Once Bitten (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #1)(28)

Chapter Eight

I’m still not sure how I made it home, but I did. I felt increasingly worse as I walked. More than once, I had to stop, wracked with pain in my abdomen.

Shortly after eight, I fumbled my way into the house with clawed hands. Claws are a real bitch for opening doors. The more subdued lighting inside was a relief to my burning eyes.

Removing my shoes proved such a difficult task that, in the end, I gave up and just kicked until they flew off. Each one smacked the wall with a thud that broke the morning stillness.

I was dizzy, and everything began to spin. Rocked with bloodlust, my stomach churned. It wasn’t my hunger. I wasn’t the one who thrived on the blood of the living.

I staggered to my bedroom. My clawed hands left scratches on the walls as I went. After hugging the toilet in my en suite bathroom did nothing to ease the pain in my guts, I crawled to my bed. I was overcome with weakness before being overwhelmed in a sea of black.

I was out for a solid nine hours during which I had the strangest dreams. Sometimes, I saw Arys’s memories through his eyes, and others, I watched as a bystander. My brain seemed to be trying to make sense of the multitude of information that I’d absorbed earlier.

I saw Arys as a man, a human man. He’d been engaged to be married more than three hundred years ago. His fiancée had been a simple beauty, but he loved her dearly. She reminded him of his mother.

His mother… Everything changed, and now I saw his mother with her rouged cheeks and highly pinned hair. I was confused, and I wanted to wake up. Nothing was making any sense to me. It was so random.

I got a taste of Arys’s horror and fear when he realized the woman who’d seduced him for the evening was a vampire with wicked intentions. She wasn’t the one to turn him though. No, that was somebody else. Something was missing. What happened to the fiancée?

My sleep was fitful and disturbing, and when I finally awoke, I was slick with sweat. Kylarai was sitting at my desk using my computer. I sat up and threw my blanket off. My tongue was dry when I tried to speak.

“How are you feeling, Lex?” She asked. She approached me tentatively and perched on the edge of the bed. I could see the flood of questions in her eyes. “You better have a damn good story.”

I still wore the clothes that I’d worn last night, but I was thankfully free of fangs or claws. I struggled out of my shirt and threw it on the floor near the laundry hamper. Then the skirt followed before I met Kylarai’s eyes.

When I sat in my under things, I turned to her. Like a true best friend, she held a glass of ice water out to me.

“Thanks,” I said, after wetting my parched throat. The word came easier than I’d expected. “I feel … awesome.”

“Seriously Alexa, what happened to you last night? Did Arys hurt you?” Her gaze was fixed on the wound near my collarbone, and I could see the assumptions forming.

I reached up and touched the bite. It was crusty around the punctures, and it ached at my touch. I made an attempt to get off the bed, but my head spun, so I sat back down. “No, he didn’t hurt me. I really need a shower.”

“Ok, he didn’t hurt you. So you’ve just recently become a donor?” There was no denying the vehemence in her voice.

“Ky, please. Don’t be like that.” I made a second attempt to get off the bed, and this time my head didn’t swim.

“Well, forgive me for being suspicious, but wouldn’t you be? You look like shit.”

“Fantastic.” I pulled some clean clothes out of my closet and turned to the bathroom. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but honestly, I don’t think it was the physical nature of things. I think it was the metaphysical.”

“How so?”

“If you’ll be the best friend a girl could ever ask for and make me some coffee, I will tell you all about it after my shower. Promise.”

The hot shower felt great even though it set fire to every sore spot I had. I shampooed my hair and lathered my body twice, careful to remove any trace of Arys’s scent from my skin.

The vampire bite, however, had not entirely healed. If I arranged my hair just right, I could most likely hide it. The bite on my breast looked the same but both wounds were clean and should heal as if they’d never happened.

Kylarai stared daggers into me when I entered the kitchen. She looked at me as if I was hiding something. She listened attentively as I recounted the previous night’s events from the time I left her.

I left out the most private and unnecessary details, but her raised eyebrows said she could guess. When I told her about the energy overload in Arys’s house, her eyes really widened.

“I’ve never heard of any such thing. That’s amazing.”

“And bizarre. I don’t know what to make of it. I felt terrible after. And so… hungry.” I was hesitant to tell her that I had actually hungered for human blood, but I trusted her, so I shared.

She looked thoughtful for a minute, chewing her pouty lower lip. “Interesting. That could be something to play with.”

“Could be dangerous, too. It really freaked me out. I’m going to ask Lena about it.” I finished my first cup of coffee in a few large gulps and poured a second. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this but-,”

“I know. Don’t say anything. But, you still have to face Shaz with that bite mark. Better think of something good.”