ALL NOVEL 66
LeBlanc drove us home after the paramedics had finished poking and prodding at us. Lee and Sierra stayed back in the car while he walked Scarlet and I to our front door. There were more cops up at the asylum and he assured me they would be coming down for a chat in not too long, but I could have some peace with Mike and my mom before then.
He drove off with Lee and Sierra to drop the two of them off at their respective homes and have a chat with their parents.
I took a deep breath. Scarlet hovered next to me, looking uncertain. LeBlanc hadn’t asked too many questions about her. I had a feeling he knew she had some relation to Demetrius but didn’t think she was a perpetrator in this incident. Which… attempted murder was still attempted murder, even if it was preemptive self defense.
On a normal, sane day Mike probably would’ve noticed the fleet of police passing through the area, but nothing about this day was going to be normal or sane.
I opened the door to a confusing scene. There was blood all over the place, dragged in from outside. It led from the front door, around the corner into the hallway, stumbled over onto a wall, and then continued under Mike’s bedroom door.
“Blacke,” Scarlet breathed, and rushed forward, skidding to a stop before she slammed into the wood. I followed quickly. I’d hoped to take a breather, but if I could help Blacke, I would do what I could.
“Mike?” I called out.
I heard him scramble in his clutter to get to the door.
“Uh, hi,” he managed. “What’s up?”
“Let me in,” I told him. I hadn’t tried the door, but it felt weirdly rude to barge in even in an emergency.
“Uh… why?”
“I know he’s in there, just let me help,” I explained. A second later the door knob turned before the wood panel flung open.
Blacke was indeed on his bed, still bleeding, though less so now. Mike was pale, blood smeared up both his arms as he’d clearly been trying to put pressure on the wounds.
“What do I do?” he asked, clearly flustered and went back to Blacke’s side.
I stepped over some bloody laundry and onto one of the clean patches of floor as Scarlet did the same behind me. Blacke was barely conscious, trying to breathe through the unpleasantness. I felt guilty again, knowing this was my doing. Then again, Demetrius didn’t have to try to kill us. If he hadn’t, he would’ve just gone to prison. So this was just as much his fault as mine.
“What can we do?” I asked Scarlet. She shook Blacke a couple times to get his attention, but his ability to focus was severely impaired.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. If… human blood isn’t… then I don’t understand.”
I looked at my wrist. It was covered in dirt and blood but a quick scrub with my jacket sleeve cleared most of it up. Mike went to say something but I grabbed the razor blade off his nightstand and fumbled with it to make a small but deep cut in my wrist. Scarlet started to protest, but I shrugged her off.
“I know, but I can’t just do nothing.” My blood had started to drip and I shoved my wrist into Blacke’s mouth.
He didn’t respond at first, much like Scarlet. Then once the smell or taste had worked its way into his subconscious he started to swallow.
“What did you do?” Mike asked. “You look like shit.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” He pulled my hand away from Blacke’s mouth. “You don’t have the blood to be giving it away. Or did you forget you almost bled to death last week?” He thrust my arm into Scarlet’s hands, who seemed uncertain until Mike tossed a tissue box at her. “I’ll do it,” he said, picking up the razor blade. He stared at it for a moment and then shook away whatever second thoughts he had. He cut into his skin, conjuring an energetic stream of blood, which he shoved into Blacke’s mouth.
I stood aside. He seemed to understand what was going on, without me explaining it.
“When did you find out?” I asked.
“Shortly after you brought me to a discussion on how to kill vampires. I had some questions. And Blacke was willing to answer them.” He shifted impatiently with his wrist still on Blacke’s mouth.
“I… see…” I said. Scarlet was gripping my wrist almost painfully to keep the blood inside.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“So… do you know why we had to do this?”
“I don’t know what you did,” Mike grumbled. He leaned his weight against his bed, keeping an eye on Blacke, who was starting to stir and reached up to hold Mike’s arm.
“Oh, we just… killed a dude, that’s all.”
“I’m assuming this dude was whoever the fuck beat the crap out of you and the same dude that conditioned these two to hunt people.”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” I agreed.
Mike was well beyond stressed, but he was taking the fact we’d collectively murdered someone with surprising calmness. Blacke started to sit up, still with Mike’s wrist in mouth, though he was starting to look more like he was just kissing the wound than having his jaws clamped onto the skin.
Scarlet finally released my wrist and then leaned down to give it a generous lick. The pain was almost instantly gone. I’d noticed back when she’d drank my blood it hurt way less than it should have and wondered if her willingness to get my blood in her mouth had something to do with some kind of anesthetic in her saliva. But that didn’t exactly make a lot of sense for a predator species.
I leaned myself against Mike’s bedframe. “I’m glad nobody died,” I said. “I thought I was going to.”
“Lexi,” Blacke started. His voice was alarmingly calm and calculated. “Can I ask you something?”
