Blood Crave 2 (21 page)

Read Blood Crave 2 Online

Authors: Jennifer Knight

Tags: #Social Issues, #Love & Romance, #Vampires, #College Students, #Juvenile Fiction, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Werewolves, #Dating & Sex, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural

He didn’t.
I sat on the floor next to his door, watching the sunlight from the window near his room creep along the dirty brown carpet. When the light hit my feet, I knew Derek would be gone until nighttime. I stood and went downstairs to Lucas’s room. Lucas wasn’t there yet, so I cuddled into his bed and attempted sleep.
Just as I was beginning to succumb to my eyelids, the door banged open and Lucas came in. I bolted upright, blinking groggily.
He strode across the room and pulled me to him with a rough jerk.
“You okay?” he asked.
I managed to nod.
“Remind me never to leave you alone again,” he said. “That was a dumb thing to do, Faith. Taking a runt around all those people? Knowing there were vampires in the area?”
“I know,” I said. “I screwed up, okay? Again. Big surprise.”
“Look, I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just don’t want you getting hurt. I’m just frustrated that you were so careless with your life, when I’m always trying to be so careful with it.”
I couldn’t help but smile at him in thanks. For caring so much. Even if it was in his backward pain-in-the-ass way. Lucas drew back and thumped down on the couch.
“So I guess he didn’t come back?” he asked.
“No. I waited up all night.” I ran my hands through my hair. “If he’s with the vampires now, the pack is going to kill him.”
Lucas nodded slowly.
“He could be murdering girls right now for all I know.”
“Well, not
right
now,” Lucas drawled. “Right now he’s asleep.”
I threw him a look, to which he crooked a grin.
“What did Rolf say about the uprising?” I asked. “You didn’t tell him Derek might have switched sides, right?”
“Nah.” He propped his legs up on a stack of books. “But he thinks we might be right. Finally. He’s not going public with it, yet, but he’s opening fire on the vampires, like Julian said. And if Derek registers with the vampires, the werewolves will kill him on sight. No questions asked.”
“But—that’s not fair. We don’t know for sure that he switched. What if he’s neutral?”
“Nobody’s neutral. Least of all Derek. If you want me to keep him safe from the pack, then you gotta convince him to stay with us. I can’t do a damn thing if he sides with the leeches.”
“I’ll talk to him if he comes back tonight. I’m sure I’m just overreacting.”
I sighed and joined Lucas on the couch. Just as one problem had been lifted from my shoulders—convincing Rolf to believe us about the uprising—another had been dumped on me. Now I had to keep Derek away from the vampires so the pack wouldn’t “accidentally” murder him.
“The vampires were talking about registering last night,” I said. “What is it?”
Lucas leaned back against the couch, looking exhausted. “Vampires are real formal about things. And the monarchs are the worst.”
“Monarchs?”
“That’s what they call the leader of a brood. They’re basically just the biggest pansies of the group.”
I snorted.
“Anyway,” Lucas said, crooking a grin, too. “A vampire that travels into another’s territory is supposed to greet the monarch of that area and request permission to stay in their lair or whatever. It’s all a bunch of political crap. The monarchs only enforce it so that they can keep track of who they have around to manipulate.”
“Great,” I said. “So now Derek’s going to be on that list?”
“Hopefully he’ll know better than to register.”
I shook my head, staring across the room at one of Lucas’s artworks. The twisted, tortured form of a human body screamed in silent agony, skin wrinkling and folding like a balled-up piece of paper. Blood poured over everything. I closed my eyes from the gore, praying silently that Derek came back safe tonight.
14
 
