Blood Type

by Melissa Luznicky Garrett

  “I couldn’t help it. I was weak and I needed—”

  “I’m sick of hearing your excuses, Ian! Go. Get out of here, and let me see to her now.”

  “You know what will happen, John. If ye care for her at all, and I know you do, you’ll let me end it now.”

  “I said go!”

  Heavy footsteps retreated, followed by the slam of the front door. I felt a hand on my head and the whisper of my name.

  “John.” I lacked the strength of voice or will to say anything more.

  “Shh. Don’t try to talk.” John bent to my neck and I felt the flick of something warm and slippery against the spot where once there had been only agonizing pain. Then John raised his head and looked into my eyes.

  “Now sleep,” he commanded.

  August 11 and 12

  I lay as still as possible and traced the long wooden beams overhead with my eyes. My arms and legs were like lead weights at my sides. After awhile I squirmed in discomfort, hearing the squeak of the leather sofa as it shifted under my weight.

  All of a sudden, a familiar face floated into my line of vision and I shrank back against the pillow as the brutal memory of what had happened came back to me. “Ian—”

  “Is gone,” John answered at once. He fell to one knee beside me and groped for my hand underneath the blanket. “Blake—”

  “No.” I squeezed my eyes shut tight, desperately wanting to purge the visions from my mind. But they stayed stubbornly in place. I brought my free hand to my neck where Ian’s teeth had pierced the skin like a hot knife in butter.

  “I was right.” Shock and horror sapped what little strength I had. My eyes flicked to John’s, and I shrank against his touch with the knowledge of what he was.

  He must have read the fear on my face because he said, “I would never hurt you, Blake. I swear.”

  I struggled to sit up. “I want to go home.”

  “You should stay here and rest. Ian’s gone. He won’t come back.”

  I looked from John to the pitch black night outside the front window. It felt much too late. “I have to go. I have a c-curfew. I’ll get in trouble.”

  “I don’t care about your damn curfew,” John said through clenched teeth. “You’ve been infected, Blake. There’s a lot we should—”

  “I need to go home.” I refused to listen. I had to get out of that house and into my own bed. If I went to sleep in a familiar place, then just maybe I’d wake up to find out this had all been a bad dream.

  John heaved a great sigh and stared down at me as though considering something. Finally, he offered me his hand. “Fine. But you’re in no condition to drive yourself. And in the morning, you and I have to talk.”

  I woke late with a terrible ache in my bones and the conviction that I’d been run over by a freight train. I rolled over and buried my face in my pillow. My head throbbed, the blood in my ears pounding with every heartbeat. My throat burned with an awful rawness, and my neck felt . . . well, my neck felt like someone had taken a bite out of it.

  I opened my eyes and saw my blood-stained shirt that lay crumpled in the middle of my bedroom floor. I stared at it, wondering exactly how it had ended up there.

  “Your parents are gone. They left early this morning.”

  I startled at the sound of John’s voice. I sat up, pulling the covers tight around my body. “What are you doing here?”

  John kept his distance. “I didn’t want you to wake up alone,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper, “to this.”

  “And so you what, decided to come into my bedroom and watch me sleep? That’s disturbing, John.” I stared at him, trying to put into words how hurt and betrayed I felt. “How did you get in here, anyway?”

  “Your parents let me in,” he said. “They even offered me breakfast while I waited.” A hint of a smile showed on his lips.

  “Nothing about this is even remotely funny,” I said, and at once the smile slipped from his face. “You lied to me, John. I felt like a fool for even suspecting you might be a, a—” I couldn’t say the word. “And then it turns out I was right all along.” I picked up my pillow and threw it at him with what little strength I had, but it fell miserably short of the target.

  “Blake,” he said, splaying his hands as he came into the room.

  “Save it, John. In case you didn’t notice, I’m having a really bad day.” I put my hands on either side of my head as if doing so might help me come to grips with what had happened the night before. “It was all just one big joke, John. People,” I stopped and shook my head, correcting myself. “Monsters like you are not supposed to exist. It. Is Not. Possible,” I said, punctuating each word with a pound of my fist against the mattress.

