by Anna Zaires
Now, I have to add that up until this point, I had never really believed in anything supernatural. I didn’t believe in ghosts or magic, and I definitely didn’t believe in vampires. My closest association to the fanged creatures was an unhealthy obsession with watching The Vampire Diaries as a fifteen–year–old.
“Vampires aren’t real,” I blurted out.
He didn’t say a word, just stared into my soul with those endless black eyes, and that was the moment that I realized all of the scary creatures under the bed really did exist. This guy was not just a regular human psychopath, as I had previously guessed. He really was a vampire.
“Shit,” I muttered. He laughed.
“How long will you keep me?” I asked suddenly.
He didn’t have to think about it. “Forever.”
I believed him.
SEVEN
The next morning I caved in. I was dirty. There was dried blood on my shirt. And I was pretty sure I was starting to smell really bad.
I snatched the faucet handle from Ryan’s outstretched palm and stalked into the rotting bathroom, slamming the door behind me. The faucet handle was difficult to screw on over the thick rust that had built up, but I managed. Pretty soon drabs of brown, dirty water glugged out of the showerhead into the filthy tub. I took off my two–week–old shirt and turned it inside out, using it to loosen some of the caked dirt and dust from the porcelain. When I had cleared a patch big enough to accommodate my feet, I balled the disgusting shirt up and threw it into the corner of the room.
The water was hot and luxurious and slid down my body like liquid velvet. There was no shampoo, so I used the bar of soap to wash my body, then lathered suds into my stiff, bloodied hair. I was exhausted. I had been plagued with a killer headache since I woke up from my uncomfortable sleep on the floor, and I’d had nightmares about the beating heart in the jar all night long.
I thought about home, just like I had been every day and night as I paced my own personal hell. I thought about Jared, about Evie. I even missed my mom. I would have done anything to get back to them. I thought back to every animal attack I’d ever heard of, every abduction, every person who’d given me the creeps. I was starting to realize that the world I had been a lifelong member of didn’t actually exist.
Then cold water cut in, freezing my nerves and making me cry out. “Jesus!”
I shut the water off as quickly as I could and dried myself with the towel I’d so generously been given, then slipped into clean clothes. The black t–shirt and jeans were mine, probably taken directly from my car after I’d been knocked out. I wrapped the towel around my wet hair, feeling calmer and a little bit more like myself than I had in days.
I grabbed my silver ballet flats, the ones covered in snow and mud that I had discarded the night I awoke in vampire hell, and tried my best to clean them up with damp toilet paper. It was a small comfort having shoes on my feet again. The morning felt almost ... normal.
I was snapped out of my somewhat serene state by a loud crash in the adjoining room.
I could not have imagined the hell that awaited me on the other side of the door.
I yanked the bathroom door open, rushing into the room Kate and I shared. Kate was crumpled in the corner – nothing new there – but she wasn’t alone. Caleb was there, clutching her narrow shoulders, dragging her back up to her feet.
“Let her go!” I yelled, pummelling his back with punches that did absolutely nothing. Someone grabbed me from behind and bent my arm back until it was ready to snap like kindling. “Ahh!” I screamed as my shoulder joint crunched out of its socket.
“Shut up,” someone breathed into my ear. Ryan. I should have known.
I wriggled out of his grip and leaned against the wall, hugging my useless limb to my chest. I snuck a glance at my paralyzed arm. It was too long to belong to me, hanging by stretched tendons. I had the sudden urge to throw up again. And it hurt like a bastard. Waves of pain slammed into me.
I stared on in pain and despair as Caleb put his mouth to Kate’s ear. He whispered things too low for me to hear, but his black gaze and twisted grin were clearly directed at me. I looked away, trying not to feel the terror that was encircling me like a bunch of snakes tightening around my useless limbs, trying not to fall into those bottomless eyes that promised an eternity of torment.
Kate’s child–like screams tore at my heart until it threatened to break in two. I started to hyperventilate.
