Night World 1 (9 page)

“So take my advice. If you don't convince Poppy to see me, make sure they don't do an autopsy on her. You don't want her walking around without her internal organs. And have a wooden stake ready for the time when you can't stand to look at her anymore.”

The pity was gone from Phil's eyes. His mouth was a hard, trembling line.

“We won't let her turn into…some kind of half-alive abomination,” he said. “Or a vampire, either. I'm sorry about what happened to your Miss Emma, but it doesn't change anything.”

“
Poppy
should be the one to decide—”

But Phillip had reached his limit, and now he was simply shaking his head. “Just keep away from my sister,” he said. “That's all I want. If you do, I'll leave you alone. And if you don't—”

“What?”

“I'm going to tell everybody in El Camino what you are. I'm going to call the police and the mayor and I'm going to stand in the middle of the street and yell it.”

James felt his hands go icy cold. What Phil didn't realize was that he'd just made it James's duty to kill him. It wasn't just that any human who stumbled on Night World secrets had to die, but that one actively threatening to
tell
about the Night World had to die immediately, no questions asked, no mercy given.

Suddenly James was so tired he couldn't see straight.

“Get out of here, Phil,” he said in a voice drained of emotion and vitality both. “Now. And if you really want to protect Poppy, you won't tell anybody anything. Because they'll trace it back and find out that Poppy knows the secrets, too. And then they'll kill her—after bringing her in for questioning. It won't be fun.”

“Who're ‘they'? Your parents?”

“The Night People. We're all around you, Phil. Anybody you know could be one—including the mayor. So keep your mouth shut.”

Phillip looked at him through narrowed eyes. Then he turned and walked to the front of the store.

James couldn't remember when he'd felt so empty. Everything he'd done had turned out wrong. Poppy was now in more kinds of danger than he could count.

And Phillip North thought he was unnatural and evil. What Phil didn't know was that most of the time James thought the same thing.

Phillip got halfway home before he remembered that he'd dropped the bag with Poppy's cranberry juice and wild cherry Popsicles. Poppy had hardly eaten in the last two days, and when she did get hungry, it was for something weird.

No—something
red,
he realized as he paid for a second time at the 7-Eleven. He felt a sick lurch in his stomach. Everything she wanted lately was red and at least semiliquid.

Did Poppy realize that herself?

He studied her when he went into her bedroom to give her a Popsicle. Poppy spent most of the time in bed now.

And she was so pale and still. Her green eyes were the only alive thing about her. They dominated her face, glittering with an almost savage awareness.

Cliff and Phil's mother were talking about getting round-the-clock nurses to be with her.

“Don't like the Popsicle?” Phil asked, dragging a chair to sit beside her bed.

Poppy was eyeing the thing with distaste. She took a tiny lick and grimaced.

Phillip watched her.

Another lick. Then she put the Popsicle into an empty plastic cup on her nightstand. “I don't know…I just don't feel hungry,” she said, leaning back against the pillows. “Sorry you had to go out for nothing.”

“No problem.” God, she looks sick, Phil thought. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Eyes shut. Poppy shook her head. A very small motion. “You're a good brother,” she said distantly.

She used to be so alive, Phil thought. Dad called her Kilowatt or Eveready. She used to
radiate
energy.

Without in the least meaning to, he found himself saying, “I saw James Rasmussen today.”

Poppy stiffened. Her hands on the bedspread formed not fists, but claws. “He'd better keep away from here!”

There was something subtly wrong about her reaction. Something not-Poppy. Poppy could get fierce, sure, but Phil had never heard that animal tone in her voice before.

A picture flashed through Phil's mind. A creature from
Night of the Living Dead,
walking even though its intestines were spilling out. A living corpse like James's Miss Emma.

Was that really what would happen if Poppy died right now? Was she that much changed already?

“I'll scratch his eyes out if he comes around here,” Poppy said, her fingers working on the spread like a cat kneading.

“Poppy—he told me the truth about what he really is.”

Strangely, Poppy had no reaction. “He's scum,” she said. “He's a reptile.”

Something about her voice made Phillip's flesh creep. “And I told him you would never want to become something like that.”

“I wouldn't,” Poppy said shortly. “Not if it meant hanging around with
him
for eternity. I don't want to see him ever again.”

Phil stared at her for a long moment. Then he leaned back and shut his eyes, one thumb jammed against his temple where the ache was worst.

