by Yvette Ford
He had me against the door now, his big hard body pressed close to me. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. The emotion in his eyes was intense like he had hypnotized me, not to make me do what I didn’t want to, but to keep me still. Or it could have all been in my mind. I scoured my brain for vampire facts and came up with none. I didn’t do paranormal. I didn’t like fantasy or sci-fi. In English class when we had been assigned to read Dracula, I’m ashamed to admit, I got Ronnie to read it and do a report for both of us. I paid him back later by doing his trig homework. It was only fair.
I licked my lips again, and Lorcan focused on them. Now he was less than an inch away. I could feel his breath on my face. I put my hands up to shove at him, but just like that night in the yard, it was like I was pushing a wall. I’d felt hard muscle before. Ronnie’s older brother liked showing off his biceps, and one time he had let me squeeze them. They were hard, but they were still flesh.
Lorcan was different. When I pushed at his chest, it was shaped like a boy who had been lifting weights, but it wasn’t like regular flesh. He was hard beneath the surface of his skin, like his internal makeup was all stone. Rock solid. If he was stabbed, would the knife even penetrate his body? I doubted it.
“I have to get back to work,” I told him in a shaky voice.
“Are you scared of me?”
“Hell no!”
He chuckled.
“Y-You’re just a bad boy. I’ve never been into bad boys. I don’t see the appeal.” I shrugged. “So why don’t you go back to Skan—uh, I mean your girlfriend, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
He pouted and put a hand up beside my head. “Aw, but nothing has happened yet. I thought I’d get one little kiss.”
“A kiss?” I squeaked.
My first kiss? My mind was yelling yes, yes, yes, but this was crazy. I wasn’t the type to be the other woman. Hell, I wasn’t the type to be anyone’s woman evidently. I should tell him no and run away. I should try that trick Ronnie had taught me a couple months ago, which I’d used on him when I was mad, and he told me he hated me, while he was curled up on the floor. I don’t know why Ronnie put up with me. I really don’t.
I had come to the decision to use the move and brought my knee up, but Lorcan anticipated it. He tightened his legs so my knee hit his thigh. The ache was not funny. He moved in closer. I backed up, but there was nowhere else to go.
“If you let me kiss you, I’ll go.” He held up a finger. “One kiss.”
I pretended I was real brave and sneered up at him, lifting my chin. “I don’t kiss vampires.”
“Would you stop with the undead nonsense?” He shrugged. “I’m a regular teen. I just moved around here, and will probably go to your school in the fall.”
“What school is that?”
He seemed to draw a blank.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” The spell or whatever he had over me was broken with his loss of concentration. I ducked down to dip under his arm, but he caught me and jerked me around to face him. Fear snaked over my body. When I looked into his eyes again, they had changed, just like that first night. All the white had disappeared, and they were black as ink.
His breath was shallow, and his big chest brushed my boobs. I was scared out of my head and excited at the same time. Where was Ronnie to help me this time? Where was anybody?
Lorcan lowered his head and sniffed along the pulsing vein in my neck. He groaned. I gripped his arms to try to push him away, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
“I can’t help myself around you,” he whispered. “What is it? What’s in your veins that draws me?”
“I-I don’t know.”
He pressed tighter to me. Oh crap, I was going to be in so much trouble. The next thing I knew, he had covered my mouth with his. My first real kiss. I don’t know what I had expected—sweetness, innocence with a few bumped faces and noses getting tangled up. You know, like in the movies when a girl gets her first one with a boy who’s getting his first too. But this wasn’t that. No way was this that amateur hour.
Lorcan put a hand on my neck and tilted my head back. He stared into my eyes with such intensity, I was shaking. He looked hungry like he wanted to eat me, but some kind of way, it wasn’t a bad thing. He lowered his head slowly, never taking his eyes off me, and then his cool lips met mine.
He was so tall, I had to stretch up onto my tiptoes to reach him while he leaned down. When our lips met, I’m telling you fireworks went off. Yeah, people say that all the time, but this was scary good. I had to fight to keep from moaning like he had a second ago. His mouth wasn’t hot like a regular person’s, but it wasn’t cold either. I imagined vampires were cold from lack of warm blood. Lorcan wasn’t like that.
He sort of sucked at my lips, drew them in between his, pulled back a little and sucked at them again. My knees gave out, but he held me up. This was so not like kissing Ronnie, which had been wet and kind of gross.
After a long time, when I realized I was holding my breath, Lorcan lifted his head. I opened my eyes which I must have closed the moment he kissed me and stared into his face. He grinned, and I caught sight of his fangs. I hadn’t been wrong.
“No,” he said gently, “you weren’t wrong. I am a vampire.”
I gasped. “You did not just read my mind!”
He chuckled. “Sorry. I am what I am.”
I was about to say something smart, but he rubbed a thumb over my lips to keep me quiet. He was still holding me by the neck, not tight so it hurt, but firm. I knew what was coming next, just as sure as anything, and I wasn’t going to let it happen.
