Michael quickly took in his surroundings and, perplexed, saw that he was outside, near The Forest. Off in the distance he could see the windows of St. Sebastian’s. Panting and confused, he took a moment to realize he wasn’t being attacked by some wild animal, he was being held by his boyfriend. Confusion quickly turned to happiness. “Ronan, what’s going on?”
Hesitant, Ronan clutched his mouth with his hand and was relieved not to feel his fangs protruding over his lips. It did make sense that they appeared of their own volition; his Day of Feeding was tomorrow morning, but it was a close call. He wasn’t yet ready to reveal himself to Michael and he knew that before he did, he would have to explain certain things to him. His kind weren’t the vampires of common legend; their history was more complicated. But for now he felt the need to keep things simple. “I found you out here asleep.”
“Asleep?” Michael asked in disbelief.
Ronan nodded his head. “I went to your dorm this morning and no one was there, then I checked St. Martha’s. I thought you might be having breakfast.”
Michael shook his head. “No, the last thing I remember, I went out looking for you last night after you left.”
“What?” Ronan didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but it was fear speaking. He knew that it was dangerous for Michael to walk the grounds at night without protection. In a much softer voice he asked, “You were looking for me?”
Michael let out a breath and started slowly, hoping he wouldn’t sound like an obsessed teenager. “Well, I didn’t like the way we left things last night. Not that anything bad happened. I just, well, I was hoping that it would have had a different ending.”
So was I, Michael, Ronan wanted to say, but instead he tried to make a joke. “Like you falling asleep in the woods?”
How could something like this have happened, Michael thought, and why do I feel so wonderful? It doesn’t feel like I spent the night on the cold, hard earth. “I have no idea how this happened. I remember losing my way a bit: It was foggy last night. And then getting really, really tired. I came here to rest for a minute and the next thing, I opened my eyes and there you were.” Michael was beaming. Part of his euphoria could be attributed to the fact that he was now holding Ronan’s hand.
Neither boy realized it until after it happened, but while they were talking, their hands once again found each other and they were sitting with their legs intertwined. The magnet had pulled them together and they were unable to resist. “And here we are,” Ronan observed.
Curious to see how things were progressing, the meadowlark flew by for one more look, singing its signature tune, and Michael got a flash of memory. He remembered words, maybe from a dream, or a book: “You can never escape your true self and you’ll never be able to escape this world until you accept that.” Right now Michael knew that he couldn’t escape his true self and, in fact, he didn’t want to. There was only thing Michael wanted to do. “This is how I wanted last night to end.”
Michael covered Ronan’s hands tightly with both of his, and looked deep within his beautiful blue eyes. He had no idea where he was finding the courage; he only knew that he had spent much too long thinking and dreaming, and now it was time for him to act. He leaned into Ronan closer until he could feel his breath on his lips, until their noses touched, and until, finally, so did their lips.
Ronan ached. A part of him wanted desperately to push Michael away and run from this place, but he couldn’t, not after feeling this sweet boy’s mouth against his. It was gentle and soft, filled with love, and just a touch of nervousness. Ronan responded by pressing his lips a bit more forcefully against Michael’s so he would know that he too wanted this connection as much as Michael did. Their kiss grew and became fuller and held the promise of much more passion yet to come. But they had time for all of that, they had time for passion. Right now was just a beginning. And it was perfect. Their kiss ended, but neither boy pulled away. Their foreheads, warmed by the sun and their emotions, remained connected. Ronan slid his face to the right so their cheeks rested upon each other and whispered into Michael’s ear, “And what a perfect way for our morning to begin.”
Lost in such intense feelings, Michael had no words. His first kiss could not have been any better. Gently they embraced. The boy he had dreamed about, an idyllic setting, a dead body nearby. What?! Over Ronan’s shoulder, Michael could see a body sprawled out on the ground, facedown, and not moving. His body tensed and he pulled away. His face must have turned white because Ronan started asking him what was wrong. All Michael could do was point in the body’s direction.