  “And yet we do,” he said, closing the distance between us.

  I shook my head. “How?”

  John shrugged as he knelt in front of me. “Are you asking for the mechanics of how one becomes a vampire, or are you asking the reasons why creatures like Ian and I exist?”

  I brought my knees to my chest and pressed my forehead against them in an attempt to blot out the fact that a vampire, who I’d assumed was human only twelve short hours ago, was in my bedroom. My head spun, and my stomach heaved with fear and revulsion.

  “Neither,” I said, my voice muffled in my legs. “I don’t want to know any of that.” I looked up sharply at him, a horrified thought suddenly occurring to me. “What Ian did to me . . . has he done that before?”

  I saw the look that crossed John’s face and I knew I had my answer. His mouth turned down in a thin, tight line, and the muscles of his jaw clenched and unclenched. He swore under his breath and looked away.

  “It was a mistake to let him stay, especially with you around. But he promised.” He swore again. “He promised me that he was in control of himself, that he would never . . .” He let his words trail off, leaving me to fill in the blanks: that he would never hurt you.

  “You put me in danger,” I said, my voice sharp as a knife’s edge. John opened his mouth to defend himself, but I held up a hand to stop him. “Never mind the fact that you’re a—” I could barely bring myself to say the word out loud, because it sounded so utterly ridiculous— “you’re a vampire. But if you knew that Ian was dangerous, if you knew he had hurt people before, then how could you expose me to that?” I shook my head, my throat aching with the need to cry. “He attacked me, John! He would have killed me if you hadn’t walked in!”

  John closed his eyes. I saw the guilt etched in the lines around his mouth and eyes, but that didn’t make it okay. Not by a long shot. And yet his voice was hard with resolve when he spoke. “We need to talk about this, Blake. There are things you need to know.”

  “Look, I survived. And I suppose I have you to thank for that. As far as I’m concerned, I want to forget last night ever happened.”

  “Good,” John said. “I want that, too. But we do need to talk about it.”

  I held up my hand again. “No, we don’t. I want to move past this. Without you.”

  John raised himself to sit on the edge of my bed. He reached out to touch me, but I jerked away from his hand. For a moment he just stared at me, his green eyes wide and imploring. “I would never hurt you,” he whispered.

  My heart gave a sudden lurch, and I had to look away. Vampires were supposed to induce fear in their hapless prey. They weren’t supposed to look pitiful and remorseful, and they certainly weren’t supposed to make you want to wrap your arms around them and tell them it was okay. That you forgave them. That it wasn’t their fault, exactly . . .

  And yet John could apologize and look sorry all he wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that he was a monster, and so was Ian. It didn’t change the fact that I had nearly died. As far as I was concerned, John and I were done. I never wanted to see him again. I’d run straight to Zach and tell him I’d made a mistake—I’d beg for him to take me back if I had to—and then everything could return to the way it used to be.

  “I want you
to leave now,” I said, looking down at my fisted hands in my lap. I wanted to jump out of bed and put as much distance between us as possible, but I was half-scared he’d pursue. His nearness made my skin twitch.

  “Blake, please. If you’ll just—”

  “I don’t want to see you anymore, John,” I said through gritted teeth. “Please go and leave me alone.”

  “But you really need to—”

  I put my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut tight, burying my face in my knees again so that I wouldn’t have to see or hear him. I wanted him to disappear from my life as quickly as he had appeared. I wanted to forget that John and Ian existed. I wanted to—

  “I said go, John!”

  “Listen to me!” I removed my hands at once and met John’s eyes, my fury burning just below the surface. I didn’t say anything. “You’ve been infected.”

  At first I thought he meant Ian had passed on some STD, but that couldn’t be right. The one consolation to almost being some lunatic vampire’s meal was at least that hadn’t happened.

