Twice Bitten

by Diana Greenbird

  ‘Emerson didn’t text you?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘No, why?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Robbie said. ‘He said he was feeling sick around third period. Got a nurse’s note to go home. Coach is freaking the heck out, but we all figured there was something wrong, you know. He missed quite a few runs yesterday he would have breezed usually.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. I wiped the rain from my hands and shoved them in my pockets.

  Robbie looked pityingly at me as the rain continued to pour, even though he’d be playing in this. The field was well irrigated, Seattle expecting plenty of rain after all, and it wasn’t raining too heavily for them to cancel.

  ‘I could maybe give you a ride back if you don’t catch Gi,’ Robbie said. ‘You could wait with Jenny. She’s in the debate-’

  ‘Don’t sweat it, Knight,’ Grayson’s voice came out of nowhere. ‘E sent me over as a chauffeur.’

  Robbie’s eyes bugged out at the second Son’s presence. He was used to Emerson and his glamour considering how much time we all spent with him, but Grayson’s overwhelming bulk, especially in a letterman jacket, reinforced his It Crowd status. He was in an entirely different league from any of us.

  ‘Urgh, yeah. See you Monday, Liv.’ Robbie escaped through the locker room doors.

  ‘Emerson sent you?’ I asked, pulling my hands out of my pockets and crossing my arms. I blew a few strands of wet hair from my face.

  ‘Did he not text you like a good little lap dog to inform you of the change of plans?’ Grayson teased, using the annoying why-why poor-me voice that was exceedingly annoying, even when it wasn’t done in his cockney accent.

  ‘No,’ was all I said.

  Grayson began to walk away. ‘Are you coming? I’m missing a damn football game because of this.’

  ‘Sorry to save you from this delightful weather you would have been playing in,’ I snarked, muttering to myself as I followed him.

  I preferred Emerson’s SUV, but that might have been because the sportscar was pretty tight inside and meant I’d have to sit closer to Grayson on the way back than I was comfortable with.

  His glamour didn’t work as intensely as Emerson’s did on me, but it still made me uneasy. That, and he was a vampire I hadn’t really gotten to know. Emerson’s vampiric side no longer scared me, but there was something…off about Grayson. He was more vampire than human.

  ‘Why’d he leave school early?’ I asked. I knew it must be important for him to not only miss practice, but also to get Grayson to skip an actual football game, too.

  I buckled up my seatbelt and tried to sit as far away from Grayson as I possibly could. He didn’t comment if he noticed.

  ‘Yeah… Emerson should really be the one to tell you. I know you’ve got that whole honesty-shtick between you, but I’m not interested in joining that club.’

  ‘You’ll just be my chauffeur and guard dog instead?’ I said, referring to when Emerson had asked him to “watch out” for me during the baseball game, as well as now.

  Grayson just gave me a dark look. All thoughts of Emma and her stupid ploy to get me kicked out of school vanished from my mind. I tapped, annoyingly, on the dashboard, wondering what Emerson was up to, who he was with, why he was missing school.

  ‘Bloody hell, can you think a little more quietly?’ Grayson asked me.

  ‘You can read my mind?’

  ‘I’m a vampire. I can do jack all besides run fast and not die,’ Grayson said, but he didn’t exactly seem displeased with that, it sounded more like he was bragging. ‘You’re just an annoying bundle of energy. Weird energy. And whatever you’re thinking about is making it stronger.’

  ‘I don’t particularly like the feel of your vamp-glamour this close to me, either,’ I said.

  Emerson never commented that my energy was annoying. We didn’t really acknowledge the energy presence we both felt around each other, or the magnetic pull that I felt just for him.

  ‘He had to get a transfusion,’ Grayson finally told me, probably to stop my bundle of “weird energy” from bugging him.

  ‘What? Why?’

  I knew Emerson got transfusions three times a week; right after school on the day he didn’t have baseball practice, and late at night on the days he did. Wherever they got transfusions was an hour drive from our tiny town. Going in the middle of a school day with no notice meant it was an emergency transfusion.

  I recalled how cold his skin had felt lately. Back when he’d grabbed my hand as he’d dragged me off towards his car, I had thought it was so strange how he didn’t feel like he’d just come from baseball practice – no sweat, his skin cool to touch, but I hadn’t realised how cool his skin had been. Much colder than it usually was. I hadn’t really put much stock into it; I’d been more focused on how my silver was burning him.

  Grayson’s next words made me realise how much I should have been paying attention to those signs.

  ‘He was starting to feel tired,’ Grayson said.

  The Grimm files stated that vampires didn’t need to sleep. They were in a constant state of repair, so a re-charge time wasn’t needed. But the way that their body worked meant that the blood they consumed or transfused was “used up” and, like an anaemic, an early sign that their red blood supply was running low was tiredness and shortness of breath.

  Younger vampires exerted a lot more energy and had to feed more often. Older vampires learnt how to control their speed and strength and didn’t get injured as often to need their body to repair itself. I didn’t know Emerson’s age exactly, but I knew he was older than half a century. I’d assumed that classed as old for a vamp, but that could still be pretty young.

