Not If You Were the Last Vampire on Earth (10 page)

Chapter 26

Her

Something was happening to me. It was stronger than the something that I experienced when Alex and I were phone pals and he played the hero in my naughty fantasies.

Much stronger.

I was in my room (I guess I could call it that now. Remnants of me, things I found and things Alex found that he thought I would like, crawled all over the space and stamped it mine). Before me was a charcoal sketch I was working on of Alex’s face. He hadn’t seen it yet. Not because I was keeping it some big secret but because I started it when he went down to do some work on his research and I couldn’t stop his name from pumping through my thoughts.

Alex, Alex, Alex
.

I liked thinking it. It made my stomach rise and plummet like I was on a roller coaster. To kill time, I had set up some of the art supplies Alex (roller coaster moment) found for me. I put coal to paper with a clear mind and before my hand began moving, I suddenly had the urge to draw him. And then I couldn’t be stopped. My fingers flew around the page as his image formed in outlines.

I don’t know how long I’d been at it but somewhere between shading his chin and jaw line I had to stop and stretch and rub my neck. I got up to rummage around for a snack.

I missed him.

Which is why when he poked his head in my room a few moments later and asked if I wanted to see the lab where he spent so much of his time, I immediately said yes and dropped a half eaten cereal bar on the nightstand by my bed.

We went down a flight of stairs and pushed through the door then turned left. Alex punched in a code and held the door open for me after it clicked.

“One, nine, one, two,” he said as I walked through it. “That’s the code if you ever need to get in here. It’s the year the Titanic sank.”

“Nineteen twelve. Got it. Kate and Leo fan?”

“Take it to your grave,” he said solemnly.

I followed Alex through the maze of machines. They were so large. Some were spinning, making whirring sounds and some were flashing. The pop of light was brilliant inside the glass enclosure. I reached out to touch one and then thought better of it and withdrew my hand. I didn’t want to disturb his project.

He had his back turned to me as he hastily straightened up his desk. Papers were fluttering as he did so and he reached out and caught them before they hit the ground with quick reflexes.

Today he wore a hoodie that was black except the sleeves and hood. They were a soft gray. His jeans were dark. My eyes traveled to his backside on their own accord and I had to snap them back up to his face when he turned to face me.

My ears flamed even though I don’t think he caught me staring.

“So here’s where I burn my hours,” he said, holding his arms out. “Not much to look at. Not like your art. But I promise, amazing things are happening inside these square and cylinder machines painted hideous shades of cornflower.”

“So which one tries to cure The Sweep?”

He wrinkled his nose. “It doesn’t quite work like that. These machines do different functions: like separate substances or hit them with infrared to determine their make up or combine elements…it’s not like an easy bake oven where I pop in a problem and it spits out a solution.”

“Not what I was thinking, Alex.”

It was totally what I was thinking.

I asked him a few more questions and he patiently explained to me the processes in his research. A lot of what he said went over my head even though I knew he was trying to translate the science into English for me.

“So you actually have live viruses in there?” I asked and he nodded.

“They’re secure. I have them in different stages of the mutation. The ones that killed vamps and the ones that killed humans. I want to develop a cure in case they ever mutate into ones that will wipe us out for good. I have to know why you lived. And subsequently why that means I do too.”

“And…the other research?”

He nodded to the whirring machine. “That research is more like the easy bake oven,” he answered smiling and I stepped forward to rib him with my elbow. I liked the contact. It felt good to touch him. I did it again but slower because I was simmering in the feel of his abdomen against my arm. His smile left his face and his eyes partly closed. He swallowed loudly but still managed to answer me. “I put the blood in there and it breaks down in the serum.”

“But you’re trying to figure out how to make more?” My question was spoken softly. Alex caught the arm that was pressed against his side and his thumb slowly glided over my skin. The action drew me ever so slightly forward. I felt drunk on his nearness.

“I’m trying to figure out how to make more with less blood. The supply is very low. It won’t even make two years on what’s left.”

I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of his hand on me. “Use mine.” I almost whispered it. His thumb stopped moving, leaving the skin there cold.

I opened my eyes. His own probed mine. “No.”

