He didn’t flinch from the question, but she’d seen his nightmares, and he knew it. “Bad,” he said. “But vampires don’t react the same way to the chemicals the draug secrete; we don’t get the dream state that Theo was talking about. So we’re awake, and aware, the whole time. Humans … I don’t know what he was dreaming about, Claire. It could have been good. I hope it was good.”
“Have you talked about what it was like? To anyone?” She glanced at Eve, who looked away, lips compressed. Of course he hadn’t. Eve would have been his listener, but there was a gap between them now that they had to shout across. Maybe it was smaller than it had been, but it was still there. “You should, Michael. It must have been horrible.”
“It’s over,” he said. “And I’m dealing. Shane will, too.” Because that’s the guy code, Claire thought in mild disgust. Deal until you break into a million little pieces. “Come on. Let’s go see him.”
She was almost … reluctant, somehow. Not to see Shane, but to see him so weak. But she was relieved to see, as they entered Theo’s ward room with its neat camp beds and sheets hung between, that Shane was one of two patients, and he looked … better. Theo, or someone, had cleaned him up, so he didn’t look like he’d bathed in his own blood anymore. Even his hair was clean, though still damp.
There was a needle in his arm, and an IV stand with blood bags. Claire winced. She knew how much he hated needles.
She held his hand as she sank down in the chair next to him. “Hey,” she said, and leaned over to brush his messy hair off his forehead. His skin was still ivory pale beneath the tan, but no longer that scary paper white. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yes.” He didn’t open his eyes, but he smiled, a little. His hand squeezed hers a little. “You’re here, aren’t you?” That sounded like a blow-off question, but it wasn’t, she realized. There was something else behind it.
“Yes, I’m here, I’m right here,” she said, and kissed his cheek. His face didn’t have the pinprick stings of the draug on it, but she’d seen them on his neck and chest—they’d suspended him in the water with his face up, the better to keep him alive while they … No, she really couldn’t think about it. Not now. “Michael said you—you might have felt what they were doing to you. Did you? Feel it?”
He took a little too long to answer. It might have been weariness, or it might have been a lie. Very hard to tell. “Not so much,” he said. “It was more like I was … dreaming. Or they were making me dream.”
“What kind of dreams?”
“I don’t think—” He opened his eyes and looked at her, just for a second, then closed them again. “Claire, I don’t think I can talk about it right now.”
That … hurt. It hurt a lot. She had a sudden dread that he was going to tell her something awful, like I dreamed I was in love with Monica Morrell and I liked that better. Or maybe … maybe just that he’d had some happy dream that didn’t include her at all. Because she knew, oh yes, that Shane could do better than her; there were taller girls, prettier girls, girls who knew how to flirt and tease and dress for maximum success. She didn’t fool herself about that. She didn’t know why Shane loved her, really.
What if the dream had shown him that he really didn’t need her, after all?
Michael leaned over to her and whispered, “We’re going to leave you two alone, Claire. If you need us, you know we’ll be close.”
She nodded and watched them go; Eve seemed reluctant, and she made a little call me gesture on her way out the door. Claire swallowed through a suddenly desert-dry throat and asked, “Why don’t you want to tell me about it, Shane?”
“It might scare you,” he said. His voice sounded thin, and a little shaky. “Scares the hell out of me.” After a short hesitation, he continued, “Some of it was good. The two of us, we were good, Claire.”
“Us,” she repeated. The fist around her heart let up, just a little. “The two of us?”
“Yeah,” he whispered, and she realized that there were tears forming at the corners of his tight-shut eyes. Tears. She caught her breath and felt a stab of real pain. “I just—it was good, Claire, it was really good, and I didn’t want to—I don’t want to—I don’t know what I—”
He stopped and turned his head away from her, then rolled over on his side.
Hiding from her.
If it was really good, she wanted to ask, why are you crying? But she didn’t, because she couldn’t stand to see him hurt like this. She was overflowing with questions, all kinds of questions, because she couldn’t understand how if something had been good it could do so much harm.
But he wasn’t going to tell her; she knew that.
And maybe, just maybe, he was right that she shouldn’t even ask. Not right now, when it was so fresh and raw, an open wound.
In the end, she snuggled in next to him, her warmth easing his shakes. Just before she drifted off to sleep, she heard him whisper, “Please tell me you’re really here.”
“I’m here,” she whispered back. Her heart ached for him, and she tightened her arms around him. “I’m right here, Shane. Honestly, I am.”
He didn’t answer.
In the morning, Shane seemed … better. Quiet, and with a wary look in his eyes that scared her a little, but he looked good. The red marks on his skin were healing up, and the transfusion seemed to have done a good job of restoring his healthy coloring. Theo had insisted on adding glucose in the last hour, even though Shane had begun griping about having the needle in.
Claire had finally left him, but not alone; Eve had shown up bright and early, coffees in hand and balancing a small tray of baked goods. Shane had accepted the coffee, and had been eyeing the cookies as Claire finally left to visit the incredibly awkward chemical toilets and do what sponge bath she could with shower gel and a bottle of water. She felt better, too, for having done it. She’d slept unbelievably deeply, not moving all night; that had been the deadening effects of the adrenaline draining away, she guessed.
Shane hadn’t said a lot to her this morning, but then, he’d just woken up. He will, she thought. He’ll be himself again today.
She was on her way back to the room when Myrnin stepped out of one of the hallways, saw her, and stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes were wide and black, and his expression tense and cautious. “Claire,” he said. “I hear he is better.” No question who the he was that Myrnin referred to, either.
“No thanks to you at all,” she snapped, and started to bypass him. He got in front of her.
“Claire, I didn’t—you must believe me, I never meant him harm. I thought …”
“You thought wrong, didn’t you? You were willing to let my boyfriend die out there. Now get out of my way.”
“I can’t,” he said softly. “Not until you understand that I did not want him dead. In no way is that true. I believed he was dead already, and I tried to spare you the pain of—”
“Shut up. Just shut up and get out of my way.”
“No!” In a shockingly fast move, he backed her against the wall, hands braced on either side of her head as he leaned in on her. “You know me, Claire. Do you believe me so petty, so … pathetic that I would do this for selfish personal reasons? The draug are not to be played with. You’ve taken huge and violent risks, going back there, and you must understand that I am a vampire. It is not in my nature to be so … careless with my own safety. Not for a single human.”
She stared at him for a long few seconds, and then said, very quietly, “Including me?”
There was a flicker in his expression, a bit of agony, and he pushed off and walked away from her. She’d hurt him. Good. She’d meant to. “Yes,” he finally said, sharply, and rounded on her from a few feet away. “Yes, even you. Stop thinking of me as some … personal tame tiger! I am not, Claire.”