Ronan wished he was surprised, but he wasn’t. I was right, he told himself, something bad has happened. Now, looking down at the lifeless body, he had proof and when he turned the body over, he gasped, “It’s Penry!”
“Oh no!” Michael cried. “Is he dead?”
Before Ronan checked for a pulse, he tilted Penry’s head to the side and saw two small holes on his neck, encrusted with dried blood that was now more black than red. Quickly, Ronan turned Penry’s head to the other side so Michael wouldn’t see the markings, and felt for a pulse. “No, he’s just unconscious,” Ronan said. “Go get Dr. MacCleery. I don’t want to move him in case he’s broken any bones.” Michael didn’t move. “Go! And find Hawksbry too.”
This is insane, Michael thought. That could be me. Penry was only a few yards away from where Michael had slept during the night and yet he was fine, he felt invigorated, even before kissing Ronan, which now seemed hours ago. All through the night he slept, never once waking, while Penry had been attacked and left for dead. He literally shook his head to try and rid his mind of such thoughts and ran off to the infirmary, shouting, “I’ll be right back!”
When Michael was gone, when Ronan was alone with Penry, his body once again took control and began to act on its own. He saw his hand turn Penry’s head to expose his wounds and when the smell of blood wafted up and through him, Ronan became light-headed. His fangs reappeared and his eyes shone with the kind of determination only brought on by an insatiable hunger. He would feed a day early. It wasn’t proper, but he just couldn’t resist.
He placed his hand over Penry’s face, he didn’t want to see the boy when he plunged his fangs into his neck, but just as he bent his head, he heard a twig break. Ronan froze. Who was watching? Who was interrupting his feeding? He prayed it wasn’t Michael and cursed his own lack of self-discipline. When he looked up, cautiously, he saw it wasn’t Michael but Nakano.
His black eyes taunted Ronan to finish what he most certainly started. But once again Nakano failed in an attempt to destroy because seeing Nakano’s sinister glare was exactly what Ronan needed to bring him back to reality and help him regain control of his body. One of the cardinal rules of his people was that you don’t attack a fellow student, especially on Archangel land. He was furious with himself that he came so close to breaking that rule. But now wasn’t the time for self-loathing; he had to help his friend.
Ronan buried his face in Penry’s neck, but instead of reopening the two gashes with his own sharp fangs, he licked the wounds with his tongue, which was as long and as flexible as Nakano’s. That was one trait they did share, but it was becoming clearer to Ronan that they had little else in common. If Nakano had his way, Penry would have bled to death, and the whole school, all of Eden in fact, would know that they were more than myth, that they were real. Ronan couldn’t let that happen, not just yet.
The cuts started to fade—Ronan’s body could heal as effectively as it could kill—and in seconds Penry’s neck once again resembled Michael’s, smooth and untouched. Ronan looked up, but Nakano was gone. The fear, however, that he instilled in Ronan remained. Why would he do such a thing? So reckless and brazen. Was this what he and Brania were planning? To begin attacking the students one by one? Possible, but their strategy made absolutely no sense to Ronan. He knew how they operated and how they thought; he knew that they could be vile and duplicitous, and so he knew that if they were going t
o start attacking students, the first one on the list would be Michael. But Michael was only a few yards away and he was unharmed. There could be only three explanations why: He was placed there as a warning, he was somehow being protected, or he was just plain lucky. Ronan didn’t like any of those scenarios since none of them allowed him to control the situation. And if he couldn’t be in control, he couldn’t ensure Michael’s safety. No one could. But matters of Michael’s safety would have to be put on hold for the time being because Penry was in far more immediate danger.
