“And buy a new outfit everyday?” Jack sneered. He had finally crouched down so he could give Matilda the attention she was dying for, and I leaned back against the counter. “That doesn’t really seem practical.”
“Exactly! Vampires aren’t supposed to be practical! You’re supernatural beings with magical powers! You don’t do laundry or play video games! You jump off cliffs and have sex with really attractive women!”
“I get it,” Jack laughed. “I had this preconceived notion about what a vampire should be, but it was all based on glamorized Hollywood ideals. Nothing could be sexy and cool all the time, especially not something that’s immortal.
Do you know how exhausting and expensive it would be to wear designer gowns and crowned jewels everyday for six hundred years? And what would be the point? Who would I be trying to impress? I’m a damn vampire! I’m not gonna put on black eyeliner and grow my hair long just so some stupid humans think I’m sexy. They think I am anyway.” He winked exaggeratedly at me, so I laughed and started walking away.
“Where are these alleged millions of movies anyway?” I headed towards the living room, even though I hadn’t seen a single movie in there. I assumed they were hidden away in some magic closet, because it seemed like the kind of house with hidden doorways.
“Most of them are in my room, actually.” He stopped me at the stairs and nodded up to his room. “This might come as a surprise to you, but I’m the movie buff in the family. Well, Mae is a little bit, but she only likes things with Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant.” He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, she really does act like she’s eighty-years-old.”
“I heard that!” Mae was walking towards us with a laundry basket overflowing with clothes, and she thrust them at Jack. “These are yours, by the way. You had a pair of tan Dickies that were covered in blood and I couldn’t get it out.”
“Oh, that must be from when I went to the club.” He started looking through the basket of clothes casually, but my eyes widened. It was one thing to know that he drank blood. It was a different thing entirely to know that his clothes had been ruined because he had drinking blood from a human being.
“Sometimes Jack goes down to the vampire club on Hennepin Ave.” Mae had noticed the shocked look on my face, so naturally, she reached out and pushed my hair back. “A lot of the girls down there are donors, but the ones that aren’t don’t mind. But sometimes when you hit an artery, things can get a little messy.”
“But if you hit an artery, don’t they die?” I must’ve continued looking freaked out, because Jack started getting frustrated. He shifted the basket to his other arm and shook his head.
“Our saliva has chemicals in it. Like mosquitoes and vampire bats have anesthetic in theirs. We have that, plus more to make the wound heal insanely fast. The marks are usually completely gone within an hour or two of the bite.”
He grew bored with the conversation, so he turned and started jogging up the stairs. “Come on, Alice, if you want a say in what we watch.”
“I’d go with him, or he’s liable to make you watch The Lost Boys,” Mae warned me.
“Hey, it’s a good movie!” Jack shouted, and I was inclined to agree. Just the same, I’d rather watch something a little less blood sucking. The whole point of the night was to not think about all the weird stuff going on.
I hurried up the stairs after him and fought the urge to go into Peter’s room. Even standing in the hall, I could smell that tangy, sweet aroma that Peter left behind, but I quickly pushed it out of mind before my heart would beat all funny and Jack would freak out on me. In order for this friendship to continue, I could not think about Peter.
“I’m just gonna put these away real quick,” Jack informed me when I came into his room. “I wouldn’t want my vampire image to be spoiled by wrinkled clothes.”
The door was open to his massive walk-in closet, and he had started hanging up some of his tee shirts. I walked over to peer inside, and I wasn’t surprised to find that his wardrobe consisted almost entirely of tee shirts, Dickies, and various shades of Converse.
“You have a billion dollars, and you have the wardrobe of a twelve-year old.”
“Yeah, well, I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old too, so-” He stuck his tongue out at me and then went back to hanging up his clothes.
“You showed me.” I rolled my eyes and went over to flop down on his over-stuffed bed. Naturally, it was completely unmade, but it had to be the most comfortable thing I had ever laid on. The sheets were probably Egyptian with a ten million thread count. Not that I knew what any of that meant, but I know it made things more comfortable for some reason. My sheets came from Target, though, and I slept just fine on them. “Oh my god! This bed is like a cloud!”
