Midnight Rose (19 page)

He stepped away from the wall, visibly trembling. His teeth chattered around his words. “I read most of it already. The diary. It’s your writing.”

Gideon nodded, swallowing against the urge to weep. Once again he was responsible for the agony on his son’s face. He’d prayed that telling Jude the truth would be the right thing to do. But God wouldn’t listen to a creature of darkness, no matter how bitterly the tears fell. He’d known the separation between God and man to be a consequence when he made his first kill a century before, and it hadn’t mattered then. The urge to feed had far surpassed the importance of an intangible relationship with a lofty creator.

Now he was on his own.

Gideon looked into his son’s heartbroken face and spoke without wavering. “I was hoping you’d have some questions so we could talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it with you.” Jude’s chin trembled. “You’re like, some kind of freak.” No one could argue with that. “That’s why nobody knows except you and me. And Mrs. Shelton, although we never talk about it.” Jude scowled. “She’s not scared of you?” “No.” Gideon hesitated. “Are you?”

The thirteen-year-old crossed his arms and stared at his bare feet. “You drink blood. Like a vampire or something.”

“The vampires in the movies are made up,” Gideon said. “Someone took the truth and twisted it.” He sat down again, folding his hands on the table before him. Calm and steady. He could get through this without losing his cool, without losing Jude. If it wasn’t already too late.

“So what’s the truth?” Tossing the ancient book on the table, Jude moved closer, sparks of fury snapping in his gaze. “All that book says is that you’re, like, this dead guy and you’re cursed and the only way you can be normal is if you drink some saint’s blood, but it’s poison. And it says people like you have no souls. Are you dead, Dad?” In spite of himself, Gideon nearly laughed. It rose in his chest, a mixture of disbelief and regret and self-abhorrence. “God, Jude. I don’t feel dead. Considering the circumstances, I feel pretty normal.” “But you kill people, right?”

“No… No, Jude.”

“Have you ever?”

Gideon stopped, rubbed a hand across his brow. No lies. He would give his boy everything, even if it left him with nothing. The shakiness finally seeped through his words. “A long time ago.” “How many people?”

“Jude, I didn’t keep—”

“More than three or four?” Jude’s voice cracked, tears welling in his eyes. “A lot? Did you scare them? Did they try to run away from you? I would. I’d get away from you and run, and you’d never find me.” Gideon closed his eyes. “None of them ran.” “Why not? Did they trust you? Because you seem so normal and all, but really, you were just planning to hurt them.” A look of stony horror crept over his pale features. “I don’t want to live here anymore,” he said, voice quavering. “I feel sick.” Recognizing the familiar pallor in his son’s face, Gideon shoved his chair back and quickly retrieved a trash bag from beneath the sink. When he held it out, Jude snatched it from his hand and glared at him.

“You’re making me sick. It’s not right to lie, Dad. Keeping all this a secret is the same as lying.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you just give me away after Mom died? Why did you think I’d want to live with you?”

“You’re my son,” Gideon said, numb with despair. “It never crossed my mind that you wouldn’t want me to raise you.”

“Well, I don’t now. I want to get away from you.”

“There’s no place to go, Jude. I’m all you have.”

Tears of frustration welled in Jude’s eyes, turned them to liquid obsidian. “If I have to live here, I want you to stay away from me. I don’t even know you.” Gideon sighed. “You do too know me. I’m the same dad who wiped your nose and your butt when you were little, the same one who loves and protects you and always will. You’re going to get used to the truth eventually. It’s part of who you are.” “No!” He jumped back, fists shredding the white plastic bag. “I’m not part of this. I’m not like you.” Ah, Gideon thought with an odd, creeping resignation. The moment is finally at hand . “But you are,” he said softly. “Part of you is like your mother. And the other part, Jude, is like me.” “I’m not.”

“The stuff in the black bottle you take every night isn’t medicine. It’s blood serum. You have the same needs I do.”

“Shut up.” Jude shook his head, tears glistening on his cheeks in opalescent streaks. “It is too medicine.

It tastes like crap, so I know it’s medicine. I have a problem with my blood, and that’s all.”

“You can’t handle the light because you’re like I used to be. People like us have to be very careful in the sun.”