The archway to the infirmary was decorated in the same way as the mirror frame in the academy greeting room, with the seven archangels that gave the academy its name. But here they were larger and chiseled out of stone instead of carved out of wood, so while their appearance was still otherworldly, it was also more lifelike. Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Sariel on top of a cluster of bones, Ramiel, Zachariel in front of the sun, and, of course, Michael, slayer of Satan. At the apex of the archway they were joined by St. Luke, patron saint of doctors, his arms outstretched to the sides, inviting the archangels to join him in his mission to heal the sick. To his right was a small calf lying on a hearth, its side split open dripping stone droplets of blood as a sacrifice to God. As he passed under the arch carrying Penry in his arms, Ronan wondered how many humans had been sacrificed for his kind and if Penry would be the next. He also wondered if St. Luke would have the slightest clue how to cure a vampire bite, but doubted the saint or even the archangels possessed that knowledge. His only hope was that Dr. MacCleery wouldn’t need those skills today.
“Lay him on the stretcher, Ronan,” the doctor ordered and then whisked Penry into a separate room, the door closing after him.
Ronan and Michael were left alone in the infirmary’s waiting room with Mrs. Radcliff, the school nurse, who definitely had no such knowledge of anything beyond rudimentary medicine. Despite what she knew about Penry, she simply assumed he passed out after a night of drinking. Archangel wasn’t known for its rowdiness. In fact, in the almost thirty years that she had worked at the academy, she could only remember three students who had a fondness for alcohol. None of them lasted very long despite the large checks their parents wrote to keep them enrolled. Hawksbry felt the school had a reputation to uphold and refused to compromise that reputation no matter how large the financial gift. The way she stared at Michael and Ronan, it looked as if she thought she had uncovered three more and assumed they all drank the night away. Luckily, Penry had an alibi, who showed up just in time to save all their reputations.
“Thanks for calling me, Michael,” Imogene announced upon entering the room, followed by a girl whom neither boy recognized. “Is Penry going to be okay?” Imogene asked.
“Well, that depends,” Mrs. Radcliff said, looking up from her paperwork to gauge Imogene’s reaction to her question. “How much did he have to drink last night?”
“He wasn’t drinking!” Imogene said. “He was with me while I was on a break from choir practice.”
The nurse eyed both Imogene and her girlfriend, whose name she couldn’t place, and her instinct, honed by decades of listening to teenagers lie, told her that Imogene was telling the truth. Her statement corroborated what she already knew of the boy; he was a good student, a poor athlete, but not a drinker or someone who took drugs. She took off her eyeglasses, held together by a fake-crystal beaded chain that she wore around her neck, and laid them on her formidable breasts. She looked matronly and could be empathetic when necessary, but most often she knew the students preferred she be honest. “He doesn’t have any broken bones or even any bruises, but it looks like he tripped on his way home and possibly suffered a concussion.”
“That’s not that serious, right?” Imogene asked.
“As long as he wakes up, it shouldn’t be,” Mrs. Radcliff said as unemotionally as she could.
Ronan didn’t contradict the false diagnosis, but he knew better. He knew that as long as Nakano hadn’t taken too much blood from Penry, he would be fine. But if Nakano took too much, past the point a human body needed to survive, no amount of science or medicine was going to keep Penry alive. Ronan just couldn’t be sure how far Nakano went, how much of Penry’s blood now flowed through Nakano’s body. Penry was still breathing when he found him, which was a promising sign, but Ronan was concerned that he was still unconscious. Imogene was more than concerned, she was quite scared. “Why won’t he wake up?”
Mrs. Radcliff couldn’t help but smile at the girl. Her personal experience with young love was a distant memory, but thanks to the students, she was reminded of it constantly. “Dr. MacCleery will be able to explain everything once he’s done examining him.”
Her girlfriend gave her hand a gentle squeeze and said softly, “Give the doctor a chance to do his thing.”
Ronan almost laughed; there was nothing for the doctor to do. He himself had healed Penry’s external wounds, but whatever damage Nakano did to Penry internally was already done. It was up to Penry now. Not having the same insight, Mrs. Radcliff offered some hope. “He’s probably a little anemic, that’s all.”
The rest of her words were lost among the onslaught of questions that arose when Lochlan MacCleery came out of the examining room. Unfazed, he did what he always did when faced with a group of concerned and very loud students; he took off his thick glasses, rubbed them with his shirttail, which was always untucked, put his glasses back on, and spoke at a volume louder than the crowd’s. “So who found the boy?”
