by H G Lynch
Then she heard a barely-audible click, and Reid drew away from her, reaching back to unlace her fingers from behind his neck. He turned his face away from her, his eyes still closed. Confused, Ember frowned. “Reid, what is it? Did…did I do something?” She heard her voice waver, feeling the hot sting of rejection. But Reid shook his head, opened his eyes and drew in a breath. He slowly turned to look at her again, a strange expression on his face that almost looked like guilt. But not quite.
“No, it’s not you. I swear. It’s…” He laughed bleakly. “It’s this.” Cautiously, he opened his mouth and slid back his lip from his upper teeth, exposing long, sharp canines. His fangs. Now Ember understood the expression on his face. It wasn’t guilt. He was ashamed. Because he wanted to bite her? “It… they come out when I’m hungry,” Reid explained quietly, but he’d dropped his gaze, “And I don’t mean, just for blood.”
It took Ember a long moment to realise what he meant, and when she finally figured it out, she felt heat sweep up her face. She tipped her head down, hoping her hair would create a screen so he wouldn’t see her blushing. “Oh,” she said simply, trying not to smile.
“Don’t worry; I’m not going to bite you or anything. I just…” He shrugged, and when she glanced at him, Reid was blushing too. It was so strange to see Reid blush, especially over something like this. She’d thought he was immune to this kind of thing, considering his reputation. He’d always seemed so sure of himself, so unabashed about it.
Ember couldn’t help it; she giggled. And once she started, she couldn’t stop. She covered her mouth with her hand, keeping her head down, but she knew Reid could see her shoulders shaking with laughter. She just couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that Reid Ashton was blushing over something like this, couldn’t believe he honestly looked ashamed, thought she’d freak out over his fangs or the idea he might bite her. Clearly, the boy had no idea who he was talking to.
“Do I even want to ask what’s so funny?” Reid asked, with a kind of resigned amusement in his voice.
Ember managed to gasp through her giggles. “You. I can’t believe you thought that I’d… that it would…” She couldn’t form a sentence, clutched at her aching sides until the giggles receded and she could breathe again. Then she looked up, wiping tears off her face, grinning helplessly. “Reid, the fangs don’t bother me. Honestly. You remember that night in the skate park when I told you I like vampires? I meant I like vampires. As in, if you wanted to bite me, I probably wouldn’t try to stop you,” she explained, despite a fresh blush rising to colour her face. Here she was explaining her bizarre fetishes to a guy who, just yesterday, she was sure she hated. A guy who, incidentally, happened to be the one supernatural creature she’d ever wished to be real.
Reid stared at her wordlessly for a long moment, the colour high on his cheekbones fading. Ember couldn’t read the expression on his face, but his eyes were roving her face, looking for something. Whatever he found, he was apparently satisfied with it, and a slow, sensual smile crept across his lips. Just for a second, Ember’s heart stopped; He was just so pretty. For all his sins and sharp comments, he had all the beauty of an angel.
“You, Ember, are perhaps the most amazing girl I’ve ever met,” he said softly, reaching out to tuck a lock of her hair back behind her ear. Jitters ran around in Ember’s stomach.
“Unfortunately, I have to admit, you’re rather amazing yourself. I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone as insane, frustrating, or nerve-wracking before in my life. And I’m certain I’ve never found a boy worth noticing before,” she admitted. Then she narrowed her eyes menacingly - Reid looked faintly startled - and added in a low voice, “You are the first guy I have ever given a chance to, and if you blow it, I will personally stake you, cut off your head and then watch you burn.”
“So, you finally admitted it to him? How did he react?” It was the first time all day Ember had had a chance to talk to Sherry about what had happened between her and Reid yesterday.
Sherz had been off with Ricky until late yesterday - Ember didn’t ask what they were doing or even where they were - and she’d been too out of it to keep up a real conversation when she’d arrived back at just after midnight.
“He was happy, I guess. I expected him to smirk or laugh or made some arrogant comment, but he just…” Ember shrugged.