“I’m not listening to you—”

“And if I don’t explain this now, you’re going to figure it out the hard way, like I had to. Please, Jude. Just sit down and—”

But Jude wasn’t listening. Gaze darting about in search of an escape, he bolted around the kitchen table and lunged for the back door, choking on hard, wretched sobs.

Before Gideon could move, before he could grasp what was happening, the boy threw open the door and plunged into the hot morning sun.

“Jude!” Gideon scrambled after him with no thought to the vulnerability of his own eyes. He caught up with him a few feet outside the kitchen door, grabbed him around the waist and tackled him, smothering him with his body. “Oh, Jude. God. My God.” The acrid scent of smoke and singed flesh rose into the blinding light, and for an excruciating moment, all Gideon could do was huddle over his son, his breath coming in harsh, torn gasps against the boy’s feathery hair.

Beneath him Jude cried softly, burned by the fleeting exposure to the scalding, relentless rays, and by the searing truth that would render him forever changed.

“Ms. O’Brien? Ms. O’Brien, are you awake?”

The hushed, frantic sound of Martha’s voice on the other side of the bedroom door pulled Kate from a deep, dreamless world. She bolted upright, sleep-blinded, and fumbled for the robe she’d laid across the foot of the mattress. “I’m coming, Mrs. Shelton. Just a minute.” A chilled draft shivered around her ankles as she stood and knotted the robe’s belt around her waist.

Something was wrong. Dread settled like a knot in her stomach as she crossed the carpet to the door, and she felt the change in the atmosphere even before seeing the panicked look on the older woman’s face.

“Mrs. Shelton, what’s wrong?”

“Gideon’s taken Jude to the emergency room. I’d planned to meet him there, but I think you should go in my place. Take my car.”

Horrified, Kate left the door open for Martha and dashed to yank out the bureau drawer where she kept her jeans. “But Jude was fine yesterday. What could’ve happened?” “It’s not the PCT this time.” Tears sparkled in Martha’s eyes as she watched Kate step into a pair of jeans. “I don’t know what happened. All I know is, Jude was running out the kitchen door as I came around the corner this morning. The sun was already hot and bright. Gideon was right on his heels—he managed to catch up with him, but…” she trailed off, her face pinched and pale.

Distress danced frenetic circles around Kate’s thoughts. Jude exposed to the hot, relentless sun, even for a second, meant agonizing injury. It was suicide. What would send him running out of the house? “Oh, Mrs. Shelton. Why would he go out in the sunlight? Was he even thinking?” “Not from the looks of it.” Martha dropped wearily to a nearby chair and propped her forehead in her hand. “I don’t know what happened before I got here. Jude’s been so moody lately, so difficult. He and Gideon must’ve had some sort of disagreement. Gideon chased him down and tackled him on the back lawn, but by then, Jude had already sustained burns. I’ve never seen anything like it. Everything the sun touched just blistered. His face, his arms…thank God he was wearing long pajama bottoms. We hustled him inside and wrapped him in wet sheets and blankets. Then Gideon drove him to the hospital in Putnam.” Myriad questions caught in Kate’s throat as she hurried for the bathroom to finish dressing. “Was Jude conscious?” she called, her fingers trembling around the toothbrush.

“Screaming and crying—I’ve never seen him in such a state of agony. And Gideon…” Martha’s voice faded from the bedroom, and Kate knew her distress was too great for her continue.

Shucking off her nightshirt, she slipped on a bra, fumbled with the clasp, dashed back through the bedroom and snatched a clean T-shirt out of a nearby drawer.

As she pulled it over her head, Martha said, “Oh, Kate, I’m so grateful you’re here. Gideon has no one.”

“He has you,” Kate said as evenly as she could manage. She stepped into a pair of flats, grabbed her purse from the dresser and stopped to lay a comforting hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “Listen for the phone. I’ll call as soon as I know what’s going on.” Martha didn’t respond. Her shoulders were trembling from the heaviness of her despair.

The day was glorious, the sky cerulean and cloudless. Squinting at the injurious sun, Kate hurried across the hospital parking lot, her thoughts whirling and tangled. She had no idea what to expect, only an uneasy certainty that father and son were both in acute pain.

The emergency room was surprisingly busy. Swerving around two nurses chatting in the entry, Kate scanned the wide, brightly lit room and didn’t see Gideon. A television mounted on a nearby wall blared Saturday morning cartoons. Somewhere beneath the din, a woman’s voice paged for Doctor Banks to come to ICU.

