I was alive.
As far as I could tell, I still had all my limbs. My toes worked— that was a plus. I could hear the beeping of a heart rate monitor. So my ears still functioned. Also good.
My eyelids were heavy as iron as I opened them. My brain muttered that going back to sleep seemed like a grand idea, but I wanted to know the time and where I was. I also wanted to see my parents. These medical emergencies were getting to be a little much, and I figured a good, solid breakdown with my mom was in order.
I appeared to be in the ICU (again). It wasn’t as friendly-looking here as in the children’s ward, and there were more machines. There were no windows. I had no idea what time of day it was, if it was the same day, or if it was even day outside.
There was, however, a young man in a dark green sweater sitting in a chair across from the foot of my bed.
I’d never seen him before. He had long red hair gathered in a low ponytail, and he was very beautiful.
He smiled when he saw I was awake. “Good morning.”
I blinked a few times, trying to focus my vision. “Is it really? Morning, that is.”
“It’s two am, so, yes, technically.”
Ugh...
“Is it rude if I ask who you are?” I said.
“Not at all,” he responded. “I’m Lyre Caulder.”
The Lord of Mythem Shire. I’d expected someone older, but he looked to only be around eighteen years of age. “Oh. Uh… should I… bow, or something?”
He shook his head. His hair slipped fluidly over his shoulders as he did. It was vibrant and impossibly red, just like Buck’s, but it was a different shade. Buck’s hair looked like fire. Lyre Caulder’s looked like fresh blood. “Don’t worry about that. You’re not my subject, after all.”
Subject. What a foreign word.
“Speaking of,” I said, “where’s Buck?”
“It’s no longer visiting hours, so I made him go home. He needs to sleep.”
“Oh… good.” He really did need it. “So, how long have you been here?”
Lyre smiled faintly. “A few hours. Since seven pm yesterday.”
I gawked. “That’s… seven hours? Weren’t you… like, bored?”
His smile widened as he held up a small, black rectangle. A phone. “Youtube.”
In my defense, I was still exhausted. My mouth moved before my brain really knew what I was doing. “Vampires watch Youtube?”
I immediately regretted it. He was the vampire equivalent of a king, and even though I was not his… subject as he’d said, I figured I should still treat him with respect. Besides, I seemed plain rude to call someone out based on their differences. I know I wouldn’t want someone saying, “sick kids like surfing?” (I do! It’s fun!), like they couldn’t be bothered to think of me as a person who did person things and liked person stuff.
But Lyre just snorted into his free hand. “Only to confuse young men in hospitals.”
I let out a long stream of air. “A noble cause.”
He grinned, showing his vampiric, slightly pointed canines. Suddenly, Lyre seemed the age his face suggested, eighteen and teenaged. I felt my mouth stretching, smiling back. It was hard not to. His grin was infectious. Then his face fell back into seriousness. “I’m sure you know why I’m here.”
I swallowed. “The Salvage.”
“Yes. Your parents have asked that I bring them here before performing it.”
“Bring them here?”
He nodded. “They’re in one of the sleep spaces. Though I doubt they’re asleep.”
“Yeah.”
There was an odd silence. I sensed that he was waiting for something. “...So?” he asked, finally.
“So what?”
“So, are you ready?”
I started. “You mean… now?”
“As soon as I get your parents, yes.”
I gulped. On the one hand, I very, very much wanted to get better as soon as possible. On the other… I was about to let someone bite me. And who knew what it would do to me.
I shut my eyes for a second, then opened them. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
He smiled like he could see right through my lie. But all he said was: “I’ll be right back” and left.
I sat simmering in my own nerves. Drowsiness weighed heavily on my eyes, but my mind was painfully awake. Would it hurt? Would I lose blood? Would that make me sick? Would I Turn? I almost wanted to call Buck just so his snide comments could calm me down, but I knew I shouldn’t wake him. I wondered if he’d been sleeping enough these past two days.
I flopped back on the pillows. The heart rate monitor tittered, but nothing abnormal arose. My eyes shut on their own. If I wasn’t careful, I’d fall back asleep.
I heard voices from a long way off, as if I stood on the other end of a long tunnel. I forced my eyes open to see my parents hovering over my bed and Lyre standing off to the side. “Oh, he’s awake,” my mother said.
I squinted. “Did I fall asleep?”
“You were getting there. Are you sure you want to do this now? We could wait until morning.”
I sat up. My vision swam sleepily, but I shook it off. “No. I’m ready now.”
My mom gripped my hand. She looked more freaked than I felt, but she just nodded. My dad scrubbed my hair, then slid his arm around my mom’s shoulders. The two of them stepped back.
