Harsh Light of Day

by Jaye A. Jones

CHAPTER 9

  “Wow, your teeth are, like, an inch long,” Will stared at my fangs and I couldn’t shake the idea of someone putting his head inside a crocodile’s mouth.

  They should have retracted by now, but the taste of the annoying boy’s blood still lingered on my tongue.

  Will added, still leaning toward me, staring into my mouth, “It’s bizarre.”

  We sat on opposite ends of his bed. Will appeared far less scared of me now than when we left his friend’s house. I didn’t know why he felt safe enough to be in the room with me, or not on the other side of it at least. But he seemed more interested than freaked out. And he was smiling again.

  “Why?” I asked in response to his comments about my fangs, folding my hands on my lap and very conscious of my canines finally getting smaller. Apparently if I thought about it, I could make them retract. Who knew!

  “I dunno. They just…come out? When you’re hungry?”

  “When I eat and after eating. Yes.”

  “What about when you think about eating?”

  I tilted my head and thought about the boy’s butterscotch blood, how warm and satisfying it had been. It still tingled my tongue and made my insides buzz.

  Will gawked at me. He’d watched my fangs extend.

  “What?” I snapped, and he closed his mouth and forced his eyes up to mine instead of on my mouth.

  “Sorry, it’s just weird.”

  “Is it? Your eyes dilate when you’re afraid or attracted to someone. Your mouth salivates when you smell food. How is this any different?”

  I’ve spent years having this conversation with myself. Everything Will was going to ask, I’d already planned the answer. All of my years of desperately seeking solitude gave me time to give a great deal of thought to what I was.

  “Are you telepathic? Can you hypnotize people? Make them do your bidding?” he asked, excitedly. But each of his enthusiastic questions had an underlying hint of dread.

  I shook my head. “No bug-eaters for me.”

  “What about crosses?”

  “Colin has crucifixes and stuff in the mansion, so I don’t think they do anything.”

  “Who’s Colin?” Will asked, his interest piqued.

  “The head of my family,” I answered quickly.

  I didn’t want to talk about them. Thankfully Will let the topic go.

  “And you can go out in the sun.”

  “Yes, you saw me. I think most vampires prefer nighttime though.”

  “But you’re so pale,” he laughed.

  “Just because we can go out in the sun doesn’t mean it’s a smart thing to do.”

  I considered adding that I didn’t think dead things tan anyway, but I thought it sounded like too much for him. The walking dead thing was pretty creepy.

  “Can you fly?” He was getting excited at the possibility when he should have been more scared. It was better he wasn’t freaked out too much. I wouldn’t be here if he was afraid.

  “We’re made up of the same stuff you are. We can’t defy the laws of physics.”

  “Except you don’t die,” he said severely. “Silver, garlic, all that other stuff?”

  “I think it is all wishful thinking. Humans want to believe there’s something they can do to keep us away. People don’t like feeling powerless, even if they are.”

  “So you don’t have to be invited in then?” Will looked around his apartment and shook his head, his ears turning red.

  I shook my head slowly.

  “The truth is, only other vampires are strong enough to bring vampires down. Even if humans could contain us, they’d find it hard to kill us.”

  Will remained quiet, his gaze back on my face, but his mind far away.

  I looked around the room for the first time. Earlier that day, I had been too confused, too unsure and anxious to really look around. Now I could take it in. The apartment was small with wood floors and old, worn furniture. Nothing matched. The couch was green and the chair was speckled brown. The bed we sat on stretched along the far wall and had dark blue sheets and a dark blue comforter. Over that, underneath Will, was an old blanket that looked like someone made with their hands. It was the first thing I felt when I awoke that afternoon. It still had a few specks of my blood on it.

  So did the wood floor.

  Other than my blood, it smelled like honeysuckle, soap, and leather.

  “So what is true then?” Will finally said, and I focused my attention back on him.

  I gave him an exaggerated shrug. “Drink blood, live forever, fast and strong.”

  I kept the tone light, or what I thought was light. It didn’t have to be a scary thing. And despite what Colin insisted, I couldn’t see the harm in telling Will about us. He was a trustworthy human. He obviously didn’t want to hunt us down and murder us. He was curious, and I couldn’t blame him.

  “So, are you, like, two hundred years old or something?”

  “Most vampires are even older than that. New vampires are only made under certain circumstances.” The sugar coated version was kind of nice. “I am a young vampire.”

  “How old?”

  “I spent twenty years as a human, and twenty years as a vampire. That is all.”

  “What were the circumstances for you to be…um…transformed? Changed? Uh…vampirized?”

  Some things needed to remain private. Will didn’t need to know about sires and consorts and the sick, twisted way a male chose his female. I didn’t know much about it, and what I did know, I wished I didn’t.

