Light Me Up Read online

  “Drive, Jenny, please.”

  “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to help you. Maybe if you could just explain to me why we’re going there I might feel better about doing this.”

  Rob interrupted. “Jen…”

  Ben spoke over him. “Do you know what the worst part of this whole dying experience has been?” He swallowed because he was losing his breath again. “It’s not the pain, not the fear. It’s not the fact that I sleep half the day when I’d rather be running around. No, it’s the having to depend on other people to simply do anything I want to do. I had to get someone to come to my house with a wheelchair to take me to the damn airport. I want to go to the graveyard, and I don’t want to explain to you why.

  You’re my sister. Can’t you help me with this?”

  Jen was silent, as she stared at the steering wheel. When she spoke it was with a sob in her voice. “Yes, Ben, I can help you with this.”

  She backed the car out of the driveway.

  “Thank you.”

  He closed his eyes. Whatever reserves he had, he needed to save them for what he was going to do.

  He walked through the mausoleum portion of the

  graveyard in silence, Rob dragging the trunk behind him. Jen had remained distinctly silent the whole drive over, and he wasn’t sure if he’d pissed her off or made her so sad she couldn’t speak. Either way, he was sure he owed her an apology, which he would gladly give… later.

  Finally, he saw the one he’d been looking for. Three intertwined circles but with a line through them. He knew that meant it was a Vampire safe-haven. She’d explained the symbol last night. Still, he’d worried that she’d erased it since she was currently occupying the place. The line through it must be the equivalent of ‘this place is lived in.’

  Even as he gasped air into his overworked lungs, he smiled.

  Rob finally spoke. “Ben, is this what you’re looking for?”

  Ben nodded. “Yes. Rob would you do me one more favor and push open the door?”

  “Of the mausoleum?”

  “Yes?”

  Ben actually heard Rob gulp. “Okay.”

  Jen huffed as she put her hand on Ben’s cheek. “You look awful. This is too much. It has to stop now.”

  “Five more minutes.”

  “No, you’re practically falling over, and you can’t breathe. I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “Fine.” By the time the ambulance got there he’d have accomplished his task

  Rob pushed open the door, and Ben walked inside. It was dark and musky but not as stale inside as it should have been. That meant it had been opened recently. He prayed for one more gift this Hanukkah —shouldn’t he be entitled to eight?— he wanted this to be the place. Please, let it be the place where Ruthie was.

  Chapter Five

  Ruth was having a delicious dream. She knew where it came from. Ben’s silly questions about where she lived had somehow put the idea in her head that he might show up. It was impossible, and yet here he was in her dream.

  “Ruthie, I need you to wake up.”

  His voice sounded too strained, like he couldn’t breathe correctly, and she’d certainly never picture him in a fantasy like that. Her eyes flew all the way open.

  “Ben? How are you here?” She pulled herself from the fog of rest and stood up rubbing her face.

  “The Vampire hunter.” He panted like he’d run a race. “He’s coming to burn down the graveyard. We have to get you out of here.”

  She grabbed him by his arms and held him up. His whole body glistened in sweat and he shook in her arms. “You came here to help me? Ben, I can’t leave. The sun is shining.”

  “Rob, come here.”

  She heard footsteps and the sound of something dragging. “Ben, man, you better get up here. Jenny is freaking out. Why do you need this trunk…”

  As he rounded the corner, the predictable happened,

  the person speaking froze in her presence. She sighed.

  “Ben, who is this?”

  “This is Rob, my brother-in-law.” Ben bent over from the waist even in her arms. “I think he’s…”

  “Enthralled. Yes, that’s what happens.”

  He pointed at the floor. “Get in the trunk.”

  She eyed the old trunk warily. “Ben, look at you. There is no way you’re dragging me out of here in that thing. You need to be in a hospital.”

  It took him a while to get each word out. “An… ambulance… is… coming… for… me.” Another pant. “Get… in… the… trunk… Rob… will… drag… you… out… of… here.”

  “Rob is enthralled. He’s not doing anything except what I tell him to do.”

  “So… tell… him… to… do… that.”

  “You’re going to the hospital. You swear it.”

  He laughed as he shook in her arms. “I… swear…

  it.”

  This was a nightmare. It wasn’t her own safety she was concerned about. The likelihood that some whacko could set fire to a hundred year old mausoleum was small indeed. The thing was pure marble, concrete, and granite. Ben had strained himself possibly past the point of recovery to try to rescue her. Now he might die right before her eyes.

  “I will get in the trunk as soon as the ambulance arrives.” She wasn’t going to leave him here alone.

  Rounding the corner, a woman in her late thirties screamed Ben’s name. She came to a stop, abruptly, immediately enthralled.

  “Who is that?”

  “My sister, Jenny. She’ll take care of me. I can’t relax if you don’t get in my trunk. Please.”

  Ruth gritted her teeth. “Fine.” Pulling Ben to her, she kissed him hard. “Thank you for this. You’re a hero.

  Did you know that? A hero to me.”

  He smiled a wolfish grin even as he doubled over on the floor. “I always wanted to be someone’s hero.”