  “No,” I said, my cheeks burning through my anger. I cleared my throat. “He um. He never. I mean, you saw that he didn’t . . .”

  John reached out and briefly cupped my left cheek in his hand before letting his fingers trail down to the tender spot on my neck where Ian’s teeth had punctured the flesh. “You’ve been infected,” he repeated, driving home the meaning of his words with a gentleness that belied the basic fact that he, himself, was a predator.

  My hands trembled, and I clenched the duvet in my fists to steady their shaking. But as the meaning of what he said sunk in, my heart began to fibrillate in my chest in an unnatural and terrifying rhythm. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the blood drain from my head.

  “What do you mean I’ve been infected?” I said, my voice quavering. I opened my eyes again, holding John hostage with my gaze.

  “I mean that—” John hung his head, unable to meet my eyes. He muttered under his breath, “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Damn you, Ian!”

  My head swam. I was going to pass out. “Just say what you need to say.”

  He took a deep, laborious breath that sent shudders through his entire body. “You’ve been infected, and now you have a choice to make.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling like I had a solid lump of fear stuck in my throat. “A choice?” I echoed, knowing that whatever it was couldn’t be good either way.

  John gave a silent nod. “You can choose to do nothing and let the venom slowly spread, or you can become one of us.”

  The blood in my ears pounded so loudly I could barely hear my own words as they came out of my mouth. “And if I do nothing?”

  John stayed silent for a long moment, and then his green eyes met mine. “You will die.”

  A chill ran up my spine, making the small hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Is there a third option?” I said with a small laugh, on the verge of hysteria. How could this be true?

  But he shook his head, dispelling any hope I’d had that this was still just one big joke. “No.”

  I pushed back the covers and shot out of bed. I felt suddenly flushed, yet clammy at the same time. My tongue felt thick and heavy in my mouth, and I convulsively swallowed the excess saliva that precipitated vomiting. But it didn’t help.

  “I’m gonna be sick!”

  I half ran, half stumbled down the hall to the bathroom, my hand over my mouth as I choked down the bile. John’s footsteps echoed mine. I tried closing and locking the door before he could enter after me, but I barely had enough time to get the lid of the toilet seat up before the dry heaves came fast and strong. Thankfully there was nothing in my stomach, but the retching was just as bad. John’s hands were at my neck, pulling back my dangling hair from my face.

  “Go away!”

  “I’m not leaving you to deal with this on your own, Blake,” he said. “We’re in this together now.”

  “The hell we are!” I said, retching again. My eyes were watering badly, tears streaking my cheeks. Snot dripped from my nose and down my lips. I groped blindly for a tissue and felt one being pushed into my hand.

  “Blake, please. If you think I’m just going to walk away from you—”

  I swatted at his hands, desperately wanting him to leave me alone.

  He clamped his hands on my shoulders. “Dammit, Blake! This is too big for you to deal with by yourself. I’m trying to help you!”

  I closed the lid and flushed the toilet. Then I crossed my arms and laid my head down, trying to ignore the solid feel of his hands on my skin. “I h-hate you, J-John,” I said, barely able to get the words out through my tears. “I w-wish we’d n-never met each other.”

  He smoothed my hair away from my forehead and tucked it behind my ear. Then he put a hand on my back. “I am sorry,” he said. “If I could take back what happened, I would. But if you’ll only listen to me, Blake—”

  “No, you listen to me!” I shrugged away from John’s touch and turned on him. “I’m making my choice right here, right now. I would rather die than be like you and Ian. You’re both disgusting, lying monsters!”

  I got up and stormed out of the bathroom, making my way downstairs to rifle the kitchen for a few crackers to settle my stomach. John stormed after me, obviously not ready to give up.

  “Do you even hear what you’re saying?” His voice pitched up with his rising temper. “I won’t let you just waste away. You have another alternative, Blake. You’re just being stubborn.”

  I threw open one cupboard after another, my tears coming fast and furious. “Where are the damn crackers?”