“I’m glad you like it.” He had finished hanging things up and flicked off the light in his closet before walking out into his room. “I would’ve made it if I’d known you’d be rolling around in it.”
“I’m not rolling around,” I muttered, but I sat up so I wouldn’t be tempted to.
Then I looked around his room. There were a few posters on his dark blue walls (one of which was a tour poster from the Cure playing at First Ave on July
12, 1984, and I wondered if he had actually been there). Underneath his massive flat screen TV, there was lots of gaming equipment strewn about a slick black entertainment center, but I didn’t see any movies.
“So did you just make up the stuff about the movies?”
“Oh, no, check this out.” Jack picked up a remote control off the entertainment center and hit a button. The entire wall to the left of the TV slid back, like a pocket door, and revealed a gigantic shelving unit overflowing with DVD’s. “That’s cool, right? This was Mae’s idea, because she said having all the movies out in the open was ‘tacky.’”
“But Peter has tons of books out in his room,” I said.
“Right?” Jack shook his head and walked over to inspect his movie collection. “Book are ‘sophisticated.’ Its what I get for living with people who were born before television. They just don’t understand this modern age.”
“Yeah, you have a rough life,” I mocked.
“Hey, my favorite pair of shorts just got thrown away!” He looked back at me, pretending to be heartbroken. “It’s been a pretty sad day all around.”
“About that…” I wanted to segue into asking him more questions about the club, even though I had already decided that I didn’t want to. He tensed up, but it was because he was afraid that I’d call him a monster or something.
“I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jack explained quickly.
“Most vampires don’t kill people. It would make eating impossible. Even if you take a metropolitan area like the Cities, where there’s a collective population of over 3 million people, about a thousand of that is vampires. But if we killed every time we ate, the population of vampires in Minneapolis alone would kill at least a thousand people a week. We’d eat ourselves into starvation in less than a decade.”
“I didn’t think you’d killed her, but that’s good to know.” A shiver ran down my spine anyway. In order for a thousand vampires to eat, a thousand people had to be bitten each week. Even if some of them lived on blood banks, the way Jack and Mae mostly did, that was still impossible to fathom. “How could all those people be bitten? Why aren’t they talking about it?”
“Very few know they’re bitten.” He was obviously uncomfortable talking about this, but he went on. “We don’t go around blood raping them or anything.
They just think they’re on dates. Lots of vampires — not me — but lots have
‘girlfriends’ or ‘boyfriends,’ but really, it’s like… having a cow, so you don’t have to buy milk.”
“Oh my god!” I gasped, and instantly thought of Jane. She went home with all sorts of guys, and most of them were really attractive and kind of creepy.
She could easily have been a vampires cow, more than once. “But how do they not know
?”
“Well, they just think…” He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “They just think that they’re with really good lovers. I mean, it feels really good. So if you incorporate it with sex, especially with drunk or high people, they have no clue.
And it doesn’t really hurt them. It’s not any worse then donating blood. You’re a little weak and woozy, but otherwise okay.”
“So that girl that you bit…” For some reason, I started feeling incredibly jealous. Just knowing that he was with a girl, that he’d fed on someone (which was both disgusting and scintillating) made my stomach twist. “Did you have sex with her?”
“No,” Jack said, but he turned away from me and looked ashamed. My heart sped up anxiously, and he tilted his head slightly, so I knew he heard it.
“But we did… stuff. The stuff doesn’t matter, though. I know guys say that, but for us it’s really true. It was just a way to get what I wanted.”
“Because for you, it’s not the sex. It’s the blood that’s intimate and… sexual.” When I said that, he realized he’d actually made things worse and grimaced. “So what’s it like?”
