Loved (6 page)

Something struck him.

“So, like, wait a minute, did you, like, say that you bought the house? As in
you
? Don’t you mean your parents?”

“No, I mean me. As in
me
,” she answered. “I bought it myself.”

He still couldn’t understand. He didn’t want to sound like an idiot, but he had to figure this out.

“So, like, the house is just for you? Like, your parents—”

“My parents are dead,” she said. “I bought it myself. For me. I’m 18 now. I’m an adult. I can do whatever I want.”

“Wow,” Sam said, genuinely impressed. “That’s so cool. A whole house to yourself. Wow. I mean, I’m sorry about your parents, but I…I just don’t know anyone like that, like, who owns a house at our age.”

She faced him and smiled. “There a lot of surprises you’re going to find out about me.”

She opened the door and watched as he walked right in, entering the house enthusiastically.

He was so easily led.

She licked her lips, feeling the dull hunger arising in her front teeth.

This was going to be much easier than she’d thought.

SIX

Caleb and Caitlin stood beside the river, staring into each other’s eyes. She trembled as she worried if he were about to say goodbye.

But then something caught his eye, and his line of vision suddenly shifted. He looked at her neckline, and seemed transfixed.

He reached out, and she felt his fingers brush her throat. She felt metal. Her necklace. She had forgotten she was wearing it.

He lifted it and stared.

“What is this?” he asked softly.

She reached up and put her hand over his. It was her cross, her small, silver cross.

“Just an old cross,” she answered.

But before she’d finished saying the words, she realized: it
was
old. It had been in her family for generations. She hadn’t remembered who gave it to her, or when, but she knew it was ancient. And that it had belonged to her father’s side. Yes. It was something. Maybe even a clue.

He stared intently, examining it.

“This is no normal cross,” he said. “Its edges are curved. I haven’t seen one like this for a thousand years. It is the cross of Saint Peter,” he stared, mesmerized. “How did you get this?”

“I’ve…always had it,” she said breathlessly, her excitement growing.

“This is the mark of an ancient coven. Of Jerusalem. A secret coven, one of extreme power. It was rumored to not even exist. How do you own this?”

She felt her heart pounding. “I….don’t know. I was told it was my father’s. I…hadn’t even thought of it.”

He turned it over gently, looking at the back. His eyes opened wide.

“There is an inscription.”

She nodded, suddenly remembering. Yes. There
was
an inscription. What?

 
“Something in Greek, I think,” she said.

“Latin,” he corrected. “
Spina rosam et congregari Salem
,” he said, and then looked at her, as if expecting her to understand.

She had no idea. She never had.

“It says:
The rose and the thorn meet in Salem
.”

He stared at her, and she stared back.

Her mind raced, wondering what that could mean. His eyes had shone with a newfound purpose.

“This was your father’s. It must have been. That inscription is an ancient vampire riddle. He is telling you how to find him. He is telling us where to go next.”

She stared back. “Salem?”

He nodded gravely.

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I care for you greatly. I don’t want to see you get hurt. This is my war. I don’t want you dragged into it. This will get very dangerous, and you are not a full vampire. You can get hurt. You don’t need to come along, especially now that I know where to go next. You have already helped me more than I can thank you for.”

Caitlin felt her heart sink. Did he not want her around? Or was he trying to protect her? She felt like it was the latter.

“I know I have a choice,” she said. “I choose to be with you.”

He stared at her for a long time, then finally nodded. “OK,” he said.

“Besides,” she added, smiling, “I can hardly let you meet my family alone.”

SEVEN

Kyle walked excitedly down the cobblestone streets of the South Street Seaport, doubling his pace. He had pictured this moment for years.

He turned the corner, and he could already begin to see it. The ship.
His
ship.

Disguised as a historic sailing ship on display from a European country, it would be docked at the Seaport for a week. How stupid these humans were. They could believe almost anything. Too trusting to think to check the hull of a piece of history. To realize that it could be the means of their death. Their Trojan horse.

Adding stupidity to stupidity, inane tourists flocked around the ship, delighted to see this piece of history under their noses. If only they knew.

Kyle elbowed his way past the crowds, and headed down an alleyway. Four hulking men stood guard, but when they looked up and saw him coming, they all nodded in recognition and quickly stepped aside. All members of his race. All dressed in black, and as tall as he. Kyle could feel the rage coming off of them to, and it relaxed him. It always felt better to be around his kind.

