assumed he was with you.”
“I left him for a bit to make some phone calls. When I came
back, he wasn’t in the lobby or the cafeteria. I’ve checked with
the security guards and they don’t remember seeing him leave.”
Tuan stepped forward. “Where else might he have gone?”
“Nowhere. Why would he? He was adamant that we bring
him to see Adin as soon as he was conscious.”
“What the hell?” Adin asked, even as he yanked the tape off
his arm and pulled out his IV line.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Donte demanded.
“We have to look for Bran. Will someone help me find some
clothes?” Adin’s face was already pale and beaded with sweat.
There was no way he’d be able to walk unaided. He gestured to
Boaz. “Get me a wheelchair, please.”
“Adin—” Boaz began.
“
No.
You were right, Boaz. I didn’t give a single thought to
what it would mean to bring Bran into our lives. I didn’t worry
about the consequences and I didn’t care about anything else but
doing what I wanted.”
“I didn’t say that, exactly.” Boaz opened the cabinets in the
room, coming up empty. “I’ll need to get you some scrubs. You
weren’t dressed when we brought you here.”
“Oh shit.” Adin imagined how it must have seemed, he’d have
been lying in bed when the EMTs arrived, he’d probably been
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211
covered with sweat and come and bite marks. He closed his eyes
for a second.
Great
. “The point is, I brought Bran here, and I’m
responsible for him. He trusts me.”
Donte nodded. “He loves you. While you were unconscious,
you called for him over and over and I’m certain he was aware of
it.” Donte looked away, his features tightening into a mask that
Adin found difficult to interpret. “For the record, I would have
liked it had you called to me.”
“You can’t think—”
“Another time, più amato,” Donte answered quickly. “Let’s
secure the safety of your toxic adoptee, shall we?”
“
Donte
.” Adin caught Donte’s arm and growled, “Someday
you’ll make my head explode.”
“I was imagining just that very thing, actually,” Donte told
him. “But we’ll save that for later when we’ve more time.”
“I hope you mean that in the nicest possible way.” Adin
bumped him weakly with his fist.
“The jury is out, caro. Behave yourself, and I will consider just
how I will explode that remarkably empty head of yours later. I
can bring both pleasure and
pain
.”
Boaz returned to the room with borrowed scrubs. Donte
made short work of working them up Adin’s legs, and then lifted
his torso in order for Boaz to remove the standard gown and slip
the shirt on over his head. Adin grunted when his head came
through.
Adin experienced waves of dizziness when Donte picked him
up like a baby and carried him out the door. He wondered how
much help he could be in his condition but he didn’t want to prove
Boaz right by allowing others to take care of his responsibility.
He clasped his hands around Donte’s neck and moaned when he
was deposited in a cold wheelchair.
Donte leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Are you certain
you can do this, caro? If you cannot, I’ll see that Bran is brought
to you, safe and sound. I promise on my life.”
212 Z.A. Maxfield
“Fat lot of good that will do me, since you’re
dead
,” Adin
teased, cautiously letting go and gripping the armrest with his
good hand. “Let me catch my breath.” Adin didn’t want to tell
Donte that was far more difficult than he expected.
Donte took the handholds of Adin’s wheelchair. “I’ll take
Adin and look around the hospital. If he’s here I will know it.”
“We’ll all know it.” Tuan grimaced. “There’ll be a trail of
healthy house plants and aging vampires in his wake.”
Adin placed his hand on the wheel to stop the chair when
Donte would have pushed him. “Maybe I’d better go alone.”
Donte snorted. “This is why I love you, you should consider
a career as an
attore comico.
”
Tuan knelt in front of the wheelchair and adjusted Adin’s legs.
“I am going to go to administration to see if my credentials will
get me a look at the hospital security tapes. I want to see if Bran’s
left here, or if anyone else I recognize has arrived…”
“We’ll find him.” Adin’s jaw tightened. “And then we’ll kill
him for giving us a scare.”
Adin and Donte began their search of the hospital by trying
to consider the places that might interest a boy like Bran. They
covered the gift shop, the florist, the vending machines, the dining
area, and one or two patio areas where the hospital staff might
go for a break or to eat out of doors. They checked the chapel yet
still there was no sign of Bran anywhere. Eventually, Donte and
Adin made their way to the ER, where they finally found Bran,
sitting with his hands folded in his lap. Next to him a teenage girl
slept with her legs curled under her and her head on his shoulder.
“I should have known.
Cherchez la femme
.” Donte stopped the
wheelchair. “You go on ahead; I’ll call Tuan and Boaz and let
them know we’ve found him.”
Adin turned and met Donte’s eyes. “Thank you. I’m sorry for
all the trouble.”
Donte shook his head and dropped a kiss on Adin’s forehead.
He pulled his phone from his coat pocket and left to find a place
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213
to make a call.
Adin wheeled over to where Bran sat. “Hi there.”
Bran flushed but didn’t move. His friend slept on. “Hi.”
Adin lowered his voice to avoid waking her. “We were frantic
just now when we couldn’t find you.”
Bran turned and spoke in the girl’s ear, she nodded and leaned
back. Her brown eyes opened and Adin saw they were puffy and
red rimmed from crying.
“Thank you,” she told Bran quietly.
Adin watched their gazes lock as something passed between
them. Bran looked solemn and sad, and the girl, a sweet-looking
thing in jeans and a white blouse with a fitted, feminine jacket
caught both his hands and gave them a squeeze. Bran stood then,
and she let him go before shoving her dark hair back from her
face and taking a deep, shuddering breath. Bran gave her one last
smile and left her there, taking a place behind Adin’s wheelchair
without asking and pushing him toward the elevators, located in
a hallway off the central lobby.
