by M. Leighton
“Oh, I don’t know. He wanted to know all about his new sweetheart,” she said, winking at me.
“And you told him everything he wanted to know, I guess.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. I didn’t bring out the naked baby pictures. Your pride is safe with me.”
That was the least of my concerns, but it was fine if she thought that’s what this was all about.
“Thanks,” I muttered. “So what all did you tell him?”
A far away look came over Mom’s face and I could see her struggling to think back to the conversation. When it apparently didn’t come to her, she waved her hand nonchalantly and said, “Just stuff.”
Mom handed me the chicken.
“Here, put this on the stove,” she directed.
I did as she asked, emptying out the raw ground chicken into a pan and turning the heat on beneath it.
When I walked back to the island, she was cutting vegetables for the salad. I watched her for a minute, no idea what to do or say or how much of a problem this was, though I suspected it was a huge one. Mom used the back of her hand to push her bangs out of her eyes and I saw a red spot on the cuff of her long-sleeved blouse.
“What’s that?” I was pointing to her wrist as I asked.
Mom turned her arm over and looked at it, shrugging. “Just a spot,” she answered, as if it didn’t even register in her mind.
As most people tend to do when they don’t have all the information, I took what details I had and filled in the gaps between them, painting my own picture of what had happened today, and it wasn’t good.
Pointing to the mountain of carrots and peppers on the cutting board, I addressed Mom. “Since we’re going to have a ton of food, would you mind if I invited another friend? He knows Lars, too,” I added, the beginnings of a plan taking shape in my head.
Mom smiled brilliantly. “That would be wonderful.”
Wonderful? Lars must’ve done a number on my mother. She probably hadn’t thought of anyone or anything as wonderful in three years.
“Cool. If you’ll keep an eye on the chicken, I’ll go call.”
Hurrying from the kitchen, I took my cell phone to my room and picked Bo’s number from my contacts list. It rang and rang and rang, but he didn’t answer. When his voice mail came on, I left him a simple, innocuous message and hung up, hoping he’d call back quickly.
When he hadn’t called back in about three minutes, I changed into a t-shirt and yoga pants, shoved my cell in the waistband and headed back to the kitchen.
Mom was actually humming when I sat back down at the island. It was like stumbling into a bad episode of The Twilight Zone.
She maintained her upbeat, Stepford Wife-like smile all through supper preparation. I’d wondered if it would falter when we sat down and it became clear to her that no one else was joining us, but it didn’t. All through the meal, she chattered on like this was a normal occurrence for us. Meanwhile, I used most of my energy trying to keep my eyes off the blood on her shirt.
Almost two excruciating hours later, the dishes were done, leftovers were in the fridge and Mom was sitting down to read, something she hadn’t done since I was a little girl. I excused myself to my room, stumbling over my thanks for Mom’s culinary efforts. It just seemed weird to be talking to her about dinner, like normal people.
I called Bo again as soon as I got into my room, but still I got no answer. I was starting to worry, wondering if he’d had a run-in with Lars or…something else, something worse. There was evidently a whole world out there that I knew nothing about, a world filled with dangers that seemed suitable only for Hollywood’s big screen.
Opening my window, I took a deep breath and sat down in my desk chair, toying with the idea of driving to Bo’s house. I was staring blankly at the glass heart paperweight he’d seemed so fascinated with when Bo’s heavenly scent drifted past my nose. It was like I blinked and suddenly he was there, standing in my room behind me.
Though I should be getting used to it, it still startled me, looking up and seeing him just standing there, and even though my heart stuttered a beat or two, relief flooded me. I was so glad he was safe. I wasn’t ready to give him up yet, and I seriously doubted I ever would be.
He’d been smiling when I turned, but now his face sobered. “What’s wrong?”
“Bo, what happens when someone gets turned? How does it work?”
Bo didn’t move a muscle. I think, for a moment, he didn’t even breathe. His beautiful eyes just drilled holes into mine.
“A vampire with mature fangs has to bite you and release enough venom in you to infect your blood.”
“Then what?”
“The venom starts destroying your red blood cells and you become severely anemic.”
“And then?” I couldn’t help my sharp tone. It was like pulling teeth, trying to get straightforward answers from him.
