Never Bite a Boy on the First Date

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t bite. Ha ha.” I took my hand back, prying off his fingers. I was about to walk out of there and straight home to tell Olympia we needed to move again, when he finally spoke, in a wobbly, I just saw a pterodactyl kind of voice.

“What if I wanted you to?” he asked.

“Wanted me to what?”

“Bite me,” he said. He took my wrists again and pulled me closer, shaking back his hair to expose his neck. “Do it. I want to be like you. I want to be a vampire too.”

“Yikes, dude,” I said, trying not to look at his neck. “Care to think about that for half a minute? It’s kind of like proposing to me, only even more eternal.” I thought that would scare him off, but it didn’t. Which maybe should have been a warning sign, but at the time I found it endearing. So sue me. I was in love…or at least I thought I was.

“Exactly,” Zach said. “I love you. I’ll always love you. I want to be with you forever.”

I didn’t say yes. Not even with his neck right there waiting for me. Some little corner of my brain was going, Wait! Think! This is not a normal reaction! Run away! Unfortunately that little voice wasn’t yelling loud enough, although it tried its best for the next few weeks, during which Zach pleaded with me every day to turn him into a vampire. Even in my love-blind state, I started to find it pretty annoying. I kept thinking, Can we please have one date that doesn’t end with you shoving your neck in my face and pledging your undying love? Can’t we just eat pizza and maybe talk about our homework now and then?

Then one day he called me and told me to come over right away. I told him it would have to wait because I was dying my hair. He told me he was dying.

I said, “You too? What colour?”

And he said, “No, seriously dying. I mean dying.”

“Literally?” I said. “Could you wait until my hair is dry?”

He said he didn’t think so, because there was an awful lot of blood already and he was feeling kind of woozy.

That’s when I realised he was serious.

Thank goodness for vampire super-speed. I got to his house in about nine seconds flat. Zach was slumped against his bathtub, looking pale, as blood from a long cut on one of his arms pooled around his jeans and bare chest. There was a glass next to him half-filled with blood and a piece of paper with bloody fingerprints all over it. It was weird and gross, and yet my whole body started freaking out with hunger at the smell of all that blood.

“What on Earth were you doing?” I asked, standing in the doorway. I didn’t want to get too close to that smell.

“I love you,” he said in this whispery, trying-to-be-heroic voice.

“Answer the question,” I snapped.

“Well, I…I was going to write you a note in my blood to show you how much I love you…and then there was so much blood I thought I’d save it for you to drink.” He waved his hand at the glass. “But then it kind of…kept coming and…I think I did something wrong.”

“I’ll say you did something wrong,” I said. “You freaking nearly killed yourself, you idiot. Couldn’t you prick your finger like a normal person, instead of slicing up your whole arm and bleeding to death?”

“I didn’t mean to,” he said, sounding irritated and a little less whispery. “And don’t call me an idiot.”

The scent of all the fresh blood was making me dizzy. “We should wrap you up,” I said, “and get you to a hospital.” I grabbed a towel and knelt next to the tub.

“It’s too late for that,” he said, back to his dying voice. He practically pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. “Don’t you see, this is perfect. We’re meant to be together. It’s a sign.”

“Yeah, a sign that you’re a moron,” I muttered, trying not to breathe in the scent of the blood as I wrapped the towel around his arm.

“I’m dying, Kira,” he said earnestly. “You have to change me…to save me.”

“I should have left you in that closet on the first day,” I snapped. His blood soaked through the white cloth instantly, spreading like red fireworks.

Zach lifted his wrist towards my face and the towel fell off with a splat. “Drink,” he said. “It’s all right. I want you to. Then we can be together…forever.”

There was nothing else I could do. The smell of all that blood was too much for my willpower. I was sure I’d never get him to the hospital in time. He was going to die and it would be my fault.

I sank my fangs into the bloody gouges on his arm.

Yeah, it was amazing. It was the last amazing moment I had with Zach. I don’t want to describe it, because remembering it now makes me feel all creepy, but it was mind-blowing. I can see how some vampires become addicted to drinking from the living. Olympia had warned me about that too.

