My Blood Approves (20 page)

“
Yeah.” He quickly glanced
at me, but I didn’t understand what he meant so I just stared at
him. “Yes. Peter left because of you. Because of what happened,
well, almost happened yesterday. But it’s not because you did
anything wrong, or there’s anything wrong with you. Peter’s just
going through his own thing and I don’t know. I think he’s just
being an ass, but Ezra says…” He trailed off, probably realizing
that he hadn’t really said anything but he’d almost said too
much.

My eyes had welled with tears. No matter
what Jack said, Peter left because of me, because of something that
I had or hadn’t done, and it was devastating. Everything about me
craved him, and I drove him away.

“
What did almost happen
yesterday?” I asked quietly.

“
Well…” Jack laughed
hollowly, and his hand gripped the wheel even tighter. “What do you
think happened yesterday?”

“
I don’t know. Honestly,
it’s hard to remember. When I try to think about it, I just
remember being in his room and feeling this incredible pull towards
him and this… yearning.”

I tried hard to focus on what had sent me in
a tailspin, but it felt so foggy. I could remember Peter’s eyes and
the way he smelled and wanting him so much it hurt. My heart raced,
throbbing painfully, and I had gotten short of breath.

“
Stop, Alice,” Jack
whimpered, and he was in total agony. His blue eyes had gone almost
translucent, and they had that hungry look that was very
reminiscent of the one that Peter had given me last
night.

“
Stop what?” I asked
breathlessly. He groaned and looked away from me, and I was about
press him further, but then the Jeep started skidding horribly
across the road.

“
Ah, hell.” Jack gripped
the wheel and tried to correct it, but I felt it start to tilt to
the side, and he gave me a frantic look.

Before I could really understand what was
happening, he lunged at me, wrapping his arms tightly around me and
pressing me against him. I closed my eyes and buried my face in his
chest, and I felt his body curl protectively around me.

There was the sensation of moving and I felt
cold wind whip through my hair. The sound of crunching metal and
shattering glass and this sickening thud filled my ears, but I
could barely hear anything over the pounding of my heart.

I finally felt Jack’s arm relax around me,
and I lifted my head, looking at him in the face. He was worried
and scared, but there was still that underlying hunger.

“
Are you okay?” Jack asked,
pushing the hair from eyes to inspect for wounds.

“
I think so,” I nodded. I
felt dazed and scared, but nothing really hurt.

“
Good. Then I need you to
get away from me for a minute,” Jack said, not unkindly.

I hurried to do as he asked, pushing myself
off him and standing up. He jumped up and took several steps back
from me.

For the first time, I looked around. We were
on the shoulder of the highway, and there were bits of broken glass
and metal all over the road. Another car had been crushed against
the cement divider in the middle, and there was an SUV farther down
that looked like it had some minor damage. Headlights of stopped
cars blinded me.

At first, I couldn’t figure out where the
Jeep was, and then I saw it. About thirty feet back from us, the
crushed remnants of Jeep were engulfed in flames.

I gasped, realizing that if Jack hadn’t
grabbed me, I either would’ve stayed in that car to get smashed and
burned up, or I would’ve been thrown from the Jeep going well over
a hundred miles an hour and landed on the pavement.

“
Are you okay?” I looked
back at him.

Jack had taken the brunt force of
everything, and if he hadn’t, I would’ve been killed. My body was
much more fragile than his, but he had to have sustained some
wounds.

“
Yeah, I’m great.” He tried
to compose himself and looked at the carnage around us.

There appeared to be some cuts on his arm,
and when he turned away, I saw the back of his shirt was shredded
and covered in blood. When he’d hit the road, he must’ve landed on
his back and skidded for awhile.

“
You’re covered in blood!”
I shouted and took a step closer to him, trying to inspect his
wounds, but he just waved me off.

I remembered the dog bite, and how the major
wounds had looked so minor. I wasn’t really worried about this, but
he had just been thrown from the car.