Now I was confused. “But you can make more in the meantime. While you figure out whatever it is you’re trying to figure out.”

Alex shook his head and stepped away from me. “I’m not going to farm your blood.”

“I’m offering it.”

“And I’m refusing.”

“But why?”

He looked angry. His hands clenched at his side and his gaze traveled around the room as he struggled for words.

“Because. I’m not going to reduce our friendship to this. I didn’t seek you out to lure you here because I needed blood.”

“I know. I called you on a whim and got to know you and you brought me to Houston to save my life. I was there. Well, mostly there. I was conscious for a great deal of how we came to be. So trust me, I know your intentions were honorable.”

“No. Just no, okay? I’ll figure it out.”

He was now too far away for my liking, leaning on his desk with his arms crossed over his chest. The ache to touch him raged in my body. What was happening? I walked over to where he leaned. I forcibly uncrossed his arms. I stood in front of him so that we were inches apart, my face staring blatantly at his stony expression. Slowly, the anger melted out of his eyes and a smile broke through.

“You will use me if things get bad,” I demanded.

The smiled dimmed. “I could never use you.”

My heart started hammering. I felt the small amount of air between us surge with something. His hand came up hesitantly and rested on my hip. My body leaned into it. My thigh brushed his in doing so. Sparks jumped off our contact.

It was hard to breathe. I glanced away to give me a moment of reprieve from whatever this was that was coursing through me. I’ve never felt it before. My eyes landed onto scribbled notes taped onto the wall.

Project C.

Project M.

Project K.

“What’s the third project?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. Alex had told me about two projects he was working on but there was clearly a third.

He turned his torso to look at the notes my eyes fell on and then turned back to me. I took a step back and around him, trying to make sense of his scribblings.

He hadn’t answered so I swiveled back to face him and saw the hesitation in his expression. My eyes narrowed further.

“I’m trying to grow a fetus. Without a womb.”

“You’re trying to do…
what
?”

Alex rubbed a hand over his face. “The hospitals are rich with eggs, sperm, and even some preserved fertilized eggs. I’m trying to do something useful with them.”

“Something
useful
? Those become people. You’re trying to grow people.”

“Yes. Yes!” Alex’s frustration was back. “Let’s put it that way. I’m trying to grow people.”

“Oh my god, we’re not vegetables in your garden, Alex!”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?”

“It’s SURVIVAL! Not just mine, the human race as well. If I can do this…there’s a chance that this isn’t over. That The Sweep didn’t kill everything. Because even though you’re immune, you will die. There is an end to the human race. And to mine.”

“And I suppose it helps in the meantime that you can snag a few drops of blood? Are you telling me your reasons are entirely unselfish?”

Alex glared at me. “Of course I’ll benefit from it. I’m not denying that.”

“Oh, if those vampire myths were true, I’d stake you right now!”

I stomped out of the lab and up the stairwell and back onto the main floor. Alex followed me, creating just as much of an angry ruckus as I was.

“Get off your high horse, Tasha!” he yelled. “If our places were reversed you’d do the same!”

I whirled to face him and jabbed a finger in his chest. “I would not! Don’t accuse me of sinking that low. You won’t farm my blood because we’re friends? But you’ll farm people in test tubes, raise babies to drain them? Like cattle? That’s despicable!”

I banged through the door but he wasn’t finished with me. He hurried around to stand in front of me and stop me in my tracks. “Is it despicable to want to live?”

“Not like this.”

“Some humans can be such hypocrites.”

“Wow, strong term. Hey, news flash! Humans don’t eat vamps so they can live.”

Alex’s jaw twitched and his stare was hard. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so angry before. That only ratcheted up my own anger.

“I’m out of here! We’re both better now. Thank you very much for everything, but it’s time I give you back your city and I go to my city. We were doing just fine on our own. I wish I didn’t know this about you. It’s ruined everything. For a little while, it was like you weren’t even a vamp.”

The hurt in Alex’s eyes seared me but I pursed my lips into a hard line, turned on my heel, and ducked into the room I had taken over these past few weeks. My knapsack sat on a side table and I grabbed it and began shoving the few items I’d collected while here into it. My emotions were a tornado mix. Anger was definitely driving it but there were others in there. Troubling ones that I didn’t know how to process.

