Blood Doll (3 page)

Christian hadn’t been vampire long enough yet to forget the horrors of influenza, and if he had any chance of making amends for the atrocities of his life, he had to keep this girl healthy.

When he returned to the front room, he found Lana curled around herself in front of the fire, shivering hard enough to make her teeth chatter. He made a big deal of letting the door bounce against the wall to signal his reentry. To sneak up on her would do no good.

“It isn’t much, but at least you can be dry,” he said. She turned her face toward him, and immediately let out a small gasp of surprise.

“You…you still have snow in your hair,” she whispered. Christian ran a hand along the top of his ruined Mohawk, not surprised when it came away with tufts of white powder stuck to it.

“So I do… just one of the many drawbacks of no longer being a fully functioning human,” he replied, and started forward. She skittered backward, her face frightened, until her back hit the wall. She let out a squeak, and he stopped just behind the sofa. “I swear I won’t hurt you, Lana. Please take the clothes and go change.” He laid them on the arm of the sofa and slowly began to back away. “The bathroom is down the hall on the left.” She made no move to do as he said, “I will be in the kitchen. I will make you a cup of tea while you change, and then we can talk.”

Chapter Three

While Christian was banging around in the kitchen, Lana picked up the clothes and scurried down the hall. With the bathroom door securely closed and locked, she turned on the light and stared into the mirror at her reflection.

She looked awful. Her hair had long since been pulled free of its ponytail to hang in stringy waves along her cheeks. Dark circles were beginning to appear under her eyes. Her skin was pale and waxy. She still shivered beneath her wet clothes.

The cold, she realized, was all she felt. With everything that had happened in the last two hours, Lana discovered that a curious numbness existed within her. Each thing seemed to happen in slow motion and with startling clarity, yet she could muster no emotion for anything…except Christian. He terrified her.

Lana looked down at the T-shirt and shorts lying on the sink. They were clean, at least—a bit big for her, but they would do until her clothes dried and she could be on her way. She glanced behind her to check the lock on the door—still locked—then stripped out of her coat, shirt, and pants. The wet material peeled away from her body like the skin of an apple, landing on the tile floor with a squishy
plop
. Even her bra and panties were soaking wet, so she removed those as well, then quickly climbed into the dry clothes. She had to roll the shorts up at her waist to keep them on her narrow hips, but the dry fabric was a welcome relief and helped to quell the shivers coursing up and down her spine.

She heard a kettle whistle at the other end of the house, and though the idea of being alone in a room with a vampire—was he really serious about that, or was he just messing with her head?—terrified her, the thought of hot tea and a possible meal drove her through the door and back down the hall to the kitchen.

She found Christian sitting in a chair at the dining table. He had changed clothes as well—a pair of black sweat pants hung low on his hips, and a white undershirt molded itself to his body. He was much more well built than she had first imagined…not that she’d had time to imagine those things. The remnants of his wet Mohawk hung in a limp trail along the center of his head, secured in place by a black rubber band at the base of his skull. He sipped from a beer bottle, and a small smile appeared on his face.

“You could almost pass for vampire yourself, Lana,” he said without turning to her, and lifted the bottle to his lips again. “You are very quiet when you move.”

“Thanks, I think,” she replied, still lingering in the doorway. She curled her arms around her body, hugging herself for warmth and protection…not that she could do much to protect herself against a hungry vampire. “Thank you for getting me out of there,” she added, and noticed that she had unconsciously raised one hand and begun to fidget with her hair. She forced her hand down by her side. “I really hope you’re going to tell me what’s going on now.”

“Come drink your tea. There isn’t much to eat, but I made you some toast.” He nodded to the plate sitting next to the steaming mug on the table. “I thought you could use the fortification.”

“Thanks,” she said again, but still didn’t move from the doorway. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“I’m not going to eat you, Lana.” This time the smirk on his face was accompanied by a chuckle. “Not unless you ask nicely.”

“What is that,” she replied with a snort, “some sort of vampire humor?”

“No,” he said. “That’s my warped sense of reality. Vampire humor would require me to put on a cape and tell you I wanted to suck your blood with a bad attempt at a Romanian accent.”

