Still no response.
I blew in his face. Perhaps not the most mature thing I could have done, but his complete lack of interest in my existence was just the tipping point. I’d just been kidnapped and manhandled, and he couldn’t even take a break from being all hipster-zen? Hello, damsel in distress here!
A groan slipped past his full lips as he opened a single eye to a narrow slit.
“Don’t… do that.” It was hardly more than a whisper, and his eyelid immediately closed again.
His obvious grogginess scared me. Was he sick? Drugged? Just what on earth had they done to him?
“Are you all right?” My voice pitched shrilly with worry, all thoughts about my own shitty situation vanishing. When he didn’t respond, I slapped him across the face and gently shook his shoulders with both hands to make sure he didn’t slip into unconsciousness. “You gotta stay with me, okay?”
Slowly, both his eyelids cracked open this time, revealing nearly black eyes with just a ring of blue, so much were his pupils blown.
“Shh, little one.” He slowly lifted a hand from his knee and wrapped it loosely around my right wrist. Gently, he pried my hand off his shoulder before he let go again, his hand falling bonelessly back down in his lap. “Have to sleep… a little longer. Until… sunset.”
Bewildered, I moved back a little so I wasn’t breathing right in his face, but I stayed in my low crouch so I could study his blank features for clues. His hand had been very cold against my skin, and even though we were in a basement, it worried me. He clearly wasn’t feeling well, and just what was everyone’s obsession with sunset around here?
His pale face and the fact that he was hardly breathing made me worry he was seriously, fatally ill, and I somehow doubted the creeps who had locked us both in this cage would care to call an ambulance.
I rubbed my face in frustration and tried to recall what I’d learned about caring for possibly-dying people on my one and only first aid course nearly eight years ago. It was then that I realized he wasn’t breathing at all.
“Omigoddess!” My pulse sped up to warp-speed as adrenaline kicked in, but it turned out my instincts were on point even if most of my conscious brain was busy freaking out.
With a swifter movement than was usual for me, I tackled my cellmate to the ground and pinched his nose shut before I put my lips on his and blew air into his lungs.
This time, his eyes opened wide as a cough shuddered through his body.
“Oh, thank the stars!” I gasped as I placed a hand on his chest, relieved beyond belief to feel his chest moving again. “You stopped breathing! You…”
But his chest wasn’t moving.
I glanced from my hand against his completely still torso to his face. His eyes were still open, looking at me as if he couldn’t quite comprehend that a stranger had just tried to perform CPR on him.
But he wasn’t breathing.
And his heart wasn’t beating, either.
It was in that moment that my brain finally decided to arrive at the party.
Sleeps until sundown, cold to the touch, doesn’t breathe…
“Motherfucking fuck!” I flew backward and scrambled away from him until the bars at the other end of the cage pressed against my back, unable to take my eyes off his still form even as his eyes slid shut again.
Mother above!
I was locked in a cage with a… a vampire!