Birth of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm) (18 page)

I rushed through the streets and down the roads, no longer enjoying the night. All I wanted to do was go home and pull the covers over my head. Maybe in the morning everything would make sense. Maybe I was just trapped in some kind of very realistic dream.

How the hell did Dorian find me? Was he stalking me or something? That was the only explanation I could think of that made any sense. It would be just my luck that one of the hottest guys I’d ever seen was actually a creepy stalker who liked to sleep in a shallow grave. As if the damn world wasn’t weird enough.

And how had Dorian controlled the bag boy from the grocery store so easily. One minute the guy is dying in my arms, and the next minute he’s staggering back to the store and thanking Dorian for giving him life advice. Dorian was such a weird dude. An insanely hot weird dude.

When I got back to Kevin’s house, all the lights were off, but I had no trouble seeing to let myself in. I wondered if my head injury had done more than just give me night vision. Maybe that was the reason I was acting like such a freak. Could a blow to the head make you a psycho? I decided that if I still felt crazy in the morning, I would head over to the hospital and see if I had a concussion or anything.

As I walked through the kitchen, I noticed the empty ice trays were in the sink again. I felt a pang of guilt followed quickly by irritation. I shouldn’t have hurt Uncle Kevin. It didn’t matter that he’d hurt me plenty in the past, violence was not the answer. But what was his deal with the ice? Didn’t he realize that if he was going to use more ice in the future he would have to refill the trays? Or maybe he just expected me to do it.

I wanted to just go to my room, climb into bed, and pull the covers over my head. When I ran from the scene of my attack, I at least brought my bag of meat with me. I wanted to suck on the meat and close my eyes, making the world go away. Instead, I took a moment to fill the ice trays. I resented doing it, but I knew it was the considerate thing to do. Not that Uncle Kevin knew the definition of the word
considerate
, but I did it anyway.

Finally lying in bed still fully dressed and with a mouth full of raw meat, I wondered about the time. I wished I had my phone, but I didn’t even think to look for it by the tree or anything where I crashed my car. I knew I had it in my hand when I slammed into the tree, but I had no idea what had happened to it after that. Smashing through the windshield had distracted me from keeping tabs on it.

I tried to just empty my brain so I could relax. My converted closet of a room was normally pitch black, but my vision had become so good that I could make out every dot on the tiles of the drop ceiling.

I’d had some pretty lousy Christmases in the last seventeen years, but this one put them all to shame. I’d been humiliated by Tommy, trashed my car, ruined Erika’s sweater, lost my phone, slept in a hole in the ground with the weirdest hottie on the planet, carjacked some guy, chewed on a bunch of raw meat, broken my uncle’s finger, and tried to rip out a guy’s larynx with my teeth. And I hadn’t even had the opportunity to wish anyone a Merry Christmas.

I must have at some point drifted off because the next thing I knew I was in searing pain. I leapt out of bed, convinced it was on fire. What the hell was going on? I couldn’t see any flames. I frantically smacked at my clothing trying to put out the invisible fire that was burning me all over. Then I thought that maybe my clothes were covered in a chemical or something, so I started ripping them off my body as fast as I could. As I flung Erika’s sweater to the ground, it partially covered the bottom of the door. I had forgotten to slide my bed in front of it when I went to sleep. My pain decreased slightly. It was still excruciating but a little less so.

I yanked the blanket off the bed and threw it at the foot of the door. My pain dropped to almost nothing even though my skin was smoking to the point that I was worried the smoke detector in the hallway might start blaring.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed although there was no one in the room to hear me. I’d just experienced one of the most excruciatingly painful things I could imagine, and I had no idea why. I collapsed onto my bed and stuck my head under my pillow.

I was going crazy. That was the only explanation. I had lost my mind, and now nothing in the world made sense. Or maybe some tanker truck had flipped on the highway spilling toxic waste, and the gas was slowly creeping across Tiburon destroying everything in its path.

Once my skin stopped smoking and I felt a little braver, I came out from under my pillow and began examining the bottom of my door. I pulled the blanket away from one edge, and my skin immediately began to burn again, so I quickly shoved the blanket back in place. It wasn’t toxic gas or anything else dangerous leaking into the house. It was just plain sunlight. That must have meant it was probably sometime in the late afternoon. There was a window across the hall from my room, and it faced west so the sun was probably going down just enough that it was at the right angle to filter in under my door.

But why was sunlight suddenly so painful? I’d never had a problem with it before. Then I remembered some of Dorian’s crazy ravings. Hadn’t he said something about avoiding sunlight? Or frying in the sunlight? He had been acting so crazy that I’d focused more on getting away from him than I had on the actual words coming out of his mouth. But he obviously knew something about what was going on, and I sure as hell didn’t.

I lay back down on my bed and tried to think about what he’d been saying to me. There was the warning about the sun. He’d definitely been right about that. I wasn’t going anywhere near the door until I was sure the sun had set.

Had he said he was a vampire? That sounded familiar. Was vampire slang for something? Like when some guy says he’s a sex machine. You don’t really think he’s a machine. You think he’s an egomaniac who probably isn’t very good at sex.