Michael raised his hand. “I did.”
He must be the American, MacCleery thought. “You’re not in class, son.”
“Sorry.”
Ronan cleared his throat. “Actually, we found him together.”
Should I be surprised? Lochlan ran a hand through his thick bush of grayish-brown hair and massaged his scalp a few times the way he always did when he was searching for the right thing to say. Seven years as resident doctor and he still loved his cushy job, he loved living out here in Eden’s countryside, he even loved dealing with the students on a daily basis. He never had kids of his own; his wife died before they even contemplated trying, so he always figured this was God’s way of making things up to him. Until he met Ronan.
Something wasn’t right with the boy. He had no idea what; maybe it was because he just looked too darned perfect. Lochlan had never been good-looking, so he readily admitted that he could simply be feeling some latent jealousy; he wasn’t above such pettiness. However, he couldn’t shake his suspicions. The way Ronan was looking at him right now, head cocked to the side, voice a bit too steady, yes, he was hiding something, but what? “I’ve run some initial tests and I haven’t found anything to make me concerned. He’s probably anemic and fainted.”
“That’s what I told them,” Mrs. Radcliff announced proudly.
“Did you notice anything unusual when you found him, Ronan?” the doctor asked.
He suspects; he always has. He has no idea what’s behind his suspicions, but he can tell there’s something different about me. Ronan shrugged his shoulders casually. “No. We were just walking and we saw him lying on the ground.”
“Facedown,” Michael interjected, feeling the need to be helpful. “We turned him over. I hope that was okay?”
“Perfectly fine, son, perfectly fine,” the doctor said. “Has anyone informed Hawksbry?”
“I called his office, but his secretary told me he hadn’t come in yet,” Mrs. Radcliff explained.
MacCleery looked at his watch and frowned. “He must’ve slept in for the first time since I’ve known him.”
Imogene couldn’t take it anymore. Why were they all just jabbering when her boyfriend was lying in there dying, or worse, in excruciating pain? “Nothing’s perfectly fine! It won’t be perfectly fine until Penry opens his eyes and wakes up.”
Lochlan suppressed a laugh. This girl was definitely going to give Penry major headaches. A great deal of amusement as well, but headaches nonetheless. “Are you Imogene?”<
br />
“Yes.”
“Penry’s been asking about you.”
Stunned, Imogene fought the impulse to thwack the doctor across the side of the head. “He’s talking?! Why didn’t you say so?!”
“Because it’s quite early, lass, and my bedside manner doesn’t click in until I’ve had my morning coffee,” the doctor said wearily, his Scottish brogue deliberately more pronounced. “Would you like to see him?”
Wiping away a few tears, Imogene told the doctor that, yes, she would definitely like to see Penry. “Wait for me,” she told her girlfriend before leaving.
“Of course.”
The doctor gave Penry’s chart to Mrs. Radcliff and told her that he should be fine, but he wanted him to spend the morning resting before he resumed classes. Just before he went in search of his morning coffee, he turned to Ronan. “If you remember anything you think might be important, why don’t you stop by.”
Michael answered for both of them. “Of course, sir, definitely.”
“I should check in on the lovebirds; don’t want Penry getting overexcited,” Mrs. Radcliff said, exiting the room and leaving Ronan and Michael alone with Imogene’s friend.
“I’m Phaedra.”
“Hi, I’m Michael and this is Ronan.”
Ronan smiled and nodded his head. “You go to St. Anne’s?”
“Yes, just transferred from New York.”
A fellow American. Michael surprised himself by getting excited. He wasn’t homesick for Weeping Water, but here, surrounded by so many accents and students of obvious non-American descent, it was nice to meet someone from the same part of the world. Not that Nebraska and New York had much in common, but they were still on the same continent. “Me too. Well, I’m from Nebraska.”
“Never heard of it,” Phaedra said with a laugh. “Actually that’s not that far from the truth. My parents are terrible urban snobs and would be mortified to know that they spent all this money to send me to an exclusive boarding school just so I could hobnob with a country bumpkin. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.”
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