and knees. My first inhale left my body in a soft scream, and I
scrambled, trying to run away, but firm arms encircled me and
held me. Tightly, not painfully. “Rena.”
I opened my eyes.
Cryder.
He held me against his chest, his nose touching mine,
his blue eyes inches from me. “Rena.”
Exhausted, I let myself go limp in his arms.
BLOOD ORIGINS- BOOK ONE
Chapter Twelve
THE CLEARING WAS SUDDENLY,
overwhelmingly, very quiet. I lay in Cryder’s arms, listening to
the incongruous sounds of birds singing around me. If it
weren’t for his hands on me and his heavy, strained breathing,
I might have even thought I’d imagined the whole thing. Had
we really been fighting for our lives? Surely it was just a
misunderstanding. These things simply didn’t happen in real
life. People didn’t have fangs in real life.
But so much of my life over the past few weeks had
been surreal. My mysteriously declining health, Cryder’s
curative elixir, and the fact that these new people had appeared
as if from nowhere, seeming to know me. It was strange
enough for a guy to show interest in me at all.
I couldn’t deconstruct it right now. I focused on
breathing, on keeping myself together.
“Rena,” Cryder said. His voice was thick, as if he had
been crying. “Are you hurt?”
I took stock of my body. My neck hurt quite a bit from
109
Yearn for Blood
being squeezed repeatedly by Bristol, but other than that, I was
all right. “I’m fine,” I said, a tremble to my words.
He seemed to hear what I didn’t say and trailed his
fingers along my throat. “I’m so sorry about all this.”
My body shook, from fear and possibly from the touch.
“It isn’t your fault,” I told him. Then I reconsidered. “Is it?”
“It might be my fault.”
I thought about that. Could Cryder be responsible for
everything I had been through? No, I decided. Cryder was
kind. He had genuinely wanted to help me at every turn, I was
sure of that now. Even if he had led Bristol to me in some way,
it wouldn’t have been deliberate. I closed my eyes and felt his
fingers on my neck, where Bristol had just handled me so
roughly, and I knew the truth. Cryder would never hurt me.
“It isn’t your fault,” I told him.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” he said.
“Done what?”
“Charged in like that. You could have been killed.”
I glared at him as I spoke. “You could have been killed.”
He shook his head. “He didn’t want to kill me. He only
attacked me to get to you in the first place, Rena. It was very
stupid on your part, diving in, trying to be a martyr without
knowing the first thing about who Bristol is—who we are—
and what he wanted with you. You see that now, don’t you?”
“He wanted my blood…”
“Your blood.” Cryder ran his thumb along my neck
again, over the pulse point, and I was reminded of when
Bristol had done the same thing. This is where he would have
BLOOD ORIGINS- BOOK ONE
bitten me. This is where he wanted to drink from me.
“Why did he want my blood?” I asked, the question
difficult to ask.
“It would have given him. .great power,” Cryder said.
“Your blood is powerful, Rena. Transformative. If he had
gotten it, he would have caught and killed me very quickly.”
My own hand went to my neck. I felt hot, suddenly, lit
up from inside, as if I could actually feel my powerful blood
rushing through my veins? “Why?” I asked again. “What makes
my blood so special?”
Cryder shook his head. “Another time. For now, let it
be enough that Bristol is dead. He’s no threat to you anymore.”
So that was the awful deathlike sound I’d heard. I
couldn’t say I was surprised, but there was a part of me that
wanted to cringe away from Cryder. A part of me that was
horrified to be lying in the arms of a man who had so recently
killed. Even if the victim was someone as evil—as inhuman—
as Bristol, it came as a shock to realize that Cryder had it in
him to commit such an act. Physically, I could never have
overpowered Bristol, but even if I could have, I didn’t think I’d have managed to take his life. It would’ve been too horrifying.
But he was going to kill Cecile…
Maybe. Maybe I could have done it for Cecile’s sake.
I gazed up at Cryder. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m all right.”
“No, you’re bleeding.”
“I’m healing.”
I raised a hand to the wound on his arm. To my shock,
111
Yearn for Blood
it did seem a little better than it had been before. “You’re
healing pretty fast,” I managed.
He met my eyes. “We have a lot to talk about, Rena.”
“You’re like him, aren’t you?”
“In some ways, yes. In many ways, no.”
“I mean you’re.. what he is.”
His face changed. Now he seemed to be pleading with
me. “Rena…”
“Later, right?”
“I promise. But we shouldn’t stay here.”
On that, at least, I was in full agreement. Bristol might
have been dead, but the clearing smelled like blood and it was
making me want to vomit. Besides, we were sitting here at the
scene of the crime. All it would take was for some innocent
hiker to happen by, and we’d be looking at a lot more trouble
than I wanted to deal with.
