Bulletproof (Healer) (24 page)

             
"Thanks for warning me about today," I say but I'm grinning so much that it's impossible to sound angry.

             
He grabs my waist and pulls me onto the bed, I struggle to hold onto the towel. He kisses me, there's a heavy pulse all over my body. "I'm sorry, you're not too mad?" he pouts his lips.             

             
"Of course not," I grin and we kiss. Then I lose the towel, and I can't remember where his clothes went, and he nips at my skin with his sharp fangs. He drinks my blood for a few minutes, letting out breathy cries of thanks then we finish up and it is me exclaiming gratefully.

             
My blood must not be satisfying enough for him because he excuses himself for a bite to eat, the recruits Gabe found in Toulouse. When Maurice leaves, I am empty again. I lie on my bed and try to steady my breathing. Gabe! Rose will send him up to speak to me. I let out a weak cry and throw on some clothes.

             
I pace back and forth. What will I say? So much has changed since I last saw him on that drive. I am more confused than ever about my feelings. Rose's words are spinning like a carrousel in my head. He loves me. Does he love me? What about Claire? Who is she? Does he love her? Does he love me? What about Rose and Dan? Would we end up like them if I allow myself to be sucked into the black hole that is forming in my chest? Does he love me?

             
The sound of footsteps up that narrow staircase tells me I have no more time to contemplate what I'm going to do and I just have to act and be honest with Gabe. It might be the last time I see him if I have my way. I wonder if he will know what Maurice and I were doing before he came here. Will it make him mad?

             
He doesn't knock. There he is. Black hair unwashed, eyes like the most delicious chocolate soufflé. What I feel when I look at him, Rose is right, it's real. "Are you okay?" he says. It seems like an odd way to start the conversation.

             
"Yes," I reply. I’m not. I spent my day donating blood and now I’m terrified of how fast my heart is pounding and perplexed by how beautiful Gabe’s face is in this dazzling bedroom.

             
“I can’t believe you’re letting him touch you, Cassie," Gabe looks genuinely concerned. Could it be that Rose is right? Does he have feelings for me? If he does then he is terrible at showing it. "That's not how it should have been."

             
"What?"

             
"Your first time shouldn't have been with a monster like him," Gabe grits his teeth.

             
"I enjoyed it," I say, crossing my arms across my chest defensively. I don't like the way he is talking down to me. Then I add snappily, “How should it have been?”

             
Gabe sighs loudly, “With someone who cares about you. You only think you enjoy it because vampires can manipulate your emotions. You should be with someone...” his voice trails off and I try not to focus on his unsaid words.

             
"You can't tell me what I do and don't enjoy, Gabe," I say. All our conversations become arguments. We can’t even be friends so how could we be in a relationship? Rose is wrong. We're not like her and Dan. We are dysfunctional.

             
“And what about collection? Did you enjoy that too?” he says snidely.

             
"No," I reply. "But it's what he wants..."

             
This riles Gabe up, “And you
have
to give him what he wants?”

             
I shrug then Gabe continues, annunciating each syllable angrily, “Do you want to know who Claire is, Cassie? Claire was my girlfriend and she was a Miracle Girl just like you. A Healer.”

             
"What?" I am dumbfounded. Is this the truth? Am I not the only person with my condition? A Healer? Everybody told me there had been no similar cases reported. "I don't believe you," I would have found out if there was someone like me.

             
"I don't care," he shrugs. “I’m telling you the truth for once. She was. We were friends all my life, my childhood sweetheart, I was the only person that knew she was different but she did a good job of hiding it, much better than you. Then when we were seventeen she disappeared."

             
I gulp, "Maurice?"

             
"Yup. He ordered somebody to steal her from me like I took you from your family," he says, his eyes fixated to the ground.

             
"What happened?"

             
"I rescued her," he is smiling a little but it doesn't look like a happy smile. They never do with Gabe. They are always tainted and halved by something sinister inside of him. "I found her, drained of her blood. Almost dead."

             
"They said that couldn't happen," I frown. "My blood replicates too quickly."

             
"For now but it gets worse. Collection starts easy but after a few weeks it gets more intense and even a Healer can’t keep up," he says. "Especially once Maurice gets bored of you. He took Claire from me, made her a strange creature that I didn't recognise. She was obsessed with him, completely in love with him and it took me a long time to realise that it wasn't Claire. It wasn’t her fault. Vampires use mind tricks, they can manipulate how you feel and what you think about around them...” That explains how Maurice could rid me of my horrible anxieties and fill the emptiness in my chest.

             
"Where is Claire now?" I fear that she isn't around at all that she died at the hands of Maurice's wrath or from being drained completely and I was facing the same fate.

             
“With her family. They emigrated to America shortly after she went home,” he shrugs.

             
"What? She got home? She’s alive?"

             
"I made a... deal with Maurice. I think I'm the only person who can say they've done that. I begged him to let her go and he did.”

