Kindred (Kindred, Book 1) (25 page)

Max was sweating slightly and did have a quite a few rips in his shirt, his right sleeve having been completely torn off. There was blood all over his legs, I couldn't help feeling that some of that just might have been a friend's. I shook my head to clear it of that thought. He looked OK, but it was evident that he had been in a furious battle and only recently as some of the marks on his arm and cheek were only just healing over. Maybe Michel had managed to get a few strikes in before he fell after all?

I decided, while their concentration was on each other, I had to take my chance. I slowly opened the door, centimetre by centimetre, by the time I had it wide enough for me to slip through, Alessandra was on one knee, still battling, still looking frighteningly beautiful, but losing ground by the second. I slipped in and ran around the edge of the room to Michel. They didn't even notice the dust softly swirling in my wake.

I knelt down beside his body on the floor and gently reached out to touch him. He was warm. Thank God. And although I couldn't sense an ounce of power rolling off him, I could sense Michel was alive. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but combined with the warmth, I just got a feeling of his presence, no power, just him, like a soul was lurking nearby. Weird doesn't even cover it.

I bent my head down to his ear and softly whispered, “Michel. Wake up. Michel, please don't be gone.” My voice cracked a little then, which kind of sounded strange. If you've ever heard someone whisper and it cracks, you'd understand. Husky and squeaky at the same time. Not attractive.

He didn't stir, but I had the feeling the soul, or whatever the hell it was I could feel, did. I glanced over at Alessandra and Max. Max had taken a hit to the chest, but was succeeding in his struggle not to go down. Alessandra had a look of intense fury on her face, but sweat was marring its perfection. She was working hard and it was taking its toll. I quickly bent back down to Michel and tried again. “Michel, please. Please come back.”

Now, I know what you're probably thinking,
why doesn't she just go and stake the big bad vampire while he's distracted by the bitch?
Unfortunately, it didn't even cross my mind. My sole focus was on Michel and getting him up and back, to me. Staking Max would have been great and all, but staking him without Michel around, was just not. And part of me feared that if I didn't get Michel's essence, soul, thingymajiggy back into his body right now, right this instant, it would all be over. I just couldn't contemplate anything else.

“
Michel, please.” I was begging now and practically crying, my eyes stinging from unshed tears, my throat raw and closing shut from emotion, my hands wringing in my lap. Of course, even if he was awake, he wouldn't have seen the distress on my face, but he could hear it. And luckily, that's all he needed.

“
I am here,
ma douce
.” I let a whimper out, I couldn't help it.

He sat up slowly, no colour in his face, his eyes a little glazed over. Luckily Max was too occupied with Alessandra. I might not like the woman, but I sure as hell could appreciate the effort she was putting in right now, even if it was to save her own arse.

Michel took a deep breath in and his gaze focused on the battle crackling and sizzling in the room, I saw the purple swirls start to swim in his eyes and I almost cried out in relief. Colour came back to his face and he started to glow softly, like when I first met him that day in the bank. He stood slowly to his feet, not because he was still shaky I think, but because he didn't want to call attention to his movements, his eyes were fixed solely on Max.

I stepped away. I wasn't sure what was about to happen, but I didn't think my vision thingy would protect me from a direct hit, or at least, I didn't want to try and see what would happen if I got in the way of Michel's power. Michel raised his hand slowly and I expected to see sparks fly or something, but Max simply fell to his knees. His head turned and a look of utter incredulity spread across his features. So, he'd written Michel off, had he? He countered Michel with his own raised hand, both of them stretched out towards each other, Max's other hand raised towards Alessandra, but she was fading. Her head kept dropping down and she'd jerk it back up and grimace.

Finally when I could stand the tension no longer, Max smiled, flicked his wrists and simply disappeared. What the?

Alessandra immediately crumpled to the floor panting, Michel glanced casually around the room and then stepped over to her, resting a hand on her shoulder. She didn't even try to grab it in a possessive slutty manoeuvre, she simply hung her head and continued to try to catch her breath.

I made a move to walk toward Michel, then I felt it, the blur against my vision, the rush of sound fading past me and away and I let myself be dragged down into that nothingness that had brought me here, hoping against hope that it would take me back to my body. Waiting for the moment when sensation would return and I'd find myself on the plush carpeted floor of Michel's chamber.

But all I could feel was a void of nothingness that stretched on and on forever.

I slowly woke to the sounds of something bleeping. I couldn't open my eyes or move my body and my hearing came and went for the first few hours. Every time it returned, there'd be the constant bleeping, not loud but persistent, repetitive, steady.

Finally I started picking up other things about me but they made absolutely no sense at all, the sound of birds, seagulls I think and wind whistling in the trees, the rustle of paper, the clink of a glass, the rush of waves against a beach, the humming of someone nearby, I couldn't make out the song.

Then I started to feel. The pull of something in the crease of my elbow, the weight of the blankets, the softness of the pillow which cupped my head and the soft warm hand holding mine, stroking the back of it with a thumb. Soft, warm and oh so comforting. I just lay there for a while revelling in the sensation. I decided it was time to see who was doing that to me, such a simple movement, but filled with so much care.

The light was harsh at first and I found myself blinking. The ceiling was a plain white, nothing special, a sunken light fixture in the middle, not directly over the bed. I turned my head towards the hand stroking mine and found Michel with his forehead resting on the side of my bed, his dark hair tumbling across the white coverlet on the mattress and butting up to my hip, one hand holding mine, stroking, the other resting across my legs. He didn't know I was awake.

I tried to say something, but no sound would come out, my throat was parched, so I opted for squeezing his hand instead. His head shot up and deep blue eyes, as deep as any ocean, looked into mine. He smiled.

