by Yvette Ford
“Lorcan, how did you become a vampire? How long has it been?”
He sighed. “Twenty years. It was my birthday, and I’d just turned eighteen.” He leaned his head back, and I noticed how there was no emotion on his face as he spoke about it. Maybe twenty years was long enough for him to accept the curse of never dying, and being stuck in the dark. “My dad had taken me out that afternoon to get my first car. I was so excited. I thought I was the shit. He let me drive all that way to the next town which was like fifteen miles, to this restaurant we both liked. I had shrimp primavera—bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and this sauce over the penne called arrabbiata.”
“Dang, you remember all that?” I asked him.
He nodded. “It was the last meal I ever ate.”
My throat tightened. “If it’s too hard to talk about, you don’t have to.”
Lorcan pulled me closer to his side and kissed me. I could get used to that. I slipped my arms up around his neck and rested my cheek on his chest. If I couldn’t trust him, it was something I would deal with tomorrow. Tonight, I wanted to pretend that he was my boyfriend, even if it wouldn’t last.
“It was on the way back. Something swooped down from the sky and bumped the front of the car. My dad didn’t believe me. He thought I’d hit something in the road, maybe an animal.” He shrugged. “It all happened so fast, maybe I was wrong, but I doubt it. We were alongside the cliff by the water. You know the place.”
I nodded. Down past the lake, just outside of town, there was a hilly area where the road got windy. If you weren’t paying attention, you could go over. During heavy storms that route out of the city was closed because of mudslides. I was thinking a rock could have hit his car, but then there were no big rocks like that on that hill above the road. The place was trees, grass, and dirt—nice to look at but not good in bad weather.
“So what happened then?”
This time he did show emotion. Anger. Lorcan put me away from him at the same time I saw that all the bruises and cuts on his face were gone. He stood up and paced the room, his fists clenched and his lips pinched tight together. When he faced me, his eyes glowed, and it was like he didn’t recognize me or thought I was the enemy from back then, the one that had attacked him and his father.
I swallowed. “Lorcan?”
His glowing eyes were creeping me out. They seemed blinded, staring right through me. “He wanted me to stop. We should have kept going. He demanded to drive and yelled at me that I was not responsible. I pulled over, and the second he stepped out of the car, he was attacked. I couldn’t stop it. I punched and beat at the thing until my fists bled, but it was like hitting a wall.”
Don’t I know that! Lorcan was built like a wall himself. Must be a vampire thing. My heart hurt for him, but I was scared to go over and try to hug him. I would wait until he calmed down some.
Without warning Lorcan blinked. His eyes went back to normal. The whites returned, and the blue-green drew me in. I drifted over to him, letting the sheet fall on the floor. I couldn’t move. He stood there above me staring into my eyes. As if in slow motion, his lips parted, and his fangs came down.
“To become a vampire, enough of your blood has to be drained away. You do not have to suck a vampire’s blood in return. That’s something different.”
I wondered what that meant. Lorcan had been feeding me his blood. “S-So your father became a vampire?” I asked.
“No. He died without a drop of blood left in his system. Everyone doesn’t turn. I’ve asked myself many times why he didn’t turn. I’ve never found the answer, and no one has been able to tell me.” He shrugged like it didn’t matter, but I knew it did. “I on the other hand did turn.”
My eyes widened. “The vampire attacked you too?”
Lorcan strolled over to the window. A glimmer on the horizon showed the daylight was coming. “Not him. Another member of his coven, whom he called when he realized there would be a witness to what he had done. Vampires don’t allow humans to know of their existence. That’s a given, right?”
I went over and stood in front of him. A few minutes ago I thought he was going to bite me, but I knew now that he wanted to nail it into my head about how I could be turned, and that I was wanted for something else, something he wasn’t ready to tell me. I couldn’t live with that, nor could I ignore it pretending that everything was going to be fine. If I wanted to live, I better learn to fight back. If I had that power he mentioned, I better develop it to protect myself from all the over vampires in Lorcan’s coven, and possibly from him as well.
“I got my revenge eventually.”
My throat went dry, but he didn’t explain what he meant.
“I have to go. Stay inside at night unless I am with you.” He climbed on the windowsill.
“Will I see you again?” That sounded so lame. I tried to give the impression that I didn’t care one way or the other, but it fell flat, evidenced by the laughter in his eyes.
“You want me, little girl?”
I rolled my eyes. “Who you calling little girl?”
“Technically, I’m too old for you. I would be thirty-eight had I lived.”
“Technically, you’re a freak of nature, but I’m not holding that against you.”
He winced. “Are you always so cruel to your friends?”
I laughed. “Ask Ronnie.”
He seemed about to say something at the mention of Ronnie, but changed his mind. He turned his back to me. “I must go before the sun rises. I’ll come back tomorrow night.”
I craved to see him, but I couldn’t let myself get caught up with him. “I need rest. I didn’t get it tonight, and unfortunately, I have to find another job.”
