by M. Leighton
As I was staring down the sullen face of inevitability, a thought occurred to me. It was both promising and troubling. I remembered Bo telling me that the young vampires couldn’t control their venom as well as the older ones. What if he failed to kill me dead? What if Drew accidentally turned me?
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a vampire. I mean, the thought of spending eternity with Bo was euphoric, even if it entailed being trapped inside a traitorous body that was possessed of an unquenchable thirst for blood. But what would I do when Bo found his true mate, the one who was destined to save him? I’d be stuck with that misery forever. Sometimes I wondered if I could make it through lunch without Bo. How could I manage that pain forever?
My rising panic triggered a surge of adrenaline and an insanely frantic need to get away. It was that adrenaline that gave my arms a little extra umph when I pushed against Drew’s chest in a last-ditch effort to regain freedom. It was just enough to force Drew back a tad and dislodge his teeth from my neck, albeit painfully. It felt as though he tore out a big chunk of flesh when he stumbled back.
At first, I think Drew was surprised. Actually, I was, too. I hadn’t really expected to be able to move him at all. Thankfully, I’d caught him off guard.
We stood facing each other for only a fraction of a second, though it felt much longer, as if time had somehow been suspended.
I bolted for the door, but Drew was already grabbing me and hauling me back against his chest. I could see our reflection in the mirror, me facing it and him standing behind me. I saw the hunk of flesh hanging down beneath my ear, flesh he’d torn away when I’d moved. Blood had soaked my sweatshirt on one side and the sheer amount caused me a bit of alarm.
I kept thinking I need to put pressure on that. I need to put pressure on that.
But then I looked up at Drew’s face and my mind instantly and sharply focused on him.
I saw the anger in his expression, something close to blind rage. I saw hunger as well, a hunger that I knew wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d drained me dry.
All other thoughts abandoned me as I watched him bare his teeth and drive them into the other side of my neck. I wanted to struggle, but he held me so tightly, I couldn’t.
I tried to kick back at him, but he didn’t even appear to feel it. I started to scream once, but he only lifted his head and bit down harder in a different spot, eliciting a gasp that pulled my scream right out of the air.
My heart was beating so fast it felt like nothing more than a quick flutter in my chest. It was getting harder and harder to stand in Drew’s arms. I found myself relying less on my legs to support me and more on his vise grip.
An annoying buzz started to ring in my ears, becoming louder and louder as my vision began to swim. I heard noises off in the distance, so far away that they had to be at the neighbor’s house. Strangely, though, they seemed to coincide with things taking place in my room.
In the mirror, I saw Bo literally jump through the window behind us. I felt like smiling, but I couldn’t muster one. At the moment, I was having trouble just keeping my lids open.
When he straightened, his face contorted into a stricken mask of fear and rage. I heard a voice say, You’re killing her, and though the voice was unmistakably Bo’s and it matched the movement of his glorious lips, it sounded too far away to be happening so close to me.
Right before my eyes, Bo’s face transformed into the monster I’d first thought him to be. His milky eyes matched Drew’s and he roared, baring four glittering fangs. His face and neck were covered with veins clearly visible beneath his uber pale skin, veins pulsing with a need that I couldn’t fathom.
I knew that Bo’s need wasn’t just his normal physical requirement of blood.
This was a need for the blood of reckoning, blood that would come from Drew and could end up costing him his life.
Drew’s face registered no change at first, but then when Bo came for him, he seemed to snap out of the hunger that had been driving him. A fraction of a second before Bo reached him, Drew lifted his head and his opaque green eyes met mine in the mirror. In them, I saw shock.
Bo grabbed him by the throat and lofted him high into the air, where Drew dangled impotently. Drew struggled, but he couldn’t move Bo. Drew brought his hands down to Bo’s wrist, trying to loosen Bo’s fingers, to pry them away from his neck, but his efforts made no impact. Drew raised his legs and kicked at Bo’s chest.
Bo’s flinch was nearly imperceptible.
