That might work. I opened the double doors and looked inside. It would be uncomfortable, but if I used the clothes to line the crack on the floor and sides, it should be dark enough in there that I wouldn’t burn to a crisp.
Were they trying to kill me or did they just not think of my light allergy? Sondra had struck me as someone who at least had a passing familiarity with vampires so it was hard to believe they wouldn’t realize how dangerous this room was to someone in my condition.
I’d give them an earful tomorrow. Right now, I needed to focus on making my little bed for the day as comfortable and safe as possible.
The blue and white flower-patterned bedspread went onto the closet floor first. I threw all of the pillows in there as well and grabbed a couple of the towels I hadn’t used from the bathroom. My nest ready, I settled back to wait for dawn.
It’s hard describing the feeling of sunrise to someone. The first time I’d experienced a sunrise after my transformation I thought I was dying all over again. It’s not like someone goes ‘lights out’ and then you’re asleep. No, I could feel dawn coming as that burning ball of fire slowly ascended and the moon gave way. It always felt like someone had a hand around my chest, slowly squeezing, the grip getting tighter and tighter the closer to sunrise it got. Fatigue would sneak in, making thoughts and movement slow, like trying to move through molasses. Eventually, I would lose consciousness.
I timed it once. Figured out the precise time of sunrise and then stared at a clock until I passed out. Turned out I didn’t even make it to the technical sunrise, falling asleep about fifteen minutes prior to lights on.
As soon as I felt the first brush of fatigue, I beat a retreat to my closet resting place. I didn’t want to mess something up just because I was too tired to take proper precautions. I tucked the towels against the door and then placed several pillows between myself and the crack. Turning my back to the door, I snuggled down as the sun robbed me of consciousness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WAKING UP WIHTOUT knowing where I was or why I had a crick in my neck was disorienting, made worse when the closet doors were thrown open. Sondra’s puzzled face peered down at me.
“What are you doing in here?”
I blinked up at her, my eyes focusing unerringly on the pulse beating at her neck. My fangs came out. Drool pooled in my mouth.
She sighed and disappeared, returning in moments with a mug full of warm blood.
“Your hunger wouldn’t be as bad if you just took it from the source,” she informed me waspishly.
I didn’t reply, chugging the blood as fast as I could. I gasped as I finished, savoring the taste. One day I wouldn’t be at the mercy of my cravings. No way could anybody go through eternity like this. I was like one of those people with low blood sugar. The moment I started getting hungry I needed a top off. I wanted to be like one of those women who could go hours and hours without thinking about food.
“You know the bed’s perfectly comfortable,” Sondra said, looking disdainfully at the nest I’d made.
“You know I’m a vampire, right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
I gave the windows a meaningful look. She looked at them and then back at me. Understanding was absent from her face.
I sighed. How could she not get it? A vampire’s susceptibility to sunlight was at the core of any vampire movie or book.
“Sunlight and vampires don’t exactly get along.”
She stared at me blankly for a minute. Then she burst into laughter. The kind that involves your whole body and makes the muscles in your stomach hurt. She wrapped her arms around herself and gasped for breath, only to dissolve into peals of laughter as soon as she caught sight of my face again.
I glared.
I stood, belting the robe tightly around me. I’d gone to sleep in it, not wanting to give up its plush comfort.
Holding my head high, I stepped past the cackling werewolf. If she didn’t stop laughing soon, I was going to plant my fist in her stomach. See if she could laugh around that.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she gasped. “It’s just your face. You looked so serious saying that.”
Of course, I was serious. Who would joke about being barbequed?
She sobered up when she got a look at my face. “You’re serious. You actually think the sun will burn you.”
I paused. The way she said that made it seem like my belief was wrong.
“Unless you’re seriously weakened from blood loss or starvation, you won’t go up in flame from the sun,” she said. “It can give you a pretty extreme sunburn, but only in direct light. Besides making you weak and extremely tired, it poses no real threat to your safety, definitely not enough of one for you to be hiding out in closets. As you get older, you’ll even be able to stay up for part of the day.”
Impossible. It was in every myth, every story. The captain and Jerry had been clear about my need to stay out of sunlight. I thought back to what they told me. It was true they had never said anything about it killing me. I assumed, based on everything I’d heard in popular culture and the fact that Jerry only gave me night runs, that it was just something I needed to avoid. If I believed Sondra, it was less about my possible fiery death and more about my inability to stay awake during the day.
