Chapter One: Help Her
Jonathon
She lay there unmoving. Fragile. Broken. So… human. I felt responsible. It was my duty to protect her and I had failed. Because of me her life was hanging on a thread. In any other circumstance, I would just turn her, but that’s not what she wanted, and I wouldn’t go against her wishes. I wondered, if she knew she was dying, would she change her mind?
I couldn’t think like that. It would kill me. Our tide was just starting to look up and then this had to happen. I could still hear her screams echo in my head as her body moved around the car like a pinball. I remember thinking at the time that her seatbelt should have stopped her but I guessed the car had turned and twisted too much for it to do any good. I had put my arm out to hold her back but then her head hit the glass and she blacked out.
“Kylie, stay with me. Oh my God! Please stay awake! There’s so much blood! If you can hear me just keep listening to my voice! Don’t go to sleep! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I love you! Please, don’t leave me!” I pleaded with her.
I ripped my way out of the crumpled car and tried to get to her. I could already hear the high pitched squeal of police sirens and an ambulance. I ripped the passenger door off. I didn’t care who saw. Kylie was more important than any witness of my herculean strength. I’d blame it on an adrenaline rush, if it came to that.
The man had come out of nowhere. He looked familiar, but ghostly, like an apparition or something, but Kylie had seen him too. While I tried to tend to her, another part of my brain was trying to figure out whom the man was, and if he had even been real.
I felt for her pulse and couldn’t find one.
I became panicked.
This was bad.
Worse than bad.
“Noooooo!” I cried into the night.
I was too late she was gone.
I tore at my hair as my jaw clamped down. I placed my hand against her throat, hoping that by sheer willpower I could bring her back.
“Come back to me,” I begged.
But then there was moth wing’s flutter.
Her heart beat.
Her heart was still beating.
By some miracle her heart was still beating…but it was getting fainter.
I had to act fast.
Blood ran down her face and from her mouth. Cuts lacerated her fragile body. I couldn’t believe this had happened. I bit my arm with my teeth and held up the blood dripping freely from the cut to her lips. She didn’t move. I had to get her to swallow some of it so it could start the healing process. Time was of the essence. Her physical damages were significant and I didn’t want to think about the internal ones. I wiped the wound on my arm with my fingers and held my trembling fingers to her unyielding lips. I coated her beautiful lips with my blood. Her tiny pink tongue flicked out and licked some of the blood.
“Good girl, get some more,” I whispered running my hands through her blood matted hair.
I couldn’t believe this had happened. I was in shock and I hadn’t known it possible to shock a vampire. Her delicate lips took some more of my blood but not enough. Someone grabbed me and pulled me away. I was too surprised to fight back. “Kylie!” I screamed as the officer pulled me away. “Kylie! Stay with me! I love you! Kylie!” I started to pull away from the weak pathetic man holding me.
“Son, we’re trying to help,” he said in Italian.
“I can help more,” I spat in Italian back at the man. He was short with a dark mustache. He was normal and unmemorable.
I ran back to the car. “Kylie!” I screamed.
“Sir, get back. You need medical attention! We will help her!” he said again. I could see a man coming with some kind of cutting instrument.
“No!” I yelled, and he continued his futile attempts to pull me away. I was no longer surprised and not so easily thwarted. I ripped at the seatbelt and yanked it free. The man gasped. I gently pulled her out of the twisted metal that was once my car. I held her to my chest. She looked so broken. I held her to me and kissed her forehead. “Stay with me, principessa. Stay with me. You’re strong I know you can do it.” I tried to discreetly slip some more of my blood between her lips but found to my dismay that the wound on my arm was already gone and the persistent cop was trying to pull her from my grasp. I wanted to rip his neck open. How dare he try and take her from me. I could already feel my teeth elongating.
Then I heard the one thing that snapped me back to reality, “Jonathon,” said Patrick sharply. It wasn’t the voice I longed to hear but it was a welcome one. Somehow they had seen what happened and come. I saw Amelia standing slightly behind him. Her and Diana’s faces showed pure horror. Danny and Mason looked shocked and Joseph looked like he was trying to keep it together but I knew he was just as horror stricken as the rest. They all loved Kylie and for this to happen? I wasn’t the only one hurting. If I could cry, I would be sobbing, and I knew they would as well. Patrick was trying to look fatherly and put together. “Officer,” he said, “this is my nephew.”
The officer let out a breath, “Good, maybe you can talk some sense into him. This young lady needs medical attention immediately.”
“I agree, sir,” he said, “Jonathon, why don’t you carry her to the ambulance,” he nodded to the waiting ambulance.
“No,” I said.
“Jonathon! Now!”
“Patrick, don’t make me do this! I can’t lose her!” I cried desperately. I saw that several police officers had already made a line around the car wreck, keeping pedestrians back. My family was standing behind that line speaking to me. I saw Patrick say something to one of the officers, and the one next to me said something, and suddenly Patrick was coming towards me.
He came to stand next to me and whispered in my ear, “The humans are already involved. There is nothing that we can do. We have to let them take her.”
“Patrick,” I pleaded brokenly.
“Stop. It has to be this way. We’ll do what we can once she’s at the hospital. You’re wasting precious time. She’s fading. You have to be feeling it.”
There was nothing else he could have said for me to relinquish her to the humans. “I’m going with her,” I glared at the officer. He nodded, too scared of me to argue. They opened the back door of the ambulance. I placed her on the small pallet of a bed. A man and a woman immediately began fussing over her. They placed an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. It took all my self-control not to push them out of the way and tend to her myself. I was surprised when Amelia climbed in beside me. I was a mess and I could see that she was beyond worried. She squeezed my knee in reassurance and kissed my cheek.
“She’ll be okay. She’s stronger than you give her credit for,” she said but I could see that she herself was worried.
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“She’s so breakable,” I mumbled as the ambulance started to move towards the nearest hospital. “What am I going to do? I thought everything was finally going to okay and now this?” I buried my face in my hands.
“That’s life, Jonathon. It’s unpredictable. Never take advantage of the time you have, because you never know when it might be your last. Even for us,” she added.
Now I was sitting outside of Kylie’s hospital room with my head in my hands and my leg moving rapidly up and down. I was trying so hard not to burst through that door and turn her right then and there. She wouldn’t want that and I would follow her wishes even if it killed us both. I loved her that much. I loved her more than anything. Patrick was right; I could feel her life inside me and it was burning weakly. This was my fault. I overreacted and my mistake might kill her.
The doctor was in the room with her now. Patrick was staying with me, by her room, while the others waited in the lobby. I don’t think he trusted me to be by myself. Quite frankly I didn’t trust myself. This was far worse than when I rescued her from Selena so many months ago. I could save her then, but now I was helpless. I wasn’t sure if she had gotten enough of my blood to do any good, and the more time that passed, the less I would be able to help her. I had to get in there.
I stood and suddenly Patrick’s rock hard hand slammed into my shoulder sending me back into my chair.