I spin to find myself chest to chest with Carter. Coldness reaches out from him and turns my skin to goose bumps. He wears black leather pants and a lavender tank top that bares plenty of his pale skin reflecting the moonlight, and he’s close enough that he has to tilt his chin down to look at me. His stringy blond hair keeps his face shadowed, but his eyes are bright.
Instinct takes over, and I step back the few inches I can so my shoulders scratch against the metal bars.
His gaze drifts down to my finger, where a tiny drop of blood gathers. I shift it behind my back as he raises his eyebrows in a look that says this won’t help me.
My chest heaves like a cat cornered by a pack of wild dogs. I need to regain some type of control. I tell myself he’s only one vampire, but somehow that doesn’t help.
“You told me it was you from the beginning.” I try to sound bold and confident, but it comes out in a squeak.
“I did.”
“You could have been a little more specific.”
His lips peel back into a smile. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“So this has always been your game. Nicholas thinks it’s his, but he’s a pawn.”
He sighs. Even pressed against the gate, as far away from him as I can get, his breath brushes the hair around my face. “That fool almost ruined it. He wanted to back out after catching feelings. He’s only human, though, so I can hardly blame him.”
“You don’t have feelings?”
His eyes drift to where my bleeding finger hides. “I feel all kinds of things.”
I swallow. I need to know if all vampires are like this—callous and calculating, treating people like playthings. That would be worse than death for someone like my dad, like me, but I doubt I will get a straight answer.
“Do they all figure you out in the end?”
“The smart ones. The ones who know the legends and recognize my name. Nicholas is an excellent decoy, though. He might be a better vampire than I am.” He laughs, and the sound is surprisingly light, but his eyes don’t crinkle around the edges, and when he stops abruptly, I can’t fight the shiver that runs through me. “Maybe I should make him one. What do you think, Victoria?”
I don’t answer. Something tells me showing the slightest care for Nicholas is the wrong move. I don’t like where this is going.
“Why bother with him at all? Why not play your own games?”
“I’ve played lots of games before, but a game within a game? That’s something new. I heard about Nicholas’s little ruse, and then I found his weak link. I love the weak. They don’t taste good.” He frowns a little, then smiles. “But they’re easily bought.”
My mind stumbles over itself, connecting everything. “Daniella. She knows what you are?”
He nods. “Her mother has considerable medical debt. People will do a lot for their families. Like I said, weak.”
“That’s not weak,” I blurt without thinking. I respect her for it. She’s doing what she has to—just like I am.
He shrugs, watching me as if he’s waiting for one more thing to click.
Then it hits me. “She had Henry alone.”
He leans forward, voice dropping so low it barely registers. “I had Henry alone.”
My heartbeat stutters. “No. He would have told me.”
He beams, rocking backward on his heels, waving a hand like this is nothing. “He’ll never remember. A drop of my blood can heal, and the right word can erase memories.”
The stain on Henry’s shirt—the one he insisted was ketchup.
This time I bend over at my waist, fighting the urge to vomit. I did this. Henry paid a huge price to get me here, and he doesn’t even know it.
I can’t let that cost be for nothing. I straighten. Carter looks like he’s growing bored.
I try to swallow, but it lodges somewhere in the back of my throat, and I can barely get out the next sentence. “So you are one of them.”
“Yes.”
“You kill people.”
“I give them what they want.” He smiles wistfully, like he’s in the midst of a sweet memory.
“I want to be a vampire.”
“So you say.”
“Will you do it?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” His tongue brushes his top lip. “I can’t decide until I taste you—until I feel the rhythm of your heart as the life bleeds out of you and into me. Will your pulse race with fear until the very end, with the desire to keep going, or will it slow, surrender, accept what it really wants, which isn’t eternal life but the sweet bliss of nothing at all? I give people what they desire.”
“Sounds like a terrible deal.”
“It’s my only offer. Give yourself to me, and I decide.”
“Does anyone actually go through with this?”
“Some.”
“How many people have you actually turned?”
He smirks. “Some.”
“What happens to the rest?”
“You know who I am.”
I do. One of the Carter brothers. A serial killer. A vampire.
I stare at him, expecting to find the same cruelty twisting his lips reflected in his eyes, but they’re empty, and somehow that’s worse.
But I’ve got hours before I need to leave for the airport. I don’t have time to find a nicer vampire. I don’t know if a nicer one exists.
“Do it,” I say.
His eyelids flutter, and the faintest flicker of life finally reaches his cold, dead eyes as he closes the gap until only a centimeter separates us.
Even a human could hear the sound of my heart beating.
He brushes the hair away from my neck, and then his hands reach to grip the bars behind my head. His face leans down beside mine.
“Hold still or this will hurt,” he whispers, and then he strikes, and it’s not slow or sensual. It’s how I’d imagine a snake bite would feel—sharp and angry and painful.
My body convulses with the urge to yank away. He’s not holding me. His arms cage in either side of my head, but the only part of him that touches me is his mouth and teeth buried in the side of my neck.
