Phoenix Dead (New Adult Dark Romance) (The Vampire Years) (9 page)

Maybe I was. But I couldn't fight it. Finding where the vein was close to the surface, I pressed my lips to it and gently sucked the flesh into my mouth.

Holding him like that, I could feel every beat of his heart - in my mouth and in my cunt. I groaned, wanting to bite down, to feel the first jet of warm blood squirt into my mouth.

Danny wrapped his arms around me, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other hard against the small of my back, keeping my thrusts short.

I squeezed back, holding him hard in me, my cunt rippling over his shaft.

“God...Lee.”

He was close. I could feel it in the pulse beneath my lips, feel it in the tightening of his stomach muscles against mine. He dug his fingers into me, locking me in place.

I sank my teeth into him.

Danny froze.

His mouth against my ear, I felt his lips part, heard him exhale. Blood coated my tongue. I swallowed and my body ignited with a new level of awareness. I could feel the fine hairs on his skin, smell a dozen different scents - the sheets, his hair, his skin, the sharp copper of his blood, the mix of salt and semen from the first time we'd fucked.

I could feel him coming inside me, feel the jerk of his cock, the pulse of cum. I sucked harder, drawing more of him into me.

I rode him, drinking until the last of his climax rolled through him.

“Stay here.” I got up and found my way to the bathroom. I rinsed my mouth out and then ran hot water over a wash cloth. Back in the bedroom, I pressed the cloth to the wound. My heart was going crazy in my chest, waiting for him to say something - anything.

When the bleeding stopped, he took the cloth from me and tossed it on the night stand before he rolled me onto my back.

He ran his fingertips over my temples, lightly stroking until I grew heavy lidded.

“Lee?” He said my name so quietly, barely managing a whisper.

“Hmmm?”

“Is that...I mean...will you need to do that again?”

I came fully awake at the question. I couldn't read him, not his tone, not the careful way he held his body.

I touched my hand to his chest, held it over his heart. “Sometimes, maybe. It feels like I'm taking back some of what I lost that night.”

He touched my chin, only a fingertip against it with just enough pressure so that I turned my face to him.

One word, and then he kissed me.

“Good."

Part Two

Whether by evolutionary intent or by chance, a vampire's basic survival needs are finely tuned to the production schedule of its favorite prey - mankind. The average human body contains ten pints of blood. A loss of up to 15% in volume - a Class I Hemorrhage - typically produces no change in the victim's vital signs. Other physiological responses, however, are present. Blood vessels constrict, the skin pales and a slight anxiety may infect the victim (more so when a vampire is the cause of the Class I loss). Fluid resuscitation generally is not necessary and plasma is replaced within 24 hours. The wait is longest for replacement of the red blood cells. This usually takes four weeks - after which, a vampire may safely feed from the same victim or, in my case, lover.

The more blood a vampire drinks beyond its basic survival requirements, the stronger it is. A newly turned or wounded vampire rapidly consumes its body's blood reserves, and a vampire low on reserves is exceptionally vulnerable to attack by other vampires on both a physical and psychological level. Unfortunately, there is no survival handbook for n00b vampires and it took time for me to learn these truths.

While the blood I had received from Army and Oscar had been filled with memories, it hardly amounted to the how-to manual I needed. So, for over four weeks I coped, not yet knowing how much or how often I could safely drink from my lover.

Not that I didn't have other options. Chris, despite a very uncharacteristic series of absences from school, was broadcasting his interest whenever he was present. He met me between classes, tucked notes (a lot) inside my locker and, more amazingly, came to the tutoring class with all of his work already done so that the time we spent together was purely personal.

In addition to Chris, I had started to collect - through no efforts of my own - a following of classmates with fetishes I didn't want to know anything about. I am not sure if the details of my attack were finally getting out despite the police gag order during the ongoing investigation or if vampires are magnets for the weird.

I suspect it's the latter, but weird is way down the list of what I want to snack on.

Chris, on the other hand, was hard to resist. Looking at him in seventh hour, I knew that, if I had never met Danny, I could melt into Chris. He was smarter than his grades indicated, hilarious when he wanted to be, cute, protective in a way that reminded me of Danny...

And that is where I would inevitably get lost. Even thinking about Chris felt like an infidelity. It left me confused as hell. The only sure thing I knew was that I was growing weak again - too weak to spend another Saturday dodging Danny's requests to attend Sunday Mass with him at St. Vincent's over on 51st Avenue.

"Are you worried your family will be there, Lee?"

We were sitting at the kitchen table and I laughed at his suggestion. First, I didn't feel like I had any family. My sorry ass excuse for a mother was dead at the fangs of the vampires who had turned me. Elliot had let his uptight wife kick me out of their house. My grandfather was probably sliding towards dementia. And my step-father Paul, whose abandonment of Sandy had precipitated my attack, was a pedophile who considered me still just young enough to be an object of interest.

Second, they were all heathens of the first magnitude.

"So, you'll go with me?" Danny fingered the garnet cross at my throat, his knuckle caressing my collar bone. It was the necklace I had seen at Blush, with the crucifix and tiers of glass beads. He had returned to the store the next day and purchased it.

Closing my eyes, I let the sensation of his touch spread across my skin. I nodded, not saying anything. I would finally give him this thing he needed. Afterwards, in bed, naked, we would mirror the service, only with real meaning because I needed to feed soon. My high school classmates - even the weird ones - were starting to look and smell like dinner.

"Good." He leaned forward, his hand closing around my shoulder as he kissed the prominence of my cheekbone.

I tried to move in on the kiss, to touch my lips to his, but he moved back. We'd been dancing this way for the last four weeks, the simmering passion flaring beyond his control only rarely and always instantly reeled back in after that one night.