Bran pushed the button to call a car and leaned against the
wall. “I’m sorry you were worried.”
“Of course we were worried. Please don’t forget there are
people out there who—”
“That was Kelsey. Her brother drowned this morning.”
Adin’s heart froze. “What?”
“She has a seven-year-old brother, and he drowned in their
pool. They brought him in and her parents are with him now.
They have him hooked up to machines, but he’s already gone.
They just don’t know it.”
Adin felt sick with sorrow for the family. “How do you know
it?”
Bran shrugged. “I was there when they brought him in. I was
close enough… I just know.”
“Does she?”
214 Z.A. Maxfield
“She does. But she doesn’t understand why. Her intuition tells
her he’s gone. I can—I did—reinforce that so she wouldn’t hold
on to hope.” Bran’s eyes looked older than old.
“Were you able to help her?”
“Maybe,” Bran said. “Who knows? How can anyone help
with something like that? She seemed to feel better when she was
close to me. I helped her find good memories. Sweet dreams.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” Adin was silent until the doors opened and Bran
pushed him into the empty elevator. “They wouldn’t let me see
you, even though you were asking for me.”
The doors closed and they started the ascent to Adin’s floor.
“I know. I’m sorry. They said that it was touch and go. They
wanted to spare you that.”
As the elevator started to rise, Adin felt a sick plummeting of
his stomach. His heart fluttered oddly and he became short of
breath. Bran squatted next to the wheelchair, so they faced one
another. “Listen to me, Adin. We don’t have much time. You
need to ask yourself about your dreams last night. How much
was me, and how much was real.”
“What?” Adin shook his head. “I don’t understand you.”
“I think…” Bran bit his bottom lip. “I think someone tried
to turn you. If you were depleted enough by Donte’s attack, it
would have been easy to start the process.” Bran reached out
and pressed the Emergency Stop button. The alarm rang so
unbearably loudly in the elevator car Adin ducked his head and
covered his ears. Bran pulled his hands away and continued to
speak. “I don’t know if it really happened, Adin.
I don’t know
. I
was in your head and I felt someone else there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean someone else was manipulating you. Misdirecting
you. And either they started the process that will turn you from
human to vampire, or they wanted you to think they did. If they
made you swallow even a mouthful…”
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215
“I dreamed that someone kissed me, and my mouth filled
with…” Adin stopped, suddenly frozen by the possibility that
drinking blood represented.
“That’s what I mean. If that part of the dream wasn’t me
manipulating you, if it was real, then it might have started the
process. It isn’t always easy to tell at first, but it doesn’t take
much.”
Adin drew in a lungful of air although it didn’t feel like he got
enough. “I dreamed it was Santos who kissed me, but then I saw
Donte’s face.”
Bran put his hand on Adin’s shoulder. “You’re sweating.”
“I’m scared, Bran.” Adin’s muscles began to tremble. He was
dizzy suddenly, as if the floor of the elevator dropped out from
beneath him. “I don’t feel so…” The walls spun around him as
Bran pushed the button that silenced the alarm and put the car in
motion again. “Bran?”
“I’m here.” Bran’s panicked voice reached him from what
seemed like a long way away. “I think it’s me that’s making you
sick.”
“That can’t be it. No one would…” Adin murmured. But he
was in deep trouble and he knew it. His heart sped up and his
breathing grew erratic. “But I can’t…seem to catch…my breath.”
The elevator doors opened, and Bran pushed Adin out onto
his floor, calling for help. The last thing Adin heard was Bran
telling someone to call for Tuan.
Before Adin opened his eyes he listened. He heard wind. It lifted his hair
and rushed against his eardrums. It batted the rigging and caused the ropes
and cleats to slap and knock against the mast. Adin heard sails snap and
fill and felt himself lifted up and down. He struggled for balance on the deck
of a boat as it rode over waves through the sea. Water lapped against the hull
as they bobbed and pitched gently from side to side. Sunshine warmed his face
in a direct challenge to the breeze, which kissed him, brisk and chilly. When
he finally looked, he wasn’t surprised to see he was sitting on the deck of his
father’s sailboat, the Odd Bean.
Adin’s first waking thought was pure elation, a sudden, intense rush
of joy at seeing his father at the helm again. His heart swelled when he saw
Keene Tredeger’s boyish delight. He was in his element on the water, a man
who’d grown up reading first Stevenson and Defoe and Melville, then in later
years lived on Patrick O’Brian and C.S. Forrester.
The sun was barely breaking the horizon, and his father was holding a
mug of coffee that steamed into the air. “Early bird gets the dawn,” he said,
smiling. “Of course your mother and sister can’t be woken at this hour.”
“They get the sunset and they see it as a fair trade.”
“Little do they know...”
Adin’s father was so vividly alive at that early hour Adin wondered if
he’d fortified his coffee with Irish whiskey. He looked around on the deck and
found his own mug. He lifted it to his lips and sure enough, it was bracing in
more ways than one. “You spiked the coffee?”
“Arrrr.” His father grinned. “A little grog never hurt anyone.”
“Don’t let mom hear you say that.”
“She’d have to get out of our bunk to stop me, wouldn’t she?” He lifted
his head and let the wind caress his face.
Adin leaned back and looked up into the sails.
“This is the best thing we’ve ever done,” his father announced. “I’ve never
felt more alive.”
218 Z.A. Maxfield
“But this is how you died.” Adin sipped his coffee. “In this boat. There
was a storm and the Odd Bean went down.”
Adin’s father’s face never lost its elated expression, but he was silent for
a long time. “I know.”
“You and mom both drowned. Your bodies were recovered but we put you