It would be so easy to give in and let it take over, but he knew that if he did that Cloe wouldn't survive. He didn't know why the monster had given her up when it had, but he wasn't about to give up control a second time and give it a second shot at finishing off Cloe.

"What the h.e.l.l are you?" Seth suddenly asked, gesturing to his face and making him realize that he'd f.u.c.ked up for the second time that day as he noted that everything had taken on shades of red.

"No f.u.c.king clue," Christofer bit out, shifting back so that he could move around the vampire when his next words stopped him.

"If you bring her to a hospital they'll kill her."

"What are you talking about?" he snapped, moving to take another step towards his truck, but fear for Cloe made him hesitate.

"She's a shifter's marked property, a b.i.t.c.h," he explained with a sheepish shrug when Christofer narrowed his eyes on him.

Ignoring the b.i.t.c.h comment, for now, he asked, "What's a shifter?"

Seth opened his mouth to answer, shut it, shook his head and then ran his palms down his face, sounding tired as he said, "This is going to be a long f.u.c.king night."

"She needs to go to the hospital," he stubbornly said even as he gently laid her back on his bed.

Seth simply shook his head as he leaned over Cloe and carefully peeled back the blood-soaked facecloths. "You can't bring a marked human to the hospital bearing your.....," his words trailed off with a frown as he peered down at Cloe's wound. "Why are you so G.o.dd.a.m.n h.e.l.l-bent on bringing her to the hospital for a scratch?"

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, shoving the vampire aside so that he could look at Cloe's wound. What he saw had his stomach twisting in dread.

"Please tell me that you didn't turn a shifter's property," Seth grumbled, but Christofer was barely listening as he ran his fingers over what should have been torn flesh.

"This has to be a mistake," he mumbled, running his fingers over the scratch on Cloe's throat as he struggled to understand what he was seeing.

She was healing before his eyes. He watched in disbelief as the rest of her wound quickly knitted itself back together until the only evidence of his attack was the dried blood staining her skin. After all this time and all those failed experiments and this happens.......

"What are you?" Seth asked him, gently cupping Cloe's face in his hand and moving it to the side to get a better look at Cloe's face and neck only to have his hand slapped away.

"Don't touch her," Christofer said, not liking the idea of anyone, especially another man, touching her and not really understanding why. She wasn't his wife, girlfriend or even really a friend, but he couldn't stop himself from thinking of her as his.

Seth sighed heavily as he stepped back from the bed. "Okay, so that answers one question at least. Whatever you are, you're possessive over your turned. Add that to the red eyes and you're definitely not a vampire," he said as he headed towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Christofer absently asked as he continued to trace Cloe's smooth skin with his fingertips, mesmerized by what he was seeing.

"I'm going to go get the blood that you ordered since we're obviously going to need it," Seth explained, drawing his attention away from Cloe.

"What are you talking about?" he asked with a frown as he glanced over his shoulder just as Seth stepped back inside carrying one of the large coolers that he'd tripped over earlier.

"We may not know what you are, but we do know that you drink blood, which means that she's going to need it and probably a lot of it during her change," Seth said as he headed for the locked refrigerator.

With a frown, he looked back at Cloe. "Will she be able to eat food?" he asked, hating the idea of a woman who loved food so much suddenly being forced to live on a diet of cold blood.

"That depends," Seth said absently as he reached over and picked up an old hardcover copy of Huck Finn and opened it, revealing a hollowed out s.p.a.ce where Christofer kept the small key for the lock on the refrigerator.

"On what?" he asked, gently brushing a few strands of hair away from Cloe's face.

"On whether or not you can eat food," Seth said, removing the lock and opening the refrigerator.

Shaking his head, he headed for the bathroom. "I can't digest food."

"Not at all?" Seth asked from the bedroom as Christofer searched for a clean basin and more facecloths.

"No," he said absently, frowning as he filled the small plastic basin with warm water and soap as he tried to remember if he'd ever been able to handle food since his change.

He remembered that his appet.i.te, something that hadn't been very big to begin with, had started to dwindle around the time that he'd turned fourteen. It had disappeared almost completely by the time he'd turned fifteen and had been completely gone by the time he'd turned sixteen. He'd managed to hide it from his family, but that was probably only because he hadn't appeared to be starving.

