Mirror: Book One of the Valkanas Clan (4 page)

“Dr. Wilson,” he
said,
his tone abruptly formal and distant again. “I did not request a meeting so you might offer excuses; I merely wished to inform you of what I do and do not consider acceptable reading material. That, and to point out that your faculty presentation has been moved forward by a few weeks. You will need to deliver your lecture on Pedagogy and Literature next Thursday at noon.” He paused. “Given your obviously unconventional techniques, I’m sure we will all find it terribly enlightening.”

Crap. I’d completely forgotten about that presentation. Of course, initially it wasn't scheduled to occur until just before Thanksgiving. Now I was going to have to come up with something that would not just scrape by as tolerably boring, but instead undo some of the suspicions Myron had cast on my teaching techniques. Numb, I mumbled some sort of agreement, and continued to sit there long after the line had disconnected and gone silent, staring at my now dark cell phone.

Fifteen minutes later, I gave up trying to puzzle out whether Dr.
Vente’s
remarks were pure coincidence or not. Instead, I tried to drill up the courage to go examine myself in the mirror, something I'd been avoiding all morning. I had changed out of blood-stiffened clothes last night when I got home, and then showered in the dark, eyes shut, not wanting to look at the after-effects of my attack and ruin the lingering enjoyment from my walk home. I’d felt a fair amount of what I assumed was dried blood flake off in the hot water, though, so I knew it couldn’t be pretty. I was betting I looked like crap on toast, and if I was right it would mean I could avoid the doctor no longer, especially not if these migraines continued. I stood up and marched myself into the bathroom, closing my eyes just before I could catch my image in the glass.

“Okay, don’t be ridiculous, just open your eyes,” I murmured. But when I finally opened them, I saw nothing. Or rather, I saw a version of myself, but it was one that not only lacked any bruises or cuts but actually looked far better than I usually did. My lashes looked
darker,
my always fair skin now seemed to have a faint pearlescent glow, and my hazel eyes shined. Even the curls in my dark auburn hair seemed shinier, lacking their usual frizzy halo. I couldn’t generally manage to look this good even after a few hours primping, on those rare occasions when I actually bothered with that kind of thing. What the hell?

I stripped off my clothes and began searching for any sign of yesterday’s attack. I checked my legs, arms, waist, and even—remembering the sickening sensation of being crunched against my car—my back, but there was nothing to see. Well, nothing but that faint glow. I scooted closer to the mirror to examine my face in more detail. My pupils were dilated, I realized, and then I found myself wondering just how badly I’d misestimated Tom. Could he have given me some kind of drug? Oh God…had I been drugged and blacked out in some kind of lunatic’s house for hours? A spike of fear abruptly jabbed through my gut, and I wished I’d felt it yesterday when I first awoke in that alleyway. If I’d been smart enough to scream then maybe the cops would’ve heard me.

Cops.
Should I call them, file a report? If I did, what would I say? “Officer, yesterday I was attacked and tried to call 911, and then I woke up in an alley and a student was with me, and he told me he’d turned me into a vampire, and then let me leave without a fight when I woke up in his apartment later that night. And oh, by the way, I haven’t the slightest scratch on me but yesterday I was covered in blood.”

Yeah, that would go over great. I'm sure they'd be happy to escort me to Our Lady of Peace and find a nice padded room for me right away. If there really was some kind of drug that healed wounds this quickly, with the side effect of making your skin glow like you’d spent all day in a spa…well, wouldn’t some drug company be making millions off it by now? Who in her right mind would complain to the cops that something must be wrong because she looked too good?

I turned back to resume studying myself in the mirror, looking for any evidence of what had happened yesterday. That’s when I noticed the two bumps on my neck. They were barely visible, two tiny raised scars about an inch apart just above my collarbone.

Right on my jugular.

Glowing skin, bright eyes, fast healing, and two almost invisible scars on my neck when I’d never had so much as a bug bite in those spots before…was it really possible that Tom wasn’t just some psychotic student I’d had the bad luck to encounter in my classroom but an actual vampire?

I slowly slid down the wall beside my mirror until I was resting on the tile, my brain racing. Surely there was some alternate explanation. I mean, yes, I enjoyed vampire stories, and I'd had my share of daydreams about having a sexy vamp lover, but I’d never wanted to
be
one. Absurdly, I found myself fixating on my fourteen years of vegetarianism—how on earth would I stomach blood if I couldn’t even touch a steak? Just the thought made me gag, and I lurched to the toilet, glad I was already in the bathroom.

Two hours later, after spending thirty minutes worshipping the porcelain and another ninety trying to find alternate explanations on Google, I’d resigned myself to believing that Tom might have been telling the truth. And that made me want to bury him with the questions that were now suffocating me. But if he’d been telling the truth, then that also meant two other things: that he’d been the one to turn me, and that he’d killed someone. Whether that made him my knight in shining armor or a psychopath I couldn’t yet decide, and until I resolved that question, I figured it was best to simply write all my questions down instead.

I grabbed a pen and started writing. Did I really have to drink human blood to survive?
If so, how much, and how often?
Obviously the sun didn’t kill me—though it did appear to give me evil migraines—so that myth was out, or at least distorted, but what else was partially (or fully) true?
Garlic?
Crosses?
Holy water?
Wooden stakes? What about super human speed or strength to go along with the rapid healing?
Or the ability to hypnotize people with a look or suggestion?
Then, my training kicking in, my questions became more academic: What is the nature of vampirism? Is it a disease and, if so, is there a cure? How long have vampires existed, and how many are there? Are vampires truly immortal?

