Not If You Were the Last Vampire on Earth (7 page)

Chapter 19

Her

My mind flipped through images, like watching snatches of late night television during a night of staggered sleep. I was delirious and tired and in that fuzzy state between dreaming and awake. I was lying on a plastic mat in the corner of a large room. I saw a figure hauling a large cage across the space. One of those cube cages for animals made of wire and metal. The face was hooded but I could tell it was a male. He was built like one, limbs pieced together on a larger frame, no softness or curves. He turned to a table and picked up a gun, leaning towards it. Checking it for something. I fell back asleep.

*        *        *

The next time I came to, my body was bouncing. It was a soft bounce like rolling over a speed bump. My head rested on tan fabric. A plastic cup covered my mouth and nose. A mask. The air it pumped smelled stale. My eyes could make out seats in front of me. A driver’s seat. A passenger seat. A nervous hand tapped on the gear shift in the middle. After the bumps subsided we sped up. Enough to where I felt the pull backwards. The humming of the engine began to pull me back under. My eyes hooded. Before they closed, they met a foreign pair of eyes in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t enough to keep the sleep from taking me, those eyes. But it was enough to make me dream about them afterwards.

Chapter 20

Her

My eyes opened slowly. They blinked slowly, too. Colors and shapes blurred and sharpened in front of me as I looked around and tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Of where I was.

It was a hospital room. I heard a beeping noise and I craned my head to the left to see a monitor. It was in time to my heartbeat. The monitor was monitoring me. I looked down at my arm and saw a needle sticking out of it, leading to a line that lead to a bag of fluid.

I pulled the mask off my face and took in a deep breath of air. I felt weak but it was a strong weak. One that I knew would wear off as I healed. I worked my jaw from side to side. Sore, but moving.

I sat up a little and it made me dizzy. Instantly, my head fell back on the pillow.

“Don’t move around too much yet.”

It was the voice. His voice.

I turned my head to the right. He was leaning in the doorway with his hands stuffed in his pockets. His body was hunched forward like he was about to walk towards me but I could see the restraint in the rest of his stance. He stayed where he was and his hunch relaxed when he saw I wasn’t going to attempt to get up again.

“Alex,” I said.

“Tasha,” he answered.

He had described himself with typical features. Black hair. A little taller than me. Kind of lean. Brown eyes with the telltale almond-shaped eyes of his race. His description didn’t even come close to what I was looking at. Yes, he was all those things. But he didn’t mention how deep his brown eyes went. Looking into them felt like falling. And he didn’t talk about how spiky his hair was off his forehead. A natural tuft type of a spike. I wanted to touch it. He didn’t tell me that he had broad shoulders and a long nose with a flat bridge.

My fingers curled in the sheets. I was afraid of one of my traitorous hands reaching out for him against my will. He was still a vamp. He was the reason the human race was next to extinct.

“How long was I out?” I kept my voice cold.

“Three days. I had to hook up an IV bag to keep you hydrated.”

I turned my arms over to inspect the inside of my wrists. My fingers brushed the sides of my neck.

Alex’s face hardened. “I didn’t bite you.”

My expression was equally hard. “I had to check.”

“I’m the same guy you’ve been talking to on the phone all those months.”

“Who neglected to mention the fangs and penchant for fresh blood.”

Alex threw up his hands. “Do you see why?”

“This is why I didn’t tell you anything about me!” I yelled. Boy, was I angry. It was excruciating on my throat to yell and my head throbbed painfully but anger trumped pain. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

Alex’s eyes were on fire. “Oh really? Yeah, maybe you withheld your name and location but you told me a lot more than that. I know you ached for your mother despite the fact that you acted like her jetting out on you didn’t matter. I know you wonder when and where she was when The Sweep got her and if she had someone with her when she died. Even though you’ve never even admitted that to yourself, much less voiced it to me. I know your dad was your everything and it almost broke you when he died. I know you’re strong. Lesser people would have killed themselves. Lesser people did kill themselves. I know you’re crazy scared to get close to someone and you dress the notion up in rules and games over the telephone so you don’t have to stare intimacy in the face. I know that you needed me. And I was there for you. In a heartbeat. Because I don’t care that you’re a human and I’m a hybrid. The only thing I care about is you.”

