The car chirps as he hits the unlocking button on his key fob, and I let myself in, securing my seatbelt and fidgeting with the air vents as I avoid looking at him. He stays silent until we’re on the road, then drives down a quiet street with no houses, just an old park surrounded by chain link fencing.
“How are you feeling?” he finally begins, catching me off guard.
“Pretty shitty, thanks for asking.” I flip down the visor and glance in the mirror at my face. I’m pale but still me. “Why do you ask? And why are we driving down what can only be described as the location for filming every serial killer movie ever?”
“Well, vampire attacks like the one you suffered only end one of two ways, and you’re not dead, so I was curious how being a vampire is treating you.”
Fuck me. “Wait,” I stammer, then glare at him across the center console, my white-knuckled grip on the strap of my seatbelt loosening in my shock. “You . . . know?”
He nods, and I adjust my position until my upper body faces him, my stare serious.
“Like you know know? As in know.”
“How many more times are you going to say know like that?”
“You fucking jerk. You knew?” I shake my head. “You know? About vampires and all this shit being real, and you never told me?”
He blanches, obviously not expecting me to react with anger at his revelation. “What could I possibly have said? ‘Hey, I know vampires exist.’ You’d have told me to grow up. I kept thinking you’d come to me, talk to me, but after Arsen’s visit today, I figured one of us had to break the silence.”
Without thinking, I punch him in the arm, shoving him into the door hard enough to shake the whole car. “What the hell could I have said? I figured you’d have me committed.” I struggle with my seatbelt to undo it. The car is closed in and suffocating, and all I can think of is getting out and pacing off the confusion clouding my head. “Stop the car! Let me out! I need some air.
Jackson pulls over and joins me after I scramble from the car, leaning against the side door. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. I think I’m in shock. It’s a giant relief to not have to keep this from you. I don’t have to watch what I say and I’m not afraid to tell you anything else.” I huff out an impatient breath at myself. “I feel terrible, I’m anemic, and I refuse . . . refuse to bite a human being and drink their blood like an overgrown mosquito.”
“You haven’t bitten anyone?”
“Not a person. Not on purpose. I guess the vampire who attacked me gave me some of his blood when I was unconscious, and that’s why I’m like this.” I kick the tire and pout at him. “I need real blood, and I’m afraid if I get too weak, those assholes will get exactly what they want from me.”
Jackson flashes me an all-too-rare grin and hugs me for the first time in forever. “Then let’s make sure they don’t, okay?”
“What do you mean?” I relax into his arms, wondering why I could never just have it easy and want him the way I want Arsen. He tips my head back and bumps my forehead with his, like he used to when we fought and made up as kids.
“I mean, you need someone on your side, right? So you and I need to stick together.”
“Yeah, that would be great. I’m just glad we’re on the same side, and I don’t have to hide anything from you.”
He flinches when I say it, but I can’t blame him. I’m a vampire now, even if I’m attempting to stay domesticated.
He pulls back, ruffling at my hair, completely fucking it up. “Well now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to class, slacker. You’ve got to finish that project.”
I laugh. “Listen, it’s not like I planned to be attacked by a vampire and miss so much school.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just because you’ve got all the time in the world now doesn’t mean I’m going to let you drop out of school and give up your dreams.” He starts the engine and heads toward campus.
I smile at him when he flips on the radio and we sing off-key to one of the popular pop songs. He’s right. I do have all the time in the world. I’m immortal now. But there are others who don’t have as much time as I do.
And it’s up to me to find the cure for them.
Chapter 3
I race down the steps from my sociology professor’s office straight to the lab on campus where Jackson and I plan to meet and grab dinner before working on my project. I round the corner and see Jackson talking with a group of friends.
“Hurry up, slack-ass, I thought you said you were going to help me.” His arm appears in the air, his middle finger extended, and I laugh at him, giving it right back. He does the man side-hug thing with the guys and waves goodbye before jogging over to me where I wait at the entrance to the lab.
