Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) (36 page)

Myles says nothing and Michael closes the distance between them.

“
I
loved Ava,” he rasps into Myles’ face. “And you took her away.”

Myles’ jaw clenches and unclenches.
“That wasn’t love, Michael,” he whispers back.

Michael
leans away from him slowly. “Maybe there is a way,” he says. “For you to be together. For a while.”

Myles swallows as Michael’s fangs come out, as he bites into his own wrist.

“Please,” Myles whispers, but he isn’t begging. “Just leave us alone.”

Michael smiles like he’s told him a joke.
“One drop,” he says. “And I will consider it.”

I can feel my heart pounding in my chest and for the first time since the memory began, I’m aware of Myles’ hand o
n my head outside of the memory in the real, present world. I shift away from him so we’re no longer touching. I’ve seen enough. My eyes open and Myles is in front of me once again, okay for now.

I wrap the blanket around me tighter.

I take his hand in mine carefully. I inspect the pink scar that’s been there since the accident. It’s the same one he used to save my life. “Did you drink it?” I whisper.

“
No,” Myles says. “I pricked my finger.” He turns his hand over and if I squint, I can see a tiny white point on his pinky.

“
It wasn’t a lot,” he’s quick to add on, closing his hand once again. He kisses my forehead. “And it was further away from my heart and brain, so it’s going to be a long time before it affects me.”

I take a deep breath. We cannot be talking about this right now.

“Why?” I ask. “Why not just kill us?”

Myles tenses.
“That’s what he’s been trying to do,” he says quietly. “This is just...for after.”

“
After he kills me?” I ask.

Myles doesn’t say anything, and I don’t want to think about that either.

“If you were infected, how did you turn me? How am I not re-infected from drinking your blood?” I sit up now, leaning against the bed.

He adjusts the comforter around my shoulders.
“Like I said,” he tells me. “It hasn’t really affected me. My blood isn’t completely overtaken by his.”

None of us say t
he word that hangs in the air: yet.

“
Michael’s blood can’t hurt you anymore because of how different your own blood is now,” Myles says. “Because it’s supposed to be used as an antidote.”

I take yet another deep breath. If I don’t, my lungs will collapse completely.

“Have you been sick?” I ask.

I can feel Myles begin to shake his head, but he stops himself.
“A little.” 

“
When?” I ask.

“
Right before you got sick,” he says. “It was just one night, my hand went kind of numb and I got a little sick. I’ve been fine since then.”

The way he talks about it, it
’s hard for me to not get angry. How can he be telling me all of this without getting upset? How can he not worry about it at all?

Instead of asking him any of these questions, I divert my attention to myself for a while.

“I could help you,” I offer. My voice is so low that I can barely hear it. “If you drank my blood, you’d have the antidote, wouldn’t you?”

He shakes his head.
“I already told you, Sophie,” Myles says, his voice almost shaking, but it’s so subtle that I barely hear it before his voice stabilizes. “The only way you can cure a vampire of vampirism is if they drained all of your blood completely. As in killing you.”

I won’t accept that.
“There has to be a way that you can do it and not kill me,” I say. “What if, just as I’m about to die, some other vampire gives me their blood?” I start to get excited at the very idea. This is something I can fix. It’s so logical that it’s almost insane.

Myles moves away from me a few inches.
“It’s not worth the risk,” he says. “I can’t knowingly put you into harm’s way like that. I don’t even know if there’s a way for you to come back from it.”

“
Myles.” I become aware that my voice has taken on a pleading tone to it and I hate that. “I think it could work.”

He grabs both of my hands and places them against his chest.
“No,” he whispers, his voice soft yet demanding. “I won’t do that to you.”

“
No,” I say, getting defensive. If I’m not careful, the colors will start to flood my vision again, making me blind to everything else that’s going on. Part of me wants that. But this is more important right now. “The better thing to do is continue to be infected so your vampire girlfriend
who can’t die
can watch you slowly waste away, just like you have to watch Ava and Evan die.” Now there are tears in my eyes, white and hot. They cool almost instantly against my cheeks. “That’s the right thing to do.”

Myles engulfs me in an embrace so tight that I can barely process it. We
’re so close. Skin to skin.

“
It’s going to be okay,” he says. “No–” he interrupts himself. “I know that it’s not always going to be okay. I can only promise that the time we do have left will be spent trying to make you love me again. So I can spend the time I have with you, teaching you everything you’re going to need to know...” He can’t finish.

I can:
“When you’re dead.”

We
’re both crying now. I take his head in my hand and wipe one of his tears away. “You saved my life,” I say. “Why won’t you let me at least try to save yours?”

Myles squeezes his eyes shut for the longest time. Then he shakes his head.
“Because I’m
still
trying to save yours,” he says. “I won’t kill you while there’s already someone else trying to do that.” The last part is meant to be some kind of dark joke but the humor is lost on me. It fizzles in the air like smoke from a stale firecracker.

“
So what am I supposed to do?” I ask. I try to sit up, but he only wraps his arms around me tighter. I give up trying to move. Holding myself together is hard enough right now without fighting him too. “Keep running from Michael my entire life? Keep running, even after you’re gone?”