REPAIR
 
U
nable to sleep, Lucas and I shuffled over to Spoons for breakfast and then met Katie to help her settle into her new apartment just across campus. Afterward, Lucas said he had to meet up with some pack member to discuss “wolf business,” so I decided it was time for me to really try and make amends with Heather since last night had, admittedly, been a complete disaster.
After calling three times, she finally picked up and agreed to meet me in the Oval, which was basically a glorified front lawn with an oval walkway encasing it and gorgeous old elm trees speckling the perimeter. In the fall, the Oval had been colorful and vibrant as the leaves changed to brilliant ambers and rusts, but now the lawn was frozen and barren. The trees were leafless, and the ground—snowless at the moment—was a sad shade of brown. Still, the sun was out and the sky was a spectacular shade of blue, so it was a perfect day for hot lattes on one of the many wooden benches. As I waited for Heather to, hopefully, show up, I watched a couple jogging together along the walkway. It made me miss running, so I decided to drag Lucas out with me later on, no matter how tired I was.
A few minutes passed before I spotted Heather coming toward me from the library, books in her hands and a scowl on her face. When she approached, I stood and offered her the latte from Spoons as though it was a peace offering. She stared at it for a moment and then sighed, placing her books on the bench. She took the cup and sat down.
Score. She was at least going to hear me out.
Not that I knew what to say.
“So what did you want to talk about?” Heather asked, testing the coffee.
“Well, ah . . . first I wanted to apologize for being MIA for the past few weeks. I had some ... family issues going on and I . . .” Derek was pretty much family, so I didn’t consider this a lie.
“Stuff with your dad?” she asked quietly.
I swallowed hard. “No,” I said, keeping my voice measured. I never even spoke to my dad. I’d almost forgotten I’d told Heather about him. It was a testament to how much I trusted her that I ever did.
“I don’t really want to get into the details,” I said. “But I just want you to know that I’m sorry, and that I hope we can still be friends. Or at least try to be.”
Heather’s smile was warmer than the coffee in my lap. “Sure,” she said. “I understand. Things happen. I just wish you’d told me what was going on at the time. I was worried about you. I couldn’t even get you on your phone.”
Because I’d been ignoring her calls. I’d just had no energy to lie to her, and no idea how to tell her the truth. I still didn’t.
“Sorry,” I said again.
She shrugged. “I’m just glad everything’s okay.” She hesitated. “Everything
is
okay, right?”
Something inside me wrenched at the thought of what might have happened to Derek last night, but I managed to keep it off of my face. I nodded.
“Good.” She smiled wanly and took a small sip of her coffee. “This is excellent,” she said.
I nodded silently again as I composed what I’d come here to say. Asking Heather to give me another chance had been the easy part. Now came the real issue.
“So,” I started, not knowing how she’d take this. “About last night.”
She averted her eyes, looking out onto the yard.
“Heather, you should really be careful,” I said gently. “I’m not your mom or whatever, so I can’t tell you what to do, obviously, but, it worried me to see you so . . . upset.” And high.
“It was just fun.”
“But do you even know those girls? They could be trouble.” They could also be involved with murdering vampires. Damn, I wished I could tell her!
She remained silent. I knew my argument was lame, but I didn’t know what else I could tell her without revealing the truth.
“Pete is garbage,” I said. “He’s lower than low.”
“I know,” she mumbled.
“So why are you letting him have this power over you?”
“Because I still love him.”
“You love garbage?” I asked, letting a little levity into my tone.
She snorted. “I guess so.”
I sighed and slung my arm around her shoulders. She leaned into me, sniffling and smiling at the same time. “We’re both messes,” I said.
“How are
you
a mess? You always have everything so together.”
“Ha!” I laughed and shook my head into her shoulder.
If only she knew.
“I feel so stupid,” Heather said. “That I let him get to me that way.” She groaned and covered her face in her hands. “Thank you for having Katie stay to take me home. Who knows what could have happened otherwise.”
I shrugged. “So you won’t see them again?”
She pulled away, wiping her eyes with her gloves. “God, no. If my parents ever found out, seriously, they would send me to a nunnery or something.”
I giggled.
“Plus,” she continued. “You know with the serial killer still out there, we should all be extra careful, not extra stupid.”
Heather stood and tossed her empty coffee in the trash beside us.
“Well, I have to go buy my books for this semester,” she said, pulling her gloves on. “Do you want to come? We can talk about dickhead boys—like Pete—” She smiled ruefully and I puffed a laugh. “And then go shopping for new clothes. I don’t know about you, but I need some heavy-duty boots for this arctic weather.”
I’d planned on spending the rest of the day with Lucas, but suddenly, spending it with Heather sounded like the best idea in the world. I’d wanted more normality in my life, and here it was.
W
hen I returned to Lucas’s room—carrying several shopping bags and a smile I felt down to my soul—it was almost dusk. He was at his desk registering for classes. When I told him where I’d been, he seemed genuinely happy that I’d taken time to be with Heather. Secretly, I think he liked my little human things. Not-so-secretly, I did, too.
I joined him at the desk and registered for classes with him. We tried to arrange our schedules so that we’d have some of the same classes—all in the late afternoon so we’d have the mornings to sleep.
I decided to take a photography course in addition to all of the math and history and other boring crap I was forced to take. Lucas registered for it too, even though he didn’t care much for photography. I think he was mostly concerned about keeping me in sight.
Afterward, we sat on the floor playing Slap Jack and waiting for the night to come, when I thought of something that had been bugging me since Calvin had said it. “Lucas, what does ‘pet’ mean?” I asked as I put down a king of diamonds. I decided to just blurt out the question without preamble with the hope of startling the answer out of him.
But werewolves, as I’d learned, weren’t so easy to scare.
He threw down a three of clubs and paused, looking up at me. “You mean a vampire pet?”
“Yeah,” I said and tossed my card.
“Some vampires are assigned humans to quench their thirst. They call them pets.”
“What do you mean,
assigned
?”
“The monarchs will give humans out to their subjects if they do something that pleases them.”
“And the vampires force the humans to stay and be bitten? But won’t that kill them?”
“They have ways around biting,” he said. “Sometimes they siphon the blood out with needles, sometimes they cover their teeth, or use their nails to make the incision. And yeah, sometimes they just kill them.”
“That’s so horrible,” I said, rigid with disgust.
“Yeah, well. You asked.” Lucas slapped the pile again, drawing the cards up into his hands.
“So how is a pet any different than a blood bitch?”
Lucas flicked down a four of clubs. “Well, first off, blood bitches don’t give blood to the vampires. And blood bitches are free agents. They can come and go whenever they want—for the most part anyway. But a pet is like a slave. They’re stuck with their vampire for as long as they want them.”
I listened to the music playing in the background, taking in a soft rock melody I’d never heard before. “So are there any werewolves that drink vampire blood?” I asked.

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