“It’s like drinking blood.” Rubbing his eyes, I could feel how nervous this made him. He wasn’t sure what I was getting at and just thinking about drinking her blood made him thirsty. On top of that, he could hear the quickening of my pulse. He was putting himself on thin ice, but I refused to let go. “It’s hard to explain. You’ll understand when you’re a vampire.”
“What is it like for her then? What’s it like for a human to be bitten?” I moved so I was sitting on my knees, tilting more towards him, and he was acutely aware of the heat resonating from my body. His hunger filled the room like a fog, permeating through me.
“I don’t know.” Swallowing hard, he glanced over at me, then almost instantly looked away.
“Did she enjoy it?”
The thought of her, some faceless girl, being with Jack and feeling any kind of pleasure sent a stabbing pain within me. Maybe that’s why I did what I was doing. I wanted to know, in some twisted way, but I also didn’t think it was fair that I was the only one feeling jealous and hurt.
“Yeah. I mean, I guess she did. I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his sandy hair and gave me a pained look. “What do you wanna know? What are you trying to find out?”
“What would I feel?” My voice had gone low and soft, sounding strangely seductive, especially for me. I don’t know if I’d done it on purpose really, or if it was just that I could feel everything that Jack felt, and it was playing with my mind. “If you bit me right now. Would it hurt?”
“For a second.” Licking his lips, he kept his eyes locked on me, and his breathing got heavier. “But then there’s the most wonderful sensation you’ve ever felt. It radiates from the bite like a warm heat and your heart speeds up so fast, it should hurt, but it doesn’t. Your senses go into a frenzy, but it all feels amazing…” He trailed off and swallowed hard.
“What would you feel?” I asked softly, and the corner of his mouth turned up just slightly.
“It’s like that, only better. We feel everything at such a heightened sense, it’s pure ecstasy. Nothing else can even compare.”
His eyes touched on the hunger that I had seen in Peter’s eyes when he wanted to bite me, and I knew thinking about Peter was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. Jack had a sharp intake of breath, and I knew he noticed the changes, the way my pulse got louder and faster, and some special scent that was supposed to drive him wild.
I’d been biting my lip, trying to control my own feelings of desire, and then I felt a sharp pain in my bottom lip. Honestly, I can’t say whether or not I did it on purpose, but Jack noticed instantly. His pupils dilated and he exhaled shakily. Unintentionally (or maybe intentionally), I had bitten my lip hard enough to draw blood. It wasn’t very much, but any amount would be enough to send Jack over the edge at this point.
He rushed towards me so quickly I didn’t see him move. His face just suddenly appeared directly in front of mine, his blue eyes staring straight into me. They were completely ravenous, but there was something more behind them then lust. There was a burning agony that came from his poorly repressed affection for me.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he murmured in a voice so slow I could barely hear it over the pounding of blood in my ears. Defiantly and provocatively, I raised my chin in the air, revealing the smooth skin of my throat.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I was tempting him brutally, even though I knew that it could only lead to our demise. With his insatiable need filling me, it still seemed entirely worth it.
Closing his eyes, he leaned forward and very tenderly, he licked the fresh blood off my skin. Then he wrapped his mouth around my lip, drinking as much of my blood as he could, and he moaned softly. As soon as his lips touched mine, I fell into a state of delirium. A wonderful weakness spread through me, and I arched my back. An intense quivering started in my heart but radiated out all over me, so my whole body shuddered.
When he kissed me fully on the mouth, I thought I would explode. I could taste my blood on his tongue and the intense excitement that went along with it. His mouth felt hungry and needy, but there was nothing forceful or rough about it. His muscles trembled with restraint. I knew the things he wanted to do me, the things that I would gladly let him do, and I could feel how hard he had to fight that off.
Carefully, he pushed me back onto the bed, his lips never leaving mine, and he pressed me into the soft mattress. His body laid on me, and I felt his heart pound against mine. Burying my fingers in his hair, I tried to pull him to me. No matter how close he got, I knew he’d never be close enough. I wanted him underneath my skin, and when I breathed in deeply, I smelled that tangy perfect scent I associated with Peter.