He stepped off the sill, but this time he didn’t fall. He just hung there in the air facing me. That was a sweet trick, but I wasn’t going to admit it to him. His expression told me he’d already read it in my mind. I resisted smacking him.
“I will get you whatever you need. You don’t need a job, and I’ll see you tomorrow night.” Before I could tell him what to kiss, he was gone.
Chapter Six
I was in the shower after the sun came up, washing the grime off my body while I thought about what I knew. I was someone special. “Okay, that doesn’t sound conceited at all, Tanesha,” I told myself, my voice echoing in the narrow space.
Never mind how stupid it sounded, someone believed it. I was special, not a vampire, definitely not dead since I had leaned half way out the window when the solar rays came beaming down, with my bare arms exposed in their path. Nothing. Not even a sizzle. I laughed at that. Although, I did notice that my eyes were more sensitive to the light, and I hadn’t tested it, but I thought my vision was clearer, better than it was.
I still needed to learn how to kill a vampire. Using human strength wasn’t going to cut it. I doubted I was “the chosen one” with enhanced abilities to rid the world of evil. I laughed at that thought. Yeah, right. This was not TV.
What else did I know, I wondered as I ran my soapy loofah over my skin. I stopped at the lower right side of my belly and froze. “Vampires heal fast and leave no scars.” I dropped the sponge and stared down at myself. The scar from when I had surgery to remove my appendix was gone. I searched the left side even though I knew that was stupid. My brown skin was smooth and baby soft. Finding it missing, I sank down to the floor and cried my eyes out while the water ran over my head. I had forgotten to put on my shower cap. I would have to wash my hair and blow it out or sit under my mother’s dryer, but I didn’t care. All this time, one theory I had was that this was a great big joke, and Ronnie would yell “gotcha” after a while. But Ronnie couldn’t remove a scar.
I was changing, and changing fast. I had to put a stop to it. Lorcan, as much as I wanted to be with him, was turning me, making me like him. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to be a vampire and live off of people’s blood. I didn’t want to have to remember my last meal because I could no longer eat real food, or be trapped in the dark because
the sun would cook me. He didn’t have a right to do this to me! No right at all, and I was going to fight back, no matter what.
* * * *
I went back to the library, bringing Ronnie along since he refused to leave my side.
“What are we here for again?” he complained.
“Well, we had to leave last time because you couldn’t stop drooling over that girl, whatever her name was.”
He pretended not to remember, but I knew he was picturing her right then. His eyes glazed over a second before he shook it off. “Please. She wasn’t all that.” He sucked his teeth for emphasis.
“Whatever.” I turned away from him and stomped over to the information desk. This time I was determined to get some info on vampires. Urban legends or old myths would work and not fiction. I figured there had to be some reference books that could point me in the right direction. After that, I was going to check out a couple of kickboxing classes. If I found something good and cheap, I was going to call my dad and beg for money to pay for it. If he knew it wouldn’t be for more clothes and shoes, maybe he would be willing. A girl could hope. What I wasn’t going to do was hold my breath waiting for Lorcan to take of whatever I needed.
“Excuse me, do you have any books on vampires?” I asked the librarian in a low voice so no one would overhear me. Not that it mattered. Vamps seemed to be eternally in if you asked me.
With a big fake smile, the librarian led me to where they kept a couple books on the subject. I ran a finger over the spines, reading as I went, and came to Vampires: Myths and Folklore. After snapping up the book, I flipped it open to the introduction page while I was half aware that Ronnie had wandered to the end of the aisle where they kept little chairs with small tables attached to them. He pulled out his Ipod, popped his buds in his ears, and closed his eyes. I sighed. At least he wouldn’t rush me.
“Vampires are creatures of the night with great strength and power. After living for centuries and watching many of the ones they love die around them, they become emotionless, shunning normal society.”
I considered what I had just read. Maybe Lorcan hadn’t lived long enough because he was hardly emotionless, and for that matter neither were the other teenage vampires, Blake and Adrianne. How long had they been vampires?
I tried to remember what that one vamp sounded like in the park, the one Lorcan had fought to save me. He had been older, and yeah, definitely frosty. I shivered. So they shunned society? That meant they might not live in a regular house, didn’t it? Or maybe they did, but they didn’t know their neighbors like we did. Shoot, a whole lot of humans don’t know their neighbors. You saw them on the news all the time. “No, we didn’t know his ass was crazy like that. We didn’t do more than say ‘what’s up’ while passing by in the morning.”
I laughed, and I could have sworn someone else laughed with me. I looked around, but there was no one in my aisle. I went back to reading, skipped over a few pages, until I found something that caught my eye. “Vampires are very strong. They can move almost faster than the human eye can detect, and they have an insatiable lust for blood. There are only three ways to kill one of these creatures—severing his head, leaving him in the sunlight, or making him bleed out without replenishing his blood for an undetermined length of time. The old Hollywood movie myths about needing to put a stake through his heart are nonsense. He can be killed just as well with a kitchen knife if for some reason he can’t replenish his blood.”
