My Precious Nightmare

8: It's a Pity He's Pretty

She frowned. Yeah, she should be afraid.

Yet the bean bag suddenly seemed like a mother's nest, drawing her in, and the blanket so soft and warm. The calm couldn't be shaken off, even as her thoughts began to scream and bang against the sides of her head.

But oh...he was beautiful. Exotic, thick lashed, sharp cheekbones and equally sharp, almond eyes that looked so sad when he finally looked back up at her, as though to ask for forgiveness.

"I am so, so deeply sorry," said his pretty mouth.

So sad. So pretty. Soft like a lilly. She'd never seen a man's mouth this close.

"It's okay. You didn't mean to," she said, even when she meant to ask why she hadn't died. But of course she hadn't died. Right?

He glanced up at her, brow wrinkled in disbelief. "Well, yes, I'm not conscious when it happens, but..." He glanced at the mug she drank, then back up at her face. "It must be the shock still. Don't worry, I'm in complete control now. I won't hurt you. I never intended to hurt you."

Lea just smiled.

And he frowned.

"Perhaps I put too much..." he shook his head and the action came across thick with disappointment. "I should have accounted for that. Less blood, less dilution...idiot." He sighed. Then gestured to her drink. "That should soothe your throat, prevent infection and help it heal faster." He vanished into the kitchen with another surreally fast move. But it was the bang of the pot that finally managed to startle her through the haze of calm. "Sorry! Sorry. Dropped that. Are you feeling feverish? Weak? Tingling in your hands?"

She just blinked and cocked her head. She sniffed the muddy dregs at the bottom of her mug. There was something else there other than cocoa and clove. Something like a health food store or licorice.

He reappeared again with two capsules full of what looked like ground up grass.

"Do you think you can swallow these? They'll help with your blood production."

"A doctor?" She accepted them. A miniature Sky in her head started screaming and she paused. Wait, this wasn't...this was real. She shouldn't just be taking pills from a...Why couldn't she think?

"More of an herbalist. Hospitals are a bad place for me."

"Herbalist vampire." He flinched at the word 'vampire,' but she forgot it quickly and found herself staring at the capsules in her palm and had to struggle to remember why they shouldn't be there. "These iron pills?"

He scoffed, as though she'd ask if they were straight up nails. "Overloading your system with iron won't speed up the process. If anything it would just clog it up. Iron isn't friendly with the digestive tract at all. Nah. These contained concentrates of certain catalysts that lower the energy level necessary for the enzymes involved in blood production to connect. Lower energy means higher rate of reproduction and..." he frowned, having realized he had relaxed too much to the point of sitting back and pushed himself back up to his haunches. "They'll just help. If nothing else they won't hurt. Though you have no reason to believe me."

The pills vanished, swallowed with the rest of her drink. She stared at her empty hand.

He put his hand to her forehead. His fingers were wonderfully warm and soft, with not a trace of the claws she had felt digging into her hair when he had dragged her behind the dumpster.

"No fever. Not really clammy." He took one of her hands from the side of her cup so he could pinch her wrist for her pulse. "Shit, I really put in too much..."

He really was so pretty.

She stared at him as he grew softer and softer. Fuzz all around.

He didn't look back, his beautiful white sprinkled lashes once more spread down over his cheeks as he counted her heart beats.

"Take me home?" Her voice pitched up on the word 'home.' Her heart skipped a beat. Her stomach clenched up to her lungs.

"No. Just while I figure things out and...take care of something." He took the forgotten mug from her hand and set it aside.

"No..." A thin thrill of fear broke through the thick wall of fuzz. "You're gonna eat me?"

His eyes flashed open in alarm.

"No! Well, I might take a bit of your blood—but it's for good reason and I shouldn't threaten your health if I take it with a syringe."

But he already had threatened her health. The world was wavering now. Her vision flickered, even as she fought to stay awake. Unbidden, a weak whimper escaped her.

His eyebrows tilted with pity.

"It's alright, I'll be quick. Don't cry."

Hot tears budded down her cheeks. His hand reached up to brush them aside, and she was startled to finally realize, after being touched and pinched, that his touch was warm. Weren't vampires suppose to be dead?

"You know that string of murders in the news? The ones where the bodies look like they've been mauled by a bear? But, of course, this is the city, there's no bear....It's a vampire....got shot...That's what..." he ducked his chin apologetically, but she barely saw it. Her eyes were closing despite her will. She only heard his ramble in chunks until even that faded it. She thought he might have touched her face again, maybe traced his fingers down the bandages on her throat. Fuzzy warmth swallowed her up to her chin.

Idiot. She was such a colossal, naïve idiot.

'I'm sorry, Sky...for not being meaner. You were right. You were so right.'