“Your body starts changing and you have to feed. What is it that you want to know, Ridley? Specifically?”
“Does it change your personality?”
“Not really. It just sort of…enhances it. Why?”
“Lars visited my mother today,” I murmured, my heart heavy with worry, this time about my mother.
Before I could even blink, Bo was hauling me up from the chair, his hands gripping my upper arms tightly. “What? What happened?”
“Not so hard, Bo,” I cautioned, prying his steely fingers loose. He relaxed his hold and rubbed my arms soothingly. “I don’t know exactly, but she’s acting like a…a…a sane person.”
“In what way?” His eyes roamed my face.
“She was here when I got home, we cooked dinner together and then we actually ate together.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
In a perfect world, Bo would never have had to know that my mother has a serious drinking problem, but since we don’t live in a perfect world, I knew I’d have to tell him eventually. I had just hoped I would be able to pick and choose the time a little better.
“My mom’s an alcoholic. She’s rarely ever here before 10:00 and, even then, she’s always wasted. I can’t remember the last time we ate dinner together when Dad was gone.”
“Is it possible that she’s just trying to straighten up, turn her life around?” Bo asked the question gently, stooping a little to look into my downcast eyes.
“It’s not that, Bo. Trust me, she’s acting really, really strange. And,” I paused, swallowing the emotion that bubbled up in my throat. “I saw blood on her blouse. She had no idea where it came from and couldn’t have cared less. That’s not like her either.”
Bo’s brows drew together in another frown. “Where was the blood?”
“It was just one drop, right at her wrist.”
“Did you see any marks? Bite marks, holes, scratches, a rash?”
“No, but the sleeves were long. I couldn’t really see her wrist at all.”
“What did she say Lars wanted?”
“She couldn’t really tell me specifics. It’s like she only remembered him, not what they talked about. She didn’t even know why she came home in the first place.”
Bo exhaled, the air hissing through his teeth in a way that made me apprehensive. He stepped back, rubbing the nape of his neck.
“What? What are you thinking?”
He hesitated briefly before he spoke. I wondered if he was considering not telling me.
“I haven’t been this way for very long. What little I know, I’ve learned either from draining other vampires or from Lucius, but it sounds like he might be trying to establish a bond.”
I wanted to ask about Lucius, who he was, but other questions were more pressing.
“A bond? What’s that?”
“When a vampire feeds on a human, if he lets that human drink from him, apparently it bonds them together in such a way that he has some amount of mind control.”
I smothered my gasp with my hand.
“Do you think that’s what Lars did to my mother?�
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“It’s possible,” he admitted, his unsettled expression anything but encouraging.
“So what does that mean? What now? What happens to Mom?”
Bo shrugged, a gesture he used frequently, but one that irritated me this time for some reason.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“What he wants with her.”
“What could he possibly want with my mother?”
Bo paused, casting an inscrutable look in my direction.
“There’s only one thing that I can think of.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
The blood drained from my head so quickly, I had to sit back down in the desk chair before I fell down.
“But what could he possibly want with me?” That just didn’t sound right. I didn’t know him, I posed no threat to him, I—
I stopped when I realized why he might want to get to me.
“Unless he wants to use me to get to something else, someone else.” Bo said nothing to this, confirming my suspicion. “He wants me to get to you.”
Bo’s expression was full of guilt and regret. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he confessed. He rubbed a weary hand over his face. “I should’ve stayed away.” Obviously frustrated, he turned away from me.
I stood and crossed to him. I touched his shoulder, letting my hand rest there until he turned back to face me.
“No, you shouldn’t have. Avoidance is never the answer. Yes, life is all about pain and trouble and frustration and anger, but it’s also about love and friendship and good days and sunshine. You can’t have one without the other. If you avoid pain, you avoid living. My family has walked that road for years and, trust me, it’s no way to exist.”
He looked miserable. “You’ve had enough pain in your life without me adding to it.”
It was my turn to shrug. What he said was true, to a certain extent. “But you’ve also brought me more happiness than I’ve seen in a long time.” More like ever, though he didn’t need to know that. But then, as I looked into his face, I realized that maybe he did. “Actually,” I said, casting my eyes down, shy and a little embarrassed all of a sudden. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been. And it’s because of you, Bo.”