“I told you I’d meet you in twenty, loser. It’s only been ten.” He laughs.
“I know, but I saw an opportunity to mock you in front of your friends. How could I pass that up?” I grin and pull the door open to the convertible Nikolai has given me to drive. “We’re getting dinner first because I owe you one for helping me finish this on time. And I wanted to show off my new car.”
Jackson pulls his jacket tighter around his shoulders and gives me a dirty look. “Where did you even get this thing?” When I raise a brow, he holds up a hand. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Well, we can’t have you working night and day and still failing out of the program, can we?”
I speed away, enjoying the nippy air as my hair flies wild around me. He doesn’t say anything else until I pull up to a stop light. “Seriously, can you please close that? I’m freezing my nuts off over here.”
“I would love to, but my fingers are frozen to the steering wheel.” I laugh when he groans and punch the button to raise the roof and jack up the heat on both of us as well. “Okay, so maybe it was a little chilly to have the top down.” I shrug a shoulder. “I regret nothing.”
He glances at me a couple of times, and I know he’s thinking about saying something. It’s his tell. I wait, watching him out of the corner of my eye as he works out what he wants to say.
“How is it, for you?”
“How is what, Jackson? Spit it out or let it go, my dude. We have food to eat and a genetics project to finish.”
“Ugh, don’t bust my balls. I don’t know how to ask some of this shit out loud without sounding insane. Being cold . . . can you still feel it? Or are you immune now?”
“Yeah. I feel everything. I’m a vampire, not a rock.”
“What about pain?”
I remember the beating I took at Arsen’s hand the night of the challenge, when he kicked my ass and Nikolai’s, and I’d discovered he’d cheated. I wince. “That’s a definite yes. Pain doesn’t care if you’re human or vampire. It’ll still lay you out flat if it’s bad enough.”
He doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the drive to the restaurant, and I let him keep to his thoughts. After all, I’m still processing what it means to be a vampire. And what it means now that I can talk to someone about it. Albeit a human, I’ll take what I can get. I can’t expect him to stay chill with it and not have questions or fears.
We order wine and deep-fried cheesy goodness for me, the special and a beer for Jackson, and we split an appetizer of loaded potato skins. “Okay,” he pipes up again as I scoop the fallen bacon back into my crunchy, greasy, hollowed-out potato half, “why do you eat food?’
I stuff the last bit into my mouth and make him wait until I chew and swallow. “Because it tastes good.” I swipe the last potato without asking him if he wants it. “Also, because I can’t get fat now.” He arches an eyebrow and I grin, wiping sour cream off the corner of my mouth.
“Not only can I eat, I can eat everything I’ve always loved and wouldn’t let myself eat before because my jeans will still fit later.”
“So you’re still Sasha in every other way, except the blood drinking and being harder to kill.”
I hadn’t thought about being harder to kill, but it applies I guess.
I nod. “And never aging.”
“Right,” he agrees, “and never aging.”
I shrug and he knocks back the rest of his beer and orders another. “Are you okay, Jackson?” He fidgets with his silverware and doesn’t answer right away, peeling the label on the bottle and not meeting my eyes until I can’t take it anymore. “Oh, my God! Just ask already. What, do you think I’m going to suddenly attack you if you say the wrong thing?”
He scowls at me. “Fine. What about all the other ones?”
“Other . . . what? Other pairs of shoes? Sack up. What’s the question? Be specific here.”
He makes a stabbing motion with his fork toward me, playfully pretending to be mad at me for goading him. “What about the other vampires? Do you like them?”
