“Why are you running away, sweetheart? A beautiful girl hits on a guy like that, and then just takes off?” He leered at me and reached out and squeezed my upper arm.
“I didn’t hit on you, idiot. I bumped into you by accident.” I looked down at his hand squeezing my upper arm, and then back up at him. “Let me go,” I said coldly.
“I don’t want to,” he said, breathing heavily. He leaned forward, bending over me, and tried to lick my ear. I felt the tip of his tongue graze my cheek as I yanked away from him. He still had a tight grip on my arm though and he began pulling me around the corner, off onto a side street. I didn’t know what time it was, but it was late enough for there not to be a whole lot of cars to try and scream at for help. I kept trying to yank away, but that just seemed to excite him more. I punched him a few times with my free hand and clawed his cheek once, but he just smiled at me and then punched me incredibly hard in the jaw. I fell down and blacked out momentarily. I came to shortly after and felt him dragging me down the sidewalk of the street he’d pulled me onto. We stopped, and I felt him begin trying to yank my pants down.
At that moment I remembered a defensive move that my dad had taught me. I curled my hand into a fist, stuck the knuckles of my first two fingers out a little further than the others, and then opened one eye slightly to see where the bastard’s head was. He was kind of too high up to do anything, since he was still struggling with my pants, so I had to wait a few agonizing moments and let him get them down past my hips, where he wanted them. When I felt him lean forward, to move my shirt up, I opened my eyes wide and struck out with everything I had, punching him directly in the ear. He screamed loudly, and fell backwards off of me. I jumped up quickly and pulled my pants up, then kicked him as hard as I could in the head.
He fell over hard, and I heard him begin to whimper. I hadn’t knocked him out yet. I walked up to him, and kicked him one more time in the face, shattering his nose, ending his stupid whining. I kneeled down next to him and lifted his head up, then slammed it back down on the sidewalk. I repeated this a few more times, until I felt his head crack open like a coconut. I rolled him over onto his stomach, and then started to pry his skull open the rest of the way with my fingers. I wanted to get to his brain first, and then I could eat the rest later.
The first bite I ate slowly, letting the flavor sit on my tongue. I closed my eyes and smiled blissfully. I had never known something could taste so incredible, or that something could make me feel so amazing. Each bite afterwards was exactly the same. I devoured his brain within minutes. It was…intense.
I was licking my fingers, smiling to myself, preparing to eat the rest and then maybe dispose of the body, if I didn’t just eat away all of the evidence, when I heard a noise behind me. I turned quickly in the direction it had come from and saw Kirk staring at me quietly. He had no expression on his face.
I stared back, equally quiet, one of my fingers still in my mouth.
“Am I too late?” Kirk asked, breaking the silence.
“Too late for what?” I said awkwardly, still sucking on my finger. I quickly plucked it out of my mouth and placed my hand on my lap.
He pointed towards the corpse and lifted his eyebrows questioningly. “Your condition has progressed. Fast.”
I looked back down at the man who had assaulted me. I stared at the back of his head, and the now gaping hole where his brain used to be. I looked back over at Kirk and said, “He tried to rape me. I was protecting myself.”
He looked surprised at this and said, “I’m sorry Audrey.” He came over and kneeled beside me. “I just assumed you had attacked out of hunger.”
“Well, I was hungry.” I smiled at him. “You smell different than the rest of them. Not in a good way though.” I crinkled my nose in distaste and he laughed.
“I’ll consider myself lucky.” He looked down at the corpse again and then back at me and a look of concern crossed his face. “We really need to get you out of here. Let me take care of this though,” he said, indicating the body.
“What?” I asked, feeling panicked all of a sudden. “No! He’s mine!” I leaned forward and grabbed the corpse’s shoulders, and pulled him up into an awkward embrace. “I’m still hungry,” I pouted.
