Hunger Chronicles (Book 1): Life Bites (28 page)

“How do you know that?” I snap at John, holding the gun out from my body as far as I can get it. Like it is a snake, or a grenade.

“I like a bigger gun.” He winks, holding up his rifle.

I give him an exasperated look.

“No, really. If I were to use a Taurus, it would be the OSS or the PT1911. This,” he points to the gun lying in my hand, “fits your hand perfectly and still has the power that you seem to love.”

Interesting, but I’m not about to believe this gun is meant for me. Despite my aid in getting the others out of there, it’s not like we’d parted on good terms. Nope. I’m quite sure disobeying a direct order is akin to insubordination in Convict’s book. “Why the gun? Why not just give me new ammo for my Glock?”

He raises a brow. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

I suck in a breath. Because Convict knew I’d given my Glock up to my pet zombie. He probably figured I hadn’t had a chance to get it back.

I stare down at the gun, the polished metal mocks me, flaming at the sliver of shame that is rising for all the nasty things I’ve been thinking of Convict. A-hole had sent me a gun. And now I couldn’t call him that—even in my mind—anymore. Crap.

I stuff the gun into the back of my pants. “Fine. Whatever. But I’m not going to be kowtowing to him like he’s alpha dog.”

John looks taken aback. “You better not.”

I give him an inquisitive look.

He smiles, his brown eyes flashing in the moonlight. “I’m your alpha.”

I snort and push by him. “Come on then, Wolf-dog. We don’t have all night.”

I am pleased as punch when he has to jog to catch up. Who is Alpha now? And then he ruins it by speaking.

“You’re right… fangs. We need to get a move on. But might I suggest we go in that direction?” He pats the front pocket of the backpack, then points about fifteen degrees to the left.

I growl and change course.

28.

I swear the dots circling the top edges of my vision are vultures. Either that or dark spots, the kind you get when you’ve way overexerted yourself. I used to get them after running a long race during cross-country track. I remember laying on the ground after having collapsed just this side of the finish line and staring up into the sky as I panted for air. I’d see vultures then too. I think I used to pray they’d come and pick my body clean since I was obviously toast. Ha. I didn’t know anything about being toast. I was such a wimp. The old me would never have made it this far. Vampire talents or not, crossing this desert is going to be the death of me.

Not John though. I stare with envious eyes at the back of my companion marching before me. As the night progresses, he seems to regain more and more of his energy. I swear he now has what my mom would call a “bounce” to his step. Sickening.

John’s hand pops up. I stumble to a grateful stop and watch as he digs the map out of his back pocket. That’s where he’s taken to keeping it. Doesn’t pay to put it away when he’s checking it every five minutes. Least it seems that way. Our stops to check the map have been getting closer and closer together recently. I’d be worried about his sense of direction if not for the fact that he has a compass. The same compass he’s using now.

He frowns down at it. Checks the map. Whistles. And it’s not a good, that’s beautiful kind of whistle, but a that’s-a-beaut kind of whistle. I’d be extremely anxious right now if I weren’t so exhausted. Instead I stumble over, grunting out a, “What is it?”

“See these spots?”

I bend over, looking at the two spots he points out.

“Town.” He taps the first one, then the second. “Base.

John folds the map, stowing both it and the compass away. He stands back up, scanning our 360. No way we’re going to make it to that first town by daybreak at this pace.”

I groan. “Just shoot me now.”

“Hey, weren’t you on the track team?” He points far to the north at the slight bump of earth that just might be a string of mountains… really far away. “Come on, Harper. First one there gets the choice between the MRE spaghetti or Asian style beef.”

29.

I don’t remember much more of that night. Other than running. Faster and faster, pushing myself beyond exhaustion. Stumbling upon the rocks that seemed to leap out in front of my feet. I remember the horrific moment when the sun came up. I remember John swearing and trying to wrap me up in his wetted down shirt.

And then I don’t remember anything else.

30.

“Eva… Drink.”

I blinked, looking up from the arduous task of painting my nails to see the familiar outline of my dad haloed by a glowing ring of morning light spilling in through the kitchen window. He smiled down at me, nudging the cup closer until it clinked into one of the dozen nail polish bottles littering the table.

