Annnd I thought I'd put up the first chapter to The Vampire's Boy here at the blog:)
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THE FIRST TIME the vampire
came for him, he was seventeen and afraid of nothing.
It was a Thursday
night, and he’d been at Jordan’s house smoking weed.
He’d told his mom they were studying, and honestly, that’s what he’d intended.
It’s just that Jordan always had weed.
When he got to the
point he felt like he was built of particles all floating separate and still
but interconnected, he left. Jordan protested, saying it
was just getting good (what it was, Jared didn’t know), but he knew if
he stayed they’d end up cutting class tomorrow. And the last time he’d played
hooky, the school had called his house and left a message, dry and mechanical:
“For the parents or guardians of Jared Mikels, Jared was absent from school
today. You have three days to submit—”
Aaannd the shit had
hit the fan.
It was the end of
April, with only a few more weeks of school left. He was determined to stay out
of trouble before summer break. He hoped. First there was the little matter of
getting into the house without his parents knowing he was stoned.
Jordan lived down the block
from him, so it only took a couple of minutes for Jared to walk home. The moon
was nearly full, white light bouncing off the sidewalk. A mild wind rustled
through leaves just beginning to sprout on the trees.
It was a nice looking
neighborhood, mostly upper scale Cape Cods, an occasional older
bungalow thrown in. His house was a brick two-story, the pine in the front yard
throwing a long shadow over the porch. He climbed the steps and opened the
front door quietly, trying to act like he wasn’t trying to be quiet. He kept
his head up, eyes wide, faking sobriety as best as he could in case his parents
saw him.
It was after eleven
and the house was dark, only the light from the TV screen in the living room
flickering over the furniture. His dad sat on the couch, slumped comfortably
against the overstuffed end cushion. The silver in his hair shone blue in the
light, and his glasses sat crookedly over his nose.
Jared watched him a
minute. His dad didn’t move. He was asleep.
“Yes,” he
whispered, pumping his fist, and started up the stairs outside the living room.
He was almost home free, but the last stair didn’t cooperate—it tripped him. He
thumped to his knees in the hall, surprised. “Oops,” he said, snickering. But
quietly. If his mom heard down the hall from her bedroom, she didn’t say anything.
Most likely she was asleep, too.
In the bathroom he
brushed his teeth, looking at himself in the mirror. His lids were definitely
at half-mast over his pale blue eyes, sleepy and well, stoned-looking. He
opened them wide as he could, straining to see the whites all around, but it
wasn’t happening, and he looked stupid enough doing it that he grinned through
the toothpaste at his image.
It’d been drizzling as
he walked home, and his dark hair was wet. It was long enough that his dad
bitched every time they were in the same room long enough to actually talk.
He leaned over, spat
in the sink and rinsed. Hell with that. It wasn’t really all that long.
His dad was a tightass. He’d really freak if he knew about the tattoo Jared had
gotten. He pulled his sleeve up to look at it.
Peace, baby. He grinned in the
mirror again.
Dad didn’t like the
long hair or the low-slung jeans (in fact Jared got yelled at just this week
for showing his ass off, literally, when he’d looked under the couch for
Malvoline the cat’s favorite stuffed mouse toy). Or the earring, the music, his
friends in general, and last but not least, the black, white and red T-shirt he
wore with a hooker and a zombie making out.
He stared in the
glass, absently rubbing the tat with long fingers, the grin disappearing off
his face. He was pretty sure Dad didn’t like much of anything about him.
He sighed and shuffled
off to his bedroom. The room was made of shadows, posters hanging on the walls like
featureless black rectangles. He expertly avoided the usual heaps of clothes
wadded up on the floor and flopped into bed still clothed. He fell asleep
almost instantly. He never heard the window slide open.
Moments later he woke
to a vampire in his bed, though all he knew at first was the press of a body
against his and a hand lying flat against his heart.
Jared blinked up into
the dark and tried to sit up, but the hand was unyielding. He turned his head
to see who held him. It was a boy with dark hair and eyes like gray smoke,
pupils red with hunger and mouth pale with need.
“I’m sorry,” the
vampire whispered. “I’m so hungry.” He gripped Jared’s head between both hands
and thrust his face into Jared’s neck, fangs sliding like twin blades of ice
into his throat. Jared cried out. The vampire clamped a hand over his mouth.
His head shook back and forth, burrowing into flesh, a beast feeding off a
carcass. Jared’s body writhed against the bed, and only the hand against his
chest kept him from falling to the floor.
The world around him
narrowed and floated away in foggy wisps. The vampire whispered into his neck,
voice vibrating low into Jared’s skin. I didn’t mean to come after you. I
didn’t want to hurt you. Tears like diamonds, cold and hard, fell
from the vampire’s eyes, rolling down Jared’s face and neck to melt into the
bed clothes.
The hand holding him down
stopped pushing against his chest and stroked instead, fingers cold. Jared’s
nipples rose hard against the touch. The vampire whispered that Jared tasted
like the best cherry wine, licking his neck over and over with long swipes of
his cool tongue. It took away some of the hurt.
Jared felt sick and
aroused, amazed that he was able to throw wood with the world like pale shadows
in his vision. The vampire licked and kissed, achingly slow and soothing, murmuring
in his ear how beautiful he was, how Jared’s blood was a part of him, voice and
touch buzzing under his skin, until Jared thrust his hips upward helplessly and
came in his pants.
Afterward he was very
tired. He slept, and he didn’t awaken when his mother came to get him up for
school the next morning. He didn’t know about his mother’s screams, and he
didn’t realize when his father gave him CPR. He very nearly died, though he
only found out after he opened his eyes the next day to see both his parents
staring at him anxiously. He was in a hospital.
His father looked like
he’d aged twenty years, red snaps threading his eyes, hand quivering on Jared’s
arm, and Jared thought maybe he’d been wrong, that his dad loved him after all.
He tried to smile, but he was still so tired.
His dad covered his
eyes, shoulders shaking. He squeezed Jared’s arm. His mother held Jared’s hand
in both of hers and cried. Embarrassed but touched, Jared opened his mouth to
tell them he was okay. He fell asleep again before he’d gotten a word out.
Two months later when
Jared was back home, freshly graduated from high school and spending his summer
getting in more trouble than ever, back to the same sure conviction in his gut
that his dad couldn’t stand the sight of him, the vampire came back.
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