Page 19 of Tell Me Why (Tell, The Detective #5)

“Tina,” he said, his voice calling her self out of the fog, if just for a moment. “Stay.”

She pressed her hands down into the gravel, willing them to keep her there. He turned to face Tony again. The man was cowering against his car, eyes astonished and wide on Tina.

“What is she?” he whispered.

“She is herself,” Tell answered. “And if you do not let her feed on you, she is going to die. That remains true. What I don’t know is if you can physically tolerate it.

She doesn’t want this . Even if it means her death, she would prefer to die than…

” He shook his head. “Than for it to be like this.”

Tony straightened.

“I can’t,” he said, and Tell sighed again, looking back at Tina with… something. Tina couldn’t see it, really. Even as she tried. All she could see was Tony.

“I understand,” Tell said, beginning to turn. Tony grabbed his elbow.

“No,” he said. “I can’t . She has to make me. You have to make me. I’m… it’s not going to kill me, any more than any other time, is it?”

Tell shook his head.

“I will see to it that you heal correctly and normally.”

Tony still had his hand on his neck where she’d clawed it, his shirtsleeve staining with blood where it was torn.

“And she’ll be… like she was?”

“I can’t promise that, but I believe it,” Tell said. “She was as she was, until she saw you. This is primal. She is trying to survive, which is… the best sign I can hope for.”

“Then do it,” Tony said. “But…” He looked Tina in the eye. “I know what I’m doing. It’s okay.”

She shuddered.

His hand dropped, and she surged forward.

Discovered that her incision had torn, and her body didn’t move right.

Didn’t care.

Tell caught her by the shoulder and wrapped his other arm around her neck, pulling her back solidly in against his chest.

“Not like that,” he said firmly. Tony nodded at him again.

Tina was weak. Tell was so much stronger than she was. The middle of her body slipped and gave rather than coiling like it was supposed to, but her arms were still out, grasping at the idea of Tony’s blood.

“Best if we just do it fast, I think,” Tony said. Tina felt Tell nod.

He didn’t let her go.

He jerked her rudely back, off-balance, and grabbed her wrists, gathering them both in one hand behind her back as she tilted toward Tony. Once again, Tony tried to flee, but Tell pinned him against the car, standing, covering his mouth as he screamed.

Tina fed.

It was a black feed, nothing organic or personal or even sensory about it.

Maybe she would have expected some semblance of self-control to come back to her as she did it, but it never came. She mauled his neck as he groped at everything around him, trying to get away, then Tell tossed her back again, and curled down to Tony’s neck, himself.

Tina lay on the ground, her actual appetite sated but not her instinct to feed.

She was still desperate, even though the organs involved in storing the blood she’d taken were full.

Tell had known.

She would have just gone on gnawing at Tony’s neck for no purpose.

He saw to the wounds on Tony’s neck and then his arm, straightening.

“Where else did she get you?” he asked.

Tony was better-composed, but held his arm against his chest as he looked over at Tina.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Is she going to be okay?”

“We’ll find out. I’ll… I’ll contact you to let you know, either way. You’re a good friend.”

Tony felt the side of his neck thoughtfully.

“Tina?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. He shook his head.

“I’m glad that I could help. I mean that. I’m okay.”

It was a lie.

She was impressed that he could stand there at all, rather than just running away from her. She had hurt him.

And she hadn’t even cared, as she’d done it.

Tony took a step forward, and Tell moved to block him.

“She’s not safe to you, yet,” he said.

“She is,” Tony said softly. “I think that hurt her more than it did me.”

“It did,” Tell said. “She just lost some of the idea of herself, and I don’t think it ever comes back. But it’s still there . She’s mortally wounded and her body is going to do whatever it has to, to survive. It’s how we’re made. You need to go.”

He was safe, behind Tell. Tell could toss her away again if she tried to attack him, so he was safe.

Safe from her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again.

“We need to talk,” Tony said. “When you’re better. Okay? Just… dinner, one night. Promise me.”

She looked at Tell.

“I’ll make sure it happens,” Tell said.

Tony nodded and went to get back into his car.

As he drove away, the overwhelming obsession tailed off and then vanished, and in its place came a pain that Tina didn’t have words for.

She threw herself onto her back, writhing as Tell came and pulled her shirt up.

“I figured,” he said. “You ripped open most of the length of your incision.”

“Agh,” she said. It wasn’t… it wasn’t even the worst pain imaginable. That was the sun, every single day, actually. But it was inescapable in a different way, a part of her, a malfunction that had her pinned down and incapacitated.

“But,” Tell said, tipping his head to the side and using his thumbs to… she didn’t look, she didn’t think about it. Probably he was pushing the edges of the incision against each other. His clinicality was comforting, because it showed no evidence of worry.

“Am I going to die?” she asked, a gasp, not entirely serious. She wasn’t going to die because that’s not what she did .

Not anymore.

“No,” he said with a focused cheerfulness. “No, you’re healing. I suspect that if we got one of the rough-play fountains next time, you won’t have any problem.”

“Ow,” Tina complained, and he shook his head.

“Hold still,” he said. “If I don’t get this lined up, you’re going to be crooked for a week.”

She lay her shoulders flat on the ground, looking up at the sky. It was just beginning to lighten, anticipating dawn.

“We need to move soon,” she said.

“Ginger wants me to take you back to her place for another two rounds of surgery as you recover,” he said. “I’m tempted to take you back to Viella and just go over to see her as you improve and need more push.”

Her own bed.

He looked over at her, then sat back on his heels, relenting for a moment.

