Pulse. Part 4

Kalina's laugh sounded hollow in her mouth.

"It also serves as a natural appet.i.te suppressant. So vampires don't want to suck the blood from pretty human throats."

She scanned his face for any sign of humor; she found none. She felt panic stain her cheeks red.

You're being silly, she told herself. It's just a joke.

"Well," she said, stiffly. "You should sell it to humans, too. I know plenty of girls on my cheerleading team who would kill for an appet.i.te suppressant. And I bet quite a few of them suck blood for fun."

Jaegar arched his eyebrow. "Funny," he said.

She felt relief wash over her like a waterfall.

A breeze blew up again, scattering the scents around the room. The smell of the wine blew, intoxicating, into her nostrils - for a moment, she could barely breathe. She looked up. Jaegar was perched against the desk at the end of the room. Something had changed in him; she could see it in his eyes. They had grown ravenous, wide with appet.i.te; his fingers were white where they clutched against the desk. She felt the gaze wrap around her, consume her, as if his eyes were darkness, and they had extinguished all the light in the world.

"You okay, Jaegar?"

Jaegar strode over to one of the bottles and uncorked it in a swift, sharp motion. He drank heavily, straight from the bottle. The liquid stained his lips and teeth.

"That's disgusting," said Kalina.

He smiled at her, and in the dim candlelight his mouth could have been blood-stained.

"I think I'm allergic to your perfume," said Jaegar.

"I'm not wearing any," said Kalina. She crossed her arms. "You know what, Jaegar? I'm going to be honest with you, here. You're kind of creeping me out. And a I believe I have a date with your brother. So, if you'll excuse me..."

She turned and strode out of the compound.

What a creep, her conscious mind told her. Good, you got out of there.

But somewhere, in some dark recessed cloister her conscious mind could not access, there remained the image of his eyes fixed upon her, his mouth parted, his tongue lingering on the edge of his preternaturally sharp teeth...

chapter 6.

She b.u.mped into Stuart halfway down the path. Her mind had been wandering a against herself she had been thinking again of Jaegar's eyes, the heat emanating from his irises - the naked, stark, desire in his stare. There was nothing like it. She had thought her experience with Aaron had prepared her for desire, but this was altogether different. It was a man's look, rather than a boy's; Jaegar was regarding her with the knowledge of a connoisseur. It disgusted her; it thrilled her.

"Sorry," Kalina stuttered. "I was...just coming to find you."

"My brother boring you?"

She gave a hollow laugh. "No a not exactly. He's... interesting, isn't he?"

"Yes, indeed." Stuart looked down. "I wouldn't spend too much time alone with him if I were you."

"Yeah, I kind of got that impression."

She took his arm. "Now, Stuart, you were going to show me something?" She gave him a weak smile. "Yesterday, at the library a you said there was something...off about what happened to Aaron. Did you mean that?"

Stuart sighed heavily. "I do," he said. "I believe that it falls to me to try to figure out what happened. To see."

Kalina nodded. "Let's go."

They entered the house, and slowly ascended the stairs to Aaron's room. "Aaron loved you very much," said Stuart gravely. "And, given that he loved you so much, I believe it falls to me to tell you more about him. You've seen his room, haven't you?"

"Rarely," said Kalina. "I mean, he's showed it to me. But he preferred to hang out in the living room. I think, with his family being out of town so much, they weren't really cool with him having girls in his room when they weren't there. That's the impression I got."

"You ever met them?" Stuart arched an eyebrow.

"No," she laughed. "Aaron said they were really conservative. They wouldn't like it if their son was dating, given his age. They thought he wasn't mature enough to date yet. I can't say I blame them."

"Well, here it is." Stuart swung open the door. "We haven't changed it a since the accident."

Kalina felt a wave of sadness wash over her. So, this is where Aaron slept, where he sat alone, where he drank in silence and misery. It looked so normal, she thought a a bed, some photographs, some papers. It looked like it could belong to anybody. But certainly not somebody dead. You wouldn't be able to tell, just by looking, that the person who lived here had died three months ago.

Kalina sighed. "Very well, then," she said. "So, tell me a bit more about Aaron."

Stuart shrugged. "Where to begin?" he asked. "Well a he was a great guy, upstanding, smart..."

Kalina couldn't listen. She kept finding things in the room to distract her a the bed still unmade, a pen leaking ink on a pile of papers on the desk, a gla.s.s of wine still stained red where the liquid had evaporated. How could Aaron be dead, she thought a when the room looked so normal? She swallowed back more tears. Her eyes caught sight of a photograph on Aaron's bedside table. It was a photograph of the two of them at the junior prom, taken only a week before the two of them had broken up. Aaron must never have gotten around to changing it, she tried to tell herself. But she knew it wasn't true. Aaron had kept it there a to look at, to blow kisses to a hoping, hoping she'd take him back, hoping they'd be able to make it work.

And now they never could.

The tears started flowing faster now, and Kalina could bear it no longer. Clapping her hand to her mouth, she rushed from the room.

"Kalina!" Stuart called after her.

