Sweet Blood of Mine (19 page)

I touched my neck and blood came away on my hand. "What in the hel are you, Elyssa? Why are your eyes glowing? Why do you have fangs?"

She stared at me again, divining the sincerity of my questions before answering. "You realy don't know, do you?"

A hysterical laugh burst from my lips. I remembered how she'd held me back from Harry earlier and how tightly she'd gripped my arm the other day. It hadn't occurred to me because I was so unfamiliar with my newfound strength. Elyssa was as strong if not stronger than I was. "Are you like me? Do you have super strength?"

"Oh no," she said with scorn in her voice. "I'm nothing like you."

"But you're as strong as I am. I can't control this problem I have. I didn't want it to happen!"

Elyssa sobbed as fresh tears weled in her eyes. It broke my heart to see her in such pain. To see the pain that I'd caused her with my ignorance. She backed away from me as one might back away from a poisonous snake. "I don't want to hear it, Justin. Just stay away from me. Don't talk to me. Don't ever come near me again."

"Please, no, Elyssa. Don't go!"

She wiped the tears from her eyes and gave me a look that bordered between pure hatred and longing.

I ran toward her. She held the knife up in a defensive position. "I'm not lying. I wil kil you if you come near me again."

near me again."

"But—but Elyssa. I love you." My voice sounded so broken and desperate that I hardly recognized it as my own.

She clenched her teeth and screamed. "Shut up!

Shut up, you filthy, lying monster!" Then she slammed the door of her car and roared out of the parking lot.

I stood in the gathering dusk alone with my tears.

Happy Birthday.

I stood rooted to the spot, agony ripping at my insides, until light faded and darkness took the sky. I somehow gathered the wilpower to go to my car and get in. I cried like a baby the entire way home. Women were my kryptonite. Even the one that loved me now thought I was a monster. And maybe I was. Maybe she was a vampire too, but I didn't care. I didn't know anything about my condition except that it had caused more pain and harm than good. I couldn't beat up bulies. I couldn't protect my friends. Everything I did backfired and hurt the people I cared about.

I wasn't even sure I had friends anymore. What would Elyssa tel Ash and Nyte? She had known them much longer than I had. If she sat with them in the gymnasium at school, I wouldn't be able to. Not without getting my throat slit by a pencil sharpener.

One thing was for sure. I wasn't meeting Elyssa's parents on Sunday.

Elyssa's mother, Leia, popped into my mind. I remembered her eyes. Her violet eyes. Just like Elyssa's. I didn't have violet eyes. My eyes did not glow that I knew of. Or maybe they did and I just hadn't looked into a mirror at the right moment. I wondered if her entire family consisted of fanged violet-eyed people. The Vampire Brady Bunch. But if she was a vampire, why were her fangs so much different looking from Stacey's? And why wouldn't anyone give me straight answers?

I walked inside my house. Dad was nowhere to be found. I had questions for him, damn it. Who were the Conroys? Where had mom gone? What in the hel was going on? I went into my room and locked the door. I looked like a zombie. Dirt caked my face. Dried blood crusted my neck and a thin red line ran from the left side of my throat to my Adam's apple. I couldn't believe Elyssa had done that to me. No wonder I'd thought she was hiding something from me. She had been. My girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—was a vampire ninja assassin. The way she'd handled those swords during the tournament blew me away. She knew her stuff.

But I was stil just as in the dark now as I'd been the day Stacey had attacked me. Except now I knew my super ex-girlfriend was a vampire, and Stacey was something completely different. What was it with me and supernatural chicks? I stil didn't know what I was, but I knew for the most part what I wasn't. I wasn't a vampire, a werewolf, or a leprechaun, to start with. The list went on and on without helping me a bit. Nothing I'd read in paranormal novels had prepared me for this predicament. I didn't glow, glitter, or grow fangs, but I could seduce any woman in a heartbeat.

Correction: I could seduce any
normal
woman. Apparently the supernatural ladies knew how to defend themselves.

I took a shower during which I alternated between sobbing and moments of stoic silence. This was worse than al my disastrous relationships roled up into one big bal of pain.

Katie may have broken my heart in two, but Elyssa had shattered it.

I was the perfect candidate for a soap opera acting career: Plenty of drama and an unhappy ending to al my romantic endeavors. I found myself staring at my computer screen. Just staring at it without a clue as to why I'd sat down there in the first place. I ran several searches and came up with hundreds of results—mostly stories about mythical beings who feasted on the souls of young girls.

Apparently, I was doomed with this curse. I didn't even know what to cal my symptoms. I almost posted to WebMD:

Please help! I have this psychic sexual sense
Please help! I have this psychic sexual sense
which lets me see these sex vapors emanating from
women. Then I ravish them.

Sincerely, Unintentional Molester

That sounded absolutely idiotic. I scribbled my thoughts furiously on a bit of paper. The
vapor
as I caled it was a sexual feeling that my mind interpreted as a misty halo surrounding females. It had to be psychic like telepathy of some sort. But I couldn't read minds, only hints of emotions around that sexual core of energy. A light bulb sparked on.

I was sensing sexual energy and bits of emotional energy.

Psychic energy.

I searched on those terms and came up with everything from yoga to people gluing energy stones to their foreheads. I also discovered every conceivable way to enlarge my manhood. Not even Yahoo Answers had anyone asking about super strength combined with the ability to make women rip off their clothes. I finaly found a website that detailed hundreds of supernatural creatures including one that sounded like me—a dark faerie, one of the Unseelie, or evil faeries, that used its sexual lure to trap females while it drained them of beauty and life. But certain things didn't add up. Faeries were ancient, according to the website, immortal, and they didn't have children. So unless another evil faerie had done something to me and put me up for adoption, I didn't know how I could possibly be one.