Oh, God. Was I really contemplating fleeing a crime
scene? What had happened to me?
I didn’t want to see it, but I forced myself to sit up, to
extricate myself from Cryder’s embrace and peek over his
shoulder. There was Bristol, lying in a pool of blood, absolutely motionless. From where I was sitting, his body looked intact,
but I knew all that blood had to be coming from somewhere.
What had Cryder done to him, exactly?
I didn’t really want to know.
“Cryder,” I said suddenly, as it hit me. “The bodies
we’ve seen around town. The body you and I found in the
park… Was that Bristol?”
BLOOD ORIGINS- BOOK ONE
He hesitated. “I don’t know that for sure. I think it
probably was, yes.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“I’m...fairly sure.”
“You mean it might have been someone else? There
could be… more of them?”
He rested a hand on my cheek. “There are more of us,
Rena.”
Us. I shivered. The panic was rising in my stomach
again. I wasn’t really safe yet, was I? Bristol was dead, yes, but presumably whatever was in my blood that made him want me
so badly was still there. Was it only a matter of time, then,
until another attacker came to kill me?
Would I ever truly be safe again?
Cryder seemed to hear my thoughts. “It’s all right,” he
said. “I’ll take care of it, Rena.”
“C
ecile could have died because of me.”
“She’s going to be all right.”
I turned to see Cecile sitting upright. Drake was
supporting her with a hand on her back and watching her
solicitously. She had tears in her eyes, and she was shivering
like a person recovering from the flu, but otherwise she seemed
fine. “Cecile!” I gasped in relief.
“Rena!”
She was out of Drake’s arms, across the clearing, and
wrapping her arms around me in a flash. I clung to her, almost
afraid to let go. “Cecile, my God. I was so scared. I was so
worried.”
113
Yearn for Blood
“You’re babbling,” she said, laughing a little.
“I’m babbling?”
“I’m fine.” She held out her arms, turning them one
way and then they other as if to show me that they were intact.
I batted them aside and inspected her hairline. “You’re
not bleeding anymore.”
“Was I?”
“Does your head hurt?” I asked.
She thought about it, lifting a hand gently to her
temple. “No,” she said finally. “It really doesn’t.”
“But…” But Bristol had thrown her to the ground. But I
was sure her head had struck a rock. “I thought you were
dead,” I said again, rather dumbly.
“Oh, honey.” Cecile embraced me. “Of course, I wasn’t
dead.”
“You were unconscious.”
“That’s not dead.”
“But he said…”
“Who said?”
“Drake.” I pointed at him, squatted away from us across
the clearing, watching us like we were a curiosity.
“Is that his name? Like a duck? What a weird name.”
“Cecile!”
“Sorry, sorry.” She snapped her focus back to me.
“What did the duck say?”
“He said you would die, if…”
“If what?”
I found myself at a loss for words. Cecile didn’t know
BLOOD ORIGINS- BOOK ONE
what Drake had done. Could I really be the one to tell her
what I had decided on her behalf? What if she was angry? She
would have every right to be—I had let a total stranger bleed
into her mouth because he said she was dying and that would
help. Free of context, it sounded insane. What if he’d given her
hepatitis or something? What if he was just some crazy drifter
who wanted to see if he could convince a desperate, stupid girl
to poison her best friend?
But that didn’t explain the fangs.
I started to breathe easier. For the first time, the fangs
that had been so alien and terrifying on Bristol brought me
comfort. Whatever Drake was, whatever he had done, it was
okay that I didn’t understand it. There was so much that I
didn’t understand. Working from incomplete information, I
had done the best I could for Cecile. She would understand
that. After all, she had done the same when Cryder had given
her the mysterious drink for me.
What was in that drink? I got chills, suddenly.
To Cecile I said, “Drake said you would die unless I let
him give you blood.”
She frowned. “Like a transfusion?”
“Like...orally.”
She made a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“I know. I thought you were dying, Cecile.”
“She was dying,” Drake spoke up. “Cecile, there’s no
blood on you now, there’s no wound, but look here. Look on
the ground.”
We both looked. Sure enough, the earth where Cecile
115
Yearn for Blood
had lain was stained dark. Drake’s white shirt also bore
bloodstains, and there they appeared deep red. It was
nightmarish.
Cecile was staring. “That’s all. .mine?” She looked to me
for confirmation, and I could see she was having trouble
believing it. “But I’m not even hurt…”
“You were,” I said. “Cecile, whatever else this is, that
part is definitely true. You were knocked out, you were
bleeding, and I honestly believed him when he told me you
were going to die.” I drew a breath. “I still believe it, I think.”
