by Temple West
I stared at Adrian. “So I just happened to be sitting right there when an interdimensional portal opened up next to your house?”
He nodded.
“Okay,” I said, “but, so what? You rescued me, the storm’s over, I’m safe now.” When he didn’t respond, I followed up with a prompting “I’m safe, right?”
He leaned in close, even took my hand in his and stared down at it like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Whatever he was about to say, it was bad.
“Your mom had died only a few days before,” he began. “You were, quite understandably, upset. If my father had come through in the city, he could have latched on to anyone, but there are so few people up here, and you were—emotional enough to draw attention. We could feel you, and we knew he’d head straight for you to strengthen whatever body he’d managed to create for himself. But I found you before he did. And I had to—”
He shook his head and sat back, a disgusted look on his face.
My stomach felt slimy. “What?”
His glance flicked up at me. “There’s no good way to say this.” He grimaced. “I had to drain you.”
“You had to—what?”
He let out a long breath. “In order to keep you from being detected, I siphoned off your emotion—all of it. I had to make even you forget you existed. That’s why you couldn’t remember the storm, and that’s why you were so weak. I nearly killed you, to keep you alive.”
I stared at him.
He scrubbed a hand across the bridge of his nose. “The stupid thing is, that should have been it. You were safe, you were home, our father left, we scared him off. Even Lucian was safe.” He looked tired suddenly. “Except Mariana had a dream about you.”
I stared at him. “What sort of dream?”
He shrugged. “She didn’t tell me much—she rarely does. They’re abstract and open to interpretation and that can mess with things. All I was told was that it had something to do with our father wanting to locate you.”
“But—it’s just a dream. Right?”
He shook his head. “No. No, unfortunately, it’s not just a dream. You’d already left residual emotional energy all over the place, like heat coming off pavement after a day in the sun. He still noticed you. Mariana’s vision confirms that.”
He glanced at me. “Since we go to the same school, it was my job to keep an eye on you after that, give you information as needed. My sister’s vision could mean nothing, but that’s rare. We don’t know what will happen, we don’t know when it will happen—but we do know it will revolve around you.”
A pregnant silence followed his statement as we stared at each other. I was, apparently, at the epicenter of a crazy demon vision, and Adrian was my vampire liaison.
And I had no idea how I was supposed to feel about that.
The bell rang sharply, startling us both. I looked away, cramming books into my messenger bag, and walked to his truck in a sort of daze, weaving through the flood of students. It felt weird that all this mythical shit was going down, and yet life went on, looking for all the world like everything was totally normal. Trish certainly didn’t know about any of this. Could I tell her? Could I tell my grandma? No. How could I tell them something I didn’t even really believe myself?
“So,” I said, finally breaking the strained silence after we were winding our way into the mountains. “Your father’s secret evil plan is to—what? Kill me?”
There was another uncomfortable pause before he finally muttered, “Not exactly.”
I looked over at Adrian. Finally, he cleared his throat. “We think he wants to impregnate you.”
I blinked.
I laughed.
And then I saw that he was serious.
I spun toward him on the seat, not sure if I’d heard him right. “He wants to impregnate me? Like, with a baby, that kind of impregnate?”
“I understand you’re upset—”
“That does not even cover the middle finger of what I am feeling—”
“—but please believe that nothing is going to happen to you while I’m here—while we’re all here, my family and I.”
“What about when you’re not here?” I sputtered. “What about when I’m at home? Or when I’m asleep? What about my family?”
“This is not—he won’t rape you, or anything,” he said, struggling for words and looking awkward as hell. “He’ll make you want him. It’s—what they do. It’s a game.”
“This is not a game,” I spat back.
He took in a deep breath. “Look, I’ve never heard of a demon going up against a forewarned human.”
“At least give me something to work with here! How would I know who he is? What does he look like?”
Adrian looked at me almost apologetically. “Technically, he doesn’t look like anything. He’s more of an—entity. When he comes into this dimension, he either creates a body for himself or inhabits one. It’s different every time. Technically, he could look like me, though I doubt he’d go for something so obvious.”
I stared at him. “So I’m supposed to be afraid of all men for the rest of my life, including you.”
“No,” he replied firmly. “No. Not forever. And not afraid—just cautious.”
“What if he does show up as you? How would I know?”
“He wouldn’t have my memories,” Adrian said with a shrug. “He’s never met me, so he wouldn’t know my speech patterns or habits. You should be able to figure out pretty quick that he wasn’t me. And you can always call my cell—if it doesn’t ring in his pocket, it’s probably not me.”
“What if you don’t have your phone on you?”
“It’s not a foolproof plan.”
“Great.”
“You’re smart,” he said, looking over at me sharply. “And gut instinct is going to count for a lot. Something feels wrong, listen to that feeling.”
He pulled onto the driveway leading up to the ranch. “The truth is, you’re well protected. The only reason we’re telling you all this is so you can keep an eye out. But that’s all—you don’t need to worry about anything except selling the story. You and I dating is believable. Your aunt and uncle believe it. Everyone at school believes it. It gives me an excuse to watch out for you. Just leave the rest to me and my family. We’ll keep you safe, we’ll let you know what’s going on. I promise.”