Once I’d written all these down, I began to experiment. I rested my fingers against my neck, testing for a pulse. I felt—well, I don’t know what I felt—it wasn’t exactly a pulse, but my jugular wasn’t completely still either. I felt the same very slight, almost imperceptible, movement when I rested my hand over the left side of my chest. If it was a heartbeat it certainly wasn’t a normal one, but something was still moving through my veins.

Next I walked over to my couch, crouched down, lifted—and put a dent in my wall when the couch flipped twenty feet across the room. There went my security deposit—I guess that was a yes on the super strength. I decided to wait on testing the speed, since I didn’t want to accidentally damage anything else in my apartment by whipping around a corner too fast. Plus Beckett was already traumatized by the couch—he’d booked it into the bedroom and I was betting I wouldn’t see him again for a few hours. I didn’t blame him.

What could I check next…I didn’t have any whole garlic, but there was some garlic powder in my spice
rack.
I unscrewed the lid and took a tentative sniff—and would have puked again if I hadn’t already emptied everything from my stomach earlier. Damn. No more extra-garlicky pasta sauce for me I guess. Of course, I still didn’t know if it would kill me, but I wasn’t in a rush to experiment any further with that one. But it did make me wonder if there were other foods I could eat. I grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl, peeled it, and took a big bite. It didn’t trigger my gag reflex, but it also didn’t taste good. Actually, it didn’t taste like anything. It was just flavorless texture,
mushing
around in my mouth. I forced myself to swallow, even though I wasn’t at all inclined to anymore. It went down fine, but I threw the rest of the banana away. I just couldn’t convince myself to continue chewing on something that felt more like pureed cardboard than actual food to my new senses.

I was digging through my jewelry box looking for the cross my grandmother had given me years ago to see if it burned me when I suddenly realized that Ava was going to call. A minute later, the phone rang. Now that was new—I was used to knowing who was calling as soon as the phone began ringing—an unusual, if irrelevant, “talent” I’d had since childhood—but this was the first time I’d known it a solid minute in advance. I almost didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say to her, but guilt caused me to grab it just before it went to voicemail.

“Hey Ava.”

“
Aly
? Oh thank God—are you okay? I got your email, but it didn’t explain what happened to you yesterday. I’ve left you about a dozen messages I think. I was afraid—” her voice cracked, edging on tears, and I felt like a terrible friend. I’d been conducting little experiments while she’d been worrying herself sick over me.

“I’m okay.” Well, relatively. “I was attacked yesterday on my way to the restaurant—”

“What?!
Who attacked you? Is that why those cop cars showed up? No-one could figure out what was going on, and when they left with no-one in the vehicles I just assumed it had been a false alarm.”

“Yes. No. I mean—yes, that’s why the cop cars showed up, no it wasn’t a false alarm; I’d dialed 9-1-1 just before I was knocked unconscious, but one of my students found me and rescued me…” I faltered. Did it really count as a rescue if you had to turn someone into a vampire to save her? “
um
, anyway, he’d carried me off before the cops showed up, so that’s why they didn’t find me.”

“He what?”
Her voice rose, and I held the phone as far from my ear as I could and bumped the volume down as low as it would go on my cell. I guess I could check off super-sensitive hearing too. “Why would he carry you away from the cops if you’d been attacked? That doesn’t make any sense.”

 
I was on the verge of telling her—we’d made a promise never to lie to one another years ago, after we’d discovered the male bonding time my then-boyfriend and her then-fiancé had said they’d been spending with each other had actually been spent in the company of blonde co-eds. But I wanted to avoid being confined to a strait-jacket even more and so, trying to convince myself I was only protecting both of us by not telling her the truth, I decided to lie.

“Um, I’m not completely sure, actually.” I paused, uncertain how to explain. “I think it was because he’s an EMT and his apartment was right around the corner. That was how he came across
me,
actually, he was walking to campus for a class. He, uh, had medical supplies at his place and figured that would be quicker than calling emergency personnel. He didn’t realize I’d already called them before I’d blacked out,” I said.

That barely made any sense at all. Guess vampirism didn’t come with the ability to suddenly concoct brilliant lies just because it gave you the need to tell them. I crossed my fingers, willing her to buy it and not ask any more questions. I didn’t think I could come up with anything else to explain all the gaps in my story.

“Oh, I see. Well that’s good, I’m just glad you’re okay. You owe me some tacos, though, for making me worry so much!” Her voice sounded too chipper, too relieved. Maybe I was wrong about not having new persuasive abilities. I felt like a Jedi.

“These are not the vamps you’re looking for,” I murmured to myself, and began giggling.

“What?” Her voice was suddenly sharp again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Oh, um” I couldn’t stop giggling.
Deep breath,
Aly
.
Deep breath.
Though, come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure if I needed to breathe anymore. This also suddenly seemed funny. I doubled over, laughing harder.

“
Aly
? What’s going on? Why are you laughing?”

“Ah,” I gasped. “No, fine, fine, just tired. You know how I get when I’m tired, all slap-happy. I’m going to go now, okay?”

I hung up before she could answer, and rocked back and forth on the floor, laughing. I realized I must not need to breathe, because I shook without pause, without enough air in my lungs to make any noise at all. Eventually, it subsided, and I rolled onto my back to stare at the ceiling. I closed my eyes, taking deep, if unnecessary, breaths. They soothed me, somehow.