“Thanks for the heads-up, Dracula.”

“Anytime, sweetheart.” He took another sip of his beer, and Lana watched, enrapt, as his throat muscles worked to draw the liquid down his throat. Maybe it was the undead thing, but there was something very attractive about him…beyond the normal, physical prettiness.

The ultimate predator,
she thought.

“Come get your tea before it gets cold, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know about the last six months of your sister’s life.”

Tea…she wanted that tea. It was the desire for something warm to push away the chill that drove her into the kitchen and up to the table. She picked up the cup and sniffed—chamomile, an odd thing for a vamp to keep—then lowered herself to the chair and picked up a triangle of toast.

“I haven’t talked to her in almost a month,” Lana said before biting into the toast. Her stomach growled in happy acceptance as she chewed.

“Not many people have,” Christian said, his expression turning dark. “Unless you’re one of The Mausoleum’s elite, that is.” He finished off the drink and tossed the bottle into the trash can across the room. It hit the bottom of the empty can and shattered. Lana winced at the sound, unbelievably loud in the quiet house. “Remember the kid at the door of the club?”

“There was something wrong with his eyes,” she replied, remembering the freakish sight of him, and sipped her tea.

“That’s a side effect, and the easiest physical way to tell a scab from an addict.”

“A scab?” Lana questioned. Christian sighed, and fixed her with a hard gaze.

“Look at my eyes… what do you see?”

“Lots of color. They don’t look normal.”

“Exactly,” he said. “I was not lying when I said I’m a vampire. That’s how I tore the watcher’s head off. That’s how I leaped to the top of a seven-story building. That’s how I brought us to the woods outside Salem in less than fifteen minutes.”

“So what do you mean by ‘scab’?”

“A scab is a human—more or less—that is addicted to and completely dependent upon vampire blood. They are still human, but suffer from the vampiric bloodlust. They are not vulnerable to sunlight, they do not have vampiric strength, and once a person becomes a scab, there are two choices: turn or die.”

All feeling left Lana’s fingers, and the teacup went crashing to the floor. Bits of ceramic skittered across the floor, radiating out from the puddle of liquid. In a moment, Christian was around the table, his hands on her shoulders to keep her from slumping to the floor behind the cup. A wave of nausea passed over her, followed quickly by a swirling blackness that threatened unconsciousness.

When Lana was able to grasp her surroundings again, she was lying on the sofa in the main room, and Christian paced the floor in front of the fireplace. She stirred, causing him to pause and glance back at her.

“Welcome back,” he said, and took a seat on the chair opposite the room. Lana muttered something in response, but even she wasn’t quite sure what it was, or if it was even a discernible language at all. Christian smiled again. “Think you’ll be okay to hear the rest?”

The world spun around her as Lana sat up. She grunted and swiped a hand down her face. On the coffee table in front of her sat another cup of tea, still steaming. Christian was nothing if not thoughtful. She immediately threw her hand against her throat, searching for puncture wounds.

“I didn’t bite you,” he said, chuckling.

“Good to know.” She cleared her throat and reached for the cup. “You’re going to tell me that my sister is a scab,” she said, pausing to take a sip. “You said earlier that she was just like the guy at the door.” She took a second sip of the tea, and the world steadied a bit. “Now all you have to do is tell me how to get to her.”

“Human?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “You don’t. They’ll rip you limb from limb in half a second if you go back in there.”

“I have to save her, Christian.”

“I…uh…I don’t think you heard me right.”

“You said that there are only two options.”

“So you did hear me.”

“There still has to be a way to get her out.”

“Not until after she is turned, Lana.” Christian rose from the chair and crossed the room to sit next to her. “Sarah has gotten herself into a mess, and nobody can get her out of it but her.”

With a frustrated whine, Lana rose from the couch, a bit wobbly at first, and paced across the room. She looked out the window at the white powder falling in thick sheets from the sky. The ground looked to have accumulated a foot or more already. The trees and shrubbery around the house were all capped in the powder, which gave the world outside that window an eerie luminescence. Fitting, considering the situation.