I started fighting, beating at his arms, kicking him, trying to bite him if I could. I think I got a good knee into his sensitive place, but he didn’t even react. Neither did his hold loosen. He was strong, and I started getting scared that if I fought harder or hurt him in some way, he’d get mad and snap me in half.
“Don’t do this, Lorcan,” I begged. “Let me go. You said you already ate. You lied!”
“No, I didn’t lie. I did feed.” He stroked that same vein in my neck. “But when you’re afraid, and when you’re excited...any heightened emotions really, I smell it, and I can’t help myself.”
“Then go suck someone else’s blood!” I screeched. “You’ve had mine.”
“I want more!”
I couldn’t say another word because he lowered head, and a sharp sting started at my neck. My body went limp like before. The pain was gone in an instant, and all I felt was him dragging on my blood. Tears filled my eyes. I didn’t want to die out here in the back of the grocery store any more than I wanted to die in Mrs. Knowles’ back yard.
What was I going to do? Nothing. I couldn’t beat him. My best friend wasn’t here this time. I knew for a fact that Ronnie’d had to work tonight. He wouldn’t come to rescue me. I closed my eyes waiting for the end, but this time was different. The world wasn’t going dark like before. I didn’t feel like I would faint.
Out of nowhere, a voice was in my head. “I don’t want to hurt her, but her blood is so good. She’s different from the others somehow. I want her with me. No! She can’t be. I won’t curse her with the curse I have had to live with for twenty years.”
Who was that speaking in my head? Was it Lorcan? But how? I’d thought before that he had been reading my mind, but was I now reading his? It was too freaky. I tried to clear my head, but I kept picking up his thoughts like a radio antenna.
“What are you doing, Lorcan? I’m ready to go home. Let’s go.”
Holy crap. I gasped. The girl that had been with him. She was in my head too? Or was I in hers, or Lorcan’s Confusion made me dizzy. But her speaking seemed to snap Lorcan out of it. He pulled back and released me. The sadness in his eyes surprised me as much as the black draining away until his eyes were normal.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. With a gentle breeze that cooled my hot body, he was gone. That quick, just poof. I stumbled a few feet away from the door while holding
my neck and searched the lot, but there was no sign of him. My fear returned, and I spun around and ran to the door. It was locked. I banged and yelled, kicked it, and jiggled the handle until someone let me in.
I don’t know who it was, but I rushed by him and headed past the bathrooms. Jill was coming toward me with a scowl on her face. I thought fast about what I was going to tell her, and only one excuse that every girl dealt with came to mind.
“I’m sorry, Jill. I got my period.” A snicker from behind me met that confession, but I ignored it. “My cramps get really, really bad on the first day until I can’t do anything but lay down. I have to go home. I’ll understand if I get fired.”
I didn’t stick around to find out what she had to say to that. I kept running. Inside my head, I heard someone say, “If she has cramps, why is she holding her neck?” But I told myself it was just my imagination, and the person must have spoken out loud.
When I burst through my bedroom door a short while later, I had no idea how I had gotten there. One minute I was bolting out of the grocery store, and the next I was home. I thought about how Lorcan had morphed away, but doubted that’s what I’d done. My mind had been filled with thoughts of getting to a safe place.
After I’d stripped down and stepped into the shower, I had two objectives for the next day after I had slept this horrible night away—I was going to make an appointment to see my doctor, and I was going to the library to research vampires. If I had one stalking me, it was for sure I would be prepared the next time I ran into his ass.
Chapter Three
“What are we doing here, Tanesha?” Ronnie looked like the last place he wanted to be was the library, which was surprising because I rarely found his nose anywhere else other than the between the pages of a book.
I held up my hand to his face, fingers splayed. “Nobody invited you. And you should be thrilled to be here. Maybe they have something new from Stephen King, your favorite author.”
He slapped my hand away. “I had things I wanted to do today.”
“I wasn’t stopping you.” Recognizing that God might have made this day just so Ronnie could bug the heck out of me, I walked past him and headed for the bank of computers in the middle of the floor. The one on the end had a blue card above it that read “Catalog.” I snatched the chair out and sat down. Ronnie scooted his narrow rear in beside me, almost knocking me on the floor, and I heaved a huge sigh. I wasn’t going to get rid of him so easily.
Deciding I wouldn’t give him any explanation as to what I was doing, I typed in “vampires” in the keyword search, and punched Enter. Ronnie made no comment, so I kept my head down and read through the entries. The first ten on the list that came up were all fiction, and one was in Spanish. I grumbled under my breath. Still Ronnie didn’t comment, so I clicked New Search. “Vampire Mythology” and “Vampire History” produced more fiction results.
I crumpled one of those little squares of scrap paper the library provided on the table, just so I could work out some frustration through the noise it made. A couple people who knew good and well they weren’t doing a thing on the Internet turned to look at me as if to say “keep it down.” I mugged them both and stood to stomp over to the information desk.
