Blood Type (23 page)

August 1
1
and
12

I
lay
as
still as possible
and traced
the long wooden beams overhead with my eyes
.
My arms and legs
were like
lead weights
at my sides
.
After awhile
I squirmed in discomfort, hearing the squeak of the leather sofa as it shifted under my weight. 

All of a sudden
,
a familiar face floated into my line of vision and I shrank back against the pillow as the
brutal
memory of what had happened came back to me. “Ian—”

“Is gone,” John answered at once. He fell
to
one knee beside me
and groped
for my hand underneath the blanket. “Blake—”

“No.
” I squeezed my eyes shut tight,
desperately wanting
to purge the visions from my mind
. B
ut they stayed stubbornly in place. I brought my free hand to my neck where Ian’s teeth had pierced the skin like a hot knife in butter.

“I was right.
”
Shock
and horror sapp
ed
what little strength I had. My eyes flicked to John’s, and I shrank against his touch
with
the knowledge of what he was.   

He must have read the fear on my face because he said, “I would never hurt you, Blake. I swear.”

I struggled to sit up.
“I want to go home
.
” 

“
Y
ou should stay here and rest. Ian’s gone. He won’t come back.”

I
looked from John
to the
pitch black
night
outside
the front window
. It felt
much too
late. “I have to go.
I have a c-c
urfew.
I’ll get in trouble.
”

“I don’t care about your
damn
curfew
,
” John said through clenched teeth. “You’ve been infected, Blake. There’s a lot we should—”

“I
need
to go home.”
I refused to listen.
I had to get out of that house
and into my own bed. If I went to sleep in a familiar place, then just maybe I’d wake up to find out this had all been a bad dream. 

John
heaved a great sigh and
stared
down at me as though considering something. Finally, he offered me his hand.
“Fine.
But you’re in no condition to drive yourself. And in the morning, you and I
have
to talk.” 

I woke late with a terrible ache in my bones
and the conviction that
I’d
been run over by a freight train. I rolled over
and buried
my face in my pillow
. My head throbbed, the blood in my ears pound
ing
with every heartbeat
. My throat
burned with an awful rawness
, and my neck felt . . . well, my neck felt like someone had
taken a bite out of it
.

I opened my eyes and saw
my blood-stained shirt
that lay
crumpled
in the middle of my
bedroom
floor
. I
stared
at it, wondering exactly how it had ended up there.  

“Your parents are gone. They left early this morning.”

I startled at the sound of John’s voice. I sat up, pulling the covers tight around my body. “What are you doing here?”

John
kept his distance
. “I didn’t want you to wake up alone,” he
said,
his voice no more than a whisper
,
“
t
o this.”

“And so you what, decided to come into my bedroom and watch me sleep?
That’s
disturbing
, John.” I stared at him, trying to put into words
how hurt and betrayed I felt
. “How did you get in here, anyway?”

“Your parents let me in,” he said. “They even offered me breakfast while I waited.” A hint of a smile showed on his lips.

“Nothing about this is even remotely funny,” I said, and at once the smile slipped from his face. “You
lied
to me, John. I felt like a fool for even suspecting you might be a, a—” I couldn’t say the word. “And then it turns out I was right all along.” I picked up my pillow and threw it at him with what little strength I had, but it fell miserably short
of the target
.

“Blake,” he said, splaying his hands as he came into the room. 

“Save it, John. In case you didn’t notice, I’m having a really bad day.” I put my hands on either side of my head as if doing so might help me come to grips with what had happened th
e night before
. “It was all just one big joke, John. People,” I stopped and shook my head, correcting myself. “
Monsters
like you are not supposed to exist.
It.
Is Not.
Possible,” I said, punctuating each word with a pound of my fist against the mattress.

“And yet we do,” he said, closing the distance between us.

I shook my head.
“How?”

John shrugged
as
he knelt
in front of me. “Are you asking for the mechanics of how one becomes a vampire, or are you asking the reasons why creatures like Ian and I exist?”

I brought my knees to my chest and pressed my forehead against them in an attempt to blot out the fact that a vampire, who I’d
assumed
was human only twelve short hours ago, was in my bedroom. My head spun, and my stomach heaved with fear and revulsion.

“Neither,” I said, my voice muffled in my legs. “I don’t want to know
any
of that.” I looked up sharply at him, a horrified thought suddenly occurring to me. “What Ian did to me . . . has he done that before?”

I saw the look that crossed John’s face and I knew I had my answer. His mouth turned down in a thin, tight line, and the muscles of his jaw clenched and unclenched. He swore under his breath and
looked away
.

“It was a mistake to let him
stay
, especially with you around. But he promised.” He
swore
again. “He
promised
me that he was in control of himself, that he would never . . .” He let his words trail off, leaving me to fill in the blanks:
that he would never hurt you
.

