by L. A. Banks
But vamp bitch was at a bad angle and I have a rock-hard head. The worst part was I had to gulp down the funky blood that ran into my mouth before I choked on it. I gagged, but held on, willing myself not to puke.
Then sparks flew in front of my eyes as she struck me with a blow that knocked me off and slammed me into the far wall.
She snarled, her neck torn open and oozing. She crashed through the closed bedroom window, shards of glass flying. I felt my body slide down the wall and land on the floor. Staring at Andre’s unconscious form, I willed myself to move, but he faded to black.
I opened my eyes to the glint of pale dawn sunlight coming through the broken window, and groaned. It burned. I rolled away on the hard floor from the painful rays and struggled to my feet. Andre hadn’t moved, but any sign the vampire had bitten him had vanished. Please, let him be alive.
I pressed my head to his chest and listened for his heart. It pounded slow and faint. Too faint.
“Andre?” No response. Panicked, I called 911.
The paramedics wanted to know if we had a fight. I looked way worse for wear, the room was in disarray with the window broken and glass shards everywhere. I told them I’d come home after a night of partying and drinking and he’d been asleep. This morning I couldn’t wake him up.
I could almost hear them thinking drugs. I wanted to scream at them to give him a blood transfusion. But I didn’t know how to tell the paramedics that he’d been bled out since he had no discernible wound on his body.
They wouldn’t let me ride with him in the ambulance. I had to follow. I pulled on a pair of jeans and pulled my hair back into a ponytail and rushed to the car. As soon as I stepped outside the door I almost fell down. The morning sun burned. What the fuck? I could almost feel my skin blistering.
I ducked back into the house and went into the bedroom to look for the keys to his Lincoln Navigator in the slacks he’d discarded on the floor to fuck that vampire bitch.
Bile roiled through my stomach. I felt sick, nauseous, hungry. But that was nothing compared to how I’d feel if Andre died. I promised myself that I’d hunt down that bitch and kill her.
I changed to a long-sleeved shirt, grabbed some big shades and almost tore up Andre’s bathroom cabinets looking for the sunscreen. I thought I’d seen some somewhere. Finally, I found a tiny tube of SPF 50. I stepped into the cool, dark attached garage of his townhouse, slathering sunscreen on my face and exposed skin.
I steeled myself against the sun as the garage door rolled up. Yeah, I’ve watched enough vampire movies and read enough books to know the deal, but I really hadn’t processed it yet. I was only thinking about Andre.
I squinted as I rolled out into the street. The sun was hot, but not nearly as painful as before, when I was fully exposed. The hospital had covered parking and an elevator straight to the lobby.
When I got to the emergency room, I told them I was Andre’s wife. They escorted me to his curtained cubicle and sheer relief zoomed through me when I saw Andre conscious, laying on a gurney with fluids dripping in his arm.
I slipped my hand into his, and he squeezed. Words were unnecessary.
“Don’t you know I’m invulnerable?” he said. “Two gunshots couldn’t bring me down.”
But a vampire almost did. “You need blood,” I said.
He nodded. “I told them I was anemic. When my initial blood work came back, they drew a cross-match for a transfusion right away.”
Then his eyes widened, as he realized the implications of what I said, his brain reacting more sluggishly than usual from the loss of blood.
“You saw her?”
I nodded.
His eyes closed. “I couldn’t help—”
“Shush.” I laid my finger across his mouth. “I know. It’s all right. Everything’s all right.”
“I wish.”
His words were so full of despair, I ached for him.
“Did she touch you? Tell me she didn’t touch you,” he said, his voice urgent.
I could smell the anxiety roiling off him. I hesitated.
“Tell me!”
“No.” The lie rolled off my tongue. I wasn’t going to level with him. I was too afraid of what was happening to me, the sickness I felt at a cellular level. “You were unconscious. It was—it was terrible.” The time difference, how could I account for it? “I was terrified. I fainted. I didn’t come to until this morning.” I studied my hands gripping the silver sidebars of his gurney. “I’m sorry.”
The fear and worry didn’t fade from his face. “There was nothing you could have done, baby. It’s a blessing that she didn’t kill you. But she probably marked you.” He looked away from my searching gaze.
“Marked me?”
“That’s what she did to me, years ago. She marked me with her scent, bit me. Then as far as she’s concerned you’re nothing but food in the refrigerator. She can come and get you at will. She kills most, but some she chooses to play with—for years.”
It was if a light turned on. I understood Andre’s eccentricities. He’d only been trying to survive. “That’s why you never wanted to go outside.”
“That’s right. Apparently some vampire rules hold true, they can’t come in unless invited. They also hesitate to feed in crowded places. The restaurant is very strict about letting in unauthorized personnel to the kitchen area.”
“How long have you been marked?”
“Since I was a teenager. She comes and goes, never quite killing me. I thought she was going to kill me last night. She wasn’t happy about my impending marriage.”
He was her lover, my fiancé was that blonde bitch of a vamp’s regular squeeze. My feelings must have showed on my face.
“She has a way of coercion. I—I couldn’t help it,” he said, looking away.
My stomach twisted. He remembered making love to her.
