The elevator doors closed on whatever he needed.
Simon hit 40 and tried to calm his breathing. The phantom burning had spread across his entire left side now, his skin prickling with sympathetic blisters that weren't really there. Charlie was running out of time.
The elevator climbed with agonizing slowness. Twentieth floor. Twenty-fifth. Simon's hands clenched and unclenched.
Thirty-fifth. The pull in his chest had become almost vertical, confirming Charlie was above him.
Thirty-eighth. Almost there.
Fortieth floor.
The doors opened on a service corridor. At the end, a heavy door marked ROOF ACCESS - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. It was secured with an industrial lock, the kind meant to keep people from jumping.
Simon pulled his gun—the one loaded with regular bullets, not silver—and shot the lock twice. The sound echoed in the narrow corridor like thunder.
The lock mechanism sparked, mangled but still holding. The door didn't budge.
"Fuck."
Another wave of Charlie's agony dropped Simon to one knee. The burning sensation had spread to his chest now, his body convinced it was dying despite being safely out of the sun.
No time for finesse.
Simon aimed at the hinges instead. Three shots on the top hinge, the metal shrieking as it gave way. Three on the bottom. The middle hinge bent but held, and Simon kicked the door at the weak point. It toppled outward with a crash.
Blazing golden light poured through the opening.
"Charlie!"
Simon ran across the roof, gravel scattering under his boots. The smell hit him first—sweet and charred, like meat left too long on a grill.
Charlie was curled in a ball against the AC unit, knees to his chest, but the shadow had shrunk to almost nothing. His feet and lower legs stuck out into direct sunlight, the skin blistered and blackening. One arm, wrapped around his shins, was burned from fingertips to elbow. The left side of his face where he'd pressed it against his knees was an angry red, already starting to blister.
His right eye, the one still in shadow, tracked to Simon with disturbing clarity.
"Couldn't jump." Charlie's voice came out as a rasp. "I tried. I'm sorry. My legs wouldn't—I tried to jump but?—"
"That doesn't matter now." Simon was already pulling the UV blanket from his backpack, shaking it out.
"You came." Charlie sounded confused by this, like Simon appearing was more surprising than the sunrise currently cooking him alive. "I thought—you killed them all—why did you come?"
The sunlight was creeping closer, the shadow shrinking by the second. Simon could watch new blisters forming on Charlie's exposed ankle in real time.
"Don't worry about that." He threw the blanket over Charlie, making sure every inch was covered. The moment his hands made contact, Charlie went completely still. Not tense, but calm in a way that made no sense given the circumstances.
Simon scooped him up, blanket and all. Charlie weighed nothing. The burned parts of his body were rigid, but he curled into Simon's chest with disturbing trust, face pressed against his neck.
"I couldn't jump," Charlie mumbled against his throat, still apologizing. "My body wouldn't let me."
"Stop apologizing." Simon headed for the ruined door, moving fast but careful not to jostle Charlie's burns.
"I ran up but couldn't get down. Isn't that stupid?" A broken laugh. "World's most useless vampire."
Simon kicked the fallen door out of his way and plunged into the blessed darkness of the stairwell. He should put Charlie down now. The immediate danger had passed. But Charlie was shaking under the blanket, little tremors that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than pain.
"How did you find me?" Charlie's head poked out of the blanket, breath hot against Simon's neck. Too close to where his pulse beat.
Simon didn't answer. How could he explain the pull in his chest, the certainty that had led him here? The way Charlie's pain had felt like his own?
