I heard Jack lumbering down the stairs, and I wondered if he was responding to the quickened beat of my heart. He was so sensitive to that, and he usual stayed way for my safety, but it also alerted him whenever I was upset about anything. He could read my emotions almost better than me since he had a direct link to my heart.
"How is everything going down here?" Jack was full of forced cheer, and his overly broad smile masked the anxiety underneath it.
"How do you think they"re going?" I grumbled, casting a look at him.
"Well, I just checked in on your brother." He ignored my glare and tried to give me information he hoped would comfort me. But until I was talking to Milo and could visibly see it was still him buried underneath his new vampire exterior, there would probably be very little to make me feel better.
27.
"He"s asleep again, but he"s looking really good. I think you"re gonna be really happy when you see him."
"He"s not a house that you"re remodeling," I grimaced at his poor choice of words. He made Milo sound like some kind of fixer upper that they were working on, and while that wasn"t very far from the truth, I didn"t want to think of it that way.
"Sorry." Jack looked apologetic and shifted uncomfortably. "Mae sent me down here to feed you."
"I"m not hungry." This wasn"t exactly a lie since stress tended to destroy my appet.i.te, but I hadn"t eaten in a very long time and my stomach had already started reminding me of it.
"Why don"t you let Jack make you some food and I"ll go make sure everything is going well with Milo?"
Ezra posed it like a question, but there was no mistaking it for anything but an order.
"I"m perfectly capable of making food for myself," I insisted as I stood up. For some reason, I had resorted to refuting their generosity with pouting. I knew I was being rude and unreasonable, but I couldn"t seem to help it.
"Fine, I"ll watch you make food then," Jack rolled his eyes.
In the kitchen, I made a show of slamming things down and banging drawers. Jack just sighed and watched me make the angriest peanut b.u.t.ter sandwich in the world. I think he had given up on trying to get me to relax or cheer up and was mostly just happy that I"d actually taken his advice to eat. But for all the stomping around and tantrum throwing I did, I wasn"t really angry with Jack or Ezra or anyone. Really, I was just scared.
Chapter 5.
Even standing in the hallway, I could still smell Peter and hated what it did to me. The ache I had been trying to ignore burned unbearably inside me and my heart sped up so quickly, it made me weak. Thankfully, Jack was downstairs, trying to do his penance by doing my laundry. Under normal circ.u.mstances, Mae would be more than happy to do it, but she had been preoccupied with caring for my brother, who apparently required 24-hour care. I"d been here for almost two days, and I had seen almost nothing of her, and I hadn"t seen Milo since Ezra warned me that it was better if I didn"t.
That left me with a lot of time to wander around the house feeling rather lost and confused. Jack tried to console while me while simultaneously trying to keep to his distance, and it did very little to make me feel better. He had camped out on the couch downstairs last night, leaving me with his room. I puttered around for a bit, looking through his drawers in hopes of finding something incriminating, but it was mostly just as I suspected. He had a trunk of graphic novels in his closet that I leafed through, but I was finding it hard to keep my mind focused on anything. All of this had really taken me by surprise, and I couldn"t keep up. There was so much up in the air now.
I knew that in a way, I should feel some comfort in this, because it meant that I would never have to give Milo up. We could always be together, and I wouldn"t have to worry about him getting sick or dying or anything like that.
Maybe if I had already turned I would feel that way, if I could completely understand what was in store for him. Instead, I had Jack"s vague a.s.surance that being a vampire was awesome, and that was about it. Ezra and Mae both offered contradicting stories about it being a curse and a blessing, and I wasn"t sure what it would feel like to Milo.
28.
What if it did something horrible to him? And he got sick or died or turned into something completely vile? What if he stopped being Milo, the timid over protective geek I loved, and turned into some overzealous blood sucker? Or what if he turned out fine, but he hated me for letting him turn? And for lying to him about what Jack and his family were, and letting him hang around them all the time when I should"ve known how dangerous it was. What if I had to spend the rest of eternity with him hating me?
When I finally tired of searching through Jack"s room and driving myself mad with worry, I finally gave into the scent. I stood in the hallway for a long while, just breathing in the perfect intoxicating tangy scent that Peter left behind, before deciding to step in further. Since Peter had taken off last spring after that horrible (and yet somehow wonderful) incident in which he nearly killed me, Mae had simply shut the door to his room.
There was no real talk of whether or not he would be back, although he hadn"t packed any of his things, but I think the unspoken consensus was that somehow, Ezra would find a cure for our "love" and life would go back to normal. Not that I even knew what it would mean to be "back to normal" anymore.
Carefully, I opened Peter"s bedroom door, checking the hall both ways just to make sure that Jack wasn"t around. n.o.body had specifically forbid me from entering his room, and I doubted that Mae and Ezra would care at all, but Jack was liable to take offense. Even mentioning Peter"s name made him tense up horribly, and I hoped that someday, he"d be able to move past that. I was beginning to doubt that Jack would ever want anything to do with Peter again, regardless of how our relationships resolved themselves.