And Lyre stepped forward. He gave me a small, gentle smile. “You’ll be just fine.”
I nodded. It felt oddly automatic. “I know.”
“If you ever need me to stop,” he told me, “just punch me or something. You won’t hurt me, so don’t worry about that.”
I laughed nervously. “I don’t want to punch you.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Willam. But really. Punch me.”
“O-okay. I’ll keep it in mind.”
He sat on the side of the hospital bed and, facing me, put a hand on my shoulder. “Try to relax. Imagine it’s a flu shot.”
“A little different from a flu shot, I think…” I managed.
He let out a quiet laugh, then leaned over. I tensed, remembered I was supposed to be relaxing, and forced my muscles to go slack. Lyre put his free hand on the back of my skull to tilt my head off to the side. His breath gusted faintly over the skin where my shoulder met my throat, and I shivered. His breath was cold.
I felt his lips on my skin a moment before there was a bloom of bright pain, small but sharp. My muscles locked instinctively, and I had to fight the urge to shove him away. Lyre’s red ponytail slithered over his shoulder and brushed my collarbone. For a breathless moment, he didn’t move. Then his body tensed and he jerked back, one hand covering his mouth, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, and the other pressed over the spot where his teeth had been. Under his fingers, I could feel the warm stickiness of blood.
“Well,” he said, his voice muffled by his hand. “That’s interesting. How do you feel?”
I inhaled to speak, and… kept inhaling. My lungs felt massive, like I could suck in all the air in the room and shout for days. I could feel my heartbeat, strong and steady as a train. “Oh,” I said, breathlessly, though it seemed as if I’d never run out of air. “It’s amazing. Is this how normal people feel?”
He kept his hand over his nose. “I can’t read your mind to be sure, but I expect so. The bleeding should have stopped by now, I think…”
Lyre carefully lifted his hand. I tried to see my shoulder, but my chin got in the way. There was no pain. “What’s it look like?” I asked.
“Completely healed,” he answered. He stood. “I have to wash my hands. I’ll be right back. Try to clean up the blood while I’m gone.”
“Sure, uh— thanks…” I started, but he was already gone.
I turned to my parents. We stared at each other for a long moment, then my dad said, “It really worked?” and I nodded, because it really, really had, and my mom burst into tears and my own eyes filled up because it had worked and I was going to live.
The three of us made a messy, drippy pile on the bed. I hugged my parents as hard as I could; which was pretty hard now that my bones were healed and my body had been kicked back into gear. My drowsiness was gone. I felt like I could run forever, just on and on and on. We sat there for a minute, all weepy, until my mom said, “alright, enough of that” and grabbed a box of tissues. After we’d cleaned up our drippy faces, my dad surfaced some wet wipes from my mom’s purse and used them to clean off my bloody skin. We tossed the wad, and Lyre came back in.
“All cleaned up?” he asked. “Good. I’m very sorry about that.”
I shook my head. “You were fine.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he replied. “That should’ve gone smoothly. I’m able to remain unaffected by the taste of human blood.” He frowned. “But…”
I gulped. “But what?”
“Has anything… strange happened to you?”
The wheelchair. The ground. The button. My bones. “Yes,” I mumbled. “Everything was broken. It was all breakable.”
Lyre sighed. “I’m not sure how you have it, but… you carry the Shattering.”
I frowned. “Huh?”
“I can taste it in your blood. It smells attractive, too. I’m surprised Buck hasn’t said anything, to you or me.”
“What’s this?” my mother cut in. “Is this about why your bones were all cracked? You didn’t explain that well.”
“Because I couldn’t,” I protested. “I thought I was psychic. Or something. It seemed ridiculous.”
“You’re not psychic,” Lyre assured me. “You used the Shattering. It’s a vampiric skill. Like the Salvage.”
The three of us stared at him. I looked down at myself as if I had to check. “...but I’m not a vampire.”
Lyre let out a gust of exasperated air and fell back into a chair. “That’s why I’m confused. It makes no sense. I suppose it could be genetic, but…” He surveyed my parents. “Both of you are normal humans.”
Wait. “Does this have anything to do with why I’m so sick?”
He nodded. “Yes. Your body cannot contain the Shattering. It’s destroying you, little by little.”
A diagnosis. I finally had a diagnosis. I could put a name to my illness. I could search for a treatment. “Is there a cure?”
He looked at me. His blue eyes were like coins of lapis. “Yes. One.”
Holy cr— “What is it?” I demanded, near hysterical. Hope was bubbling up inside me, boiling over in a mad rush.