He hadn't lost any weight, had any problems functioning or any of the symptoms that should have accompanied his lost interest in food. Instead he found himself hungry for something that he couldn't name, but not to the point that he couldn't function. By the time that he'd opened his eyes and discovered that he'd somehow become the property of the SS, that hunger had consumed him.

It only took him a few minutes to realize what his body craved and when he did, he'd panicked. He'd curled up into a ball on the cold, metal floor of his cage and struggled to ignore the mouthwatering aroma coming off the doctors, guards and vials that lined the tables set up in the center of the large lab. Instead, he'd tried to tell himself that it was all a bad dream and that he'd simply fallen asleep in front of the fire again and as soon as he woke up everything would be okay. Instead, one of the guards had noticed that he was finally awake and they'd done their best to redefine his definition of h.e.l.l.

"What about liquids other than blood?" Seth asked as Christofer returned to Cloe's side and began carefully washing away the blood.

"No," he answered, his attention never leaving Cloe's beautiful face as he wondered if she was going to turn out like him or if they'd simply found a way to heal her with his blood without destroying her life.

Chapter 20.

"She wants to talk to you," Seth announced as he jogged down the stairs, another large cooler in his arms.

"She'll have to wait," he said even as he opened up his senses and listened to Marta's heartbeat, making sure that her heart wasn't stressed. After a minute he blocked out everything, focusing back on Cloe. Her breaths were still shallow, but they'd evened out, giving him some hope.

"Can I ask you something?" Seth asked, sounding genuinely curious as he set up an IV pole, something that Christofer was unfortunately quite familiar with thanks to all the surgeries that Marta had been forced to endure over the years.

His first impulse was to tell Seth to mind his own f.u.c.king business, but then he remembered that he was in no position to refuse the vampire, not when he had so many questions of his own that needed answers. "What do you want to know?" he murmured as he sat by Cloe's side, taking her cold hand into his.

"Why didn't you change Marta?" Seth asked, his attention focused on the small rubber tube that he was carefully attaching to the bag of blood that he'd hung from the IV pole.

"Because my blood kills," he explained without much thought.

Seth pointedly glanced down at Cloe. "Looks like she's doing okay."

"She should be dead," he said softly, reaching over to run his knuckles gently along her jaw, needing to touch her to prove to himself that she was okay.

"What did you do differently this time?" Seth asked, leaning over to gently pry Cloe's mouth open.

Shaking his head, Christofer forced himself to move his hand away from Cloe's face, afraid that he'd tear the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's hands off for touching her. "I don't know."

"Were you trying to change her?" Seth asked, applying some clear gel to the tube before he slowly and carefully began feeding the tube down Cloe's throat.

"No," he said, forcing his attention away from what Seth was doing to her.

"Then how did she get your blood?"

"I don't know," he answered, frustrated that he still didn't know how he'd f.u.c.ked up so badly.

More than that, he was furious with himself for not figuring it out sooner. If he'd known that it was possible to turn someone, to save them from dying, from suffering unnecessary agonizing pain that wouldn't go away no matter how many surgeries or pills doctors suggested, then he would have changed Marta as soon as she'd turned eighteen. He could have saved her, made up for all the time that she'd been trapped in that lab with him, forced to undergo experiments even though the doctors had figured out early on that she was nothing like him.

He could have saved her.

His gaze shot back to Cloe as a thought occurred to him. Maybe he still could. If Cloe pulled through this, he could ask her what happened and then he could- "It's too late," Seth said quietly.

"You don't know that," Christofer bit out, refusing to look at the vampire and see the pity that matched his tone.

"There's a reason why we don't turn children or the elderly," Seth began to explain while Christofer watched the clear tube turn red as blood flowed down the tube until it reached Cloe's lips and he had to once again force himself to look away, his stomach turning at the reminder of what he'd done to her.

"When they're changed," Seth continued, "they're trapped the way the world saw them as they were when they were mortal. That means that a child will forever remain a child even while his mind continues to develop into adulthood. The world will always see him as a child, weak and dependent and no amount of time will ever change that. He'll never grow up."

