Birth of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm) (13 page)

I turned my back to the west, and my throbbing headache lessened considerably. I was able to think a little more clearly and began to wonder how beat up I was after the crash. I began brushing clods of dirt off of Erika’s sweater. Then I noticed a big red stain that smelled like really good wine or something. “What is that?” I wondered aloud, scratching at the red. It was spread across most of the left sleeve and shoulder.

“It’s blood,” Dorian told me as he dusted the dirt from his own clothes.

“Blood!” I gasped. “That’s totally dried on there. It’ll never come out. This isn’t even my sweater.”

Dorian gave me a puzzled look. “I don’t think you’ve fully grasped what’s happened,” he told me.

“I know that I’ve crashed my car, ruined my only friend’s sweater, and spent the night cuddling with some weirdo in a ditch,” I informed him. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes, but Haley, the thing you don’t understand is …”

“Wait a minute,” I said. There was some small creature creeping through the underbrush not more than five feet away from where we stood. My stomach growled. Before I knew what I was doing, I had lunged for it. Snatching the chipmunk from the ground as it scrambled for its burrow, I plunged my teeth into its flesh and savored the warm redness that filled my mouth with unimagined delights.

I only came to my senses once the poor little creature stopped struggling. It was completely drained of its blood. “What am I doing?” I shrieked, flinging the lifeless carcass away from me in horror. “What’s happening to me?”

Dorian grabbed me by both shoulders and gave me a hard shake. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he yelled into my face, forcing me to focus on his words. “You are a vampire.”

Chapter 20

Dorian

I don’t know what possessed me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to figure out what possessed me. But as Haley was dying in my arms, I found that instead of wanting to end her life, I wanted to make it last for  an eternity. The urge to be a maker had never been very strong in me, but there was something about her final words that stung me. Something about her saying “It doesn’t matter” made me feel that it did desperately matter. A young woman shouldn’t feel so lost that as she lies dying, “It doesn’t matter” are the last words from her lips.

I guess I was moved by pity. Or temporary insanity. Probably a little bit of both. But instead of just drinking from her and then slipping off into the night, I quickly carried her into a small wooded area that ran parallel to the road where she had collided with the tree.

She had almost already bled out, so there wasn’t much left for me to drink. I sank my fangs into her smooth, tender neck anyway and pierced her jugular vein. Then I began to drink. I could feel her heartbeat quickly growing weaker. She didn’t have long for this world.

That’s when I should have left her. I had hurried her through the pain of a slow death. That should have been enough. She wouldn’t have suffered, and she wouldn’t have been a vegetable on life support for the next twenty years. But did I stop there? No. Of course not.

Instead, I turned my fangs on myself, plunging them deep into my own wrist, then held the flowing blood to her lips. “Drink,” I commanded her. She moved her head slightly but did nothing to partake of the life I offered her. “Haley, you must drink,” I insisted, pressing my bloody wrist against her mouth before the wound had time to heal.

I saw her throat move as she swallowed, and I knew some of my blood must have been getting into her system. She grew a little stronger then, and she was able to take in more. Her face began to heal before my eyes. Her head looked less concave. She had the strength to reach up and grab my hand, pressing the wound on my wrist tighter to her mouth.

“Easy,” I told her, jerking away a little. If she drank too much, then I would be too weak to bury us, and we would both fry in the light of dawn.

To watch her transform from a mortal into a creature of the night was a thing I was glad I had lived to behold. She had not been plain or ugly as a human, just not as remarkable as her friend. But as a creature of the night, everything about her became intensely more attractive. A few moments after her heart had stopped beating the transformation began.

Haley’s hair, which had been brown and straight, became a wavy, lustrous shock of chestnut spilling around her shoulders. Her figure, which had been slim but nothing special, took on bends and curves that would have made most mortal men drool. Her face took on more subtle changes. Her skin tone became pale and more even. Her eyes appeared wider apart, and I had to assume they had grown more intense in color, although she had them closed, and I couldn’t remember what color they were. Her cheekbones grew more distinct, and she became more symmetrical in every way. Not that she had been a lopsided beast, but most faces are a little asymmetrical, and it is amazing the changes that appear when two halves of a face are perfectly matched.

I eventually had to wrench my wrist away from her lips. I was feeling drained and needed to rest before clawing a hole in the earth that was large enough for the two of us to hide from the dawn. She gave a small whimper as I took away my blood. But I knew she’d had enough. She was no longer a member of the living.

It was several hours later before I lowered her into the makeshift grave and then climbed in after her. I could already sense the sun threatening to appear on the horizon. “Sweet dreams, my child,” I said to her, bestowing a kiss on her forehead before I pulled the dirt in over us. For at that moment, I truly did feel like a father. Or maybe I had the same feeling as Doctor Frankenstein when he first breathed life into the body of his dear monster.

Turning someone into a vampire is one thing, but explaining to her that she was now a member of the undead was quite another. I’m not sure what I expected from Haley once she’d risen, but it sure wasn’t a girl freaking out about getting a little blood on her friend’s sweater.

