Narrative P.O.V.
Cain stood out in the hallway, his breathing erratic.
The fangs in his mouth were extending from his gums and poking his bottom lip.
He tried to focus on the smell of disinfectant in the air but the only things his senses had zeroed in on were the scent and sight of her blood.
For the first time in his life, he wasn't resisting the vampiric pull to completely drain someone of their blood.
The urge he was fighting was not one to kill or satisfy hunger, but to satisfy lustful and prurient desires.
It was much stronger than anything he'd felt before.
He heard the doctor walking down the hallway and he turned to face away from him.
"When was the last time?" The doctor asked him as he walked up.
"I don't know what you mean," Cain remarked.
"When did you drink last?"
Cain closed his eyes tightly as he caught another whiff of her blood on his hands, despite his earlier attempts to scrub it away.
"Yesterday morning," he answered.
"You shouldn't be trying to last that long," the doctor scolded. "Especially now that she's here."
"Tell me something," Cain said. "If you relied on the bloodshed of others to survive, how often do you think you'd try to last between feeding?"
The doctor was quiet for a few moments as he took Cain's comment into consideration.
"Jai did as you asked and a new shipment was sent over from the regional hospital in the late afternoon yesterday," the doctor informed him.
"I could go through all the blood in Germany and still want hers," Cain said with a clenched jaw.
It was silent for a minute before the doctor sighed.
"When do your parents return from Australia?" He asked.
"Two weeks."
"Maybe you should convince them to make a visit," the doctor said. "I'm sure they'd want to meet her and I think you need more help than you're willing to admit."
Cain turned around slowly, giving the doctor a glimpse of his darkened eyes and extended canines.
"You think?" He snarled, sarcasm dripping from his words.
The doctor drew in a deep breath before walking past Cain into the examination room where the girl was waiting.
- - -
Ella's P.O.V.
I heard the door open again and I turned to see the doctor return.
He placed the tray that was in his hands on a cart beside the table where I laid.
Cain walked in behind him, looking slightly shaken. His eyes caught mine and I went back to staring at the ceiling.
"Here's something for your headache," the doctor told me as he handed me three pills and a cup of water.
I tried to sit up but I couldn't lift myself off my back without getting light-headed. Cain walked over and placed a hand under my back and helped me sit up.
It was difficult not to choke on the medicine with Cain touching me.
"Alright," the doctor said. "I need you to lay back down for me."
I did so with Cain's help, although I refused to look at him.
The doctor came over as Cain walked around the table to stand at my feet and watch.
I winced as the doctor gave me the injection of anesthesia in my cheek.
"I'm going to give that a second to set in," he said, observing the cut. "Looking at the wound, I think you'll need three or four stitches."
Wonderful, I thought.
A couple of minutes passed as the doctor prepared his tools and the numbing set in.
He only took a few short minutes to stitch up the cut on my cheek before he rubbed ointment over skin and placed a bandage over it.
The doctor helped me sit up as he gave me ointment and bandages of my own.
"Keep the wound clean, but don't wash it with soap until it closes. Make sure you put ointment on it afterwards and keep it bandaged up. This will reduce scarring."
I nodded taking the bandages and tube of ointment from him.
"Here's something for your headache," he said handing me a bottle of pills. "If you start to get bad migraines, let me know and we can get you something stronger. Also, if you're still nauseous in twenty-four hours, I can get you something for that too, just let him know."
He nodded at Cain when he said this. I looked over at Cain to meet his stare and I looked back to the doctor.
"Thank you," I said.
He nodded.
"Thank you for fighting the bastard and staying alive," he said. "I don't like signing death certificates."
I laughed nervously before Cain interjected.
"We should be going now," he said.
Cain took my hand and helped me off the table. When my knees buckled under, he picked me up quickly.
My head was spinning so fast I couldn't see straight.
"I think I'm going to be sick," I said.
Cain looked at the doctor who nodded quickly.
"You know, I think I better go ahead and get you some of that anti-nausea medicine."
He left the room to go get it and I sighed.
I couldn't help but nuzzle my head into the crook of Cain's neck. He smelt divine and I couldn't hold my head up to save my life.
I heard the doctor return and he handed Cain another bottle of pills.
"You'll need to rest for the next two weeks at least," the doctor told me. "That means no excessive movement or long periods of standing and I don't want you reading or writing either. Your brain needs to rest."
I couldn't help but groan internally.
This was going to be the longest two weeks of my life.
"Come back and see me after about fifteen days and we'll go from there," he said.
Cain thanked the doctor for his help before he began to carry me from the room.
We hadn't even made it down the hallway before I had fallen asleep, my head on Cain's shoulder.
- - -
Narrative P.O.V.
"We don't even know who this guy is," Daniel groaned.
The three men had been standing over the dead body of the intruder for quite a while as they formulated a plan of action.
"Well, we bloody well need to find out," Cain said, crossing his arms.
Jai ran a hand along his jaw.
The three cups of coffee he had drank that morning and throughout the day weren't enough to push sleep from his mind.
It was two in the morning when he'd been woken up suddenly, and even fifteen hours later, his workday didn't look like it was ending anytime soon.
"We can run his DNA through the system and see if a match comes back," Daniel suggested.
"Already on it," Jai said, sighing. "It's going to take time though."
"Which is something we don't have," Cain retorted.
He walked around the examination table where the body was laying and he grabbed a scalpel.
Cain used the end to lift the top lip of the corpse and expose the half-extended fangs.
