by M. Leighton
Putting a hand to my chest, as if to stop the ache that throbbed there, I apologized. “I’m sorry, Bo. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, so forgiving and understanding it made me feel even worse.
Though I could easily get caught up in the guilt and misery of mindlessly lashing out at Bo, I couldn’t focus on that right now. I had to know the rest of the story.
“So then what happened?”
Bo sighed. “I pulled you out and carried you to the grass. I could hear your heart beating, but there was so much blood,” Bo said, his face contorting in remembered pain. He closed his eyes against it. “And you smelled so amazing.”
“Did you- did you…” I trailed off, unable to finish the question.
Bo hung his head. His nod was barely perceptible, but I saw it nonetheless.
“I couldn’t control myself. It was like being taken over by some kind of demon that didn’t think or care. It just felt. And tasted. I couldn’t stop myself, no matter how wrong it was,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stood quietly by, watching Bo relive those moments that I couldn’t remember, the agony of it, the disgust of it. The pleasure of it.
“How am I still alive?”
“I heard your heartbeat slow and then I remembered your face from behind that windshield. You were so scared,” he recalled. “But you were so beautiful.” His lips curved into a bitter smile. “I just couldn’t take your life. I just couldn’t do it, so I made myself stop drinking. I realized that I wanted to help you. I wanted to feed you—my consciousness, my energy. I wanted to feed you life. My life. So, I tore open my wrist and I fed you.”
I was silent for a long time, digesting what he’d said, working his words into what I knew of the accident and my recovery.
“You saved my life,” I stated, as much for my benefit as his. As if he hadn’t given me enough, Bo had given me back my life. He’d saved me.
“I almost took it,” he said miserably.
“But you didn’t.”
“But I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“As you were waking up, I promised you, promised myself, that I’d never drink blood from another human. And I haven’t. I live on blood from the bank and nothing else.”
Listening to him, something he’d said before, when I’d asked about my mother, popped into my head.
“You said you couldn’t stay away from me.”
Bo nodded.
“And I feel like I can’t breathe when you’re not around,” I stated absently.
As I rolled the two puzzle pieces around inside my head, I stopped and looked up at Bo when, with an ominous click, they came together in my brain, showing me a picture that terrified me.
“It’s you,” I breathed in horror. “It’s that bond. You’re doing this to me through that bond.” I began backing away from Bo, betrayal and anguish rising up inside me. “You’re doing this to me on purpose!”
“Ridley, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re making me feel this way.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes you are.” It was easy to convince myself that the way I felt about him—the desperation that I felt to be with him, the need I felt to have him near—was manipulated, manufactured. It was easier to believe that than to believe that feeling like I couldn’t live without him was real.
“Why, Ridley? Why would I do that? To what end?”
“You’re using me. You- you’re—” I stammered, not having a good answer.
“No, I’m not!” Bo reached for me, grabbing my shoulders. “It doesn’t work that way. But even if it did, I would never, never do that to you. What you feel is real. Even if I wanted to, my blood is not powerful enough to control you.”
“But Mom was acting all smitten with Lars. He was doing that to her, just like you’re doing this to me,” I accused bitterly.
Bo squeezed, his fingers biting into my arms. I flinched and he immediately released me, dropping his hands to his sides where they curled into tight fists.
“No, I’m not. You saw the way people reacted to Lars. It’s because he’s so powerful, his blood is so potent. His presence is like a drug,” he said.
I had to admit that Lars did have a very profound affect on people, one even I’d reacted to a little. That also probably explained why Bo hadn’t thought much of my temporary thrall. He’d known what it was.
“I’m not that strong yet. Even with our bond, I couldn’t make you do anything that you didn’t want to.”
On the heels of that thought was one that was even worse, or at least it seemed that way to me.
“Is that why you have feelings for me? Because you drank my blood?” It was bad enough to think that my feelings weren’t real; it was nearly intolerable to think that Bo’s weren’t. It was devastating to think that his attraction was all about my blood, not my heart, not me, that it was chemically-induced.
“Of course not,” he declared vehemently. “Naturally, I crave it. More than I can even describe, but it’s not you. The way I feel about you has absolutely nothing to do with your blood. Yes, I felt drawn to find you, probably because of the bond, but that link doesn’t make you fall in love. If anything, it clouds my feelings for you.”