             
“How could he do that? Surely, she told the police about him and what he’s doing here,” I say exasperatedly. It can’t be that easy.

             
Gabe glowers at me for interrupting him, “He knows witches so he erased her memory so she couldn't tell anybody about the things she's seen here," he says and tears are strangling his voice. I don't want to imagine how I would feel watching Gabe cry. He is so stoic, always fighting against the pain and never surrendering to it so to watch his humanity get the better of him would be heart-wrenching.

             
"In exchange?" I'd be a fool to think that Maurice would let Claire go without getting something in return.

             
"That I helped find the next Healer and he gets a sick pleasure out of knowing that my life is destroyed by the fact that the love of my life doesn't know my name anymore and instead I had to search for the next Miracle Girl, the next Claire. You came along surprisingly quickly," he says.

             
I am the next Claire. A replacement whom Gabe can attach his wounded feelings to. He continues, "But I didn't expect you to be so... wow. You’re feisty and you want to live and you’re weird and crazy. You are more than Claire. She was weak. It turns out she didn't really care about me. She jumped at the chance of leaving. She didn't fight for me, for us but you would fight, wouldn't you?"

             
He starts to cry. I move towards him. Touching him seems so foreign. I remember how his hands felt in mine when we pretended to be a couple back in England. Our skin met and it was like a firework. Colourful, kaleidoscopic explosion. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and pull him in close to me. He breaks down and cries into the crevice between my neck and shoulder like a small child. "I'm so sorry, Cassie," he sobs. "I'm sorry."

             
I shush him until he calms down and he pulls his head away to look me in the eyes. "I will save you. I saved her. I can do it again,” he says, putting his hands at either side of my face.

             
"You can't save me, Gabe," I say, replicating his gesture and cupping his face with my hands. His face is scratchy and unshaven.

             
He nods and swallows tears, "I will. Do you remember Paris? The kindness you showed me when I was a drunk bum? It didn't phase you. You saw me at my worst and you kept fighting, kept trying to be my friend while I tried to push you away. I want to fight for you too."

             
"Why did you push me away though?" I ask.

             
"Watching Claire leave...” his breathing is jagged. "Without a memory of who I am was the worst possible pain. It broke me and then I found out about you. I didn't want to believe that you existed. I would have to hand over an innocent girl to Maurice and I'd have to watch you lose everything you are like Claire did. I couldn't bear the thought of getting to know you, falling for those gorgeous blue eyes or the way you see the good in every situation, even in dickheads like me. How could I let myself love you when I knew that you would disappear as soon as we got here?”

             
“I wish I knew that. I wish you’d told me” I said. It would have been easier to handle his standoffish behaviour had I known there was such an honourable reason behind it. "I could have understood. It made me sick thinking that you hated me when I so badly wanted you to like me."

             
"I know but I am too stubborn. I didn’t, I don’t, want to face what I did with Claire again. I couldn't bear it.”

             
"But why does Maurice want my blood, Gabe?" I ask. I am wearying of all the unanswered questions. “What can a Healer do for a vampire?”

             
"Healer blood possesses many… interesting qualities. It's the reason you can survive all those accidents, the reason you never bruise or burn or scar. Your blood has the power to heal any human but more than that if a vampire drinks Healer blood they can walk in the sunlight and no other vampire, no witches or werewolves, can hurt them. When your blood is in his veins, when he drank Claire's blood, Maurice is free from all that once inhibited him. He's completely indestructible."

             
I take a minute to inhale this. Maurice has been wooing me so he could use me as his personal source of immortality. He could open me up like a tap, take a drink and feel stronger than ever before. All the gifts and the sex were to soften me up. I guess my blood must taste sweeter when I'm relaxed but I know, if he chooses so, he could just take it.

             
"Gabe?" I say looking at his sweet face.

             
"Yes?" he looks forlorn. It seems selfish to make him endure this pain again. I should turn him away and help him to not love me. He shouldn't have to lose another person to Maurice's greed.

             
"To answer your question... yes, I would fight," I say. "I couldn't leave you. Not now, not ever."

             
He smiles and nuzzles his face into my shoulder, "I promise you I'll think of a way to save you from this, Bullet." It feels nice to hear him call me that again.

             
There is a silence while we contemplate our next move. Our feelings can no longer be ignored. We are willing to risk our lives to save the other even if we don't understand why. I look at Gabe, what now?

NINETEEN

             
My thoughts turn to Maurice. He's not around so I am not affected by his dizzying mind tricks that turn me into a blithering, ditzy girl. I am angry. I'm afraid. Worried that soon the superficial sex will bore him and soon I will become a zombie, sitting in the surveillance room with wires coming out of my skin. Unable to think and feel. Barely alive.

             
"It makes me feel sick to think of the ways he's touched you," Gabe says, running his finger along my collarbone. He doesn't seem entirely comfortable touching me. It might take some getting used to after spending so much time determined to stay away from me. "I wish I could erase that from your memory."