"Marta's not a child," he needlessly reminded the vampire through clenched teeth, trying to pretend that he didn't know where Seth was going with this.

"I know that she's not a child," Seth explained softly as he double-checked Cloe's line. "She's an old woman whose body is struggling to make it through each day. Her body is broken down, her bones weak, her skin thin, her organs slowly failing and her mind is tired, unconsciously accepting the fate that awaits her. It's the natural process and her body's preparing itself for what's coming."

"I can stop it," Christofer bit out, looking down at the proof that anything was possible.

"If your blood doesn't kill her, there's always a chance that she won't survive the change. With her age and health problems it's doubtful that she'd survive it and if she did you'd be condemning her to an existence of dying from old age."

"You said it yourself, I'm not a vampire. My blood might affect her differently. She might-"

Seth chuckled without humor. "Might? Are you really willing to take that chance? You could end up killing her immediately or dooming her to a life of h.e.l.l, living each day like she was dying, too weak to protect herself in our world and leaving her helpless to protect herself against humans if they discovered what she was."

"I'd protect her," he bit out through clenched teeth. He'd always protected her, that would never change, but if he could do this, if he could change her into what he was then he would never have to lose her.

"Do you really think that she wants to continue living like this? She'll always be weak, always tired, making her more dependent on blood just to get through the day. Is that really what you want for your sister?"

No, it wasn't.

He wanted Marta to have the chance at the life that she'd been robbed of. He wanted to go back in time and fix everything. He'd leave long before that night when the SS stormed their home and dragged them off, because they'd heard a rumor about a teenage boy who wouldn't grow. He'd lead them away from his family and if they still caught him, then so be it as long as his family was spared the h.e.l.l that Hitler's men had unleashed on them.

His father never would have been shot in the back of the head while trying to protect him. His pregnant stepmother never would have been shipped off to a concentration camp, suffering unimaginable horrors before she'd finally perished. Marta would never have been forced to live with a lifetime of reminders from her time in that lab. All he wanted to do was fix this...

But it seemed that he couldn't.

His sister had suffered her entire life and now that there might be a way to save her, he couldn't use it because it was too late. There would be no saving Marta no matter how badly he wanted to and G.o.d, did he want to.

"Don't waste what precious time you have left with your sister living with regrets," Seth said after a slight pause, drawing his attention to the man that was looking down at Cloe with a haunted expression.

Christofer didn't respond and Seth didn't seem to expect him to. For a long time they watched over Cloe, quietly switching out the empty bags with fresh blood when the time came while Seth explained a few more things about their world to him. Within a few hours, Cloe's color improved and her skin warmed while his mind reeled from everything he'd learned.

"Were you born this way or were you changed?" Seth asked while Christofer watched the vampire change out another bag, memorizing everything he did so that he wasn't forced to feed Cloe by pouring blood down her throat later.

"Born," he guessed, still not sure after all these years what went wrong.

Seth nodded, appearing to file that information away. "That definitely rules out vampire."

"I thought we'd already established that," Christofer said dryly, biting back a yawn when his gaze flickered to the clock and he noted the time.

"I'm going to have to leave soon," Seth said, noting the time as well.

Christofer absently nodded as he picked up Cloe's hand and brought it to his lips so that he could press a kiss against her palm.

"She might not be happy if she wakes up," Seth said, pointing out the obvious.

"She's going to be furious," he murmured, already knowing that she was going to hate him and was d.a.m.n well going to wake up from this.

"The shifter that you stole her from will-"

"She doesn't belong to anyone," he snapped, cutting the vampire off.

"Whether you like it or not, she was a shifter's property. Someone marked this woman, claiming her as his property and that same someone is going to be p.i.s.sed when he finds out that you stole her," Seth snapped right back.

"I don't f.u.c.king care," he said, not giving a d.a.m.n whether some f.u.c.king werewolf, and he'd been shocked when Seth had explained that they really existed, was mad that he'd changed Cloe.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d could go f.u.c.k himself, because he'd be d.a.m.ned if he allowed anyone to treat Cloe like s.h.i.t, especially since Seth had explained exactly what shifters did to their property. When he'd discovered what those marks on her back meant he'd barely been able to contain the rage inside him. The only thing that had helped was the promise he'd made to himself that one day he would find the shifter that had ripped her back to shreds so that he could tear the piece of s.h.i.t apart with his bare hands.

