My Blood Approves (21 page)

“
How old are they?’ I
couldn’t help but lean in close, scrutinizing Mae’s perfect
porcelain skin. It was hard to believe that she’d even been
twenty-eight.

“
Oh, gosh.” Mae looked over
at Jack for help, but he just shook his head.

“
I only know the age they
were when they turned.” Jack had been leaning forward onto the
island, but now he stood up and leaned back on the kitchen counter
behind him, crossing his arms over his chest. “Peter’s nineteen and
Ezra’s twenty-six. You’re the oldest.”

“
Thanks,” Mae gave him a
wry look, then turned back to me. “Well, Peter’s not quite
two-hundred. Maybe one-ninety or something like that. And Ezra is…
Gosh, it’s so horrible that I don’t know how old my own husband is.
Oh! Jack, you remember! We had that big party a few years back when
he turned three-hundred? When was that?”

“
I don’t know,” Jack
shrugged. “Like… five years ago? Time’s really hard to keep track
of anymore.”

“
You’re telling me that
Ezra is over 300 years old?” I asked.

Ezra, who had to be one of the most
perfectly attractive people I’ve ever seen and drove a Lamborghini.
He’d been around for over three centuries. I had never felt so
small or insignificant in my entire life.

“
Yep. I’m the baby. By a
lot.” Jack grinned broadly, and part of that made sense. Ezra and
Peter’s eyes looked so much older, and everyone seemed to indulge
Jack the same way you would indulge the baby of the
family.

“
But you call them your
brothers, and they can’t be.” I remembered when I asked Jack about
it being a fraternity, and slowly, it dawned on me what I had said
that had made him laugh. They’re blood relatives.

“
Not in the human sense,
no,” Mae explained. “But as vampires… brothers still isn’t exactly
the right word.” She looked back over at Jack. “You understand this
better than I do.”

“
It’s hard to explain until
it happens to you, or if you don’t know the person that turned
you,” Jack took a step towards the island and nodded at Mae. “Ezra
turned Peter, and Peter turned me.”

He laid his hands flat on the countertop and
watched me, gauging my response to everything they were telling
me.

“
You mean Peter turned you
into a vampire?”

Whenever I said the word vampire, I felt
like a complete tool. Like I was in a bad horror movie or I was
being Punk’d. It just wasn’t a possibility.

I was having this conversation because it
was like when I had a dream and everyone was made of cotton candy
or something. I just kinda went along with it. Once I suspended my
belief, I just had to go with the flow and pretend like everything
made sense.

“
Yeah.” He
nodded.

“
So what does that mean? He
bit you?” Just the thought of Peter biting anyone made my heart
rate speed up. That’s what he’d been trying to do when I was in his
room, and even now, knowing exactly what he meant to do, it somehow
made me want him more.

“
No, biting doesn’t do
anything,” Jack shook his head, but he raised an eyebrow and gave
me an odd look. Then it dawned on me.

“
You can hear my
heartbeat,” I said. When we had been in the car, right before the
accident, my heart had been racing like mad because I was thinking
about Peter, and it had been distracting Jack.

“
And when you…” Jack’s
expression changed, and he looked away from me, but I could already
feel his desire.

“
You’re thinking of Peter,”
Mae caught Jack’s response. My cheeks reddened, because it was so
embarrassing that the vampires find out that I have a crush on one
of them. That was my big concern right now. “You release a kind of
pheromone when you’re… ready. I don’t know how to explain
it.”

“
It entices us to bite
you,” Jack said bluntly.

My heart had slowed, but he still looked
strained. Meanwhile, Mae didn’t look effected by it at all.

“
So… is it just when I
think about Peter? Or when I think about… anything like
that?”

“
Ezra is will have to
explain all that,” Mae said suddenly. Jack had looked as if he was
about to say something, but she cut him off.

“
So how do you turn into a
vampire then?” I returned to the topic we’d been on before I’d
distracted them with my beating heart.

