Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter (2 page)

At the end of the day, Denise started spinning the
combo on her locker at the same time as me. I got distracted and had to start
over.

Once she had her coat on, Denise shut her locker with a
thud
.

“See you later,” she said, hoisting her backpack over one
shoulder

So now she couldn’t wait to walk out to our cars together?

Okay then.

I zipped up my jacket a minute later and headed for the
student parking lot alone. The moisture on my lashes froze as soon as I stepped
outside. Exhaust from idling cars hovered in the stagnant air. Not only was
this time of year cold and dark, it turned my stomach inside out.

Once the car stuttered to life, I smacked my mittens
together to keep from freezing solid and let the vents do their work unthawing
the windshield. After the ice turned to droplets, I swiped the windshield with
the wipers. They carved a porthole into the glass and grated against the coarse
outer layers of ice.

The roads hadn’t thawed, not even with the blast of exhaust
pipes and friction of tires running across the polished ice all day. Tires spun
in the parking lot. The truck in front of me gunned it and slid sideways onto
the road.

College couldn’t come soon enough.

I turned the radio on and sung along softly to the lyrics as
I passed mounds of snow that had melted during a warm spell the previous week. This
week they’d refrozen into white misshapen humps over the landscape.

My tires skid at the first red stoplight. I slid forward
four inches. Getting started again took a moment. Too much gas and my tires
spun in place.

Once I lived on campus at Notre Dame there would be no more
playing slip and slide on the streets. I planned to walk everywhere on solid
pavement.

I passed the fast food chains lining the road just blocks
from Denali High. On the long straight stretch home I drove on autopilot until
business centers turned to neighborhoods. Small gaps of forest arched over the
sides of the road. I was almost home when I took the sharpest curve on Jewel
Lake Road.

As I rounded the corner a SUV appeared in front of me,
speeding around the bend. The car made a horrible skidding sound before sliding
into my lane.

Time inched forward.

Tires screeched. I braked, but the car slid out from under
me. Light glinted off the SUV’s front windshield, and for a moment, I saw the
driver—a boy wearing a blue bandana around his forehead. Maybe I would have found
him cute if he weren’t about to kill us both.

In seconds, he would hit me. And I couldn’t do anything. I
couldn’t brake. I couldn’t dodge him. This was it.

I saw the boy’s face. I read his lips. “Oh, shit.”

We said the words together.

In the event of a catastrophe, one thing is sure. Your life
ends on a curse.

 2

Sound returned first. A gurney trundled over the floor.
Parchment fluttered. The scratch of pen on paper thundered in my ear, as though
someone held a microphone to the tip as they wrote.

Later I heard voices and a horrible metallic scraping. Even
with eyes closed the lights glared. The brightness penetrated my eyelids
straight to the space in front of my brain. Static pinpricks of light moved
inside my forehead.

They wheeled something over. It got closer and closer.

A smooth voice said, “Find me the moment she starts to come
around.”

Then sound left the room like fire sucking oxygen from a
burning building. For a while there was nothing, not even the static in my
mind. And then the first traces of feeling returned.

Blood rushed through my veins. My heart began a steady pump.
My eyes fluttered. I balled my toes up and released them. The thin bones in my
hand moved under my skin like hammers connected to piano keys as my fingers
twitched over the sheet.

“How are you feeling, Aurora?”

I lowered my chin and got my first glimpse of the face
behind the voice. He was a young man, cleanly shaven, wearing a gray suit.

When our eyes met he smiled. “I am Agent Melcher. Welcome
back.”

My voice croaked the moment I opened my mouth. “Where am I?”

“You’re on Elmendorf Air Force Base and this…” Melcher said
looking around the bright enclosure “is our unit’s own private ER.”

It made sense that I would be in a hospital, but why on
base? My family had no ties to the armed forces. Dad was out of the country
surveying, but where was Mom?

“What happened?”