  Don’t die. She didn’t say the words aloud. She couldn’t ask him to do something he couldn’t possibly control.

  With a final glance at Ben, she smiled as she looked at Rob and Jenny. Pointing her finger at Jenny, she spoke to her first. “Take care of Ben. Help him get upstairs, get him in the ambulance.” The woman blinked twice before she grabbed Ben’s arm. Finally, Ruth regarded Rob and said the words she never thought to say in her life. “I’m going to get in that trunk. Close me in and drag me out of the cemetery.”

  Rob nodded. She felt sort of bad for the man. She wasn’t heavy, but she wasn’t lightweight either and the trunk was big and bulky. But this had been Ben’s plan. She had to do what he wanted regardless of how terrible it felt.

  She climbed in the trunk, and Rob pushed the lid down on top of her. Being encased in the darkness didn’t bother her. She’d lived in the night for sixty-five years and slept in cemeteries for most of that time. There was little that could actually scare her.

  Except for the thought of Ben dying in the mausoleum. Closing her eyes, she listened to the sound of his strained heart. It was all she needed to hear. Step-bystep Rob dragged her further away from Ben. It took an eternity. In the distance, coming closer, she heard the wailing of an ambulance. In the sixty-five years she’d been dead and the twenty-two years she’d actually walked in the sun, she didn’t think she’d ever heard a more welcoming sound than that.

  With her super hearing, she could still make out Ben’s heartbeat. Tears filled her eyes. Banging the lid of the god-forsaken trunk, she bit down on her lip. She needed to admit it. To give it the word it deserved. She’d fallen in love with him. She shouldn’t have been able to do that. She was a Vampire. Not to mention it had been really fast. They’d only known each other three nights and now one day.

  But what did two people with their particular issues need with a lot of extra time? It just was what it was. Ben had just risked what remaining days he had left on the planet to save her because he thought she needed re
scuing. Unless he suffered from delusions-of-superhero-syndrome, which she really didn’t think he did, it seemed like he was in love with her too.

  She blinked. It was so easy to admit it to herself.

  She loved him. God, he was dying and she loved him.

  Rob dragged the trunk along the ground, still following the direction she had given him. Suddenly Ben’s heartbeat stopped. She gasped and covered her mouth to stop from screaming. Had he died? Had it stopped? Or had she moved far enough away that she couldn’t hear him anymore?

  For the first time since she’d been changed to a Vampire, she closed her eyes and prayed. Please, let it be that she was too far away. Please, let the ambulance get there on time.

  The trunk stopped moving, which meant Rob had brought her out of the cemetery. He’d come out of enthrallment soon and wonder what he was doing. That was fine. There was nothing more for her to do but wait for nighttime. They would be the longest hours of her life.

  Ben woke up slowly. He fought through waves of pain to get to the light in front of his eyes. He heard the machines beeping before he could see anything and, with a sense of familiarity, he knew he was in the hospital.

  For a second he considered letting himself return to unconsciousness. His family would want to say goodbye. They would need closure. This, he was sure, would be the last trip to the hospital he ever took. Finally opening his lids, which felt like they had either been glued down or had suddenly gotten ten times heavier, he looked around the room.

  As far as hospital rooms went, it was spacious. A giant window lay on the wall to his right. If he wanted to, he could stare into the vast nothingness of the night. From his vantage point, he couldn’t even see stars, which he hated.

  Managing to turn his head to the left, he saw another window, this one displaying the hallway of the hospital floor. Doctors, nurses, and other hospital personnel rushed around under the sign that read ‘Intensive Care

  Unit.’

  This was it. He wasn’t coming out of the ICU this

  time. His gaze darted to the machines around his bed. One gave him fluids and medicine. Another took his pulse, his blood pressure, his echocardiogram. All of that was acceptable. He had a legal document telling the doctors he no longer wanted any extraneous measures to keep him alive. Sighing with relief, he was glad to see his wishes were being honored.

  He knew what had to happen if he were to live: he needed another heart transplant. With his blood type, he had been lucky to get one once. There was simply no way he was getting a second heart and he was tired, so damn tired, of waiting.

  His mother stood in the hall. She argued with a man in long white coat —presumably the doctor— about something. She’d done that every time he’d gotten really sick as a child. It was her job, he understood that, but this time he didn’t need her to fight so hard. This time he needed her to let go.

  Pressing the call button alerted everyone in the hall he was awake, and soon his mother, the doctor, and three nurses stood before him. One of the nurses fiddled with his IV and then left the room while the others fluffed his pillow and checked his chart before leaving.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Sitting down on the side of the bed, she stroked his

  head. “I was just telling the doctors here that you might have changed your mind. Maybe you would like more help than you’re getting.”

  He shook his head. He didn’t want to fight. “Go home. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “But Ben…”

  He interrupted, his voice strained. It was even hard for him to hear himself. “Just go home. It’s been a trying day. Go home, Mom. I love you.”

  She looked like she wanted to argue. He knew the stubborn set of her jaw —he shared the trait— but he kept his eyes steeled, telling her he wasn’t going to take any argument on the subject. She finally nodded and kissed him on the cheek, promising him she’d be back the next morning.

