Twenty-Two
“I don't know what the hell that means.” He's still holding me up, but I wave him off, using the sink for support instead. If my head would stop going like a carnival ride, and my stomach would stop whirling around, I could focus on the situation. No such luck.
“It means that I will only feed from you,” he says, sitting on the edge of the tub. Oh, I really don't like those words.
“Come again?” I try to stand up, but the room spins and he has to catch me so I don't smash my face against the sink. This nurse routine is freaking me out almost as much as whatever the hell he just did.
“I can only feed from you,” he repeats. I hate the way he uses the word feed so casually. Um, it's my blood that's doing the feeding, if I'm understanding him right.
“How does that save me from Ivan?” Sweat runs down my face as if I've run a marathon. My heart keeps racing and slowing and my skin shifts from hot to cold. I'm a human traffic light.
“He cannot touch you now. Nor any other noctalis.” I close my eyes so the room will stop spinning.
“Well, that's so reassuring, Peter. I'm so glad we got to play blood brothers. This little arrangement sounds like it's pretty awesome for you, and pretty sucky for me. Why didn't you just kill me and be done with it?” I want to shoot daggers at him with my eyes, but I'm not really in a position to do that. Words are all I've got.
“I would not have chosen it for you.” He avoids the second part of my question.
“But you did. You did it without even consulting me. God, you really are going to kill me.” I lean down, pressing my face into the cool stone of the sink.
“I am sorry.”
“That makes me feel so much better, thank you. The least you can do is tell me what else this relationship entails.”
“I don't know,” he says. I blink my eyes open. The room's still spinning.
“What the hell do you mean?” I move my face so I can look at him out of the corner of my eye. He looks funny sitting on the tub. If I didn't feel so awful, I might have laughed.
“I have never done it. I only knew it could be done.” So I'm an experiment. Great.
“That's just...” I clench and unclench my hands, searching for the right words. “That's just fucking fantastic.” Crass, but it's the best I can come up with. Of course there's no reaction from Mr. Cool-as-a-cucumber over there. I'd love to yell at him, but my throat hurts too much.
“Can you only Claim one person at a time?” I'm trying to avoid the blood question for as long as I can, because I don't want to hear the answer.
“Yes.”
“So it's not really beneficial to have only one source of food. Blood.” There it is, the B word. My words feel like they're stuck in my sore throat.
“It is more of a territorial thing. If there was someone desirable, then the strongest noctalis would claim them for a time.” I know what comes next.
“I'm guessing it ends badly for the human.” Otherwise known as me.
“More or less.”
“You are frustratingly opaque.” I have to throw up again and Peter holds my hair. How sweet.
“Ava?” Dad knocks on my door as I'm washing my mouth out again.
“Yeah?” My voice is weak. Why does he choose this exact moment to be parental? Seriously?
“Are you okay?” I'm just fantastic.
“Yeah. I just don't feel that great.” I look up and realize the sun is low in the sky. I must have passed out for several hours.
“Do you need anything?” Please don't come in.
“No, I'm just going to lie down. I've taken some Pepto so I should be good.” Peter seems completely un-alarmed that my father could walk in and find a strange guy in my bathroom.
“Are you sure?” Oh my God, will you just go away?
“Yeah. I'll let you know if I need anything.” I hear his footsteps as he walks back down the stairs.
“Why does he have to choose now to be all concerned?” I push my disgusting hair out of my face. “I need to take a shower,” I say, even though my hair is still wet from the last one. My clothes reek of sweat and I've got dried blood all over me. Come to think of it, so does he, but there's no visible wound. Great, he's also got magical healing powers he didn't tell me about.
“Are you sure you can stand?” I want to give him a withering look, but I refrain. There's no way he's watching me shower.
“Yeah,” I say although I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen. There's a handle, and I need a few moments alone to think. All my fury over what he's done sort of went out of me when I threw up.
“I will stay, in case you need me,” he says, getting up.
“Okay,” I say, because I'm glad he's going to be here, even though I haven't had the chance to figure out how I feel about what he's done to me. I just know that I don't want him to go anywhere. The minute he closes the door, I kind of want to call him back, but that's ridiculous. He's just in the next room, but I can't deny the uncomfortable feeling that I'm missing something important. That feeling you get when you realize there's a quiz in math and you've completely forgotten to study.
I don't bother to wash my hair. I just let the water pour down my skin, wishing it would wash everything way. I make sure I hold the bad arm outside of the curtain so it doesn't get wet. I have to use my other arm to hold onto the shower bar so I didn't fall. It is possibly the shortest shower of my life. So many thoughts war for control. I don't even understand some of them. I'm a swirling hurricane of sad, crazy, angry hurt feelings.