His room was just as he had left, but I barely noticed it. I closed my eyes, breathing in even more deeply, and a wonderful heat surged through me. There was a physical pull inside me and I was drawn into his room. Peter had been long gone for months, and my body still clamored to get in every last possible drop of him.
On the floor in front of Peter"s ma.s.sive bookcases, there was a white rug that had been stained with a few stray drops of my blood. I still remembered the horrible ecstasy it had been when Peter bit me, and the way the life had drained from me in this beautiful, peaceful feeling. Nothing, not even my magical kiss with Jack, had ever felt as good as that. Even now, knowing what I know and having all that I have, I knew that if Peter offered to bite me in exchange for my death, I would gladly make the trade. My feelings for him were positively suicidal, but I couldn"t seem to help them.
I walked around Peter"s room, admiring his odd collection of things. His furniture seemed to be primarily antiques, and everything was either natural wood or white. His bed, which smelled all too sweetly of him, was far too tempting, so I deliberately steered myself away from his white linens. His book shelves were lined with books from every day and age, and I let my fingers travel over their worn bindings. Then I noticed something that made already shortened breath catch.
Peter had an entire section of books on vampires, and I didn"t mean things like Bram Stroker or Anne Rice. They were books with t.i.tles like A Vampire Dictionary and A Brief History of Vampyres. I pulled the latter from the shelf, carefully open the cover to the fragile, yellowed pages. My senses were closely tuned into Peter"s odor, but I was overwhelmed by the moldy, dusty smell that came out of the book, and I sneezed softly.
I sat back down on the overstuffed chair Peter had by the book shelves, and I started looking through it.
There was no table of contents, but it appeared there was a page missing. Instead, it started with a foreword.
"I am not the oldest of my kind, nor do I claim to be expert on them. However, in my many years of existence, I have found very little written on the subject of vampyres, other than very 29 questionable folklore. In an effort to dispel the mythology and to create a guide for the newly turned, I have decided to write this book. In no means is to be taken "Bible" for my kind, but rather, as the t.i.tle suggests, a brief history of vampyres as far as I can tell."
For some reason, my fingers had begun to tremble, and I was terrified I would rip the fragile pages out. Somehow, knowing there was a history for vampires was disconcerting. I knew they existed, but the only ones I actually knew were Jack and his family, and there was nothing particularly frightening or disturbing about them. But to think of vampires as a whole, an entire species of creatures out there, feeding on the living for the past millennia... it sent unwitting chills down my spine.
Carefully, I turned the page to continue reading. I was desperate to find out as much as I could about them. If I had been a smarter person, I would"ve started researching them long ago, but it didn"t seem as crucial. I always just thought I"d figure things out when it happened to me, but that no longer seemed good enough.
The first chapter was simply t.i.tled "In the Beginning."
"Perhaps what is most unusual about vampyres, is that while we carry many of the same traits of humans, we lack any real creation story of our own. Some vampyres still cling onto the religion of the people, while others banish it, saying that we are proof that G.o.d does not exist. What I have found to be true is much less sensational than one would hope. We have neither a direct line with G.o.d or the devil. We are no closer to the meaning of life than any other human. If we are demons, as many believe, then we have yet to receive instructions from our master, should one even exist.
"Vampyres have not existed as long as humans have, by our best record keeping, and I was unable to find anything on the first vampyre. More precisely, I have never encountered a vampyre who admitted to being the first one, or any other vampyre who met him. Our first doc.u.mented appearance happened to coincide with a plague, which leads me to believe that we are some kind of plague ourselves."
"I see you found some light reading," Ezra interrupted my reading, startling me so badly that I jumped up from the chair and dropped the book onto the floor. He chuckled warmly, but I couldn"t help but feel like I had been caught doing something wrong.
"I-I just-I was just curious," I stumbled and felt my cheeks burn with shame.
"There"s no harm in being curious." Ezra waved off my apology and walked over to me. He picked up the book off the floor, and then held it for me to take. I hesitated for a moment, afraid that it might be some kind of trick, although he didn"t seem much like the tricking kind.
"I just don"t know very much about you." When I finally did take the book from him, I lowered my eyes to floor and pulled it close to me.
"We haven"t been as forthcoming as you"d like?" Ezra raised an eyebrow, and I wasn"t sure if he was being skeptical or sincere, making me all the more nervous. My heart beat frantically in search of the correct answer, and I fought to control before it sent Jack bursting into the room to make sure I was alright.
"No, it"s not that," I corrected myself quickly. "It"s just..."
What was it exactly? They had all been incredibly open with me, Jack and Mae especially. When I had questions, Jack always answered them to the best of his ability, but somehow, that wasn"t enough anymore. As much as I knew, it seemed liked there was twice as much that I didn"t know.
30.
"It"s because it"s personal now," Ezra nodded knowingly. "Before, we were merely a curiosity to you, or an opportunity."
"No, no!" I interrupted him forcefully. "You"re not some sideshow to me! You"re my life!"
