Who would even bother to look inside?
“You need to mow the lawn,” she huffed, gritting her teeth against the pain as they trudged over uneven ground, up the steps, and through the door.
They also left it unlocked for expediency’s sake. There had been nights when time had been of the essence.
“Ground’s still too wet.” He flicked a switch, and bright light flooded the small living room.
Krysta limped over to the futon and slumped down on the waterproof tarp they always placed over it on nights she hunted. That bright idea had come to them too late to save their first from bloodstains.
“Do you need help getting your coat off?” he asked, sitting in front of her on their dented and scarred coffee table.
She nodded. Pulling cloth away from the wounds it stuck to always made the pain worse.
Sean, tight-lipped and silent, removed her coat as gently as possible.
Krysta tugged her shirt over her head. Underneath, she wore a heavy-duty sports bra that covered everything. Not one hint of cleavage could be found, not that she had much. And, beneath the pants she removed, she wore bike shorts.
Sean scowled as he examined her wounds. “The leg isn’t broken. It’s sprained. I don’t like how these two cuts”—he motioned to one on her shoulder and one on her thigh—“are bleeding, so I’ll heal them first.”
“Thank you.”
He closed his eyes and rested his hands on his splayed knees. Krysta remained quiet while he breathed in through his nose, held it, then released it several times. Opening his eyes, he covered the wound on her thigh with his hands.
Warmth flooded her skin. The cut began to tingle as if a numbing agent had been applied. Blood ceased oozing from beneath his fingers. The pain eased.
When Sean withdrew his hands, the cut had been replaced by a faint scar. “Turn to the side a bit.”
She did so, giving him greater access to the wound scoring her shoulder.
He cupped a hand over it. Again a soothing warmth suffused her wound as it healed beneath his touch. Sean had borne this gift all of his life. Just as she had borne hers. And he had been healing her for as long as she could remember. Though she was two years older than Sean, she couldn’t count the number of times he had stopped her crying in their youth by covering a scraped knee or cut elbow with his little hands and making the wounds disappear.
Of course, they didn’t actually disappear. Neither of them were sure how exactly it worked, but he seemed to transfer the wound to his own body, which healed at an accelerated rate. Even now, a red stain appeared on the shoulder of his shirt.
“I’ll heal the leg now before I heal the others.”
“The others aren’t bad,” she insisted. “I can just use some butterfly closures on them.”
He shook his head. With careful hands, he lifted her foot and propped it next to him on the coffee table. “Do we really have to do this every time?” He settled his hands on her shin where it hurt the most. A muscle in his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth.
She hated causing him pain. That was the worst part of all of this. Not the vampires trying to kill her. Or having to hide what she did from everyone so they wouldn’t think she was crazy and commit her. But the pain Sean experienced when he healed her time and time again, saving her ass so she could go out and do the same thing again tomorrow.
The pain in her leg vanished. And she knew Sean would limp if he were to stand and try to walk now. But he didn’t. He stubbornly healed every cut and bruise on her arms and legs and back.
She hugged him gingerly when he finished, knowing he now ached in all of the places she had. “Thank you.”
He patted her back, then shifted over to slump down on the futon.
Healing her didn’t just open wounds on him. It also exhausted him.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked.
He shook his head. “How long are we going to do this, Krys?”
She slumped back beside him. “I don’t know. As long as it takes, I guess.”
“Takes to do what? For a while there, it seemed like we were making a difference. The vampires’ numbers decreased. You’d go weeks sometimes without running into one. But eleven in one night?”
“Twelve, if you count the . . .”
“What? The good one?”
She sighed. “I don’t know.”
“It’s turning into a never-ending battle. We can’t win this.”
“How can we stop?”
Another deep sigh soughed from him. Raising a hand, he rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
She understood his weariness. Some may have counted tonight a victory. But she and Sean could see it only as defeat, as proof that they would never succeed in ridding the world of every bloodsucker on the planet.