The silence seemed to grow around her, dulling even the sound of the crackling fire. Awful thoughts ricocheted through her brain—Sarah was in trouble, and Lana was helpless to fix it. Since they were children, they had always looked out for one another. Yet here she was, a bystander on the sidelines at the worst moment in either of their lives. She could try, but if what Christian said was true, she would be dead before they ever saw each other.

He had yet to steer her wrong or go back on his word, but the whole concept was still so foreign. He’d told her he was a vampire and she had taken it as the truth without question. That, she realized, was the most absurd part of the entire evening, worse even than seeing a man’s head snatched from his shoulders in one swipe.

“How do you know I can’t help her?” Lana asked, turning away from the window. At some point, Christian had risen and gone back to pacing. She had never heard him.

“Because I was in her position not too long ago.”

“You were a scab?”

“Most of us were at some point,” he confirmed, pausing to stare into the fire for a moment before resuming his track. “The addicts don’t really know how bad it is on the inside. They think they’re taking heroin.”

“The needles…” Lana said, remembering. “If it isn’t heroin, then what is it?”

“Blood,” Christian answered, his shoulders slumping as he said it, “drastically cut with saline. It dulls the potency.”

“But keeps the euphoric effect.”

“Precisely. It looks and smells like heroin. Addicts can’t tell the difference between heroin and blood, until…” He hesitated, still refusing to meet her gaze.

“Until they’ve had too much,” Lana said, finishing his thought. Christian nodded. “What happens when they’ve had too much?”

“The addiction becomes a disease. They move to a different level in the chain, because the watchers start denying the purchases. They essentially become whores. They let the vamps drink in exchange for sex and blood—usually straight from the vamp’s vein and much more potent. After so many of these exchanges, the addict loses the ability to focus on human functions. His eyes turn milky, and the desire for blood becomes too strong. It takes precedence over everything else in his life, so he essentially becomes a blood doll for the higher-ups.”

“Blood doll?” Lana asked, wrinkling her face. “You mean a cheap meal?”

“That’s it, yeah.”

“So why are they called scabs?”

“Because of the scabs on their arms. The bites, the needle marks…they scab over, because while it doesn’t matter how deep the wound is, it will scab over and heal—another effect of the blood.”

Lana watched him turn and pace back toward the hallway. If he hadn’t told her what he was, she never would have guessed him to be some sort of monster. He looked and sounded human. There wasn’t any sort of rage. He wasn’t immaculately beautiful or made of stone. He drank beer and cooked toast. He did carry her nearly thirty miles, but she could have easily played that off as shock-induced madness.

“So you have super speed and strength. You have amazing regenerative powers. Is there a downside to being a vampire?” she asked. His already pale skin seemed to lose what little color it had, and he turned to glare at her.

“Oh,” he said in a singsong tone, “nothing much…you only live long enough to go completely mad, require human blood for sustenance, never sleep, and burst into flame in the sunlight. So no, not really.” Christian snorted.

“You can eat, though.”

“Yes,” he replied. “We also have heartbeats and breathe. Our blood, while inhuman and diseased, still has to circulate to keep us moving. We’re still cold, and the hunger for blood often turns us into animals if left unchecked.” He sighed, and his whole demeanor changed. “Look, Lana…it isn’t the romantic thing the media has turned it into. I’m not some lovelorn teenager; I’m not some thousand-year-old entrepreneur with dreams of grandeur and an ego problem; I’m not a great, whining eunuch, and no, I don’t fucking sparkle.”

Lana burst out laughing.

She doubled over, holding her sides as her whole body shook with laughter. She giggled so hard she lost all breath control and collapsed to her knees, tears pouring from her eyes. In the distant recesses of her mind, she registered Christian’s impatient scoff, and the slam of a door. But what immediately sobered her was the new, deeper and raspier voice.

“Oh, Christian…you brought me dinner,” the voice said, and when Lana looked up, she couldn’t stop the scream of terror that ripped from her throat. A maniac smile of mangled teeth and distended fangs hovered in front of her, set deep in a face that would have rivaled Max Schreck for ugly. The man was obviously old, his withered skin hanging from his bones and his milky eyes absolutely insane.