I snorted and leaned my head against the back of the seat. “Sure, sure. I won’t worry about a thing.” I stuck a finger in the air, frowning. “Remind me, why does your dad want me to bake his vampire baby in my bun oven? I mean, honestly, what’s the point of getting me pregnant?”
He leaned back, looking somewhat deflated, as the house came into view. “It may have something to do with the type of person you are, the emotions you give off. And it may be payback.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Payback for what? I sure as hell haven’t done anything to him.”
He parked in front of the house and sat there for a moment before responding. “We took Lucian back. We pissed him off. Getting a local girl pregnant right under our noses would be a characteristic revenge.”
“But why? Why does he even need another kid?”
Adrian looked uncomfortable. “That’s one of the things I’m not allowed to tell you.”
“Well, that’s bullshit.”
He shrugged, looking grim. “I know.”
I waited, but he didn’t elaborate, and by the way his jaw was clenched, I doubted he was going to.
“Fine—don’t tell me. But shit, dude, I’m seventeen,” I protested, as if Adrian was the one that needed to be convinced that impregnating me was a bad idea. “Wouldn’t he want someone older to seduce? Like a—woman. Or something?”
“Mariana’s mother was fourteen when she got pregnant,” he said, which made me feel zero percent better. “When you’re immortal, the current cultural attitudes about motherhood don’t really mean a whole lot. The younger the hosts are, the stronger and healthier they tend to be.”
He shut off the engine and we got out, walking awkwardly to the front door of the ranch.
“I’d like to take you to meet my family tomorrow,” he said as I dug my keys out. “Would that be all right with you?”
Did it matter, really, if it was or not? But all I said was, “Sure.” Maybe they’d have more answers for me. Ones that Adrian apparently didn’t have permission to reveal.
We stared at each other for a moment before I opened the door to the house and let myself in, locking both the handle and the deadbolt behind me.
Everything was exactly the same, really. Nothing had visibly changed about my life, but I was now mulling over ways to ward off demon seducers and avoid showing up on the supernatural edition of Teen Mom. And I was pretending to date my stalker’s vampire son. And I still had a shit-ton of algebra homework to do.
8
MEETING THE FAMILY
“So, dumb question. If you’re ‘thirsty’ and have to drink from a live person, how do they not turn into a vampire when you’re done?”
Adrian snort-laughed, suddenly, like I’d made a joke. And then he realized I was serious. “We can’t just bite people and they turn into one of us,” he explained. “That’s—that’s not a thing. We’re born, not made.”
“Oh.”
I felt kind of stupid. Although who can blame me? All the vampire lore I was aware of was pretty consistent on bitten humans turning into bloodsucking sociopaths.
It was the next morning and we were in his truck, going to school. I’d warned my aunt and uncle at breakfast that I would be popping over to meet his family before I came home for dinner. They hadn’t said a whole lot, but I got the impression it seemed like I was getting engaged to Adrian rather than just dating him. Which was funny because I wasn’t even really dating him.
Though by the looks of things, you couldn’t tell it was all fake. I was sitting tucked under his right arm, one leg stretched out over the bench seat and the other resting on the floor. The snuggling-on-the-way-to-school thing was his suggestion—he said we needed to be comfortable with each other and act, convincingly, like a couple. I wasn’t gonna argue. He was always ten degrees warmer than me, and in the middle of winter I would take practice-cuddling in exchange for additional body heat any day.
I played absently with the sleeve of his sweater. “So then how do you not just straight up kill people when you’re snacking on them?”
“By not snacking on them as often as possible. Blood bags have been a modern blessing.”
“Okay—dumb question number two: Why do you even need blood?”
“Because our bodies can’t produce it correctly. It’s kind of difficult to go about your day when your heart’s not beating.”
I absently traced his knuckles with my finger as I stared out the window. “I thought vampires didn’t have heartbeats—I mean, you’re one of the undead, right?”
I could feel his eyes roll even if I couldn’t see it. “Quite alive, thank you. And any operational body needs a power source. Humans have the cardiovascular system. I’m more or less human, so I have a heartbeat. However,” he conceded, “it’s more efficient. My resting heart rate is about ten beats per minute.”
“And mine would be?”
“Seventy-five.” He paused. “Ish.”
I looked up and gave him a dazzling smile. “I feel totally inadequate right now.”
He smiled back, just as sarcastically. “At least you don’t have to ingest other people’s blood to stay alive.”
I nodded. Good point.
“We drink blood,” he continued, “because our bone marrow produces red blood cells that interfere with the hemoglobic process—”
“Whoa, whoa,” I interrupted. “Just, hold on. In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m an art person. Your fancy science words mean nothing to me.”
“Sorry,” he apologized, looking sheepish. “I—I’m used to reading about all this in lab reports and case studies. I’ll try to make it more—visual?”
I settled back into his arm. “If you produce a flannel graph out of somewhere, you will be well rewarded.”