The world here seemed too fluorescent and cold, too unprotected. Her anxiety to reach Gideon swelled.

Was Jude burned so badly they had admitted him?

She approached the check-in desk, where an elderly woman with a volunteer tag waited to help incoming patients. “Excuse me, but I’m looking for a man who brought in his thirteen-year-old son with severe burns. It would’ve been in the past hour.” The woman checked the clipboard and nodded. “Yes, they’ve already been seen. Are you a relative?” Kate swallowed the urge to lie. “I…no. I’m a friend.” “No one but immediate family is allowed beyond the doors, but you can take a seat in the waiting room and I’ll let the nurses know you’re here.”

Discouraged, Kate thanked the woman and wandered the length of the waiting area, ignoring the curious stares of weary patients and families as she passed by. It reminded her of a bus station with its screaming brightness, unyielding plastic chairs and blaring television. She swerved around a yellow toy truck that rolled into her path, offered its young owner a distracted smile, and kept walking.

At the back of the room, a set of narrow windows overlooked a hallway where a stretcher and a cart of medical equipment half-blocked the view. Bracing against the wall, she stood on tiptoe and craned to see beyond the obstacles. Astonished relief propelled her heart straight to her throat. Gideon stood twenty feet down the hall to the right, leaning against the wall beside an examination room. His dark head was bowed, palms covering his face. The picture of hopelessness.

As she stood there, peering at him from an impossible angle through a narrow, smudged window while Bugs Bunny sang somewhere over her head, a mortifying thought rampaged through her mind. You’re falling in love with him .

No, no, no. Not now. Now wasn’t the time for earth-shattering realizations. She drew a shuddering inhalation and felt like it was her first breath since the moment Martha had knocked on her bedroom door. How could she get to Gideon from where she stood? He needed her, but he was in a no-admittance zone, and she wasn’t about to throw herself again at the mercy of the volunteer stickler behind the desk.

Urgency clutching her heart, she headed back across the waiting room, past the desk, to the entry, where she spotted a set of automatic doors opposite the exit. White-coated personnel moved up and down the corridor behind the doors; she caught glimpses of white coats through the skinny glass panes.

A sign posted nearby warned that only medical staff was allowed down the hall, but Kate knew eventually those doors would open, and then she’d slip through and find Gideon.

Five minutes passed. Ten. The door swished open, and a hospital attendant backed through with a patient in a wheelchair. Offering the young man a polite smile, Kate waited until he’d circled around toward the exit before she darted between the sliding doors.

No alarms went off; no orderlies leaped on her and tackled her to the ground. Smiling grimly at such an image, she hugged her purse strap against her shoulder and rounded the corner. Her footsteps tapped softly against the slick linoleum. She kept her gaze straight ahead, walking with a purpose, past the nurse’s station, past several open rooms and a patient on a gurney parked against the corridor wall like a broken-down vehicle on the side of the highway. When she rounded the next corner, her steps slowed.

Gideon had changed positions; his shoulder was braced to the doorframe of the examination room, his attention fixed within. As though he felt her presence, he stirred and met her gaze.

“Hi,” she said softly when she reached him. “How’s Jude?”

“Sleeping.” He nodded toward the darkened room and Kate peeked inside. Jude lay on his back, bare-chested, both arms bandaged. An intravenous tube ran from his wrist to a metal stand by the headboard. His hair was a shock of ebony on the pillow, complexion a fiery crimson against the stark hospital linens.

She turned back to Gideon, searching his weary face while a wave of compassion tightened her chest.

“What did the doctor say?”

“The obvious. He could’ve died.”

“Gideon, what happened?”

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the wall. “Just another day in paradise at Sister Oaks.”

Biting back the barrage of questions building in her throat, she waited, watching him.

“We had a discussion about our family’s origins,” he said finally. “He didn’t like what I had to say.” His eyes opened and despite the pain shining there, he offered her a rueful smile. “That’s not out of the ordinary with thirteen-year-olds, as you well know. But this time, Jude didn’t know what to do with his anger, so he ran outside. Something any kid in the middle of a tantrum would do. It just happened to be daylight. It just happened to be Jude. Ten seconds of full exposure blistered his skin.” “I’m so sorry, Gideon.”