They were walking back to their room after the final bell and, for the first time lately, Ricky was nowhere to be seen. He’d been sticking by Sherry so often these last few days that Ember was starting to consider pulling out a restraining order on him. Ember was missing her best friend because of him and she just wanted one girls’ night, with movies and popcorn.
“And? Come on, he had to say something or do something? Some kind of show of appreciation?” Sherry muttered, a meaningful gleam in her green eyes. Ember just sighed and rolled her eyes. It only spurred Sherry on more. “He did, didn’t he? Did he kiss you? Stroke your hair? More? Come on, we’re best friends! We need to share this stuff!” When Sherry said that, Ember felt a wash of guilt yet again at how she was hiding the true identity of Ricky and the guys from her best friend. It was something she should know, something huge and amazing and wonderful. But it was safer not to tell her; safer for everyone, especially her.
But Ember could tell her this much; after all, it was only girly gossip. “Yeah, he kissed me. Or I kissed him. Whatever. And, no, he didn’t exactly stroke my hair but things got a little warm. No clothes hit the floor though, so don’t even ask.” Ember held up a silencing hand quickly as Sherry opened her mouth, undoubtedly to ask just that. She was grinning madly, clearly pleased. Ember almost wanted to tell her exactly what Reid had said to her yesterday, about how he noticed her and how he’d said that whenever he’d kissed her, it had been what he wanted more than anything. But, for now, she wanted his words to be her little secret. A memory she could keep locked away until it got worn with time, like a photograph taken out to be looked at too many times.
“At least now we both have boyfriends. Maybe we could go on a double date?” Sherry’s green eyes sparked excitedly at the idea. Ember groaned inwardly, thinking that her friend’s head-over-heels romance had turned her mind a little slushy.
“Seriously? A double date? That’s about the most sickly, mind-numbingly clichéd thing you could’ve suggested,” Ember groaned out-loud this time, feeling queasy at even the idea of a double date. It was typically romance movie-type stuff that made her want to gag.
Sherry knew that, of course, but she simply smiled. “Please? It would be fun.”
Ember wasn’t to be persuaded, not this time. “No way. Not in this lifetime chum. And anyway, I’m not quite sure if you’d say Reid was my boyfriend exactly. We’re still working out the details of that issue.” Ember felt the puzzled frown on her face and saw the disappointed look on Sherry’s. She also had an air of exasperation all of a sudden.
“What? Why are you giving me that look?” Ember asked defensively as they reached their dorm room door.
Sherry sighed. “Even when you can admit your feelings for him, you have to be difficult about it. You couldn’t just accept you’re in a relationship and like it, could you?” Sherry shook her head, stepping into the room and flicking on the light switch.
“Hey, it’s not that… well, not completely. There’s genuinely some things we-” Ember stopped, bile rising in her throat and the air escaping her lungs. Sherry had turned to face her already, before observing the room, in order to give her a judging glower.
“What? What is…” Sherry turned and saw it too.
Ember felt like she was honestly going to throw up, her blood ran cold and her limbs went numb. Tears sprang to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, and before she could start hyperventilating, she screamed. Sherry - just barely visible in her blurry peripheral vision - just stood still as stone, obviously too shocked and horrified to move or speak. Ember covered her mouth with her hand, her stomach spasming, wracked with waves of nausea and chil
ling horror.
She barely noticed when Ricky and Reid burst in the door not fifteen seconds later. Ricky went right for Sherry, but when he saw the mess, he stopped and swallowed, disgust clear on his face. He swiftly turned back to Sherry and practically carried her from the room, arms around her protectively, whispering soothing words over and over. Ember’s vision was too blurry from tears and the shaking to distinguish anything but a pool of red and black in her line of sight, and she could barely get enough breath. Someone was pulling at her arm, trying to take her away, but she wouldn’t - couldn’t - move a muscle. Slowly, Reid’s voice came blurrily to her ears, and she finally understood what he was saying.
“Ember. Ember, come on, we need to get you out of here. Now, come on. It’s OK. It’s OK. Everything will be OK.” Reid’s voice was worried and slightly panicked, filled with the same disgust as Ricky’s face had displayed. Even vampires had limits to their gruesomeness, she supposed distantly.
