Everything blurred in pain and darkness and the smell of rotting vegetation. Most of me ached with the bone-deep bruises of a hard fall, while my left leg radiated pain so sharp it shorted out my brain and kept me from concentrating on anything except how much it hurt to move, to breathe. Every motion set off a new wave of agony that squeezed my lungs until I couldn’t inhale. I clenched my jaw against a scream as the night grew silent, not even crickets chirping or insects buzzing about.
I cursed through the pain and tried to get my bearings. A small slope, heading up and with vegetation closing in around it, offered the only clear way forward. A road. Something teased my memory. Something about a road and my cell phone, making a call. Getting help.
An eternity passed as I suffered and breathed and tried to talk myself into moving. I rolled to my back after shrugging out of my mangled backpack, groaning as something in my leg ground against something else and set my teeth on edge, and pushed myself into a sitting position. The blood rushed out of my head and left me swaying; I dug my fingers into the dirt to stay upright. The waning moon provided too much light and revealed the bloody mess and yellow-white bone of my left shin.
I fumbled through the pack to my flashlight and evaluated the duct taped splint that was all that kept me from coming apart and giving up completely. An aluminum splint and duct-tape, my belt, some half-dirty t-shirts to protect the raw wound… It was the worst splint I’d ever seen in my life; a bear could have done better with sticks and bird shit. The Girl Scouts would have laughed me right out of my old troop if they saw such a thing passed off as first aid.
I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth to avoid hyperventilating, reaching back for long-lost first aid classes, and searched the pack for my cell phone. Memories flashed in and out, distracting me as jammed fingers and what felt like a sprained wrist made doing anything difficult, of being on a trail. A storm. The strange man with wild hair and gnarly teeth. Falling down a slope and hitting trees. Waking up in a white room.
Cufflinks and shiny shoes. Dragomir.
Vampires.
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. Sorting out what actually happened from the story Dragomir came up with took too much brainpower when my whole leg throbbed every time I blinked or breathed or thought too hard. Fuck a duck. I hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
I turned the cell phone on and crossed my stiff fingers that the battery held enough charge to actually do what the vampire planned. It was still searching for a connection as I caught up a long, sturdy stick on the trail next to me and debated trying to stand. I couldn’t sit there in the weeds all night, not stinking of blood and helpless as a day-old lamb, otherwise a polecat or bear might mistake me for an easy snack.
It had not escaped my notice that Dragomir kept my rifle.
I tried later to forget everything about what came next – passing out when I accidentally put weight on my bad leg, hauling myself upright one agonizing inch at a time, staggering and dropping the stick and following it back into the dirt. The gentle slope loomed like Everest.
Screaming into the night drew nothing to me but more agony and breathlessness – though it helped to bellyache at the universe about my terrible luck. Maybe Dragomir heard me, wherever he was. No doubt laughing his creepy head off at the sight of my pain. I frowned at the near-full moon and paused to lean against the stick and consider all the choices I’d made in my life.
What if vampires also fed from mental anguish, in addition to blood? Was that a thing? Psychic vampires or emotional vampires?
A cool snakeskin whisper slid against my thoughts and told me to focus on getting to the road.
“Stop doing that,” I said under my breath. “I’ll get there when I get there.”
The moon still hung in the sky, almost hidden by the mountains, by the time I made it to a rutted dirt track that could have been a road. My phone dinged with alerts for missed messages and voicemails. The wind picked up, no longer blocked by the trees, and cold blanketed me in another kind of darkness.
I leaned on the stick and missed, falling hard on my right knee. Something popped or tore or just gave up and I shrieked like a stuck pig.
Maybe they would hear. Maybe whoever looked for me heard and would come faster. The cell phone slid out of my hand and I pushed my body, to stretch just a little farther…
It skittered away, down the slope, and I exhaled in defeat as I flopped onto my back. I stared up at the night sky as snow started falling in fat, wet flakes. They stuck in my eyelashes and mixed with a few woe-is-me tears as pain faded into numbness like that first night in Dragomir’s lair. The frozen ground at my back no longer hurt. It took away some of the agony of my legs and an aching shoulder but also reminded me I’d left the pack – and the emergency blanket – somewhere down the trail.
I exhaled and listened for anything that disturbed the silence except the whisper of falling snow.
Maybe Jamie saw the same stars before he disappeared. Maybe he’d heard the same sounds. Maybe he thought the same things, wondering if it was the last time he’d see those stars and think thoughts and regret everything he hadn’t had time to do. My heart ached deeper than my broken bones. Maybe Jamie bargained and begged to live, maybe he shouted at the universe like I wanted to. Like I imagined Dragomir had as he watched the sun rise on Jerusalem and knew the inevitability of death waited. Deus vult and nothing could have changed it, until it did. I envied the dubious comfort Dragomir must have taken in believing everything was preordained and that a reward waited for him instead of only more darkness. The moon hovered in silence and the snow kept falling.