I couldn't blame him. I was still withholding information on Oscar and the vampires who had attacked me. My age bothered Danny, as did the unexplainable lack of scars on my body from the attack. And, from his blood, I knew there was something bothering him on an even deeper level.

The crime scene photos - the ones they had taken before they realized only one of the bodies on the garage floor was dead. Danny had seen the pictures of my torn and naked body. It fueled his dedication to bring my attackers to justice, but it had also driven his early obsession with me. The age difference, my orphaned status, the pictures - he felt like a predator.

But I was the one who wanted to sink my teeth into his flesh, fucking and bleeding him until we both collapsed exhausted on the bed.

"Danny..." I rested my hand on his bare forearm, tried to caress the skin but he stood up and scooped his car keys off the counter.

"We need to go shopping," he said.

The image of us thrusting and moaning evaporated. "Don't you think you've bought me enough clothes already?"

"That was all school stuff." Forgetting himself for a second, he fingered the cuff of my shirt and I managed to curl my hand around his before he could pull back. "You need something a little dressier for church. And you haven't even said anything about needing a prom dress yet."

I frowned. "Prom?"

"Yeah, you know, dancing, corsages, that sort of thing." He extracted his hand from mine. "Have you decided who you are going with?"

"Prom was supposed to be two weeks ago but the principal cancelled it." I stopped and pointed at myself. "For security reasons."

I didn't care about the prom, but his question irked the hell out of me. If prom was still on, I'd want to go with him - the guy I was fucking (if only the one night) and kind of thought I was in love with when he wasn't asking stupid questions.

"That's tough, been taking a lot of flak, huh?"

I raised my hand, showing about an inch of air between my thumb and index finger before widening the space as far as I could.

"So that's why you've been...a little quiet?"

He didn't want to say moody, but that would have been the better descriptor. I shrugged, letting him think what he wanted to. I was quiet for a lot of reasons, including the barriers he kept erecting between us.

He stood and gave my shoulder a brotherly squeeze. "All the more reason to go shopping."

***

Less than twenty-four hours later, I was sitting in a pew at St. Vincent De Paul. I was wearing a white, crinkled chiffon dress that fell in layers down past my knees. The dress itself was sleeveless but I had a matching shawl of the same fabric and color around my shoulders. My legs were bare, the outfit finished off with white sandals. My hair was in a braid wrapped into a bun at the base of my skull. Around my throat was the garnet cross with its tiers of glass beads.

I wasn't thinking about how I looked, however. How could I when I recognized the priest? Or, at least, I thought I did. Part of my brain already knew I wasn't really seeing Oscar up there. That part, unfortunately, couldn't convince the rest of my brain and I was staring so hard in disbelief that Danny gave me a gentle nudge.

"You okay, Lee?" He had his church whisper down pat, his lips didn't even move.

Not trusting my voice, I put my mouth a centimeter from Danny's ear. "Isn't the priest a little young?"

"Father Craig is almost fifty."

Right, so I was hallucinating, but why?

Oscar looked up, smiled directly at me, his tongue snaking out of his mouth to slowly lick the center of his top lip. "Hungry, Lee?"

I'd say my heart or lungs stopped, but that is pretty much status quo for vampires. Everything internal runs slower. Still, I was unnerved by his words and the complete lack of reaction from the people around me.

When the time came for Communion, I was ready to faint or scream. Not because I was going up there, I wasn't. I already knew that, as a non-Catholic (never mind my being a vampire), it would be improper of me to take the sacrament. But Danny would be up there, kneeling, eyes closed, tilting his head up to take the wafer, exposing his throat. And I couldn't get the possibility out of my head that, instead of my hallucinating Oscar, the rest of the congregation was hallucinating Father Craig.

I grabbed Danny's wrist before it was his turn to stand. "Don't go, please."

He looked at me, his gaze soft but determined. "It's okay, Lee. Not all rituals are dangerous."

I put my hand back in my lap, knotted my fingers together. He thought I was remembering the attack, the chanting, the candles and robes, the rows and rows of fangs as more than a dozen vampires bit into my flesh. He thought, more than anything, that he needed to take Communion for my benefit, to show me that the church wasn't a scary place filled with scary people.

I looked at the row of worshippers already dipping down in front of Oscar. I wondered what they saw in place of the young Hispanic male with long black hair and glittering black eyes.

Don't you hurt him.

I voiced the words in my head. Oscar only smiled darkly at me. When it was Danny's turn, he took his time, stopped to place his hand for a moment on Danny's shoulder and whispered something to him.

When we were finally out in the parking lot, I asked Danny what Father Craig had said to him. He looked at me like I was confused.

"He didn't say anything."

Danny was clearly distracted, looking past the surrounding parked vehicles to the street beyond as he started to unlock the car door. I tugged at his sleeve.

"I saw him say something to you."

He shrugged, still staring at the street and then his features narrowed. Danny the boyfriend was gone, instantly replaced by Officer Gutierrez. I followed the direction of his gaze to find Oscar standing across the street, dressed in tight jeans and a t-shirt. Oscar's predatory stare shifted from Danny to me. He lifted his hand in greeting and, even at this distance, I could see his mouth pucker in a mocking kiss.

So could Danny.

"That's him!" Danny broke into a run, scaled the cast iron fencing rods that bordered St. Vincent's and dodged four lanes of Sunday traffic on 51st Avenue.

I followed, not quite so dramatically given the dress and my knowledge that, no matter how hampered I was from lack of blood or the sandals or the chiffon clinging to my knees, I could still outrun a human. I found the nearest gate out of the church lot, circumnavigated the cars Danny had already brought to a honking standstill and cut the same path through an unfenced yard that opened onto North 50th Drive. From there, I chased after him along Pinchot Avenue until we both lost site of Oscar and Danny came to a panting halt.