“
I’m fine.” He held his arm
out for me to see. A thick line of blood ran from where a gash
should be, but there wasn’t one. There wasn’t even a
mark.

“
What about your back?” I
asked, but he shook his head.

“
It tingles. It’ll be fine
in a minute.” All the skin and the muscles should’ve been ripped
from his back, but it would be fine in a minute.

“
You saved my life. Again.”
I wrapped my arms tightly around myself.

The adrenaline, confusion, and Peter’s
sedative all mixed through me, on top of Jack’s apprehension and
fading hunger. I was on the verge of hysterics.

“
Well, this time, I almost
killed you too. So… it kinda evens out.” Jack meant he’d almost
killed me by crashing the Jeep, but I could still feel his hunger.
I remembered that ominous conversation he’d had with Ezra about how
this all wouldn’t last much longer.

“
Why do you keep saving my
life?” My voice trembled, and hot tears slid down my cheeks. Jack
looked at me like he didn’t understand what I meant, but I went on
talking, and the more I talked, the harder I cried. “I just don’t
get it! Why do you keep saving me if you’re just going to kill me?
Why don’t you just hurry up and get it over with already? Is this
some kind of sick game for you? Do you always have to play with
your food before you eat it?”

His jaw dropped and his eyes widened with
shock and hurt.

“
Do you know…” Jack trailed
off, trying to get a handle on what I meant. “We’re not going to
kill you.”

“
Then what’s going on?” I
was almost shrieking by then. “What the hell are you and what do
you want with me?”

“
Alice, we’re
vampires.”

Jack gave me an even look, and I almost
burst out laughing, but then I realized that he was completely
serious. I lapsed into a stunned silence, which was just as well,
because suddenly there was the wailing sirens and flashing lights
of the police and ambulance.

- 13 -

The paramedics thought that I was in shock,
and if I had been able to speak, I probably would’ve agreed. They
couldn’t explain how either of us were alive, or where the blood
all over Jack’s body had come from. They wanted to put us in an
ambulance and send us downtown, but since Jack wouldn’t pass any
kind of medical test, he fought them until they finally
relented.

He allowed them to check me over, but when
they said I was fine, except for the shock, he demanded a ride home
in a police car.

He sat next to me in the backseat, and while
he whispered my name several times, I never responded. I just
stared out the window and tried to make sense of his
confession.

Some things fit. Like his superhuman
strength, his miraculous ability to heal, the way he never ate or
drank anything, and I’d only ever seen him at night.

But they were all tan (except for Mae, but
she was British), and I’d actually heard Jack’s heartbeat last
night. He didn’t have fangs, and he hadn’t eaten me.

That did kinda explain what had happened
with Peter, except why did they want him to eat me? What was so
damn important about that? Couldn’t anybody just eat anybody?

Mae must’ve seen the police car, because she
was at the front door waiting for us when they dropped us off.
Matilda jumped all over Jack, but he wasn’t in the mood, so he
pushed her off.

“
Jack, what happened?” Mae
was talking to him, but she was looking me over.

I didn’t even have a scratch on me, but when
I’d caught my reflection in the rearview mirror of the squad car, I
was completely white and my eyes were frantic and red-rimmed from
sobbing.

“
I totaled the Jeep,” Jack
answered vaguely. We stood in the entryway, but he pulled off his
shirt and started wiping off the blood with his ruined
shirt.

“
Again?” Mae sounded
exasperated and looked over at him. “Jack, you’ve
really-”

“
She knows,” Jack cut her
off.

He looked at me, then quickly looked away.
Even though there were still patches of blood on his back, he’d
given up on that and balled up his tee shirt, then walked into the
kitchen.

“
What?” Mae turned back to
me, her face unsure.

“
He told me that you’re
vampires.” It was the first time I’d spoken since he told me, and
my voice sounded hoarse and foreign to me.

Mae let out a long shaky breath and looked
down.