Cecile nodded. “Then you did what you had to do.”
“Yeah?” All the tension seemed to rush out of my body.
I hadn’t realized how anxious I truly was about Cecile’s
reaction to what I’d allowed.
She laughed a little and hugged me. “Of course, Rena. I
would have done the same if it had been you. I’d never let you
die; you know that. Not if there was any other way.”
“I love you,” I whispered into her hair.
“You too, goofball.”
Remembering the other part of what Drake had said, I
held her back at arm’s length and studied her. He had told me
that saving Cecile’s life would come at the cost of making her
“like him.” I thought of his fangs, and of Bristol’s incredible
strength and speed, and I examined my best friend. She was
still Cecile, still the girl I’d known all my life. And yet,
something felt different, slightly off. I remembered with a start how quickly she’d crossed the clearing from Drake to me. Had
it truly been as fast as I was imagining? Was I overdramatizing
BLOOD ORIGINS- BOOK ONE
the moment in my mind? Or had she really been as fast as
Bristol?
“What?” asked Cecile, raising an eyebrow at me. I’d
been staring at her too long.
“Nothing.” I smiled. “I’m just glad you’re okay. We
should head home.”
As Cryder and Drake led the way out of the clearing,
though, I kept thinking about Cecile, watching her closely
when her eyes were focused elsewhere.
Did she have fangs now? I couldn’t ask her to show me.
It would be too macabre, for her to find out that way. Telling
her what I’d allowed Drake to do while she was unconscious
was one thing. Telling her she’d been irrevocably altered by
it. .that was something else altogether. I didn’t know enough
to break that news. Drake, or perhaps Cryder, would have to
explain.
And I hoped they would do it soon. Somebody really
needed to start explaining what was going on around here,
why my life had been so transformed over the past few weeks
that I barely recognized it—or myself—anymore. Why had
these strangers come to our town in the first place, and why
had Bristol killed so many and left their bodies around? What
was the strange concoction that Cryder had been so adamant
that I drink, and why had it had such a positive effect—for it
had, there was no denying that—on my health?
And what were they? What was Cryder really? The
changing eye color, the speed and power, the blood obsession,
and, of course, the fangs. .it all added up to one thing, one
117
Yearn for Blood
creature I’d always known was the stuff of myth and fantasy.
And yet here they were, standing in the clearing with me and
Cecile, watching us.
Vampires.
What in the world could they po
ssibly want with me?
BLOOD ORIGINS- BOOK ONE
Chapter Thirteen
I NEEDED ANSWERS TO SO MANY QUESTIONS.
But before I could ask, a gust of wind seemed to sweep the
clearing. Dust filled my mouth. I coughed, trying to clear it,
and felt a hand—Cecile’s—begin to rub circles on my back.
When I managed to drive my eyelids up, everything had
changed.
The dirt by my feet, which had been soaked with Cecile’s
blood only a moment before, was now unsullied. It was as if
nothing had ever happened here.
“Oh no,” Drake murmured.
“What is it?” Cryder asked. We all turned.
Drake was staring at the spot where Bristol’s body had
lain. The ground there, too, was pristine. Just bits of grass
speckling the forest floor.
Bristol’s body had vanished.
For the first time, Cryder appeared truly shaken. “What
do you suppose that means?”
“I don’t know,” Drake said.
119
Yearn for Blood
“He is dead, isn’t he?” The fear rearing up inside me
again sent a tremor through my voice.
“There’s no reason to think otherwise,” Drake said. He
sounded very reassuring, but I’d heard the anxiety in his tone
before. Even if Bristol was dead, that didn’t necessarily mean
we had nothing left to worry about.
But it was hard to worry too much right now. I’d been
afraid of losing my life today, and with Bristol gone, I felt for the first time in hours that I was truly among friends. True, I
didn’t know Drake or even Cryder all that well, but it was hard
to imagine them wishing me harm. Whatever had happened, I
thought, maybe it was best to simply not look too closely.
Maybe the lesson here was to be grateful for the fact that I was
alive and not try to dig into the mysteries of the universe. After all, wasn’t that what had gotten me into trouble in the first
place?
I turned my mind to another mystery instead—how
were we going to get home?
“How did you get here?” Cryder asked, when I voiced
the question. He seemed surprised that this was even an issue.
But then, I thought, noting a slight bitterness in my own mind,
it was probably easy not to worry about transportation when
you could run as fast as he could. Why did Cryder even own a
car? It was probably some macho guy thing.
Yearn For Blood (Blood Origins Book 1) Page 10
