“I’m dying, Kira,” he said earnestly. “You have to change me…to save me.”
“I should have left you in that closet on the first day,” I snapped. His blood soaked through the white cloth instantly, spreading like red fireworks.
Zach lifted his wrist towards my face and the towel fell off with a splat. “Drink,” he said. “It’s all right. I want you to. Then we can be together…forever.”
There was nothing else I could do. The smell of all that blood was too much for my willpower. I was sure I’d never get him to the hospital in time. He was going to die and it would be my fault.
I sank my fangs into the bloody gouges on his arm.
Yeah, it was amazing. It was the last amazing moment I had with Zach. I don’t want to describe it, because remembering it now makes me feel all creepy, but it was mind-blowing. I can see how some vampires become addicted to drinking from the living. Olympia had warned me about that too.
After Zach was fully dead, I left his body there and went home to tell Olympia what had happened. She laughed and laughed and laughed until she literally fell out of her coffin. Which, incidentally, was not quite the reaction I was expecting.
“Well, we’re in love,” I said, offended. “I’m sure it’ll turn out fine. Like Bert and Crystal.”
“Oh dear,” Olympia said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Now perhaps you’ll see why listening to seven hundred years of experience is a good idea.”
Yeah. About a month later, in a rental car somewhere in the middle of Kansas, while we were moving around every night to hide our trail, Zach tried to get to second base with me and I threw him out of the sun roof. We had to drive half a mile back to find him. He sulked all the way to Montana.
That was the end of that relationship.
TRAGICALLY, I AM now stuck with Zach until he decides to go off and start his own vampire family somewhere, which requires a level of maturity I’m fairly sure he won’t be able to muster any time in the next five hundred years.
On the plus side, our cover story in this new town was that we were supposed to be brother and sister, so he couldn’t hit on me in public any more. That didn’t stop him from trying sometimes when we were at home – hence the long midnight walks to avoid him. He kept staring soulfully into my eyes and saying things like, “You want to be with me, Kira,” or “We are meant for each other,” which would maybe have more impact if his idea of “soulful” didn’t involve enormous, googly eyeballs. The good news is, I’m still a lot stronger than him, as apparently that is a skill I am extra-blessed with. Zach? Not so much. Olympia asked me to stop throwing him out windows though. They’re expensive to replace and the noise might disturb the neighbours.
That whole saga is why they immediately blamed me for this new vampire attack. As if I hadn’t learned my lesson! I was pretty sure I’d never date again, just in case I accidentally landed another obsessive lunatic. If you asked me, I was the vampire least likely to bite another high school football player.
But Wilhelm was convinced that after biting Zach, I’d become addicted.
“I knew this would happen!” he huffed, wagging his finger in the air. “I knew it was foolish to turn a child of this horrifying century! She’s a degenerate menace! We should lock her in a coffin and feed her through a tube until she is old enough to be trusted!”
I glanced at Olympia. “You guys don’t really do that, do you?”
“Not unless it’s necessary,” Olympia said, which didn’t reassure me very much.
We were in the den, which is Wilhelm’s favourite room after the basement, where he sleeps. Olympia deliberately chose a house with very few windows – they’re hard to find, but cheap, because nobody else wants them. The den had only one small window. Like all the others in the house, it was covered with dark blinds and heavy velvet curtains.
On the table next to Wilhelm’s Barcalounger was the only light in the room: a tiny lamp with a pale red shade. Olympia had convinced Wilhelm to give up his dripping Gothic candles after he set the last Barcalounger on fire. This new chair was covered in a prickly red-and-black plaid. The colours matched the dark red Oriental rug and the sleek, black metal coffee table, but stylistically the room was a bit of a mishmash.
Not that I’ll ever tell my vampire parents this, but they’re not exactly the world’s greatest interior decorators. It’s like they’ve latched on to a couple of trendy things from each century and haven’t noticed that the world has moved on.
This is unfortunately true of their clothes too. We’re not going to even discuss the tragedy of a medieval vampire in a pale blue leisure suit. I make Olympia run her outfits by me every morning before I let her drive me to school.
“She is running wild!” Wilhelm bellowed now, talking about me again. “She will bring the vampire hunters right to us!”
“This isn’t the Dark Ages, Pops,” I said. I love the way Wilhelm’s hair stands on end when I call him that. “There aren’t mobs of ignorant villagers outside with pitchforks and torches. Nobody even believes you guys exist. Us guys, I mean.”
“That is precisely the kind of thinking that will get us all staked!” he shouted. “These new vampires think they can bite anyone they like! They don’t remember how the hunters watch for any signs of us! Careless, reckless, selfish—”
“But I didn’t do it!” I yelled over the end of his sentence. “Call me what you like, but I DIDN’T BITE HIM!”
Wilhelm glared at me with beady, bloodshot eyes. He wasn’t bitten until fairly late in life, so he’s kind of grizzled and grey for a vampire. Plus he’s had the same moustache since the 800s – long and droopy and fluffy. Apparently it keeps going in and out of fashion, so he sees no need to shave it. Personally I think it’s really distracting to talk to someone who looks like he has giant fuzzy caterpillars crawling out of his nose.
“It might be true,” Olympia interjected. “We can’t be sure she did it.”
“We can’t be sure she didn’t,” Wilhelm snarled. “We should move again, and quickly, before they come to hunt us down.”
“Oh, no,” I said, remembering the long weeks of car travel and switching cities and identities. It was bad enough after my death; after Zach’s it was even worse, because he was there pestering me the whole time and there was no way to get away from him. I was kind of hoping we’d stay here in Massachusetts for a while. “Please don’t make me start junior year all over again.”
“I hardly think relocating is the worst of your problems,” Olympia pointed out.
“There could totally be other vampires here,” I said. “We saw this way suspicious guy at the school, didn’t we, Olympia? And it’s a pretty big town, right? There could be vampires all over the place!”
“Most vampires are not as foolish as you are,” Wilhelm growled.
“Let me find the vampire who killed Tex,” I said. “If I can figure out who did it, will you believe me? Can we stay?”
Olympia and Wilhelm looked at each other for a long moment. Sometimes I think they’re actually talking to each other when this happens, which is fully creepy. Nobody wants parents with telepathy.
Finally Wilhelm snorted, which made his moustache flounce up and down. “I am not happy about this,” he said. “I want that to be clear.”
“All right, we’ll let you try,” Olympia said to me. “But if you haven’t figured it out