“No, no, no!” she protested. “You promised you wouldn’t!”
Promised he wouldn’t what? Kill her? But hadn’t she wanted to die?
“Quiet!” he hissed forcefully, and she stopped whimpering all at once.
The vampire smiled. “That's a good girl,” he said. He pressed his thumbnail into the creamy flesh at her collarbone. Kate’s eyes went wide in horror as her skin broke apart under the pressure, ruby–red blood rising up from the puncture. I watched helplessly as she tried to push him away.
I wanted to yell, “Stop!” But it was useless. I held my breath, squeezing my eyes shut, my last vision a horrific tableau of the vampire sucking greedily at the girl’s shoulder. I held my good hand to my ear and turned my face to the wall, but I couldn't block out the noise entirely – the sucking, slurping noise of warm tomato soup being hungrily drawn through a straw. Poor Kate was the straw, and her blood was the soup.
I resisted the urge to curl up in a ball, to try and run away, to scream. I was just there, frozen and pathetic and unable to do a damned thing to help.
Eventually, the noise ceased. I opened my eyes to see Kate dead, drained of blood, and Caleb rising from her lifeless form. He wiped his mouth and turned to me, smirking. A low wail grew louder and louder and it took me a minute to realize that it was coming from me, that I was screaming. I abruptly shut my mouth, and the noise stopped.
I was shaking so violently, my knees threatened to buckle underneath me. Anger blossomed inside my chest. Nobody had the right to take someone’s blood—someone’s life—like this.
“Don't you dare!” I cried as he came closer. “I'll scream. I'll hurt you.” As if I could.
He stopped, a peculiar look on his face. He smiled, blood still smeared on his teeth.
“What did you say to her?” I demanded.
“I said –” he spoke in a voice that was older than time, six little words that made tears spring to my eyes “– do you want to die today?”
But it was a lie, he hadn’t asked her that. He was asking me, did I want to die today?
A burning hand rested heavily on my throat, so hot I wondered if it would melt my skin. He was clearly waiting for an answer from me.
I shook my head NO. The burning hand squeezed harder, the black eyes grew wider, imploring a response. “I didn’t hear you.”
“NO!”
He loosened his fingers and let his arm drop slowly from my throat.
“Don’t worry,” he said cruelly. “You will soon enough.” He looked down at Kate’s lifeless body with those demon–black eyes. “She did.”
I stumbled and sank to the floor next to Kate, nursing my arm in my lap. There was blood everywhere, so much more than one person could ever forget. I held my hand in front of my face, the one I could still use. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I didn’t think I ever would.
I said nothing as Ryan followed the older vampire out of the room. The door slammed, and I heard bolts sliding shut on the other side of the wall.
And then, it was just me and the dead girl on the floor.
I cried until salty tears burned my cheeks, and watched that door, and I was hurting so intensely I couldn’t even muster up some sympathetic thoughts for the dead girl who lay less than three feet from me.
I wanted so badly to leave my body right then. I wanted to fly away home, to be with Evie and Jared and my mom. I’d even hug my idiot stepfather. But I couldn’t leave. I could never leave. So I did the next best thing. I closed my eyes and remembered a time before I was taken, a time
when I was just a regular girl falling in love.
EIGHT
I lived practically my whole life with the boy I would fall in love with right under my nose, both of us blissfully unaware of what magic – and horror – would occur as a result of our union. When we were in kindergarten together, we fought like hell over whose turn it was to take the class hamster home over the summer. When we were fifteen he and his idiot friends crashed Evie’s birthday party, stole all of our carefully stashed beer and smashed her front window. And in sophomore year, I took great delight in defacing his yearbook photo in the library’s only copy.
