“But you don’t know. You can’t know,” Mark said. He sat back and crossed his arms. “I don’t feel all that comfortable with it. If he’s a half-vampire, then–”
“It might explain what happened to me the day before yesterday, Mark,” Promise cut in quietly. “If there are degrees of it. It might explain a lot.”
Mr. West sat forward, concerned. “What happened?”
She felt all their eyes on her, but she felt Peter’s most of all. It was as though his gaze contained heat or a force that worked on her nerve endings. “I went to look for the cabin. In the woods north of Willow’s End. I rode Ash in around noon, and I was checking trails, marking as we went along. I thought if I could just find the cabin, mark the way to it, then we could come back and destroy it…” she trailed off, uncomfortable as her story had begun to drift south of the truth. But there were things about what she was doing that no one here needed to know. “Anyway, I couldn’t find the cabin, and by that afternoon, we were headed out, but we were going through the part where the kudzu is the worst, the thickest, and I heard one behind us, and he just…he came out of nowhere. Ash took off before I could even tell him to. I almost fell. And we were…it ended up being lucky for us because the vampire got caught, tangled up in the kudzu, and we got a good head start. We were at the very edge of the woods, almost out, and it followed us the whole way. Right at the end, at the edge of the clearing, the sun came out, and the vampire started to burn. Its hand started to burn. And that stopped it. But it kept watching from the trees, just a little further back. It was waiting. It knew enough to do that, to wait like that.” She sighed, and her breath trembled out. “And I didn’t understand how it could be out. Even in the woods, even cloudy and surrounded by kudzu, it was still daylight…it shouldn’t have been able to go out. It scared me.” She looked at Peter, guarded and watchful. “Does the sun burn you, too?”
He looked at her for so long that she grew uncomfortable under his gaze, but she didn’t look away, merely tilted her chin up in determination. She needed to know something about him, and she needed to know it now because she already sensed the potential of her feelings. She was drawn strongly to something in his eyes, some deeper sense of loss and pain.
He stood and held out his hand to her. Promise looked at the other three, feeling slightly embarrassed, and then took Peter’s hand. He led her to one of the big cafeteria windows, where the mid-morning sun shone the brightest. He stood facing her, the side of his face painted in strong light, and she observed his skin, his eyes. He was fair, almost pale, and his eyes grew translucent. They were light gray. He smiled, and it was a sad smile, full of a past she didn’t know but understood to some degree, regardless.
“If I stay in the sun too long, I’ll start to feel uncomfortable; eventually my skin will start to blister, but that’s only after hours of strong sunlight. There are…other things…the strength and–” he dropped his head briefly, then looked up again. “–but I think they’ll develop a cure, a complete cure for it.” Promise wondered about the part he’d skipped over, but something about him made her trust him. He smiled and again, it was a grave smile, weary but not beaten. “It’s no different from any other disease. I’m still human.”
“For everyone?” Promise asked, her voice faint.
He shook his head. He didn’t understand her question.
She swallowed. “Will it cure anyone who is a vampire now?”
“I don’t know,” he said his eyes filling with concern and recognition. “Who is it? Your dad or mom or–”
“My mom and dead are dead, but my little brother…” Promise dropped her head and ran a hand across her face. “He’s still out there. I think. I’ve been looking for him.” Unconsciously, she touched the pink scrunchie holding her hair back and then glanced to where Mr. West and her friends sat. She lowered her voice. “I wasn’t looking for the cabin, I don’t even know if there really is one out there. I was looking for my brother in the woods because we used to…we used to play there. He’s just a little kid, only nine. I always took care of him from the time he was born.” She looked at Peter, and her eyes had filled with tears that she refused to let fall. Her chin came up again. “I was going to stake him.”
He nodded his understanding, his eyes taking on a brief, intense shine of their own. Relief flowed through her, almost weakening her knees. It had been a terrible secret she’d carried, tangled up as it was with guilt, anger, and just not being sure. Of anything.
