Pasha smiled. “If you hadn’t made love to me in the shower, we would have invited him over earlier.”
“Whose fault was that?” Zachary drew her into his arms and kissed her neck.
“Hmm, I’d say we were equally at fault. I can’t resist you.”
“I—” Someone knocked on the door, and Zachary appeared next to it, then peeked out the security peephole where Alex was standing on the covered porch in the dark before sunrise. He opened the door for Alex. “Good morning. Come in. We’re just fixing breakfast.”
Pasha was glad Alex hadn’t just appeared in the house like he could have done. “Good morning, Alex. I was afraid you might have been sleeping the day away.” Pasha motioned to the eggs. “What would you like?”
Alex was wearing a long-sleeved shirt for the experiment, thankfully, and he even had a pair of work gloves he’d scrounged up in her dad’s garage. “Scrambled eggs work for me. Thanks. I slept some earlier this morning so we could test your theory. I looked up the weather report and it says we’re getting full sun today.”
“Yeah, so we can test our theory to the extent you’re comfortable with. Victor and Boniface are sleeping for now. The back patio will protect you and because it’s early, the sun won’t be as strong.” Pasha began serving up the eggs.
Zachary had cooked up some sausage and hash browns and added them to the plates.
“We could expose all but a small bit of skin and see if the sun has any effect on it.” Pasha got everyone cups of coffee. At least the vampires could still eat and drink regular food, even though they needed supplements of blood.
“Okay. I was thinking about sticking my foot out in the sun, really wanting to believe this will work, but probably trying a patch of skin would be best.” Alex joined them at the table.
“Do you remember a time since you were turned that you’ve made the mistake of going into the sunlight?” Zachary asked.
“A couple of times I was about to when I remembered what I was now. You know, after thirty-one years of being strictly human, well, and half hunter, it’s ingrained in you to sleep at night and be up and about during the day. I didn’t feel any apprehension about going out.” Then Alex frowned. “Wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t it come naturally to feel something wasn’t right? To fear the sunlight?”
“I would think so,” Zachary said. “I was afraid I couldn’t either, but then Adonis proved he could be out during the day and the sun wouldn’t affect him. He was afraid to go out in the sunlight to begin with. But then we’re fully hunters.”
“Right.”
They finished breakfast and then Zachary offered to clean the dishes while Alex and Pasha went to the back window to look out.
The sun was rising, and a small amount was touching the edge of the covered patio.
“Let’s do this while the sun isn’t at full strength. Maybe I can get around outside before a certain hour, if I don’t burn in lower light.” Alex was about to open the back door.
“Wait, what part of your skin do you want to test?” She got a couple of washcloths and found some masking tape.
“My arm. We can pull up my sleeve and wrap the cloths around all but a small amount of skin and see what happens.” Alex pulled on the work gloves.
She covered the area around the skin so that he only had a small bit exposed.
Zachary finished cleaning the dishes and joined them as they walked onto the back patio.
“How do you feel?” Zachary asked.
“Normal. Maybe a little bit of anxiety, but not like I have a real fear of the sun. More like fear of the unknown. I should have asked the Crichton vampires how they viewed the sun now, but they were all asleep when Zachary invited me over. Well, it didn’t even cross my mind to ask them earlier actually.” Alex moved toward the sunlight spreading across the back patio and before he changed his mind, he stuck his left arm into a band of light.
Zachary was ready to yank him out of the sun if he needed to, both he and Pasha looking on, nearly bumping heads with each other and they blocked out the sun on Alex’s skin.
Alex smiled. “Well, it appears low light sun doesn’t harm me.” He gave a big sigh of relief.
“I’d still be cautious,” Pasha said, feeling anxious.
“Yeah, I agree,” Zachary said.
Alex pulled up a chair and sat in the shade. “I’m going to soak up the shade for a while.”
“I’ll go check on the house across the street,” Zachary said, and Pasha appreciated that he’d offer to let her watch over Alex, but she couldn’t do it.
She patted Zachary’s arm. “If he needs to be moved out of the sunlight in a hurry, you can just grab him up and appear inside the house with him. It would take me longer to move him if he were to become incapacitated or confused.”
“Are you sure?” Zachary asked.
“Yeah. You can keep me posted on his progress.” She kissed Zachary’s mouth and he responded with just as much interest, and then she reluctantly pulled away and patted Alex on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Alex said. “If this works, I’ll feel a lot better about my mother having been a huntress and falling in love with a human and then being turned by a vampire against my will.”
Pasha just hoped as the sun intensified, Alex would be all right.
Zachary couldn’t have been more pleased with how things had turned out for Alex, though he wanted to be with Pasha in case anything happened. But this was too important a find: that if one of theirs was mated to a human, their offspring could still have some protection against the vampire. Mainly, on a personal note, it was good that Alex was more like Zachary than like the other newly turned vampires.
Alex was keeping his face out of the sun, and still just exposing the small amount of skin. “I’m getting too hot.”
“Burning up?” Zachary asked, getting ready to remove Alex from his chair and whisk him away to the house.
“No. I just want to toss the gloves because I’m getting so hot in the Florida sun.”
“Just wait. It’s better to see what will happen as the sun rises in the sky and the light is more intense just on one little bit of skin. We don’t want you to overdo it and see you badly burned in the process.” Trying to get Alex’s mind off being so hot, Zachary asked, “Have you done much training with a sword, Alex?”
“Yeah. I didn’t ever plan to learn how to fight. What good did it do for my mother and father? My mother, of course, was a huntress trained in sword and dagger fighting, throwing stars, wrist blades, the works. From what I’d learned about them after I’d grown up was that she had been teaching my father the trade. But humans don’t have the strength or faster healing abilities that hunters do. So no matter how much he trained, he would still have been at a disadvantage.”
Which made Zachary think of the Van Helsing hunters.
“But then I had such an urge to train, like it was in my blood that I had to do it. I had my mother’s weapons and used them to train with. After my parents’ deaths, you know what the worst of it was? The hunter community didn’t even avenge my mother’s death. She’d been one of them! Her parents had died before she met and married my dad, but at least her two brothers could have avenged her death. Their inaction really pissed me off. Not to mention the vampires got away with it, as if the hunters felt the vampires were justified in killing my parents!”