Was it love, even then? I’m not so sure. But I do know that the summer before senior year, Evie and I took jobs at a local kids’ Summer Camp to earn some cash. We were saving for the amazing condo we were going to rent together when we both got accepted into the same college – me into photography, Evie into print journalism. After college, Evie was going to move to Paris and write for Vogue, and I was going to travel the world, take a whole bunch of photos, become the next famous photographer, and then live in a warehouse loft conversion in New York. Plus, we were both going to use our athletic talents to our advantage, using track and swimming scholarships to help us make the big time. Jared was poised for great things, too; he was going to study medicine and become a surgeon. His parents weren’t rich so he was working as a lifeguard at the local summer camp, trying to earn a few bucks to bankroll his medical degree.
The three of us had always ended up at the same school – first grade school, then junior high, and finally Blair Academy. But the academy was a big place, and after sophomore year we never really hung out in the same circles as Jared. Jared studied, swam and played football, I ran track and went to too many parties, and Evie studied too much, partied too much, was on the swim team and still managed to top every class she was in.
So, back to our cushy little summer jobs. Evie and I were both on the swim staff for the summer. We had to teach swim classes in the mornings, supervise the kids at lunch, and then do lifeguard duty in the afternoons. On the Saturday after our classes had finished for the year, Evie and I drove to the camp to take our lifeguard and swim instructor tests and get our first aid cards updated.
I sat in the passenger seat while Evie drove my car, a pretty common scenario for us. Her ancient VW was about to fall apart and I swear the only thing keeping it together was sticky brown rust, while I was still driving the car my dad had bought for me a month before he died. A black Honda Element that nobody would ever be able to convince me to sell.
Evie was at the wheel while I frantically read through the first aid guide in case we got tested. “Do you remember any of this?” I looked up in time to see a familiar pink donut reaching into the sky. “Stop, stop!”
She slammed the brakes on, just making the turn into the Dunkin’ Donuts across from Jefferson Lake. She parked and we got out, the cool morning air forming goose bumps on my bare legs. I tugged at my frayed denim shorts, trying to make them cover as much skin as possible. I detested the cold, even when it was only moderately cool on a summer’s day that would probably reach the nineties before sundown.
We ordered flavored coffees – French vanilla for me, caramel for Evie – and sat in a plastic pink booth while we waited.
“I hope there are at least some hot guys there,” I remarked. My last relationship had ended three months before, and apart from a few mediocre make–out sessions at parties, I was starting to get a little bored. It was time to move on and find a new boy. Our coffees were called and we grabbed them, wandering across the road to the lake.
Since Jefferson Lake was fifty acres across, all the smaller neighboring camps sent their new swim staff to testing day at our larger camp. All up there were probably a hundred or so new swim staff milling around, dressed in bathing suits, goggles perched on foreheads, and the smell of sunscreen and coffee draped across the chilly morning. Evie and I dropped our stuff at the bleachers and wandered over to the lake in just our bathing suits, towels wrapped around our waists and coffee cups warming our palms.
A girl dressed in a lifeguard uniform with SUPERVISOR emblazoned on the breast pocket was calling out names in alphabetical order.
“Cheryl Anderson.”
“Miles Barker.”
“Mia Blake.”
I handed my coffee and towel to Evie, whose last name – Montgomery – meant that she wouldn’t be called for a while. I was familiar with the drill from the year before – eight people called up at a time to swim their twenty laps before diving for the weighted buoy at the bottom of the lake.
Taking my place at the third lane, I turned to my right to see the other five swimmers in my round wander up to their lanes. The guy next to me was facing the other way, but I was sure I wanted to do a lot more looking at him regardless of what his face looked like. His body was sweeeeet – tanned and firm in all the right places.
I absent–mindedly dipped my right foot into the water and squealed. “THAT’S FU– THAT’S FREEZING!” I yelped, yanking my leg away. “How are we supposed to swim in there?”