“Audrey,” he said quietly. He gently pried my arms away from the corpse, and I couldn’t do anything about it. He was a lot stronger than I was. I let out a frustrated growl and went to reach for it again, but he took my face in his hands and said, “I know how it feels to be that hungry. But you don’t want this. Trust me. What if it had been your dad? Or Bruce? Audrey, you killed someone.”
I looked down at the corpse again and stared at it for a good thirty seconds, thinking hard about what Kirk had said. I tried not to see it as food. I looked back up at him, shrugged, and said, “I don’t care.”
His eyes widened in shock, and then he hugged me tightly, kicking the corpse aside. Suddenly we were flying through the streets, so fast that I couldn’t see where we were going. And I was afraid to let go because I would probably slam into a building or something. All I could do was squeeze my eyes shut and hope he knew where he was going.
After a minute or so of Kirk’s super speed, we came to an abrupt stop. I waited a beat and then slowly opened one eye, peeking out at our surroundings. We were in front of an older house, with a big front porch. It looked a little run down, and it had a neon sign in the window that read “Psychic”. It was currently shut off.
“Is this where you live?” I asked curiously. In all the time I’d known Kirk, I had never been to his house.
“Actually, I’m in the basement.”
“They have those here?” I asked wonderingly.
He smiled slightly and said, “Some older houses do, yeah. This one was a bomb shelter, converted into an apartment by the owner.” He looked at me with a worried expression and said, “Are you okay to walk?”
“Huh? Oh…” I hadn’t thought to try yet. After my encounter with that bastard and then being dragged at top speed…but I felt okay actually. I took a step forward and seemed to be all right, and gave him two thumbs up.
“Alright then, let’s go.” He took one of my hands and led me around behind the house to a set of stairs leading down to a solid steel door.
“Ooh, Kirk’s lair!” I giggled a little then covered my mouth when Kirk looked at me oddly. “Sorry,” I said, giving him a guilty smile.
We went down the stairs and then he unlocked the door, and led me into his apartment. I stopped short in the doorway and waited for him to turn on the lights. It was pitch black and I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.
“Sorry about that,” he said, fumbling around past some heavy-sounding objects. “I don’t really need them on, so I just keep them off for the most part. It saves on electricity.” I saw him smiling at me sheepishly as they flickered on.
“Wow,” I said as I looked around.
All of the walls were lined with bookshelves. There was not one clear space. The room itself was immaculate, but every possible place where you could have a bookshelf, there was one.
“And I thought I liked to read.” I turned around and looked at everything with my mouth hanging open stupidly. “I am so envious right now.”
“Thanks. But this is all built up over time and everything…” He drifted off into thought and began staring at me, then seemed to realize what he was doing and started looking around his room again, as if suddenly seeing it from a new perspective. “Yeah, there are a lot, huh?” He gave a short laugh and glanced around at the books a few more times, but then eventually began staring at me again. Finally, he seemed to come to some sort of decision, and he said, “Audrey, I really care about you.”
This brought me out of my momentary shock, and I turned to him and smiled. I was so happy to hear him say that. “I care about you too, Kirk. A lot, actually. I know right now I’m kind of messed up, but I still know that I’ve had feelings for you a lot longer than I even realized-”
He cut me off abruptly in one swift movement. One moment he was standing over near one of his massive bookshelves, the next moment he had me pinned in his arms and he was biting into my neck, draining me of what felt like everything I had. I could feel my knees buckling, and he let me fall gently, but he came down with me, lying on top of me, still drinking. I felt one of his hands on my lower back, and I could feel his fingers gripping me tightly. Soon I began to fade out, and then I felt him shaking me, telling me to drink.
Whatever he gave me, which I realized afterwards was obviously his blood, it tasted almost as good as the brain I had eaten earlier. Almost, but not quite. I drank until I heard him cry out, and then he pushed me away roughly. I felt dazed, and then I felt him lifting me up, and then setting me down gently onto his bed. He crawled in next to me and I fell asleep instantly.