I slid my hands under his shirt, desperate to feel as much of him as I could. To my surprise, his normal temperate skin burned hot under my fingers.
It felt amazing, so I dug my fingers into his flesh, and he moaned against my mouth. His hands found their way under my shirt, smoldering against the trembling skin of my belly.
He finally managed to pull his lips from mouth, and they traveled down to the perfectly exposed skin of my throat. When he pressed his lips against my veins, just feeling the pulse against his skin, I was almost writhing with pleasure.
There was a hunger so strong it was painful. I thrust my body against his, begging him to drink, and then suddenly, he growled and sprang from my arms.
“What?” I wailed, sitting back up on my knees. He was standing on the other side of the room, panting heavily and shaking horribly.
“He’s going to kill you.” Jack let out an unsteady breath, and his eyes were wild with passion. “I want to so bad, but he would kill you.”
“So?” It was hard to breathe, let alone speak, and I barely managed. “It would be worth it. I want you to, and I don’t care what the cost.”
“Yeah?” He looked unsure, then nodded. “Yeah. Me neither.”
I was at the edge of the bed, and he ran back over to me, wrapping his arms so tightly around me that I couldn’t breathe. Oxygen didn’t feel much like a necessity anymore. All that mattered was the way his lips felt pressed against mine. He kissed me so hard that my lip sprung fresh blood, and he moaned desperately. My fingers dug into his hair and I waited for him to bite me.
“You’re going to get yourselves killed!” Mae hissed, and I whipped my head over to see her standing in the doorway, glaring nervously at us. Jack had stopped kissing me, but I was reluctant to untangle myself from his arms.
“We didn’t do anything.” Jack still had his eyes on me and his voice was husky, so I knew he was still locked in a trance from the bloodlust.
“Yet,” Mae glowered.
“Yet,” Jack agreed, and brazenly, he kissed my throat again, right where my pulse still pounded heavily. My body slacked in his arms, but Mae rushed over, smacking Jack hard in the arm before he could do anything.
>
“Jack Allen Townsend!” Mae howled.
“Okay, okay!” He took a step back from me, causing me to collapse backwards on the bed, and held up his hands defensively, but Mae swatted him again. “You can stop now! I’m done!”
“You better be!” Mae obviously didn’t trust him because she stood directly in front of me, blocking his path to me. “You’re going to get her killed! Is that what you want?’
“You know that’s not what I want,” Jack groaned, but a guilty expression passed across his face. The heat of the moment was rapidly dissipating, and the realization of what he had almost done to me, to us, was taking over him.
“Then what the hell did you think you were doing?” Mae demanded. He scratched his temple and sighed.
“Being a vampire?” He kept his tone sarcastic, but I could feel how afraid he really was.
“You are such an idiot!” Mae turned away from him to inspect me for bite marks. When she saw the blood on my lips, she gasped and turned back to him.
“Did you do that to her? You drew blood?”
“No!” Jack insisted, his eyes wide. “She did that! She bit her lip!”
“Why would you do that?” Mae whirled on me, and I’d finally regained enough strength to sit up. “Do you have any idea what that does to him? He can barely control himself around any blood, and yours is even worse. Do you both have a death wish?”
“It was an accident,” I mumbled.
“You need to shower and use a lot of mouth wash.” Mae held her hand to her face, looking distressed but sounding matter-of-fact. “If he even hints at smelling Jack on your blood…” Her eyes welled with frightened tears, and she shook her head. Then she pointed to the bedroom door and snapped, “Go! Right now! Go downstairs and use my shower! The longer it sets in, the harder it will be to get out!”
“Sorry.” I scrambled out of Jack’s bed, which was easier said then done since my ankle had become tangled in a mass of blankets. “Sorry.” As I stumbled down the stairs, I heard Mae yelling at him.
“How can you be so careless with her life? With your own?” Mae admonished him. “She’s only a girl, Jack! What were you thinking?”
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