Secret Vampire (21 page)

All her senses were keen. Delicious smells wafted
by her, the smells of small burrowing animals and
fluttering dainty birds. On the wind came a tantaliz
ing hint of rabbit.

And she could
hear
things. Once she whipped her
head around as a dog barked right beside her. Then she realized that it was far away, outside the ceme
tery. It only sounded close.

I'll bet I can run fast, too, she thought. Her legs
felt tingly. She wanted to go running out into the
lovely, gloriously-scented night, to be one with it.
She was
part
of it now.

James,
she said. And the strange thing was that she
said it without saying it out loud. It was something
she knew how to do without thinking.

James looked up from his shoveling.
Hang on,
he
said the same way.
We're almost done, kiddo.

Then you'll teach me to hunt?

He nodded, just slightly. His hair was falling over
his forehead and he looked adorably grubby. Poppy
felt as if she'd never really seen him before-because

now she was seeing him with new senses. James
wasn't just silky brown hair and enigmatic gray eyes
and a lithe-muscled body. He was the smell of winter
rain and the sound of his predator's heartbeat and
the silvery aura of power she could feel around him.
She could sense his mind, lean and tiger-tough but somehow gentle and almost wistful at the same time.

We're hunting partners now,
she told him eagerly,
and he smiled an acknowledgment. But underneath she felt that he was worried. He was either sad or anxious about something, something he was keeping from her.

She couldn't think about it. She didn't feel hungry
anymore ...
she felt strange. As if she was having
trouble getting enough air.

James and Phillip were shaking out the tarps, un
rolling strips of fresh sod to cover the grave. Her
grave. Funny she hadn't really thought about that
before. She'd been lying in a grave-she ought to
feel repulsed or scared.

She didn't. She didn't remember being in there at
all-didn't remember anything from the time she'd
fallen asleep in her bedroom until she'd woken up
with James calling her.

Except a dream ...

"Okay," James said. He was folding up a tarp. "We can go. How're you feeling?"

"Ummm
. . a little weird. I can't get a deep
breath."

"Neither can I," Phil said. He was breathing hard
and wiping his forehead. "I didn't know grave dig
ging was such hard work."

James gave Poppy a searching look. "Do you think
you can make it back to my apartment?"

"Hmm? I guess." Poppy didn't actually know what
he was talking about. Make it how? And why should
going to his apartment help her to breathe?

"I've got a couple of safe donors there in the build
ing," James said. "I don't really want you out on the
streets, and I think you'll make it there okay."

Poppy didn't ask what he meant. She was having trouble thinking clearly.

James wanted her to hide in the backseat of his
car. Poppy refused. She needed to sit up front and to
feel the night air on her face.

"Okay," James said at last. "But at least sort of
cover your face with your arm. I'll drive on back
roads. You
can't
be seen, Poppy."

There didn't seem to be anyone on the streets to
see her. The air whipping her cheeks was cool and
good, but it didn't help her breathing. No matter how
she tried, she couldn't seem to get a proper breath.

I'm hyperventilating, she thought. Her heart was
racing, her lips and tongue felt parchment-dry. And
still she had the feeling of being air-starved.

What's
happening
to me?

Then the pain started.

Agonizing seizures in her muscles-like the cramps
she used to get when she went out for track in junior
high. Vaguely, through the pain, she remembered
something the P.E. teacher had said.
"The
cramps
come

when your muscles don't get enough blood. A charley horse
is a clump of muscles starving to death."

Oh, it
hurt.
It
hurt.
She couldn't even call to James for help, now; all she could do was hang on to the
car door and try to breathe. She was whooping and
wheezing, but it wasn't any good.

Cramps everywhere-and now she was so dizzy
that she saw the world through sparkling lights.

She. was dying. Something had
gone terribly
wrong. She felt as if she were underwater, trying
desperately to claw her way to oxygen-only there
was no
oxygen.

And then she saw the way.

Or smelled it, actually. The
car was stopped at a red
light. Poppy's head and shoulders were out the window
by now-and suddenly she caught a whiff of life.

Life.
What she needed. She didn't think, she simply
acted. With one motion she threw the car door open and plunged out.

She heard Phil's shout behind her and James's
shout in her head. She ignored both of them. Noth
ing mattered except stopping the pain.

She grabbed for the man on the sidewalk the way
a drowning swimmer grabs at a rescuer. Instinctively. He was tall and strong for a human. He was wearing
a dark sweatsuit and a bomber jacket. His face was
stubbly and his skin wasn't exactly clean, but that
wasn't important. She wasn't interested in the con
tainer, only in the lovely sticky red stuff inside.