Though not intentionally, he’d made an admission of sorts, one that was not lost on me.
“Are you saying that you’re in love with me?”
“My god, yes!” He flung his arms wide in exasperation.
Against my will, my heart swelled. I watched him, and his reaction seemed authentic, his frustration genuine. Could he be telling the truth? All our time together had felt real, on both sides, and I wanted so badly to believe that it was.
“What did you think this was all about?”
“How am I supposed to know? I can’t read minds you know,” I said, a little frustrated myself.
“Sometimes I wish you could,” he claimed, running his fingers through his hair. The gesture left several pieces sticking straight up, begging for me to smooth them. But I resisted, needing to maintain distance from him so I could figure out what to do now.
“So what do we do about Lars?”
Bo’s brows snapped together. “I think I might need to pay Lucius a visit.”
Bo had said Lucius was an elder, someone who’d answered many of his questions and explained things to him. Though I wished it otherwise, Bo hadn’t managed to convince me that all this—our relationship, his feelings, my feelings—wasn’t fabricated and it didn’t set well with me. I wondered if maybe Lucius could answer some questions for me as well.
“Could I go with you? I mean, this is my mother we’re talking about.” I tacked that last on there to sway Bo in case he was considering saying no.
He shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
His consent seemed casual enough and I really needed some objective answers, information that it sounded like this Lucius would be able to provide.
“When can we go?”
“How about tomorrow after school?”
“I’ve got practice. Can we do it Wednesday? It’s our off day this week.”
“Wednesday’s fine, but we probably shouldn’t put it off any longer than that,” he warned.
“Alright. Wednesday it is.”
********
The next day I felt out of sorts. For virtually the first time since I’d met him, I looked forward to time away from Bo. My heart and my body ached when he left the night before, and it was all I could do not to ask him to stay, but I just couldn’t seem to shake those creeping doubts that had cropped up as a result of our conversation.
I had a headache from the frown that I knew I was wearing. Not being around Bo, not giving in to my feelings for him and my desire to be near him, was wearing on me. I was determined, however, to resist as much as possible until I’d had a chance to interrogate Lucius.
When lunch rolled around, I was glad when Savannah corralled me to her table. At lea
st she would alleviate the uncomfortable tension that I felt existed between me and Bo.
Turns out, she managed much more than that. Savannah was quite entertaining. It wasn’t hard to see why Devon and Bo liked her so much.
“…but that hair! There was probably a disturbance in The Force when she got out of bed this morning,” Savannah was saying. “I wanted to poke out my own eyes when I passed her in the hall.”
Devon chuckled, eyeing Savannah with nothing short of adoration. “You know what I love about you?”
“Um, everything?” She looked comically hopeful.
Devon chuckled again. “I meant aside from your abundant humility.”
“My outrageous fashion sense?”
“Fashion sense?” Devon looked pointedly at Savannah’s black fedora. “Not quite. I was referring to your complete lack of theatricality.”
She managed to look offended. “I don’t have a dramatic bone in my body.”
“Let’s see,” Devon said, narrowing his eyes and tapping his chin with his finger. “Just last night, wasn’t there some mention of a worldwide boycott followed by a withering death if Starbuck’s discontinues the Cinnamon Dulce?”
“Hey,” she said, her eyes round. “It could happen.”
“Yeah, right. No drama here,” Devon teased, rolling his eyes. They both laughed.
I was smiling as I watched the interaction, envying their easy affection and uncomplicated relationship. I sneaked a peek at Bo; he was watching me watch them. There was a sadness just beneath the surface of his pleasant expression. It drifted across his face like a ghost moving through the vacant rooms of an empty house.
For a moment, when our eyes met and held, it seemed as though he could feel the anguish that was plaguing me, that he too felt the unsettling shadow that hovered over us, over our relationship.
Reaching up, he brushed his thumb over my brow bone, as if to wipe away the frown I knew still lingered there, and, for a moment, it almost felt as if he had. All too soon, however, Trinity’s boisterous laughter cut into our moment and I looked up to see her fawning all over Lars.
He didn’t look particularly thrilled with her at that instant, but Trinity was oblivious. She was on cloud nine, a thousand light years from reality. I wondered if she was overdosing on the “drug” of Lars’s presence.
