Essence (Nectar 3)

A few months back he’d have ended her and blown up this island and every coalition member on it. Now, though, he wanted all the facts before he made any decisions.

~~~It was afternoon and Tristan was sitting beside Kyla’s bed, holding her hand. He hadn’t left the area at all, couldn’t bear to have her out of his sight.

She was again sedated. As soon as her last sedative had been tapered off she’d spiked a high fever and started convulsing again before she’d even woke up. It’d scared the shit out of him; he’d never been so scared.

Now it’d been about four hours since Sasha had started drip-feeding Kyla her brother’s blood and Tristan was getting antsy. There was a contraption between Kyla and her brother, she was now on her back, no longer touching Kyle, and the contraption was feeding Kyle’s blood into the machine and then into the top of Kyla’s hand at a slow drip. A screen on the machine was scrolling with numbers.

Sasha was asleep on the sofa and Sam had just gotten back after visiting with that old booty call. Apparently the new and improved version of this vampress was now worth more time than just a roll in the hay after having her bitch switch flipped to ‘off’.

The computer scrolling the data started to beep and Sasha was practically airborne, rushing over from the sofa where she’d been sleeping.

She read the screen.

“What the fuck is wrong?” Tristan was on his feet now, hovering over Sasha, who was looking at numbers that didn’t mean a fucking thing to him.

“Nothing, no; just an alert that the filtering has hit the levels that I set. We should stop now and wake her, see if there’s a difference.”

“It’s done already?”

“Yes. So, I’m tapering off her sedative now.” She pushed some buttons on a machine hooked to Kyla’s IV, “And she should wake soon. We will see where she’s at.”

She pushed some buttons on Kyle’s machine as well.

“Are you altering anything for him?”

“He’s not on any sedatives. Only a feeding tube but he was exhibiting signs of pain last night so I’m just checking the dosage for the pain medication.”

“Pain?” Tristan asked, “Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s never come up before. I’m wondering if he’s having a sympathetic twin response.”

Tristan frowned, “Corsican twins?” Was she some sort of fucking quack or something?

“It sounds odd, I know, but these things have been documented, they were documented with the Kelly triplets. I’m not saying that’s why Kyle was experiencing pain but his pain levels were very similar to Kyla’s shortly after she was brought down last night.”

Tristan sat back down.

“I’ve got to take care of Kyle; a few bio issues, so could you give me about five minutes?”

“Not unless I wheel Kyla outta here with me,” Tristan folded his arms across his chest.

“Right.” She didn’t look aggravated.

He flicked channels aimlessly on the television while she dealt with catheters and whatever else she was doing for Kyle.

“I’m going to catch a quick shower and change,” Sasha said, “I’ll be back in ten minutes or so. If any alarms go off, can you or Sam come get me? I’ll hurry.”~~~Tristan waited what felt like an eternity before Kyla’s eyes opened. He watched. She was looking around, looking sleepy, disoriented, and like death warmed over. Sasha was checking numbers on the machine.

She looked glazed over, still, but he leaned over hopefully, “Hey baby.”

She licked her lips and swallowed what looked like painfully and then grunted in pain and tried to sit up.

“Whoa, whoa. Stay put, baby. You need to lay here for a second. Are you thirsty?”

She nodded.

Tristan hit the controls on the side of the bed to move her into a more upright position and then gave her bottled water through a bendy straw.

“No change,” he muttered to Sasha while looking at Kyla’s eyes.

Fuck.

It didn’t work. Fuck.

His chest felt hollow.

“I think we’ll start things back up in about an hour. Give her more.”

“Why an hour?”

“I need to run some tests on Kyle first. Make sure he can safely donate more blood.”

“Right. Are her stats any different?”

“She’s had a decent amount of nutrition with the IV I’ve given her. She’s in some discomfort, though. Maybe you can take a feed from her and tell me what you get from her blood. Maybe you can also, uh…try to read her that other way, see if it changed things?”

Tristan snickered, “You’re saying I should make her come?”

Sasha blushed, “We’ll unhook her and you can take her upstairs. That’s your call. You said she regained lucidity last time so maybe you’ll read more from her.”

Sasha looked away. She was having a reaction of extreme arousal at that thought. Tristan tried to not let her see that he knew that but he and Sasha were both aware of one another’s reading abilities so she wasn’t making eye contact while she disconnected Kyla from the machines.