Bulletproof (Healer) (23 page)

             
I feel a pang of sympathy for Angelica. She is horrible but perhaps she didn't start out that way. She might have been young and beautiful and longing for an exciting life like Rose. Maurice is charming, who wouldn't want to work for him? At least that's how it must seem at first but now she has rotted away and now there is nothing redeeming left. Is that what a mortal life with vampires always leads to? Is there no happy ending?  “It's not always horrible, there are a lot of perks but when I see you like this it's hard to think it’s all worth it.”

             
Gabe told me how Rose uses shopping and handsome men to cope with the hardships in her life. She lives in a vicious cycle: needs her job to pay for her happiness but it is her job that drives her to depression.

             
"Can you forgive me for bringing you here? For not telling you?"

             
I nod and clasp her hands in mine. No matter what happens I won't doubt Rose again. I am positive that she is the closest thing I have to a friend on this planet. She may not be able to get me out of this predicament but she is a shoulder to cry on, somebody who can help me put things into perspective, somebody to talk to when I'm feeling low and she understands how conflicted I feel about Maurice, Gabe and my family back at home. "Can you forgive me for being such a bitch?" I say, wiping away the tears which have collected underneath her eyes.

             
She laughs, "I deserve it, Cass. If I had told you, you and Gabe could have tried to run or something."

             
Everything freezes at the mention of his name. "I don't think that was ever an option," I say forlornly. I want night to come. I want to feel numb and make the sadness that I feel whenever I think about Gabe go away. Only Maurice can eradicate those thoughts.

             
"Still bad?"

             
I nod, "Is he still here?"

             
“Yes. He’s recruiting today though," she replies.

             
"What is recruitment?"

             
Rose goes red, "We are sent out to the city to find, well, Maurice's dinner I suppose."

             
"You pick humans to feed him?" I sound shocked but I shouldn't be surprised. A vampire needs human blood to survive. During our nights together Maurice would always nip off for half an hour. He must have been off for a midnight snack.

             
I try not to imagine whose blood had stained his lips, the same lips I shamelessly kiss to help make the sadness dissipate, but I remind myself Maurice needs to be sustained on the naive citizens or he will shrivel up and die. Without blood, a vampire won’t live. Simple as that. I wonder who Gabe will bring back today, what lives will be expended and what they are leaving behind.

             
She nods, "Gabe hates doing it but he said it beats watching you in here like this."

             
"I thought he'd get a kick out of watching me in pain," I snap.

             
Rose frowns, "Sometimes I think we're on the same page but then you say things like that and I realise we couldn't be further apart."

             
"What do you mean?"

             
"Gabe is in
love
with you," she laughs nonchalantly. I widen my eyes and feel a gust of air knocked out of my lungs. She's lying, why would she joke about that when she knows how I feel about him? "He is completely besotted."

             
"He hates me, Rose!"

             
Her laugh gets louder and I itch with frustration, "Are you joking? I can't tell if you're being serious. You can't be serious."

             
"I'm being serious! He loathes me. He can't even bear to touch me and then there's Claire!"

             
The laughing stops. "How do you know about Claire?"

             
"I heard him shout her name in the hotel in Paris," I explain but I feel like I've said too much.

             
"Claire is his ex-girlfriend..." there is evidently more to the story than that. "Trust me, Cassie, Gabe does not hate you. In fact, it's been tearing him apart that you don't want to see him. He feels terrible about everything."

             
"I can't imagine Gabe feeling terrible about anything," I say.

             
"You don't get a moody face like his without being pretty sad. He's a total ass, you don't need me to tell you that, but he is so much more than that," she says, "He is a tortured soul."

             
I gulp. I am frightened to speak now. I am afraid that Rose is lying to me and that she is telling me these things so I will relax more and harvesting my blood will be easier if I’m happy.

             
"I've always had a soft spot for him since he arrived here a few years after me. I thought you saw what I see when I look at him," she says. “More than meets the eye, a heart of gold in a bad boy exterior.”

             
"I do," I choke.

             
She smiles, "Good because he wants to see you tonight. Well, I told him to. I told him you'd want to talk to him."

             
"Tonight? I'll be with Maurice," I say.

             
"Really? Is it that good?" she raises her eyebrow then she adds, "Actually I've had vampire sex, it's pretty amazing and Maurice can be quite hypnotising."

             
"That's for sure," I say, feeling heat in my thighs thinking about him. Sordid images flashing in my head.

             
"Okay so it's amazing. You can give me details later but seriously I'll tell Gabe to see you in the morning. You need to talk," she says.

             
"I don't think that's a good idea," I've barely made any progress, seeing Gabe's face again would only set me back a thousand steps. "Maurice wouldn't like it."

             
Rose sighs, "He's got you wrapped around your little finger."

             
“I don't care if it isn't real, Rose. It feels amazing when I’m with him. I don't want to think about Gabe. It hurts too much," I bite my lips.

             
Rose views me with sceptical eyes. "I need to administer the second phase of collection." She fiddles about with wires and tubes before finding the drip and poking into it my skin. "Cassie? That pain you feel whenever you think about Gabe means so much more than whatever lust you feel when you're with Maurice," Rose whispers, watching the clear liquid flow into me.

