Page 48 of Just for a Taste

I faded in and out of sleep several times and was distantly aware of my surroundings over the course of an hour, in the way an insect was. A sterile scent overpowered the base notes of stone and mustiness—the unmistakable fragrance of the abbey. I was sitting up in an uncomfortable bed, and every time I moved, cotton rasped against my arms. There was a weight in my lap and heavily blunted pain all over my body. Eventually, however, whatever had numbed the pain wore off.

Finally, I became fully conscious. I was back in the abbey, tucked in a room I hadn’t seen before. It had been rendered into a makeshift hospital room, with a monitor at my side and a web of wires and sensors everywhere. Zeno was softly snoring through parted lips with his head in my lap and his arm reaching over my body to hold my hand. At the sight of him, the machine beside me beeped loudly.

The door creaked open, and Noor’s head poked into the room, followed by the rest of her.

“Good,” she said, setting a glass of water at my bedside. “You’re awake. I hoped it would go well.”

“I—” I tried to speak, but that single syllable came out as little more than a harsh rasp. My throat was painfully scratchy. I reached for the water at my bedside. It felt like sand going down. I blinked back tears and tried not to cough.

At my movement, Zeno’s lashes flickered open, and he sat up immediately.

“Cora,” he murmured, grasping my hands. “I was terrified you’d never wake up. I was terrified .”

I went to speak and could not once again, but for an entirely different reason. I had known Zeno for months and had seen him at his highest and lowest. Only twice had he cried in my presence, and now, before my eyes for the very first time. At the sight of my loved one so despondent, it was impossible not to cry myself.

“Hey,” I whispered, catching one of his tears with my lips. “I know better than to go and do something like that.”

Zeno took advantage of my proximity and tilted his head up to kiss me. There was restraint in it, frustration at the web of wires holding him back from embracing me outright. I cupped his cheek in my hand and skillfully navigated him closer to deepen the kiss. I made my movements as fluid as possible to mask the fact that many of my tears were in response to the pangs of pain throughout my entire torso, the throbbing in my bandaged fingers, and the burning ache of my entire throat and jaw.

“Zeno,” Noor scolded. “Leave the room.”

The vampire pulled away from me and shot such icy daggers at her that, for a split second, I was convinced he’d murder her. But as I should have known, Noor had a vague understanding of how to herd the beast within the man.

“For Cora’s own good,” she added a bit more softly. “So I can focus on healing her.”

He shot me one last longing glance, then left the room like a dejected dog with his tail between his legs. If not for the confusion and searing pain, I would have laughed.

As soon as Zeno left the room, I let my body wilt.

“Give me a number for the pain,” Noor said, approaching.

“Nine,” I whimpered in return.

She held up a syringe of some sort of medication. “Would you like—”

“Anything!” I interrupted. “It hurts.”

She flushed my IV and then administered medication slowly. I already felt relief by the time the plunger met the barrel, along with a general feeling of ease. Another flush left me feeling warm, and it pleasantly numbed every ache. I exhaled and closed my eyes, tempted to drift away once more. Through my eyelashes, I could make out Noor’s impatient expression, jolting me back.

“What . . .?” I stared down at my body, utterly perplexed. I was a mess of wires and tubes, bruises and bandages.

Noor sat on the edge of my bed, which creaked in protest. “My knowledge of how you came to the hospital is secondhand. I will tell you that if you want, but I’d like to start with your medical state.”

Both were, I supposed, equally valid lines of questioning. I gave her a nod to continue.

“You arrived at the hospital nine days ago in critical condition with a variety of minor injuries, such as broken fingers. More concerningly, you bit through your tongue. Unfortunately, you inhaled quite a bit of blood when you lost consciousness. That, combined with four broken ribs—one of which punctured your lung—and an unknown amount of blunt trauma.”

“Jesus Christ.” I touched my hand to my side and found a massive bandage along it.

“That’s just from the chest tube,” she said, as though that would comfort me. “It came out two days ago. I’m going to monitor the sutures for a bit, but your lungs are looking quite healthy, especially considering the intubation.”

My hand moved to my throat. “I was intubated ?”

“Yes. Twice, actually. You were extubated for the second time two days ago.”

“That explains how terrible my throat feels,” I croaked. I was trying, semisuccessfully, to mirror the casual nature in which Noor was speaking. “What happened to me?”

Noor frowned. “Do you not remember? You were taken by Zeno’s family and beaten.”

Flashes of Basilio, Urbino, and Zeno’s father came to mind. A shiver ran through me at the thought of them.

“I do remember,” I responded. “I just didn’t know if I could trust that it really happened.”

She gave me a strange look. “What can you trust, if not yourself?”

“A lot. Or maybe nothing. I don’t know.”

Noor held my gaze and allowed me to parse one of many questions. “I remember seeing Zeno. Was that—”

As I spoke, my mouth felt even drier. I certainly remembered someone tearing Signore Urbino apart as I was drifting away. Someone with blood covering their hands and rolling down their chin, like I had seen in old medieval paintings of vampires. Maybe that was all this memory was: just some distant recollection of an artwork I had looked at.

With a pit in my stomach, I tried to approach the burning question from another angle. “Where is Signore Urbino?”

Noor darkened, and her expression alone immediately granted my answer. “He doesn’t work at the abbey anymore,” she replied dryly.

“What about Basilio?” I demanded. “What about Zeno’s father?”

“They won’t bother you anymore.”

There was a prolonged silence between us, as heavy and dry as the lump in the back of my throat. The beeping of my heart rate had spiked, and as the silence dragged on, it gradually plateaued. Doctor Ntumba didn’t move at all, just maintained eye contact with the wall behind me.

“I wish you would just tell me outright,” I whispered. “I wish you would tell me that Zeno tore them limb from limb like he told me he would.”

Her response came quickly and sharply: “Zeno did no such thing.”

I knew Doctor Ntumba well enough to know that such a response wasn’t very meaningful. She was an incredibly honest woman, but her honesty was hollow. He hadn’t literally torn them limb from limb, but that didn’t mean they weren’t killed by his hands or by an order. That didn’t tell me if they were even alive.

I also knew Doctor Ntumba well enough to know prying would be a waste of time beyond this point. Zeno would tell me the truth if I asked—every horrid ounce of it.

But as I stared down at the well-worn indent in the bed where Zeno must have spent countless hours resting in lieu of his own bed, at the closely annotated copy of our most recent read, and at the mess of wires along my arms, I felt a new resolve. Doctor Ntumba had already given me the only truth I needed: they won’t bother you anymore.

By my actions, we were free. It didn’t matter how.

“Can I see him now, then?” I asked softly. “Just for a bit?”

“Of course. I’ll be back in half an hour and we can discuss your treatment in depth. For now, just know that these next couple of days will be excruciating in many ways, but by the end of them, I’ll have you disconnected from all these wires and lines. The next two weeks without morphine will be even worse, but by the end of them, you won’t have any bandages under your clothes.”

I winced at the thought of it. Even now, with morphine coursing through me, I could tell that the pain was still present beneath the warmth. It was waiting just beyond the threshold, ready to pounce and consume me the moment it got its chance. But as certain as I was of this, I was certain of something else.

“I can handle it. I can handle anything now.”