After Zach was fully dead, I left his body there and went home to tell Olympia what had happened. She laughed and laughed and laughed until she literally fell out of her coffin. Which, incidentally, was not quite the reaction I was expecting.

“Well, we’re in love,” I said, offended. “I’m sure it’ll turn out fine. Like Bert and Crystal.”

“Oh dear,” Olympia said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Now perhaps you’ll see why listening to seven hundred years of experience is a good idea.”

Yeah. About a month later, in a rental car somewhere in the middle of Kansas, while we were moving around every night to hide our trail, Zach tried to get to second base with me and I threw him out of the sun roof. We had to drive half a mile back to find him. He sulked all the way to Montana.

That was the end of that relationship.

Chapter Four (#ulink_7d3531bb-12ce-5e48-a088-2e26e20738ba)

TRAGICALLY, I AM now stuck with Zach until he decides to go off and start his own vampire family somewhere, which requires a level of maturity I’m fairly sure he won’t be able to muster any time in the next five hundred years.

On the plus side, our cover story in this new town was that we were supposed to be brother and sister, so he couldn’t hit on me in public any more. That didn’t stop him from trying sometimes when we were at home – hence the long midnight walks to avoid him. He kept staring soulfully into my eyes and saying things like, “You want to be with me, Kira,” or “We are meant for each other,” which would maybe have more impact if his idea of “soulful” didn’t involve enormous, googly eyeballs. The good news is, I’m still a lot stronger than him, as apparently that is a skill I am extra-blessed with. Zach? Not so much. Olympia asked me to stop throwing him out windows though. They’re expensive to replace and the noise might disturb the neighbours.

That whole saga is why they immediately blamed me for this new vampire attack. As if I hadn’t learned my lesson! I was pretty sure I’d never date again, just in case I accidentally landed another obsessive lunatic. If you asked me, I was the vampire least likely to bite another high school football player.

But Wilhelm was convinced that after biting Zach, I’d become addicted.

“I knew this would happen!” he huffed, wagging his finger in the air. “I knew it was foolish to turn a child of this horrifying century! She’s a degenerate menace! We should lock her in a coffin and feed her through a tube until she is old enough to be trusted!”

I glanced at Olympia. “You guys don’t really do that, do you?”

“Not unless it’s necessary,” Olympia said, which didn’t reassure me very much.

We were in the den, which is Wilhelm’s favourite room after the basement, where he sleeps. Olympia deliberately chose a house with very few windows – they’re hard to find, but cheap, because nobody else wants them. The den had only one small window. Like all the others in the house, it was covered with dark blinds and heavy velvet curtains.

On the table next to Wilhelm’s Barcalounger was the only light in the room: a tiny lamp with a pale red shade. Olympia had convinced Wilhelm to give up his dripping Gothic candles after he set the last Barcalounger on fire. This new chair was covered in a prickly red-and-black plaid. The colours matched the dark red Oriental rug and the sleek, black metal coffee table, but stylistically the room was a bit of a mishmash.

Not that I’ll ever tell my vampire parents this, but they’re not exactly the world’s greatest interior decorators. It’s like they’ve latched on to a couple of trendy things from each century and haven’t noticed that the world has moved on.

This is unfortunately true of their clothes too. We’re not going to even discuss the tragedy of a medieval vampire in a pale blue leisure suit. I make Olympia run her outfits by me every morning before I let her drive me to school.

“She is running wild!” Wilhelm bellowed now, talking about me again. “She will bring the vampire hunters right to us!”

“This isn’t the Dark Ages, Pops,” I said. I love the way Wilhelm’s hair stands on end when I call him that. “There aren’t mobs of ignorant villagers outside with pitchforks and torches. Nobody even believes you guys exist. Us guys, I mean.”

“That is precisely the kind of thinking that will get us all staked!” he shouted. “These new vampires think they can bite anyone they like! They don’t remember how the hunters watch for any signs of us! Careless, reckless, selfish—”

“But I didn’t do it!” I yelled over the end of his sentence. “Call me what you like, but I DIDN’T BITE HIM!”