With all my fiction-born ideas of vampires out the window, I found my own voice, as I forced my eyebrows to unknit due to my confusion. “Thank you for saving me. I don’t know what to say for all you’ve obviously done. Although my memory is fuzzy and fragmented as to all that happened, how I got here, how much time has passed, and all, still, I can see that you have cared for me on top of saving me. So, I am indeed grateful. I figure it is in poor taste to hit you with all my questions, so please forgive me when I do so anyway, as they are spinning out of control in my head. With my fragile grip on the reality of the past hours or days, I feel like I’m going mad trying to make heads or tails of all that happened.”
“First off, you’re welcome. It is what I do. I save people. Second, feel free to ask away. I can only imagine what is going through your head. We have nothing to hide from you.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. But first, after all you’ve done, can I trouble you for water first? I’m unbelievably thirsty, so much so that, believe it or not, for as much as I’m rambling, it is making talking a struggle.” I tried to laugh, but the dryness of my throat showed in the way the air seemed to catch, and choke me instead of coming out as it should have.
“Absolutely. I should have thought of that and had a bottle ready for you. Hold on a sec.”
She’d not sounded sarcastic at all. In fact, she’d sounded and appeared, from the contorted look on her face, to be genuinely upset she hadn’t thought of a thing like water after all she’d already done for me. Apparently the ‘a sec’ part was literal, as she seemed to only disappear to reappear with a bottle of water.
“How do you do that? I guess I wasn’t hallucinating the speed you carried me at when you saved me. And, how does a woman as thin as you carry so easily a woman as big as me? Beyond that, for now, let me just say that I really appreciate the water.”
I stopped to take a sip from the bottle she handed me. My stomach did not feel like it could take all my mouth wanted to gulp down just yet. So, instead, I swished the bit I took in around my dry mouth before swallowing. I swore, before it even got down my throat, I felt my stomach almost immediately roll in protest.
“What I am gives me well beyond human strength and speed. It assists me in my job, my duties to save those who need me. You were pretty out of it when I found you on the road. I’m surprised, actually, that you remember anything. You barely mumbled or even moaned at first. I believed you to be unconscious.”
“How long have I been here? Hours? Days? Weeks? How am I healed so completely?” I’d not gotten the answers I’d wanted from the first questions, only confirmations that I’d been right. I moved on, though, with so many questions still driving me mad, making my head start to ache to ask them all without rattling them off like an insane woman.
“You haven’t been here long. You slept through a little more than one day, off and on, that is. The moments you were awake, though, you were not exactly lucid yet. Part of that was the healing, and partly the medicine of sorts we gave you. Regardless, you needed the rest and recuperation time. You have been healed by magic and blood. I hope that doesn’t freak you out. If you remember being woken to drink, that was a special recipe born of a spell given to us long ago by a sorcerer. The Royal sorcerer, in fact. It contained juices of fruits and vegetables for nourishment, which helps hide the taste, too, of the special herb mixture and drops of our blood.”
I gulped as my stomach rolled again, a little more toward the nauseous side than it already had been. A swipe of heat burst from my neck, creating fevered droplets to form a condensation there. My hand flinched to swipe across the sweat breaking out on my forehead, but I thought better of it. I didn’t want to appear more freaked out than I already was. I was sure my skin had gone much paler than hers by now. Instead, I redirected my hand to my lower abs, resting it there gingerly as I set the water bottle aside. A second sip was pretty much out of the question at the moment, no matter how much my tongue still wanted it.
“I’m sorry. I’ve said too much, maybe too fast,” she continued. “Your face that was just starting to get some color back into it is paler than mine.”
My brain went immediately to mind reading, and then to a fear that she could alter my thoughts like the vampires did on TV. Glamouring, they often called it. I kindly reminded myself of all that had already been untrue about them, save using their blood to heal and the super speed. That line of thought not helping, I forced myself back into the conversation at hand.