The Vampire's Assistant

Chapter Thirteen

After the holidays, Eric and I went on about life as usual but the cloud of our conversation that night and all its implications hung over our heads. I battled with my thoughts constantly. I desperately wanted to enjoy being in love, truly in love, for the first time in my life, without the complexities of the situation looming in the back of my mind. For Eric's part, he slipped more and more talk of my turning and the joys of vampirism into our conversations. He knew it complicated things for me, but he was nothing if not persistent.

His persistence tripled when I suddenly fell ill. Out of nowhere, really, I was all but bedridden. My body was weak and wracked with chills, my skin was pale and clammy, and I could barely keep any food down. At first, I chalked it up to a stomach virus and a bit of Eric's blood had me feeling good as new. But within a week the symptoms were back. This confounded Eric, who insisted that his blood should have completely cured whatever sickness I had. He gave me his blood again, more this time, and for about a week I was healthy.

When my symptoms returned again, Eric got scared. It was a strange thing to experience. I'd never felt real fear from him before. Part of me had wondered if he was even capable of it. He began pushing even harder for me to agree to let him turn me. I staunchly refused. I didn't know what was wrong with me and I wasn't about to go killing a fly with a shotgun. I reasoned that it was some sort of virus I was somehow catching repeatedly. Eric ordered a cleaning crew to his house, my apartment, and the club. It seemed a little silly to me, but it eased his worries.

For my third round with the sickness, I wouldn't accept Eric's blood anymore. It infuriated him, but I reasoned that my body needed to build up its own immunity to whatever this was. Begrudgingly, Eric let me try my theory but only if I stayed with him for the duration. He had his maid prepare one of the upstairs bedrooms for me on my insistence that I had no desire to go through a stomach virus around his vampire senses.

I bore through it for a week but my symptoms remained the same. Finally I bit the bullet and made an appointment with my doctor. She agreed it was most likely a stomach flu, but I couldn't include that my vampire boyfriend had cured me of it twice already so the erratic nature and longevity of the sickness concerned her. She ordered several tests and I waited grumpily in the sterile exam room while they were processed.

When Dr. Bailey returned with the results, I was happy for about a second before she gave me the diagnosis. The word passed her lips and my world started to turn black. I gripped the edges of the examining table to keep from falling and she grabbed my shoulder to steady me. I shook my head vehemently.

"No," I insisted. It didn't make any sense. It was impossible. "There's been a mistake."

"No mistake."

"Are you sure? Can you just check again?" I leaned forward, trying to get a look at the chart in her hands.

She shook her head. "Abigail, I am completely confident our test was correct. We can run it again if it makes you feel better. But I am very sure you are pregnant, my dear."

I didn't go back to Eric's house. I went to the drug store and then drove straight to my apartment. In the safety and privacy of my own bathroom, I tore through the packages of the three different pregnancy tests I'd purchased and waited anxiously. They all showed positive. I threw them in the trash and sank to floor.

My mind raced. Had I been drunk recently? Blacked out? Was there a moment in the last few months I could have been taken advantage of? I couldn't think of a single one and the idea itself seemed wholly unlikely.

Dr. Bailey had estimated me at three months. I had only been with Eric in that time. I held my head in my hands. Was it possible? Was there something supernatural at work here? If so, what the hell was growing inside me? I looked down at my flat belly and felt more afraid than I ever had in my life. I was even more afraid than I had been tied to that chair in Eric's office, being tortured within an inch of my life by a sadistic vampire.

I had to get an abortion. That was the only real option here, wasn't it? I shook my head. Now was not the time for decisions. I couldn't be rational with this chaos raging in my mind. I curled myself into a ball on the floor and just sobbed, unable to do anything else. I didn't know how long I laid there, but by the slow drifting of the shadows across the floor, I knew nightfall was drawing nearer. I was happy at the thought. I needed Eric. I needed his calm and his strength. I needed him to make sense of this for me. Eric would make things better somehow. With that one comforting thought, I drifted off to sleep.

I awoke to two large, boot clad feet filling my field of vision. Eric. Relief washed over me for only moment, before I looked up into his face. His eyes were fixed fiercely on the pile of positive pregnancy tests in the wastebasket. A breath later, his anger struck me like a physical blow. I scrambled to my feet.

"Eric, no," I cried and reached out to him. He caught me around the wrists before I could touch him, and flung me away from him. I stumbled backward into the counter. I shook my head, huge, hot tears blurring my vision. "Please," I sobbed, my throat tightening as the desperation welled from my chest. Why hadn't I realized? How could I have been so stupid?

His eyes burned into me, pouring out all his hatred, anger, and jealousy. He didn't utter a sound. He didn't have to. I choked on the onslaught.

"It's not what you think."

Silently, he turned on his heel, turning his back to me with a finality that broke my heart. I leapt at him, frantically clawing at his chest like a mad woman.

"Eric, listen to me! Please!" He stared down at me coldly. "I swear to you! I don't know how it happened!"

Eric smirked, very much a vampire in that moment. "I have a pretty good idea." He extracted himself from my grasp and headed for the door.

"Eric, please! I love you!"

He stopped in the doorway and his shoulders tensed. Fresh hatred seethed from his body but this time I could feel an overwhelming sadness beneath it. It hurt me even more than his anger. An instant later, with no warning but the sound of a quick breeze, I was against the wall, Eric's strong hand around my neck, my feet dangling helplessly a foot off the floor.

He glared up at me and bared his fangs. "I would have given you anything. I would have given you immortality."

I wheezed, barely able to breathe and completely unable to talk. I wished desperately then that our bond was stronger, that I could send my thoughts to him. I would have said that I never wanted immortality, that I didn't care what he could give me, that all I wanted was him. I would have told him that I was his completely and no man could ever turn me away from him. But all I could do was gasp pathetically for air.

Eric's arm shook with barely restrained rage and I wondered for a moment if he would kill me. He seemed to debate it. "I want you out of this town," he growled, "Out of my area. You have shamed yourself and you have you shamed me. If I ever see your face again I will drain you dry."

He released me abruptly and I fell to the floor in an inelegant heap. I stayed there, curled in on myself, sobbing so hard I thought my lungs would burst. Vaguely I registered him leaving and in a dark, far corner of my mind, I could feel him, raging, breaking, in just as much, if not more, pain than I was.

"Please," I whispered, wishing I had the power to reach him with my words. "Please come back to me. I love you. I love you. I love you." I chanted it. I sang it in my head. I pushed it across the bond, flooded the channel with it. I love you. I love you. Love. Love. Love.

The response was fury as cold and harsh as a slap to the face and then there was nothing. The bond was cut and I was alone. Utterly alone.