Awakening (Awakening, #1)

Chapter 20

I must have fallen asleep, which seems impossible but happened rather quickly. I crack open my eyes with difficulty due to the bright light filtering through that small window, blinding me. I look over to Maggie and breathe out a small sigh of relief at knowing she's still here hanging on with me. She's looking out of the window, but not squinting at the intense beams of light shining through. She's just...staring.

I clear my throat, or at least attempt to. My throat is so dry that when I try to swallow, it's like being scratched with sandpaper from the inside. A few minutes later, Maggie looks over in my direction. The bruise on her face is fading, which shows me that she heals quickly. That may come in handy if we have any plans on trying to get the hell out of this place.

"I was wondering when you were gonna wake the hell up," she says. "For a vampire, you sure do sleep a lot. That sure won't do us any good if we plan on ditching this shit-hole."

"You're right. But sorry to disappoint. I don't have any solid plans yet, but I'll keep thinking-," my mouth clamps shut when Maggie brings her hands around the pole she was tied to, showing me her hands. And wrists. Without restraints.

"Yeah, well you took too long."

"How...how did you...I can't even move my hands!" I say. I'm completely in awe; I need to know how she managed to get free.

"A magician never reveals her-," I shush her with a look when I hear footsteps descending the staircase. Maggie immediately throws her hands back behind her back the way they were, and manages to tighten the restraints again. Thank goodness for that too, because I have a feeling we would have a hard time trying to explain that.

I release a little bit of tension from my body when I see that it's just Teegan coming down the stairs. A few moments later, a clear baggie of a red liquid substance falls to the ground just out of reach with an audible squish. The smell hits my nostrils like a freight train and I can already feel my throat start to spasm and my mouth turn from a dry desert to a watery oasis.

I say what should be obvious. "I can't reach that."

By the look she gives me, I know then that she has a mission in mind. "I have some questions. And you're going to answer them."

"So you plan on starving the answers out of me? You know I don't know anything."

"I want to know what you see me as," she whispers, searching my eyes for something she'll never find. "Do you see me as some girl who ruined your life? Or do you see me as the girl who loves you more than she loves herself?"

I take a moment to try and think of something to say without completely blurting out how I really feel. "What you did...it was extremely selfish and...unforgivable."

"Hey, hey, I know that, okay? You think I don't think about that every second of every damn day?" Teegan looks as if she's about to cry. "Just...tell me. Tell me what's so wrong about not being able to stand the thought of losing someone you love so much? Tell me!"

"What do you want from me?" I believe I'm yelling now. "What, you want me to say everything is fine? It's not fine! You have me and an innocent girl tied to poles in a basement, starving! I can't remember much of my old life, but I can tell you that I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I've ever loved you!"

Silence. Deafening silence. Maggie looks back and forth between us, silent as well.

"You don't mean that, you don't even know-,"

"But I do know!" I'm definitely yelling now. "I know what you did, and I get that you feel like it was a good thing, but it's horrible! You took away my life; the very thing that made me human- made me who I was! And I can never forgive you for that."

"You were sick too," she said, barely audible even to my ears. She quickly wipes away a runaway tear before she continues. "No one knew, of course not. Of course no one did. But I did. And I had to do something about it, I was not going to just sit by with my immortal life while knowing eventually I would have to watch your mortal one waste away in front of me. I just...couldn't."

Now I'm curious what she means by this. Any insight into my old life can help me figure this whole mess out. So I go along with it. "What do you mean I was sick?"

"I could hear it in your chest. A little off-step in your heartbeats. I knew then that something was going to go terribly wrong if I didn't do something. So if you wanted me to stand by and wait for the inevitable, then I'm sorry I let you down, Jonah," she says. Then she walks over to where the bagged blood lies on the floor.

And she steps on it. I listen to the sickening sound of the contents of the bag leaking out, the blood running in rivers, pooling out of my reach. The smell invades the whole room and invades my senses until I'm consumed by it. Teegan saunters back to my side. I refuse to let the look of pure anger and defeat show, not in front of her.

Teegan grabs my chin with her hand and forces me to look at her. "Imagine that that bag is my heart," her voice breaks a little. "And my foot...," she squeezes harder. "Is you. What you did to my poor...little...heart."

And then my neck snaps and everything goes black.
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