“I'm coming out, but I'm wearing a towel. You'd better turn your back,” I say as I crack the door open. Relief washes over me as soon as I see him. Even with the pain and how shitty I feel, my face breaks out into a goofy smile. What is wrong with me?
I still make sure he's turned around before I come out, holding onto various objects in the room to cruise over to my dresser to grab some clothes. Getting dressed is an ordeal that takes twelve times longer than usual, but once I'm decent, I get back into bed. He hasn't moved at all.
“Peter.” He turns. “What happens now?” I'm ready to hear the rest of it.
He sits on the edge of my bed. “I don't know. That is the truth, Ava. I have only heard about Claiming. I have never seen it done.” He won't really look at me, which makes me want to grab his chin and hold it so he'll look me in the eye with that unblinking gaze.
“How did you even know it would work?” There's a nasty pause.
“I didn't.” Getting up, he goes to the window, pressing his forehead against the glass as if he wishes he could escape. A pang of sadness and longing jolts through me. It feels foreign, like it doesn't belong to me.
I close my eyes and lay back on my bed. My emotions rage for control.
“How are you feeling?” He studies me as if he's never seen me before.
“Like there's something crawling under my skin,” I say. I'm full, too full. Any moment now I'm going to overflow all over everything. “It's not very nice.”
“Yes.” He closes his eyes as a shudder goes through him. Earth shifting at a fault line. I've never seen him do that. The simple movement sends a similar tremor through me. This exchange of blood has done more than either of us can fathom right now.
“You feel it too?”
“I feel different.” He sits down on the end of my bed.
“How?”
“I feel....” I've never seen him struggle for the right words. “I want to... Are you all right? How are you feeling?” His eyes frantically seek mine out. Reassurance.
“Am I going to become a noctalis?”
“No. You would need to ingest my blood for that to happen.” That's a relief.
“I feel like I should have asked you that first off.” My head starts to pound and I know I'm going to have a rager of a headache.
“Can you get me a glass of water?” He's back with it in two seconds. “Oh, and some aspirin?” He hands me two pills, our skin meeting. It's just a brief touch, but it makes my mouth dry and my stomach flutter. I want it to happen again.
I look up at his face, finding his eyes through his hair. They aren't blank like they usually are. My face blooms into a blush. Given the circumstances, it surprises me as much as anything else. Another shudder goes through him.
“Is something wrong?” His energy is frenetic. He vibrates with it, as if he's had far too much coffee. “You're not, um, hungry or whatever, are you?” Why am I bringing this up?
“No.” Quickly, he glances down at me. “I only need to eat every two weeks at the most. I can go for longer.” I am only momentarily relieved.
“How much do you need?”
“Not much.” How much is not much?
“What if I don't want to?”
“Then I will waste away.”
“Will you die?” I move closer to him. For some reason, the closer we are, the better I feel. Like we're magnets or something. What have we done?
“No.”
“So you'll just be in agony.” An image of myself reaching out and brushing his hair out of his face goes through me with such longing that my hand raises, as if of its own accord. I let it drop back down.
“More or less.”
“I hate it when you say that. Is it more or is it less?” He considers for a moment.
“Maybe.”
I thump back on my pillows. He's impossible. Was it only last night I danced with him? So close. It makes me want to hide my head under the pillow when I think about it, but the memory also makes me tingle all over in a really nice way.
I have to go to school tomorrow, see Tex and Jamie and pretend I haven't just participated in some crazy blood swap with a sort-of vampire-angel. This is going to be a nightmare.
“Ava.” I open my eyes when he says my name.
“Come with me.” He turns his back to me and strips off his shirt. The need to touch him overwhelms me for a second that I can't see or feel anything else. There's a rushing in my ears and I feel faint. It consumes me, but only for a second.
“Does it hurt? When they come out?” Like a five-year-old, I'm distracted when they start to emerge, small buds at first which bloom into bones and feathers that shine like black silk. Their color reminds me of those Japanese beetles my mom is always trying to eradicate from the garden.
“No.”
“That's good. It would be awful if they hurt every time they came out. Like Wolverine.”
“Pardon?” He turns around.
“Oh, sorry. X-men reference. Never mind.” I look away from the shining feathers, distracted by them bending and warping the light into different colors. Red, indigo, purple, pearl. I reach out my hand to stroke one.
The wing I touch trembles slightly. A tremble echoes through my own body.
“Can you feel it? When I touch them?”