Deep down, I didn't realy want to admit that I was a faerie either, because it sounded girly. But at least it was a start.

I flopped on my bed and spent some quality time staring at the ceiling as my maudlin emotions dragged my spirits into the gutter. Somehow, I slept. On Sunday, I sat on my bed staring at the wal—the ceiling needed some alone time—my heart gripped with agony. I caled Elyssa and got her voicemail. "Please cal me back," I said. "I don't understand what's going on." After an hour, I caled her again. After the fifth time, I gave up. She wasn't going to cal me back. As far as I knew, she didn't have a social networking profile on any of the major websites. I didn't even know where she lived.

I caled Ash.

"Hey, Justin," he said in a cheery voice. "Man that was so awesome yesterday."

"Yeah, it was fun."

"You know, I want to thank you."

"For what?" I asked. I was surprised Elyssa hadn't caled him and told him not to talk to me.

"You've realy been a good friend," he said. "This isn't easy for me to say, but…" He took a deep breath. "I haven't had a lot of real friends besides Nyte and Elyssa.

You're for real, man. Thanks for being there for me."

I choked up al of a sudden. My voice cracked as I tried to speak. "Sure. Thanks for being there for me, too."

"Any time." He chuckled. "We're gonna go out for burgers later if you want to join us."

"You and Nyte and Elyssa?"

"Ha, like you wouldn't know if she's coming. I have never seen her happier, man. I'm so glad you guys met."

I felt tears coming on again and clenched my teeth to stiffen my upper lip. "Maybe I'l join you later," I said, trying desperately to keep my voice even.

"Cool. Just text me if you can make it."

I hung up as salty tears burned my eyes. "Screw me," I said in a miserable croak and flopped down on my bed. I'd even forgotten to ask him if he knew where Elyssa lived. He would probably wonder why in the world I was asking. It seemed like something a boyfriend should know.

Besides, if Elyssa thought I was a monster, what would her family say? Much as I needed to get out of the house, I couldn't force myself to go out with Ash. I would only be a miserable mess.

Sunday passed in a haze of pain and I woke up to Monday. A tiny shard of hope that I might be able to talk Monday. A tiny shard of hope that I might be able to talk to Elyssa had lodged in my heart. But she wasn't in the gymnasium that morning. Ash and Nyte didn't know where she was. I looked everywhere for her in the halways between classes. During lunchtime I looked but couldn't find her in the cafeteria. Ash figured she must be sick. I was sick to my stomach. I left the cafeteria and went outside. A figure sat on a bench near the tennis courts on the side of the school. Elyssa.

She whirled to face me when I was twenty feet away. She relaxed somewhat when she saw it was me, but her hands remained in a defensive position. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"What are
you
doing out here?" I shot back. "This is sily. I'm no monster, Elyssa. I'm just a guy like any other. Okay, maybe I'm not quite like any other, but I would never hurt you."

Her eyes iced over. "Get away from me."

"I'm not going anywhere until you tel me what's wrong."

"You don't understand do you?" She said, grabbing her lunch and stuffing it back into the bag. "You're a monster, a creature. The thought of having kissed you makes me want to vomit. You're not even human."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, anger replacing the hurt. I walked toward her with my arms up.

"Look at me. I'm human as you are."

"Your kind is anything but human."

"I'm getting realy tired of people teling me what my kind is like. I don't even know what my kind is! And in case you hadn't noticed, you grew fangs the other day, and I don't know too many humans with glowing eyes."

She gritted her teeth. "You don't know what you're talking about." She walked toward me with menace in her eyes.

I backed away in case she puled another knife on me. "I love you, Elyssa. I didn't want to do whatever the hel it was my body tried to do to you. I can't control it.

Can't you help me?"

"You wouldn't know what love is if it ripped your heart out, Justin. It's a human emotion." Raw emotion boiled in her voice. She shoved roughly past me. "Stay the hel away from me." A few feet later, she spun around.

"And you'd better not harm a hair on Ash or Nyte or I wil hunt you down and hang you by your intestines."

"So you're going to take them away from me too?" I shouted. "You're just going to rip everything I care about out of my life?"

"You're incapable of caring about anything. I guess you'l discover that before too much longer and I won't feel so bad about having to put you down."

Then she was gone.

I punched the wooden bench so hard it split in half.

I punched it again and again until only a pile of pulp remained. My hand ached. Splinters jutted from between my knuckles and blood ran down my fists. The skin pushed the splinters out. The blood stopped flowing. My hands were good as new. If only it were so easy to heal my broken heart.

Hunger gripped my stomach. I spotted my bagged lunch sitting on the ground where I must have dropped it earlier, so I took it and devoured it. I was stil hungry but now I was thirsty too. I went to a water fountain and drank, but nothing seemed to quench my thirst. My stomach rumbled. I went into the bathroom and washed my hands.

When I looked into the mirror, a stranger looked back.

Wel, not exactly a stranger, but a miserable guy who looked just like me but had ice-blue eyes instead of hazel ones. Those eyes were haunted. That face was very pale. This stranger, the poor fool, didn't have a chance at happiness.

Two guys I didn't know burst into the bathroom.

Two guys I didn't know burst into the bathroom.

They were laughing so hard that tears of mirth poured down their faces.

"And the bear wiped his butt with the rabbit," one of them said, slapping the wal with each convulsive guffaw.

His friend colapsed against the wal, holding his ribs and howling with laughter.

They kept repeating the sentence over and over again. Apparently it was the punch line to some joke I'd never heard but wished I knew so I could laugh along with them.

Something tickled my senses. It was faint, but it emanated from both of them. I reached for it with my mind and latched on. This was completely unlike what had happened with me and Victoria. With her, it had been like drinking a milkshake through a large straw. This was like drinking unsweetened tea through a tiny stirring straw—