Not just subtly wrong. He didn't want to believe it, but Poppy was
strange.
Irrational. And now that he thought about it, she'd been getting stranger every hour since James had been thrown out.

So maybe she
was
in some eerie in-between state. Not a human and not a vampire. And not able to think clearly. Just as James had said.

Poppy should be the one to decide.

There was something he had to ask her.

“Poppy?” He waited until she looked at him, her green eyes large and unblinking. “When we talked, James said that you'd agreed to let him—change you. Before you got mad at him. Is that right?”

Poppy's eyebrows lifted. “I'm mad at him,” she confirmed, as if this was the only part of the question she'd processed. “And you know why I like you? Because you've always hated him. Now we both hate him.”

Phil thought for a moment, then spoke carefully. “Okay. But when you
weren't
mad at him, back then, did you want to turn into—what he is?”

Suddenly a gleam of rationality showed in Poppy's eyes. “I just didn't want to
die,
” she said. “I was so scared—and I wanted to live. If the doctors could do anything for me, I'd try that. But they can't.” She was sitting up now, staring into space as if she saw something terrible there. “You don't know what it feels like to know you're going to die,” she whispered.

Waves of chills washed over Phillip. No, he didn't know that, but he did know—he could suddenly picture vividly—what it was going to be like for
him
after Poppy died. How empty the world was going to be without her.

For a long time they both sat in silence.

Then Poppy fell back onto the pillows again. Phillip could see pastel blue smudges under her eyes, as if the conversation had exhausted her. “I don't think it matters,” she said in a faint but frighteningly cheerful voice. “I'm not going to die anyway. Doctors don't know everything.”

So that's how she's dealing with it, Phillip thought. Total denial.

He had all the information he needed, though. He had a clear view of the situation. And he knew what he had to do now.

“I'll leave so you can get some rest,” he said to Poppy, and patted her hand. It felt very cool and fragile, full of tiny bones like a bird's wing. “See you later.”

He slipped out of the house without telling anyone where he was going. Once on the road, he drove very fast. It only took ten minutes to reach the apartment building.

He'd never been to James's apartment before.

James answered the door with a cold, “What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in? I've got something to say.”

James stood back expressionlessly to let him in.

The place was roomy and bare. There was a single chair beside a very cluttered table, an equally cluttered desk, and a square unbeautiful couch. Cardboard boxes full of books and CDs were stacked in the corners. A door led to a spartan bedroom.

“What do you want?”

“First of all, I have to explain something. I know you can't help being what you are—but I can't help how I feel about it, either. You can't change, and neither can I. I need you to understand that from the beginning.”

James crossed his arms over his chest, wary and defiant. “You can skip the lecture.”

“I just need to make sure you understand, okay?”

“What do you
want,
Phil?”

Phil swallowed. It took two or three tries before he could get the words out past the blockage of his pride.

“I want you to help my sister.”

P
oppy shifted on her bed.

She was unhappy. It was a hot, restless unhappiness that seemed to swarm underneath her skin. Coming from her body instead of from her mind. If she hadn't been so weak, she would have gotten up and tried to run the feeling off. But she had spaghetti for muscles now and she wasn't running anywhere.

Her mind was simply cloudy. She didn't try to think much anymore. She was happiest when she was asleep.

But tonight she couldn't sleep. She could still taste the wild cherry Popsicle in the corners of her mouth. She would have tried to wash the taste away, but the thought of water made her feel vaguely nauseated. Water's no good. Not what I need.

Poppy turned over and pressed her face into the pillow. She didn't know what she needed, but she knew she wasn't getting it.

A soft sound came from the hallway. Footsteps. The footsteps of at least two people. It didn't sound like her mother and Cliff, and anyway they'd gone to bed.

There was the lightest of knocks at her door, then a fan of light opened on the floor as the door cracked. Phil whispered, “Poppy, you asleep? Can I come in?”

To Poppy's slowly rising indignation, he
was
coming in, without waiting for an answer. And someone was with him.

Not just someone.
The
one. The one who had hurt Poppy worst of all. The betrayer. James.

Anger gave Poppy the strength to sit up. “Go away! I'll hurt you!” The most primitive and basic of warning-off messages. An animal reaction.

“Poppy, please let me talk to you,” James said. And then something amazing happened. Even Poppy, in her befuddled state, recognized that it was amazing.

Phil said, “Please do it, Poppy. Just listen to him.”

Phil siding with James?

Poppy was too confused to protest as James came and knelt by her bedside.