This time her strike was perfectly accurate. Her
wonderful teeth extended like claws and stabbed into
the man's throat. Puncturing him like one of those
old-fashioned bottle openers. He struggled a little and
then went limp.

And then she was drinking, her throat drenched in copper-sweetness. Sheer animal hunger took over as she tapped his veins. The liquid filling her mouth
was wild and raw and primal and every swallow gave
her new life.

She drank and drank, and felt the pain disappear.
In its place was a euphoric lightness.
When she paused to breathe, she could feel her lungs swell with
cool, blessed air.

She bent to drink again, to suck, lap, tipple. The
man had a clear bubbling stream inside him, and she
wanted it all.

That was when James pulled her head back.

He spoke both aloud and in her mind and his voice
was collected but intense. "Poppy, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
It was my fault. I shouldn't have made you wait so
long. But you've had enough now. You can stop."

Oh
...
confusion. Poppy was peripherally aware of Phillip, her brother Phillip, looking on in horror. James said she
could
stop, but that didn't mean she
had to. She didn't
want
to. The man wasn't fighting
at all now. He seemed to be unconscious.

She bent down again. James pulled her back up
almost roughly.

"Listen," he said. His eyes were level, but his voice
was hard. "This is the time you can choose, Poppy.
Do you
really
want to kill?"

The words shocked her back to awareness. To kill
...
that was the way to get power, she knew. Blood
was power and life and energy and food and drink.
If she drained this man like squeezing an orange, she
would have the power of his very essence. Who
knew what she might be able to do then?

But
...
he was a man, not an orange. A human
being. She'd been one of those once.

Slowly, reluctantly, she lifted herself off the man.
James let out a long breath. He patted her shoulder
and sat down on the sidewalk as if too tired to stand up right then.

Phil was slumped against the wall of the nearest
building.

He was appalled, and Poppy could feel it. She could
even pick up words he was thinking-words like
ghastly and
amoral.
A whole sentence that went something like
"Is it worth it to save her life if she's lost her soul?"

James jerked around to look at him, and Poppy could
feel the silver flare of his anger. "You just don't get it,
do you?" he said savagely. "She could have attacked
you
anytime, but she didn't, even though she was
dying. You don't know what the bloodlust feels like.
It's not like being thirsty-it's like suffocating. Your cells
start to die from oxygen starvation, because your own blood can't carry oxygen to them. It's the worst pain
there is, but she didn't go after you to make it stop."

Phillip looked staggered. He stared at Poppy, then
held out a hand uncertainly.

"I'm sorry
..........

"Forget it," James said shortly. He turned his back
on Phil and examined the man. Poppy could feel him
extend his mind. "I'm telling him to forget this," he
said to Poppy. "All he needs is some rest, and he might as well do that right here. See, the wounds
are already healing."

Poppy saw, but she couldn't feel happy. She knew
Phil still disapproved of her. Not just for something
she'd done, but for what she
was.

What's happened to me?
she asked James, throwing
herself into his arms.
Have I turned into something awful?

He held her fiercely.
You're just different. Not awful. Phil's a jerk.

She wanted to laugh at that. But she could feel a
tremor of sadness behind his protective love. It was
the same anxious sadness she'd sensed in him earlier.
James didn't like being a predator, and now he'd
made Poppy one, too. Their plan had succeeded bril
liantly-and Poppy would never be the old Poppy
North again.

And although she could hear his thoughts, it
wasn't exactly like the total immersion when they'd
exchanged blood. They might not ever have that to
getherness again.

"There wasn't any other choice," Poppy. said
stoutly, and she said it aloud. "We did what we had
to do. Now we have to make the best of it."

You're a brave
girl.
Did I ever tell you that?

No. And if you did, I don't mind hearing it again.

But they drove to James's apartment building in silence, with Phil's depression weighing heavily in
the backseat.

"Look, you can take the car back to your house,"

James said as he unloaded the equipment and Poppy's clothes into his carport. "I don't want to bring
Poppy anywhere near there, and I don't want to
leave her alone."

Phil glanced up at the dark two-story building as
if something had just struck him. Then he cleared his
throat. Poppy knew why-James's apartment was a
notorious place, and she'd never been allowed to visit
it at night. Apparently Phil still had some brotherly
concern for his vampire sister. "You, uh, can't just
take her to your parents' house?"

"How many times do I have to explain? No, I can't
take her to my parents, because my parents don't know
she's a vampire. Right at the moment she's an illegal
vampire, a renegade, which means she's got to be kept
a secret until I can straighten things out--somehow.':

"How-" Phil stopped and shook his head. "Okay.
Not tonight. We'll talk about it later."