I could feel Alex’s presence fill up the doorway and I stopped my frantic stuffing of items to turn and look at him. He looked cold and faraway. The expression in his eyes was closed off, almost like I was seeing a stranger.

“It’s true, humans don’t eat vamps to live,” Alex parroted my words back to me in a deathly low tone. “But they don’t think twice about donating organs, blood, body parts, everything to a fellow human with a disease. Oh, there were plenty of humans who needed regular blood transfusions and the world clasped their hands to their chests with pity and donated it. I didn’t ask to exist. I didn’t choose this life. I was born this way just like the people everyone was so eager to help were. But because my method of consuming it is through my fangs and not through a needle in my arm, I was deemed a demon and my kind were hunted down and wiped out. I’ve lived with that. I lived with the fear of my mother and sister being found out by Containment for hiding me. For loving me. And I didn’t think anything could be as hard as that. Until now. What you just said –
for a while you didn’t see me as a vamp
– that hurt. I spent a lot of years hating who I was and I’m not going to fall back into that place. Not even to appease you.”

I didn’t try to stop him as he left. I couldn’t. I was frozen in my spot with one hand clutching the knapsack and the other holding a pack of charcoal watching him walk back in the direction of the stairwell.

I heard the click as the door closed behind him. I glanced at the half completed sketch of him I’d been working on and something jerked in my chest.

What have I just done?

Chapter 26

Her

I padded down the hallway in my socks. A single light cracked through an office door like a beacon in the dark space. It wasn’t the desk he showed me in the lab. It was deeper in, around the corner, a place I had yet to explore. I didn’t know what I was going to say to him. I only knew I needed him back. My bags were half-heartedly packed for Tucson, most of the effort fueled by the heat of the argument.

I couldn’t erase what I knew. What I learned before I properly labeled him a vamp. Somehow that label kept sliding off. Like it didn’t fit. I didn’t even know what vamp meant to me anymore. In one impassioned speech, in the space of minutes, he struck shame into my heart and forced me to see the world through a vamp’s eyes. I had hurt him and I wanted to take it back. My heart ached for our conversations, and his eyes, and his infectious laugh. The rest of the world would have frowned upon these feelings I had but the rest of the world wasn’t here.

I pushed lightly on the door. It squeaked on its hinges. Alex turned from the desk he was sitting at and locked eyes with me. We remained frozen that way. Me in the door frame, him in the swivel desk chair. My words had been harsh. I needed to start this.

I shifted on my feet nervously. My lips curled in a timid smile and dropped. I cleared my throat. “Alex...” I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. He was just sitting there. Looking at me. I hadn’t come prepared with any words to undo some of the damage I did upstairs. The machines whirred on, oblivious to my plight. “Alex, I-”

I was cut off. In a swift moment, Alex pushed himself out of the chair and met me at the doorway. His lips pressing to mine swallowed my voice. His hands rose up to cup my cheeks, soft and desperate at the same time.

My own hands were just as desperate. I clutched the sides of his shirt. My mouth moved with his. His kiss was passionate and needful, opening my mouth and craving more. The taste of him set my heart on fire. It pounded with a wonderfully painful beat.

He pulled away to look at me. His hand massaged the back of my neck and his eyes bore into mine. “I’m sorry, you were about to say something before I interrupted you.”

“Alex, I love you.”

He stilled and pulled away like I’d taken a five iron to his stomach. His hand rubbed his chest absently as he looked at me with bewilderment.

I looked down at the floor between us. It hadn’t been what I came here to say. I had come to apologize. To make amends. To set things back to the way they were before. But when he kissed me, he awakened the truth that had been dwelling inside me and when that kind of truth rises to the surface it’s impossible to contain it.

Now I wish I had contained it. He still hadn’t spoken. And why should he? First I insulted him, his species, condemned his very existence. And then in the next moment I’m professing my love? I was never good at velvet roping my thoughts before they entered my mouth and Alex was getting the full effect of my roller coaster of emotions.

