Her Yearning for Blood Read online

  Something was wrong.

  I touched raw fingers to the wall and willed myself to stay upright. I would not allow myself to faint. Taking a ragged breath, I shuffled toward the door. Boys were yelling now but I could no longer hear the girl.

  Who was she?

  “I’ll lock you in the basement if I have to,” came Evan’s voice from what sounded like quite a ways away.

  Moving slower than a rusted robot, I crept toward the door. I had never felt such agony. The ants must have bitten every inch of my body. The skin on my arms, stomach and legs was puffy with masses of red welts. I couldn’t see any evidence that Evan’s aunt had applied any cream or ointment, though that probably shouldn’t have surprised me. Judging by the lock on my door, it seemed obvious that I wasn’t really a patient. From the sounds of the commotion out there, it didn’t seem that any of us were.

  I took two more steps and sucked in a breath each time. I now knew what a lobster in a pot felt like. It took all my willpower not to scream.

  “Get that witch away from me!” a boy bellowed.

  “Can’t you all just shut up,” a girl screamed. “Just shut up!”

  At least she was alive, whoever she was.

  “Erica, you should go back to bed,” Evan said. “My aunt will be back in after—”

  “I can speak for myself, Nephew,” came his aunt’s high-pitched voice. “Young lady, either you get back in that room or I’m going to give you something that will make you sick to your stomach for a week.”

  I paused, both to rest my pain-wracked body and to put my thoughts together. I didn’t know any Erica. I also didn’t remember seeing any new girls at the military base, but there had been a lot of kids there.

  I inched forward again only to see the knob turning. Stopping, imagining the pain of the door striking my raw skin, I said, “Evan?”

  “What are you doing out of bed?” Evan’s aunt asked has she pushed into the room. The rush of air from the door made me wince. “Don’t worry. That will all be healed up in a few hours.”

  I didn’t believe her. Not even a little.

  “Maybe someone should just bring me home,” I suggested.

  “Might as well drive a wooden stake through your heart right now,” Mrs. Groacher said. She wasn’t smiling. “Now back up and get into bed. You’re not going anyplace, not until Sunday.”

  Fearing the stern woman would grab at my raw arms, I did as told. The trip back to bed was quicker and, if possible, more painful. I eased myself down to a prone position and sighed as stinging nerve endings settled down. Exhausted, I could still hear the boys yelling in the background. A series of thumps and slaps seemed to silence them.

  Nurse Groacher leaned over me. A vision of Kathy Bates’ character from Misery, the Stephen King movie, came to mind. I had a fleeting vision of a board being propped between my ankles as the woman smashed a sledgehammer against my feet. I knew I had to get out of this place but my body had done all it could do. Already my eyelids were growing heavy. I ran my tongue across the inside of sore gums and was glad I couldn’t remember fire ants crawling inside my mouth.

  Nurse Groacher said, “I’ll be back in a couple of hours with….”

  I didn’t hear anything else because blessed unconsciousness took me.

  6

  A blood-curdling scream stabbed like a knife through my ears. I sat bolt upright and heard the clank of chains. Cold steel chafed at my wrists. A white hot rage flashed across my mind. I snarled and yanked against the shackles that bound my arms to the cast iron headboard behind me. I kicked and felt another set of chains securing my ankles to the footboard. Somehow, I had allowed myself to be duped by the gorgeous but evil Evan and his mean-spirited aunt.

  Rage surged like a living mass inside of me.

  “Let me out of here!” I hissed and felt the skin inside my mouth rip. For some reason, the coppery taste of blood was driving me crazy. I ran my tongue across the wounds but could feel nothing. The pain was gone.

  Something was different, however.

  I probed my teeth with my tongue. They seemed to take up more space inside my mouth. Then the tip of my tongue passed across the point of an upper canine tooth. I felt an instant stab of pain but as with the earlier cut, the discomfort vanished as quickly as I felt it. The taste of blood sent my mind into an almost uncontrollable state of hunger. My stomach grumbled with need.

  What was happening to me?

  “Evan! Nurse Groacher!” I shook all four chains at once. “You better let me out of here!”

  Through the walls, I could hear a muffled male voice also calling for freedom, but his pleas seemed to have no more effect than my own. If only we had been closer together, maybe we could have teamed up to escape.

  Suddenly, I realized the pain from my ant bites was gone. I glanced down. Unbelievably, the hundreds of red welts all over my body had disappeared. It hardly seemed possible that I could have healed so quickly. Maybe the red marks hadn’t been bites at all. Maybe they had been some kind of a rash…caused by Nurse Groacher?

  Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true. I had still been conscious when the ants attacked me. They had been as real and painful as the recent marks on my skin. No, something beyond my understanding had happened; I intended to find out what, just as soon as I could get free of my restraints…and get something to eat. My stomach cramped in hunger.

  “Evan, please let me go now. I promise not to tell anyone.”

  Who would believe me anyway?