“Your color is improving,” he said. “The sequence that you did, when you first got up. You ought to keep doing that. It’s helping a lot. We weren’t too late, but it was so close.”

“I got out,” she said. “Didn’t I? On my own?”

“I found you out crawling along the ground in the middle of the Texas desert,” he said.

She laughed, then pulled her shirt back down and looked up at the sky again.

“I wasn’t sure what was real, by that point.”

“That was very apparent,” Tell said.

She jolted, looking at him.

“You asked Keon for a favor,” she said, and he sighed, then nodded, not looking at her now.

“I did.”

“Does it mean… all of this was for nothing? Are you exactly where you started again?”

“I’m exactly where I started,” he agreed.

“More or less.” He turned to look at her.

“But you managed to play a key role in toppling the farmed vampire-parts industry. It’s not permanent.

The knowledge is out there, and it will come back.

But for now, the number of vampires who go through what you went through has plummeted, and will stay low for…

probably years, if Keon decides it’s a danger to him. ”

“But…” Tina said. “You didn’t get rid of your debt. All of this was for that.”

“I would and will go to great lengths to clear my debt with Keon,” Tell said, glancing at her, then shifting, making to stand. “But there are things that matter more, and I’ve carried it this far. I don’t mind to carry it a bit further.”

“After all that, I’d even gotten out on my own,” she said.

“The only reason I was there was because Keon was sending his men. You might not have escaped, if they had heard of attacks elsewhere, earlier. I regret nothing.”

It hurt to hear it, but she wasn’t going to argue further.

She was alive.

Clearer than she had been in weeks.

And she didn’t want to go submit herself to Ginger again tonight or tomorrow night, either.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

“Let’s go home.”

Tell was waiting for her when she was able to move again the next dusk.

“You can come in,” she called, rolling onto her side and just resting her face against the soft-smooth of the sheets.

“I’ve arranged a fountain,” he said, leaving the door open as he came to sit on the edge of her bed. “He’ll be here in about an hour. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m missing six major organs and the rest are made of gelatin,” she answered.

“And other than that?” he asked.

“I’m clear,” she said. “I’m home. I don’t feel…

” She’d struggled with it, through the day, and she still didn’t have words for it.

She tried anyway. “I just went through something. Something awful that… incapacitated me and made me question reality. Where I wasn’t sure if I was even going to survive. And yet… I’m here and…”

“It should bother you more?” Tell asked with a gentle humor.

“Exactly,” she said. “Why am I not jumping at shadows and questioning my sanity?”

Why had the daylight been the easiest day she could remember having, even as she was still in the throes of whatever they’d shot her up with?

“Because your nature has changed,” he said.

“You are more confident, at a default. I wasn’t sure how much it would be true for you, but…

I’m glad it is.” He paused. “Hunter and I tell all of our little stories like they’re funny, because they are.

But they were all like this, at the time.

Painful and unknown, some with very long recovery times.

Some with losses that still hurt.” He paused again, looking at the floor beyond his knees.

“Do you think about that you died ? Or that you haven’t had a wave of grief over your mother and your father since I turned you?

It’s possible for a vampire to lose his faculties through immense trauma, but I think it’s actually brain damage that’s so bad that they can’t heal from it again.

We are made for immense time and to survive.

It changes how we experience things and how we carry those experiences with us. ”

“Is that why you don’t actually talk about any of it?” Tina asked.

“You will have lost a part of what you had remaining to you that was human,” Tell said. “And you may look back at this with… bitterness, as you figure out what it actually means. I’m sorry for that. But… I’m glad to hear that you’re surprised at how little it has affected you, otherwise.”

He rose.

“Are you ready to get up, then? Ginger says that if you can’t walk by yourself by midnight, I have to bring you back.”

“I’m up,” Tina said, smiling down into the sheets. “I’m up. Anything but that.”

“Good,” Tell said. “I’m going to go make sure they’ve delivered the right flavors of yogurt.”

She lifted her head, and he winked at her as he started for the door again.

“Life goes on,” he said, and she nodded.

“I guess it does.”

Three more surgeries with Ginger and she was clear of it.

Tina had never felt more grateful to have a full range of motion and normal strength.

So long as the sun was down, she wasn’t in pain.

Tell took another job after three weeks, signaling that he was no longer concerned about her, and she spent her evenings out at a club with him or working on tracking down where a series of hamburger patties had been waylaid on their way to restaurants.

Tell suspected a fae thievery ring, and it was just…

it was hilarious, the things that Tell thought they might have done, to lay hold of a truck full of pre-formed meat patties.

It was just after midnight when the elevator dinged and Tina sat up from where she was working in her room, just because she hadn’t bothered to get out of bed yet. She’d had an idea during the daylight hours, and had gotten sucked into the trail of clues from there and lost track of time.

Tell was around somewhere.

But the way the feet moved off the elevator, she recognized him immediately, and sprang out of bed and down the hallway, going over the railing rather than going the long route down the stairs.

Hunter put an arm out and she hit him in the chest at speed, wrapping herself against him and burying her nose in against his shirt.

He was here. He smelled like open air and live blood and his own, distinct self. She hadn’t known what was going to happen, when he got here, how it would change what had happened or how she felt about it.

She was surprised to find that it changed almost nothing. It was past.

“You have a good trip?” she asked, as he put his face down against her head.

“Ups and downs,” he said. “Pretty normal.”

He lifted his head as Tell walked past, then raised a hand in greeting.

“How about you?” he asked Tina. “Work and all that?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding and looking up at his face. “Yeah. Ups and downs. Pretty normal.”