Like tossing a small boy, Bo threw Drew up against the wall beside my bed and then rushed forward in attack, burying his teeth deep in the soft tissue of Drew’s neck. Drew leaned helplessly against the wall, stunned and unable to move inside the iron grip of Bo’s arms.
“Bo, no,” I mumbled, unable to garner the strength to shout.
Drew’s eyes dropped to mine where I sat crumpled in the floor with barely enough energy to remain upright. As I watched, the shock drifted away from his now-blue eyes, replaced by the passive tides of resignation. But there was something else there, too, something that looked an awful lot like regret.
“Bo, don’t.” I tried again, but I was just too weak.
I didn’t think Bo heard me, but when he lifted his head and turned to look at me, I knew he had. I could see the blood lust all over his face. I’d seen that look before. It was a thirst for revenge, and last time, it had nearly killed him.
As Bo and I stared at each other, a quiet voice pierced the stillness.
“Kill me,” it said.
It was Drew.
Bo and I both looked to him, but Drew was watching only me.
“Let him kill me, T,” he said pitifully. “I can’t live like this.”
Each word stabbed at my heart.
“You can’t mean that,” I whispered. This was the Drew I knew. This was the Drew that I once thought I loved. It was there, in his eyes, on his face. He was sincere. And he was miserable.
“I do.” He turned his eyes to Bo. “Do it,” he encouraged. When Bo didn’t make a move, Drew gritted his teeth and spat, “Do it!”
Bo looked to me and I shook my head, hoping he wasn’t considering honoring Drew’s request. He dropped his eyes from mine before sliding them back to Drew.
“Bo, you’re not—”
I didn’t even get the words out before Bo disappeared out the window with Drew in tow. He handled him like a rag doll, like Drew wasn’t an incredibly strong vampire himself. Bo was just so much more powerful, more powerful than even I’d known.
I knew I didn’t have enough juice to make it to the window, much less outside to follow them, so I lay over on my side and held a hand as tightly as possible over the gaping hole in my neck.
I felt the slow pump of blood oozing between my fingers. I couldn’t press hard enough to make it stop. And I was so tired, much too tired to keep holding on.
As the light began to fade from my view, I was thankful that Drew hadn’t managed to turn me. Not that I wanted to die, but I thought becoming a vampire destined to live eternity in mourning and heartache was the less desirable outcome.
I closed my eyes, the cold from the floor seeping into every cell of my body as I lay there, waiting to die. I heard noises again, still far away. I managed to open my eyes just long enough to see Bo striding toward me. Quickly, he bent and scooped me up.
At that moment, I felt complete, like all was right with the world. I would die in Bo’s strong arms, with his tangy scent in my nostrils and the image of his once-again fully human face burned onto the backs of my eyes. There was nothing else I could’ve asked for, unless it would have been for more time.
He carried me to the bed and tore open his wrist, holding it to my mouth.
“Take it, Ridley,” he said softly. “You need blood to heal.”
“I can’t be a vampire,” I managed. “I don’t want to- to…” I stammered. I was just so, so weak.
When my lids fluttered open once more, I saw an expression of hurt and worry
on Bo’s face. I wasn’t sure why it was there, but I wished for it to ease. He was too beautiful to feel pain, or at least that’s the way it should be.
Bending his muscular arms and curling me up to his mouth, I felt Bo’s tongue as he tasted the blood at my throat. When he lowered me, I saw that his eyes had already begun to pale again at just that small taste.
“Finish it. I’d rather you do it.”
“Ridley, if there’s any venom in your blood, it’s not much. Not enough to turn you. Take my blood. I can’t lose you, too,” he said quietly, his eyes closing briefly, as if in pain. “Please don’t do this to me.”
He held his dripping wrist to my mouth once more and I opened, wrapping my lips around his warm skin, suckling his sticky sweet blood until that familiar need to sleep stole over me.