He turned and began to stalk out of the room. His outburst deflated some of my anger but I still scowled and yelled at his back because I wasn’t sure what to feel at that moment.

“Where are you going?” I shouted as he disappeared out of the door.

His head popped back into my field of vision from the doorway. “I’m hungry and if you keep glaring at me like that, I’m going to fucking eat you.”

And then he left.

Chapter 21

Her

The funny thing about loneliness is that is has nothing to do with time or how many people surround you. You can be in a throng of a crowd and feel like the loneliest person on earth or you can be completely alone in your room and feel saturated with presence. The year I spent looking for another face was a pretty low point for me. I had a dull ache as I searched, each day growing more disheartened to learn that I was it. There was no one else. I carried that ache around like a wound on my chest. Always present but bearable.

And then I wasn’t alone. Alex’s voice kept me company every day for over two months. Tarzan, Sherlock, Big Bird (I had demanded to be
Snuffleupagus
, the forgotten puppet), Garfunkel, Clyde – his name changed every day but his voice didn’t. His laugh didn’t. His like humor, the breath he sucked in when his realized I was about to reveal a secret, his light teasing, the quiet when he was listening intently, and the way his voice dropped and sounded faraway when he described something from The Before didn’t. Those were constant. Somewhere in that time, my wound healed. It didn’t go away completely. The effects of the last six years I wore like a scar. But I didn’t hurt every day.

He didn’t come back for a while. As I lay there on the bed as time passed, the ache of loneliness transformed into a sharp pinch. The thought of not talking to him anymore was like a jab in the heart. All this agony over a vamp. A cute, angular, just taller than me, bottom-lip-biting vamp.

The dogs came first. Mowgli, Baloo, and Bagheera came bounding into the room and pawing at me with tongues lolled out. I laughed as I hugged them.

“I missed you stupid furballs,” I said excitedly into the scruffs of their necks. When they milked all the petting out of me in our reunion, Bagheera and Baloo took to exploring the room with their noses and Mowgli awkwardly jumped onto my bed and gingerly situated himself at my feet. We slept on a mattress on the floor at home and this height was unnerving to him.

Alex appeared warily in the doorframe then holding a steaming bowl. “Is it safe?” he asked.

“Safe from what? Me or the dogs?”

“Both. You guys bite in different areas but the pain is equal.”

It was then that I noticed a large wrapping on his forearm that I missed before. “Who got you?” I asked.

Alex pointed to Baloo. “The one with the funny leg. He ripped a chunk out of my arm.”

As if sensing he was the topic of conversation, Baloo let out a low growl.

“Baloo! Be nice,” I ordered and he lowered himself to the floor.

“I’m sorry, I had to tranquilize your dogs. When I got to Tucson they wouldn’t let me come near you and we certainly couldn’t share the front seat on the ride back to Houston.” He inched into the room. “They’ve been in cages for days. So they’re a bit restless.”

I looked at him curiously. “It was very thoughtful of you,” I admitted. “You didn’t have to go through all that to bring them, too.”

“You’ve already lost so much. I know what they mean to you.” He held up the bowl in his hand. “Vegetable soup.”

My stomach growled at the smell. I reached for it and he came into the room enough to hand me the bowl.

“They’ll behave while I’m awake,” I promised him and he nodded and leaned against the counter that spanned the wall in front of me but I saw that his body didn’t completely relax.

“This is good!” I exclaimed in surprise after a bite. Or half a bite. Part of it dribbled down my chin. From the bit I tasted, the broth was rich and the mix of vegetables complimented each other. Campbell’s is good but there’s only so much a canned soup can offer.