They parted ways respectfully, and as Kyle walked down the middle, they closed up the alley way again.

Kyle approached the rear of the ship, hidden from the public. Several more of his kind stood by it, and when they saw him approaching, they immediately got to work. They lowered a huge ramp in the side of the hull, and began to wheel down an immense carton, boxed up in plywood. Ten men rolled the massive carton slowly down the ramp, down to the cobblestone sidewalk. Kyle came up to it.

“My master,” a short, balding vampire said to Kyle, running up to him and bowing.

This man was sweating profusely, and seemed very nervous. His eyes darted all over the place. He must have been looking out for the police. And it looked as if he had been waiting a long time. Good. Kyle liked to make people wait.

“It is all here,” the man continued, in a rush. “We’ve checked it several times. It’s all safe and sound, my master.”

“I want to see it,” Kyle said.

The man snapped his fingers and four men ran over. They raised crowbars to the carton, and removed one of the wooden planks. They tore away at layer and layers of heavy duty plastic.

Finally, Kyle stepped up and reached in. He felt a cold, glass vial, and extracted it.

He held it up, examining it under the light of a street lamp.

Just as he remembered. Microbes of the bubonic plague swarmed in his hand, perfectly intact. He smiled slowly.

Now his war could begin.

*

Kyle wasted no time. Within hours, he was in Penn Station, ready to get to work. As he marched through the station, against the crowd, his temper flared. He walked right into hordes of people, at rush hour, all racing to get home to their pathetic little families and homes and husbands and wives. He felt his hatred well.

If there was anything he hated worse than a human, it was mobs of them, rushing to and fro in every direction as if their lives mattered even a bit, as if their mere 100 years on this earth held any consequence at all. Kyle had outlived and outlasted them all, generation after generation, for thousands of years. Even the more significant humans, like Caesar and Stalin and—his favorite, Hitler—had been practically forgotten within a few hundred years of their lifetime. They were something at the time, but nothing shortly afterwards. Their frenetic movements, their feelings of self-importance, rattled him to the core. He felt like killing every single one of them. And he would.

But not at this moment.

Kyle had important work to do.
Truly
important work. He was flanked by a small entourage of eight vampire thugs, and they all strutted through the crowd as quickly as possible. Each carried a backpack. And each backpack was packed with 300 vials of the plague. They would split into four teams, and each team, like the four Horsemen, would spread their death to each corner of the station. One team would cover the station itself, one the Path to Grand central, one the A, C, or E subway line, and one the 1 or the 9 train line. Kyle reserved the best location for himself alone: Amtrak. He smiled to think that his portion of the plague would spread farther and wider than any of the others. Just maybe he could take out other cities, too.

Kyle had other vampire minions hard at work, too, in subway stations all over the city, in Grand Central, and in Times Square.

Kyle nodded, and the teams immediately split up. He walked alone towards the Eighth Avenue entrance.

He descended the escalator, walked to the end of the platform, then kept walking, past the point where anyone was looking. He quickly jumped down onto the tracks. As he landed, rats parted ways. They could sense his presence. How ironic, Kyle thought. It was the rats who spread the plague to begin with. Now, they ran from it.

Kyle walked into the blackness, down the tunnel, sticking to the side of the rail. He kept walking, and finally came to the juncture where all the tracks met. He reached into his backpack and took out a vial, and held it up under an emergency light. He could barely contain his excitement. He set down the pack, reached in with both hands, and got to work.

After so many centuries of waiting, it was now only a matter of hours.

EIGHT

Sam couldn’t believe his luck. He was being shown around an awesome house by a gorgeous girl—a senior, no less—who seemed into him. She was hot. And really cool. And she had the entire place to herself.

It was like an angel from God had come down and dropped her into his lap. He still couldn’t believe it. It was just what he needed, and at just the right time. He was afraid that any second all of his luck would turn, and she’d ask him to leave. But she didn’t seem in any rush to ask him to go. In fact, she seemed like she wanted company. And she didn’t even care that he’d been in her barn. In fact, she seemed to have liked finding him there. He couldn’t believe it. He’d never had any luck in his life like this before.

As he walked around, he saw that her house was still basically empty. No food in the fridge, and not even that much furniture. There was just a random chair here and there, and a small couch. That made him feel good, cause he could help her. If she wanted. He could help her fix it up, move stuff, buy food, shovel, whatever she needed. Even if she just let him crash in her barn, that would be cool. And if she wanted him in the house, well, that would be awesome. More importantly, he really liked her. He was lonely. He realized it now. He really liked being around her.