             
"Why are you pushing this?" I ask. I already made my mind up. I can't think about Gabe anymore. I care about him deeply. I might even love him but I tried to help him and he made it clear my aid was not wanted. There was nothing at all that I could offer which he wanted to take from me. It might not be real but Maurice wants my body, he wants to have sex with me and he can give me pleasure. It might be fake but I can't spend my whole life brooding over a boy who can't be happy himself never mind make me happy.

             
"Because I see the way you watch each other and you're my friends. You could make him happy. You could bring him out of that darkness and he could make you feel really alive," she says. "But you don't need me to tell you this. You already know and you've thought about it a million times, right? I've been in love too and the good outweighs the bad. I wish I'd never let it go, I don't want you to do the same."

             
"Why did you let it go?"

             
Rose is placing my bag of blood into an incubator. Her hands are shaking. "A couple of years ago, Maurice gave me a week off work so I went back home to visit my brother then I met Dan. He was  American, studying medicine at Oxford, volunteering at Michael's care home. He was so smart and so kind, Cassie, and really sexy too. I spent the whole week with him but I knew I had to come back here. I had no choice and Dan had to go back to America too. He asked me to come back with him. We were totally in love, I even asked Maurice if I could leave. He declined my offer. I haven't seen Dan since."

             
"That's sad," is all I can say.

             
"It is. I miss him everyday and even when I'm with other men, none of them can ever make me feel how I did with Dan. Sometimes I wish I'd never met him because missing him hurts so much but feeling love is definitely worth the pain," she explains. I think she might start crying again but she pulls it together.

             
"It's not the same," I reply. "Gabe and I."

             
"No love story is ever the same," she says, taking my blood out of the incubator and filling up five small cups with the liquid. It is odd watching her work with the substance that should be flowing through my body. I feel detached from it now. "Will you please see him? When Maurice is feeding tonight?"

             
I sigh. I don't think she's going to give up, "Okay." The thought of seeing him sends an ache across my skin. I don't believe what Rose is telling me about Gabe loving me. My feelings are unreciprocated. There is no way he stares at the ceiling and wills the dull ache in his chest away like I do. Whatever torments him, I am not it. But Rose is my friend and if meeting Gabe will give her peace of mind then I'll do it. After that I promise myself I won't subject myself to seeing him again. The sharp edges of his face, the pillowy lips, his menacing eyes that made me so wary when I first met him in Vita.

             
"Good. Time to swap over," Rose says and switches the nutrient drip for the needle which extracts my blood. "It will be okay, Cassie."

             
"I'm stuck here forever, aren't I?"

             
"Who knows. I have a lot of hope that the European vampires will come out the closet, so to speak, like the Americans. Things would be a lot better for us then," she says. "I would be protected, a little more. So would you, and Gabe too."

             
I have read enough about vampires and seen plenty to know that this seems unlikely. The vampires in America are watched, gawked at, bound by new laws and restrictions that a vampire like Maurice doesn't have to worry about. Why would he surrender his ability to do what he wants like a ruler of an undiscovered island? What would he gain? Maybe a few nice hotels to stay in during the day? He would have to sacrifice his recruits for a pasty blood donor volunteer showing up at his house once a week; that's how it works in America at least or at least how the media want it to appear. I don't know if Rose is just being idealistic, stupid or trying to comfort me.

             
Rose spends the rest of the day with me. Swapping the needles, examining my blood and checking it with strange devices but more importantly keeping me company, keeping the sadness at bay. Angelica comes in occasionally to check up on things; Rose puts up a good front, assures her I am feeling fantastic and she has everything under control. She just wants the eyes to stop staring so she can continue to feed me the truths that have been concealed from me over the past few weeks.

             
I want to ask more about Claire but I don't. Maybe I could assemble some courage in my cowardly heart and ask Gabe himself why this ex-girlfriend seems to have such a potent place in his life. What was so special about her? The question is stuck in my throat, I almost ask Rose a thousand times but it won't come out. I think I'm afraid that the answer won't give me any closure, it will just make me feel worse.

             
Then she informs me after the fifth collection is finished that Maurice is awake now. I feel giddy. Excited to be intoxicated by him, to get drunk off his kisses and forget about everything Rose has filled my brain with. I can worry about my feelings for Gabe and the horrible future that awaits me tomorrow. For now, I can release every tight muscle in my body as Maurice's lips obliterate all the pain. So what if it's not real, so what if it's a mind trick and he’s manipulating my feelings? That's a problem for another day. I want to relax.

             
"Go get changed, wash up, you might feel a bit groggy after today," Rose says.

             
"I feel fine," physically I feel no different. My blood has done a fine job of regenerating itself so I still feel life running underneath my skin like an electric current. I am, after all, Miracle Girl.

             
             
EIGHTEEN

             
I return to the Andromeda Suite, shower and wrap a fluffy white towel around my body. When I come out of the ensuite bathroom, Maurice is waiting for me on the bed. "Evening," he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. I feel all my problems evaporate like the tiny droplets of excess water glistening on my skin.  The sadness and anger disappears so quickly that it’s hard to remember it existing in the first place.