"No, I know that. It was a poor choice of words on my part," Ezra elaborated gently, trying to calm me.
"I know how much you care for us. But... you"d always known us as this, and whether you understood us completely or not was irrelevant. You saw that we were happy and well, and that was enough for you. But now that it"s struck Milo, it"s suddenly not enough to just know that we"re content. You need to understand everything about it."
"Yeah," I agreed. My body relaxed readily when I realized that he understood exactly what I meant, and why I needed to know. "So?"
"So... you want me to tell you everything," Ezra smiled sadly.
"Yeah, kind of," I admitted.
"I have bad news," he exhaled. "There"s not much more to tell."
"How can there not be much to tell?" My voice quavered with incredulity. "You"re smarter and more intuitive than humans and you"ve been around for centuries! And you"re telling me that the little bit you"ve confessed to me in the past few months covers the entire history of your species?"
"No, of course not," Ezra laughed lightly at my fervor. "We have an extensive history, and that book you"re holding right now is a very good source of a lot of it. But it"s much like any other history book you"ve read. It tells you the who and the what happened, but you"d be more interested in a biology book."
"Is there one?" I asked hopefully.
"There are a few," Ezra wagged his head back and forth as if none of them were really that good.
"Peter has some, I"m sure, and if you look through his books you"ll come across them. But there are many problems with a biology book about vampires. For one thing, autopsies are impossible.
Whatever kills a vampire tends to completely destroy everything inside him, making it impossible to really dissect it all and see how it differs from a human. But that"s only half the problem."
"What"s the other half of the problem?"
"Have you heard about the b.u.mblebee?" Ezra casually leaned back against the end of the Peter"s fourpost bed, crossing his feet over his ankles. He looked at me seriously, as if I would immediately grasp he correlation between b.u.mblebees and vampires.
"What are you talking about?" I shook my head, confused by the abrupt subject change.
"According to an aerodynamic study done in the early 20th century, the b.u.mblebee can"t possibly fly,"
Ezra explained. "Its wings are much too small and can"t possibly beat fast enough to carry the weight of its body."
"What?" I furrowed my brow in confusion and tried to figure out what he was saying. "So... What?
31.
How do they get around then?" I decided that it was some kind of joke or riddle, and it would be better if I just played along with it.
"They fly, of course," he smiled broadly at me.
"But you just said...:" I sighed and shook my head. "What does this have to do with vampire biology?"
"Nothing." Ezra shrugged. "Science proved that it was impossible, even though they were seeing it with their own eyes. The b.u.mblebee flies despite evidence to the contrary, much like myself.
Eventually, scientists managed to figure out they were looking at the wings wrong, and they work more like helicopter blades than bird wings, and they figured out the magic in the flight of the b.u.mblebee.
"Unfortunately, science has yet to figure out the magic of us," Ezra finished, looking apologetic.
"So you"re saying that n.o.body knows the answers to my questions?" I asked dully.
"Yes, and no." He stood up, smiling softly. "You"ll find some things, but it"ll probably never be enough. Just the same, you can take a look through Peter"s books and see if you can come across anything that might help you feel better."
"Thanks," I mumbled, unsure of how else to respond.
With that, Ezra nodded rea.s.suringly at me and then strode out of the room. I sighed reflexively and listened closely for his departing footsteps, but there were none. The only sound I could really hear, the only one I ever really heard since Milo had started turning, was a soft music wafting from his room that sounded like Mozart. I knew that Jack had to be somewhere downstairs, doing the cleaning that Mae had been forced to ignore.
I settled back into the chair that Ezra had startled me from and opened the book where I had left off. As I read on, I found that the faded italics offered me very little in what I wanted, just as he had predicted. It was interesting just the same, telling the story of the unnamed author and his transformation into a vampire. He described it as intensely painful and excruciating, but in the end, very brief and hard to define what exactly had hurt so much. There was just pain, and then a thirst that was absolutely unquenchable.
There wasn"t much about turning that I didn"t already know. Of course it would be impossible for me to completely understand until I experienced it myself, but the book added very little to that.
The only real new information was that some vampires turned more than others. While most retained a sense of their humanity, some of them lost it entirely. They were nothing more than crazed bloodthirsty monsters, and usually, they didn"t live very long because the humans and even other vampires couldn"t stomach a creature like that.
I had just finished reading a pa.s.sage about an encounter with one such beast when I heard a disgusted scoff at the door, frightening me so much I yelped. I half expected to find Milo standing there, with shiny new fangs dripping with blood and that animal look in his eyes the book described. Instead, it was just Jack, standing in the doorway and frowning darkly at me, his blue eyes filled with turmoil.
"You scared me!" I gasped, pointing out the obvious in an attempt to alleviate his glare.
"What are you doing in Peter"s room?" He was fighting to keep the edge of his voice, but he did a very poor job of it. The last time I"d been in this room, I"d almost died, and he had to strain to keep his eyes from staring at my dried blood on the rug.
32.