit, like a lightning bolt of fire, angry stabs of sunlight against his skin.
Dawn.
He glanced up. Above him, in the dome of sky, the protective shield of indigo had succumbed to the pale, dire streaks of a lavender and pink sunrise.
Alexander cried out, turned and clawed at the door. With each fiery tear into his skin, his eyes watered, his nose ran, and he tried not to vomit with the acute, lethal pain of it.
It all made sense now. The desperate hunger, the relentless pain. He was being sent through morpho before his time.
One hundred years before his time.
Mouth wide and fangs curled, he cried out into the sunrise, then collapsed in a heap against the door.
Sara walked down West 11th toward her building, pulling her wool coat closed at the neck to keep out the frigid morning air. Exhaustion licked at her mind and her muscles, making her feel like a huge wimp. Fighting for Gray had become commonplace in her daily life, but last night’s episode had drained her will more than she cared to admit. She liked to think of herself as a hard-ass, someone who pushed herself and those around her until the answers revealed themselves—then on to the next mystery. But witnessing Gray’s potential suicide attempt had her wondering for the first time since med school if she might come out of this a failure, if her plan to go back home to Minnesota, return a well and happy Gray to their ever-hopeful mother, was an utterly bullshit objective.