"You'll care when he brings his Pack after both of you, especially if Marta gets caught in the middle," Seth said, making everything in him go still even as his vision dimmed out, taking on shades of red. "You're going to have to accept the fact that you can't protect them both, Christofer. One day that shifter is going to come for her and when he does, he's going to make you pay and if Marta is around........," he let his words trail off, but Christofer didn't need him to finish his sentence to know that if the shifter ever came sniffing around, he was going to be forced to make a choice, protect his sister, the person he loved most in the world, or the woman that he couldn't stop thinking of as his.

It was time, Marta realized with a sad smile as she carefully ran her fingertips over the yellowed piece of creased parchment that she'd been carrying with her since she was a child.

The fact that it had survived a toddler carrying it everywhere, the time she'd spent locked up in that tiny room off the lab, their escape through Europe, their time living on the run and all the years she'd carried it in her purse, still amazed her. Christofer had been mad when he'd realized that she'd taken this picture, she remembered with a small smile.

Papa had forbidden her to go into Christofer's room, but he'd been her favorite person in the world and sometimes when she got too lonely while he was having his lessons or when the nannies were vexed with her, she'd sneak into his room, sit in front of the fire and look through all of his drawings. She loved looking at his artwork. Even as a child she'd known that it was special. She used to think that Christofer used magic to create his drawings and statues the way that he could capture the exact detail of someone's face, every perfection and flaw with such ease. It didn't hurt that he'd agree with a chuckle and a wink as he worked, creating works of art that rivaled masters. To this day, she'd never seen any piece of art come close to her brother's skill.

It wasn't just because he could capture someone's likeness perfectly and without a single flaw, but that he seemed to be able to capture the heart and soul of a person. It was in their expression, the tilt of their lips and the way they held themselves that made you believe that Christofer had found a way to turn people into images on paper and into stone and marble. She loved to watch him work, loved everything that he created, but this piece of aged parchment......

This was her favorite.

The paper was simple, the kind that he used to use when he was doodling. Some of the graphite had smudged over the years, but it was still just as perfect as it had been the day that she'd found it stuck inside of one of Christofer's school books. It was a drawing of Christofer holding her when she was just a baby, probably only a few hours old, but the look of adoration on his face as he peered down at her had made her feel special, safe. He'd always made her feel that way even those times when she'd probably deserved a swat on the bottom, she thought, smiling as she ran her fingers one more time over the picture that she'd cherished for most of her life.

"I'll protect them," Christofer's words carried up through the grate in her floor just as more pain sliced through her tired body, "I'll protect them both."

No, he couldn't, she thought with a wistful smile as she picked up another bottle of the pills that Christofer didn't know about. One by one, she began to swallow them, taking small sips of water every few minutes to help the pills go down. Once the bottle was empty, she carefully lowered herself to the floor and pushed aside the small throw rug that Christofer had given her one Christmas so that her feet wouldn't have to touch the cold floor in the winter.

As quietly as possible, and praying that Christofer was still focused on what was going on downstairs, she pried open the loose board that she'd discovered after Christofer had bought the house for her, with trembling fingers and removed it. She was taking a chance by doing this while Christofer was home, something that she'd never done before, but right now she didn't have a choice if she wanted a chance to tell him how much she loved him.

She reached for the shoe box that she kept in the s.p.a.ce just as another shot of pain surged through her stomach and down to her legs, almost making her do the one thing that she'd been struggling not to do for the past year, cry out in pain. Gripping the edge of the opening tightly, she closed her eyes and calmed her breathing, knowing that if she didn't Christofer would hear her heart racing and he'd rush up here to check up on her.

After a few minutes when her body started to go numb and the trembling worsened, she finally managed to calm her breathing enough so that she could reach down with an unsteady hand and push the lid off the box. On top was the letter, the one that she'd written a year ago when the doctor had told her the news.

She picked it up and held it against her chest as she used her other arm to help pull herself up and back onto the bed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she closed her eyes and tightened her grip around the letter, wishing that she'd been able to say more, to make things right for Christofer, but there was no time.