“Well… yeah,” I said. “I don’t exactly have any secrets from you… I don’t think.”
“Yes but,” he seemed hesitant to ask. “When Demetrius had you on the ground… you bit him, right?”
“Yes.” I rubbed my mouth at the memory. I’d spat out as much of his flavor as I could but there was still that lingering metallic taste in the back of my throat.
“Do you feel okay?” he asked. “Any sickness at all?”
“No, I don’t think–” but I realized why he asked and instinctively rubbed at my face again before going to the bathroom and running the water.
Scarlet followed me, looking concerned.
“You bit him?” she asked.
“I didn’t have anything else,” I explained and leaned over to slurp as much water in my mouth as I could, then gargled it, and spat it out. There wasn’t any color difference from plain saliva but the flavor of blood was still lingering.
“How much did you swallow?” she asked.
“I–I don’t know. Nothing willingly. I spat it out as soon as I could but—” My stomach felt queasy and I hoped it was just psychosomatic. “How much did you ingest to— to change?”
“A small glass,” she told me. She sniffed at my skin concernedly. “You don’t smell like you're a vampire, so you aren’t one yet at least. And I got sick very quickly after drinking the blood.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “And you were very sick right?” I asked.
She nodded. “I couldn’t keep anything inside of me. And my teeth hurt real bad too.”
She pointed to her fangs. “They grew underneath the old ones and eventually the old ones fell out, but it wasn’t natural. They bled a lot in the process.”
I poked at my canine teeth. They still felt fine. “I must’ve avoided it then,” I said. “I don’t feel horribly sick.”
She wrapped her arms around my waist to give me a hug. “I’m glad. I don’t want you to have to live like this.”
My mind chewed on a thought for too long as she hugged me. She turned her head to look up at me, concerned at my silence.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t it be easier for us to be together if…” I didn’t know if I should ask or not. She said it was better that I wasn’t a vampire but, I couldn’t help but remember the entire problem Bella had in Twilight was that she would age and Edward would not. I was facing the same issue but I didn’t want to blindly throw myself at Scarlet and ask her to change me either. It wasn’t a decision I could make on a whim.
“You’d have to live like we do,” she said. “Or like the other vampires do. Always migrating, never settling down, only having shitty jobs that don’t bother to do a background check and’ll pay you under the table. It’s not an easy life.”
“But I’d be with you forever,” I said.
She hugged me harder. “What if things go wrong?” she asked. “I don’t want to lose you, but it’s never an impossibility that we’d break up. And then what? You’re stuck like this forever. You’d just hate me all the more.”
“I could never hate you,” I smoothed her hair back as she buried her face against my chest. “I know you’ve done bad things in the past. And I know you’re going to have a lot of difficult emotions to process through for a long time. But I want to be there for you anyway.”
She shook her head. “Maybe someday, but I don’t want you to make this decision now when we’re both… exhausted.”
I nodded, agreeing. I didn’t want to make an ill informed decision either. It was the kind of thing Scarlet and I should talk about extensively, and I should probably discuss it with the other vampires to get their information too, though I wasn’t sure how long their patience would last with our little group stumbling about like idiots.
We headed back to Mike’s room to find Blacke fully awake, though looking pained and uncomfortable. Mike had sat on the bed next to him now and was wiping away blood with some paper towels.
The two of them looked at me expectantly.
“I’m fine,” I said. “No vampire-ness in me.”
Blacke nodded. “That’s good,” he said with relief. Mike similarly looked relieved but kept his thoughts to himself on the matter.
I looked at Scarlet and then at the blood on the floor, leading back out to the front door.
“We need to clean this up,” I told her. I didn’t know where Mom was, but she didn’t need to know about all of this mess right now. LeBlanc was probably unaware she was putting herself together more so he might not even try to talk to her about it. But the other cops might. I couldn’t say. We were a small town, everybody knew about my father and LeBlanc and him were very good friends back in the day so when it came to me, he did have a lot of sway. I just wasn’t sure if this was going to be one of those times where protocol overruled personal relations.
Scarlet and I set out to clean for a while. Mike joined in eventually, but kept an eye on Blacke, who was doing his best to bandage himself and get some rest to recover.
AN: And we are almost done. Just 1-2 chapters left and then these characters are on their own without my narration. TY everybody who's made it this far. Fewer that last year but alas, the sequel will always have fewer fans than the original. That being said, I do have plans on revising this book. (Nothing crazy, no major plot/character details changing. Just pacing issues and formating, and bc I'll put it together in one book, it's serialization quirks will be removed.)
So yeah. Almost there. Then I need to decide which story will be my next obsession. Flutter or Blood Fluke. My editor thinks Flutter should be it as it has more 'publishable' qualities but that's not why I'm writing on the interwebs. There's a separate publishable section in my google drive for proper manuscripts.