Blood Awakening (28 page)

“Ooh, subtle,” Lacey said as Erik almost dragged me to the front of the building.

“Um, a simple ‘please’ would’ve worked, too,” I said after he finally released my arm.

“Sorry,” he said, staring out the front door to the still-busy street. I was amazed at how active and alive the city was, even in the late hours of the night. “I just wanted you up here in case my uncle hears us. You know, you kind of being a vampire and all.”

“Gee, thanks. Wait, what?” I stared at him, though he didn’t take his eyes off the door. “Your uncle is here?”

“Yeah,” he said, finally looking at me. “He lives upstairs.”

“Upstairs from a dentist’s office?”

“You know how expensive it is to live in this city?”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh yeah. Forgot. Sorry.” He smiled at me, though worry hid behind it.

“Everything’s gonna work out fine,” I said.

“What?” He stared hard at me. “Oh, I know. I’m not worried about that.”

“Then what?” I asked.

It was a few seconds before he answered. “Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that crap, Erik. I know you. I know when something’s bothering you.”

Another long pause, then, “I haven’t been here since Lila died.”

Way to go, Ava.

“Oh. Sorry for pushing.”

“It’s okay.” He captured and released a deep breath, his eyes going back out the door. “She used to love coming here. She and Uncle Adam were really close.” I could see the memories on his face, the pain they brought back to the surface. “She used to say that she was really his daughter, not our dad’s.” He laughed a little. “I would tell her that she was a moron, because we were twins, and I knew who my dad was.”

“Erik—”

“—then she’d cry and say I was a jerk and run and tell Uncle Adam what I did.” He lowered his head and turned away from the street, back to me. “She was always telling on me, getting me into trouble.”

I smiled as he looked at me. “I think you got yourself into trouble. She just kept you from getting away with it.”

He laughed again and moved closer to me, close enough for his fingers to brush against mine. “Yeah, guess you’re right. Hey, did I ever tell you about the time she tried to convince our uncle that I was the reason she broke her arm?”

“No,” I said, taking in a deep breath of my own.

Crap.

“But it’s gonna have to wait.” I turned back toward the office where Kayla and Lacey were. Alone.

“What?” Erik asked. “Why?”

“Because,” I said, my fangs itching behind my gums. “We have company.”

C
LOSING IN

I
didn’t wait for Erik as I took off down the hall toward Kayla. If anything else happened to her because of me, something horrible…

“You mean, a vampire?” Erik asked, finally catching up to me. “Here?”

“Yeah,” I said, scanning the area for the undead interloper.

“Where? How?” He seemed as panicked as I felt.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Close.” I didn’t want Kayla or Lacey to panic—or know what was going on—so I focused my hearing to penetrate through the wall of the office. I could hear Kayla recit
ing words from her dad’s journal pages, while Lacey offered her usual off-handed commentary. They were fine.

“Oh God,” Erik said, bounding down a different hall to a door marked STAIRS.

His uncle.

I ran with him, both of us bounding up the stairs to the third floor. My senses were kicking into hyper-drive as we climbed; the intruding vampire was definitely on this floor. I grabbed Erik’s arm just before he opened the door leading back into the hall.

“Don’t,” I said, pulling him back. “Let me.” Without waiting for his argument, I moved around him and turned the handle. Once open, the putrid scent of death—and of fresh human blood—flooded my nostrils. “Erik,” I said, looking back at him.

“No,” he whispered, knowing what I couldn’t say. “No.”

“Stay here.” I placed a hand on his chest, his heart beating like mad beneath it. “Please.”

“No way in hell, Ava.” Fury swirled behind the deep blue of his eyes. Fury that couldn’t listen to reason. I knew he would follow me; there would be no stopping him. So I gave in and stepped out into the hall leading to his uncle’s home with Erik behind me.

The door leading to his apartment was already open a couple of inches, and I could hear movement inside. My body on high alert, I slowly pushed the door open, praying that it wouldn’t make a noise and alert our presence. Once it was fully open, I could see the path of destruction the vampire left in its wake. Everything in view was awry: overturned tables, ripped sofa cushions, papers and books strewn across the hardwood floors.

The vampire was searching for something.