  If vampires didn’t feed regularly enough, after the tiredness came actual sleep, only it was more like a coma until they managed to get blood. It was where Cassidy attributed the rumours of vampires being un-dead. With no blood in their system, a vampire’s heart stopped beating and their body went into a stasis state. It was a scary thought to many vampires that they could be buried alive for centuries without feeding and still survive.

  A vampire could live up to a thousand years before their body faded. Cassidy had never gone into the detail of what that meant. It had simply been something she’d speculated on in her later rants. I attributed that part of my reading to my early dreams about those vampires who had been thrown into the plague pits, believed to be dead.

  ‘Your extracurriculars are wearing him out.’

  ‘We Will Rock You is doing him in?’ I never considered I was adding more on his plate than he could physically handle.

  Grayson laughed, though not exactly humorously. ‘No. Spending time with you. Your energy messes with his head. Abnormal biology and all that. You spending every night this week with him and driving you home is taking its toll.’

  ‘I’m hurting him?’

  ‘No.’ Grayson swore, and looked a mixture of angry and worried at me for a second. ‘You’re not hurting him and don’t tell Emerson I said that,’ Grayson said. ‘Just being around you makes his brain have to work a little differently. He probably should have been having more regular transfusions, but he’s been preoccupied.’

  ‘Is Charlotte with him?’ I asked. If the drive they had to take for a transfusion was an hour away, didn’t that mean he should probably have someone drive him there if he was feeling ill and tired? Tiredness kills and all that.

  ‘Charlotte?’ Grayson asked. ‘No. She’s got a date with her new beau tonight.’

  ‘I thought you and her were…’

  Grayson chuckled. ‘You really don’t pay attention to anything outside of that head of yours, do you?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Maybe live outside your own world for a while and find out.’ Grayson waved his hand at me as if to tell me to calm down. ‘Charlotte and I are currently on one of our many breaks. A vampire’s heart is a fickle thing,’ Grayson said. ‘You don’t have to worry about that, I suppose, what wi
th Emerson “remembering” you and all.’ Grayson winked, using that same air-quotes tone Emerson did when he said “remember”.

  His mood had dramatically shifted from him being Mr closed-off chauffeur who didn’t want to answer any of my questions to being almost playful now. I’d experienced these 180 shifts before with Emerson, how he’d gone one week to hating me and the next to saying he liked me and was bored with our “animosity”. Perhaps it was a vamp thing, something to do with their dissociation. Or maybe it was just a Sons thing. I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t hung out with any vampires before these guys.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Love and all that stuff… we only feel it for the moment,’ Grayson said. ‘Whilst we’re with you it’s all consuming and passionate, but it can change as soon as we’re apart. We can physically remember that we felt love for one another. We can remember the times we spent together. But it’s not really us anymore.’

  Though he was driving, Grayson clenched and unclenched his fist. It was sort of his thing, just like messing with his hair and then putting his cap back on was Emerson’s.

  ‘But I don’t need to tell you that – Emerson explained it all to you, didn’t he?’ It was a rhetorical question.

  ‘So, Charlotte just broke up with you because she got infatuated with someone new?’ They’d looked pretty cosy at Emerson’s baseball game a few days ago. It was strange to think how easily vampire’s hearts could be swayed.

  ‘And she’ll break up with him once she gets bored and she’ll move onto someone else or back to me or Emerson.’

  ‘Or Emerson?’

  ‘Jealous?’ Grayson asked. He seemed legitimately curious.

  The jealousy from my dreams was probably seeping through a little, even though I knew none of what I dreamt about could possibly be real. I had no idea what sort of relationship Emerson had with her. But Grayson implied that there was something romantic there.

  Besides the rising feeling in my gut that was (not that I was going to admit it to him) jealousy, my mind went to how it would almost be impossible for a vampire to feel jealous if they never felt connected to anyone beyond the moment they were with them. Grayson couldn’t feel jealous over the new guy Charlotte was dating because the version of himself that had loved her was already in the past – the memories themselves separated from the feelings he’d once felt for her. Similarly, if Emerson had ever loved her – like he had in my dream – that would have faded from his memory (at least the connection between knowledge and feeling) as soon as they parted. Unless I was with him.

  ‘Have they been together in the past?’ I asked, instead. Was it possible that my dreams had revealed something true? Not the exact history, but perhaps that it hadn’t always been Grayson who Charlotte was close with.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they’ll get back together again?’

  ‘Probably,’ he mused. ‘But not whilst he’s with you,’ Grayson said. ‘Which is what you’re wanting to know, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why? We’re not dating or anything.’ One kiss a couple of weeks ago didn’t make for a relationship. An added dash of jealousy to my, unfortunately, ongoing crush didn’t change things. Neither did me going to his games now and having him drive me home. ‘We’re just friends.’

  Grayson shrugged like I was simplifying something much more complicated than that. ‘You’re special. And he “remembers” you. He’s not going to screw with that. Even for Charlotte, who will always love Emerson more than she can love anyone else.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘She loved him before she turned. Which means the closest she remembers to feeling love will always be for him.’