I didn’t trust myself to say anything. But it would be more than all right when I killed the bitch. If I had to put her in an industrial size hamburger grinder and torch the meat, I would do whatever it took to lay her un-dead ass to rest.
I started shaking, tears leaking from my eyes. I hate to cry, especially in front of people, but this was all too much.
“Baby, c’mere.” Andre offered me comfort, but right now I couldn’t take it. I hurt too bad physically, mentally and emotionally.
I turned away and grabbed a box of tissues. “I think I’m in shock.” That was the understatement of the century. The deal is that I think I’m turning into a vampire.
Chapter Three
* * *
Two nurses came in the emergency room cubicle, one carrying a bag of dark fluid. They went through an elaborate ritual of checking and rechecking to make sure he was the right patient and that was the right bag of blood before they hung it. Finally, the dark red fluid seeped slowly through a filter and down the tubing. My mouth watered.
“We’re going to take him up to his room now,” one of the nurses said. “The doctor is going to admit him overnight for observation.”
“Don’t leave. I don’t want you going back to my place alone,” Andre said. “It’s not safe.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.” I swallowed back a rush of nausea. At that moment, I felt too sick to do much of anything but follow his stretcher.
But I made the effort to pull a nurse aside and ask to close the blinds and curtains to the windows in his room before I entered.
Sick or not, I don’t want to burn.
The chair next to Andre’s hospital bed reclined and the nurse told me it converted into a bed. As soon as he was settled, I collapsed on it and nodded my thanks to the nurse for the blankets and pillow she handed me.
I was shaking inside, feeling cold and feverish. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, but there were some things I had to ask Andre first. Things about vampires.
“Why didn’t you want me to go back to your place?”
Andre stared at the silent figures moving on the television scree
n. “I invited her in. She’ll be back.”
“So it’s true that vampires can’t come into a residence unless invited? Are we safe now?”
“She called it human magic. A human’s body or their shelter, whether a cave, tent, car or a hole in the ground, can’t be invaded by evil unless invited. Even this room, since we’re sheltered from the outside, is considered our home and can’t be invaded.”
“A human’s body can’t be invaded? Doesn’t that defeat the whole vampire purpose?”
“Unless invited or allowed. She has powers of coercion and seductiveness. She has no problem being invited.”
My lips tightened as I remembered how I complied in that bathroom stall when she slipped her fingers between my legs. I wouldn’t normally allow any woman, short of an OB-GYN, to do that.
“If she marked you, it’s as if she put a tracking device on you. She’d know exactly when you were back at my place, vulnerable and alone.”
I had a lot of questions, but a spasm started in my stomach, shivered over my body. “Andre, we’ve been through a lot. I need to sleep, and I think you do, too.”
He nodded. “Leave the door open.”
“So nobody will have to knock and be invited in? How can we live like this?” It was a rhetorical question, full of worry.
“I hate it. I hate feeling helpless, I hate being afraid and most of all, I hate vampires.”
I opened my eyes, startled by the vehemence of his words. “Surely she can’t help being what she is?”
“Evil is always a choice and she’s pure evil. She needs to die.” He turned his head and met my gaze. “I’ve got to figure out a way to kill her and any other stinkin’ vampire I ever run across.”
I murmured my agreement and closed my eyes, hurting both body and soul.
I opened my eyes to the darkened hospital room. A nurse was there, standing over Andre. “Hello sleepyhead,” she said.
I stretched. Andre was sleeping and a tray of food was on the bedside table beside me. “You missed lunch and dinner. I had them leave your dinner tray in case you woke up hungry.”
The new-fangled way to take vital signs only involved pressing a button. The cuff in place on his arm hissed as it filled with air.
“What time is it?”
“A little after midnight.”
I was stunned at her answer. I’d slept more than sixteen hours straight. I never slept that long at night. “Could you take the tray? Thank you.”
I was relieved when she left. I could smell her and I never smelled people before unless they were actively funky, which this nurse was not. Her smell was weird and appealing. But the smell of the food was disgusting. It was surprising considering how hungry I was.
They’d hung more blood on Andre. Drip, drip, drip. I watched it, fascinated. Amazing how well I could see in the dark. More amazing was how I could smell. Andre’s delicious personal scent wafted over me and it was all I could do not to start making love to him. I heard the drop of the blood from the needle to the filter that connected to the tubing filled with dark, red…
Blood. I wanted it. I wanted it bad. I rushed to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror and opened my mouth. Even my gums were sore. I couldn’t believe my eyes when my incisors started to protrude, razor sharp. Oh fuck. I was a vampire for real or I’d lost my freaking mind for goddamn real.
I considered my weird hunger. It was something like sex, the hunger, this incessant craving. I wanted to slip into bed with Andre and take him inside me, pounding with blood and life and just…taste.
My eyes closed with pain. That was one thing I could never, ever do. He hated vampires. I heard the truth in his voice. If he ever realized that I was a vampire, he’d hate me, too. And he would want to kill me.
My knees buckled. I grasped the edge of the sink. I was a vampire. I’d been sick, as if I had a mild virus. I felt a little better now, but deep in my cells something about me had changed.