The question shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. “Not really. I mean, yeah, some of them. They’re people, some of them are super shitty people, but others are . . .” I think of a good adjective. “Nice isn’t a good word for any vampire, but some are . . . decent, I guess.” I laugh at him and dip one of the little mozzarella sticks into the tomato sauce, enjoying the sharp tang on my tongue. Food is life. Or well, it used to be. Now blood is life? But I’m still glad I can chow down. “It’s weird how you make me think of things I really haven’t thought of yet.” I’d been so busy between the attack, the Provokar challenges to decide which clan I belonged to, my change, and finding the cure, it’s a miracle I still know my own name at this point.
“I’m naturally curious,” he says, and I blow a raspberry at him.
“You’re naturally nosy, you mean.”
“Oh, whatever. Scientists have a thirst for the facts.”
“Mmm-hmm, sure, sure.” We both tuck into our food, commenting on how good it is, and I pretend to stab him back with my own fork as he steals a cheese stick.
The conversation about my newfound vampirism is over and talk switches back to the project and which computer fonts Dr. Lyons hates to see in papers. I’ve never known a scientist to care about what font we use, so long as it’s not handwritten chicken scratch, but Dr. Lyons is a diva. The sparkling wine is tasty, and we laugh as we go through everything. It’s normal. Average. Completely human and it’s something that I’d always taken for granted. Jackson pays for our meal, refusing my cash to cover my half, and I let it go, deciding to get him a gift card to Starbucks or something so he can drink all those espresso shots on his night shifts on the force.
As we get back into the car, this time with Jackson behind the wheel, I lean my head back against the headrest and smile at him. “Thank you for tonight, Jackson.”
He clicks his buckle and pulls away from the curb. “For what?”
“For accepting me with my extra pointy teeth and not letting me forget what it means to be human.”
He grabs my hand in his and squeezes. “I’m with you until hell freezes over. And even then.”
Back at the lab, we get to work. I copy and paste the written report that goes along with my project until it finally resembles coherent thoughts in one Word document. Jackson takes more pictures of the experiment itself, since he’s the better photographer, and formats them in a way that makes sense. I can understand biology and genetics, but Microsoft Word has beaten me into submission more than once. He asks more questions about vampires as we work, and I answer the ones I can. Through it all, as he asks for more details, I realize I don’t even know much about what I am now.
“But they kill people, Sasha. I mean, why do they only come out at night if they aren’t dangerous and up to no good?”
“I’m not dangerous, am I?” I shrug and focus on the paper, sending it to the nearest printing station for the hard copy I’ll turn in. “There’s nothing wrong with being nocturnal. I think it’s just kinda like their cultural norm. God, Jackson, you take the night shift on purpose, and you’re human, so what does that say about you?”
“More bad things happen at night. I want to do the most good.”
“And maybe we, you know, me and the other vampires, just want to stay out of the way.”
“But sunlight has no effect, so why not assimilate into regular society? Why stay on the fringe?”
“How well has that worked in the past when people who defy the norm step into the light? Salem witch trials anyone? How about the Inquisition?” I cluck my tongue. “Never ends well for those who don’t fit into the neat little box society has created for what’s acceptable.”
He works for a minute, but I can see the tension in his shoulders and I know he’s not done. He fills a printer with the photo paper I brought and prints out the images for the project, spreading them out and sorting them chronologically, removing the ones I don’t need. He’s just as meticulous as I am with our course work. If I wasn’t slightly annoyed with his assumptions of what’s right and wrong about being a part of the fangy club, it would make me smile.
“Admit it, Sasha, they hide because they’re hurting people. Aren’t they?”
I don’t have an easy answer for it, and I glare at him over the drafting table. “How many vampire movies have you seen? Wouldn’t you stay away from public scrutiny, if you knew you’d be accused of all that carnage by strangers before they ever bothered to know you? What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“How can you defend vampires, when you’ve seen firsthand what they do? Have you forgotten what it was like, being chased and attacked?”
I shove my laptop to one side and lean toward him. “No, I haven’t forgotten what one deranged vampire did to me. Nor have I forgotten that I’m one of them. Do you even remember that?”