  “Evan? Evan?” I kept up my calls for several minutes until it became obvious that either he wasn’t listening or didn’t care. Either way, I was on my own. I knew I should have been more frightened but something inside of me had changed. Here, chained and locked in a strange room, I felt more in control than ever before in my short teen life. I couldn’t put a finger on why I felt so different, so strong, but I did.

  I was also hungrier than I had ever been.

  Visions of barely cooked hunks of steak came to my mind. And the weird thing was, I didn’t even like steak…certainly not raw. Nevertheless, the image made my mouth water. I remembered the blood being squeezed from the headless squirrel. I imagined my mouth below that gray body, catching every drop.

  “Yuck!”

  What was happening to me?

  I had to get away from this place. Now.

  I studied my chains and the cast iron headboard for any signs of weakness. Not seeing any, I had moved my focus to the manacles around my ankles. The floorboards in the hallway creaked ever-so-faintly. All senses attuned, I inhaled and could smell his earthy scent. A whole new kind of hunger overcame me.

  Everything stopped as I waited for Evan to unlock and open the door.

  The sight of him struck me with an intensity I wasn’t prepared for. His strong chin and dark eyes were like beacons, and the open top buttons of his shirt revealed pale skin pulled over taught chest muscles, muscles that matched the ripples beneath the skin of his thick forearms. Awestruck, I watched him approach the bed with a brass key in one hand.

  “My aunt gets carried away,” Evan said as he freed me from the manacles around first one ankle then the other. As he reached for my wrists, my eyes were drawn to his Adams apple and the taut cords to either side of his neck. I had an overwhelming desire to lick and bite into him there. It took all of my willpower not to give into the urge as he released the last two manacles.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, leaning so close I could see every whisker of his five o’clock shadow. I held my breath and tried to focus on the distant wall with the bent gun, but even the sound of his voice sent tremors of need coursing through my body.

  It’s true that I had had a crush on him for going on two years, but this was something else entirely. There was something animalistic about the way my mouth watered at the sight of him, the way the muscles between my thighs trembled. I simultaneously needed him to leave and to stay. My body was a quivering mass of hormones and every last one of them wanted o
ne thing—him.

  “The next twenty-four hours are going to be the hardest for you,” he said. “It’s a transition period for your digestive and circulatory systems.” The deep timbre of his voice made it hard to concentrate. “Considering how many more ants attacked you, you’re doing really well compared to a couple of the guys and Erica.”

  Fury shot like electricity through my body. Though I didn’t know any Erica, hearing him say her name was reason enough to-to…. Breath whooshed from my lungs. I couldn’t believe the violent rush of thoughts that had surged through me. In just a few seconds, I imagined ten different ways to brutally kill a girl I didn’t even know.

  What was happening to me?

  My stomach chose that moment to growl, which gave me an excuse to say something and take my mind off the beautiful dark eyes which bored into me. A part of me wanted those eyes to stay focused on me forever.

  “I’m hungry,” I managed to say.

  He got to his feet and half-broke the spell that had been holding me enthralled. I still couldn’t take my eyes off his powerful neck. My saliva glands were working overtime, which made no sense at all!

  “Food could be a problem,” he said.

  “You can’t afford food?” I responded, then suddenly realized how rude that had been. Everyone knew that Evan’s mother had died when we were still in elementary school, and a few of us had heard rumors about the legal battle he had gone through to emancipate himself from his aunt several years earlier. In short, Evan was a teenager living alone in his deceased parents’ huge house. Without a job, it wasn’t surprising that he couldn’t afford groceries.

  “Get your ass down here and let me out,” I heard a boy yell. “Evan, let me out or I’m going to beat your ass!”

  “Is that Paul Doucette?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he’s going to be a real headache,” Evan said.

  “So let him go,” I blurted.

  And that girl Erica, too.

  “You do realize something has happened, don’t you?” Evan said. The way he said it sounded ominous. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more. There had been so many kids at the military base.

  “The base?” I said. “The explosions?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Evan said. “No one died. Not yet, anyway.”

  “So?”

  “Do you remember the ants?”

  I glanced to my arms, which strangely looked paler than usual, and nodded.

  “Those ants carried a kind of virus, something the military was experimenting with.”

  My eyes were glued to his.

  “The Army was trying to create vampire soldiers,” Evan said.

  Instinctively, my tongue swept over four extra-long, extra-sharp canines. “And you’re saying—”

  “I’m saying those were vampire ants. Seven of you got bitten. You worst of all.”

  “So we’re—we’re—”

  I smiled. Obviously this was some sort of a party joke. At any moment, Amanda and Rachel were going to come running into the room, giggling at me for being so ridiculously gullible.

  “I’m not kidding, Kayla,” Evan said. “You’re becoming a vampire.”

  Suddenly, a dozen pieces of the crazy puzzle of the last—I didn’t know how much time had passed—started coming together: the ravenous ants, the out-of-control squirrel, Evan squeezing blood all over the ground, all of it. I wished I could faint, something I had done at least a dozen times in the past, but apparently my body was no longer as fragile as it had once been. I remained awake and aware, forced to face the horrifying reality straight on.

  “So you just happened to stumble across this secret how?”