  I tried to ignore the weirdly sick feeling that my dream had been a little more than accurate about Charlotte and Emerson’s past relationship. Emerson said I wasn’t lamia, but having strange dreams that might tell me hints about the real world and relationships of people I knew… that sounded oddly witchy, didn’t it?

  Grayson continued, ‘it’s why she won’t come near you. If it’s possible for us to feel jealous she feels jealous over you. Emerson’s never been able to love her past the moment.

  ‘Emerson’s pretty… protective over your friendship. He knows you’re not exactly comfortable with us vamps and Charlotte’s probably the most hostile out of us all. Especially if she got territorial over Emerson and demanded you spent time with them both so he could “remember” her. He told her to keep her distance just in case.’

  ‘Would that be something he’d want?’

  Was he protecting me from Charlotte because he didn’t think it was something he could ask a friend to do, or because he didn’t want to?

  ‘You’d offer to be their emotional fluffer?’

  I must have not looked like I understood the term because he told me to Google it.

  ‘Would it hurt more for him if I did? If I gave him memories of loving her and then when I leave, he goes back to a dissociated life? Or will it make things more equal for them: both able to remember feeling something for one another?’

  ‘You’re genuinely asking, aren’t you? You’d really do that for him…’ Grayson’s tone was one of complete amazement.

  I’d never been in love before, but you didn’t read as much Classical prose as I did and not come out the other end with an understanding of love. Like the lines of Wuthering Heights had come to me when I first saw Emerson, another part of the book returned to me.

  You said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!

  I’d been haunted by the memory of the night my parents were murdered since it happened. Even after every night of going through the pain of losing them, there was a twisted part of my soul that missed it now that I no longer dreamed of the little brown house. For twelve years I had been able to hear the voices of my parents and remember their faces where else they might have simply faded off into obscurity. That was more than anyone else could say for being orphaned at such a young age.

  And I would go through any agony, any pain, any haunting, to be close to those who had loved me. That was love. I could only imagine how heart breaking it must be to know you once felt something like that, but be separated from it by a vacuous void as Emerson had called it.

  The closest I had come to romantic love was Christian. I hadn’t quite had the time for it to get there, but I knew that I would have done anything to give ourselves more time.

  If Charlotte remembered an inch of love she’d once had for Emerson, to see him now and know that he could not feel for her must be agony. Likewise, if Emerson had once felt love for her, it wasn’t fair that being a vampire took that from him, too, after the moment had passed. He’d already lost out on everything he’d ever wanted because he’d been turned against his will.

  If I had been willing to go to a few baseball games just to give him the memory of comradery and the friendship he talked about having with his guy friends – of course I was going to suck it up and be the better person and give him memories of love.

  Despite telling myself I wasn’t going to third wheel any of his dates just so he could remember kissing someone, Emerson was a good guy. If I could give him an inch back of what had been stolen from him, then I would. Even if it meant fighting my own jealousy. What was my body’s sexual want and lust standing in the face of actual love? Gi might have accused me of being selfish once, assuming Emerson wanted to date me and I just wanted FWB regardless of his feelings, but that wasn’t who I was.

  ‘I do have a heart, you know,’ I said.

  ‘There’s worse things than being heartless,’ Grayson said. ‘Like being selfless with it.’

  I didn’t bother to answer him.

  He pulled up, opened the doors and watched me walk up the drive and unlock my door. Grayson didn’t roll down the window to speak to me one last time like Emerson always did, he just drove away.

&nbs
p; As I watched the taillights until they rounded the corner, I thought about the impossibility of loving a vampire and expecting to be loved back in return.

  13

  I was reading Persuasion when I felt Emerson arrive in my room. The magnetism came first, the thread that seemed to pull us together, and then the presence of the vamp-glamour, which told me he was close.

  ‘You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope,’ he quoted.

  He was by my window, leaning up against it casually as though he’d always stood there. I’d left it open to hear the rain that hadn’t let up.

  ‘Not quite there yet,’ I said. ‘She’s only just found out about Wentworth’s return.’ I put my Kindle down on my bedside table.

  ‘Gi told me what happened with Emma and being called into the principal’s office. I certainly have a knack for taking the right day off school to avoid your drama, don’t I?’ I wondered whether that was a hint at the last time he’d been missing from school and Emma had stolen my clothes. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘She blew up my car last time. This was hardly even a thing.’ Wrecking the Pep room would have only affected me if it had worked at getting me expelled. Since I was only on a final warning, I hardly even considered it. Though it did piss me off a little. For once, I had something to lose if I had to leave this school. I had friends. It was strange how that made me care.

  Emerson stood in silence. He was wearing his cap, and a black hoodie. His outfit was soaked, which meant it must have been raining pretty damn bad. I wondered if baseball practice had been called off.

  ‘You’re dripping all over my floor,’ I said.

  He left my room for a second and reappeared with a towel. He threw his hat onto the bed, took off his hoodie and began to towel-off. When he was done, he left the towel on the floor on the puddle he’d made to soak it up.

  ‘Did you mean what you said on Friday, to Grayson?’

  ‘About what?’ I asked.

  Emerson appeared closer in front of me, sitting next to me on the bed. It dipped slightly under his pressure.