Another laugh in my head and a whispered “kitchen knife.” I ignored it.
So if I could somehow hold down a vampire, I could either decapitate the sucker or drain him. Like sitting on him would hold him down. How in the world could anybody kill one of them that way?
“Who are you trying to kill?
“All right, enough is enough,” I shouted and ran to the end of the aisle in the opposite direction of Ronnie.” A librarian frowned at me from across the room and tapped a finger to her lips. I was so irritated that I sneered at her. I pitched my voice low. “You better show yourself right now!”
Energy crackled over my fingertips, freaking me out. I shook my hands and ran them over my denim miniskirt, but didn’t dispel the power I felt surging throughout my body. I didn’t see twinkling lights or anything dramatic like that, but I knew I was different if only for a minute.
Nervous, I clung to the nearest bookcase with one hand and threw the other hand out ahead of me. I don’t know what I was planning on doing, but what happened blew my mind. I felt the energy leave my body just like it did when Lorcan was hiding in my room. That time I knew where Lorcan was even though my eyes couldn’t see him. This time I didn’t have a clue. I just knew somebody was here who had jokes, and I was going to make him sorry.
Like I said, the energy or power or whatever you wanted to call it shot out of me, through my arm, and across the floor. I couldn’t see anything, but a cart of books just flew up off the floor and smashed against the wall. When it did, books landed everywhere, and people screamed. But that wasn’t what I was focused on. A shadow uncurled from the floor under a table, separated from the table’s real shadow and darted out of the way just before the cart hit next to it.
I could tell myself that was a coincidence, but it wasn’t likely. Without a second thought, I let go of the bookshelf and took off after the shadow. The more he had to move away from the shadows in the room—and there were few because the library was bright for reading—the more he was visible. I had the feeling he shouldn’t even be trying that trick here where someone would notice.
He moved fast, but he couldn’t get up to what I guessed was vampire speed because of so many people around. He was headed to the exit, and I was right on his tail. A familiar chuckle sounded in my head at the same time I realized it was that dumb behind Blake. I was right on him, like he wanted me to catch him. At the front door, I laid a hand on his shoulder just as I heard Ronnie tell me to come back.
Just that quick, Blake threw on a hood, spun around, and had me in his arms. The world around us went out of focus while we moved through the doors and away from the library parking lot. I couldn’t believe how the wind blew against my face, and I couldn’t make out anything around us. I fought to get out of Blake’s hold. “Get your hands off me, Blake. What are you doing?” I shouted through gasps for breath.
His hold tightened. “Come on, we’re going for a little joy ride.”
“Joy ride, my butt. Let me go!”
I elbowed him and ended up hurting myself. Trying to remember how to conjure up that energy flow, I concentrated, and Blake laughed over top my head because I was tucked under his chin, held against his chest. If it was Lorcan, yeah, but Blake was on the boney side, and not comfortable, for real.
I was getting angrier at him for his games. “Put me down, idiot!”
Had to be the anger that triggered the power because like before it came out of nowhere and was like a fist to Blake’s chin. He went flying one way, and I went flying another. I bumped the ground and landed in a heap of pain in the middle of an alley. I shook my head to clear it, but I was getting a headache, and from the feel of my forehead, a lump was forming there too. Blake was so going to pay.
Standing up on trembling legs, I looked around and didn’t recognize the area. Not that I had memorized back allies, but something told me this was deeper into the heart of the city, not where you wanted to find yourself even in the day time. Fear crept over me, and the anger I had felt at Blake began to dissipate. All that was left was self-preservation.
Hearing a grunt behind me, I spun around to find Blake splayed on the ground, in clear view of the sun. His cloak might have been thick, but it was no match for ninety-five degrees and zero humidity. Even a drop of sweat wouldn’t sizzle for long out here before it evaporated.
Blake was dying. One of his hands slid to the edge of the cloak but didn’t venture past it. “Please help me, Tanesha,” he rasped.
I should let him stay there. After all, he was the enemy, a vampi
re. But he was also a person. I think. And I couldn’t stand there and watch him beg me for help and not do anything. I spotted a shaded area between two Dumpsters and ran over to grab hold of Blake’s arm. I tugged. Nothing. He was heavy!
“I can’t move you, Blake. Can’t you try to stand up?”
Steam rose. My head began to spin. Why would he risk coming out here? To mess with me? He must be out of his mind.
“Get up, Blake! Try!”
He found the strength to lift himself just a few inches off the ground. That helped me get a foot under him and a good grip on his shoulder. With everything in me, I rolled him over and nearly burned off his face. He howled, and I screamed. We rolled again, and he landed in the shade.
“Oh my goodness, I am so sorry,” I told him as I forced myself to examine his face. His skin was hot to the touch, and my stomach roiled looking at the burns. Unlike how Lorcan had healed last night, Blake didn’t seem to be getting better. “Why aren’t you healing?”
