The Guest & The Change - By M. D. Bowden Page 0,37

felt herself moving, something shaking her, and the dream faded away.

More images formed in her mind. Jo, her husband, who had only days before been turned into a vampire. Horror and pain flooded over her as she relived how he had tried to attack her in the alley, to bite her, to drain her blood. She watched as his life was ripped from him by a stake penetrating his heart, rammed into him from behind. She saw him lying dead in the dark - his face bloody, his clothes torn. He had been taken from her, from their children. He was moving in and out of her grasp, of her consciousness. She saw her previous life fade away, moving further and further from her reach.

More shakes rattled her body and she drifted into dreamless sleep.

***

Daniel held on tightly to Sarah. He sat at the bottom of the same tree he had rescued her from two days earlier. He thought back to the state he had found her in. She was weak - bloody, at the edge of death.

He had thought he had lost her.

He winced as he remembered slicing open his neck, his blood flowing into Sarah’s mouth.

His blood had saved her.

She was alive.

He hadn’t stopped holding her since. He hadn’t moved from his position. Night and day had come and gone, and he had held her. Watching, waiting for her to awaken.

He hadn’t expected her to sleep for so long, but he had never experienced this kind of situation before. She had been through too much, lost so much blood. She’d been cold, very cold. He leant down again and kissed her lips. She twitched slightly in his arms, and he thought he saw the trace of a smile.

He hugged her tighter.

Color had returned to her cheeks and she was looking healthy again. She was still dirty, covered in dried blood. He had thought about taking her back to The Woodman, the hotel he’d been staying in, and giving her a bath. But in the end he had decided not to disturb her, to let her rest - let her heal.

It was strange though; while he’d been watching, holding her, he’d felt vague ripples of energy moving over her body. When he looked really closely, focusing his power on her skin, it looked like it was shining lightly.

He didn’t know if this was normal or not, under the circumstances. He hadn’t actually healed anyone with his blood before. He had watched as Sebastian had - although this was not done altruistically. Sebastian had used his blood for his own gain - to create more vampires. If someone died with vampire blood running through their veins, they would reawaken as a vampire, forever craving blood. Sebastian was the vampire who had turned Daniel, he had tormented him and killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of people. When Sebastian had used his blood to heal, Daniel hadn’t paid very close attention to the victims; instead he had removed himself from the situation, preferring to be as uninvolved as he could.

Sebastian’s victims hadn’t been through as much as Sarah had though, they had been healthy, apart from the sudden loss of blood from the feed, and they hadn’t slept after they were healed.

Daniel reached out and stroked Sarah’s face. She wriggled a little, snuggling into him, getting comfy. Her eyelids fluttered in a dream. He wanted to kiss her again, for them to melt into one another, to make love.

She looked beautiful as she slept, and he held her as if she were his own. He hoped that she would be his - but how would she feel after everything that had occurred? She may want to be as far away from him as she could be, as far removed from anything supernatural as possible. Her husband was recently dead and she had two young children to look after.

Daniel thought of his life up until this point. He had been a vampire for as long as he remembered. His human life paled into insignificance after so long, snatched away by Sebastian when he had turned him. For as long as he’d been a vampire, he had wanted to destroy Sebastian. Now he had done it. He was free to do something else - what would he do now? Could he stay with Sarah? He would need to live in this small town, to watch her grow old. Could he be a father to her children? How would that work - a vampire as a