My senses were sharper. I could feel the strength in my muscles. They’d changed somehow. I knew I was stronger, probably faster, too. What had changed most was the way I handled food, my entire gut. The thought of eating solids made me feel nauseous. Food didn’t smell good and if I could bring myself to taste it, I was sure it wouldn’t taste good. My new hunger craved something different. Lord help me.
Was vampirism nothing more than a blood-borne virus? I cast a reflection in the mirror. I was definitely not undead. Hot blood pounded in my veins and rushed through my body as always. I drew air in and out of my lungs, bathing the blood that rushed through those capillaries in air. I was breathing, warm and alive. But I had no doubt I was a vampire.
I stared at my incisors in the mirror. They were evident if I smiled, but they appeared retractable according to my hunger and reaction to my circumstances. I was alive but very, very different.
I’d become extremely photosensitive to sunlight and my circadian rhythm had changed to adapt to that. I’d always been a morning lark, now I was going to be a creature of the night.
The immortality bit was probably too good to be true, also the magic powers. Just my luck that the first person in my life that I’d bit the fuck out of was a vampire. The shit was apparently a blood-borne virus. It could be worse, I suppose. She could have had AIDS.
The thought of food nauseated me, but hunger gnawed at the pit of my stomach. My fangs extended again when I thought of that delicious blood dripping into Andre. But I wasn’t up to bite somebody to eat. Gross.
I frowned as I remembered how Andre’s wound disappeared. That seemed like magic. But it could be some enzyme in my newly vamped saliva. There was no such thing as magic, ghosts, demons, werewolves and other beasties.
Okay, there was such a thing as vampires, but it had to have a perfectly scientific explanation.
The hunger roared through me, almost bending me double. I had to get out of here, away from the smell of the man I loved.
I staggered out of the room. It was worse out here. The air was sharp and metallic with blood. The hunger sharpened into pain.
I took the elevator downstairs to the basement. A lone janitor was mopping the floor. He didn’t look human anymore. He looked like a giant donut, cinnamon crusted. “Where’s the blood bank?” I asked, trying to stand as far away from him as I could.
“We don’t have no blood bank I know of.”
“Where do you keep your blood? I need to pick some up for a patient.”
“That would be the lab,” he said, pointing.
I raced down the hall.
I went through the door marked “Laboratory.” There was nothing but a little cubicle with a young man behind glass.
“Can I help you?”
“I need a bag of blood for Andre Moore, room 417. Um, make it a double.”
He stared at me. “Where’s your blood requisition? And I need your RN badge to scan for pickups.”
The hell with that. I stared into his eyes and made a mental demand. Get me my blood, dammit!
His face went slack and he went to work. “I want three,” I called after him.
That was pretty cool, how he skedaddled on my mental command. But I was unsettled. My neat virus theory was shaky. Wasn’t mind to mind coercion some kind of magic? But people hypnotize others all the time and don’t call it magic. There had to be a scientific explanation for it.
But what else had Andre said? If the vampire bites you, she marks you and can somehow find you anywhere? That had to be duplicated in nature somewhere. As soon as I got home, I’d hit the Internet hard.
The man returned and slid three bags of blood through the bottom opening of the glass, much like a bank withdrawal.
“Hey, thanks.”
He nodded, not looking happy. I hoped he wouldn’t get into trouble, but hey, I have needs.
There was a woman’s bathroom right down the hall. I felt my incisors extend.
As soon as the door of the stall closed, I raised one of the bags to my lip, intending to rip it open
with my incisor. Then I felt the stall tremble. An earthquake? It was San Francisco. But then a clear, bright white beam of light from nowhere fell on my blood. I looked around wildly but I couldn’t see where it came from. I clutched the bags to my chest.
All of a sudden I heard a deep voice say, “It is forbidden, a mortal sin.”
What the fuck?
“But the flesh of life, which is the blood, you shall not eat,” the deep male voice said in my ear, way too close for my comfort.
“Um. Is this God?”
“Hardly. You’re not that important.”
A smart-ass disembodied voice. Just what I needed. “But I’m hungry! What else can I eat?”
“Nothing else.” The voice was lower. Did I detect a note of sympathy? “…to abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from what is strangled, and from blood.”
“If I don’t eat, I’ll die.”
Silence. I moved my hands away from my chest, and the beam of light illuminated the bags of blood. The life. My life.
“You know most people on the verge of committing mortal sins don’t get supernatural visitations with dire warnings, or at least not that I’ve heard.”
Silence. Then the voice said, “Vampires get a choice because you humans have the gift of free will. But you’ve made your choice harder.” The note of sympathy was pronounced. “Most vampires have to also make the decision to hunt and often make a messy kill to obtain their first meal, not merely tear open a clean, plastic bag.”
“So what will happen if I drink this blood?” Every cell in my body was screaming for me to ignore the hallucination and satisfy my hunger.
“You will be damned by God.”
I gave a bitter laugh. “Is that what you call free will? To either satisfy my natural hunger or be damned by the Lord Himself or die an agonizing death in good standing?”
“Yes, now you understand.”
The light clicked off as if somebody flicked a switch. I was left alone with my choice.
