The world was going fuzzy around the edges. My thoughts were starting to slow. I was losing consciousness. After all my struggles to survive, I couldn’t believe this was how I would go.
His face reflected puzzlement. “Why aren’t you healing yourself?”
I wondered what my parents would think of this. Jenna. She’d be so upset that our last conversation ended in an argument.
Fresh pain jolted me back to the present. I screamed as it slammed through my body.
Angry eyes glared down at me. “I don’t know what game you’re playing at, but whatever it is won’t work. Now, fix yourself so we can be off.”
It took effort and wasn’t pretty, but I managed to get the words out. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He cocked his head as his eyes flared with suspicion. “What clan are you?”
I snorted at him. No way was I answering any questions from the man who killed me. It felt good to deny him in this even if it wasn’t much of a rebellion.
“You don’t have to die. Just tell me what I want to know.”
“Wh- What do you mean?” I gasped out.
His face was grim as he reached out, and a cool power danced across my skin, raising goosebumps in its wake. It felt good, the way a wet cloth on a hot summer’s day did. Abruptly, the cool gave way to burning pain, searing through the flesh all the way down to the bone. I screamed, a long, thin sound.
Deep inside, in a sensation I never wanted to experience again, tissue knit together. Breathing got easier and it felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest.
“Now, my answer please,” the vampire said.
I gaped at him. He’d healed me. How had he healed me? Not everything was healed. My body was still broken and hanging by a thread, but whatever he’d done had fixed my lungs, making speaking a lot easier.
“You still have a lot that needs fixing. I would take advantage of the situation before I get impatient.”
I didn’t want to give up my secrets, but I didn’t want to die. I’d seen enough in my life to know that my injuries would kill me if left alone.
“I don’t have a vampire clan.” The words felt odd on my tongue. I wanted to pull them back as soon as they’d left my mouth.
The man looked surprised. It was the first real emotion I’d seen besides anger or predatory interest.
“Impossible. You can’t be more than a few years old.”
“Surprise.” My voice sounded weak to my ears. Even with what he’d done, I wasn’t going to last much longer.
He heard the weakness and shifted to touch me again. I flinched. Whatever he’d done before had hurt, even if it’d helped. The pain had rivaled what the sorcerer had inflicted on me. I was not looking forward to experiencing it again.
“Feel what I do,” he told me.
His power caressed my skin before once again turning to searing heat. This time though, I concentrated, following it with my senses as it swept through looking for the broken bits of me. I saw what it was doing as it forced things to regenerate and then knit together the parts that had been damaged.
Something inside me swelled, rising to meet his, helping where it could. It wasn’t much. My power was so much weaker than his, awkward and fumbling where his was graceful and efficient. Between the two of us, we repaired the damage.
By the time we were done, sweat beaded on my forehead and even the vampire was looking a little ragged around the edges.
When the worst of the damage was healed, his power withdrew. He sat back with a sigh. I took the opportunity to sit up, amazed that I could with only a twinge of pain. This was amazing. It almost made up for getting beat all to hell to learn this skill was in my repertoire. It didn’t make me any more dangerous, but it might make me a lot harder to kill.
I probably couldn’t do a full repair as he had. I was too young for that, but it did up my chances of surviving.
I looked up to find him studying me.
“Your power is extraordinarily weak for a vampire out of her hundred years of service.”
I looked down at the scrapes and cuts I still had. He hadn’t healed any of the superficial stuff, just the life-threatening ones. It meant I had some impressive scrapes and bruises.