__
I woke up in stages. First, I just lay there, not quite knowing if I was still sleeping or if I was really awake yet. I felt like I was floating, so I figured I must have still been sleeping. Then I really did begin to doze again. After what felt like only a short period of time, I came around again, and I moved on the bed and turned onto my back. I kept my eyes squeezed shut because there were lights on, and they were really bright. I felt something next to me, and then gradually opened my eyes and saw Kirk. “Oh!” I said, quickly realizing that I had slept with a boy. This was major. Not like we had had sex or anything, but still. And hadn’t he bitten me too? I reached up and felt my neck, but everything seemed to feel normal.
I glanced back over at him, and saw that he was still sleeping. He hadn’t been disturbed by my movement. I shifted upward onto my elbow and looked down at him. He actually looked…kind of funny. Normally he was all dark-haired and pale, with sharp features and whatnot… Wow, he was attractive. But that wasn’t the point. Now, he seemed to have sort of a, well…a greenish pallor to him.
I reached out and shook his shoulder a little, and said, “Kirk?” I got no response though.
I whipped around quickly in the other direction when I suddenly heard a sharp ringing. It sounded like it was coming from over near the door. I got up slowly and walked around the room, trying to see where it was exactly. I was pretty sure it was his cell phone. After a minute of looking though, it stopped. I waited briefly and then heard it start up again. It was coming from a small desk near his front door. I went over to it, removed several stacks of paper off of it, and answered it quickly when I saw that it was my cell phone number on the caller I.D. “Hello?”
“Audrey?!”
“Bruce!” I was seriously relieved to hear his voice, because that meant he wasn’t dead. Then I thought about the situation for a second and said, “Why do you have my phone?” I looked around blankly, searching for where my belongings were. I realized suddenly I didn’t have anything with me, not even my keys anymore. And then it dawned on me that I had left my phone at home, in my rush to leave and not kill Phantom.
“Audrey where are you? We have been looking everywhere! Your dad is flipping out.”
I could hear my dad in the background, grumbling something in response to that.
“He wants to know if you’re okay. And where are you?”
“Oh my gosh, I am so glad you guys are okay!” I let myself feel relieved, before allowing any fear to settle in at having to explain that I had slept at Kirk’s, in his bed…with him. I was just so happy to hear the two of them.
“Of course we’re okay! Are you?”
“Yes! I’m definitely okay!” I figured the fact that I was no longer turning into a zombie qualified as a positive response to that question. “But where have you guys been? I drove around everywhere looking for you guys!”
“Oh, that. We went chasing after Besnik when he woke up from that spell, and let me tell you, he was fast for a little old dwarf.” My dad said something indecipherable in the background. “Okay sorry, he’s not a dwarf, but he’s just so tiny! Anyway, we lost him up in the Angeles Forest somewhere, and we headed back home where we thought we left you safely with Agnes, but you two were gone! So that brings me to now. And the fact that you aren’t answering my question. You’re making me crazy here doll. What is happening with you??”
“I’m okay, I’m okay! I got kind of…confused. And some things happened I guess-”
“What things?” My dad asked. I was on speaker now.
“I’ll explain everything when you get here, I promise.”
“Well where is ‘here’?”
“Oh! Right, sorry. I umm…sort of had to crash at Kirk’s last night?” I laughed nervously.
There was silence on the other end. Then my dad said angrily, “Address.”
“Oh right, let me just, go wake up Kirk.” Again, total silence on the other end of the line. I could picture Bruce in my mind looking back and forth between my dad and the phone, trying hard not to make any comments.
I kneeled next to Kirk on the bed again and shook him gently. “Kirk? Are you awake yet? I sort of need to know where I am.”
I waited a few seconds, but he wasn’t budging. He was totally out. And considering the whole vampire thing with the weird ‘not breathing’ aspect (which I guess would now apply to me as well) it was hard to tell what was going on with him.
“Well…crap.” I put the phone back up to my ear and said, “Let me go outside to check. I’ll just look at the front of the house and then look at the street sign.”