“Sometimes.” He looks over his shoulder at me, and I'm reminded of a statue or something. It makes me think back to the broken angels that guard the mausoleum I'd met him in front of.
“Here.” He picks me up with one scoop. I gasp as my skin meets his. HIs arm goes under my legs, the other around my back. My arms go around his neck to hold on. His hair tickles my hands. My fingers long to rake through it. Where his heart should beat, there is nothing. I lean my ear against his chest. He is so silent. It makes me self-conscious about my noisy body.
Where I touch him, his skin starts to warm. It's sort of waxy, like a leaf. I fight the urge to stroke his back where the wings meet flesh. Somehow he gets both of us through my window and onto the porch roof outside.
“Are you ready?”
“More or less,” I say breathlessly. He walks two steps forward, wings extending to reach their full span, brushing against the velvet of the sky. I take one look at how far up we are before turning my face into his chest. I hold on for dear life as he runs down the slope of the roof and off the edge.
The air grabs at me, stealing the air from my lungs. I gasp to bring it back. His arms tighten for a second, pressing me closer. I know the ground is below us and I'm not standing on it anymore and my life is in his hands and he could just drop me and that would be the end of this Claiming thing, but I feel safe. He's strong and steady as his wings beat the air, making it rush over both of us.
“I'm okay,” I say to reassure myself as much as him. We rise. Ten feet. Twenty. The world drops out from under us. It isn't a smooth a ride; every time his wings pulse, we shift a little until he gains altitude. I don't ask him where we're going. It doesn't really matter. The shingles of my roof grow smaller as we go higher. I try not to look down and instead stare at the sky as it seems to get closer. If we only flew high enough we could touch the top of it. I want to reach out my hands and try to snag a cloud or a star. It seems like something that's possible.
The road snakes below us. There are a few cars, their headlights like fireflies. Every now and then there is a glow of light from a house. Other than that it's so quiet, the only sound the wind as it rushes over us.
I close my eyes. My lips are getting chapped from the wind, but I don't care. I let everything else go. I'm flying. I'm human and I'm flying, with an angel. Sort of.
“Where would you like to go?” I hear his words echo through his chest more than from his mouth.
“Anywhere.” I don't bother saying it loud. He hears me. I look up at his face. It's shaded, hard to make out in the weak light. His hair streams back. I feel like some artist should be immortalizing him on a frescoed ceiling in Italy. In this moment, he looks every bit an angel.
Time ceases to have meaning. I relax more, let myself fall into him. We pass a few towns. It is so dark and everything is unfamiliar. We rise higher, the lights blotted out by the distance. It's just us.
“I wish I could do this every day,” I whisper into the air.
“It would not be special if you did it all the time.”
“I guess you're right. Still. This is...”
“I know.” His face isn't blank anymore. Well, he's not smiling or anything, but I feel the peace rolling through him. He's free up here. This is his sanctuary, and he's up here with me, which makes me feel like an intruder. My arms tighten around his neck. They're getting tired of holding on, but I'm not letting go.
“I'm sorry I asked you to bring me up here.” He swoops in an arc, turning us around. My skin is covered in goosebumps I'm sure he can feel.
“Why?”
“Because this is your place, and now I've ruined it. Everyone should have a place that is theirs.”
“I do not mind sharing this with you.”
“Are you sure?” I re-adjust my grip for the thousandth time.
“Yes.” He looks down at me and I meet his eyes. They sear like fire the dark. I settle back against his chest.
There is a small bump as we land back on my roof. My legs shake, so he holds me up until I get them back under me. I realize it is the longest skin to skin contact we've had. I hope it didn't make him uncomfortable. He holds me even after we get through the window.
“Are you hungry? Don't lie to me.” I say. As soon as I'd gotten over being sick, my stomach cramped, just a little bit. It's gotten worse and worse, and instinct tells me what it means. I'm Peter's hunger barometer.
“Yes.”
“Go ahead then.” I've only been Claimed for a few hours, and already I'm willing to open a vein for him. Not good.
“I can wait.” He puts me down, withdrawing as quickly as he can, like he can't get away from me fast enough.
“You gave me something. I'd like to return the favor.” It's foolish, I know, and it could also kill me. I still have the glow of the flight rushing through me, and I kinda want to. Just to see, and to stop my stomach from hurting.
I turn my head to the side. They usually go for the neck, right? I stuff my shaking hands under my comforter and take a deep breath. I really hope this doesn't hurt too much.
“Are you sure?” He teeters on the edge of decision. I feel him standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for me to tell him if he should jump.
“I trust you,” I say, and close my eyes.