Page 43 of The Undead

You bastard, I tried to say. He knew what he was doing to me. Heknew.Even as I thought it, he turned toward me, and the red wasn’t a reflection. His eyes glowed a dim auburn, fire hidden under a disguise of human color. He leaned forward until I could see the gleam of his fangs when he spoke, white as the white tile on the kitchen floor.

“Come on, Michael. One drink for what you want to know,” he said very evenly. “Do you think that’s a fair trade? You can always die. It’s the easiest thing any of us do.”

The touch of memory was like silk on my skin. Maggie tangled with me in a damp urgency in the sheets, her fingers laced with mine and white with pressure, laughing in joy … Maggie’s lips, hot and smooth on mine … Maggie, blood streaking her forehead, reaching out to me as I slipped away into the water. Twisting in and around those memories, and the reality of the present, was the distant scent of blood.

Nothing meant as much as knowing she was all right. Not justice, not morals, not pride.Nothing.And Adam knew that, the bastard.

Adam picked up the glass again, turning it in his fingers. When he turned, he kept looking at the glass, as if the blood were the answer to both our problems. I suppose that in a way it was.

I stretched out a hand that shook with strain and rage. Adam wrapped my fingers around the glass and helped me get it to my lips. The slick surface was surprisingly cool after all that handling, but then his hands weren’t warm and neither were mine. Something triggered my lungs to breathe in, and the scent of blood filled my nostrils. Familiar, to a surgeon. Totally unfamiliar in the way it called to me now. I opened my lips and let the cool red slide between them. The taste was still blood, but it was as if my interpretations of blood had changed; it satisfied me in some cell-deep way that nothing else ever had.

It feltright.

When the glass was empty except for the dim red film inside, Adam gently took it back from me. He stayed on one knee, looking at me with those dark, quiet eyes that only occasionally betrayed the inhumanity behind them.

“Good. That was very good. She’s all right, Mike. She’s in the hospital, but she’ll probably be going home tomorrow or the next day.”

I closed my eyes wearily. Oh, thank God, thank God. But the knowledge didn’t comfort me as much as I’d wanted it to. I wanted to go to her, to be with her.

And I couldn’t do that. I opened my eyes and glared at Adam.

“It’s all right to hate me,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “So long as you keep feeling something. We’ll work on friendship later. For now survival is more important.”

I was experimenting with my voice. Something unintelligible came out, but I think he got the sense of it. His smile deepened and cut little lines around his mouth.

“I don’t think that’s possible even if I wanted to try it,” he said mildly, and stood up.

Somebody was coming down the hall. I heard the breathing and the heartbeat long before I heard the soft footstep, and I saw Adam’s eyes shift too. I practiced my head-turning and saw Sylvia brace herself with one hand on the wall by the kitchen entrance. She was dressed in a huge white fleece robe, and her black-and-silver hair fell across it in a vivid stream.

Her face was pale, but she didn’t look nearly as surprised at seeing a corpse in her kitchen as she ought to have been.

“I see it worked,” she finally said, and came toward us. The sound of her heartbeat drummed in my ears, a rushing liquid sound underscoring it. I found myself listening to it in fascination as she approached, and felt my first stirrings of hunger.

Adam lifted a hand and stopped her. Sylvia froze where she was, jammed her hands into the pockets of her robe, and looked from him to me, then back to him again.

“Don’t you think you’re being overprotective?” she asked him. The unspoken wordagainhung between them. Adam tilted his head and shrugged. “He doesn’t look as if he could wrestle a two-year-old, much less me.”

“He’s young. He’s hungry. Don’t underestimate him, Sylvia, as you constantly do me. He’s too new at this.”

“I promise to be terrified of his very shadow,” she shot back. Her green eyes focused on me. “How are you?”

“He can’t speak yet. I think he’s all right. Go back to bed, Sylvia.”

“Dawn’s coming,” she reminded him. He sighed.

“Yes, I know. Better than you.” There was something in his smile as he looked at her, something that made me ache for Maggie. A patient, half-amused fascination in his eyes that told me better than any words how he felt about Sylvia Reilly. “Go to bed. I’ll be there soon.”

The longing threatened to overwhelm me. I watched her smile and walk away, and I had a vision of Adam’s fingers sliding over that copper skin—and I knew she held the same vision. I looked at Adam, and he met my eyes with an ironic, amused directness and shrugged again.

“Come on, Michael. Time for bed.”

I had a thousand objections, a thousand questions, and no voice to use to express them. I glared my fury at him, but Adam only smiled and helped me up. My legs seemed steadier from even that small infusion of blood, and I concentrated on walking. It was like a toddler taking his first chubby steps, but I supported my own weight. Adam’s hands loosened—a little surprised, I thought—and he steered me out of the kitchen into a huge slant-ceiling living room that might have come out of some New AgeHouse and Garden.Bare oak floors, again, tall graceful furniture that looked hand-turned to me. The paintings on the walls were beautiful and strange, sunlight and darkness and stark lines. It was an attractive room, but while I could see Adam’s hand in it—the Adam I’d known—I wondered how much of it was set decoration, and how much was Adam’s own true self. Nothing. Everything. He didn’t pause there, just directed me down another hall and up a gently curving staircase. Three doors on this hallway—Sylvia was behind one of them, I could hear her pulsebeat like a phantom drum as we went by—and I expected him to stop at one of the other doors. Instead, he kept walking, to the blind oak-paneled end of the hall.

“Gahk,” I mumbled, and he reached out to press two nail-studs to my left. The paneling slid quietly aside.

“Surprise,” Adam answered. “Home sweet home, for a few days. I’ll help you find yourself a safe place.”

After the light—however dim—of the hall, the utter darkness of the room took hold of me with an unpleasant sudden shock. I froze and realized that I could see—but differently. My vision, as the paneling slid back into place behind us, edged out the angles of the room and furniture with vivid red lines. Furniture? I’d expected the usual horror-movie apparatus, coffins with the lids gaping invitingly open. Instead there were two regular-sized beds that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Baptist minister’s house.

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