Without looking, I reached behind me and grabbed a fistful of Erik’s shirt, pulling him closer to me. I forced my mind to ignore the scent of him, instead focusing on the danger ahead of us. I led us into the apartment slowly, afraid that at any moment we would be attacked.

But we never were. Through each room, around every corner, the place seemed empty. No sign of the vampire, no sign of Erik’s uncle. It was as though they’d vanished. The noise I’d heard when we first got here was gone as well, which meant one of two things: Either they were really gone, or Erik’s uncle was.

“Please stay here,” I whispered to Erik, my voice so low even I could barely hear it.

“NO,” he mouthed back, practically pushing me forward. I wanted to shake him and say “I can’t watch you and save your uncle, too,” but I didn’t. Instead, I kept walking through the apartment, the master bedroom the only room yet to be searched.

When we made it to the door, I turned to Erik. “Once I open this,” I whispered, pointing over my shoulder to the door behind me, “you stay back.” I could feel venom dripping from my veins, which had been exposed this entire time and I hadn’t even known it. Erik obviously understood that I was dead serious, because he didn’t protest, only nodded in agreement. Satisfied that I had finally gotten through to him, I flung open the door, ready to strike.

Once in the bedroom, all I saw was blood. Covering everything.

The walls were splattered with it, blotches of deep crimson spotting the almost-white wallpaper, the thick carpet, the olive green bedding. My stomach lurched with hunger at the overwhelming scent of it and I had to fight with everything human inside me to remain calm. Erik practically gasped from behind me and stepped to my side. I instinctively threw an arm out to stop him.

“No,” I whispered, pointing to the bathroom off to our left. I could hear noises coming from inside, sounds of pain and vengeance. I slowly moved away from Erik and headed in the direction of the half-open doorway, more blood caking the exposed tiles of the floor. As I was ready to lunge in and stop the monster responsible for the carnage, the door flew wide open and a blur of black teeming with the stench of death bolted from the room.

My body was thrown back against a large armoire, shattering the wood and sending my brain into stunning dizziness. I almost blacked out, but knew that I couldn’t if I expected to keep myself—and Erik and his uncle—alive. I jumped to my feet, ignoring the shooting pain running from my hips to my head, coming face to face with the vampire.

He was about my height, and most likely my weight too, by the looks of him, with wild eyes and super-pale skin. A set of bloody fangs hung in the open space of his mouth, and he smelled foul. Like, worse-than-undead foul. Even though I felt pretty evenly matched against him, I knew that he had just fed, and would be a lot stronger than me.

Not that that was gonna keep me from killing him.

I didn’t think, only reacted. I leaned over, shoved Erik through the doorway back into the hall, and leapt forward at the vampire. We fell back onto the bloodied bed with me on top of him, his arms around my back. I tried leaning forward so I could sink my fangs into his neck, but the squeeze hold he had on me was breathtaking. I could feel my ribs ready to cave under the pressure, my lungs nearing asphyxiation. If I didn’t do something, I would be dead soon—or very close to it.

I started shifting my body, thrashing like crazy from side to side, hoping to break free. I didn’t, but I did manage to move one leg from his side to in between his legs…which gave me the perfect advantage to show him what a Super Knee to the groin felt like. One thing I’d learned about vampires? It might be hard as hell to kill them, but they still felt pain.

His arms immediately fell from my sides and went to his crotch as he cried and yelled out. I didn’t waste any more time, falling onto his chest and piercing the vein running up his neck with my fangs. The taste was worse than awful, his undead blood turning my stomach. But I drank it anyway, sucking in even the tiniest bit of fuel it provided, just in case he had a friend waiting in the bathroom. The vampire’s hands clutched and clawed at my back and head, trying to pry my teeth from him, but it was a pointless effort. Within seconds, his arms went limp by his sides, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he stopped moving. I kept my fangs in his neck a few more seconds just to be sure I finished him off before climbing off the bed and heading toward the bathroom. I used the back of my hand to wipe blood from my lips before going inside.

Erik was already there, inside the waterless bathtub and cradling his uncle like he had Lila’s lifeless body the night she died. I fought back tears—and the mesmerizing scent of his uncle’s spilled blood—as I knelt down beside them.

“Is he…alive?”

