Page 38 of Blood Lovers (American Vampires #1)

Just… driving.

My eyes fly open and for a moment I can’t move. I can’t even breathe. This goes on for enough seconds that I almost give in to panic. But then I gasp for breath and sit upright in the bed. I look to my left and and let out a relieved sob when the space is empty.

Paul is gone. I did it. I banished him to the other side of the dreamwalk just like those ancient people Lucia was telling me about.

But my mind is sharp right now. And it’s racing in full-on survival mode. What if he woke up before me?

I look around, almost certain that I will find Paul leaning against the wall, arms crossed smugly, smiling at me.

But I don’t. There’s no one here but me and Ryet and when I glance at the thick, wooden door it’s bolted from the inside.

A moan makes me jump and look down to my right and find Ryet curled up in a fetal position, shivering so hard his teeth are chattering. I reach out and touch his face, but pull my hand back immediately.

He feels like ice.

He feels like death.

I let out a long breath, relieved. Because that means I won’t have to fight him when I make him drink me as I die.

We’re both gonna die today. And the vampire Paul will be trapped behind a purple veil forever. This is the best I can do for this godforsaken world. It will have to be enough.

I scramble off the bed and the memory of what happened tries to rear its ugly head. But I push it down.

I don’t have time to reminisce about last night and I certainly don’t have time to have feelings about it. I need to get this over with before I lose my nerve.

I step off the bed and my foot slips on something slick. I’m already putting pressure on it, so I slide with it and end up banging my head on the footboard as I fall.

“What the fuck?” I mutter this under my breath as I turn over, realize I’ve fallen into a pool of blood, and come face to face—literally eye to eye—with Lucia.

Or rather, Lucia’s head .

I lean over, gag, and then spit up blood. Which is enough to make me gag again.

I was drinking him. Oh, God help me, I was drinking him.

Despite having a very good reason to wallow in my current circumstances, I don’t have time to fucking wallow. I was maybe a little hesitant about killing myself, but that whole last conversation with Paul comes rushing back and yeah… there’s really no other way out of this.

I can’t remember it all but I heard the words ‘darkness,’ and ‘babies,’ and… well, we all know where it goes from there.

And I’m not gonna do it. I will not do it.

Being a feeder would be bad enough, but a breeder? To some kind of dark spirit?

No. No, no, no.

My boots stick in the already congealing blood once I get to my feet, and I kick Lucia’s head out of my way. That’s not her. She’s gone now. She has escaped this nightmare but I’m still here, so I don’t feel bad about this kick.

I stumble over to the armoire, frantically searching for a syringe and the drug Lucia was going to give me before she lost her head, and find two bottles of clear liquid. They are not the kind of bottles I’ve seen in my college health center. They are the kind of bottles I’ve only seen in the Guild library.

On one, the label reads ‘Nightcall.’ The other label says ‘Blackshade.’ Both are about half full.

I have no idea what these drugs do.

I look on the floor. Lucia had the syringe. I saw it. There was no label on it, but I don’t need to know what the drug is called. She prepared it. Whatever is in that syringe, it’s the right one.

I don’t immediately see it, but when I get on my knees and look under the bed, there it is.

I grab it, stand back up, and look at the needle. There’s no cap. So obviously she was about to inject me when… something stopped her.

Paul, probably.

Ryet moans again and I look over at him, panicked. Are his eyes open? Is he watching me prepare to kill him?

No. He’s not sleeping, I know that much because he’s writhing a little, his back arching, then bucking. Like he’s in a lot of pain. So he’s in a coma or something. Suddenly he whispers, “Jane,” in a very soft, soft voice. Like… like he’s pleading with her over something.

Jane. That was the wife.

Is he seeing her right now? Are they talking it out? I know Ryet has some kind of control over the purple too. I’m not sure if it’s the same as mine, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that he can see others there too, just like I saw Lucia. Who, I am almost certain, was dead the last time she was talking to me.

I look at the needle, then down at my thigh. All I have to do is stab it into the muscle and push the drug in. Then lie down next to Ryet, help him latch on to my neck, and let him drink me as I die.

Easy. It’s all so very, very easy.

I raise the syringe, and I swear, I fully intend on going through with it. But then some of what is really happening here starts to sink in.

They were feeding on me.

I fed on Paul.

There is blood inside me right now.

A guy I liked—and I really, really did like him—is turning into a monster before my eyes. And there is a dead witch’s head on the floor near the stone wall.

A sob escapes my mouth before I can stop it.

But just one. Because I don’t have time for this! I need to get this done! I need to save the world from what we are.

So I look up at the syringe—which is still in my hand, raised above my head—and I count down from three. Two. One… and I just… drop it.

It clatters to the floor and in that same moment, Ryet moans.

I can’t do this.

Maybe—and it’s a big maybe—maybe I could kill myself and live with the consequences. But him?

I don’t know. I don’t think that’s right, I really don’t.

The syringe, the leg, the bed, the drink—it’s all very, very easy in theory .

But I will be killing someone who just yesterday was a friend.

And who the hell am I to make this decision for him?

I’m no savior. I’m not the hero of this story. I’m one of the bad guys. A witch, for fuck’s sake. Made from evil itself.