“Look, I’m just worried. I’m a cop, remember? It’s my job to be suspicious.” He hands me the folder of photographs and I count to ten before answering, doing my best to stifle the smart-ass comments I want to make.
“You’ve arrested all sorts of bad guys, right?” He nods, watching me slide each page of my project into clear sleeves the professor told us weren’t necessary. “Do you think all men are bad?”
He snorts and arches an eyebrow. “Most of them.”
“Oh, right, yeah, that’s why you have poker night with ‘the guys’ and go running with a bunch of, oh what are they called? Oh, right, guys, and when I call you and you’re at the Rowdy Robber, you’re with . . . wait for it . . .”
“Guys,” he finishes for me. “Yeah, okay. What’s your point?”
“You’re standing here with me, now, aren’t you?” His mouth makes a round O as my point dawns on him. “The two aren’t synonymous. I’m not a bad guy, Jackson, but I am a vampire.”
“A new vampire.”
I groan aloud and cover my face with my hands. I feel like I just got Jackson back, and now he’s slipping away again. He’s the only friend I can count on to be there for me, and the only way it seems he can do that is if I pretend I was never attacked. “Okay, I’m a new vampire. Who has never bit anyone. A vampire who just wants to ace the fuck out of this project we both worked so hard on.”
“Well, I worked hard on it.” He wipes at his face, a broad smile stretched across it.
“Oh, fuck you.” I laugh, the tension broken for the moment, but our argument still weighing heavy on my mind.
If the man who’s known me my entire life can’t seem to get past my no-longer human status, what does that indicate for my future? Does being a vampire erase all the good things I’ve done? Has it changed me so completely I can’t even see it? Or does Jackson have something else he’s not telling me? Something about what Arsen said earlier flashes in my memory, and suddenly I’m angry. Furious at Nikolai for attacking me. Livid that I fell for Arsen’s charm and despite myself, I miss him. And hurt that not even Jackson, my only mortal contact, can treat me with human decency.
Chapter 4
My fingers squeeze the test tube in my hand and then go lax. The cylinder slips and smashes on the floor, the liquid inside making a puddle the size of my thumbnail. I’m still swearing under my breath as Jackson swoops
in to take the rest of the tray from me before I can do more damage. I glance at my shaking hands, then at the clock. It’s after midnight. We’ve been working for hours, and my hands aren’t steady enough to handle this stuff. I need to feed, and there’s no viable blood in sight.
“Jackson, you know what? I don’t need your help. Just get the hell out. I need to finish. You don’t need to be here. I’ll give you cash for a ride.” I grab my backpack and fish out my wallet, my stomach clenching with equal parts hunger, anger, and desperation to get Jackson away from me before I snack on him.
He pushes my outstretched hand to one side and shakes his head. “What the fuck? I thought we were fine? I didn’t mean to upset you with my questions about vampires, and we’re almost done here. What’s with the sudden mood swing? Did you get a text from that guy or something?”
I can’t tell him that I need blood, not after the argument we just had about me still being pretty much normal, despite being a vampire. It’s my fault he’s here at all, instead of drinking at the Rowdy Robber with his cop friends or chasing skirts. I need school, and a life, and a friend in my corner who doesn’t have an ulterior motive. I can’t lose Jackson over this. I just can’t.
“Just leave. I’m tired and grumpy and you know I can kick your ass, so why argue with me?” I lighten my tone, but my words are still harsh. I set my finished report next to the physical experiment and pretend to check my workspace for anything I forgot to clean up.
The only blood in the mini fridge under my desk is tainted. I take a quick mental inventory, but I haven’t smuggled in any fresh blood bags in days, too focused on my work to think about what would happen if I stayed on campus too long when I’m so hungry.
“Seriously, is everything all right?” Jackson’s concerned face only intensifies my irritation. It’s horrifying to me that his emotions make him feel more like food to me, and I use the thought to stifle my bloodthirst.
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