A Stone-Kissed Sea
Page 26

Passion was sexy. Focus was attractive. And in her most exhausted hours, she’d allowed her mind to wander to what that focus would feel like if it ever turned her direction. Lucien was an attractive man, and she was only human.
But her feelings were contrary to reality. Most of what Lucien projected toward Makeda was irritation, disinterest, and at best, a grudging tolerance.
Lightning cracked the sky as she crested the hill separating the lab from the main road. She downshifted and applied the brakes, careful not to let the Jeep gain momentum on the slick road. It twisted between the oaks and cedars, the gravel worn away in some spots by the downpour.
A deer jumped from the bushes, but she overrode her instinct and kept the Jeep straight, knowing that swerving could mean her death in these kinds of conditions. Luckily, the animal darted away from the car and into the bushes on the other side before she reached it.
“Stupid Bambi,” she muttered.
She moved her hand to the stick shift and pressed down on the clutch, ready to downshift as the slope increased. She nudged the wheel to the left as the road twisted into a curve—
The steering wheel didn’t budge.
She lifted both hands, attempted to wrench the car back on the road.
Nothing.
Her pulse increased as the oak trees in front of her grew larger. The car was slipping and sliding down the hill. She braked too hard, and the rear of the vehicle fishtailed to the left. Then Makeda was sliding sideways down the hill, mud and rock flying up and slapping the side of the car. There was no time to think. No time to react.
The Jeep rolled.
Something crashed.
Everything went dark.
“Makeda!”
His face swam in and out of Makeda’s vision. Not him. He couldn’t be the last thing she saw.
Not him.
Chipped-granite eyes in a coldly handsome face. Hard eyes. Hard face. Planed and ancient like the earth he controlled. Old eyes. Young face. His shaggy, rain-soaked hair dripped water onto her lips. She closed them as another stab of pain hit her chest.
“Dr. Abel,” he said, “stay awake. Emergency services are on the way.”
Images swam to the surface of Makeda’s mind. Her mother laughing in the kitchen and her father behind his desk. The sun setting over the ocean near their home on the Puget Sound. She could hear the crashing water that reached the cliffs in this place she loved and hated.
Love and hate.
Like two beings struggling beneath her skin.
Always always always.
Torn in two. Something in her was so torn.
“Makeda!” He slapped her, and she took a sharp breath.
The quick inhalation hurt so badly she felt the tears come. They wet her cheeks like the mist rolling off the ocean. She could hear it. Hear the tide going out.
No. No, she was too far. Too far from the sea.
Wasn’t she?
Her heart. It pulsed in her ears, surging, then falling off. Waves receding.
“Makeda, stay awake.”
Tired. Hurts.
“I know it hurts.” Another slap. Harder this time. “Stay awake, dammit!”
Not him. She didn’t want to see him. She was dying, and it was his fault. Makeda felt him bend over, put his mouth at her ear, his breath cold because he couldn’t be bothered to heat it. Couldn’t be bothered with even a semblance of humanity to comfort her. She wanted her mother. Her sisters. She wanted home.
“Yene konjo,” he whispered, “you may hate me, but I will not let you die.”
Unbidden, old images came to her, aching scenes from her childhood. Mountains rising above the mist, sweeping ranges covered by a blanket of green. Raw beauty covered by dense clouds and a sky pregnant with rain.
Rain.
She felt it falling on her cheeks. Her forehead. Her lips.
Another slap to her cheek, but Makeda decided not to breathe. Not this time.
It hurt too much.
Everything hurt…
“Makeda!”
She dreamt of drowning. But when she opened her mouth, it was to drink the sea that surrounded her. She drank and drank and she was not full. She swallowed the ocean, but it did not quench her thirst.
She dreamt of floating, but when she opened her eyes, it was to see the moon through a veil of water. Blood and salt. A warm thread slipped past her lips, down her throat.
She was filled with it.
Her skin was freezing, but a fire burned in her veins. Her heart slowed. Stilled. But the fire still raged. It raced through her blood.
Tiny droplets flowing into other droplets, forming tributaries that dropped water to the earth… Flowing along paths leading back to the massive expanse of the sea that was the source of all water.
The source of all life.
The source.
It all filtered back to the source.
The fire pumped from her heart, through her lungs, stealing her breath before it crept through her arteries, the delicate arterioles, the tiny capillaries that fed each cell. The fire churned through her veins, an endless system of cells fed and renewed…
Blood.
The source of all things.
The elemental energy filled her mouth as she drank. The space and matter of it. Liquid fire. It filled her mouth. Transformed her mind. Newly woken synapses latched onto the thought, dissected it, and came to their conclusion even as her body lay unmoving.
Vampire.
They had made her vampire.
She could feel him in the room when she woke.
“Yene konjo, you may hate me, but I will not let you die.”
Makeda was assaulted by her senses, bruised by the rush of input to her system. The sheet over her naked body was too heavy. The low light from the lamp was too bright. When she inhaled, she tasted everything.