“Yeah, but barely,” Erik said, wiping blood from his uncle’s forehead. Adam moaned and shifted a bit in his nephew’s arms before slowly opening his eyes. I had no clue what type of injuries he had sustained, his body completely covered with his own blood.

“Do you remember anything?” I asked him, sorry for having to question a man who had literally just survived the worst attack of his life.

Adam cleared his throat and tried to sit up; Erik kept an arm over his chest, preventing him. “He was here when I got home,” Adam said, his words dripping with pain and fear. “About an hour ago.” Oh god, he’d endured all of this for an hour? My heart went out to him.

“Do you know how he got in, Uncle Adam?” Erik asked. Though he wouldn’t show them, I could hear tears behind his voice.

“Not sure,” Adam said. “Fire escape?” Without thinking, I jumped up and ran to the large double window of the living room, careful not to disturb anything that may offer some clue as to who the now-dead vampire was—or who he was working for. Tiny shards of glass littered the floor behind the overturned sofa, and a soft, icy breeze filtered in through the hole just above the window’s lock.

“It was the fire escape,” I announced once back in the bathroom. Erik had managed to sit his uncle upright and was now out of the tub, his clothing covered in blood. I swallowed the want climbing my throat. “Broke the glass above the lock,” I went on, feeling as though silence would be unbearable.

“Dammit!” Erik began pacing the tiny room, running a bloody hand through his hair.

“Erik, I’m so sorry about this,” I said, reaching out to him.

“What? Why? This isn’t your fault.” He only looked at me briefly as he kept up his assault on the tile beneath his feet, leaving streaked prints in his wake.

“It is,” I said, turning from him to Adam, who seemed to be coming to more and more. “None of this would’ve happened had I not come out of that coffin.”

Self-loathing, party of one?

“What the hell are you talking about, Ava?” Erik finally stopped pacing and faced me. “Kayla said they’ve been planning something like this for centuries. It has nothing to do with you.”

“A-Ava?” Adam’s weak voice pulled my attention away from feeling sorry for myself.

“What is it, Uncle Adam?” Erik asked, moving past me and going to his uncle. He knelt down next to the tub and brushed some matted hair from his uncle’s face.

Adam didn’t acknowledge him, his terrified eyes focused on me. “Y-your name…is Ava?”

“Yeah,” I finally said, my own voice coming out weak. Why did my name matter so much to him?

“That’s Ava, Uncle Adam,” Erik said, almost with a smile—which was weird given our current circumstances. “The girl I told you about?”

He had told his uncle, the man who raised him and Lila, about me? What had he said? Who did he tell his uncle I was? Questions bombarded my mind, mixing with the questions about tonight’s events already living there.

“You didn’t say she was…a vampire,” Adam said. My skin went cold.

“H-how did you know that?” Erik stammered, his eyes flashing from his uncle to me over and over.

“Because,” Adam said, grunting as he tried to sit up more in the bloody bathtub, “she’s the one that monster was after.”

W
ELCOME HOME

T
his isn’t your fault,” Erik said again as he and I crept from Adam’s bedroom, closing the door behind us. It took all of Erik’s strength and most of mine to pull his battered uncle from the bathtub and put him to bed. There was really no point in trying to clean up, since the place looked like the inside of a heart attack, so we simply tossed a fresh blanket onto the bed and he was asleep before his head hit the pillow. Erik did clean the blood from his face and arms so I wouldn’t have to stare at it—only smell it.

I made a beeline for the living room, copying Erik’s pacing from earlier. As thoughts of what had happened to Adam nearly broke me down, Erik came over and grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Ava, stop,” he said, his warm hands sending chills up my arms. “I know what you’re doing.”

“What?” I asked, almost frantic. “What am I doing?”

“You’re trying to figure out how to fix all this by yourself.” He knew me, I gave him that. “But you don’t have to,” he went on, the softness of his voice and the warmth behind his words lulling me into a false sense of hope. “You don’t have to take care of everybody like you think you do.”

“Yes I do,” I said, reluctantly pulling myself from his grip. With nothing else to occupy my hands—well, nothing that wasn’t Erik—I began straightening up the disheveled room. “I have to, Erik. Can’t you see that?” I wouldn’t look at him, fearful of what his eyes may hold.