“You were in a car accident. Do you remember?”

Of course I remembered. How could I ever forget the last
seconds of my life? Or what I thought were the last seconds.

“The other driver…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Is gone,” Melcher answered.

Suddenly the steady smile on his lips was too much. I looked
at the door beyond his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Aurora. We’ve taken care of everything—the surgery
and organ transplants. Thanks to the blood transfusion we performed your bones
are healing quickly. You’ll be better than new in no time.”

The smile in his voice made me distrust him at once.

“Why am I here?”

“Because you have very special blood, Aurora.”

No one ever referred to my blood as special. Doctors called
it unique and rare —the rarest of all blood types. Less than one percent of the
population had AB negative blood. Maybe that’s why I was on base. Maybe the
government had the only supply of AB negative for my blood transfusion. But why
would they help me?

I looked at Melcher for further explanation, but he kept
smiling and said, “I’ll send in your mother now.”

Melcher’s calm, calculating tone was replaced by my Mom’s
own hysterical outburst as she flew into the room. “Oh, my God! Aurora! Thank
God! Thank God!” She grasped me by the shoulders and lowered herself over my
chest, pressing me into the bed. She pulled back. Tears streaked her cheeks.
“Thank God,” she said again. “My baby. It’s a miracle.”

She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “How are you feeling?”

I squinted at her. “Why am I on base?”

Mom’s face screwed up funny and it looked like she might
start crying again. Then she took a deep breath and returned to patting my
hand.

“You look like you’re feeling much better,” she answered for
me. “Agent Melcher said I can take you home in another week.”

The agent, not the doctor.

“How long have I been here?”

“Two weeks…”

“Two weeks!” I cried.

Tears started pooling in Mom’s eyes once more. “They had to
put you in a medically induced coma.”

My eyes darted around the room frantically looking for a
clock or a calendar —a window even. “What month is it?”

Mom hesitated before answering, “December.”

“But my exams. My assignments.”

Notre Dame might have accepted me, but that didn’t mean jack
if I didn’t graduate.

“I spoke to all your teachers and they’re giving you
extensions. You’ll be able to go to school the week before Christmas then use
the holiday break to catch up.”

Mom placed a hand on my face. “Don’t worry. Just rest and
we’ll get you home.”

My stomach twisted into knots. Going home meant getting in a
car and I was never getting into another moving vehicle as long as I lived.

I’d just have to walk back —all fourteen miles.

A young man in a white lab coat and crew cut burst into
my room early the next morning. I pulled my bed sheet instinctively against my
chest.

“Alright, Aurora, up and at ’em.”

The possibility of a car waiting outside made me wince. “Where
am I going?”

“Not far…next door.”

“What’s next door?”

“The treadmill. It’s time to start physical therapy.”

I waited for him to laugh and say he was joking; he really
needed to take my blood pressure and check my vitals. But he frowned when I
didn’t leap out of bed and do something peppy, like a hundred jumping jacks.

“Um, I just woke up from a coma yesterday, and it sounds
like I had some pretty major surgery.”

If there was ever a reason to get out of physical anything,
surviving a head on collision should rank top.

“Yes, but you have special blood.”

I was starting to think it was mutant blood the way everyone
talked about it in this place.

Physical therapy guy nodded at a neatly folded stack of
clothing on the chair beside my bed. “I’ll wait in the hall while you get dressed.
You have five minutes.”

Five minutes,
I grumbled after he left. I was no
doctor, but this wasn’t how you treated trauma patients. I peeled the sheet
aside and took a tentative first step onto the cold linoleum floor. My hand
gripped the mattress in case I was unable to hold up my own weight, but I felt
sturdy once I got the second foot down.

After removing the hospital gown, I glimpsed a first look at
my body. A line of stitches zipped up my chest over a four-inch scar.
Nice
.
At least nothing was crushed beyond repair. My legs and arms weren’t even
bruised. That only left my face.