  “We usually say “turned”. Another vampire has to turn you,” I said, not answering his question.

  “Then who turned you? Are they still around? Where do you live? Do you live with lots of other vampires?”

  I put up my hand to silence him. I couldn’t answer the personal questions. Anything about vampires in general, fine, bring it on. But I didn’t want to think of my family. I didn’t want to have to explain those things.

  Will seemed to understand, and changed his questions.

  “Can you be hurt?” he asked, but then shook his head. “Of course you can. You were all cut up when I found you around that tree.”

  “Yes—” I began, but he interrupted excitedly.

  “You said vampires can kill other vampires. How?”

  Did he really need to know that? If he ever had to face a vampire, a normal vampire, he’d be dead before he could remember what I told him.

  In that case, it wouldn’t do any harm to tell him.

  “Truthfully, we can die in most of the ways you can. It’s just a lot more difficult.”

  “You heal, right? Like, you were all cut up before and then you got out of the shower and all of your cuts were gone.” He drew his eyebrows in and thought for a moment, “wonder why I didn’t realize something was weird before.”

  “I thought you did realize, but it was better that you said nothing. Spencer and Julia can never know. You shouldn’t know.”

  “Are you gonna get in trouble?” he asked, and I felt like laughing.

  But then I thought about it. I would get into trouble, already was in trouble really, but I didn’t care about that. If the others came to find me, and found me here, Will might get hurt because of me. Will was in trouble.

  Idiotic young vampires can be so selfish.

  “I’m afraid I may have brought something bad into your life. I have a family, and they will try to find me. Probably are already on their way. See, I’m not supposed to be around humans. No vampire is.”

  “How can you avoid it? People are everywhere,” Will asked.

  “We have a home that we don’t leave. Avoiding humans is the easy part.”

  He didn’t understand. I wasn’t explaining it very well, but it was for the best. Will didn’t need to know the details. But there were some things he deserved to know.

  “If they find me here…if they found out what you know
…”

  “What would they do, try to turn me into one of them?” Will asked. He thought it was a joke, and his eyes looked interested rather than afraid.

  “The life of a vampire is not what the books make it look like. You wouldn’t want to be turned.”

  “It sounds pretty great to me,” Will laughed.

  Leaning in so his warm breath tickled my cold face, I whispered, “It sucks. You’d hate it.”

  “Sucks,” he giggled. “Or…or bites!”

  I grinned as he amused himself. I couldn’t tell if he was making jokes because he was nervous, or if his earlier concern about me possibly killing him was completely gone. Either way, it was nice to see him laugh.

  Eventually, he asked, “But why does it suck?”

  “Okay, let’s see if I can explain.” Exactly what is my deepest problem with being a vampire? “All right, how about this? What are your favorite things? Little things, I mean, like the parts of your life that make it worth living.”

  “Wow…that’s heavy.”

  I laughed, and it surprised me. I didn’t know I could do that.

  “You’re having a discussion about life with a dead, fictional creature. Yes, it’s heavy.”

  Will laughed for a few seconds and then shrugged, “I’m not sure how to answer the question. You mean, like food and stuff?”

  I shook my head. He didn’t get it, and I didn’t think I knew how to explain. Maybe humans didn’t appreciate the minor parts of life until they were gone. I wasn’t even sure I knew fully why my memories meant so much to me. I just knew they did.

  But I still wanted him to understand my point.

  “Okay, I’ll try to explain it. After a long day of work and school, when nothing’s gone right and all you want to do is something that makes you feel better, what do you do?”

  “Well—” Will looked away from me and drew in his brows. “I go over to Spencer and Julia’s, swipe beer from their fridge, watch reruns on their TV, and take a nap on their couch. No visitors, no cell phone, no computer. I just…relax.”

  “Okay,” I nodded my approval. “As a vampire, you wouldn’t be allowed to know your friends anymore. You wouldn’t even remember them. Beer, TV, relaxing? They don’t exist in our world.”

  Will tilted his head to one side and I watched the expression on his face change as he considered what life would be like without the things he enjoyed. I suspected the idea of never seeing his friends again was the part that made him understand.

  “No,” he said, conviction on his face. “I wouldn’t want to be turned into a vampire.”

  “In my world, you aren’t given a choice.”

  “In your world?” Will asked, looking at me again, ignoring the truth in what I’d let slip. “You know there’s only one world.”

  “Technically…” I began, but felt something tug on my insides. It wasn’t like the mindless pull that led me to the annoying boy in the kitchen. It was clearer. I understood what I needed to do, and obeyed the pull immediately.

  I got off the bed and walked out the door without another word to Will, without even looking back at him.

  If what I felt meant what I thought, he should stay in the safety of his apartment.

  I should have said the words, told him not to follow, but I was too focused and fascinated about the certainty of what I was feeling.

  Someone was calling for me.