“I don’t know if it will cure everyone,” Peter said. “I have at least half an immunity from one of my parents–that’s why I’m still here. But if Chance had no immunity, if he has changed completely…then, I don’t know.” He grasped her arms, and she stiffened in surprise at his touch, the intensity of it. “I’m sorry about your family; I know how–”
She’d just started to relax in his grip when he was torn violently backward. Completely unprepared, he stumbled over a chair and fell onto his side. He looked up in shock. Mark stood between Promise and Peter, his hands bunched into fists.
“Keep your hands off her!” Mark said as Promise yelled, “Mark! What are you doing?”
He rounded on her with a look of hurt surprise.
“I was protecting you, Promise! It looked like he was going to bite you…I don’t know what he’s capable of! None of us know!”
Then Mr. West reached them. He held out a hand to Peter and pulled him up. Lea stood next to Mark, and her hands fluttered uselessly near her chest until she caught them together, subduing them. Her face was unhappy, and she glanced from Mark to Peter and back to Mark.
“I think we can surmise that he’s not going to try to kill anyone, Mark,” Mr. West said, and his tone was mild but threaded with an anger that was rarely heard. “He’s been as he is for over ten months, according to what the Guardsman said, and has shown no signs of progression in the disease.” Mr. West put two fingers against Mark’s chest in warning. His voice lowered so that only Mark would hear. “It’s one thing if you’re honest desire is protection, but I don’t think that’s the whole story here. And I’m telling you now that you better get control of yourself. You’re an asset here, Mark, and the younger kids–boys especially–look up to you. I need you to keep setting a good example; we don’t need any more Deidres around here. Do you understand?”
Mark glared, and his mouth worked, but then all at once his hands unfisted as he blew out a gusty breath. His shoulders sank, and his face cleared of anger. “I’m sorry; you’re right,” he said. He looked from Mr. West to Peter. “Listen, man, I didn’t mean…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I just thought–” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I thought, but I was wrong to push you.”
“No harm done,” Peter said neutrally.
Mark turned to Promise, reaching for her hand. “I’m sorry. It’s just that–”
Promise stepped back in confusion and looked from Mark to Peter, a bright spark of anxiety snapping awake in her mind. She’d seen a flash in Peter’s eyes when Mark pushed him–a dangerous orange warning–that had faded quickly back to mild gray. No one had seen it but her.
Mark colored in embarrassment at what seemed to him to be Promise’s disregard of his apology. He turned and hurried from the cafeteria.
Lea watched Mark go, distressed. She swayed onto her toes as if lifted by helium balloons and then glanced at Promise. Promise shrugged her shoulders the tiniest bit, and Lea stumbled after Mark, as if released from a tether.
Chapter 6
“We can get her some of those heavy padded blankets just like the ones I use for Ash,” Promise said, running her hands over Snow’s muzzle. The horse was tall and broad, and she was dappled across her wide chest and ankles with light gray spots. Her mane and tail started out dark gray and faded to white. “Appaloosa in her genes, huh?” Promise turned to smile at Peter as her hand continued down the horse’s neck to pat her shoulder.
“Yeah, and something else, too. Something bigger, maybe eve
n Clydesdale. She’s strong,” Peter said.
Promise glanced at Snow’s feet. They didn’t have the extra hair, but her ankles were thick and powerful looking. Promise nodded. “She could probably kick Ash’s butt.”
Peter laughed. “Maybe, but he’s got longer legs. He could just run away from her. Hey, want to go for a ride? Then the horses can meet.”
Promise checked the sun. It was afternoon, but not too late. If they didn’t go far, they should be okay. But a thread of unease wormed through her. She pictured Mark standing over Peter and the angry spark she’d seen in Peter’s eyes. She couldn’t shake the thought: he is, at least in part, a vampire.
“Well, maybe we should get Snow settled in first, let her rest up,” she said, her words tumbling together. “Did Mr. West tell you which room you’d be in? A lot of people don’t want to live with a horse, so it can be–”
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said, his tone mild, and she turned in surprise.
“What? Why do you say that?” she said, then dropped her eyes to her clenched hands.