Ember wanted to yell at him that it wasn’t OK, how the hell could it be OK! There was a mangled, dead crow on her bedroom floor, wings twisted grotesquely and blood seeping out of it onto the carpet! How could that be OK? But she could only gasp through her tears, feeling cold and numb.
Eventually, Reid gave up on trying to make her cooperate gently, and just lifted her in his arms as she continued sobbing. She didn’t fight him as she might’ve usually at the indignity of being carried like a child. She clutched his t-shirt and curled into his chest, letting him take her wherever it was he was taking her.
All the while, he muttered to himself too low for her to hear properly, and occasionally made a remark to her, meant to be soothing. It didn’t help.
Ember was surprised to open her eyes to see clean white floors and pale lavender walls around her. Bright lights lit the sterile, cold room and she realised she was in a harsh, rough hospital bed. She tried to sit up, glancing down the rows of empty beds on one side, and at the drawn moss-coloured curtain on the other side.
She was in the infirmary.
She tried to sit up again and felt vertigo hit her, so she lay back dizzily. Her eyes were sore and her head hurt a little, but other than that she was fine and couldn’t understand why she was here. That was, until the images hit her a moment later; the mangled crow, the twisted wings, the blood on the floor, the lifeless empty shine in the crow’s black eyes.
Nausea roiled in her stomach but she swallowed it back, determined not to throw up. The helpless tears came once again to pour down her face and she felt something in her heart wrench.
Who would do that? Who would do that to an animal? What kind of sick, evil person would kill a crow that way? And why would they put in her room? Some kind of ghastly, twisted practical joke? An atrocious, disgusting prank?
She realised as she asked herself the questions that there was no possibility other than the theory that someone had done it intentionally. It couldn’t have been that the bird flew in the window and hurt itself somehow, or that it was simply a coincidence it had been in her room specifically. It was meant for her. There was no way it was directed at Sherry, because nobody hated her. Some people disliked her just because of her association with Ember, but it was Ember that people hated around here. But who would hate her enough to do something like this? Who would be sick enough to do it?
“Oh, crap! You’re awake!” Reid’s voice echoed in the near-empty infirmary and she turned to see him rushing over to her from the open doorway in the opposite wall.
“You’d have preferred I stayed unconscious?” Ember choked, a weak attempt at her usual wit.
“No, of course not. But I wanted to be here when you woke up to make sure you were OK. You fainted halfway here and I was worried.” Reid’s blue eyes bore into hers, conveying all his anxiety and concern. Ember felt her lip tremble and bit down on it, trying to repress more tears. Reid wrapped his arms round her, holding her to his chest and planting tiny, soft kisses in her hair. It was such an unfamiliar thing for him to do, so bizarrely gentle and despite what they’d said to each other yesterday, Ember couldn’t help but feel startled by it. This is the kind of thing a boyfriend would do, her mind whispered, and she frowned, unsure exactly how she felt about that. It was so new to her.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find who did this. I promise, we’ll find him.” There was grim, furious determination in Reid’s voice. And for the first time, the fact that he was a cold-blooded vampire scared her a little. She didn’t want to think about what he might to do to whatever sick bastard he found guilty of this horror. But she let him hold her, drawing strength from his care and determination, no matter how unsettlingly foreign it was to her.
A short while later, Reid was sitting in a padded plastic chair, pulled up next to her bed, one hand twined with hers on the sheets. His long fingers tapped a rapid, random beat on the back of her hand.
“So, when do I get out of here?” Ember asked eagerly, looking round at the too-clean infirmary walls and floor. She’d never liked hospital-type settings like this. They were too emotionless, too bleak and sterile. The strong smell of bleach and metal put an uncomfortable tang on her tongue.
“Now, if you want. The nurse wanted to check in on you in a half hour and give you some sort of medication for anxiety, but I can pull some strings.” He smiled and Ember knew that he didn’t mean pulling strings the way a normal person did, the way a human did. Vampire compulsion was sure to be his charismatic tool, with, perhaps, the aid of his charming smile. Ember smiled back at him and nodded. Reid went off to find the nurse, and Ember sighed.