“Poppy, I know you're upset. And it's my fault; I made a mistake. I didn't want Phil to know what was really going on, and I told him I was just pretending to care for you. But it wasn't true.”

Poppy frowned.

“If you search your feelings, you'll
know
it's not true. You're turning into a telepath, and I think you already have enough power to read me.”

Behind James, Phil stirred as if uneasy at the mention of telepathy. “
I
can tell you it's not true,” he said, causing both Poppy and James to look at him in surprise. “That's one thing I found out from talking to you,” he added, speaking to James without looking at him. “You may be some kind of monster, but you really do care about Poppy. You're not trying to hurt her.”

“
Now
you finally get it? After causing all this—?” James broke off and shook his head, turning back to Poppy. “Poppy, concentrate. Feel what I'm feeling. Find the truth for yourself.”

I won't and you can't make me, Poppy thought. But the part of her that wanted to find out the truth was stronger than the irrational, angry part. Tentatively she
reached
for James—not with her hand, but with her mind. She couldn't have described to anyone how she did it. She just did it.

And she found James's mind, diamond-bright and burning with intensity. It wasn't the same as being one with him, the way she had been when they shared blood. It was like looking at him from the outside, sensing his emotions from a distance. But it was enough. The warmth and longing and protectiveness he had for her were all clear. So was the anguish: the pain he felt to know that she was hurting—and that she hated him.

Poppy's eyes filled. “You really do care,” she whispered.

James's gray eyes met hers, and there was a look in them Poppy couldn't remember seeing before. “There are two cardinal rules in the Night World,” he said steadily. “One is not to tell humans that it exists. The other is not to fall in love with a human. I've broken both of them.”

Poppy was aware, vaguely, that Phillip was walking out of the room. The fan of light contracted as he half-shut the door behind him. James's face was partly in shadow.

“I could never tell you how I felt about you,” James said. “I couldn't even admit it to myself. Because it puts you in terrible danger. You can't imagine what kind of danger.”

“And you, too,” Poppy said. It was the first time she'd really thought about this. Now the idea emerged from her muddled consciousness like a bubble in a pot of stew. “I mean,” she said slowly, puzzling it out, “if it's against the rules to tell a human or love a human, and you break the rules, then there must be some punishment for
you.
…” Even as she said it, she sensed what the punishment was.

More of James's face went into shadow. “Don't you worry about that,” he said in his old voice, his cool-guy voice.

Poppy never took advice, not even from James. A surge of irritation and anger swept through her—an animal surge, like the feverish restlessness. She could feel her eyes narrow and her fingers claw.

“Don't you tell me what to worry about!”

He frowned. “Don't you tell me not to tell you—” he began, and then broke off. “What am I doing? You're still sick with the change and I'm just sitting here.” He rolled up a sleeve of his windbreaker and drew a fingernail along his wrist. Where the nail cut, blood welled up.

It looked black in the darkness. But Poppy found her eyes fixing on its liquid beading in fascination. Her lips parted and her breath came faster.

“Come on,” James said, and held his wrist in front of her. The next second Poppy had pounced and fixed her mouth on it as if she were trying to save him from a snakebite.

It was so natural, so easy.
This
is what she'd needed when she was dispatching Phil to get Popsicles and cranberry juice. This sweet, heady stuff was the real thing and nothing else was like it. Poppy sucked avidly.

It was all good: the closeness, the rich, dark-red taste; the strength and vitality that flooded through her, warming her to her fingertips. But best, better than any mere sensation, was the touch of James's mind. It made her giddy with pleasure.

How could she ever have mistrusted him? It seemed ridiculous now that she could
feel,
directly, how he felt about her. She would never know anyone the way she knew James.

I'm sorry,
she thought to him, and felt her thought accepted, forgiven, cherished. Held gently by the cradling of James's mind.

It wasn't your fault,
he told her.

Poppy's mind seemed to be clearing with every second that went by. It was like waking up out of a deep and uncomfortable sleep.
I don't ever want this to end,
she thought, not really directing it at James, just thinking it.

But she felt a reaction in him—and then felt him bury the reaction quickly. Not quickly enough. Poppy had sensed it.

Vampires don't do this to each other.

Poppy was shocked. They would never have this glory again after she changed? She wouldn't believe that; she refused. There must be a way….

Again, she felt the beginning of a reaction in James, but just as she was chasing it, he gently pulled his wrist back. “You'd better not take any more tonight,” he said, and his real-world voice sounded strange to Poppy's ears. It wasn't as much
James
as his mental voice, and now she couldn't really feel him properly. They were two separate beings. The isolation was awful.