He stepped closer, and Promise held her ground. She looked up. He was less than a foot from her. The light from the doorway was at his back, and his eyes had darkened to the slaty shade she’d seen when he was in the principal’s office. His face was grave but not angry. “Give me a chance, Promise. There’s something good between us; you feel it too, don’t you?”
With him this close, her eyes were level with the scar on his neck, and it seemed to pulse with the beat of his heart. She raised one trembling finger to trace it. “What happened? Will you tell me?”
He reached up for her hand and grasped it lightly without pulling it away from the scar. “Yes. I’ll tell you,” he said, and his tone held an odd mix of resignation and relief. “Help me get Snow taken care of first. She needs water, and she needs to eat. Then I’ll tell you everything I remember.”
They spent the remainder of the afternoon getting Snow settled in. Rumors had spread quickly about Peter, especially after the scuffle in the cafeteria with Mark. The children, boys especially, looked at him with awe, and the older people were suspicious and gave him a wide berth. Promise understood their skepticism, but was not moved by it. They would come around, or they wouldn’t. It didn’t much matter to her.
Promise discovered something about herself that she may never have discovered had the vampire plague not occurred and had she not decided to actively seek out her brother…she found out that her own path might very well diverge from everyone else’s. She no longer felt the ties and pressures to stay with the herd, and she found that to be acceptable.
Peter and Snow had a small room to themselves. There were no windows, but it got enough light with the door propped open. At night, Peter would have to use a lantern the same as everyone else. There would be something especially confining about a cinderblock room with no windows, though, Promise realized.
It took longer to get Snow and Peter settled than Promise had thought, and at four fifteen–fifteen minutes to absolute curfew–she stood from the blankets she’d been laying out and looked to where Peter was struggling to get the cot open. His tongue peeked out from the side of his mouth as he concentrated over his task, and Promise put a hand over her grin. Almost as though he sensed her amusement, he looked up. “What?” he said, and his face was so earnest, so open and trusting, that her stomach filled all at once with dizzy, tender butterflies.
She shook her head, letting her hand drop, letting him see a more genuine smile. She checked her watch: four eighteen. “I have to go. You won’t be able to tell me your story.”
He stilled, looking at her. “Do you want to stay here for the night? I could find another cot.”
She did, she did want to…but she also didn’t. It was confusing. She had a flash of her mom, sitting at the end of the bed in her room at home, asking her if there was anything she wanted to know about sex. At the time, at thirteen, she’d been horribly embarrassed but…Yes, she thought now, I want to know everything. She was filled with an ache both nostalgic for her mom and something else, something yearning and almost lost. A need to be near another person.
No, not just another person, this person: Peter.
She shook her head. “No, I can’t.” She glanced down the hall at the last few people scurrying to their rooms. Most of the classroom doors were shut. After a year of absolute curfew, the regulator in her head was saying ‘move, move, get to safety’. She grabbed his hand. “Come to mine. There’s room for you and Snow.”
He studied her for a long moment, and she was overcome with a wave of embarrassed regret. She pulled her hand away. “Or not, whichever. You’ll be perfectly comfortable here, I’m sure.” She backed out of the room and checked her watch again without seeing it. “I’ll come by in the morning, okay? Or not. Or you can come find me. Either way.”
His eyes had not left hers, and now a small smile played across his lips. He grabbed Snow’s bridle and pulled her toward the door. “Should we bring her blankets, too?”
Promise blushed and shook her head. “No. Ash can share.”
They hurried down the hall, Snow’s hooves clunking hollowly. Promise was aware of two things above all: the looming curfew–now six minutes away–and Peter jogging along beside her. There was something exciting about their exertions, something in the sense of urgency and their breath coming a bit quicker. But there was something innocently exuberant about it, too…the feeling of them as kids running together in exhilaration. She wanted to grab his hand. She wanted to laugh.
They passed the door of 502, only three doors now from 508–the classroom Promise shared with Lea. Deidre stood at 502, watching as they hurried by, and she caught Promise’s eye. Deidre cocked an eyebrow.
“Little slumber party in 508?” Deidre said.