Perhaps this is part of the test, standing here when I could jerk away at any moment.
I bite the inside of my cheek and taste blood—thick and coppery—and try not to gag. I wonder if it tastes better to him. I can’t imagine drinking it to live. I can’t imagine killing another person so I could keep going forever and ever. He fed on Henry and didn’t kill him, but taking away someone’s memory might be worse—the sickest violation. There must be other ways. Animals. Blood bags. I need to know. I should have questioned him more. I should have found out more. I still don’t know what it means to be a vampire—everything Nicholas showed me was fake. I’m assuming it’s better than death, but the only vampire I’ve met is a serial killer, an empty shell of a person. The only emotion I’ve seen reach his eyes was when I agreed to let him possibly kill me.
What if vampires feel nothing at all? Dead on the inside as well as out. A week ago, this may have been appealing to me, but now? I just got my emotions back. I just started feeling alive again. I don’t want to go back to existing instead of living.
Is my pulse slowing? I can’t tell. Keep fighting. Be brave. Be strong like Buffy.
Something hot touches my cheeks, and for a second I think he’s bitten me somewhere else, but no. I’m crying.
Dad wouldn’t want this life. He wouldn’t want me to risk this.
Buffy knew when she had to lose someone—when there was no other option.
This might be a choice, but it’s not a good one. At worst, I’m dead. At best, I’m a vampire and Dad’s a vampire, and we live forever fighting the urge to take lives, to hold onto our humanity, slowly feeling nothing inside. Nobody’s ever been more human than Dad. He’s too good for this.
“No,” I mumble. When did I start to sag? The door behind me holds most of my weight.
Carter hums in response but doesn’t move.
“
No,” I say louder. I lift my hands to his chest and push. His fangs strain against the skin of my neck as he budges the smallest amount.
He’s not stopping.
I swear his lips smile against my neck.
He gave only two outcomes: vampire or dead. Backing out was never a choice.
I let a sob rip through me. I let my grief flood my system, and then I let my legs collapse out from under me as I finally let go of hope and accept my fate.
He doesn’t expect this, and since he wasn’t holding me, I drop, and his fangs rip away from my neck before I hit the ground like an empty sack of flesh.
He runs the back of his hand across his mouth as he glares down at me. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”
One of my hands goes to my neck, presses against the wet, hot life leaking out of it. I dig the fingers of my other hand into one of the cracks in the sidewalk and try to pull myself out from under his shadow. He crouches and watches me drag myself away inch by inch. My limbs are made of nothing but water and grief, but I force myself to keep crawling.
“You’ve just voided our agreement,” he says. The soft giddiness in his voice strengthens my next push away from him. “Do you want to know what I would have chosen? Do you want to know if you were going to live forever or die? Not that it matters now.”
I’m too weak. I pull myself to the rough wall of the convent and lean against it as I sit with my legs tucked to my chest. I’ve put only four feet between us. Not nearly enough. My vision blurs.
Carter crawls toward me on his hands and knees like something out of a horror movie.
He is a horror movie.
I kick a leg out at him, and his hand latches around my ankle. I sense him squeezing, but I barely feel the pressure.
“Do you want to know what I chose?” he asks again, because this is his game. My despair is his prize.
“I’m choosing life.” My voice comes out clearer than I expect.
“I don’t think so, my dear.” He lets go of my ankle. He doesn’t need to hold it. I’m not going anywhere alone. But I don’t need to.
I hear voices. I can’t see them yet, but they sound close enough to reach me in time.
So I let out a bloodcurdling, vampire-movie-worthy scream.
Carter’s eyes widen. He shakes his head at me like I’m a very naughty child who deserves both admiration and punishment for their wicked ways. He bites into his hand, wiping his blood across the wound on my neck. And then he’s gone.
Worried faces blur in front of me as I pull out my phone and point to Henry’s number.
Come. We have not much time left before sunset.
—Mark of the Vampire
Twenty-Two
I’m on my flight. I don’t remember much before getting here. I remember Henry crying though.
He swore a lot too. Some of it was directed at me. Some of it at himself.
We’re not sitting together, but Henry uses the bathroom about ten times, and I’m sure it’s so he can check on me as he passes by.
At least he believes in vampires now. I didn’t tell him what really happened to him. I’m not sure he should be the one to carry that if I can hold it for him. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that’s the decision I’ve made. I wonder why Carter didn’t take my memory too in those final moments, but I bet he wanted me to live with it, for it to haunt me. I decide not to let it.
He healed my neck, at least. When I got back to Henry and wiped the blood from my skin, there was nothing, no trace of where the fangs tore my flesh. The people who helped me assumed I was drunk, that I’d cut my hand and touched my neck. When Gerald first appeared, people had wondered why there had never been signs of vampire attacks in the hospitals. That makes sense now. I didn’t go to the hospital, even though Henry wanted me to. I had no proof. Besides, I need every second I have left with Dad.