"I need some air," she said through her tears.

She reached the porch and there sat down, gasping for breath as she rocked on the creaky swing. She buried her head in her hands, ashamed of the red flush spreading across her face.

"Kalina," Stuart sat down alongside her. "Are you all right?"

She gave up.

"No," she said. "No, not at all. It's a it's all my fault! Everything's my fault! Aaron a I shouldn't have broken up with him. If he had a problem, then it was something for us to deal with together; I should have been there for him, helping him recover. Whatever happened to him a whether it was a mugger, or a DUI a I don't even know, it wouldn't have happened if I were there. To take care of him. To love him."

Stuart wrapped his arms around her; she lost herself in his embrace. He stroked her hair softly.

"You couldn't have done anything," he said. "Aaron a it was his job to take care of himself. Heck, if I had a girl like you, I wouldn't need to drink." But he took her hands in his. "Listen," he said. "You need to know something about Aaron. So you can stop blaming yourself. So you can stop being angry."

Kalina nodded mutely.

"He wasn't an alcoholic, Kalina," said Stuart.

"What a of course he was a I could smell that Vampire Wine on his breath the whole time..."

"You're not going to like it..."

Kalina straightened up. "Tell me," she said.

"You're a it's going to sound funny, okay?"

"Believe me; I can handle it." She crossed her arms. "What could be worse than being an alcoholic, right?"

Stuart's face grew more serious. "Aaron was a vampire."

She stared. It all started coming back to her a Jaegar's louche comments, the Vampire Wine, the strange events of the day earlier, something that she couldn't quite remember a a scene in her car...

"Seriously?" She wasn't sure what else to say.

"Seriously."

"Vampires don't exist."

"They exist."

"Well, they only come out at night."

"Not quite. It's painful to come out in the day a but not impossible. If you take special precautions. These rings are filled with Life's Blood." He held up a ring on the finger of his right hand. "They allow us to walk among the day-walkers."

"Seriously?" Kalina wasn't sure what else to say.

"Seriously."

"And a you're a vampire too?"

"And Jaegar."

"Jaegar I can believe."

"Aaron wanted you to see it in the Greystone Bible. Aaron was born in 1870. He died in 1887. He became a vampire."

She shot him a wary look. "I can't believe it. Okay, if you're a vampire. Prove it." She stood up.

Stuart sighed. "You might want to be sitting down for this."

She sat back down, her mind racing. "Okay."

Stuart rose. "You see that tree, over there?"

"Yeah, the apple tree...what, you going to suck the blood out of it or something."

"Not quite."

Suddenly, with a blinding flash, Stuart was gone. She could see a dark shape, as fast as the wind itself, tracking towards the tree. It stopped, momentarily, and then whirled back towards her, and as soon as he had gone Stuart had returned again, an apple in his hands. "You should eat this," he said. "Shock has a bad effect on blood pressure."

Kalina remained paralyzed in her seat. "Oh, c.r.a.p. Aaron was a vampire." She straightened up. Remain calm, Kalina. Breathe. "You're not going to eat me, are you?"

"No," said Stuart. "Not all vampires feed on humans. I choose not to. I drink Vampire Wine."

"Vampire Wine. " Kalina put the pieces together. "Jaegar...I thought he was kidding..."

"And Aaron drank Vampire Wine, too. To avoid succ.u.mbing to temptation. To avoid drinking blood whenever he got too...excited..."

Kalina's eyes widened. "So you mean..."

"Vampire Wine wasn't the problem, Kalina. It was the only solution."

Kalina used to think the only people who thought vampires were real were the creepy Dungeons and Dragons kids who used the math cla.s.sroom for their campaigns during lunch. She felt vaguely nauseous.

The tears began rolling down her cheeks again; she couldn't help it. Fear and disgust mingled together with the shock a images of Dracula she had seen on television superimposed on Aaron's face. "This is all too much..." she said. "This is too friggin' weird."

Stuart gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder. "I'm sorry you had to find out like this..."

"Should I have known?" she looked up, her eyes red with sorrow. "It's not the sort of thing you suspect, you know..."

"h.e.l.lo, friends and enemies!" Jaegar sauntered up to the porch. "I see you've finally let the bloodsucking cat out of the bag."

"She didn't know, Jaegar."

"We're friendly vampires." Jaegar grinned at her. "Promise!"

"I'm going to Aaron's room," announced Kalina. "To sit down. Don't you dare come after me! Or...I'll...stake you!"

The look of surprise on both brothers' faces answered her questions. Sunlight might not be fatal, but she got the sense that staking definitely was.

"Tactful," said Jaegar, when Kalina had gone. "Really tactful."

"It's not like there's an easy way to say this!" Stuart stood up. "Sorry, your boyfriend's a vampire?"

"She believed you," said Jaegar. "That's something."

"I had to show her flight."

"You flew in front of her?" Jaegar laughed. "The worst pickup of all time. Hi, I'm Stuart. Go out with me a see a I can fly? What's next, you'll start sparkling in front of her?"

"She asked for proof."

"I would have gone with the fangs, personally."