How could she survive if she could never touch his mind again? If she had to use
words,
which suddenly seemed as clumsy as smoke signals for communication? If she could never feel him fully, his whole being open to her?

It was cruel and unfair and all vampires must be idiots if they settled for anything less.

Before she could open her mouth to begin the clumsy process of verbally explaining this to James, the door moved. Phillip looked around it.

“Come on in,” James said. “We've got a lot to talk about.”

Phil was staring at Poppy. “Are you…” He stopped and swallowed before finishing in a husky whisper. “Better?”

It didn't take telepathy to sense his disgust. He glanced at her mouth, and then quickly away. Poppy realized what he must be seeing. A stain as if she'd been eating berries. She rubbed at her lips with the back of her hand.

What she wanted to say was, it isn't disgusting. It's part of Nature. It's a way of giving life, pure life. It's secret and beautiful. It's
all right.

What she said was, “Don't knock it till you've tried it.”

Phillip's face convulsed in horror. And the weird thing was that on this subject James was in perfect agreement with him. Poppy could sense it—James thought sharing blood was dark and evil, too. He was filled with guilt. Poppy heaved a long, exasperated sigh, and added,
“Boys.”

“You're better,” Phil said, cracking a faint smile.

“I guess I was pretty bizarre before,” Poppy said. “Sorry.”

“
Pretty
is not the word.”

“It wasn't her fault,” James said shortly to Phil. “She was dying—and hallucinating, sort of. Not enough blood to the brain.”

Poppy shook her head. “I don't get it. You didn't take that much blood from me the last time. How could I not have enough blood to the brain?”

“It's not that,” James said. “The two kinds of blood react against each other—they fight each other. Look, if you want a scientific explanation, it's something like this. Vampire blood destroys the hemoglobin—the red cells—in human blood. Once it destroys enough of the red cells, you stop getting the oxygen you need to think straight. And when it destroys more, you don't have the oxygen you need to live.”

“So vampire blood is like poison,” Phil said, in the tones of someone who knew it all along.

James shrugged. He wasn't looking at either Poppy or Phil. “In some ways. But in other ways it's like a universal cure. It makes wounds heal fast, makes flesh regenerate. Vampires can live on very little oxygen because their cells are so resilient. Vampire blood does everything—except carry oxygen.”

A light went on in Poppy's brain. Dawning revelation—the mystery of Count Dracula explained. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Is
that
why you need human blood?”

“That's one of the reasons,” James said. “There are some…some more mystical things human blood does for us, but keeping us alive is the most basic one. We take a little and that carries oxygen through our system until our own blood destroys it. Then we take a little more.”

Poppy settled back. “So that's it. And it
is
natural….”

“Nothing about this is natural,” Phil said, his disgust surfacing again.

“Yes, it is; it's like whatdoyoucallit, from biology class. Symbiosis—”

“It doesn't
matter
what it's like,” James said. “We can't sit here and talk about it. We've got to make plans.”

There was an abrupt silence as Poppy realized what kind of plans he was talking about. She could tell Phil was realizing it, too.

“You're not out of danger yet,” James said softly, his eyes holding Poppy's. “It's going to take one more exchange of blood, and you should have it as soon as possible. Otherwise, you might relapse again. But we're going to have to plan the next exchange carefully.”

“Why?” Phil said, at his most deliberately obstructive.

“Because it's going to kill me,” Poppy said flatly before James could answer. And when Phil flinched, she went on ruthlessly, “That's what this is all
about,
Phil. It's not some little game James and I are playing. We have to deal with the reality, and the reality is that one way or another I'm going to die soon. And I'd rather die and wake up a vampire than die and not wake up at all.”

There was another silence, during which James put his hand on hers. It was only then that Poppy realized she was shaking.

Phil looked up. Poppy could see that his face was drawn, his eyes dark. “We're twins. So how'd you get so much older than me?” he said in a muted voice.

A little hush, and then James said, “I think tomorrow night would be a good time to do it. It's Friday—do you think you can get your mom and Cliff out of the house for the night?”

Phil blinked. “I guess—if Poppy seems better, they might go out for a little while. If I said I'd stay with her.”

“Convince them they need a break. I don't want them around.”

“Can't you just make them not notice anything? Like you did with that nurse at the hospital?” Poppy asked.