Page 60 of The Undead

“Sure,” I said, and offered my arm. Sylvia watched us with a half-frown, but she didn’t say anything; a glance at Adam showed me that he was deeply involved in his music, oblivious to anything happening more than a foot in front of him. Colleen’s hands wrapped comfortably around my forearm, and I led her carefully around tables and chairs toward the dimly lit sign that informed us of ladies and gents.

It was a long hall, and there was a dark corner at the end where Keller’s had hidden its pay phones. As we passed it and started to turn toward the rest rooms, Colleen tugged at my arm and pulled me right instead of left—into the shadows.

“Wrong way—” I began, and then she was pressed against me, warm flesh and thundering heartbeat. Her arms went around my neck. “Colleen—”

“No!” she hissed in my ear. “Listen. I knew when Adam asked me to come at the same time as Dan that I’d be for you, whoever you were. I’m for you, Michael. I can’t stand waiting, I can’t stand it—”

She was shaking all over, not from fear but from need. I swallowed hard and felt the hunger surge forward until it filled every cell of my body. The need for her tingled in my fingers as they rose to touch her face, resonated in my lips as I kissed her gently and tasted the scent of blood under her skin. She caught her breath as my hands tightened; I deliberately loosened them, and pulled away from her.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I blurted out. I was glad, suddenly, that she was blind, because I felt like a blushing virgin in the back seat of a car. Her fingers lifted to trace the lines of my face.

“Here, take my hand,” she murmured. I wrapped my fingers around hers. She turned it so that her wrist faced up. “There. That’s what you do. It’s easy, just stop when I tell you to stop.”

“Colleen, I don’t think this is such a good idea. How many times have you done this?” I was having trouble talking. My fangs insisted on coming down. Colleen’s fingers tightened on mine.

“Eighteen with Adam. It’s all right, Michael. Nothing to worry about. Justhurry.”

I lifted her wrist to my mouth and set my lips on it. The touch of her skin made me lose every fear and every ounce of sense I had left. I couldn’t have stopped myself, even if I’d wanted to. My lips opened, and my fangs sliced through the thin fragile skin, through the elastic resistance of veins, and then—

—then—

I knew, as the first drops did into my mouth, why Adam had given me cold refrigerated blood to drink, why he drank so much of it himself. This wasn’t food. This was so far beyond orgasm that the remembered human pleasure didn’t even compare; it hurt, an exquisite awful pain that made me want to scream and hurt forever as I felt Colleen melt and merge with me. The taste of hot blood burned in my mouth like hot pepper, spread through my body in an electric-white spasm of joy. I drank, and drank, pulling life from her body into mine in a stream of delicious power, not even dimly aware of her voice above me, her free hand pushing ineffectually at me. I wasn’t even aware that she’d stopped moving except that it made it easier to continue to drink.

Something exploded painfully in front of my eyes, and I let go of Colleen and fell backward with both hands shielding my face from the brilliant flare of not one match, but the rest of the book. Colleen slid limply to the floor.

Adam, expressionless, dropped the burning matches and ground them out underfoot before bending to take Colleen in his arms. I watched him numbly, licking drops of blood from my lips even as my hunger rolled away under the pressure of horror at what I’d done. Adam put his fingers over her throat and looked at Sylvia, who stood waiting behind him.

“She’s alive,” he said tonelessly, and Sylvia breathed a sigh of relief. “We’d better get her to the hospital.”

“What abouthim?”Sylvia asked, and I heard the razor-edge of contempt in her voice. Adam didn’t even look at me.

“It isn’t his fault, altogether,” he said, still in that colorless voice. “I should have paid attention. I thought Colleen was the best choice because she took so much pleasure from me, but I should have known she wouldn’t know the difference between an old vampire and a new one. I should have warned her—and I should have kept Michael under control. God damn it, this is my fault, not his. Don’t think I haven’t made the same mistakes, or worse ones.”

“Adam, he could havekilledher!” Sylvia hissed. Adam looked straight at her.

“And do you think I haven’t killed before? Grow up, Syl. I nearly killed you, once. How could you forget that?”

She rocked back as if he had slapped her. Adam turned to me, and I saw no forgiveness in his eyes, regardless of what he’d just said to her. But then I didn’t have any forgiveness for myself, either.

“Come on,” he snapped. “Get your ass up, Michael, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“What about Dan?” Sylvia asked.

“We can’t trust Dan anymore. Come on, Michael, get up! Do it or she’s going to die right here, do you understand? Move!”

Adam’s voice rose to a shout. It shoved me to my feet and got me stumbling along the hallway to a back door. Adam elbowed it open, and he and Sylvia got Colleen’s limp body propped between them.

I sat in the back seat and realized, as the car sped up the winding road for the freeway, that I felt totally and completely satisfied. Better than I ever had, mortal or not.

I sat in the dark and cried.

Sylvia took Colleen in and filled out all the paperwork at the hospital emergency room; Adam and I sat in silence in the car for the better part of an hour before she came back out and got into the passenger seat. She didn’t look at either one of us.

“She’ll be all right.” Sylvia’s voice was louder than necessary, and we all knew it. “She lost a lot of goddamn blood.”

“I know,” I whispered, and covered my face with my hands. “Adam, I’m sorry. I didn’t know—I couldn’t—”

Adam sat in silence for another long minute, watched the LCD of his car clock change numbers, and then he turned his head to look at me.

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