He smiled. He was smiling a lot these days. “No flannel graph. I do a mean shadow puppet, though.”
I snort-laughed. “This is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had.”
“You’re telling me. Anyway, listen up—there’s a quiz on this later.”
“Oh my gosh, you are a nerd.”
He clamped a hand over my mouth, smiling. “Lesson One: human biology. Being mortal and clumsy, you trip over your own shoelaces and scrape your knee.” I muttered something about being clumsy, my ass, but his hand muffled it. “Now, the platelets in your blood snag on the damaged blood vessels and explode”—he released my face to tap his fingers against my palm in an exploding motion—“releasing fibrin, which attaches to itself to form a net that your red blood cells can’t get through, which is called a blood clot, and it keeps you from dying horribly every time you get a paper cut. Now I, being an awesome vampire, get in a really cool fight—bullets flying, explosions, the works. Someone stabs my shoulder—do I die? Nope. My vampire platelets are hyperactive. They actually pull the wound back together while my injury heals—and I heal very, very quickly.”
I stared at his hand covering mine. “I still wish you had a flannel graph, but I gotta admit, that’s pretty bad ass.”
He rested his arm across my stomach and continued. “It is, and it isn’t. We kinda got screwed over in the red blood cell department. Their shape is amorphous, constantly fluctuating between randomly mutating structures. And they don’t contain hemoglobin. And they’re about ten times the size of a normal human red blood cell.”
I looked up at him, eyes narrowed questioningly. “And that’s bad.”
“It’s bad,” he confirmed. “The mutating shape prevents oxygen from bonding. Even if it could, there’s no hemoglobin to attract oxygen in the first place.”
“Science words,” I warned. “When you say hemoglobin I just think of little Irish tricksters who live in caves, or Lord of the Rings.”
“You mean goblin?”
“Yes.”
He rubbed his hand over his face, but he was smiling. “Your brain works on a completely different level from mine.”
“Apparently.”
“All right, how about you just give me a signal anytime I get too technical?”
I thought about it. “You cool with a thumbs-up, thumbs-down approach?”
He nodded. “That would be acceptable.”
I gave him a thumbs-up. He smiled.
“All right—take two. Because our red blood cells constantly change shape, they can sort of morph their way through the smaller blood vessels, but it takes longer. Slower surface circulation leads to a low oxygen supply—” I was starting to raise my hand in a thumbs-down gesture, so he said, “Okay, okay! If we don’t drink blood, we look really pale. Regardless of our ethnicity or geographic location or exposure to the sun. And we feel cold to the touch.” He paused and looked down at me in exasperation. “I am seriously trying here. Every instinct I have is telling me to use polysyllabic words to impress you.”
I squeezed his arm comfortingly. “You’re doing fantastic. But your information doesn’t add up. You’re not pale, and you’re not cold. In fact, you’re downright hot,” I said, remembering how my cheek had burned against his chest two days ago in the clearing. I saw a smile spread slowly across his face at my choice of words, and I rolled my eyes. “Not that kind of hot.” He arched a brow at me. I rolled my eyes again. “Okay, yes, that kind of hot. You know what I mean.”
“That’s because I’m very good about maintaining a consistent diet.”
I frowned at his typical answer-that-was-not-an-answer, but before I could call him on it, we turned a corner sharply and the bright morning sun reflected off a metal switchback-warning sign, casting a glare onto myself and Adrian. A thought struck me and I examined his hand in the light.
�
�According to legend, you should be bursting into flames right about now.”
He smiled, glancing out the window. “There’s a little truth to that, but only a little. If we haven’t had blood in weeks, our skin loses all its pigmentation—which is really weird if you’re a dark-skinned vampire, by the way—so if we’re outside in bright sunlight, we do burn. We just don’t spontaneously combust.”
“Glad to hear it—I’d never get your ashes out of these seats.”
“Try Lysol. Works like a charm.”
I smiled at him and he smiled back.
“Lesson Two,” he continued. “Vampire biology. All vampires are born with type AB blood, which is a universal receiver. Basically, it doesn’t matter who we get blood from, as long as we get it from a human.”
“So, no drinking the blood of innocent bunnies.”
“Correct,” he confirmed. “The bunnies are safe.”
“And all the bunnies rejoiced, and there was great joy in the land of bunnies.”
He looked at me funny and I shrugged as if to say, “Deal with my weird; I’m dealing with yours.”
“All right,” he said, apparently moving on. “This is where it gets gross—and complicated.” He paused. “It is also extremely weird saying all of this out loud, especially to someone who didn’t grow up like me. I just want that to be on record.”
I nodded very seriously. “Noted. Hey, can I call you ‘Dracula Pants’ in public? It’s kind of like ‘Smoochy Pants,’ but funnier, because you’re a vampire.”
“No. When we drink blood,” he continued, “our immune system destroys everything but the red blood cells. Our native red blood cells mimic the size and shape of the donor cells before they break apart the donor cells, exposing their hemoglobin into our bloodstreams.”