It’s not my job to save the world.

But what choice do I have? If I don’t die, how do I even get out of here? There must be people downstairs, right? Lots of them. Do I just walk down the stairs and leave?

I walk over to the door, slide the bolt back, and I’m just reaching for the doorknob to crack it open and see if I can hear anything when Ryet moans.

“Hey.” His voice is raspy. I go completely stiff. My grace period is over and I wasted it. Now I have to leave so I grab the doorknob, turn it, and—“I’ll come by your place later.”

I whirl around, stunned. “What?”

He coughs and a bit of blood spills out of his mouth. He licks his lips, his eyes still closed. “I’ll come by your place later. I’m OK. I just need some…”

But he doesn’t finish. I think he just passed out again.

I take my hand off the doorknob and sigh, just like I did last time.

Then I walk over to the bed, sit down next to him—the same way I sat down next to my grandma the night this whole shit show started—and I push some hair out of his eyes.

I could love him. If neither of us were who we are, I could love him.

His ice-cold hand reaches up to cover mine. Then he absently pats me, eyes still closed. “You don’t have to stay. I’m OK.”

He’s not. He’s really, really not. And I want to cry about this so bad. Because I like him. I could love him.

But I don’t have time to think about any of this. “Ryet?” I nudge his shoulder a little.

“Hmm.”

“We have to go, Ryet.” The words spill out, not premeditated, but I find that I really mean them. “We have to go right now. Can you get up?”

His eyes flutter, like he’s trying to open them. And for a moment, I think he’ll do it. That he will just get up, and take over, and fix this. Save me. Like he did my first night in White River when he knocked on my window and I was having a stress breakdown.

But he just doubles up in his fetal position—his face one giant wince—and he moans louder. Because he’s in the middle of something here.

He’s in the process of transforming into a vampire and he’s not capable of saving me.

I deflate a little, scanning the room for some kind of answer. Then I see the little cooler next to the door. The cooler where Lucia was putting all the bags of blood after she bled me out.

I walk over there, open the top, pick up a bag, bite the little plastic tube where the blood should flow out, spit it across the room, walk back over to Ryet, and place the bag up to his lips.

“Here.” I reach under his neck and lift his head up a little. “Drink it, Ryet. We need to go .”

He doesn’t. He’s too busy writhing in pain. So I squeeze a little blood out, wipe it over his lips, and the next time he licks them, he catches on and begins to suck the bag down.

I don’t know how much he’s supposed to get, but I let him take it all because he begins to improve as the minutes tick off.

Finally, his eyes flutter open. They are unfocused at first, like this is just some kind of reflex. But then, slowly, his eyes find mine. We stare at each other for a moment.

And I know what he’s thinking. You did this to me .

And I also know he wants to say it out loud, so I don’t give him the chance. “Paul is gone. I banished him to the other side of the purple. No one has come up here yet, but I don’t know how long we have before they do.”

Ryet just stares at me, unblinking.

“We have to go. And I cannot get us out of here. Do you understand me?”

“You—”

I point at him. “Fuck you! Just… fuck. You! I didn’t do anything! I was tricked! And I’ve only been feeding you to keep you alive. But if you would like to die, then I’ll go. And leave you here. And you can spend the rest of your miserable demon life writhing in pain because you won’t have my blood to save you. But it you don’t want to do that, if you want to live like I do, then get the fuck out of this bed and get us the hell out of here!”

There is a long moment of silence as we stare at each other.

Enemies?

Lovers?

Just two people stuck battling a war together that they never signed up for?

Number three, I think.

But he gets up, slowly swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He has to pause here and lean over. For a moment I think he will throw up the blood I just gave him and I say a silent prayer that he won’t, because there are only two bags left and I don’t have it in me to feed him again.

Then he stands, leans on me, and I pick up the cooler of blood bags as we leave the room together.

No one is up in the house . Ryet mumbles something about lazy fucking halfbreeds, but I don’t know what he’s talking about. He leads me through the upstairs of the lodge until we get to a locked door.

Then he presses in a code, opens it up, and we walk in.

It’s an apartment, I guess.

When I glance at Ryet with questions, he just says, “Paul’s.”

Inside the bedroom there’s an open panel in the wall. For a moment I think we’re going through there, but Ryet, who is still leaning on me, directs us to an opposite wall. He does something with his hand on the panel and it slides open, revealing another exit.

He’s losing strength quickly, but he manages to point at it. “Garage.”

“OK.” I nod. And then I help him down the passageway. It’s a long passageway—a quarter mile at least, if I had to guess—and most of the time I’m practically carrying him. But then lights come up, fully illuminating a massive garage with lots of trucks and cars. I take us over to the closest truck and put him in the passenger seat, then get in the driver’s side. “Keys?”

He flips the visor down above me and keys fall out. I catch them in my hand, but it’s an electric start, so I tuck them into my pocket, start the truck, and pull forward.

Ryet is already passing out again. I reach into the back, take out a bag of blood from the cooler, bite off the top, and hand it to him. “Drink it. Quick. Because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing or how the hell I get out of here.”