The cup was one of my mother’s cut crystal tumblers that were reserved for guests—or my father’s nighttime “toddy.” I frowned, staring at the strange reddish liquid within. It almost looked like V-8, except not so thick.

“What is it?” Not my morning orange juice, that’s for sure.

“Something I made. Kind of like an immunity booster.”

I rolled my eyes, shoving the cup away. Ever since the outbreak in South America, dad had been a little nutty. I blamed it on his work. It hadn’t been so bad when he was a microbiologist in the labs at Flagstaff Medical Facility, but a month ago he’d been pulled from his current project and asked to head the research team down at the Naval Research Laboratory at Anderson Mesa. It had seemed like a real feather in his cap. What it was, was a pain.He was obsessed. If last week when he’d pulled me from the debate team’s spring trip to Phoenix because he didn’t want me traveling “in a time like this” hadn’t proven it, then the hours and hours he spent after work down in his basement workroom did.

Paranoid. Bordering on OCD. There must be a pill for that combo.

“Dad. You don’t have to worry. The virus is contained below the border. They said so on the news last night, remember? No international flights, barricades along the coast. We’re good. Even the President said so.”

I turned my attention back to my nails. The Desert Sun polish had a neat glittering gold undertone, but I was beginning to think it was too garish for the midnight-blue dress Carrie and I had picked out for me. Just the thought of the beautiful silk dress with its diaphanous folds (Carrie’s description, not mine), had my heart racing. The prom. Tonight. Carrie would be coming over in a few hours to help me with my hair and makeup and then… then I’d be waltzing (okay, trying not to trip over my two left feet) into the Radisson ballroom on Raoul’s arm.

I held my hand away from my face, puckering my lips. No, the Desert Sun wasn’t right. I scanned the bottles before me. Maybe the Silver Twilight?

“Crowd control. The media is being asked to keep panic to a minimum.”

Oh wow. Mom and I needed to talk, because if Dad was imagining government conspiracies now, we had a real problem.

“Dad, I take my vitamins. I run. I eat healthy, drink my orange juice every morning.” I grabbed a ball of cotton and the nail polish remover and started to work on stripping my nails. “Besides, wasn’t it you who said all that stay healthy, avoid passing germs stuff was junk? That this virus is too virulent to be contained by such inadequate measures?”

He sucked in air through his teeth, swearing under his breath.

“Can’t have it both ways, Dad,” I said, and reached for the Silver Twilight.

He snatched the bottle out of my grasp.

“Hey!”

He shoved the cup toward me. “Drink this and maybe I’ll let you go to the prom tonight.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Let me go to the prom? Not going to work, Dad. You’ve already given both me and Raoul your permission. Besides, you don’t want to break mom’s heart. She can’t wait to snap a memory card full of pictures before we go tonight.”

“You will drink!” His fist slammed down onto the table, making me jump and yelp. This was not my father. Dad didn’t get angry. I could count on my hand the number of times he’d yelled at me. Just curl my hand into a fist and…yup, zero.

His face twisted up, pain choking his voice into a harsh whisper. “Please, Eva girl.”

Nor did he plead.

The table shifts under my hands—guess he really hit it hard—I stare at the bottle of sparkling Desert Sun as the room fades behind a sparkle of lights. Desert. Sand. Sun. The sturdy man before me framed with a blinding halo of white light.

Am I dying then?

I blink, my nails digging not into the lace tablecloth but the sturdy cotton shirt of the man holding me. He’s but a shadow compared to the blazing light behind him. I swallow past a tongue that has already gone dry.

“Dad?” When you die, you get to see the people you love, right? The people who passed before you? It would make sense that my dad would hold me through this transition into the afterlife. Or it would, if I were human. Did vampires go to heaven?

No they go to hell.

“I’m so sorry, Dad.”

“Please, Eva… Drink.”

Only the voice coaxing me to drink is not my dad’s but someone equally familiar. Someone who’s holding me tight against his trembling chest.

Something presses against my cracked lips. Warm, sweaty, and oh so sweet in its intoxicating scent. A man’s wrist. A pulse. Blood. John’s blood.

I want it.

No!

I turn my face away, but am jostled as John shifts me around. Then his wrist is pressed against my lips once more, only this time it’s more than just the sweet scent of his sweat glazed skin, it’s his blood. He’s cut himself. No fair.