********
Of all the terrible ways to wake up from such an emotionally and physically traumatic experience, my mother’s drunken screeching was probably one of the worst. “Ridley, why didn’t you do something?”
Mom’s harsh, slurred words penetrated the thick soup that had invested my head. I battled through it until I managed to crack my eyelids and look around the lamp-lit cavern of my bedroom.
Memories of what had happened rushed in quickly and I sat up, searching the shadows for Bo. My nose, now even more sensitive to his scent since drinking his blood, detected hints of him lingering in the air around me. My ears prickled with the sounds of someone moving lightly across the grass in the front yard, just past my still-open window. But more than what my five senses could detect was the sharp visceral knowledge that he’d just left, that he wasn’t yet very far from me. That tie to him, that bond to his body, his soul, his presence, was once again firmly and strongly intact.
I took a moment to savor it, closing my eyes and relishing the way his blood sang in my veins, hummed along my nerves. I could almost feel him behind my eyes.
But then something unpleasant jolted me out of my introverted musings.
“Ridley, answer me!”
With a sigh and a roll of my eyes, I scooted off the bed and opened the door.
It wasn’t until I was halfway out into the hall that I remembered what I must look like, all covered in blood. I knew that my marks would be healed for the most part, courtesy of Bo’s amazingly powerful blood. But his blood couldn’t shout out stains like good ol’ detergent could.
Glancing down at my sweatshirt, I was surprised to see that I wasn’t wearing a sweatshirt at all. And the yoga pants I’d put on were gone as well. I backed up and hurried into the bathroom for a quick peek.
My neck was a bit red and it looked like it had been scratched more than anything, but the blood had been carefully wiped away. I parted the neck of the men’s button-up flannel shirt I was now wearing and saw that even my chest was clean, free of the rivulets of blood that had gushed from my torn throat.
Heat erupted and spread across my chest and down my arms, making my nipples tighten and tingle. Bo had changed my clothes and cleaned me up, and even now, just thinking about him touching me, taking my clothes off and replacing them with clean ones, made my body warm as if I could still feel his gentle hands on me.
In the mirror, I could see that my pupils were dilated and my lips were slightly parted with want. An ache started at my core and radiated through me, and I bit my lip to keep from moaning. With my enhanced connection to Bo, sometimes my intense physical attraction to him could be a bit of a bother, especially at times like this when my mother was apparently on a drunken rampage. I took a deep, clarifying breath to compose myself before heading out to face her.
When I found her, she was leaning up against the coat closet just inside the front door, working hard at undoing the strap around her ankle that held her shoe in place. I watched as she struggled to remain upright, wrestling with it while she balanced on one high heel-shod foot. I doubted she could do that stone cold sober, much less this deep in her cups.
Finally, with a frustrated growl, she slid down to the floor and brought her foot up closer so that she could work at the buckle.
“Need some help?” I asked, having seen her fight with it long enough.
Mom looked up, glaring at me from under her mussed bangs. “Not from you,” she said hatefully.
“What’s the matter, Mom?”
“The same thing that’s always the matter, Ridley. You let Izzy die and I don’t think I can ever forgive you for that.”
I’d heard this a few times before. Occasionally, Mom would get a hold of a nasty mood and, when coupled with vodka by the gallon, she would tell me where she really felt the blame for Izzy’s death lay—with me.
Regardless, though, it was always an excruciating slap in the face to know that anyone would dare blame me for the death of the sister that I loved so much. I’d gladly have taken Izzy’s place—many times I’d wished it had been me instead—but that wasn’t an option. She was practically dead as soon as the car struck the tree.
From the second we’d hit, Izzy’s fate had been out of my control.
But that would never be enough for Mom. She would mourn the loss of the
“good daughter” for the rest of her life. That, in turn, meant that she’d always point the finger of blame at the survivor—me.
It aggravated me when I felt tears collect behind my lashes.
“I didn’t let Izzy die, Mom,” I said, my voice betraying me with a tremble.
