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“My readings were coming back weird. The nurse freaked out.”
Lucas took me down a side street, keeping our pace quick. I felt a little steadier but knew I needed to lean on him. “What do you mean, weird?”
The truth hit me then. I’d spent my whole life preparing for this moment, in one way or another, and yet it was strange and terrible to face.
“I’m not yet a vampire,” I whispered. “But—I’m no longer human.”
Chapter Nineteen
WE RETURNED HOME FROM THE CLINIC AT SUNSET. Lucas poured me back into bed, and we worried about what to do. I told him everything that had happened at the clinic and the weird readings that had made the nurse panic.
“Never happened before?” he said. I shook my head.
“Then—you’re changing. Whether you like it or not. You’re becoming a vampire. A full vampire, I mean.”
“I can’t be a full vampire unless I kill. That’s the only way it works.”
“How do you know?” Lucas demanded. He lay on the bed with me, though I was beneath the covers and he was on top of them. “Nobody really understands what happens with kids like you, right?”
“Almost nobody. But my parents understood. They never would explain most of it, but this part, they were really clear on.” I stared up at the white ceiling, studying the whorls of plaster.
“There are only two ways a person becomes a vampire. Either you’re a regular person who gets bitten repeatedly by a vampire and then is killed by the final bite, or you’re a born vampire—like me—who makes a kill. That’s it.”
“Then what’s happening to you?” He cupped my cheek with his hand. His dark-green eyes were anguished. “I can’t stand this. Not knowing. And I realize it’s got to be worse for you.”
I held his hand to my face and tried to smile. I couldn’t bear to tell him what I was starting to believe.
With my body weakening, I had begun to experience the strangest sensation—a kind of sinking, a wearing away, as though I were somehow less each day. Something inside me was fighting against the force of life, and that something was winning.
My parents had always refused to tell me what would happen if a born vampire refused to make that first kill and complete the transformation. Now I thought I knew what had frightened them so badly that they wouldn’t even speak of it.
I was beginning to wonder if the only alternative was to die.
Lucas’s fingers threaded through my long hair as he combed it to soothe me. At last I said, “If I wrote my parents a letter, would you promise to send it if—”
“If what?”
I closed my eyes. “If anything bad were to happen.”
“Bianca—”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore right now. But if you would promise—it would mean a lot to me.”
Lucas was quiet for a while before he whispered, “I promise.”
The next morning, as soon as I woke up, I knew something inside me had changed for the worse.
Before, even on my worst days, I’d been able to get around a little bit. Now I was so weak I couldn’t get out of bed without Lucas’s help. To my embarrassment, he had to walk me to the bathroom. He brought me breakfast in bed, but I couldn’t eat more than a wedge of toast. Even that, I had to force down.
“Do you want me to get you blood?” he asked. His hands gripped the back of the chair so tightly that his knuckles were white. “I could catch something, or I could bust into a hospital, hit the blood bank.”
“I don’t want any blood. I don’t want anything. Just—some water, maybe.”
Really, I didn’t even want the water, but at least that way Lucas could feel like he’d done something for me.
The passage of time meant nothing to me; I didn’t go outside at all. Lucas called in sick to work; I was scared he’d get fired, but then again, maybe a chop shop didn’t expect every single employee to show up every day. When I asked him about it, Lucas nodded. “Places that break the law don’t usually get too excited about enforcing the rules. Don’t worry about me, okay, Bianca? Just take care of yourself.”
But how was I supposed to do that?