“Shut up, Dee,” Promise said, without breaking stride. But she felt her face grow hot again, nevertheless. The social conventions post-vampire were radically different than pre-, but some things had not changed. For instance, people talked: people always talked. In a way, the community was tighter knit now than before if only due to space constraints, but after an initial period of ‘we’re all in this together,’ the cliques had begun to group together again like cancer cells programmed to form a tumor. It was almost as though people of a certain mindset were magnetized and unable to ever really break free from each other.
For the remaining school-aged residents of Wereburg who had survived the plague, the polarization seemed to be taking place along fairly standard lines: popular and unpopular.
Deidre Morris, although at twenty-two not technically of school age, was still firmly in that mindset. She’d been very popular, if not well-liked, and after everything had settled down at the high school, she’d begun a campaign of gathering the popular kids back into a group. It never occurred to her to wonder why she wanted things that way; she never questioned her motivations. The fact was that the insecurity of being at an in-between age at an in-between time motivated much of what she did, she just didn’t know it.
Promise bothered Deidre on some fundamental level. She was a pretty girl but didn’t even care enough about that to wear make up. She’d been from a good, if slightly funky, family. She could have been popular here in the post-plague outpost; more than that, she should have been! Instead, she chose to hang around with that orphan, Lea. It was almost as though popularity didn’t mean anything to Promise, and for Deidre, that was unacceptable.
“Who was that?” Peter asked.
Promise shook her head, irritated. “She’s nobody, just a snob.”
She rounded into 508, and Lea and Mark looked up in surprise from where they sat on Lea’s cot. Lea jumped up.
“Oh gosh, I thought…when you weren’t here by four, I thought…” she trailed off and looked from Mark to Peter. Then she addressed Promise again, “You’re usually here before the curfew. Hi, Peter.” She smiled briefly and then dropped her eyes.
Peter nodded. “Hi, Lea…hey, Mark.
”
“Hey, Peter. Hey, Promise,” Mark said. “You guys almost didn’t make it.” He smiled, and Promise smiled back, relieved. The last thing she wanted was more uncomfortable tension.
“Yeah. It was a last-minute decision,” she said.
“Hey, look at Ash,” Lea said as Promise turned to pull the door closed.
They all looked.
Ash was looking across to Snow, his head up and ears pricked forward. He was as still and watchful as Promise had ever seen him. Snow snorted softly and raised her head, and Ash blew out a breath as if he’d been holding it. Lea laughed with her hand over her mouth. “Love at first sight,” she said and glanced at Promise.
For her part, Promise felt a small nip of jealousy, followed by a settling, a feeling of rightness she couldn’t have explained. Peter led Snow across the classroom, past the big windows to where Ash stood. The horses touched noses, breathing audibly. The light was fading from the sky, coloring everything a soft orange, and that last light of the day seemed to highlight the horses where they stood. Promise reflected to herself that you could practically hear the bond as it formed between them.
Then Lady jumped up from where she’d tucked herself under a corner of the blanket, and all hell broke loose.
The little terrier ran in circles at Snow’s feet, barking wildly and bouncing as if her legs were springs. She was mad. She nipped inches from Snow’s haunches, and Snow kicked one irritated leg back, whinnying nervously as her eyes rolled, trying to see behind her. Then the dog was at her front and jumped to bark and snap at her chest, and Snow stepped back, blowing in alarm. Ash’s head jerked up and down, and he snorted and pawed the ground, confused. Promise ran to grab Ash’s bridle as Peter scooped up the dog. She wriggled furiously in his arms, trying to push herself nearer the white horse, straining against his stomach with her skinny back legs.
“Lady, stop! Stop it right now!” Lea said and grabbed Lady from Peter’s arms so he could calm Snow. “Lady, you hush now. Hush, baby.” Lea hugged Lady, planting kisses on the top of the dog’s hot little head, but still Lady struggled, whining. “Lady, no. You have to make friends. You have to make friends with pretty Snow.”
Blood Run – The Complete Trilogy – First Promise, Two Riders, Last Chance Page 6