But what a way to go, I thought, looking back at Bo. He was my drug.
He’d turned to watch them as well. Although his expression had gone sour as he brooded, it only served to make him even more painfully handsome, just in a dark and dangerous way.
I sighed quietly, careful not to draw his attention. It seemed our relationship was destined to include pain of one form or another.
That afternoon, I noticed that Trinity was not in the Government class that we shared. I had no trouble picturing her ditching class to spend the rest of the day on an elicit tryst with Lars. I’d love to do nothing more than enjoy such a day with Bo.
As much as I disliked her ways, I couldn’t bring myself to feel ambivalent about Trinity walking into situation rife with danger. She had no idea who or what she was dealing with, what she was unwittingly involving herself in. I didn’t take it lightly, and I felt bad for not at least trying to warn her off sooner.
Resigning myself to the distastefulness of such a conversation, I decided that the next time I saw Trinity, I would talk to her.
Of course, I had no idea what I’d say. I couldn’t very well explain that she was unintentionally consorting with a vampire. Yet I had to say something that was compelling enough to get her to stay away from him.
I assumed I’d have more time to think about it, assumed that Trinity would skip practice like she’d skipped the latter half of classes, so I was surprised when I saw her making her way to the drill field. Brushing off the dread that was weighing me down, I took a deep breath and rushed out to meet her, hoping to have a word out of earshot of the pack of gossip-hungry cheerleaders that stood by the bleachers.
“Hey,” I said casually when I fell into step beside her. “Can we stop and talk for a second?”
Not only did Trinity not even bother looking at me, she didn’t stop walking either. She just kept right on going. “I have no interest in listening to your lame apologies.”
“It’s about Lars,” I announced, hoping that would get her attention.
And it did.
“What about Lars?” She stopped and turned to look at me.
It was then that I noticed how terrible she looked. Trinity was a petite girl with natural blonde hair and uncommonly olive skin. She looked perpetually tanned and was the envy of virtually every female in a fifty mile radius. Today, however, her skin looked sallow and her face looked gaunt. Her eyes, which normally glistened with a vivid (if not vicious) sparkle, were dull and lifeless. To me, she actually looked like a drug addict, one who was in desperate need of a fix.
“Trinity, I don’t think he’s the kind of guy you need to get mixed up with.”
She snorted. “Of course you’d say that, Ridley. Jealous much?”
“Trinity, I’m not jealous. I’m just…concerned. That’s all.”
“Yeah, right. Because you spend so much time being concerned about me.” With a roll of her bloodshot eyes, she started to walk off.
“I think he’s dangerous,” I blurted.
Rather than making some snide comment or blowing me off like I was being ridiculous, Trinity just looked at me, a tiny frown creasing her ashen brow.
I could see the wheels turning, which made me wonder what she’d seen or noticed or perceived that was giving her pause. It must’ve been something significant because it was unlike Trinity to hold her tongue.
“Dangerous how?”
“Just dangerous. Period. He’s not who you think he is.”
Her frown deepened and I could see a flicker of apprehension darken her blue eyes. Just when I thought I was about to make some progress, an intoxicating smell teased my nose. At first it sort of scrambled my senses, just as it had the last time I smelled it. I looked over Trinity’s shoulder and I saw Lars walking toward the bleachers.
I might’ve been lost to the aroma, like before, had it not been for Trinity’s expression. It sobered me. Her face relaxed immediately, a barely-concealed look of ecstasy settling over it, like she’d just been dosed with some incredible narcotic. I felt alarmed by her reaction; it was like she’d been brain-washed.
“You smell that, Trinity? That’s not normal,” I said quietly, knowing Lars could probably hear me perfectly.
Trinity sniffed a couple of times, her happily dazed look never faltering. “I don’t smell anything but the stench of your jealousy, Ridley,” she replied pleasantly, almost dreamily. “You just can’t stand the fact that I found someone like Lars, someone so…so…” She trailed off absently, smiling contentedly.
She didn’t know he was behind her, didn’t know that it wasn’t a coincidence that she had suddenly forgotten all her misgivings. But I knew. I knew that his close proximity was likely what triggered the change in her. As long as he stayed close, she stayed under his spell. I wondered if they’d had each other’s blood yet. Maybe that’s why it took Mom’s thrall a little longer to wear off; she’d had his blood.