Alex flashed me a grin. “Thanks. I made it.”

My surprise etched deeper on my face. “You cook?”

“Yes, I cook. I had a mom. She was human. She worked two jobs to support us so I helped out wherever I could.”

“But if your diet is mostly red and liquidy…”

He shook his head but a small smile played on his lips. “I can eat food. It just doesn’t sustain me. I’m half human. I inherited taste buds. But when I eat, the food feels like it just evaporated and I’m still hungry.”

“I’m hating you more with every word,” I said. I had abandoned my spoon and was tipping the bowl and gulping it into my mouth. Most of it got in but a small waterfall stained my gown. Hunger makes you forgo some class.

“I’d happily pack on the pounds after tearing through a bag of Oreos if it meant shedding some of my other vices.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. The wetness from the soup sat warm on my chest and my words felt funny coming out, like I’d just come from the dentist. “My face feels funny.”

“You had botulism,” Alex told me.  “The toxins have a paralyzing effect. It will go away in a couple days.”

“I ate something bad?”

“You ate something fatal. If you hadn’t called me, you would have eventually stopped breathing.”

I finished my bowl and held it awkwardly in my lap. A thank you was in order but I couldn’t seem to choke out the simple words. I was supposed to hate vamps. Vamps weren’t supposed to make me laugh. Or make me soup. Or save my life.

We eyed each other, meshing the visions before us with the personalities we came to know on the phone.

We were silent for so long, Alex finally said, “I could rustle up a couple of receivers if it makes it easier.”

I almost smiled. “I didn’t know a lot of vamps.”

“A lot?”

“Okay. Any. I didn’t know any vamps.”

My eyes studied him. Just like the woman in the mall, you couldn’t tell he fed on human blood to live. Unlike that woman, I felt no kneejerk reaction to protect myself. There was no threat here.

“Well,” he said. “Now you know one.”

Chapter 22

Him

While Tasha slept, I powered up a pair of walkie talkies and left one of the mates in her room. When I wasn’t in the lab, I could hear her on the main floor from my office or my bedroom. It was just when I had to go work that I’d be out of earshot. And it made me jumpy trying to work and not be connected to her. Funny, since that’s all we were for two months. Disconnected by space and her reservations.

The first couple days when all she pretty much did was sleep was frustrating because I kept running back up the flight of stairs to make sure she was okay. I’d be staining microbes on a Petri dish and this uneasy feeling would creep up my neck and it would itch until I set my work in the fridge and go to check. And she’d just be laying there, sleeping, all her fingers and toes in tact.

Now she was up and moving a little bit. We didn’t leave the hospital. Just moving around on the main floor wore her out. She took her time in each of my rooms, scrutinizing them, trying to see me in all my stuff. When she glanced at me, her eyes would be full of thought.

I could feel her trying to shed her prejudice against vamps. It was not a new sensation for me to experience. I had spent my life in hiding.

She ran her hand against an Aerosmith poster.

“Favorite?” she asked and I immediately knew what she was referring to on the one word.

“
Living on the Edge
.”

Her smile was small. “Not
Walk This Way
? Or
Dream On
?”

“Nope. Yours?”

“
Dude Looks Like a Lady
.”

I shook my head. “Not what I would’ve guessed for you.”

“My dad loved that song. He was a very serious man. A sergeant. Always business. But I remember when he sang along to that song, his face scrunched up and his voice went high pitched like Steven Tyler’s and he shed some of the seriousness in the moment.” She sighed and her gaze left the room, settling on a memory I couldn’t see. “So, yeah. Favorite by proxy,” she said, coming out of it. “My favorite solely on the music?
Sweet Emotions
.”

I felt the tidbit she shared relax me a little, like the woman I knew was coming back.

I started singing the song softly under my breath. She dared a small smile and continued to look.

“Oh, yeah. Stephen King,” she said, coming to my books. My reading preference which once was a lively phone conversation was now a reflection on my vampiric status.

