Chapter Fifteen
“I’ve never heard anyone scream like that.”
The only other sounds were the occasional whizz of a car passing by, and the air conditioner running as high as it would go. “That’s surprising,” I muttered, not looking at Chase, hoping that if I didn’t look at him, didn’t show an interest in talking with him, he would just let it go. “Considering you live with your sister.” Because we all know what a crazy bitch Morgana could be.
“You know I’m not going to live you alone until you tell me what happened,” he said, seemingly picking up on my thoughts. Damn it all, he was right again. I knew he wasn’t going to drop the subject until I broke down and told him what I had seen in the mirror, and then in my own mind. And I wouldn’t have even cared about telling him if it hadn’t been for the fact that what had happened in my bathroom scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know if it was just my imagination, brought on by nerves or worry, or if it was real, a true vision sent to me by Mikhail. And what if it was? Did this mean that Cassie was a vampire? Hadn’t Elle told me that her body had been destroyed when the warehouse burned? The thought of Cassie as one of the undead made my stomach churn. She had hated vampires with all her soul–vampires had killed her parents. She had once told me the absolute last thing she ever wanted was to be turned into a vampire, and if she ever was turned into one, to kill her. At the warehouse, I had seen pleading in her eyes; she had been begging me to end her life there so she wouldn’t suffer vampirism and I hadn’t been able to grant that particular request. Was Cassie a vampire now because of my squeamishness? My moral high ground?
“Penny for your thoughts?” Chase asked, trying a different approach.
I finally turned to look at him, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile. “You don’t have enough pennies for all my thoughts, Chase.”
“Will you please tell me what happened back there?” He sounded exasperated.
The bitchy side of me started to rise, and I didn’t even try to stop it. “Will you please tell me about your scars?”
I had never seen someone’s skin pale so quickly. It was like he had seen a ghost. Like he couldn’t believe I would have brought his scars up again. To tell the truth, I couldn’t believe it either. I mean, I’m not a nice person, but wasn’t that going just a little too far? I knew I should have quit right then, and apologized to him for bringing up such an obviously painful subject, but I couldn’t stop. It felt so good to lash out with all the anger, frustration, and fear that I was feeling and cut someone else, so that they had wounds as deep as I did. It felt so good to bring someone down to my level of pain and suffering. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew these thoughts were wrong, that they weren’t mine, but at the moment, that didn’t matter. I could tell Chase was angry, because he swerved sharply over and parked on the side of the highway. Cars whizzed past, honking at him, but it didn’t seem to matter.
“Are you an attention-seeker, Chase?” I asked. I had no idea where the words were coming from, and I felt numb as I uttered them. “I’ve read that people who attempt suicide multiple times with no success are just attention-seekers.”
“You think I tried to kill myself?” he asked. His voice was that strange growling voice that belonged to the wolf-man in him. Part of me was a little frightened–what would happen if I had made him angry enough to shift? Even as I thought up all sorts of dire scenarios in answer to that question, the other part of me really didn’t care.
I took his hand in mine, pulled his arm to me, and pushed up his sleeve. Under my fingertips I could feel his blood pulsing quickly from the adrenaline of trying to keep himself in human form. “You have slash marks all over your wrists,” I said. “What am I supposed to think?” He didn’t answer. I looked up at his face and saw that his eyes had bled from blue to yellow–the amber-yellow of a wolf’s eyes. And at that moment I got the strangest urge that, once again, I knew couldn’t possibly belong to me. But I wasn’t thinking straight, as you have probably realized, and so I couldn’t stop myself from acting on that strange urge. Letting go of Chase’s wrist I reached up with one hand to cup the side of his face, and then I pressed my lips to his cheek. Why I didn’t stop there, only Heaven knows, but then with my tongue I traced a line from where my lips had touched his skin to his temple. For a moment he lost himself and turned his face to mine, capturing my lips oh-so-lightly. I faintly remember thinking something about the whole situation just wasn’t right, and then I started to deepen the kiss.
Suddenly Chase pulled away, as if he had just caught on that something was not right. He looked at me with a look of confusion, his anger either gone or not as intense as it was. “What is wrong with you?” he asked.
“What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong with me.” Except, there totally was, so why was I saying there wasn’t?
He sniffed the air. “You don’t smell like yourself,” he said. “You smell like...vampire.”
And right then I had this mental image of Mikhail and Cassie, in bed together, wrapped in each other’s arms, laughing–and I knew, just knew, that they were laughing at me. “Stop it!” I screamed, backing as far away from Chase as I could. He just sat there and stared. It was so strange–I could see Chase, but I could still see Mikhail and Cassie in my mind. They both looked up, as if they could see me, and smiled. The next thing I knew, I was on the side of the road on my hands and knees, throwing up. Chase knelt beside me, holding my red hair–so coppery in the midday sunlight–out of my face.
“Feel better?” he asked once I was finished. Using his T-shirt, he wiped my mouth clean, and then handed me a piece of gum. He was like a supernatural boy scout.
I took the gum and chewed furiously for a few moments to rid my mouth of the taste of vomit. “What happened?” I asked him.
“You don’t remember?” When I shook my head, he looked as if he had finally put a few pieces together. “You told me you were going to be sick, and then you looked like you were going to pass out. You got pale, and your eyes rolled back into your head. I pulled you out of the Jeep, and you vomited. This is the same thing that happened in the bathroom, isn’t it? You don’t remember what happened in there, either.”
I shook my head. There was a big black spot in my memory–I didn’t know how I had gotten from standing in front of the mirror to screaming on the floor. All I knew was that I had seen the vision (or what have you) of Mikhail and Cassie, and then...
Oh, I found the pattern.
“We have to get you to Stavros,” Chase said. He helped me stand and let me hold onto his shoulder as I climbed into the Jeep.
“Hey, what exactly does a vampire smell like?” I asked, purely curious, as he got into the driver’s seat.
He thought about it a minute before answering. “Kind of coppery, like old money. Or snakes.”
I chuckled. “Snakes. Go figure.”