  Evan’s dark eyes drifted down to the hardwood floor as if in shame, but when they rose again I could see a combination of loneliness and sadness. Suddenly, I knew that he had been carrying the burden of this secret, possibly for a long time. I tried to remember how long it had been since he started pulling away from the rest of us, his classmates, his friends: eight years, nine maybe.

  “You’re a vampire,” I whispered.

  He nodded, his chiseled chin jutting out defensively.

  I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hold him. All this time, I had been acting as though I was the one who was different, as though I was the one who couldn’t seem to fit in with the crowds. But this, what Evan had been forced to—

  Damn! And now my turn had arrived—but I didn’t want this. I couldn’t possibly do any of the things I had seen in the movies. It made me sick to think how I had reacted to the taste of my own blood earlier.

  “Is there a cure?”

  “Not one that you would like,” Evan said.

  I knew he meant death.

  “And your aunt?” I asked, suspecting I finally understood her unpleasant nature.

  Evan shook his head. “She’s human but she knows about me. My mother told her just before she died. She thought my aunt could accept what had happened, accept me.”

  “Didn’t she?”

  Evan shrugged. “She hasn’t given my secret away,” he said, “and she supplies me with blood from the clinic.”

  “So you don’t…kill?”

  “Deer, rabbits, sometimes a wolf or fox. But, no, I don’t kill people. I wouldn’t even drink human blood except I get sick if I go too long without it.”

  Paul Doucette reinserted himself into the conversation.

  “You better get your ass down here, Evan, because I think Tony just killed Dillon.”

  Evan raced out of the room so fast I could barely see him move. Since I was now free, I followed as best I could. Evan’s house seemed even larger on the inside than it was outside. Surprising for a vampire’s home, there were a lot of windows through which shone a bright moonlit night. Outside the bedroom, I turned right and followed a long, wide hallway to the end where I had glimpsed the oak door closing.

  Basement, I guessed.

  I slipped through the door and hurried down a long stairway which opened into an immense carpeted room with a full set of windows along one wall. Correction: a daylight basement.

  “Let me out of here, Kayla,” I heard Paul say from a locked door to my right. I could see him banging on a small square window.

  Evan was unlocking a padlock to another room further down. He disappeared inside.

  “I told him to shut up,” one of the boys said. “I told him to be quiet!”

  Evan reappeared carrying a limp form. The look on his face told me all I needed to know.

  I brushed tears from my eyes. I recognized the tall, lanky redhead; Dillon had always been well-mannered, quiet. He didn’t deserve this. I intentionally didn’t allow myself to consider that he might have been better off than the rest of us.

  “Why were they together?” I asked.

  “They were best friends,” Evan said. “They begged me not to separate them. Dillon was crying.”

  “Your aunt didn’t chain them?”

  “No need. The cells down here are secure. My father used to sleep in one of them. I should have known, though.”

  “Hey,” I said. “You’ve been amazing…for all of us. It’s not your fault.”

  “Tell Dillon that,” Evan said, shaking his head and staring down into the lifeless eyes of our classmate.

  “I looked at Dillon, face tilted away from me, blood smeared across his neck, a huge red splotch staining the right shoulder of his light blue T-shirt. His lips were tight with what looked like pain. His eyelid twitched.”

  “He’s still alive!” I gasped.

  “No he’s not,” Evan said. There was a sad timbre to his voice. “Vampires don’t exactly die, not without help.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Evan carried Dillon toward a pair of glass double doors leading outside.

  “I have to burn him,” Evan said. “And if I don’t cut his head off first, he’ll scream until his vocal chords are too charred to work anymore.”

  “So he’s still alive!”


  “No. Whatever part of his brain made him Dillon is gone. If I don’t finish the job Tony started, he’ll go on a killing rampage until his body starts to rot and fall apart. By then, half the town could be dead or turned and the Army would be back.”

  I wanted to argue, to fight for the life of my friend, but the things Evan said were too horrible to imagine. My life had turned into a nightmare straight out of a horror movie. I couldn’t speak.

  “Lock Tony’s door again,” Evan said. “I knocked him out but he’ll come around soon.”

  “Where…where will you do it?” I asked. One of Dillon’s feet jerked.

  “There’s a concrete bunker at the back of my property. My mother had it built to take care of the infected animals we found.” Evan stepped outside.

  “Remember, lock Tony’s door.”

  I turned to do as asked when the sirens began. It sounded as though both the Groacherville police cars were coming up the long private driveway to Evan’s house. I turned to lock the room where Dillon’s body had been found, but I was too late. Tony had already stepped outside of his cell. He leered and gave me a malicious grin. Four new fangs framed his otherwise perfect dentist’s son teeth. His long blond hair was matted on one side with what I imagined to be Dillon’s blood. Seemingly unconcerned with the sirens, squealing tires or the sounds of car doors opening and closing, he snarled and sprinted straight at me.

  End Episode One

  Coming August 2012

  “Her Yearning for Blood, Episode Two”

  at Amazon.com

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  ALSO BY TIM GREATON

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