Mencheres pressed on Blake’s chest in those measured, controlled pumps. Elise sucked, drawing Blake’s blood into her with the help of Mencheres’s actions. She drank deeply, chilled by the temperature of Blake’s blood but not stopping until what she’d taken from him would have been lethal if he wasn’t clinically dead.
“Now,” Elise said. “We’re going to transfuse my blood to Blake. All of it.”
Mencheres found a catheter that wasn’t broken and set up the line in Elise’s throat, positioning the other end of the IV in Blake’s jugular. Once it was set, Elise closed her eyes, willing her blood out of her body and into that narrow plastic tube.
It took ten minutes for Elise to drain herself into Blake. When she was done, she felt light-headed, as if she hadn’t fed in weeks. She found the portable defibrillator under the remains of the car seat and charged the electrodes, pausing only to send up a silent plea. Please. Don’t take him from me.
Then she sent the volts into Blake’s chest. His heart fluttered again for an extra few beats after the shock, but then stilled once more. Elise charged the defibrillator and hit him with another set of volts. Blake’s heart responded, beating on its own for a full minute, then it quieted again.
Mencheres touched her arm very lightly. “You’ve done all you can. Even if this worked, Blake’s heart won’t restart enough for him to live as a human again. He will either rise as a vampire, or he will stay dead.”
Elise put her arms around Blake. “So now we wait?”
Her sire nodded. “Yes. We wait.”
Epilogue
Elise looked around at her home under the defunct train station in the District. In a lot of ways, she would miss this place. But a promise was a promise.
She hefted her books into a double-plied leaf and lawn bag, thinking she’d leave the bed and chair for another lost soul to make use of. Maybe her former home would provide the same kind of refuge to someone else that she’d needed these last few decades. The thought pleased her.
An arm slid around her waist, the muscled flesh the same temperature as her own. “Ready to go?”
Elise smiled and turned into Blake’s embrace. He was faintly flushed from a recent breakfast of plasma, but the new silky luminescence to his skin looked very different than when he’d been human.
“I’m ready now.”
Elise was ready for a lot of things, the first of which was living with the man she loved. And maybe next was learning how to drive. Or how to play chess.
Now that she had Blake, the possibilities were suddenly endless—and wonderful.