  My attention lighted on the vase of sunflowers that Zach had given me, severely wilted now. Out of sheer anger and frustration, I picked it up and hurled it to the ground. It shattered at once into a thousand tiny pieces, and I gasped, shocked at what I had done.

  John grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the mess. “Stay right there. Don’t move. I’ll clean it up.”

  I stood frozen, watching helplessly and in silence as John swept the broken shards of glass into a pile before transferring them to the yellow dust pan. He dumped the contents into a doubled plastic bag and then dropped the entire thing into the garbage can. We spoke through none of this, and he seemed to be using the silence to collects his thoughts and think about what he wanted to say next.

  “I’m not a monster, Blake,” he finally said. He must have seen the withering look on my face because he hurriedly followed with a reply. “Yes, there are fundamental differences between us. But I was once like you. I am still flesh and blood. I still feel joy and love and pain.” He stepped forward and took my shoulders in his hands, shaking me gently. “And I won’t have it end like this!”

  “What does it matter, John?” I felt suddenly very tired. “We hardly know each other. Why do you care what I choose now?”

  “I know you well enough to be sure that I don’t want to lose you. You need to make the choice. You need to say the words. I don’t want to force you.”

  “I have made my choice. I already told you.”

  “But you’re making the wrong choice!”

  I pushed his hands away and spun around, unable to look at him any longer. “I don’t want to think about this right now.”

  He came up behind me—my body shivered with the anticipation of his touch on my skin—and yet he didn’t lay a hand on me at all. “You don’t have much time, Blake. Maybe until the end of the year. If Ian were an older and more powerful vampire than he is, you’d have even less time than that.”

  “What will happen to me?” I asked in a whisper.

  “If I don’t turn you?”

  My answer came out a mere breath. “Yes.”

  “You’ll start to lose your appetite. Regular food will hold no appeal to you. You won’t be able to sleep. Your body will just start to . . . give out. Doctors will run one test and study after another. They’ll say you have hemolytic anemia, but none of
the treatments will work. All they’ll do is buy you a little time. Everyone you love will suffer as they watch you slowly succumb to death, and no one will be able to save you except for me. Please, Blake.”

  “And if I let you save me?” I ventured.

  “A little of my blood by mouth. That’s all it takes. And then we’ll have eternity together.”

  I closed my eyes, thankful that John couldn’t see the grimace on my face. I was seventeen years old, and a virtual stranger had just proposed we spend eternity together.

  But what choice did I have? It was either spend eternity in a grave buried under six feet of dirt, or spend eternity walking the earth feasting on the blood of strangers. Neither seemed particularly desirable.

  “I need time to think,” I said, my voice flat.

  John put his hands on me then and turned me to face him. He lifted my chin with his finger and kissed me. I flinched at the warm lips beneath mine, so human-like.

  When the kiss persisted with no sign of John giving up, I put my hands against his chest and shoved hard. He put his forehead against mine, though, and his breath came out in a long, warm sigh against my cheek.

  His voice was just a whisper in my ear when he spoke. “Make the right choice.”

  And then he was gone.

  October 27

  “I want you to turn me,” I finally said. John still hadn’t looked at me or uttered even one word.

  He raised the glass to his lips and drained the contents. Then he turned around and began painstakingly washing it in the sink. “Why?” he said at last, a hard edge to his voice. I could tell by the lines of his shoulders that he was strung tight as a wire.

  My mouth fell open and I gave a silent, incredulous shake of my head. “Because I was wrong, John. I don’t want to die. And if I have to become what you are in order to hang on to some semblance of my humanity, then I’ll go through with it.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to change you just to ease your guilt?”

  I gripped the edge of the table until the tips of my fingers turned white. The tension between us was thick, and I wanted nothing more than to lash out at John, whether with fists or fury. “Of course I feel guilty, John! I understand now what Ian means to you, and I’ve jeopardized your relationship. Not to mention I’ve potentially made things a lot worse for you.”