“You put me in danger,” I said, my voice sharp as a knife’s edge. John opened his mouth to defend himself, but I held up a
hand to stop him. “Never mind the fact that you’re a—” I could barely bring myself to say the word out loud, because it sounded so utterly ridiculous— “you’re a
vampire.
But if you knew that Ian was dangerous, if you
knew
he had hurt people
before
, then how could you expose me to that?”
I shook my head, my throat aching with the need to cry. “He
attacked
me, John! He would have
killed
me if you hadn’t walked in!”

John closed his eyes. I
saw
the guilt etched in the lines around his mouth and eyes, but that didn’t make it okay. Not by a long shot. And yet his voice was hard with resolve when he spoke. “We need to talk about this, Blake. There are things you need to know.”

“Look, I survived. And I suppose I have you to thank for that. As far as I’m concerned, I want to forget last night ever happened.”

“Good,” John said. “I want that, too. But we do need to talk about it.”

I held up my hand again. “No, we don’t. I want to move past this.
Without
you.”

John raised himself to sit on the edge of my bed. He reached out to touch me, but I jerked away
from his hand
. For a moment he just stared at me, his green eyes wide and imploring. “I would
never
hurt you,” he whispered.

My heart gave a sudden lurch, and I had to look away. Vampires
were
supposed to induce fear in their hapless prey.
They weren’t supposed to look pitiful and remorseful, and they certainly weren’t supposed to make you want to wrap your arms around them and tell them it was okay.
That you forgave them.
That i
t wasn’t
their
fault
, exactly . . .

And yet
John could apologize and look sorry all he wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that he was a monster, and so was Ian. It didn’t change the fact that I had nearly died. As far as I was concerned, John and I were done. I never wanted to see him again. I’d run straight to Zach and tell him I’d made a mistake—I’d
beg
for him to take me back if I had to—and then everything could return to the way
it
used to be.

“I want you to leave now,” I said, looking down at my fisted hands in my lap. I wanted to jump out of bed and put as much distance between us as possible, but I was half-scared he’d pursue. His nearness
made
my skin twitch.

“Blake, please. If you’ll just—”

“I don’t want to see you anymore, John,” I said through gritted teeth. “Please go and leave me alone.”

“But you really need to—”

I put my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut tight, burying my face in my knees again so that I wouldn’t have to see or hear him. I wanted him to disappear from my life as quickly as he had appeared. I wanted to forget that John and Ian existed. I wanted to—

“I said go
, John!”

“Listen to me!” I removed my hands at once and met John’s eyes, my fury burning just below the surface. I didn’t say anything. “You’ve been infected.”

At first I thought he meant Ian had passed on some
STD
, but t
hat couldn’t be right. The one consolation to almost being some lunatic vampire’s meal
was
at least
that
hadn’t happened.

“No,” I said, my cheeks burning through my anger. I cleared my throat.
“He um
.
H
e never.
I mean, you saw that he didn’t . .
.
”

John reached out and briefly cupped my left cheek in his hand before letting his fingers trail down to the tender spot on my neck where Ian’s teeth had punctured the flesh. “You’ve been infected,” he repeated, driving home the meaning of his words with a gentleness that belied the basic fact that he, himself, was a predator.

My hands tremble
d
, and I clenched the duvet in my fists to steady their shaking. But as the meaning of what he
said
sunk in, my heart began to fibrillate in my chest in an unnatural and terrifying rhythm. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the blood drain from my head. 

“What do you mean I’ve been infected?” I said, my voice quavering. I opened my eyes again, holding John hostage with my gaze.

“I mean that—” John hung his head, unable to meet my eyes. He muttered under his breath, “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Damn you, Ian!”

My head swam. I was going to pass out.
“Just say what you need to say.”

He took a deep, laborious breath that sent shudders through his entire body. “You’ve been infected, and now you have a choice to make.”

I swallowed hard, feeling like I had a solid lump of fear stuck in my throat.
“A choice?”
I echoed, knowing that whatever it was couldn’t be good either way.

John gave a silent nod. “You can choose to do nothing and let the venom slowly spread, or you can become one of us.”

The blood in my ears pound
ed
so loudly I could barely hear my own words as they came out of my mouth. “And if I do nothing?”

John
stayed
silent for a long moment, and then his green eyes met mine. “You will die.”

A chill ran up my spine, making the small hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Is there a third option?” I said with a small laugh, on the verge of hysteria.
How could this be true?

But he shook his head, dispelling any hope I’d had that this was still just one big joke. “No.”

I pushed back the covers and shot out of bed. I felt suddenly flushed, yet clammy at the same time. My tongue felt thick and heavy in my mouth, and I convulsively swallowed the excess saliva that precipitated vomiting. But it didn’t help.