Myles sniffs, and there is the longest stretch of silence before he gathers enough strength to speak to me again.
“I don’t know,” he says, defeated. “I’ve tried everything I can think of, and I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

His voice cuts out and I know it
’s because he’s upset. I can’t take it anymore. I have to move away before this entire situation consumes me.

“
I’ve killed you already,” he says under his breath. I don’t think it’s meant to be said out loud, but it’s out in the open, in the small space between us. “The moment I walked into your life and interfered, I killed you. It’s my fault.”

I shake my head.
“No,” I whisper back. “Even if that were true, you’ve given me so much
more
.”

I think about who I was before Myles entered my life.
How broken and sad I was, just trying to keep my head above water. Then he came in and changed it. He gave me something solid to hang on to, not so he could save me, but so I could pull
myself
out of the waves. How could I regret any of it?

I rest my chin on his bare shoulder, giving up on trying
to reason with any of this. I trace my fingers around the edge of the scar on his neck. My mark. My fingertips tingle and my palm becomes hot. I like how that feels. “You haven’t killed me,” I say into his throat. “Not yet.”

“
I think my blood is the only thing you can drink,” Myles says, as if suddenly realizing it himself.

“
I think so, too.”

Neither of us moves, neither of us says the logical conclusion of events: that either way, we’re both dead.

***
 

My phone buzzes across
the room, from inside my pants which lay abandoned on the floor. The sudden noise makes me jump and Myles places a hand on my back to steady me as he reaches for it.

The time on my phone reads 3 AM. How could all of that
happened in such a small span of time?

There’s a text from Manny:
You okay, Pinky? I’m so sorry.

I’m too tired to text him back
but I don’t think I’m mad at him, as ridiculous as that sounds. How can I be when Michael is threatening the life of the person I love too? I know I’m getting desperate enough to sacrifice anything, so why should I fault him for doing the same?

Then there’s a text from Jade:
Are you okay? You just kind of left.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him, so I just put:
I don’t know
.

Myles shifts next to me as he leans against the bed. It’s hard not to stare at him, at all of him, or think about how he won’t be here because of me.

Jade messages me back a few seconds later:
Can’t sleep. Want to meet me? Not to talk about it or anything...just to hang.

I know what he’s doing.
Trying to get me to leave so I–we–don’t have to think about any of this shit that’s going on.

“
Are the protectors here?” I ask Myles at the same time I text Jade:
Where are you?

Myles closes his eyes for a moment, like he’s listening for something.

Jade says:
The lobby. You?

I text:
Myles’ room.

“
They’re at the bar and all over the hotel,” Myles answers. “Ten of them here, five of them there.”

I text Jade:
Let’s stay here. Meet me in my room?

Jade doesn’t answer for a long time after that.

“Are Boo and Trei here?” I ask, my heart beginning to pound again. “And what about Manny?” I ask.

Myles tilts his head up at the
ceiling but I can tell he’s not looking at anything, only concentrating. “Everyone is in the hotel,” he says. “Boo and Trei are in their room, Manny’s talking to one of the protectors. Everyone’s safe.”

“
For now,” I say.

“
For now,” Myles agrees.

My
underwear is the closest thing, so I put them on first.

Jade finally gets back to me:
The coffee here sucks. I’m heading to the place down the street, want anything?

The phone falls from my hands as I throw on the rest of my clothes.
“Jade’s leaving,” I say.

Myles doesn’t say a word as he finds his clothes too.

Chapter 20

Dig a Hole

“
The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on. He took a face from the ancient gallery and he walked down the hall.”—The Doors

Myles finds four protectors in the lobby and tells them to follow us. There are three men dressed as business men and one woman who looks a little bit older than me. They run to the coffee place with us, but when we get to the door, there’s no one inside except a waitress filling ketchup bottles. She asks us how many we are, grabbing menus from the counter, but we’re gone before she can turn back around.

Now I don’t know where I’m supposed to go. Part of me realizes that maybe this is all for nothing. Maybe Jade is okay and nothing bad is going to happen. But the bigger part of me knows that can’t be true. Michael is here and he wants me dead. Now that he finally has me, he’s not going to spare anyone until he gets what he wants.

Stupid. I’m so fucking stupid. Sitting in a hotel room with my boyfriend, worrying about how long he and I have left when all of this other crap is going on. When my friends and family are in a bar miles away where Michael was trying to kill me. I left them all there to be with him. I let my brother slip through my fingers when it would have been easy to hang on to him, had I been thinking at all.

Myles brings me closer behind the coffee shop.
“Stop,” he says, having heard every pathetic thought that wormed through my head. “We’ll find him.”

“
Did he say he was on his way there or that he was already here?” one of the men in suits asks. He’s calm, not out of breath the way I am.

“
He was on his way,” I tell him. “I think.”

“
Okay,” he says, a reassuring smile on his face. “Maybe he isn’t here yet.”

He turns to one of the other men and motions to them. The other man leans his palms against the wall, and I can see a faint trail of light trickle into the stone.

“We can’t just stand here,” I say. “We’re wasting time.”

Myles lets me pull him forward
even though I have no idea where I’m going. I walk past the building, down the street until the street ends and there’s nothing illuminating the ground beneath our feet; but I can still see. “Do you feel him, Sophie?” Myles asks after a little bit.