The Week I Was A Vampire (4 page)

Monday Afternoon

Baby Got Vamped

When Jude came to, she was lying naked and wet in the bathtub, which made sense since she’d slipped and hit her head mid-shower.  Groggily, she lifted herself up, wincing as the cool water splattered her skin before she spun the dial and turned the water off.

            
 
Odd
,
she thought as she climbed from the tub.
 
I don’t feel cold.

            
 
It was true.  While acutely aware of the fact the water in the shower was icy cold, Jude herself did not feel chilled in the slightest.  She did have the biggest headache ever, though, and her craving for bacon and had magnified tenfold.

             
She wrapped a terry blue towel around her body before picking up her hairbrush stationed beside the sink and running it through her hair.  With a start, she stared at herself in the mirror, entirely unbelieving of what she saw.

             
She was... pretty.  And not the kind of pretty her parents thought she was.  She was pretty like Jemima, who, if she borrowed Lux’s lingo, was actually smoking hot, or would be when she was older.

             
Jude’s normally copper colored hair had darkened to a beautiful auburn shade, and even wet it held a luscious curl that made her wonder what it would look like dry.  Her skin, normally prone to acne like the majority of teenagers, was the color of cream and blemish free.  Obscenely pale, more so than usual, and her lips were rocking a slightly blue tint, but she chalked that up to her icy shower.

            
 
I heard rinsing with cold water was good for your hair and skin
,
she thought as she leaned towards the mirror to examine herself closely
,
but I didn’t think it was a miracle cure for plainness.

            
 
Startled, she backed away from the mirror when she noticed her once green eyes were now the color of polished wood and seemed to be lit from within.  How had that happened?

            
 
A loud bang on the bathroom door had her jumping out of her skin.  Jude quickly pulled her towel tighter around her body before cracking the door open enough to see a flash of purple hair.

             
“I take it you decided to skip school today,” Lux said accusingly and Jude absently wondered how long she’d been unconscious in the tub.

             
“Um, yeah,” she lied, having planned to attend school that day and thus keep her perfect record intact.  “Give me a minute and I’ll be right out.”

             
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Lux said.  “Caleb has taken over your room and I do not feel like dealing with Satan’s spawn this early in the day.”

             
Jude laughed as she closed the door, wondering why Caleb, who loved everyone willing to pet him, disliked Lux with a fiery passion, despite the girl’s attempts to get him to like her.  She even showed up at the house smelling like catnip one day and Caleb had tried to claw her leg off.  The situation was deemed a lost cause and now, Lux kept a wide berth when it came to Jude’s cat who was the undisputed king of the Carstairs household.

             
Ten minutes later, Jude emerged downstairs to find Lux at the kitchen table eating a cupcake from a tin.  Jude finished buttoning up her forest green shirt just before Lux turned around and promptly went bug eyed.

             
“Is something on my face?” Jude asked, running a hand over her flawless complexion.  She hadn’t even needed to put makeup on, her eyelashes already a mile long and perfectly curled.  The only product she’d used had been a tinted lip balm, which effectively removed the slightly blue sheen to her lips.

             
“Earth to Lux,” Jude said when her friend didn’t respond.  Waving her hand in front of Lux’s face effectively called the girl back to the present.

             
“When did you get hot?” Lux said and quickly backpedaled.  “Not so say you weren’t beautiful before, but damn.  I knew turning eighteen was monumental, but I didn’t know it made you an instant hottie.  Seriously, your hair.”

             
Jude spun around, fluffing her voluminous curls as she did.  No styling had been necessary and Jude loved the dark red hue her hair had adopted.  Maybe her new shampoo was to blame, but whatever the reason, she grinned as Lux groaned and dropped her head on the kitchen counter.

             
“Enough with the hair porn,” Lux said.  “Seriously though, what shampoo and makeup are you using, because you look phenomenal.”

             
Jude shrugged as she made her way to the refrigerator and pulled out the container of bacon her mom kept in the bottom drawer.

             
“Bacon?” Lux said as Jude heated a pan on the stove.  “Since when do you eat bacon?”

             
“I had a hankering,” Jude said and glanced at the clock above her head.  “Besides, it’s after noon and I’m hungry.  Simon will be waking up soon and I might as well cook the whole bag because I know you’ll want some as well.”

             
“I’m touched by your thoughtfulness,” Lux said, wandering around the island to come stand by Jude who was watching the bacon start to sizzle on the griddle, “but that doesn’t explain why you haven’t eaten meat in like, five years, and are suddenly indulging a mere hankering.  I dragged you to a barbecue cook-off last summer and you managed to resist temptation.  What gives?”

             
Jude turned to face Lux, who must have seen something that frightened her, because she jumped back with a gasp as though she’d been electrocuted.

             
“Look,” Lux said, “I’m sorry how I handled things last night, but if something happened, you should tell me.”

             
“Nothing happened,” Jude said.  “I left the party and I came home.  Why are you freaking out?”

             
“Because,” said Lux, “your eyes are black.”

             
Jude sped to the foyer where a mirror was hanging by the door.  By the time she reached the mirror, she didn’t even need to look to know something was different.

            
 
No one moves that fast
,
she thought, looking back the way she’d come.
 
Especially not me.