  As his mother left, the doctor remained staring at him from the end of the bed. “You know you might not be here in the morning.”

  Ben smiled, even as it hurt. He always preferred when the doctors told him the truth. “I had a feeling.”

  “Then I’ll wish you goodnight, Mr. Fox.” He smiled at Ben before he walked out of the room and into the hall.

  Ben let his thoughts drift away from his current status. Somewhere out there was a woman who could make nighttime seem like high noon. She was everything light, everything good in the world, and he’d been given four nights to know her. A movement caught his attention in the hall. Or rather, he amended, a lack of movement. Everyone seemed frozen in place.

  He sucked in what little breath he had. It had to be Ruthie. It had to be the enthrallment.

  She appeared in his vision as she passed through the hallway window. Turning to look at the people frozen in the hall, she waved her hand. “Go about your jobs. Take care of the people. You cannot see me.”

  With that said, she seemed to float, rather than walk, through the doorway into his room. When she saw him she smiled, which was great because he grinned like a fool.

  “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t let you be killed.”

  She nodded. “I understand your heroic intent. However, the nutty Vampire hunter never did show up, and the graveyard is not on fire.”

  He digested this information. So he’d done this to himself for no reason. Would he do anything differently? No, he decided without hesitation. He thought she’d been in danger. There had been other choice. End of story.

  “Are you suggesting I overreacted?”

  She sat down next to him on the bed. “Maybe. Still,

  thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He meant it.

  “I love you, Ben.”

  Her words washed over him like a hot bath, soothing a part of his soul he hadn’t known was in pain. He spent so much time thinking about his physical pain, he’d not known how much he needed to hear those three words from someone other than his family.

  “I love you too, Ruthie.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I do. And I’d like to argue the shouldn’t part, but I don’t have the wherewithal.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Ben, I have to tell you. I don’t want you to die. If you want me to make you a Vampire, I will.”

  “Really?”

  “But you have to know what it means. You have to understand. You’ll need to drink blood.”

  “I get that.”

  “You’re going to, for at least a while, want to kill the people you take it from.”

  He nodded. In his life, he’d never been so excited by an unexpected conversation. “Will you help me to not to?”

  She swallowed, and he saw the muscles in her neck move. “I will. But when you wake up changed, you may not want me anymore. You may decide to be a loner, as I have been.”

  He couldn’t imagine that happening. He’d always been social, and he was convinced Ruth’s thinking that she wanted to be alone was really a result of her feeling guilty, despite her protest to the contrary, about having survived the holocaust when her family did not. Plus, as he looked at her now he knew he would pick her above all other women in the world to stay with always.

  “I doubt that very much.” He coughed. It was getting harder and harder to speak.

  “No more sunlight. You can’t see your family. Even if you’d be fine with it, they’d be enthralled, every time you walked in the room they would become enthralled. It will be hard for you to know they’re out there and to never see them.”

  She was right on that front. It would be hard. Damn hard.

  “It’s natural to die. All humans do it.” She choked like she was holding back a sob. “You don’t know what happens next. Maybe it’s wonderful. Maybe it’s nothing. There is no shame in deciding to say goodbye the right way.”

  “Ruthie, you’re forgetting the most im
portant thing.”

  She wiped at her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “You. I get to spend eternity with you.”

  “Living in a mausoleum.”

  Ben had some thoughts about that but he wasn’t going to discuss them at the moment. He’d save that for later when things had calmed down.

  When it came down to the moment, it wasn’t a hard decision. He knew it was right. He’d always trusted his instincts, and he felt completely calm about it. “Do it.”

  She smoothed the hair on his forehead. “It’s going to hurt. I can’t enthrall you. We’ve proven that.”

  “I’ll feel your bite?”

  “Yes, you’ll feel me suck your blood from neck. If you’re still conscious, you’ll feel me drip my blood in your mouth.” She swallowed. “Then,” she seemed to choke on the words. “You’ll die.”

  “I’ll die. Go on.”

  “I hope there will be no pain. I don’t know. I don’t remember my death.”

  Raising an eyebrow, he smiled. “And then I wake up, a blood-sucking Vampire.”

  “Don’t make jokes, I’m being serious.”

  “I already said for you to do it. There’s nothing left but to find the amusement in it, Ruthie.”

  She sighed, and the sound moved through him, doing more for his discomfort than the morphine moving through his IV. “Oh, the way you say my name.” She closed her eyes. “I have to finish telling you what will happen. When you have all the facts, you tell me to do it, I’ll do it then.”

  “Okay.”

  This seemed important to her. He wasn’t going to lessen it by rushing her, even as his chest got tighter and his breathing more constricted.

  “Your family will bury you. They’ll think you’re dead. You won’t remember any of it. The next thing you’ll know is when you wake up. Then things will be different. Much as you dismiss me when I say that to you, the truth is the world will look changed.”

  He reached out and grabbed her hand, amazed by how soft her skin was. “Do it, Ruthie. Stop delaying. Get the hard part over. Then the next thing I know will be waking up to you.”

  She was silent for a second, and then as he watched, two of her teeth elongated in her mouth. She raised an eyebrow, her pupils dilated and slightly red in their hue.