Secret Vampire (15 page)

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 pre
tending 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 men
tion 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 any
one 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 protec
tiveness he had for her were all dear. So was the
anguish: the pain he felt to know that she was hurt
ing-,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. Be
cause 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 bub
ble in a pot of stew. "I mean," she said slowly, puz
zling 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 any
one the way she knew James.

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

It wasn't your fault,
he told her.

Poppy's mind seemed to be clearing with every sec
ond 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 to
night," 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 communica
tion? 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.
^,,

'qt 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 revela
tion-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 dis
gust surfacing again.

"Yes, it is; it's like whatdoyouc
a!l
it, from biology
lass. 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 real
ized 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.