“Okay Aud. We’re pulled over.”
I went to the door and started unlatching it. There were a few weird locks, and I didn’t remember Kirk taking this long to unlock the door when we were getting in here. Finally I managed to get them open and I turned the knob and pulled the door open. I started walking outside, when I suddenly felt myself being yanked back into the apartment, and the door was being closed again.
“Audrey what are you doing?” Kirk had slammed himself up against the door and was staring at me as if I were insane.
“I was trying to go outside to get the address! You were like, dead asleep! I couldn’t wake you. And you know you really don’t look too good.”
He definitely had a greenish tint to him. And he almost seemed like he was on the verge of throwing up.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, clenching his jaw. “Why do you need the address?”
I wiggled the phone at him and said, “My dad and Bruce are trying to come and get me. They called your cell.”
“Oh…” His brow furrowed in worry and he looked around his apartment, then back at me. “The address is 627 Lindley Ave. But tell them to come around to my door, not the front door.” He was whispering now, since he suddenly realized they were on the phone listening.
I lifted an eyebrow at him skeptically and said, “Sure, whatever you say,” and then gave the information to them.
I set his cell phone back on his desk, and then said, “Okay, what all is going on? I feel way better than I have in days, and you look horrible. Did you actually change me? Or just fix me or something? I don’t really feel vampire-y.”
“First off, that’s not a word.”
“Ha ha,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.
“Second, you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be a vampire yet, because you’ve never been one before. But you’ve already been turning into something sort of supernatural, so this probably isn’t too much of a shock to your system. But trust me, you’ll notice things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you won’t be too fond of the sun, for instance.”
“Ahh, right. Hence you yanking me back in.”
“Exactly.” He forced himself to smile, but he looked even worse when he did.
“Maybe you should lie back down.”
“Yeah, I think that’s probably a good idea. I need to eat, also. I think your blood is doing this to me. It infected me or something.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. “That’s awesome!”
He gave me a somewhat stony look and I immediately
apologized. “That just slipped out. I- I didn’t mean I was happy you’re sick or anything.”
“I know,” he said, and took my hand, squeezing it gently. “I just feel like crap.”
“But you know I felt fine when I started walking outside.”
“Was the sun directly on you?”
“I don’t know. What happens to you if you’re directly in the sun?”
“You burn.”
“Oh.”
“If you get hurt Audrey, I will be really angry that I got sick for nothing.” He pulled me down to sit next to him on the bed.
“I think I should try and go outside though, just to see. I mean, it felt fine, having the sun on me. I didn’t feel like I was going to burst into flames or anything.”
He laughed. “I didn’t say you would burst into flames. I said you would burn. Big difference. It’s a long painful process, nothing quick like exploding. Either way, it can kill you. But still, big difference.”
He laid his head all the way back on the pillow, and stared up at me. After a moment he reached toward me and started playing with a strand of my hair. “You really are beautiful, Audrey.”
I turned away, feeling a blush coming on, but I didn’t actually feel myself blushing. I turned back to him, surprised, and touched my cheek, expecting to feel warmth. “Hey! I’m not blushing!”
He laughed and then tapped me on the nose, and leaned up to kiss the cheek I wasn’t holding. Then he kissed me lightly on the lips. “Nope, no blushing.” We smiled at each other, and then he sort of flopped back down on the pillow again and I felt awful that I couldn’t do anything.
I was about to ask if I could bring him someone to eat, when there was a knock on the door. “They’re here!” I said happily. Then I suddenly felt incredibly scared and nervous. “Maybe you should cover up with the blanket. Look really sick and everything.”
“Because without the blanket I look like I’m ready to run a marathon?”
“You know what I mean!” I ran over to the door and opened it for them to come inside. I realized Kirk and I hadn’t even discussed what we were going to tell my dad. My level of fear shot up another notch.
Who is Audrey Wickersham? Page 13