AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Interesting tactics from the guy who hasn’t set foot in a church in fifteen yea—uggh!”
It was embarrassing to be stabbed, especially when one considered my new catlike reflexes. I can only say that I didn ’t expect it. Zeb passed out when we dissected frogs in junior high. He won one fight in high school, and that was because Steve McGee tripped and fell onto Zeb’s fist. But still, there I was, mocking Zeb’s overaccessorizing one minute, and the next, the orange plastic hilt of his carving knife was protruding from my gut.
“Ow! It has to be wood, you doorknob. And it has to be in the heart!” I yelled.
My experience with stab wounds was limited, but it was certainly different from being shot. This was a cold sensation, the flimsy steel embedded in my flesh like a splinter. The wound itched as I wiggled the blade out of my stomach, back and forth, a loose wound that annoyed more than pained.
I hissed as I pulled it free, glaring at a thunderstruck Zeb. We watched as my skin knit itself back together, the tendrils of muscle and skin tissue reaching out to restore itself. I smacked Zeb’s shoulder.
“Dumbass!” I cried, tossing the knife away.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” he sputtered. The shock of what he’d done had apparently broken the violent vigilante spell. “I just panicked.”
Fitz loped after the knife to retrieve it. Fascinated, we stared as my idiot dog managed to drag the knife back by its plastic handle and drop it at our feet. Zeb grabbed it and rammed it into my thigh.
“Ow!” I yelped, shoving him hard enough for the weight of the crosses to tip him onto his back. “If you stab me one more time, I’m going to kill you. Not funny ha-ha kill you, literally suck the life out of you. And giving me the chair will obviously do the state no good.”
I pulled the knife out again. Zeb sat up enough to watch the wound close again. My jaw dropped. “Zeb Lavelle, are you stabbing me just to watch me heal up?”
He looked defensive. “No!”
“I’m so going to bite you.” I tossed the knife up onto Zeb’s roof and glared at the cross-a-palooza. “Would you take those stupid things off?”
“So, you are afraid of the crosses?” he said, holding a neon orange plastic monstrosity up in a protective gesture.
“No, I’m afraid of people who look like Mr. T.” I shook my head. “Is there a gumball machine in town left intact?”
“Well, I remembered enough of last night to know I might need some insurance, ” he said, taking off the necklaces but keeping the rosewood cross in his lap.
I plopped down next to him, wondering what to say next. Does Hallmark make a “Sorry I tried to drink your blood and touched you in a vaguely inappropriate manner” card? I settled for “How much do you remember?”
“It’s pretty foggy. I remember you having big front teeth and being really strong, me offering to buy you pizza, and then for some reason, me scoring the winning touchdown in a pickup football with the guys, followed by a round of beers at Eddie Mac ’s.
And I’ve never been to Eddie Mac’s.”
“And you don’t have any guys,” I pointed out, glad that Gabriel had managed to wipe the least flattering portions of the evening.
“So, you’re a vampire,” said Zeb, always eager to fill verbal space.
I shrugged. “Yup. Is that going to be a problem for you?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t know what you’re capable of, which is scary. The whole blood-drinking thing is weird,” he said, giving me his honesty face. I hated that face. It usually meant I was getting bad news or the truth. Sometimes they were one and the same, which sucked.
“I would never hurt you, Zeb. I was just kidding about sucking the life out of you, really,” I said. I didn’t reach out. I couldn’t stand the possibility that he would shy away from me. Instead, I countered with hurtful sarcasm. “Besides, my drinking blood’s not nearly as weird as that time I caught you shaving your legs.”
“I was curious!” he yelled. I burst out laughing. Being Zeb, he made his “I’m not responding in order to spare our friendship”
face, which was more agreeable. He said, “Besides, I did that once. You’re going to be drinking blood for the next thousand years or something. You’ll never die, never eat, never grow old, never have kids.”
“Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that one,” I muttered. Like so many elements of my new nature, the thought of never having children hadn’t occurred to me yet. It was still one of those things far off in Somedayland, after I got married and learned how crock pots worked. Now, children weren’t possible, which was yet another thing my mother could be pissed at me about.
“I was so scared for you, Janie,” he said. “You just disappeared. I thought you were in a car wreck, murdered, or, worse, that you’d finally taken Norman Hughes up on his offer to elope. So you were dead …or married to a guy born without sweat glands. And when I found out that you were dead but you weren’t, well, I didn’t know what to think. I mean, it’s kind of cool. I have a friend who’s got superpowers. But I feel left behind and, well, terrified.”
“It’s still me, just different,” I said lamely.
“How did it happen?” he asked. “Most of the people you read about being turned meet vamps in clubs or over the Internet…Ew, did you…?”
“Yes, I met a vampire on the Internet, went to his evil love den, and let him turn me, because I ’m that brainless,” I huffed, slapping his shoulder. “Look, I don’t want to tell the whole long sordid story, OK? Someday, when I’m very drunk, I’ll tell you.
