Page 67 of From the Shadows
“He’s not going to die,” Diego promised. “But…. Jerm, he won’t be the same Shay.”
Jeremy’s brow furrowed. “What? Of course he will.”
Diego swallowed hard. He hated that he would have to shatterhis kid’s fantasy. “They killed him, Jerm. The only way I could save him was to turn him into a vampire.”
Jeremy blew out a breath. “But he’s going to be okay?”
“Did you hear what I said? He’ll be a vampire.”
Jeremy cocked his head. “Yeah? So? You’re a vampire.”
He wasn’t understanding. “When you become a vampire, you change.”
The two of them sat there, staring at each other before Jeremy finally asked, “How?”
Diego hung his head. “Shay should have had a choice in what happened. I was selfish, because I couldn’t live without him and I turned him without a thought to what he would want.”
“He would want to live. With you and me. He wants to be my other dad. He wants to make a home with us. He won’t care that you made him a vampire, because he loves us and?—”
The anger, the impotent rage, the loss, all bubbled up inside Diego. “Jeremy!”
He sat back, startled, his eyes wide. “D?”
“What I did to him was a betrayal. He’s going to hate me for taking away a choice from him, like it was for me.”
This time Jeremy scowled. “Yes, he’s going to hate you for saving his life,” he grumped, the sarcasm thick. “That makes all kinds of sense. Who wants to die?”
Someone who had already outlived their life. “It’s still a choice he should have been able to make, and I took it away from him.”
It was quiet a few moments, and then Jeremy shifted into a six foot reticulated python and curled around Diego, who sat there and cried because the best thing that had ever happened to him was dead and his coming back would cost Diego everything.
Shay’s headwas a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts. They pounded his brain one second, then flashed away the next, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t understand any of them. He did his best to open his eyes, but the strain was too much, so he keptthem closed and drifted off to sleep, despite the fact that he was starving.
When he woke again, he tried once more to crack his lids, to see what was going on, but exhaustion swept over him. And he was starved. He couldn’t focus. Where was he? What happened? He hadn’t been this groggy since waking up in the hospital after the beating.
“How are you feeling, Shay?” a voice to his right asked. It sounded like Diego, but… not.
“Th-thirsty,” he croaked out, his throat parched.
“We can give you something for that, but first you need to know some stuff.”
“O-okay.” What was going on? What had happened to him? Why was he so hungry?
“Shay!” came a sweet, high-pitched voice.
“Jeremy?”
Then there was a weight on his chest as slender arms snaked—heh—around him, holding him close.
Shay wrinkled his nose. “Dude, when did you shower last?”
“This morning” came the reply. “Diego said if I wanted to come in and see you, I had to.”
But it couldn’t be. Jeremy smelled… wrong.
“Why don’t you go sit outside, Jerm?”
“But I want to see Shay.”