She was starting to get over the horror of what had happened, and now she was getting angry about it. She wasn’t so much angry at the fact the bird had been put in her room, meant for her, but more at the sickness of the way the bird had been killed. How could anyone do that to an animal? She thought once again, fury building up. A knot of flame locked in her chest, and she gritted her teeth. Maybe she’d give Reid some ideas of how to deal with the sick son of a bitch who did this when he found him? Nobody should get to mangle a bird like that and get away with it. Detention wasn’t enough. Expulsion wasn’t even enough. He should suffer the way the bird did.
“Ember,” Reid’s concerned voice pulled her from her gruesome train of thought. His wide eyes and pinched mouth let her know he’d been in her head again, and she felt the anger drain away faster than it had come on. Sometimes her temper swung wildly like that, mostly when she was tired or already upset.
“I just can’t stand it! How could anyone do that to a bird? It’s the most sick, twisted, evil, repulsive, damned awful thing I’ve ever seen!” she spat, curling her fingers into the blanket on her lap.
“Ember, relax. We’ll find out who did it, and why, and then we’ll deal with them accordingly,” Reid said calmly, shrugging as if it were no big deal. Ember supposed, to a vampire, a dead crow possibly wasn’t a big deal. She was overreacting slightly, but she was an animal-lover and tended to be a bit sensitive on the issue of people hurting animals.
“I’m just angry, is all. And…” She paused thoughtfully. She’d never fainted before last night but she was sure she shouldn’t still be dizzy, her head shouldn’t still hurt and the nausea she felt should’ve gone away by now. She knew these symptoms well, realised the cause of them also accounted for her sudden temper snap. “And I need caffeine before I bite someone’s head off. That’s probably why I’m all crazy,” she offered as an explanation for her mood swing.
Reid just looked at her for a moment and then said, very soberly. “You know caffeine is a drug, right? Your addiction to it is rather unhealthy.”
Ember scoffed, rolled her eyes. “You sound like my mother,” she grumbled. Reid just grinned.
“The nurse said you can go but you have to take one of these before you go to bed tonight.” He held out a little orange bottle of pills. She eyed the bottle with disdain before snatching it and shoving it in her pocket.
Reid helped her off the bed since she couldn’t
touch the floor - her feet dangled several inches above the shiny, linoleum floor. This amused Reid a great deal, it was clear on his face, but he refrained from mocking her for once. Ember glared at him anyway, knowing he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t seem to care.
It wasn’t until they were halfway back to her room that Ember’s sluggish mind spat a few real thoughts out, thoughts that didn’t pertain to Reid or how unreal he looked walking beside her.
“Wait, where’s Sherry?” she asked, suddenly panicked and desperately worried about her friend.
“She’s OK. She’s with Ricky somewhere, probably the library. She stayed by your bed for a little while, didn’t want to leave, but the nurse said she’d let her know when you woke up.” Reid frowned for a second at that and then smiled, shrugging it off. “Well, you can tell her yourself I guess. If we can find her,” he added.
After a moment of thought, Ember decided Sherry was probably just fine and she could go to find her, and check on her, later. Reid started walking again, not holding her hand but wandering along very close next to her - she had a feeling he wanted to hold her hand but didn’t dare in case it stirred up more rumours if they were seen. He stopped at the door to his room and caught her hand – very briefly - to stop her from walking past it.
“Hey. In here, Firefly.” He nodded toward his door hand on the door handle. Ember paused and glanced down the hall toward her room.
Then she shook her head. “I need to see my room.” She knew the room would’ve been thoroughly cleaned by now and she wanted to banish the images she had of the crow on the floor. Reid looked at her with a concerned expression.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said quietly.
“Please. I need to see it all clean again to get rid of the horrible images. Please?” she insisted. Reid looked ready to argue, but then Ember looked up at him pleadingly, and saw his resistance crumble. Slowly, Reid nodded and led her down the hallway toward her own room, though he clearly wasn’t happy about it.