His expression was tense, as if he was fighting an inner battle of some kind. I shouldn’t be hanging out with this guy, I thought to myself. I didn’t care if he did save my life. He was trying to kill himself, or at least that’s what he had said. Not normal, sane behavior, in any case.
“Did your sire explain anything to you before he was murdered?”
“I don’t know why you keep calling him my sire. He was my date. A blind date, if you want to know the truth.”
“Fine. Did your… date… explain anything to you?”
“About what?”
“About your neck and what it means.”
I absently reached up to touch my wound and flinched.
“He said that he was a vampire and now I was one, too.”
The stranger nodded. “Well, that’s a start. And then?”
“Then I sprayed him with pepper spray and ran away. He was out of his mind.”
He frowned at me. “He wasn’t lying.”
“No, I’m sure he believed what he was saying. That’s one of the signs of being crazy, isn’t it?”
The stranger came nearer to me, and I studied him up close for the first time. His handsome face was very pale in the moonlight and his eyes appeared to be silver, able to reflect what little light there was the way a cat’s might. When he spoke, I noticed the fangs.
“You are a vampire, Sarah. He wasn’t crazy.”
I had the can of pepper spray from my wet purse back in my hand in a flash. I held it up to his face. “Get away from me right now.”
“Your only link to your new world has been killed. You need to listen to me if you want to survive.”
“Vampires don’t exist.” My voice was firm, but my insides felt like jelly.
“Yes, we do.”
I pressed down on the spray’s trigger button, but it flew out of my hand as the stranger effortlessly knocked it away. He grabbed my shoulders and I started fighting for my life, scratching and clawing at him like a wild animal.
“Stop it,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
It was impossible to fight him. He was so strong that I could barely move. Hot tears coursed down my cheeks and I was exhausted from fighting, from running, from denying what I was hearing. My neck throbbed. I let my arms drop loosely to my sides. My head began to swim and I saw colors exploding as they had when Gordon hit me. I tried to focus on the stranger, his arms now the only thing keeping me from falling backward onto the cold, hard pavement.
“It’s okay.” His voice suddenly sounded miles away. Distant and fading. “I’ll take care of you.”
The world went black.
I opened my eyes. I was sprawled on a leather sofa in a dark, unfamiliar room. I sat up slowly. My head ached as if I had the worst hangover of my life. That sure was one crazy dream. I looked around. Where the hell am I? There was a rustle to my left and a door opened. The stranger emerged from what looked like a kitchen area. He held a glass of water in his hand and he didn’t smile when he saw I was awake. Ah. Must still be dreaming. Sure felt real, though.
“Who are you?” I moved as far away from him as the sofa would allow. My voice croaked as if I’d been asleep for a while. Which was strange, since I’d never dreamed that I was sleeping before.
“My name is Thierry de Bennicoeur,” he said.
“French.”
“Originally.”
“You don’t have an accent.”
“Not anymore.”
“And you’re a vampire.”
“Yes.”
“Where are we?”
“My house.”
He was a man of few words. I searched my mind for something else to say. If I stayed silent too long, I might start panicking again. I didn’t care if this was a dream; it was a weird one.
“Why were you trying to kill yourself?” I asked absently.
He stared at me for a moment but ignored the question. “How do you feel right now?”
“Like I went out drinking and a bus hit me. I want to go home.” I made a move to stand up, but the flashing pain in my head stopped me cold. Were you supposed to feel pain in a dream? Didn’t seem right.
“We need to take care of something first,” Thierry said.
“What?” I glanced at him and my eyes widened when I saw a sharp knife in his hand.
“What the hell are you planning on doing with that?”
He raised an eyebrow at my panicked tone. My eyes widened even more when I saw him drag the blade across his wrist. Holy shit! He was going to finish killing himself right in front of me. That was so sick. I felt so weak that all I could do was whimper as I saw blood flow from his cut. He held his wrist over the glass of water and let his blood drip into it. Then he produced a spoon and stirred the contents.
“If your first drink is not directly from your sire, then it’s best for it to be a little weak,” he explained.
I stared with disbelief at the diluted blood. Then I looked at his wrist. The wound was rapidly disappearing until there was no more than a small pink line where the cut had been.
“Drink.” He offered me the glass.
I waved it away. “I’d rather have a diet Coke, if you don’t mind.”
He placed the glass down on the shiny black coffee table and stood up. “Let me explain a few things to you, Sarah Dearly. Number one: Your sire didn’t finish making you a vampire before he was killed. The wound on your neck proves that. If he’d finished properly, it would be nearly healed by now. Number two: to finish the job, you need to ingest the blood of a full-strength vampire. Since I don’t see any other volunteers around, I figured it was up to me. So don’t be difficult.”
“I’m not drinking anybody’s blood,” I said firmly.
He shrugged. “Then you’ll die before the end of the night. There is a toxin in a vampire’s fangs that will infect its victim when the sire drinks deeply and fully of their blood. The toxin is what makes one a vampire. If your… date… had simply wanted a small taste of you, then it would be a moot point. However, by your symptoms, his intention was obviously to make you one of us. The toxin now in your body needs to be counteracted with this.” He indicated the glass of pink water. “Simple as that.”