I stood on nervous feet, hopping from side to side, trying to decide what to do. To trust that Sam, a vampire I’d only known for a short time, would deliver me home safely and without an agenda of his own? Strangely, I found myself looking forward to the idea of being alone with him on a cross–country road trip.
Don’t get carried away, I thought to myself. You’re never going to see him again.
And for some silly reason, the thought of never seeing him again hurt. More than I could have imagined. I could kind of see why. Whereas Ryan was the source of all my troubles, and Ivy was cold and aloof, if it hadn’t been for Sam’s gentle guidance and ability to listen to me freak the fuck out on a regular basis, I would have gone insane the first night I landed in that house. I suddenly understood why the thought of losing him hurt so much. It was because, in my new life, he was the only real friend that I had.
You’re going home. You need to forget about him.
Somehow that didn’t seem so easy.
I stormed out to the car, irritated that my plan had been sprung before I’d even left the house. I was so terribly bad at anything that required stealth or cunning. I threw my bag in the backseat of Sam’s SUV, a sleek black BMW with leather seats and chrome wheels. It looked like a car that Ivy would choose, not Sam. I imagined if he had the choice, he would pick something as ordinary as a second–hand pickup.
“Nice car,” I murmured as he entered the garage carrying a duffel bag and a small ice cooler. He must have seen my eyes light up, because he nodded and handed the box to me. “You didn’t think three little bags would get you there, did you?”
I shrugged. “I would have had more if Ryan hadn’t sniped it all.”
Sam’s face fell. “That’s where it all went?” he asked.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “He took a big cooler full of blood bags with him. He’s going to Turn Clair in Barbados.”
I placed the cooler on the floor behind the passenger seat and closed the door. “I don’t know why he has to go all the way to Barbados to do that. It’s hardly a time to be getting a tan when she’ll be all albino girl.”
“Barbados is a hospital,” Sam said as he shut the tailgate. “It’s in Malibu. It looks like a regular hospital, but it treats anything that falls out of the human category.”
“Clair is still human, though,” I said. “And how come you’re not surprised? Did you know he was going to Turn her?”
I really hoped he didn’t know.
“Nothing he does surprises me, Mia. He’s done far, far worse than that.”
“Oh.” I swallowed uncomfortably and hopped into the car, throwing my handbag at my feet. A wave of nausea hit me and I clamped my mouth shut and counted to ten in my head.
You don’t need blood yet. You just had some.
“Are you alright?” I opened my eyes to find Sam in the driver’s seat, peering at me with concerned eyes. “You’re as white as a ghost.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said quietly. I reached down and grabbed a bottle of water from my bag, cracked it open and drank the whole thing in one go.
Stop thinking about feeling sick and you’ll stop feeling sick. It’s all in your head.
I felt bile rush up my throat and I bolted from the car, barely making it to the garden bed on the side of the driveway before the entire contents of my stomach projectiled out of my mouth and onto a pretty rose bush. Thank goodness the garage door had been open or I would have chundered all over the car bonnet. I felt a warm hand on my back and my cheeks started to burn. Great, he just saw me throw up. Classy.
“Here.” A fresh water bottle was placed in my grasp. I opened it and took a small sip, swirled the water around my mouth and spat it out.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head and taking a deep breath. “Let’s get out of here.”
FORTY
It was small talk for the first few hours. Small talk and me napping. I was so tired, I felt like I could sleep for days. I was tired right down to my weary bones. I awoke just as we were crossing the border from LA into Arizona, in a town called Needles. If I had stayed asleep five minutes longer, I would have missed Needles completely.
“Can we stop?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
Sam frowned. “It’s only been three hours.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I need to pee.”
Sam shrugged in agreement and turned into a gas station. As soon as I got out of the car I regretted it. The temperature had to be at least a hundred and five, and the sun burned my skin the moment I was outside.
***
Ten minutes later, I was scratching my reddened skin as we left California and drove into Arizona. The Mojave desert stretched ahead of us, shimmering with mirages of things that did not exist.
“That sucks,” Sam said, reaching over and pressing two cool fingers to the pink flesh at my wrist. The skin stayed white for several moments, indicating a nasty burn.
“I remember that,” Sam said. “It took months before I could go out in the sun without getting fried.”
They called Sam the Ripper. Ryan’s words came back to me like a knife to the heart.
“What was it like for you?” I asked carefully. “In the beginning.”
He didn’t answer, and after several minutes had passed I guessed that he wasn’t going to.
***
“Have you ever wanted to kill someone? To feel their life force fade away? To take everything from them?”
I thought of Caleb. Of Ryan.
“No,” I replied honestly.
He tore his eyes from the road and stared straight at me. The anguish in his gaze was unmistakable and raw.
“I did. I feasted on the suffering of others. The more they hurt, the better I felt. Their blood was like a never–ending river of pain.”
“You … hurt people?”
“I killed people, Mia. I killed a lot of people. And worse.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. His eyes were glossy, and I wondered if he was going to cry. I’ve never seen a guy cry before.
“There are things worse than killing someone. I’ve done most of them.”
