I was slightly surprised by how much my body had changed in what seemed like hours since I'd been nailed to that chair. Rebecca had stayed the same physically when she'd started metabolising iron, at least on the outside, but I felt mildly shocked every time I saw myself in the mirror. My shoulders had become bigger, somehow, and I was developing muscle all over the place. It was like an accelerated puberty, but without the acne or awkwardness. I seemed to have just shrugged myself into this new body with the squared off chin and older face.
The psychological stuff was something else though. I spent half the time in a kind of disturbed awe of what I'd become. The rest of the time I worried about accidentally killing people, especially while I was asleep, for some reason. The idea that one day I might sleepwalk through the house, stopping hearts as I went, had taken root in my mind and was wrapping its slowly growing tendrils around my thoughts, generating a deep anxiety that I might one day wake up and everyone around me would be dead. Freaky, I know, but it grew to be a very real fear for me.
I eventually discussed the possibility with Marcus, who sat me down and asked me a disconcerting number of questions, and then sat for a few seconds, apparently deep in thought.
"What do you think?" I asked him, trying to suppress the worry in my voice. I may as well not have bothered. Marcus looked at me in surprise. He had forgotten that I was even there.
"What?"
"Do you think it's possible that I could stop someone's heart in my sleep?" I asked again, more amused than annoyed by Marcus' absentmindedness.
"Oh, that!" he said.
"Yes, that," I said dryly, trying not to laugh in spite of my anxiety.
"Definitely not. It requires too much focused and sustained concentration. Now, if you'll excuse me..." he trailed off, disappearing like a white rabbit into his own world. I watched him thinking for a minute or so before I left him to it.
Angus was much easier to talk to, and I spent the rest of the week hanging out with him and my sister. She seemed to get most of what worried me, but Angus would shake his head and grin at me, and roll his eyes. As therapy went it was pretty basic, but he made me feel that all my concerns were unfounded, and after a while I concluded that he was right. And just like that, my anxieties evaporated.
As the mornings passed and everyone remained very much alive, apart from Simon who had become a Skyrim zombie, I started to relax, and when Oliver proposed that we send a crew in to see if cleaning out the vampire bases would be a viable and achievable option, I was one of the first to agree.