“
I drank Peter’s blood. So
it’s Peter’s blood, and Ezra’s blood, mixed with my blood coursing
through my veins.” Jack gestured to his arms, as if I could see
through his skin to his veins. “It’s not like a father-son thing,
because it’s not part of who they are. It is who they are. My blood
is their blood.”

“
Does that actually have
any bearing on who you are?” I leaned on the island, looking
intently at him. I was starting to give myself to their fantasy
completely, and I was interested in them as if I actually
believed.

“
They don’t define my
personality.” Jack looked over at Mae, who nodded at him. “But we…
Remember when you first came over to meet them and I said that I
knew Peter and Ezra would like you? It was because I liked
you.”

“
So they’ll like whoever
you like?” I was skeptical, because Peter still didn’t like
me.

“
No, no, that’s not it
either.” Jack sighed, and he debated how much he was going to tell
me. I didn’t understand what he could still possibly be hiding from
since he’d confessed vampirism. “Because I don’t just like you. My
blood likes you.”

“
Okay, what the hell does
that mean?” I actually leaned away from him a little bit, and I’m
sure I looked afraid.

“
Jack, maybe Ezra would be
better suited to talk about that,” Mae gave him an even glare, and
he lowered his eyes. Then she turned back to me, smiling warmly.
“Ezra really is a bit of an expert on everything. Jack and I still
have so much left to learn.”

“
You guys aren’t really
vampires, are you?” I asked apprehensively, and Mae
laughed.

“
Oh, love, I’m sorry, but
we are.” She tucked a strand of hair back behind my ear, and since
I didn’t push her away or flinch, she smiled.

“
But you guys don’t sleep
in coffins or have fangs and you’re not pale.” I said, then quickly
corrected myself. “Well, except for Mae, but even she’s not that
pale.”

“
We kind of have fangs.”
Jack opened his mouth wide and ran his tongue along his teeth,
emphasizing the pointed incisors. They weren’t longer or bigger
than any other teeth I had seen, but they did look awfully
sharp.

“
And coffins are just a
ridiculous legend. Beds are much more comfortable.” Mae scoffed at
the notion.

“
But you’re tan. You can’t
go in the sun! Wait, can you go in the sun?”

“
We can, in fact, but we
don’t usually,” Jack continued. “The sun kind of makes us tired,
but we won’t burst into flames or die or anything like
that.”

“
That doesn’t explain the
tan,” I pointed out.

“
We don’t change from when
we were turned, and I skateboarded a lot so I was out in the sun.
When I turned, my skin was full of melanin, and now it always will
be.” Jack thought about it for a moment, then corrected himself.
“We do change a bit. We improve. I wasn’t quite this handsome, and
I had more of a farmer’s tan. But somehow, it evens things and
smoothes everything, like gleaning off any fat I had. It’s
impossible for a vampire to be overweight. We no longer require the
storage of anything, so it all dissolves pretty quickly after the
turn.”

“
We drink our blood, so
it’s more fat-free,” Mae added.

“
You drink blood.” Until
then, I had been trying hard not to really think of it.

When I thought of Peter biting me, it had
more been about the feeling of everything, and not about the actual
act of him drinking my blood. It was almost impossible to imagine
Mae or Jack doing it.

“
It is a necessity,” Mae
whispered sadly.

“
But like animal blood,
right?” I asked hopefully, but Mae kept her eyes down, so I looked
up over at Jack, who just shook his head.

“
We can’t live on animal
blood.” Jack kept his pale blue eyes on me, so I had to focus not
to look even mildly revolted. “It’s the same reason a person can’t
live on a blood transfusion from a dog or rat. Essentially, we
require a weekly blood transfusion to survive. We just have to
ingest it.”

“
You… you kill people?” I
know my voice was trembling, but then Mae’s eyes shot up and both
her and Jack looked appalled.

“
No! No, of course not!”
Mae vehemently denied it. “People can lose huge amounts of blood
before they die.”