I swallowed thickly and cracked the window, staring straight ahead. The landscape was barren and desolate, but it looked positively radiant compared to sitting in the car listening to Sam talk about murdering people. I was suddenly all too aware of the fact that nobody knew where I was. Or who I was with. The one person I had trusted in the midst of chaos, and he was telling me this?
Hot, stale air flooded the car, and I closed my window again. I slumped down in my seat and looked limply at Sam, concentrating on the road ahead. I could tell by his expression that he felt me staring, but he didn’t turn to look at me. He was clearly locked inside his own struggle.
“Would you do that now?” I asked. “Would you hurt someone again? Would you hurt me?”
He cleared his throat. “Of course not.”
“Did you hurt anyone before you were a vampire?”
Now he looked at me. “I know what you’re doing.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re trying to pass the blame. Like it wasn’t my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I replied forcefully. “Unless you decided to let someone Turn you, to make you a vampire, then none of it is your fault.”
“But what about you?” Sam repeated. “What happened to you that you’re so different? You don’t even like blood.”
I blushed, stared at the floor.
“Oh, come on, Mia. A few minor cravings is nothing compared to what I’ve just described. Trust me.”
The funny thing was, I did trust him. Even after what he’d told me. I glanced at his hands and couldn’t imagine them being used to inflict misery upon somebody.
“I tried to bite Ryan,” I said sheepishly. I didn’t need to tell him the rest.
Sam laughed! I felt my face turn even redder.
“Sorry,” he said. “I would love it if you bit him. A scar would be even better. God knows
he deserves much worse.”
I frowned. “You don’t like him very much,” I said, “do you?”
“Do you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. And I really didn’t. The pull I felt towards him was incredibly intense. If I thought about moving further away from him, it hurt, a dull thud between my temples and a sharp spike in my chest.
“Don’t you have that feeling with Ivy? That pull?”
Sam’s face fell a little. “Not exactly,” he said. “I love her, but we don’t have that bond a vampire and maker normally share. It’s a long story.”
“Is that why?” I asked gently. “Why it was so bad for you? Because you didn’t have that voice in your head telling you everything would be alright?”
Because as much as I hated to admit it, Ryan’s voice inside my head, infuriating as it could be, was the only thing that had kept me sane during those first few weeks after waking up as a baby vampire.
“Maybe,” Sam replied. “Who knows? It was a long time ago.”
He continued to drive while I thought.
“How old are you, again?” I asked. I knew he had told me when I first met him, but in the murky recesses of my brain, the number had vanished.
“Thirty-seven” Sam said.
“You don’t look a day over twenty–one,” I remarked.
“That’s because I’m not.” Sam grinned. “I was Turned on my twenty-first birthday. Well, technically it was the next day, so I guess you could say I am a day over twenty-one.”
“How did it – what happened?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer. I still couldn’t talk about what had happened to me. Who was I to think that he was any different?
“I was living in New York at the time,” Sam began. “Ivy and I had had this huge fight, because she needed to go back to LA and wanted me to go with her, and I couldn't, because my dad was sick and I wanted to be close to everyone and finish school.
“I turned twenty–one in May. My parents threw me a huge party at their house. We were all drinking. Most people were gone by 2 a.m. I went to bed after that. I didn’t even wake up and the whole house was on fire.
“All I remember is Ivy dragging me out of bed and jumping out of the window with me in her arms. That was the first time it really occurred to me that there was something different about her. You know ... something not human. She had been giving me blood samples for my research at the university, but she always told me it was someone else’s blood we were studying.”
“Jesus,” I said. “What happened?”
“I was dying,” Sam said. “Well, I did die, I guess. I had burns to most of my body. Before I passed out, Ivy offered to save me, to give me some of that blood, and when she cut her wrist I knew the blood had been hers. I had watched the virus in that blood completely overtake human blood and change DNA. I didn't want it touching me. I said no.”
I thought of falling from that building in Mexico, and being offered the same deal by Ryan, and I shuddered.
“But she did it anyway.” He looked terribly sad, clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles.
“And your family?” I probed gently.
“All dead in the fire,” Sam replied stoically. “My mother, my father, a sister and two brothers. All gone.”
My throat was so tight I could barely speak. Without thinking, I reached out and squeezed Sam’s right hand, the one that wasn’t on the steering wheel.
“Did you forgive Ivy? For Turning you even though you said no?”
“Of course,” he replied. “She saved my life. She loved me.”
Something about that story made me terribly uneasy, but I couldn't put a finger on it.
She loved me. Sometimes love makes people do crazy things.
We travelled in silence for another twenty or so minutes.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I said, breaking the sadness that lingered in the air like dead souls.
Sam just looked at me. “Again?”
The truth was, my stomach was turning in on itself again, and I was terrified of throwing up in the car while we were doing ninety on the interstate. I told Sam this and he appeared concerned.
“How long have you felt like this?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. A few weeks, maybe? It’s hard to remember with everything that’s been going on. I’m sure it’s just part of being a vampire.”