Ella had no clue how close to being dead she was when Cain had come into the room and Jai hoped she'd never find out.
"You don't think he was working with the same guy who kidnapped all those men, do you?" Daniel asked Cain.
"I don't know," Cain answered honestly, putting the scalpel back on the tray. "It's too much of a coincidence to think the two instances could be related but, on the other hand, to think that Vampires were nearly extinct twenty years ago would mean the existence of these men were too rare not to be connected in some way."
It annoyed Daniel how awake and clear-headed Cain was.
Both he and Jai were exhausted, but Cain never slept anyway, so he didn't expect Cain to be the least bit tired. That didn't mean that he wasn't annoyed by it.
"Alright, lets just finish this in the morning," Daniel said. "We'll wait for the DNA test results to come back and go from there."
Both he and Jai were thrilled when Cain made no effort to protest his idea and they left the morgue as quickly as they could before Cain could object.
Cain stood next to the body with his arms crossed as the two men left him alone.
He stared at the unidentified intruder in furious thought.
Who are you? He thought. Why did you try to kill Ella?
Then it dawned on him.
He wasn't trying to kill Ella, he had been trying to kill Cain.
- - -
Ella's P.O.V.
The next five days were some of the most boring I'd ever experienced.
When I wasn't sleeping, I was laying on my back, staring up at the ceiling and counting the grain on the wood paneling in the frame on the bed.
Breakfast was in my room everyday before I woke up in the morning, lunch was delivered by a boy whose name I didn't know because he wouldn't speak to me, and Cain always brought dinner at night.
Sometimes he would drop it off, other times he would stay and chat. It was never for more than a few minutes though.
Sometimes he was talkative, other times he was quiet. Cain's definition of talkative, however, was to give more than one word answers when I would ask him questions. Although, he continuously gave vague answers when I asked him about how the search for my grandfather was going.
Eventually, I was sick of staring at the ceiling and I abandoned the instructions the doctor had given me and I did homework or would read the books that I had borrowed from my grandfather's house.
This offered a fleeting relief from my boredom and I decided one night that I had had enough.
I waited until late, when I was sure everyone had gone to bed. I threw on a hoodie and sweatpants over my pajamas and opened my bedroom door slowly.
The hallway was empty.
I crept out of the room quietly and made my way to the stairs at the bottom of the tower to Cain's office.
I opened the door slowly, cringing when it made a slight creaking noise. After I closed the door, I walked up the stairs into the dark office.
I blindly held my hands out in front of me, looking for the desk with the lamp on it.
When my hands found the desk, I felt around all the papers that were spread across it before I touched the lamp.
"Don't turn that on."
I jumped six feet into the air and screamed so loud I gave myself a headache.
"Jesus Christ, Cain!" I shouted, putting my hand over my chest.
I leaned against the desk, feeling myself getting nauseous.
"You scared the shit out of me," I said breathlessly.
When he didn't answer me, I looked around the room, hoping my eyes had adjusted.
It was still pitch black, even when trying to focus.
"Why are you just sitting up here in the dark?" I asked him incredulously.
"I was sleeping before you woke me up when you opened that door down there," he retorted.
My eyebrows furrowed.
"You were sleeping at your desk?" I asked him, noticing where his voice was coming from.
Cain didn't answer me.
"What are you doing up here?" He asked instead.
I took a deep breath.
"I wanted to see what more you guys had found on my grandfather," I said.
"I've told you we found nothing," he remarked.
"I wanted to see for myself."
Cain was quiet for a few moments.
"Why are you really up here?" He asked me.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
"I've been having a hard time sleeping," I admitted. "I think my concussion is the reason I've been having nightmares. I'm also kind of freaked out to stay in that room by myself at night now."
"Why?"
I let out a breathy laugh.
"When someone breaks into your room in the middle of the night and tries to kill you, it doesn't make you look forward to going back to bed at night."
I heard the desk chair roll backwards as he stood up.
"If it makes you feel any better, the guy wasn't trying to kill you," he said.
The way Cain's voice carried made me think that he was walking around.
"His hands around my neck said differently," I retorted.
"I think you scared him. I don't think he was expecting you."
"Who would have he been expecting?"
"Me," he answered shortly.
"Why would he have been expecting you?" I asked him, my eyebrows furrowing.
"Because it's my room."
I felt the air leave my lungs.
"Why on earth have I been sleeping in your room?" I asked him.
"Because I wanted you to."
His voice was much closer to me than it had been.
"Why?" I asked gently, fearing the answer.
"I'm not sure I can give you a good answer," he said.
Cain's voice was only a foot or so away from me. I could feel him getting closer.
"Well," I said slowly, trying to find words. "You're more than welcome to have it back."
Cain was silent for a few minutes before I felt his hand touch mine, sending my heart into a frenzy.
"Where do you plan on sleeping after that?" He asked me, his voice getting softer as he got closer.
I couldn't speak as his hand traveled up my arm and his other hand went between my arm and hip to rest on the table behind me.
"You're more than welcome to stay with me."
I gulped as he spoke those bold words.
Feeling his hand leave my arm and touch my neck, his thumb trailing my jaw, I drew in a sharp breath.
Cain's nose touched mine slowly and I found myself leaning into him.
I could feel his breath against my lips and my eyes fluttered shut just before he backed away, leaving me to catch myself on the table.
A few silent moments went by as I listened for him.
But there was no sound to be heard.
I reached behind me and turned on the lamp.
He was gone.
And just like that I was alone to wonder what had just happened.
- - -