“Become a vampire,” he said.
The hope flared out, leaving me dizzy. “What?”
“A vampire’s body is more than strong enough to contain the Shattering. If you became a vampire, you would live.”
“But…” I rubbed the side of my head. “That’s— No. I don’t want that.”
Lyre sighed, that small smile back on his face. “Yes, I figured that. The Salvage will work for a while. If you have it performed multiple times, you might live a normal human lifespan.”
I couldn’t help myself; my face split into a massive grin. “Really?”
“I don’t know. Your condition may worsen unexpectedly. But it’s possible.”
I breathed out heavily. I was almost sick with hope and relief. I couldn’t wait to tell Buck. “I… thank you.”
“Yes,” my mother echoed. “Thank you.” She was tearing up again. I wished she wouldn’t, because it was making me weepy, too.
Lyre smiled his small smile, which I was coming to recognize as his ‘comforting’ smile, one he pulled out to make the rest of the room feel better. “I’ll give you three some space, now. If you need anything, you have my phone number.” He nodded to my parents, then turned to me. “Willam. If your symptoms reappear within the next few weeks, I want you to tell me. Otherwise, we’ll plan on you coming to me every several years to have the Salvage performed to maintain your health. In the meantime, I’m going to look into the Shattering. Perhaps I can find a way to rid you of it.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Please—” Then I remembered myself, and I remembered who he was. “Oh, but, you must have a lot of stuff to do running the Shire. I don’t want—”
He cut me off. “Willam. My job is to protect my people. Your vampire skill makes you— in a way— one of mine. It is my duty to help you.” His blue eyes glittered. “Besides, I want to.”
A shiver scuttled up my spine. “U-um. Well…. okay, then.”
“Good?”
“Mmm. Mmmhmm.”
“Wonderful.” Lyre stood, bowing his head a little to my parents. “Come to me with any concerns.”
My father moved forward slightly. “How much—”
“No.” Lyre’s hand whipped up in a commanding gesture. “You owe me nothing.”
My mom eyed him. “You can’t be serious. You saved his life.”
“Then all you owe me is to keep him alive. Well…” He strode to the door and turned “this is goodbye. And, Willam?” I blinked at him. He grinned in that small way of his. “We’ll meet again.”
As far as I could tell, I still had all my limbs. My toes worked— that was a plus. I could hear the beeping of a heart rate monitor. So my ears still functioned. Also good.
My eyelids were heavy as iron as I opened them. My brain muttered that going back to sleep seemed like a grand idea, but I wanted to know the time and where I was. I also wanted to see my parents. These medical emergencies were getting to be a little much, and I figured a good, solid breakdown with my mom was in order.
I appeared to be in the ICU (again). It wasn’t as friendly-looking here as in the children’s ward, and there were more machines. There were no windows. I had no idea what time of day it was, if it was the same day, or if it was even day outside.
There was, however, a young man in a dark green sweater sitting in a chair across from the foot of my bed.
I’d never seen him before. He had long red hair gathered in a low ponytail, and he was very beautiful.
He smiled when he saw I was awake. “Good morning.”
I blinked a few times, trying to focus my vision. “Is it really? Morning, that is.”
“It’s two am, so, yes, technically.”
Ugh...
“Is it rude if I ask who you are?” I said.
“Not at all,” he responded. “I’m Lyre Caulder.”
The Lord of Mythem Shire. I’d expected someone older, but he looked to only be around eighteen years of age. “Oh. Uh… should I… bow, or something?”
He shook his head. His hair slipped fluidly over his shoulders as he did. It was vibrant and impossibly red, just like Buck’s, but it was a different shade. Buck’s hair looked like fire. Lyre Caulder’s looked like fresh blood. “Don’t worry about that. You’re not my subject, after all.”
Subject. What a foreign word.
“Speaking of,” I said, “where’s Buck?”
“It’s no longer visiting hours, so I made him go home. He needs to sleep.”
“Oh… good.” He really did need it. “So, how long have you been here?”
Lyre smiled faintly. “A few hours. Since seven pm yesterday.”
I gawked. “That’s… seven hours? Weren’t you… like, bored?”
His smile widened as he held up a small, black rectangle. A phone. “Youtube.”
In my defense, I was still exhausted. My mouth moved before my brain really knew what I was doing. “Vampires watch Youtube?”
I immediately regretted it. He was the vampire equivalent of a king, and even though I was not his… subject as he’d said, I figured I should still treat him with respect. Besides, I seemed plain rude to call someone out based on their differences. I know I wouldn’t want someone saying, “sick kids like surfing?” (I do! It’s fun!), like they couldn’t be bothered to think of me as a person who did person things and liked person stuff.