But what did vampire mean? He sucked the life out of you? He was such a jerk that he sapped your soul? That might have been true, but it seemed like an odd thing for a guy to come right out and just admit.

I found that I was very tired. It was late afternoon, but I could barely keep my eyes open. It didn’t really matter because I wasn’t scheduled to work until seven, and I didn’t want to go out into the roasting sun anyway. Lying on the bed, I shut my eyes and let my mind go blank.

Chapter 28

Dorian

Even though it was Christmas, I really didn’t want to go back to the castle. I didn’t want to face my family and explain what had happened. It was all just too ridiculous, and Haley would probably be dead by tomorrow night anyway. So I figured I would just return to my favorite crypt in the cemetery to rest and then figure out what to say to my aunt and cousins once I knew the fate of my progeny. That sound like about as good of a plan as any.

I did feel guilty for not being there on Christmas. My aunt had gone to a lot of trouble to make the night special, but I had the feeling her efforts were more directed at Jessie’s human than for my benefit. Still, I hated being rude. I would have to apologize profusely and perhaps buy her an emerald brooch.

The tomb suited my purpose just fine, but I did realize that I had spent two nights roughing it there in less than a week. I was growing positively bohemian. As I reclined on the marble slab of some wealthy man who had died right around the time I was being born, I thought about the events of the last twenty-four hours. What had possessed me to turn Haley Scott? Over the last eighty or so years, I had seen plenty of people fall from buildings and drown in sinking riverboats. I had even saved one or two when the opportunity presented itself. But that was only to preserve their mortal lives. I had never once thought of turning a single soul into a vampire.

Why had Haley been so different? It was true she had turned into a very becoming vampiress, but she wasn’t even the mortal I was attracted to at the party. Was it just because I felt sorry for her? Or was it because she’d shown some insight into the challenges of living for an eternity? Could it simply be that I was bored and had allowed myself to get caught up in all the trials and tribulations of human emotions? Or had some fleeting impulse led me to believe that she would make a delightful companion for the next couple of centuries?

That last thought turned out to be quite a long distance from the truth. I already half wanted to stake her, and we’d only spent a few minutes together.

And then to find her tearing the throat out of a hipster behind the local Stop-n-Save. She was gorging herself on his blood, and she didn’t even realize why she was doing it. Haley’s complete refusal to accept that she was a vampire did not bode well for the future. Not hers or mine. If I couldn’t convince her that she was a creature of the night and that she needed to practice extreme discretion then there was a strong chance the Bishops would send somebody to put a quick end to my dear scion. Nobody wanted a rogue vampire. Not mortals or the undead. It just caused problems for everyone.

Being a vampire meant Haley had the opportunity to live forever. But what she needed to understand was that immortality wasn’t a guarantee. Not if she wasn’t smart about it. If Haley lived until nightfall, I would have to put all of my effort into explaining to her that she was a vampire–and everything that entailed.

Chapter 29

Haley

I finally managed to get up when the sun went down. I pulled on my robe, pushed the blanket and sweater away from the door, and wandered down the hall to the bathroom. I needed to get cleaned up and over to the diner for my shift.

Besides being a little groggy, I felt great. I wasn’t bruised from the accident. I wasn’t sore from my midnight run. I was hungry as hell and craving a steak, but that seemed to be a new state of normal for me. I started the water running and shed my robe. It always took a few seconds for the hot water to push the cold water out of the pipes. As I was standing there waiting to hop in, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. And then did a double take.

I looked stunning. It wasn’t a very modest thing to say, but I couldn’t help myself. My mousy brown hair was gone, replaced by a beautiful chestnut mane. My eyes, instead of being a muddy mix of green and brown had taken on an almost gem-like quality of flashing emerald green and warm smoky topaz. My figure, which had been rather board-like, had expanded and contracted in all the right places. I stood staring at my reflection with my jaw hanging open. I knew the blow to my head had given me night vision, but was it also making me hallucinate?

What the hell was going on?

I showered, almost feeling like a stranger to myself. I was so used to being invisible that suddenly becoming visible was a little shocking. But it did explain why the bag boy-man had pursued me behind the grocery store. I had thought he was acting weird when he offered to help me with my groceries. But then he probably thought I was acting pretty weird when I bit him on the neck.

I wondered what he had told the cashier when he staggered inside all covered in blood. Did he tell her the crazed girl buying all the meat had jumped him, or did he go with Dorian’s story about the dog? And what had Dorian done with his eyes to control the guy? I’d seen something going on. Some kind of intensity that seemed to almost hypnotize the guy. And then he just did what Dorian said to do, no questions asked. That was pretty cool.

I couldn’t believe all the filth I scrubbed out of my hair. The water washing down the drain looked all rusty, and I wondered if that was my blood or the bag boy’s. Or maybe it was just dirt from sleeping in the ground with Dorian. Such a weird way to cuddle up with a girl.

I didn’t have time to keep thinking about all the strange things that had been happening to me in the last forty-eight hours. I had to get to work, and I sure as hell didn’t have anyone to give me a ride. Looked like I’d be jogging again.