A Dawn of Strength (A Shade of Vampire #14)(10)

“Rose, my darling. We have so much to catch up on. You must tell me everything.”

And so we sat in her living room for the next few hours. I recounted all the details of my story to her, and I was stunned as she told me her tale. I was furious at how the white witches had treated their own kind, and I felt incredibly guilty that they’d gone through all that suffering just because they’d been trying to find me. Once we were caught up on each other’s stories, I reached for Caleb’s hand. Corrine had warmed up to him considerably during the course of our conversation.

Standing up, I unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his shoulders so Corrine could see the damage that had been done to him by the South American thugs.

Her eyes widened as she moved closer to the vampire and looked over the wounds. “These bullets are lodged deep,” she murmured. She shot a look at me. “You might not want to be here to watch this, Rose.”

“I’m staying,” I said firmly.

“Okay.” Corrine sighed and led us to her spell room. She cleared the long wooden table in the corner and placed a plastic covering over it. Grabbing a cushion from one of the chairs, she placed it at the edge of the table as a pillow. She gestured for Caleb to lie down. He lifted himself up and stretched out. I walked to the edge of the table and stood by his head.

“We’ll work on the chest area first, then the shoulders and back,” the witch said. She grabbed a bottle of bright blue liquid and began dabbing it over Caleb’s wounds with a cotton swab.

Corrine looked down seriously at Caleb. “Now, this could be quite painful. Do you want me to give you some kind of painkiller to make it more bearable?”

“I’ll be all right,” Caleb muttered.

I looked at the sharp metal tools Corrine had started pulling out of a drawer and wiping down with the blue solution. She must have caught my expression, because she smirked. “Don’t look so scared, Rose. This procedure looks more primitive than I intend it to be. I’ll mix up a potion that will help the bullets loosen from the flesh and slide out easily. These tools are mostly to help lift them out.” She walked over to me and gripped my hand. “I’ll make this as quick for your man as I possibly can.”

I walked with the witch over to the sink and watched as she began pulling bottles of colorful ingredients off the shelves and mixing them up in a small brown cauldron. She brought the mixture to a boil quickly, then muttered a few words to cool it. We walked with the cauldron back over to Caleb. Setting it down next to her tools, she disappeared from sight for a moment before reappearing with a long, white sheet. I helped her spread it out over Caleb.

As she set to work, I mostly couldn’t see what she was doing because she was deliberately using the sheet as a shield. But it pained me every time Caleb’s jaw clenched.

I stood behind his head and pressed my palms against his forehead, gazing down into his warm brown eyes.

Corrine glanced up at me with an amused expression. “Judging by the look on your face, anyone would think that I was working on you rather than Caleb. Don’t you trust me, honey?”

“I do trust you, Corrine,” I said. “I just…”

I just hate watching Caleb suffer more than he has already.

Although I didn’t say the words out loud, Caleb smiled, his eyes lighting up. He reached up a hand and brushed it against my cheek.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m fine.”

I caught his hand and kept hold of it until Corrine laid her tools down and looked up at us again.

“Okay, that’s the chest area done,” she said. “Now we’ll just wait a few minutes for Caleb’s natural healing capabilities to kick in and close the open cuts I’ve just made…”

After two minutes, she lifted the sheet off him. Caleb propped himself up and we both stared down at his chest. Gone were the dark shadows, and in their place were light scars where his skin had just closed over. My eyes fell on a pile of bloody bullets gathered up in a ball of tissue next to Corrine. I shuddered. “Thank God those are out of you.”

“Now let’s finish the rest,” the witch said.

Caleb rolled over on his stomach as Corrine repeated the same procedure on his back and shoulders. Time seemed to pass quicker this time. Perhaps it was Corrine finding her stride and feeling more confident with the procedure, but it felt like less than ten minutes before she lifted the sheet again and showed me the bullets she’d removed.

“There,” Corrine said, smiling. “You’re a new man, Caleb.”

I handed Caleb his shirt as he sat up. After looking himself over, he began buttoning it up.

“Thank you, Corrine,” he said.

Corrine reached up and ruffled his hair. “Don’t mention it.” She threw me a wink.

Even though her hands were still bloody, I threw my arms around her and kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”

“Off you go now,” she said after returning my kiss. “Ibrahim and I have some catching up to do. We were unconscious for God knows how long.”

As we walked toward the exit of the witch’s home, we passed Ibrahim in the corridor, still wearing his navy pajamas.

“Bye, Ibrahim,” I said, giving him a hug. “We’re heading out, but Corrine wants you. She’s in the spell room.”

“Try to stay out of trouble this time, Rose,” he said, rolling his eyes and closing the door behind us.