But Lyre just snorted into his free hand. “Only to confuse young men in hospitals.”
I let out a long stream of air. “A noble cause.”
He grinned, showing his vampiric, slightly pointed canines. Suddenly, Lyre seemed the age his face suggested, eighteen and teenaged. I felt my mouth stretching, smiling back. It was hard not to. His grin was infectious. Then his face fell back into seriousness. “I’m sure you know why I’m here.”
I swallowed. “The Salvage.”
“Yes. Your parents have asked that I bring them here before performing it.”
“Bring them here?”
He nodded. “They’re in one of the sleep spaces. Though I doubt they’re asleep.”
“Yeah.”
There was an odd silence. I sensed that he was waiting for something. “...So?” he asked, finally.
“So what?”
“So, are you ready?”
I started. “You mean… now?”
“As soon as I get your parents, yes.”
I gulped. On the one hand, I very, very much wanted to get better as soon as possible. On the other… I was about to let someone bite me. And who knew what it would do to me.
I shut my eyes for a second, then opened them. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
He smiled like he could see right through my lie. But all he said was: “I’ll be right back” and left.
I sat simmering in my own nerves. Drowsiness weighed heavily on my eyes, but my mind was painfully awake. Would it hurt? Would I lose blood? Would that make me sick? Would I Turn? I almost wanted to call Buck just so his snide comments could calm me down, but I knew I shouldn’t wake him. I wondered if he’d been sleeping enough these past two days.
I flopped back on the pillows. The heart rate monitor tittered, but nothing abnormal arose. My eyes shut on their own. If I wasn’t careful, I’d fall back asleep.
I heard voices from a long way off, as if I stood on the other end of a long tunnel. I forced my eyes open to see my parents hovering over my bed and Lyre standing off to the side. “Oh, he’s awake,” my mother said.
I squinted. “Did I fall asleep?”
“You were getting there. Are you sure you want to do this now? We could wait until morning.”
I sat up. My vision swam sleepily, but I shook it off. “No. I’m ready now.”
My mom gripped my hand. She looked more freaked than I felt, but she just nodded. My dad scrubbed my hair, then slid his arm around my mom’s shoulders. The two of them stepped back.
And Lyre stepped forward. He gave me a small, gentle smile. “You’ll be just fine.”
I nodded. It felt oddly automatic. “I know.”
“If you ever need me to stop,” he told me, “just punch me or something. You won’t hurt me, so don’t worry about that.”
I laughed nervously. “I don’t want to punch you.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Willam. But really. Punch me.”
“O-okay. I’ll keep it in mind.”
He sat on the side of the hospital bed and, facing me, put a hand on my shoulder. “Try to relax. Imagine it’s a flu shot.”
“A little different from a flu shot, I think…” I managed.
He let out a quiet laugh, then leaned over. I tensed, remembered I was supposed to be relaxing, and forced my muscles to go slack. Lyre put his free hand on the back of my skull to tilt my head off to the side. His breath gusted faintly over the skin where my shoulder met my throat, and I shivered. His breath was cold.
I felt his lips on my skin a moment before there was a bloom of bright pain, small but sharp. My muscles locked instinctively, and I had to fight the urge to shove him away. Lyre’s red ponytail slithered over his shoulder and brushed my collarbone. For a breathless moment, he didn’t move. Then his body tensed and he jerked back, one hand covering his mouth, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, and the other pressed over the spot where his teeth had been. Under his fingers, I could feel the warm stickiness of blood.
“Well,” he said, his voice muffled by his hand. “That’s interesting. How do you feel?”
I inhaled to speak, and… kept inhaling. My lungs felt massive, like I could suck in all the air in the room and shout for days. I could feel my heartbeat, strong and steady as a train. “Oh,” I said, breathlessly, though it seemed as if I’d never run out of air. “It’s amazing. Is this how normal people feel?”
He kept his hand over his nose. “I can’t read your mind to be sure, but I expect so. The bleeding should have stopped by now, I think…”
Lyre carefully lifted his hand. I tried to see my shoulder, but my chin got in the way. There was no pain. “What’s it look like?” I asked.
“Completely healed,” he answered. He stood. “I have to wash my hands. I’ll be right back. Try to clean up the blood while I’m gone.”
“Sure, uh— thanks…” I started, but he was already gone.