“
Oh.” That was all she
said. She didn’t tell me that Jack was insane, as I had hoped and
half-expected, or expound on it

“
So it’s true?” I asked.
The words came out even, but I knew there were hysterics hiding
behind them.

“
Your throat sounds dry.”
Mae forced a smile and put her arm around me, but she did it like
thought I’d push her away. I didn’t, but I knew that I probably
should’ve. “Why don’t we go in the kitchen and get you some water
and we’ll talk in there?”

“
I’m already on it,” Jack
informed us as she led me into the kitchen.

He had filled a giant glass with cold water
and ice cubes from the Pür filter in the fridge. He handed it to
me, but I stopped and opened the fridge first. Just as Milo had
predicted, it was completely empty. I stared into it for a minute,
and Jack prompted me to drink the water.

I shut the fridge and greedily downed the
water. My thirst had kicked in, and I turned to look at them. Jack
was shirtless, leaning against the island, and Mae wrung her hands,
but both of them watched me.

“
Jack, I really wish you’ve
waited for when Ezra was home, or Peter even.” Mae told him
quietly.

“
It couldn’t wait anymore,”
Jack said dully.

“
I know, but Ezra and Peter
know so much more.” Mae exchanged a nervous look with Jack, and
then smiled at me again and pulled out a stool. “Here, love, why
don’t you sit down?”

“
Where’s Ezra?” I got on
the stool and decided to start with the simplest questions first,
the ones that seemed sane and rational. Not like, so, do you guys
wanna suck my blood? That was the kind of thing I definitely didn’t
want to think about.

“
He’s out looking for
Peter,” Jack answered, and Mae looked over at him.

She fidgeted with a wavy strand of her hair,
and I knew that she desperately wanted to touch mine. My water
glass was almost empty, so I set it on the island and sighed.

“
So… you’re vampires?” I
asked, feeling incredibly foolish. It sounded so stupid coming out
of my mouth. This was a family of normal, healthy people, and there
were no such things as vampires.

“
Yes, love.” Mae smiled at
me, and it had to be the saddest, most terrified smile I’d ever
seen. T

They were waiting on edge, and I didn’t
understand why. They were the big powerful vampires, and I was just
one small human girl. If anyone should be scared, it should be
me.

“
All of you?” I looked from
Mae to Jack, who just nodded solemnly. “Then why did you say that
it would be better if Ezra or Peter were here? Don’t you know just
as much?”

“
They’re older, much
older,” Mae explained, and her strained expression started to relax
a bit.

“
How old are you?” I
remembered the first time I had asked Jack that, when we were
waiting in the booth at the diner, and the way he had laughed at
the question.

“
Well, um, I was
twenty-four when I turned, and that was in 1994. So I guess that
puts in me in my forties.”

“
You don’t seem like you’re
in your forties,” I said and he laughed at that, which went a long
way to alleviate the tension in the room.

“
Vampires age differently,
obviously.” Jack gestured to his bare chest, which did not look a
day over twenty-four.

“
Physically, we don’t age
much at all,” Mae elaborated. “We mature in a much different rate.
When we first turn, we’ll almost regress emotionally. Jack is
closer to that of someone in their teens than of one in their
twenties.

“
Part of that has to do
with his personality,” Mae smiled at him. “But part of it is his
age. And since our minds always stay sharp, we don’t ever really
get old. We learn from our experiences and we mature, but not the
same way people do. Jack will never really act like a man in his
forties, no matter how old he gets.”

In retrospect, a lot of what he did made
sense when I thought of him as being more around my age. Which is
why it never seemed creepy that he was hanging out with me, even
though he was older. He never acted older. He was, after all, at my
maturity level.

“
How old are you?” I turned
to Mae.

“
I was twenty-eight when I
turned, and that was… wow, that was fifty-two years ago.” She
looked a little surprised herself, as if she hadn’t thought about
in awhile, and then smiled at me. “So, I’m eighty. Wow. Well,
that’s not as bad as Peter or Ezra.”