“And this is the living room,” she said, as she walked him into the final room. It was really bare, no pictures on the wall, no rug on the floor—just a small loveseat in the middle.

“Sorry it’s still so empty,” she said. “I just got here. I didn’t want to bring any of my old stuff. I figured I’d just get a new start.”

Sam stood there, nodding. He was dying to ask her a whole bunch of questions. Like:
where are you from? How did your parents die? Why did you come here?

But he didn’t want to be too pushy. So he just stood there, nodding, like an idiot.

He also felt kind of nervous. He was really attracted by her, more than he’d been by any girl in his life, and he didn’t really know what to say—and didn’t trust himself to say anything. He had a feeling that if he said anything, it would come out wrong.

“Want to sit?” she asked, as she walked around and sat in the loveseat.

Do I ever
.

He tried not to show his excitement. He tried to walk as casually as he could, as he came over and sat beside her. It was a small loveseat, and his leg brushed up against her as he sat. He could smell her perfume, and he felt his blood race. It was getting hard to think clearly.

She tucked one leg under the other, and turned and faced him. She sat there, smiling, staring into his eyes, and he wondered for the millionth time if this was all a dream, if one of his friends was setting him up for a prank.

“So,” she said. “Tell me about you.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Are you from here?”

Sam thought how to answer that one. It wasn’t easy.

“No, not really. But I guess you could say I am, since I’ve lived here more than just about anywhere. We moved around a lot. My family. Well me, my sister, and my mom.”

“What about your dad?” she asked immediately.

Sam shrugged.

“He was never around. They said he moved out when I was young. I don’t really remember.”

“Haven’t you tried to track him down?”

Sam looked into her eyes, and wondered if she was able to read his mind.

“It’s funny you should ask,” he said, “because I actually have been trying. I’ve always wanted to know. But I never found anything. Until last week.”

Her eyes opened wide in surprise. Sam was surprised by how excited she looked. He couldn’t really understand it. Why would she care?

“Really?” she asked. “Where is he?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly, but we’ve been talking on Facebook. He says he wants to see me.”

“So? Why don’t you see him?”

“I want to. It just has all gone down so fast. I guess I just need to make a plan.”

“What are you waiting for?” she asked, smiling.

Sam thought. She was right. What
was
he waiting for?

“Why don’t you write him back? Make a plan to see him? You know, if you don’t set a plan, things never happen. If it were me, I’d message him right now,” she said.

Sam looked into her eyes, and as he did, he felt his thoughts shifting. Everything she said made so much sense. It was weird: he almost felt like every time she said something, the thought became his. She was right. He shouldn’t wait.

He reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and logged onto Facebook.

As he did, she cuddled up next to him, leaned her shoulder into his, and looked at his phone with him. His heart started racing. He loved the feeling of her shoulder touching his. It was so soft, and fit perfectly. He could smell her hair, and it was overwhelming. He was getting really distracted. He had forgotten, for a second, why he had taken out his phone.

Then he saw the new message light, and opened it.

There it was. Another new message from him.

It read:
Sam, I would love to see you. We do need to get together. I know that you are busy in school and all, but what does your schedule look like? It’s hard for me to travel, because of my bad leg, but I’m wondering if you could come up here and visit me? I live in Connecticut
.

Samantha smiled. “There you go,” she said.

“What should I say?” Sam asked.

“Say yes. Tomorrow’s Saturday. It’s the weekend. What better time?”

She was right. Saturday was the best day. Wow. This girl was not only really hot, she was really smart.

Sam typed back:
OK. Sounds good. How about this weekend? What’s your address?

He hesitated for a second. Then he clicked send. He already felt better.

“I’m so excited for you,” Samantha said, smiling. “Wow, it’s so cool that I could meet you at such an exciting time.”

Sam suddenly felt her smooth fingers reach out and stroke his face, then slowly run through his hair. The feeling was intense. Amazing. His heart was slamming, and he could barely think.

He turned and looked at her, and saw that she was facing him, both of her hands now, caressing his face, his neck, his hair. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from her large, glowing green eyes. He could hardly breathe.

“I really like you,” she said.

Sam opened his mouth to speak, but it was too dry. It took him a couple of tries. “I really like you, too.”

He knew he should lean in for a kiss, but he was too nervous. He was relieved when she leaned in, and planted her lips on his.

It was amazing. The blood rushed to his brain, and he prayed this would never end.