I turned to my parents. We stared at each other for a long moment, then my dad said, “It really worked?” and I nodded, because it really, really had, and my mom burst into tears and my own eyes filled up because it had worked and I was going to live.
The three of us made a messy, drippy pile on the bed. I hugged my parents as hard as I could; which was pretty hard now that my bones were healed and my body had been kicked back into gear. My drowsiness was gone. I felt like I could run forever, just on and on and on. We sat there for a minute, all weepy, until my mom said, “alright, enough of that” and grabbed a box of tissues. After we’d cleaned up our drippy faces, my dad surfaced some wet wipes from my mom’s purse and used them to clean off my bloody skin. We tossed the wad, and Lyre came back in.
“All cleaned up?” he asked. “Good. I’m very sorry about that.”
I shook my head. “You were fine.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he replied. “That should’ve gone smoothly. I’m able to remain unaffected by the taste of human blood.” He frowned. “But…”
I gulped. “But what?”
“Has anything… strange happened to you?”
The wheelchair. The ground. The button. My bones. “Yes,” I mumbled. “Everything was broken. It was all breakable.”
Lyre sighed. “I’m not sure how you have it, but… you carry the Shattering.”
I frowned. “Huh?”
“I can taste it in your blood. It smells attractive, too. I’m surprised Buck hasn’t said anything, to you or me.”
“What’s this?” my mother cut in. “Is this about why your bones were all cracked? You didn’t explain that well.”
“Because I couldn’t,” I protested. “I thought I was psychic. Or something. It seemed ridiculous.”
“You’re not psychic,” Lyre assured me. “You used the Shattering. It’s a vampiric skill. Like the Salvage.”
The three of us stared at him. I looked down at myself as if I had to check. “...but I’m not a vampire.”
Lyre let out a gust of exasperated air and fell back into a chair. “That’s why I’m confused. It makes no sense. I suppose it could be genetic, but…” He surveyed my parents. “Both of you are normal humans.”
Wait. “Does this have anything to do with why I’m so sick?”
He nodded. “Yes. Your body cannot contain the Shattering. It’s destroying you, little by little.”
A diagnosis. I finally had a diagnosis. I could put a name to my illness. I could search for a treatment. “Is there a cure?”
He looked at me. His blue eyes were like coins of lapis. “Yes. One.”
Holy cr— “What is it?” I demanded, near hysterical. Hope was bubbling up inside me, boiling over in a mad rush.
“Become a vampire,” he said.
The hope flared out, leaving me dizzy. “What?”
“A vampire’s body is more than strong enough to contain the Shattering. If you became a vampire, you would live.”
“But…” I rubbed the side of my head. “That’s— No. I don’t want that.”
Lyre sighed, that small smile back on his face. “Yes, I figured that. The Salvage will work for a while. If you have it performed multiple times, you might live a normal human lifespan.”
I couldn’t help myself; my face split into a massive grin. “Really?”
“I don’t know. Your condition may worsen unexpectedly. But it’s possible.”
I breathed out heavily. I was almost sick with hope and relief. I couldn’t wait to tell Buck. “I… thank you.”
“Yes,” my mother echoed. “Thank you.” She was tearing up again. I wished she wouldn’t, because it was making me weepy, too.
Lyre smiled his small smile, which I was coming to recognize as his ‘comforting’ smile, one he pulled out to make the rest of the room feel better. “I’ll give you three some space, now. If you need anything, you have my phone number.” He nodded to my parents, then turned to me. “Willam. If your symptoms reappear within the next few weeks, I want you to tell me. Otherwise, we’ll plan on you coming to me every several years to have the Salvage performed to maintain your health. In the meantime, I’m going to look into the Shattering. Perhaps I can find a way to rid you of it.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Please—” Then I remembered myself, and I remembered who he was. “Oh, but, you must have a lot of stuff to do running the Shire. I don’t want—”
He cut me off. “Willam. My job is to protect my people. Your vampire skill makes you— in a way— one of mine. It is my duty to help you.” His blue eyes glittered. “Besides, I want to.”
A shiver scuttled up my spine. “U-um. Well…. okay, then.”
“Good?”
“Mmm. Mmmhmm.”
“Wonderful.” Lyre stood, bowing his head a little to my parents. “Come to me with any concerns.”
My father moved forward slightly. “How much—”
“No.” Lyre’s hand whipped up in a commanding gesture. “You owe me nothing.”
My mom eyed him. “You can’t be serious. You saved his life.”
“Then all you owe me is to keep him alive. Well…” He strode to the door and turned “this is goodbye. And, Willam?” I blinked at him. He grinned in that small way of his. “We’ll meet again.”
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