“You did! It should’ve been you, not her,” she spat angrily, tearing at the strap that crossed her ankle.
I bent to help her loosen the buckle.
“I wish it had been, Mom,” I said quietly, sniffing softly, hoping that my distress would remain undetected.
Mom grabbed my chin and jerked my face up, our eyes meeting.
“Don’t you dare try to make me feel guilty with your tears. You can’t fool me. She would never have been on that road if it weren’t for you. You don’t deserve to cry for her.”
“Mom, please. You know I would never hurt Izzy. I’d give anything to have her back.”
“Hush,” she said, turning her face from me. “I can’t stand to hear it anymore.
Just get that shoe off and leave me be.”
Again, my body betrayed me. As I nimbly worked the shoe loose and away from Mom’s foot, my tears peppered the tile of the foyer floor. I stood and handed her the shoe I’d just removed.
She took it from me, flinging it angrily down the hall toward her bedroom.
“Get out of my sight!”
Without so much as another glance in her direction, I turned and walked back to my room. When I closed the door behind me, I leaned back against it, hating the pain that suffused my chest. It was bad enough that I’d lost my sister almost four years ago, but in a way, I’d lost my entire family that fateful night, too.
My mother had drowned, first in her tears, then in her bitterness, now in her alcohol. And my father, he’d run away. Though he’d never really left home, left us, he was long gone, all the time, even when he was present on the weekends. He was just a shell of the man he used to be.
At least they can still manage to pretend some of the time, I told myself consolingly. I thought of my new curfew, of how I’d been restricted from being out by myself after dark. Even though it was an inconvenience, in a perverse way, I cherished the limitation. It was a reminder of what life used to be like when they cared, what life was probably like for other kids whose parents were actually present and accounted for, emotionally anyway.
Pushing away from the door, I reminded myself that I would only have to deal with it for a little while longer, until I graduated and was forced to figure out what to do with about my future since my lifelong plans were basically a shambles.
But I’d think of something. I had to.
Feeling suddenly lost and melancholy, I switched off my lamp and curled up on my comforter, listening to the louder-than-normal night life that was singing outside my window. I fell asleep almost immediatel
y, still exhausted and lethargic from my earlier tussle with Drew.
My eyes snapped open and the red clock numbers read 2:17. I was still curled up on my right side, facing the window, as the mattress dipped behind me. A cool hand slid over my hip, splaying across the skin of my belly where my flannel shirt lay parted.
I snuggled back into Bo. I didn’t need to turn around and look. For one thing, I knew from his body temperature that I wouldn’t be able to see him. He was freezing. I knew exactly who it was, though. Every cell in my body welcomed his closeness, all my senses opened up to take him in, like flower petals opening up for the sweet, wet kiss of the rain.
His cool lips grazed my neck, sending chill bumps down my left arm.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he whispered against my skin.
My heart squeezed and my throat constricted with emotion. I didn’t have to ask what he meant. I knew. As I’d suspected, he hadn’t been gone very long when I’d awakened and he must have been close enough to hear my mother’s vicious barbs.
Tears burned my eyes as the pain of her comments came back in a flood.
That’s why I put them out of my mind. It hurt too bad to think about them.
“I know,” I said quietly. “But it still hurts.”
“I know,” he said.
A single tear somehow managed to escape my tightly squeezed lids.
Immediately, the cool air began to dry the wet trail it left on my cheek. When I felt composed enough to speak, I asked, “Drew?”
“Shh. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Though I wanted to know, I didn’t think I could handle one more thing on that night. Silently, I reached down and brought Bo’s fingers to my lips. His hands were so strong, so capable, but I knew that there were some things in life that even Bo couldn’t fix.
********
The next morning, Bo was already gone when my alarm went off. I hadn’t even been aware of him leaving. In fact, I hadn’t been aware of much of anything after I fell asleep in his arms. I reached out to the place beside me, the place where he’d lain. The comforter was icy where his body had been. He couldn’t have been gone very long.