“Okay. So, too much too soon? I’m sorry. No, I’m not sorry. I feel what I feel and that’s not changing. I’m just sorry I’m giving you the blow-by-blow on my emotions instead of allowing you time to process one before I hit you with the next.”

“Shut up,” he said, shaking his head. “Shut up, shut up, shut up. Just stop talking.”

Alex moved closer to me, pulling me into a tight hug and kissing my temple. His voice was next to my ear. “I am so in love with you. I have been since listening to your wacky stories on the phone. Since before I ever laid eyes on you. So let’s just shut up and stay with this emotion for a sec, okay?”

“Okay,” I said into his shirt. Then in the same muffled voice I added, “You kissed me.”

“Yes. Because you’re beautiful. And you’re you. And I spent the last hour in agony because I thought I was about to lose you and there was nothing I could do to change it. So when I saw you standing here…yes, I lost all the control I’ve been so carefully practicing.”

My hands moved under his shirt and pressed into his back. I loved the feel of his skin. I loved his voice in my ear. I loved his patience – the excruciating patience he exercised while I opened up to him at my own pace. But most of all, I loved his loss of it. I sighed softly into his chest. “Lose it again.”

My words elicited something between a growl and a moan from him. His mouth found mine again I pressed into him. His contact was the only the thing that could quell this fevered want in me and I was quickly realizing it still wasn’t enough.

My fingers made quick work of the buttons on his shirt and we broke apart only long enough to lift my tank top off of me. Out of breath, he moved away from me and held me at arm’s length.

“What I need is several floors up. Do. Not. Move.”

I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing as he dashed from the office shirtless. I took the time to poke around in this side office while he was gone. It was clear this is where he holed away when he went into one of those research binges he told me about. Twinkie wrappers filled a nearby trash can and there was a hospital bed that had been rolled down here with a single blue blanket neatly folded on it.

Notes littered the top of the desk. I picked through a couple of them: observations and data from his experiments. On most of the papers, his handwriting was neat and crisp. Some of the ink on others was heavy and his short lines dragged between words. He was angry. His experiments kept failing and the frustration bled into his notes.

I opened the top drawer of the desk and saw a picture of a smiling young woman. She was beautiful with her dark hair and matching eyes. They came to life in the photograph as if she were sharing a secret with the photographer. The way it was carefully tucked in the drawer, like it was opened when he needed a reminder of better times or a shot of love in the arm, told me she was important to him. More than important. She was what kept him sane.

His body was suddenly behind mine, wrapping me in his long arms. He stared down over my shoulder at the picture.

“Kisa,” he said. “My sister.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“I miss her like you miss your dad.”

My throat constricted with tears. There was no better way to understand him in that moment what his twin had meant to him. We shared a mirrored loss.

I turned to him and brought him back to me. We kissed like The Sweep was still haunting us, waiting to claim us tomorrow. Like I’d spent the last four years waiting to kiss him.

My legs wrapped around his waist and he carried me to the bed.

“I have to be careful,” he said as he lowered me onto it. I pulled at him to climb on top of me and he obliged but he hung over me, hesitant. My hips moved with need.

“I don’t want to be careful,” was my answer.

He smiled and trailed a few kisses down my collarbone sending shivers of desire down my body. “A vampire’s fangs tend to come out in…heated situations.”

My fingertips stroked his jaw line. His eyes hooded at my touch. “Let me see,” I whispered.

His eyes met mine doubtfully for a brief moment but then in a flash, his incisors became sharp points that rested lightly on his lower lip.

I sucked in a sharp breath. He began to draw away, but my fingers moved from his chin to his mouth. They ran lightly over his lips and brushed over his fangs. What horrified me only hours ago now finished Alex completely. The creamy glow of his skin, his strong jaw, the way his eyes searched mine at this moment for acceptance. The fangs looked right. I leaned up and kissed him gently. His arms circled around me and crushed me to him.

“Tasha,” he whispered. The fangs retracted and his tongue pushed into my mouth. In a fevered rush, we shed the last of the barriers our clothing so inconveniently provided and he took a few moments to open the package he ran upstairs for before lowering himself onto me.