“
We just drink blood from
people,” Jack elaborated. “It’s a painless process. Our saliva
works as like an anesthetic and makes the wound heal crazy
fast.”

“
And Ezra’s so good at it
that most people don’t even know they’ve been bitten,” Mae
explained, somewhat proudly. “Jack and I live mostly on blood from
the blood bank anyway. It’s not quite as good, but it’s much less
complicated.”

“
You get blood from the Red
Cross?” I pictured Mae and Jack going down to a Red Cross and
asking for a pint of blood for the ride home.

“
No, not exactly.” Mae
gently touched my knee and smiled at me. “There’s a vampire blood
bank. People think they’re donating to some place like the Red
Cross, but it’s for us. So we have a fridge in the basement full of
blood.”

“
Not that Peter or Ezra
ever really get into it,” Jack muttered, and Mae shot a look at
him.

“
They lived too long in the
times before blood banks,” Mae said, looking rather apologetic.
“They’re purists.”

“
So… they… what? How does
that work? They just find some random person and bite them?” The
thought of Peter biting anyone else made me feel vaguely
nauseous.

“
No, they have clubs where
people willingly donate, and a lot of times, they can pick up
girls, who think they’re going on a date and getting a long kiss on
the neck, but really they’re just getting a snack,” Mae
clarified.

“
You’re okay with that?” I
asked Mae. “Ezra’s out and about dating and drinking other
women?”

“
It’s not pleasant,” Mae
admitted, with a pained expression. “But it’s the nature of who we
are. And I’d rather have him seducing a woman than just attacking
someone and killing them. It’s the price of eternity, love. I can
be with him forever, but he has to kiss other women.” She smiled
sadly at me, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to come to terms
with it like she had.

“
I drink almost entirely
bag blood,” Jack interjected brightly, and I turned my attention
back to him.

“
The night you picked me
up, were you going to bite me?” Then, remembering how suddenly
drowsy I was and that I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten home, my
eyes widened. “Did you bite me?”

“
No!” Jack put his hands up
defensively under the scrutinizing glares from Mae and me. “No! I
didn’t! Honest!” Then he looked sheepish. “I’d actually just come
from the club, and I’d … fed, right before I saw you.”

“
You mean the clubs I was
trying to get into?” I wondered if Jane had ever been picked up by
a vampire without knowing it. She probably had, and that served her
right.

“
No, it’s a vampire one.
Well, I guess I don’t know where you guys were trying to go, so you
might’ve. Most people don’t know it’s a vampire club. That’s how I
turned.”

“
Peter picked you up at a
club?” I raised my eyebrow skeptically.

“
Nope,” Jack grinned. “I
followed these two hot chicks in, and they turned out to be
psychotic vampires. Peter was there, looking for something to eat.
But the girls went crazy and left me for dead. Peter found me in
the alley behind the club, and for some reason, he decided to save
me.”

“
Do you have to be dead to
turn?” I asked.

“
No, you can’t be dead,”
Jack clarified. “Once you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it. Vampires
aren’t undead. We’re just a different form of people. Ezra
explained it to me that vampirism is a virus, sorta like AIDS,
except whereas AIDS makes you sick, this makes you
better.”

“
It’s a virus?” I looked
skeptical.

“
I guess.” Jack shrugged.
“That’s what Ezra told me. It’s like an evolutionary mutation. His
theory is that people have no predators. The only thing that really
takes people down is weather and disease. The plagues actually
helped keep the population in check. When cities were overflowing,
a plague would come and knock the numbers down. A vampire is just
another kind of plague.”

“
Yeah, that’s great and
everything, but a virus?” I shook my head in disbelief. “How can a
virus do this to you?”

“
Again, Ezra is more of an
expert than I am,” Jack said. “But it just makes you more
efficient. We get exactly what we need all the time. We don’t have
to process anything. We live on pure, fresh nutrients. And it stops
decay. When we die, we’re like Styrofoam. We’re here forever. When
we get injured, we heal at an alarming rate, because we’re all
blood.”