            
 
“Jude?” Lux said, hesitantly rounding the corner.  She stopped a few feet away and stared, which prompted Jude to look in the mirror.  Sure enough, the brown eyes she thought beautiful upon exiting the shower had darkened to black, the color bleeding to cover the whites of her eyes.  It truly was a terrifying sight.

             
“I thought it was a dream,” she said, looking away from the mirror and keeping her eyes downcast.

             
“You thought what was a dream?” Lux asked not moving from her spot a relatively safe distance away.

             
Jude looked up at her best friend and cringed as Lux shied away. 

             
Lux wasn’t the kind of person to shy away from anything, yet the sight of her best friend’s now black eyes was enough to have her finger the silver rosary she always wore.  Was it possible Jude would attack her?

             
“You were right,” Jude said, “about Daniel and Jemima.  She attacked me after the party, but Daniel and another woman saved me.”

             
“Another vampire?” Lux said, but Jude shook her head.

             
“I don’t know,” she said.  “At first, I thought she was an angel.  She seemed so nice.”

             
“Did Daniel give you his blood?” Lux said and Jude nodded, which prompted a curse to escape her friend’s mouth.

             
“Bacon,” Jude blurted out and zipped to the kitchen in time to flip the strips of meat popping and sizzling in their own grease.  Lux followed, sitting on the other side of the island as Jude bit into a greasy strip of undercooked meat.  She couldn’t resist the craving any longer.

             
“Yeah,” Lux said, “how about you chew on that and hope it gets rid of any urge to chew on me.”

             
Jude stopped eating, comically so with a piece of bacon dangling from her lips, and shook her head.

             
“I’d never hurt you,” she muttered around her mouthful of meat.  Already, she felt herself returning to normal, which was something to think about as she wasn’t sure what normal was anymore.

             
“How are my eyes?” she asked and Lux visibly relaxed.

             
“Brown again,” she said.  “Kind of weird since they were green yesterday, but they’re brown and normal and you don’t have to worry about scaring Simon when he wakes up, although that would be kind of funny.”

             
Jude smiled and inhaled another strip of bacon.

             
“Did anything else happen?” Lux asked.  “I mean, yeah, I’ve heard vampire blood can cure a multitude of ails, but I’ve never heard about people turning into supermodels with black eyes, unless...”

             
As Lux trailed off, Jude could feel her throat slowly constrict, a response that had always occurred when she was nervous.

             
“In the shower, this morning,” Jude said.  “I slipped on a bar of soap and hit my head.  I only came to right before you showed up.”

             
“That means you were out for six hours,” Lux said, “assuming your alarm clock is still set for six a.m.”

             
“It is,” Jude said before reaching up and touching the place where her skin had split open after cracking it on the tub.  Nothing.  Not a scratch, nor even a dull pain.  If Jude hadn’t known where to look, she never would’ve found the spot.

             
“I think,” she said, the tightness in her throat increasing, “I think I died.”

•§•

“Okay, you died,” Lux said, oddly calm.  Then again, if Jude died with vampire blood in her system, that would mean she’d be turning into a vampire.  Which, long story short, meant her life was now Lux’s area of expertise.

             
“We need to find your sire,” Lux said and at Jude’s blank expression, she rolled her eyes.  “Maker.  Creator.  A.k.a, Daniel.  You died with his blood in your system, which makes you his responsibility.  Do you have his number?”

             
Jude shook her head.

             
“I didn’t get it at the party last night and I don’t know who that woman with him was.  And,” she added, “no pun intended, but I’d rather die than call Jemima.”

             
“So you have her number?” Lux said, but again, Jude shook her head.

             
“Simon should,” she said, “and if he doesn’t, he’s probably found her on the internet by now.  Assuming she’s on the internet.”

             
“Numero uno,” Lux said, holding up a finger, “your brother needs a girlfriend.  Also, why wouldn’t she be on the internet?  Vampires can Tweet if they want to.”

             
Somehow, the combination of bacon and speaking Simon’s name resulted in the bedraggled teen appearing in the kitchen at that moment, his skinny white torso on display and his gym shorts on backwards.  The girls watched as he zeroed in on the bacon, not once taking notice of his sister’s enhanced appearance.

             
“Hey Simon,” Jude said and watched her brother emerge from his sleep induced haze.  “Do you have Jemima’s number by any chance?”

             
“What do you want with it?” he said, plopping onto a barstool at the other end of the island from Lux.

             
“I want it,” Lux said.  “Jemima had these super cute boots on last night and I just have to know where she got them.  It’s a girl thing.”  She fluttered her lashes and smiled endearingly, but Simon merely scoffed and rolled his eyes.  At his brush off, Lux’s eyes narrowed dangerously and Jude watched as her friend fluidly crossed the short distance to Simon, spun him on his barstool, and planted her combat boot clad foot uncomfortably close to a certain part of his anatomy.

             
“Either give me the number,” she said, “or I will make you sing soprano and you will not like how I do it.”

             
Simon visibly gulped, an action that drew Jude’s attention to the pale expanse of his neck where she could see his veins thrumming away as his heart pumped blood through them.  She could hear his heart beating, the vibrations it emitted strong to the point she could feel them as if it were her own heart beating and not her brother’s.  That’s when she noticed her heart had stopped beating, a realization strong enough to break her hazy and singular focus on her brother’s neck.