The supervisor didn’t look impressed. “You’ll be saving children from drowning in there come Monday. You’ll get used to it.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I wanted to tell her to jump in the water, but I bit my tongue and focused on the task at hand. Pretty soon we were being told to stay next to the water and wait until time was called. Somebody had thought to cordon off eight lanes with rope, which was handy. I sat down at the edge and waited. I looked to my right again and hot guy in lane four flashed me a dazzling smile that made me forget all about swimming tests and cold water. Holy mother of all things sexy, he was fine. The body sure did match the face, with big eyes the colour of bamboo, a mess of sandy blond hair, and dimples on both cheeks. Oh, and a V that started at his torso and disappeared into a pair of swimming shorts that left little to the imagination. I realized my eyes were lingering a little too long on his lower half and slid my gaze back up to his face. Recognition sparked inside the cotton-wool of my early-morning brain. I know him!
I raised my eyebrows, confused. “Jared?”
He smiled again, looking extremely devilish. It had been at least two years since I had had an actual conversation with him, and it was probably about something really immature like tee–peeing the teachers’ cars.
“Mia. What camp are you working?” Oh, boy. His voice had gotten deeper. Damn.
“J–Jefferson day camp” I stuttered. “You?”
Before he could answer, the whistle blew and seven bodies dove into the lake.
“Crap,” I muttered, standing up and executing one of the worst dives ever. I ended up in a half–dive, half–belly flop, and I could just imagine the peals of laughter above me in the bleachers. As I hit the water, the icy temperature knocked my breath from my lungs and time stood still while I floated, motionless, and tried to remember how to swim.
As my head broke the surface, I gasped in a breath and saw that most of the other swimmers were at least half a lap ahead of me already. I groaned inwardly and started swimming, mentally counting each lap in my head. Front crawl seemed to be the best way for me to avoid freezing to death and also offered the fastest path, meaning I could finish and get back to my French Vanilla Latte as soon as possible.
Pretty soon I stopped worrying about the cold, pushed on, and wondered when it had been that Jared Cohen had started looking less like an underdeveloped twelve–year–old and more like Ryan Kwanten. It was enough to make my cheeks burn, which was great, since the rest of me was dragging along like a brick of ice.
I got to the last few laps when a cramp started to squeeze at my lower left calf muscle. It was pretty minor at first. Sixteen laps down, four to go. Then, the cramp spread to my foot and I wanted to squeal. I did those last few laps messily, with terrible technique, and started to moan as I hoisted myself out of the pool and onto the slightly warmer pine decking. I ripped my goggles off and threw them to the side, fra
ntically massaging my frozen muscles with my fingers.
“Cramp?”
I looked up from my spot on the ground to see Jared standing above me, his tanned chest covered in hundreds of drops of water that glistened in the morning sun.
I bit my lip and forced myself to look at his face. “Yeah,” I groaned. Thanks for the distraction, though.
“Here,” he said, kneeling down beside me. He pushed my hands away and started massaging my clenched calf muscle with big, smooth fingers. I bit back an involuntary sigh and felt my cheeks redden at the thought of where else I’d like those fingers. Of course, I didn’t tell him to stop. I snuck a glance at Evie, who was oblivious to the world and listening to her iPod in the bleachers. I kind of wished she would bring my coffee down to the pool deck. Then again, I kind of hoped she wouldn’t interrupt this highly-arousing massage I was getting in the middle of about two hundred of my fellow employees.
“You’re not cold,” I remarked as Jared’s warm fingers worked their magic. “What’d you do, down a quart of scotch before you went in?” I imagined kissing him, finding the taste of whisky on his lips. I’m not going to lie – I didn’t even try to distract myself. I was experiencing the female equivalent of a raging hard-on over this guy.
Jared laughed, even though I thought my attempt at a joke was pretty pathetic and definitely not up to my usual smart–ass standards.
And his smile was amazing.
And I fell just a little bit in love with the kid who had stuck craft glue in my hair in first grade.
“I’m used to it,” he said. “Swim team and all. Evie and I swim outdoors almost every morning during swim season.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” I replied. From now on, I thought, I’m going to be coffee–bitch for the swim team every morning. And I’ll sit in the nice warm bleachers and sip my latte while I watch those abs of steel and that cute –
“All better?” he asked.