“I like horror. He’s the king of it, true to his name,” I said, trying not to be defensive.

“Mmmm hmmm.” The smile was gone from her face and I could hear her mind screaming
Typical!!!

I usually had no patience for ignorance and I hated cowering from the truth before The Sweep when admitting to it meant death for me and everyone I loved. Now that the threat was gone, I could wave my vamp flag without fear. I was anxious for her to get over it. I already knew what she was like underneath all this judgment so I needed to exercise patience if I wanted her back.

“So do you like being a vamp?”

Tasha finally stopped touching my things and settled rigidly into a chair in the corner of the room.

“I don’t mind it like I used to. I would like to give up blood and I hope to eventually find a substitute altogether but otherwise, it’s what I am. I can’t change it and I wouldn’t at this point if I could. If I did, I wouldn’t be me.”

“Substitute?”

Oh, yeah, the research. Time for more truths.

“Yes. I’m researching blood alternatives.”

“I thought you were researching a way to cure the virus infection.”

“I am. I’m running more than one project. The virus infection and a serum.”

“Serum?”

“It’s how I’m still here. Without humans. Before, I always fed from donated blood. But I realized early on in high school that I’d need an alternative. A back up if you will. One of the downsides of a vamp’s diet is how restrictive it is. We aren’t as adaptable as humans.”

I approached her and pulled the ottoman away from the chair to sit. She shifted a little but to her credit, she didn’t move away.

“It’s like, weaning myself off human blood,” I continued. “I figured out how to make a lot of sustenance from a little blood. So if I were to take a vial of human blood, I mix it with a serum that allows me to make ten liters of nourishment. Which is great, but what’s even greater is if I can make more with even less. That’s what I’m working on. If I can do it without blood at all, that would be ideal but I’m a long way off from that.”

“So…where do you get the blood?”

“It’s frozen here. I have stores of it I’m working with.”

“Ah.”

She looked uncomfortable. She was fidgeting with the arm of my chair, pulling at a loose string in the stitching. I was about to offer to leave the room, give her more space when she asked, “Did your sister like being a vamp?”

“What? No. My sister was human.” I was taken aback by the question momentarily before I realized that of course Tasha assumed that my sister was a vamp. I was a vamp and we were twins. The surprise in her eyes confirmed my realization. “Vamp offspring works like genetics,” I explained. “It’s like eye color or height. We were fraternal twins so we had different genes. Not every vampire sires a vamp. But two humans could still have a vamp if both their fathers are vampires.”

“Oh.” She took a deep breath. “So you can cook well and you eat food for fun. But, you have to drink this serum everyday?”

“I call it juice because serum doesn’t sound appetizing, but yeah. That’s what keeps me alive. And it tastes bland, like bitter watered down tea but it’s not the worst thing.”

She looked me dead in the eye. “Does blood taste good?”

“Not really. And I mean the blood I used to drink at the blood banks.”

“Does fresh human blood taste good?”

She wasn’t going to let me wiggle around this one. I gave it to her straight.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever-” she swallowed forcefully and diverted her eyes trying to get out the question. “Have you ever turned anyone?”

“No. I can’t. Vamps don’t inherit that trait. My fangs aren’t poisonous and they don’t have the ecstasy effect a full vampire’s does. If I bite someone, they feel it. It’s not pleasant.”

“Have you…”

I waited a beat but it was clear she didn’t have the balls to finish it. I gave her a pass.

“Yes. I’ve bitten someone. And when you don’t hate my kind, maybe I’ll elaborate on the circumstances. But right now, I’m not in the mood to share anymore.”

I stood up and headed for the door. Her voice stopped me.

“Alex?”

I turned. “What?”

“Thank you for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome!” My response was angry because that’s what I was feeling but at least I had her gratitude.

She nodded. “I deserved that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I’m trying, okay?”

“Okay. Try. But I don’t need to sit here while you poke through my stuff and look at me with that frown on your face. You can judge me just fine while I work in my lab.”