“Eva, Take my vein.”

I strain against his hold, my weak arms feebly trying to push his arm away. Doesn’t he understand? Doesn’t he see what he’s doing to me? Monster. He’s trying to turn me into a monster all over again.

“Can’t.” I manage to pant out. “You’re a were. Won’t work.”

“You drink zombie blood!”

“Know. Weird that.” His hand drops down to my chest. Feeling me up or feeling for a pulse?

Stupid, Eva. You have no chest, remember?

I couldn’t even fill out my prom dress. I remember how Carrie stood there in my bedroom shaking her head. I can practically see her measuring eyes, the purse of her lips as she considers what to do. And then my mom breezes in, her wide mouth spread in a smile that went from ear to ear, a pretty pink box with a black bow on it held out in her arms. Padded push-up bra. Thank you, Victoria Secrets.

“I’m in human form now. Maybe it will work. ” John’s voice pulls me back to the present. Too bad, that part of the memory, the before, the last moments with my friends and family? I could live that over and over and never tire.

“Not going to drink your blood,” I say.

“Why not?”

I can tell he’s getting angry now, like that last breakfast with my dad. Dad never got angry. I hate it when the people I love got angry with me. So I force my mouth to form around the words to explain. “Werewolf should never be a lamb. Won’t drink. Won’t control you.”

“Honey, it will take a lot more than one little female vamp doling out commands to control me. Now drink.” And the wrist is back.

I shake my head, but I can’t muster the energy to turn my head from the slick river of blood that dribbles from his slit skin. Time shifts—faster, slower, I’m not sure. It’s no longer measured by seconds but by each pulse of his heart.

“Damn it, Eva! Drink. You have to drink.”
It’s dad’s voice again. No, not just dad’s voice. Both of them. Pain, desperation. Neither of which either should ever show. Not my calm father, not my stoic John. How can I fight them both? I can’t.

I let myself go, testing, with my tongue, the blood dribbling onto my lips. Oh, yes… More! I latch on, pull in a long draw. My mouth fills with the liquid that is my drug. Sweet ambrosia, John’s blood, but there is something else there. Something…

I yank my head back, shoving his wrist away. I bit him. I drank from him. I’m choking on the tangy sweet liquid that pools in the back of my throat. Want to spit it out. Need to spit it out.

“Swallow!”

Don’t want to. Don’t want to.

“Swallow it!”
It’s both of them again. No, it’s all three. John, dad, and
him
… I can’t resist him. His words, like an undeniable command in my head. Swallow. So I do. My body begins to shake. Fire running through my veins. The blood. Oh sweet blood. Not just human, something else there, but right now it is dormant. And that makes it human enough.

“Thank you, Eva. You’ll be okay now. You’ll be okay,”
they whisper together.

Okay? How can I ever be okay? Dad’s dead. Me a monster.

A hand strokes down my cheek, rubbing away my tears.

Why, dad? Why did you let this happen?

“You scared me, Eva.”

And then there is only one. I come back to myself, my eyelids flickering open. It’s John and only John who holds me now. Not
him
. Not my dad. But now I know. I know what he did to me. And I know what my dad did too.

I grip John’s arm, tugging him down close. “I think I know why I can drink their blood.”

31.

The only good thing about the gas guzzling bucket of bolts we found is that it’s noisy. I am sick to death of the spring loaded bench seat, the rattling dash, the flickering overhead light that must be cross-wired to the headlights and comes on whenever they do—I think we’ll be lucky to get another mile out of the antiquated hobby truck we’ve “confiscated”—but I can’t help but appreciate the reprieve that the deafening roar of its engine has given me. Hard to talk over this roaring beast. A good thing, as I really don’t want to talk any more about the incident that set us on this course.

I’d drunk John’s blood. And liked it.

He had been right in that he’s too strong of mind for the feeding to have given me any control over him—if it had he would have stopped quizzing me already—b ut it did give me a sort of hyper-awareness of where he is, or what his general state is. What is weirder is to know that under that stoic exterior, John is a bundle of emotions. Keyed. It’s been two days since my revelation in the cave and he’s still supercharged with excitement.