“
Tu es réveillés mon amour, mon précieux amour.
”

“
English,” I managed to whisper then licked my lips and cringed as my throat closed over completely. Michel quickly stood and reached for a jug of water, pouring some into a waiting glass, he held it to my lips and I sipped at it gratefully. You have no idea how much better I felt after that. I hadn't realised just how thirsty I was and how dry my throat had been and once that was dealt with, I felt a million times better.

But, Michel wouldn't let me get up straight away, he pushed the buzzer next to the bed and a human nurse came in. She fluffed around checking this and that out, taking my temperature, listening to my chest, flashing a pen light into my eyes and looking in my throat. I croaked out the
Ahhh
, but it seemed to satisfy her. She proceeded to remove a number of tubes from my arm, my nose and then one much lower. Once she was satisfied she had a quick word with Michel at the door and was gone.

I took the chance to sit up while his back was turned, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. The world tilted abruptly and Michel caught me as I fell.

“Too soon,
ma douce
. You have been lying still for one week now, you need to let your body do this slowly.”

One week? One friggin' week? No friggin' way!

He raised the back of the bed up halfway using a control on the side, hanging on a cord. It was kind of like those beds you see in the emergency room. He lay me back down gently, lifting my feet back onto the bed and perching on the side next to me.

“
One week, huh?” I said, my voice sounding a little tinny, different, not quite yet strong, not mine. “What's that all about?”

Michel brushed my hair out of my eyes and let his hand trail down the side of my cheek. “You gave me quite a scare,
ma douce
. When I opened up the chamber at
Sensations
you were curled up on the floor. I could not rouse you. Nothing I could do could make you wake.” He looked pained at the memory. “I had you brought here immediately and waited for you to stir.”

He smiled then, a slightly wicked smile. “You do make a wonderful sleeping beauty though.”

Despite the unusual realisation that I had missed a week, totally slept through it, Michel was quick to bring me up to date on the events after I left the basement. It turns out, that Max didn't just vanish into thin air, he disappeared from our shores and ran into hiding. He knew he couldn't beat both Alessandra and Michel together. It had been close, he had almost defeated Alessandra after knocking Michel out and sending his soul flying, but when Michel reappeared in the basement, he knew he was done. He took the coward's way out and ran.

I had been asleep for exactly one week. Nobody could tell Michel why, the doctors and nurses he called in were at a loss. They said my body was fully functional, but my mind was resting. Michel had me connected to heart monitors, fluid and nutrition supplies and just waited. From the look in his eyes, it had been the longest wait in his life.

“So, Enrique and Stephen tell me you aided in the battle after all, my dear.”

We were sitting in the lounge of yet another of Michel's residences, where he'd had me resting after the fight. I felt a hundred percent, fighting fit, but he insisted we stay one more day before returning to the CBD. Looking out at the view over St Helier's Bay,  there were lights of small watercraft twinkling on the waters and the dark shape of Rangitoto Island blotting the landscape. I couldn't tell if he was angry or slightly impressed.

“Stephen?” I opted to just ignore the tone altogether.

“
Stephen was at the docks when you took out twenty vampyre in under a minute.”

I spluttered, “It wasn't twenty.”

“The number is irrelevant.” Not to a hunter, but I thought I'd keep that to myself. “The fact that you did it, is not.”

There was a flash of something in his eyes. I couldn't quite grasp, it wasn't anger, but I couldn't tell what it was either. He was using everything in his arsenal to try to hide it from me. Even though I had got good at reading him, if he really worked at it, he could still hide his emotions from me.

The fact that he had to work at it at all, said a lot about how much things had changed.

Well, the cat was out of the bag, so there was no sense denying it I suppose. “I didn't wake when you spelled me and left me locked in the chamber.” I glared at him for that one, he simply looked back at me unmoved, waiting for me to continue. “It wasn't a dream, but something similar to what you create when you visit my dreams, it felt like that, but I could smell and hear and also touch and as you know, participate.” My mind flashed briefly on Rocky, lying so still, so white. I had not participated then, other than to witness that horror, or intervened either. Of course I hadn't known I could intervene, but that's not the point is it? I should have tried. “No one could see me though, or sense me, or even hear my movements. It was as though I was a phantom. But I could kill. So I did.”

I glanced at him to see if he found that repulsive, killing vampires when they don't even know you are there. It sounded barbaric, wrong,  even to my ears. He must have been able to see the guilt on my face, it was too close to the surface and I hadn't even tried to hide it. Maybe I was slipping in that department too, because he reached out and took my hand and started stroking it. He didn't say anything, just gave me some warmth, when I had suddenly started to feel so cold.

“
The first time, I didn't know what was happening, I just appeared at the docks in the middle of the fighting, but the second time, when I appeared in the club, I think I made it happen. I had woken up in the chamber and could hear the fighting in the club, but it wasn't until I felt you in pain, that I started to,” I dared a glance in his direction, one eyebrow was delicately raised, “um, get a bit desperate. I panicked, I guess, I didn't want to hear or feel what I was hearing or feeling, so I just tried to not exist.” It sounded all wrong, but it was really the gist of it. I had laid down on that carpet trying to block everything out, but when I felt the sense of nothingness approach, I had desperately grabbed it in an attempt to get away from everything else around me.

He sat forward and reached out to stroke my face. “What does it mean, Michel?” I asked. “I shouldn't be able to do this, should I? I haven't turned 25 yet, so if this is a power, which I can only imagine it is, why have I got it now?”

“I do not know,
ma douce
, I can only guess, but it is not something you should be afraid of. It is part of who you are and without your interaction that night, the outcome may have been quite different.”