“Excuse me.” I leaned out over the desk, hands at my sides, trying to see what was on the librarian’s computer screen. He was on the phone and looked at me like I was crazy. Remembering the night before, I narrowed my eyes at him trying to get inside his head. All I got was nothing. He flared his nostrils and leaned away from me, then spun around with his back to me.
Sucking my teeth, I searched for another librarian, but the only other person was helping someone else. I refused to leave this place until I found something useful to help me learn about vampires. Maybe the main library downtown would be better than this small branch, but I didn’t feel like humping it on the bus to get there.
Someone bumped my arm beside me, catching my attention. I glanced over to come face-to-face with this boy that sure enough needed a makeover. I blinked. His hair was dyed coal black and lay in what looked like unwashed clumps about his head. His pale skin showed off the half dozen silver rings in each of his nostrils in the worst way, and his clothes, shades of purple, were at least three or four sizes too big. I put the freak at seventeen.
He tucked a hand beneath his chin and grinned at me. “Let me ask you something that’s been on my mind for like”—he waved his hands in the air—“ever. Do you believe in vampires?”
I gulped but couldn’t bring myself to say anything at first.
Like he didn’t expect an answer, he continued. “What about werewolves?”
I reached into my jean shorts pocket and pulled out a square of bubble gum to pop in my mouth. Throwing the weight into one leg with my hip poked out and an elbow propped on it, I gave him a bored look. “You’re talking to me why?”
Someone burst out laughing, and we both turned to glance in the direction it came from. My heart seemed to stop dead in my chest. There next to Ronnie where he was still sitting in front of the catalog computer was the girl who had been with Lorcan the other night. She leaned down to rest her arms on the desk and giggled while somehow giving Ronnie a good view of her big old boobs. Jealousy rose in me. Not because I was interested in Ronnie that way, but because he was my friend, and I didn’t want to share him with bimbo vamp girl. Crap, I was taking this vampire stuff in stride way too easily.
I started over to them, but the boy next to me grabbed my arm to hold me back. I couldn’t have pulled away if I wanted to. “Hey, they’re having their fun. We can too.”
“Not in this lifetime, homeboy.”
He glanced around as if checking to see if anybody was close by and lowered his voice, while playing with one of his nose rings. It had the effect of looking like he was picking his nose. My stomach turned.
“You want to know about the undead right?”
I frowned. “The what, now?”
He whacked my arm with the back of one hand, making me wince in pain. I think he was joking around, but he didn’t know his strength. “The undead, dude, the undead.”
“What is that? Dead people that came back to life?” I wanted to get away from him, but if he knew anything that could help me fight Lorcan, then I was all for it. I wasn’t sure if he was with Skanky over there with Ronnie, but I took a chance. “Why don’t you explain it better?” I suggested.
The boy in purple took my arm, more gently this time, and led me over to the children’s section. Why here, I didn’t know. Maybe it was because if the kids overhead him saying crazy stuff, they’d think he was telling me a story. Okay, that made zero sense, but it was the only thing I could come up with at the time to settle my fears. Because it was for sure, I was freaked out.
After we sank down to those little colorful squishy animals that decorated the children’s section, he held out his hand to me to shake. “I’m Blake, by the way.”
I just stared at him at first, and then I shook his hand before resting my palm against my leg. When he turned his head, I scrubbed it along my shorts. “So why should you help me? And how do you know I wanted to know about vampires?” I looked back over my shoulder toward Ronnie. The girl was still there, but this time, she looked up at me, and her face grew dark and threatening. I felt a chill pass over me. Something told me if I crossed her, she’d get real ugly, and all that cutesy stuff would disappear.
Blake smirked. “You think we don’t know?” He wagged a finger in my face, and I got to see the dirt caked beneath his nail up close and personal. “We’re like a hive.” He paused seeming to think about it. “No, like a collective. You know, Star Trek? Stuff like that.”
“Whole lot of idiots, but one brain?” I suggested. I waited for him to be offended, but he just laughed, a nice easygoing sound to my surprise. I found myself smiling, liking him despite that fact that he was a bloodsucker. “So what did you mean about undead?”
“Okay, well, vampires have died once, and for w
hatever reason have come back to life, or what translates to life for them. We suck blood to keep moving, but we never die.”
“Never?”
“Nope. Rad, right?” He grinned.
“So not,” I told him.
“Anyway, some call us”—he made quotes in the air—“‘the undead.’ Sometimes it’s the walking dead.”
“Got it. You’re dead.”
I wanted to ask him how to defeat them, if it was steaks and garlic and all that stuff, but I was too scared. After thinking about it half the night and jumping at every sound outside my window, I had remembered some facts or what I assumed was facts. I hadn’t closed my eyes until four in the morning. And then my mother had made Ronnie and me spend most of the day helping her with home improvement projects that would never be finished if her past record was proof. I’d just remembered that I needed to call my doctor and make an appointment before her office closed. After a run to the store for Ronnie’s brother, we had headed over to the library. It had been a good thing that the library opened late. Maybe not so good since at least two vampires had taken advantage of the dark to hunt me down.