I spend the flight on any vampire message board I can find, leaving warnings about Carter and the convent, but then I go back and take down my posts. I don’t want more desperate people to seek him out like I did.
I also spend the flight getting used to feeling again. I can feel other things besides sorrow and my sorrow won’t be any less, and that’s okay. There’s no more guilt left in me. I tried. Sometimes acceptance is the only choice.
Then the plane lands.
And my phone lights up with multiple missed calls from my mom and sister.
The wet, blue sorrow catches me and drags me out to sea and drowns me so I’m left gasping for air, fingers shaking, other passengers staring as Henry pries my phone from my clenched fingers.
Despair has its own calms.
—Dracula by Bram Stoker
Twenty-Three
Not dead. My dad is almost dead, but he is not dead.
Not yet.
That’s what family is. It’s the people you’re born to
and the people you choose who stand
beside you when things get hard.
—The Originals
Twenty-Four
My dad is asleep when we get home. Henry offers to sit with me, but my family needs me more than I need him.
I run into Jessica in the hallway, and when I move to walk around her, she steps in front of me again. I stare at the flip-flops I almost never see her wear and brace myself.
She should yell at me. She should be angry. I left her alone to plan for the memorial instead of being strong for her, too. I should have been strong for all of them—not just Dad. That meant accepting their pain and sharing mine.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What?” I finally look at her.
“Dad told me. The whole vampire-hunting thing. I think he thought you were sharing one of your inside jokes, but I know you. I know how fiercely you believe. I remember hunting those damn fairy rings and every other thing you read about.”
I stare up at her wet eyes, the dull red of someone who’s forgotten what it’s like to not cry.
It brings back the guilt. I should have given her a chance. It bubbles in my throat, and for a second I fear it might destroy me right there before I can even get to see Dad, but then she reaches out and squeezes my hand, and the strength of her fingers forces it away.
She gives me her strength when I thought she needed mine.
“I would have helped you,” she says.
I don’t know what she means exactly: if she would have gone with me or if she would have tried to help me see reason, but it’s enough.
I’m thankful she’s still gripping my hand when I remember what day it is. “Today’s Dad’s birthday. I…” I choke on the words. I need to call everyone and cancel, and every call will be a torturous round of questions: How Dad’s doing? Why did I plan a party in the first place? Where have I been?
Jessica shakes her head. “Aunt Becky ratted you out a few days ago. I took care of it.”
Relief crushes me. But my sister’s hand in mine keeps me together.
I would tell you that it’s okay to have hope…
because sometimes that’s all that keeps me going.
—The Vampire Diaries
Twenty-Five
The bed shifts, and I bolt upright.
I spend most of my time in Dad’s room, head resting on the sliver of empty space on the hospital bed, so I’ll know if he stirs.
He moans a little, and I reach for the liquid morphine on the bedside table. He’s not really conscious anymore. We give him so much morphine now that he never wakes up. It’s the price to keep the pain away. A price everyone agrees we should pay.
I won’t get to say goodbye to him, not really, just his unconscious body.
That will be my price for trying to save him, and whether I can live with it or not, I pay it.
He moans again.
“Okay, Daddy.” I call him Daddy sometimes, like when I was little. I hope he hears it and it gives him perfect memories. “I’m going to give you a little more medicine.”
“No,” he moans, and I freeze. His eyes open
and close again.
“A little more, Daddy,” I choke out.
“No, no, no.” His no’s are mixed in with more moans, so I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
Shaking, I put the medicine back on the table. I grab his hand, and he squeezes. We sit like that, him moaning, sleeping, waiting for the morphine to wear off a little more.
My mom pokes her head in the room an hour later and hears him. She rushes in the door.
“You didn’t give him his morphine?” Her voice is sharp, almost panicked.
“He said no. I heard it.”
She reaches for the bottle.
“I don’t want it.”
Mom’s face pinches at Dad’s voice, fingers going white around the bottle.
Dad lets go of my hand and reaches for hers, squeezing, and I watch my mom’s face soften in a way I never really see.
“Give us a minute, Anna,” he says, and Mom bends down and kisses his gray fingers before she leaves. On her way out, she touches my shoulder, and I think it’s a reprimand at first, but there’s something else in it, a passing of strength.
Be strong, it says.
I am. Stronger in a different way than when I left.
I take his hand in mine again.
“Kiddo,” he says. His eyes are foggy with pain, but they find mine.
“I’m here now, Dad.”
“I know. You’ve been here all along.”
“I wasn’t. I’m sorry I left you, Daddy. I shouldn’t have gone.” I lay my head against the bed for a second, discreetly wiping my tears on that old blanket before sitting straight up again. It’s hard not to fall back into old habits. It’s hard to let him see me and all my emotions.
“Honey, I’m glad you did.”
“It was a mistake. I should have been here with you. We could have watched more movies together.” My voice shakes on the word “movie,” and I have to draw in a ragged breath.
Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things Page 25