When he pushed in, I tightened and clutched his shoulder. The feeling was so foreign. He instantly stopped but I moved my hips a little to encourage him on. He did, more gently. He rocked slowly, giving me only some of him while my body relaxed, melting around him.

As his thrusts deepened, the pain was washed away with waves of pleasure. His skin was heated against mine. When his fangs popped out again, he closed his eyes and turned his head but I took his face in both my hands. He opened his eyes and looked at me. My gaze didn’t waver. This is who he was. I loved who he was. He must have read this in my look because his own eyes darkened and I clearly saw his raw passion for me in them.

His pace quickened and he filled me completely with his movements. Our eyes never left each other and the look we shared grew more intense.

My breath started coming in short bursts. Heat rose up inside of me and pooled below my waist. It came crashing down in a splash of ecstasy that caused my thighs to squeeze him and my hips to bear down onto his thrust. As I did so, his fingers gripped my lower back and his body pressed into mine then shuddered.

We lied tangled on the hospital bed and breathing heavily. His fangs were gone. It was silent as we recovered. It was my second time having sex but this experience made my first time seem like a cheap make out session. Being with Alex filled my chest with a burning joy that stoked my orgasm and brought a fullness that I could never get on my own.

I watched him as his body came down from it, lying next to him and really taking in the sight of him with no clothing. Being this close to him and not in heat, I could finally appreciate his body and it was fascinating me. Now that I was satiated, I had time to explore. I began tracing lines on his abdomen. A rock of muscles met my fingertips.

“I’ve been revealing things to you in pieces, easing you into it,” Alex said as he watched my hands move up to his chest. “And it nearly cost me everything when you got upset. So I want to tell you all of it. Everything you need to know.”

I stretched up slowly and kissed him. I was still in an afterglow and in no mood for a heavy discussion.

“Later,” I sighed, closing my eyes. “I don’t have the energy to go another fighting round with you. You took all my energy ten minutes ago.”

He kissed me behind my ear. “Yeah, this is not where I thought we’d end up,” he said.

I turned and nestled into his shoulder. A contented tiredness settled over me. “Sleep with me.”

His laugh was light. “I just did.”

I looked up so he could see my grin. “Cheeky bastard.”

“That I am,” he said. His free hand gestured to the shoulder my head claimed. “Every night. This is your spot. It’s yours every time you sleep.”

“Make it official. I want a tattoo that reads
This Shoulder Property of Tasha Owens
.”

“Yes, ma’am. The second we come across a tattooist, it’s a done deal.”

I scrunched my nose up at him and he kissed it and for the first time in a long time, I felt whole.

“Owens, huh?” he asked.

My lips pulled down in a slight frown. Oh, yeah. We covered everything from books to childhood games to philosophy but we forgot to divulge our last names.

“Yes. Tasha Owens, no middle name.”

He stuck his hand out for a handshake. “Alexander Walter Kim. It’s a pleasure.”

I made a face as I shook it. “I can’t believe I slept with you without knowing your last name.”

“Slut.”

“I promise I never do that.”

“They all say that.”

“You didn’t even buy me a drink first.”

“Water counts.”

“You didn’t buy that!”

“It was in the vending machine.”

“Yeah, with a gaping hole which you stuck your grubby hand through.”

“Details, details.”

I sighed contentedly. “I haven’t been this happy since The Before.”

Alex’s fingers traced light patterns on my shoulder.

“What does ‘this happy’ feel like?” he asked in my ear softly.

“Like tiny soda bubbles bubbling in my body and tickling my stomach and making my head light. Like everything is heightened. All my senses are firing at once. Even the air tastes sweeter. Like I could laugh at nothing right now except you keep giving me viable material so I can hide my crazy grin behind your jokes instead of looking like a weird, smiling idiot. That kind of happy.”

I felt his fingers freeze as my speech went on but then they started up again, stroking my shoulder in light caresses and dragging me from tired to barely awake.

“I see,” he said. Through his chest, I could feel his heart pounding a little harder. Faster. “So, in other words, you’re almost as happy as I am.”

“Mmmmmm,” I murmured sleepily.

I think he said something else, but it was all very fuzzy. The feel of his hands on me lulled me down into a deep, easy sleep.