He grabs it roughly, then stares at me, so many, many accusations in that stare.

But he doesn’t say them out loud. Just drinks a little to muster up the strength to guide me to the door, out onto the mountain, and down the long blacktop driveway to a highway.

Then he just… passes out.

And that’s it, I guess.

Enemies on the run from evil.

Aren’t we the fuckin’ evil?

My life, I swear.

It only takes me about five minutes to realize I have nowhere to go, so I just pick a direction and drive. We can’t go back to White River because those are Paul’s people. I don’t understand how they’re all connected, but they are his and that’s all that matters.

Plus… culty. We nailed it.

I sigh and look over at Ryet. He’s sleeping now, but not peacefully. He’s got his whole body angled towards the passenger side window so I can’t see his face, but I know he’s in pain because every minute or so the muscles in his back will spasm and he’ll arch and buck for a moment as he moans. Then the contraction, or whatever, will subside and he’ll relax and breathe deeply.

It reminds me of a mother in labor. Not that I have any first-hand experience of that, but just in general, from what I’ve seen on TV. A short moment of intense pain, then a rest.

Everything about what we’re doing right now is stressful for me and my whole body feels like it’s buzzing. I try to rationalize this—I’m nervous. I’m scared. I’m… lost.

And it’s all logical. The buzzing could be from all that.

But it could also be from the blood I drank. Paul’s blood.

Whenever he comes up in my mind, I try to push his face away. Blur him out. Obliterate him from my history. Cancel him from my life.

And it kinda works.

But then again, it kinda doesn’t. Because the problem is that I’m on the run—basically alone, but not alone, either. And there is nothing in front of me but an empty mountain road. No radio stations are coming in. And there’s no music in cars anymore. Even I’m old enough to remember when people kept CD’s in the car. But now, everyone keeps the music on their phones and I have no fucking idea where my purse is, let alone my phone.

So internal thoughts are all I have to keep me company.

I run the entire last week through my head over and over again. Mostly skipping the part where Ryet and I met and had our fun banter and uninhibited sex because I feel like those two days don’t count anymore. It was a setup, that’s all.

Most of my thoughts are consumed with Paul. Where is he? Is he dead? Did he find a way out? Is he coming for us?

I don’t know.

About three hours into the drive Ryet begins to growl. I stiffen, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turn white, but then I remember the blood. I pull over for a minute, put the truck in park, and shake him until he wakes up. His eyes are bright red and he’s snarling at me with those new teeth of his. And the only thing I can think about—as I push the half-empty bag of blood up to his mouth—is that I made a huge mistake. And I should probably just open his door, kick him out into the ditch, and drive away.

I even picture myself doing this. Leaving him behind, driving to the nearest bus station, looking for the horse and rider, making them call Zusi for me, and going home. Putting all this behind me.

But I don’t have a home. The Guild was never my home. It was just a prison. The only reason it didn’t feel like a prison was because I was too stupid to see what was right in front of my face.

They didn’t even let me read the books.

But anyway. The real reason I don’t kick Ryet into the ditch and drive away is because I’m not sure he would die. I’m not sure he hasn’t passed that point of no return. In other words, I’m afraid he’ll come hunt me down. And he could do it now. Easily, I think. And I would have nowhere to run. I would have no one to protect me.

So I don’t kick him out. I just let him drink the bag of blood and pull back onto the road, thinking about heading south.

I eat junk food from gas stations and fill up the tank using a credit card that I find in the glove box, a business Platinum American Express card made out of some kind of metal with a corporation’s name on the bottom that I can’t pronounce because it’s just a collection of letters that aren’t a word. XILMX.

Zilamax? Who knows. Don’t care.

I know every transaction is traceable, but I don’t care about that either. There is no way we don’t get caught. No way at all. Right now I’m counting on the slim chance that Ryet will stabilize and… I don’t know. Save me, I guess. Put it all right.

It’s dumb. I’m his food .

I use the bathroom at the gas stations too and clean up a little. I do what I can to make myself feel normal in the five minutes I give myself to leave Ryet alone in the truck.

We ran out of blood bags a couple days ago so now, every few hours, I have to pull over somewhere and let him feed on me. And every time I do this, I hate him a little bit more.

But even if I could’ve kicked him out and left him behind back in the mountains, I know for sure I can’t do it now.

He’s changing. Right in front of me.

He goes long stretches of hours making no sound at all. And then he’ll start whimpering, then growling, and that’s how I know to stop.

I don’t want him to wake up. I will do anything to not see those eyes again. So I feed him until he’s full, and quiet, and I can talk myself into thinking I’m safe, and then I just keep driving. Going nowhere in particular. Just… driving.

On day eight I break down and buy a phone and data plan with the credit card. Then I book us an Airbnb for a night because I need a shower and a place to put Ryet while I shop for new clothes because this is all so gross, I’m starting to reconsider Lucia’s plan to kill myself so I can kill him too, and I’m still not sure I could do it.

That’s not even true. I know I can’t do it. Because I’m a fucking coward and I want to live. I settle for the new clothes and a shower.

We stay just the one night.

Then I help Ryet stagger his way into the truck, and I just… keep… driving.