Chapter 21

Haley

“What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked, wanting to just get away from the weirdo, but he was gripping me too tightly.

“Listen to me, Haley. I am a vampire. And when your car collided with the tree last night, I saved your life by turning you into an immortal.”

“What?” I said again. I was pretty sure I’d hit my head in the car accident. Maybe that was why he wasn’t making that much sense.

“You are a vampire, and I am your maker,” he said, sincerity written across his handsome face. “I know you must be feeling very frightened and confused right now, but I don’t want you to worry. I will spend the next few decades shepherding you through this transition.”

I knew that good-looking people could usually get away with crazier behavior than ugly people, but at some point you had to draw a line. “Yeah, listen,” I said, firmly removing his hands from my shoulders. “I’m sure I’m in a ton of trouble for not going home last night, and I really don’t have time to deal with whatever you’ve got going on here. So …” I began edging away from him. “I’ll just be going now.”

“Haley, halt,” he commanded. When I kept going, he added, “Obey me. I am your maker.”

This made me giggle a little. “Whatever you say, dude.”

“Haley, what color are my eyes?” Dorian asked.

It seemed like a question out of left field. But I really just wanted to placate him so I could get the hell out of there. I had a throbbing headache. Probably because I hadn’t eaten in so long. I was really craving a big, juicy steak. But just to move things along, I squinted at the handsome weirdo. “They’re gray,” I told him. I’d never met anyone with blond hair and gray eyes before. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever met anyone with gray eyes. Still, that wasn’t the point. He’d asked, I’d answered, and now I was leaving.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that you can see my eye color even though the sun has gone down?” he asked.

He had a good point. I didn’t remember my night vision ever being all that good. I could make out Dorian’s hotness as easily as if he’d been standing under a lamp post. I could make out individual leaves on a tree. It turned out I could see everything around us quite distinctly. I knew for a fact the sun had set because I’d seen the tail end of the sunset when we’d first climbed out of the hole.

I reached up and touched my head. I was remembering more and more about the previous night, and I could distinctly remember that I had gone face first through the windshield of my car and then smashed my head into a rather large tree. I knew that head injuries could sometimes do some pretty strange things. There were people who got hit on the head and suddenly could draw fractals in great detail or instantly knew how to play the piano without even knowing how to read music. I was obviously suffering from some sort of medical phenomenon where a sharp blow to the head had given me night vision. I would probably be written up in some kind of medical journal or something.

Dorian was staring at me intently with his gray eyes. I knew he was expecting me to say something, so I just kind of mumbled, “I have a headache,” and began heading through the woods in the direction that I hoped led back to the road. Maybe my car was still there. Maybe the accident wasn’t as bad as I remembered, and I could drive it back to Uncle Kevin’s.

I didn’t even want to think about the fit Kevin was going to have about me staying out all night. And on Christmas. Not that he really cared or anything like that, but it was a really good reason to yell at me and get all physically threatening. I was sure he wouldn’t want to miss out on that. Especially on a holiday. If Thanksgiving was any indication, that was his favorite time to be a jerk.

“Haley, you don’t understand,” Dorian said, keeping pace with me. “You cannot go back to your mortal life.”

This made me laugh. “Um … yeah. It’s not like I actually want to go back to my life, but I don’t exactly have a choice,” I informed him.

“But you are a danger to everyone you know and love,” he insisted.

I didn’t have a long list of people that I loved. There was my mom. I loved her. I wanted to scream at her half the time for being crazy and leaving me to have such a crummy life. But I did love her. There was no denying it. And I guess I loved Debbie in a way. Or at least I cared about her because I knew she cared about me. But that was mostly it. There had been some foster parents who had been kind to me, but it seemed like every time I got settled into a good home, the state would decide that my mom was doing well enough to take care of me, and I would be uprooted again. I had learned pretty quickly not to get too attached to anyone.

Dorian looked so intense and earnest. He was probably as crazy as a loon, but at least he appeared to be sincere about the whole thing. “Listen,” I told him, “thanks for …” I couldn’t think of any possible reason I would be thanking him. “Thanks for not raping me in your little hole set-up and everything,” I finally said. “But I’ve really got to get home.” Then I added, “So I’ll see you around sometime,” and started heading for the road. I could hear some cars in the distance and figured if my own car was gone or disabled, I would just have to flag somebody down.

I thought I was pretty clear in the fact that I didn’t want to hang out. But Dorian didn’t take the hint. He kept following me through the woods. Maybe he wasn’t used to females not hanging all over him or something. He must have thought I was a challenge.

“You must listen to me,” Dorian said, grabbing my arm and putting his body between me and the road. “I am your maker.”

“Let go of me,” I told him, using the weight of my body to knock against his arm and break the grip he had on me. “I know you’re hot, but I’m not going to make it with you.”

He seemed a little flustered. “I … That’s not …” he sputtered. “I’m not talking about having sex with you. That’s the furthest thing from my mind. I’m talking about guiding you, teaching you the ways of the vampire so you don’t end up with a stake in your heart.”

I suddenly realized I was standing alone in a wooded area with a guy who was claiming to be a vampire.