He frowned. “It’s not something I’ve ever heard of. And you say you still eat mostly regular food?”
“Sure,” I said. “I get cravings for cheeseburgers a lot. I think it’s the red meat.”
“And the blood? You crave that, too?”
“A few times,” I admitted, embarrassed. I almost told him how I had slept with Ryan, but changed my mind. I liked Sam. I didn’t want him knowing that dirty little secret.
“A few times a day?”
“No,” I replied. “Just a few times. Once I wanted to bite Ryan. Another time I smelled the blood in the refrigerator. Other times, it makes me feel clearer, but I don’t crave it. It still kind of grosses me out.”
“You need to stop and pee a lot for a vampire,” Sam mused.
“Gee,” I replied. “Awkward much?”
“Sorry,” Sam said, giving me one of his enormous puppy-dog smiles that reached all the way to his eyes. “I’m just trying to get a catalogue of symptoms so I can try and figure out what’s making you sick all the time.”
“I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal,” I said, suddenly alarmed. “Do you think there’s something wrong with me? Ryan says I sleep a lot for a vampire.”
“You do,” Sam confirmed.
“Great, so I’m basically a lazy sloth vampire.”
“Cravings. Nausea. Vomiting. Excessive urination. Fatigue. If I didn’t know better,” he joked, “I’d say you were pregnant.”
I laughed. “That’s impossible. Vampires can’t have babies.”
“Plus, it takes two to make a baby,” Sam added. “Unless it was the immaculate vampire conception.” He was still chuckling to himself when he caught a glimpse of my red face and his smile vanished. “Whoa,” he said. “You and Ryan?”
“It was a mistake,” I said, shaking my head.
“I hope he didn’t compel you,” Sam said tightly. “I might have to murder him if he did.”
“No, he didn’t compel me,” I said, burying my face in my hands. “Oh. My. God. I am so mortified right now.”
“It’s no big deal,” Sam said. “It’s none of my business.”
Neither of us spoke for a few minutes.
“In that case,” Sam said pointedly. “My earlier diagnosis may have some merit.”
“That’s not funny,” I said angrily.
“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Sam said, looking at me seriously. “Mia, it can and does happen from time to time. Don’t think yourself impervious to getting pregnant just because Ryan told you so.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re serious. You’re actually serious. This is insane!”
Sam was pulling into a small cluster of shops that I hadn’t even noticed.
“Where are you going?” I demanded.
“To buy something,” Sam replied. He pulled into a parking bay, shut off the engine and took the keys. “Need anything? Snacks, water?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks.” I really wanted to ask him to pick up some kind of hotdog with extra salt, but I didn’t want to give his outlandish theory any more fuel, so I didn’t.
I pondered Sam’s crazy idea while I waited for him to come out of the convenience store. There was no way I could be pregnant – my mind couldn’t even comprehend such a possibility. Besides, Ryan was older and wiser than Sam, at least when it came to vampire–related facts. If he said all vampires were sterile, then I believed him. Sam was just being crazy.
By the time he had returned, I was happy again and thinking about what I would do first when I got home. A visit to Jared, of course, then a quick trip across the Hudson River to see
my mom at her work offices in Manhattan sounded good. I still hadn’t thought of a convincing story as to why I was home when school was days from starting. I decided to stick with good old–fashioned homesickness as my excuse. Besides, it was true.
Sam handed me a brown paper bag as he got into the car. “What’s this?” I asked as I opened the bag, at the same time realizing what the pink cardboard box contained. “Jesus, Sam!”
“Just humor me,” he said, starting the car. “Take the test. Tell me how wrong I am. And then we’ll never speak of it again.”
FORTY-ONE
We decided between us to stop for the night in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. We’d been on the road for over twelve hours and both of us were starting to get pretty tired. We hadn’t mentioned the stupid pregnancy idea again, and I had all but forgotten about it when I rushed ahead of Sam and towards the bathroom of our motel room.
“Wait!” Sam said, tossing me the brown paper bag. And then, when he saw my face, he added, “just humor me.”
I rolled my eyes and shut the bathroom door.
“Hey, you want some food?” Sam called after me. “There’s a Pizza Hut a few blocks down. Do you want me to grab you something?”
“Sure,” I replied, taking the cardboard box out of the paper bag and ripping it open. I waited for Sam to leave, and when I heard the motel room door close behind him, I peed on the stick and replaced the cap.
I tossed the test on the counter and promptly forgot about it. I wandered out to the main room, where I had thrown my bag onto the first of two single beds. I decided to take a quick shower while Sam was getting pizza. I took my oversized toiletry bag into the bathroom and locked the door. I had just turned the water on when I spied the pregnancy test sitting on the counter.
Two lines.
I dropped the toiletry bag and fell to my knees, swiping the test off the counter as my knees buckled. I turned the test over, to recheck the helpful little diagram that was stuck to the back. One line – not pregnant. Two lines – pregnant.
I read those words and my entire world came crashing down around my feet.
There are things worse than death. And here I was, in the midst of one of those things.
Wombstone (The Vampireland Series) Page 20