I was afraid to meet his gaze, heat staining my cheeks after having poured my heart out. He drew me into his arms and I went willingly, glad to bury my burning face in his shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t think I could’ve stayed away from you for even one more day anyway,” he admitted quietly.
One more day?
“What do you mean?”
I felt him stiffen at my question, so I pulled back to look up into his face, to gauge his odd reaction.
I repeated, “What do you mean?”
Bo just watched me, searching my face for something. I waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. A sinking, breathless feeling began to gnaw at my insides.
One image flashed through my mind over and over again, like an eerie strobe. It was the sight of Bo’s compelling eyes hovering outside the windshield of a car. Only it wasn’t Drew’s windshield that I was remembering; it was Izzy’s.
Air slowly filled my lungs in a long gasp of comprehension. I held it there until it burned inside my chest like a raging inferno.
“You were there,” I whispered. “Three years ago, you were there.”
CHAPTER NINE
Several emotions flickered across Bo’s face, but neither confusion nor denial ranked among them.
“Bo?”
He sighed, and it was a weary sound that carried a heavy weight. “Even though it was so long ago, it seems like it happened only yesterday.”
Bo walked to the window and stared out into the dark. I could tell he wasn’t seeing the night, at least not this night. His eyes had a distant look about them, the look of someone peering into the past.
“I hadn’t been turned very long and, fortunately, I slept through most of it. I’d been in the woods for days when I woke up. And there was this thirst—a thirst I couldn’t explain, a thirst that no food or water would quench. That’s the day I met Lucius.
“He’d been feeding me. He’s an elder, but he lives a…different kind of life. He explained what I was, what I needed. It was like waking up to a different world. My dad was dead. The prime suspect in his murder had been released on a technicality. I was turning into some kind of creature from the movies.
“For weeks after that, I searched the woods day and night, waiting, hoping to find the person responsible. I needed blood, but I refused to drink from humans. I realized that I could survive on animal blood, just barely, but enough to find Dad’s killer.
“I was going into the woods one night, stalking a deer, when I heard the squeal of the brakes. I ran back to the road and got there just before the car started rolling. Just in time to see your face through the windshield. For a second, I couldn’t move. I can’t describe what it felt like, but I can still feel it when I remember that night.”
He paused, lost in the feelings that he couldn’t articulate.
“The sounds of metal and glass on asphalt were so loud. I wanted to turn and run, knew that I should, but when the car hit the tree and stopped, I knew I had to get to you, to make sure you were alright.”
Though he was finally telling me how he felt—something I’d wondered about and agonized over for quite some time now—it was another thought that took center stage in my mind. He’d come after me. Me.
“I had to know that you were alright,” he groaned.
“Me?”
Bo nodded.
A tiny red spot of anger penetrated the gray cloud of confusion that had settled over me. It swelled and surged until it had enveloped me in a blinding crimson haze of fury.
“You let my sister die to save me?”
Bo said nothing.
I was beside myself, unable to contain the pain and the rage swirling inside me. I wanted to lash out. Drawing my arm back, I brought my hand around as hard as I could, my palm connecting with Bo’s face in an ear-splitting crack. “How could you? How could you do that? How could you let her die?”
“I didn’t, Ridley. She was already gone,” Bo explained softly, sadly.
“No she wasn’t, she—”
“Yes, she was, Ridley. I knew when I saw her that she wouldn’t make it. Even if I could’ve gotten my blood into her, it wouldn’t have mattered. Her injuries were too severe. There was no way she could’ve survived that. There was just no way.”
It took a few seconds for his words to penetrate my addled brain. Looking at him, Bo appeared calm and sincere, yet devastated, too. But, strangely, he also looked somehow deserving, like he was willing to take the blame for something that wasn’t even his fault just so I could have someone to blame, someone to be angry with.
As quickly as it had come, my anger died, leaving behind only an intense sadness. I knew what he was saying was true. Izzy’s head had been crushed against the tree. Everyone knew that she was ninety percent gone as soon as it happened. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
