Tainted Blood (61 page)

I got her into bed covering her and the toaster, which had already been in the bed, with her blanket that was no longer being used as a cape. I stretched out on the bed beside her hoping she’d pass out soon. She curled on her side and stared at me. It was like having a toddler. A fully out of control toddler. I remember when my little brother, Harrison, was younger, he’d do weird stuff, but it never endangered anyone’s life and I never lost sleep over it.

“Carter?” she said quietly, her dark brown eyes still missing that spark of someone being home.

“Yeah?” I responded just as quietly.

“I think my socks are on the wrong feet.”

“Laney?” I whispered.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not wearing socks.”

“Oh.” She rolled over and a few minutes later she quietly said, “Sorry about the were-thing. It was all my fault.”

“No it wasn’t, Laney.” This was a surprising change of subjects.

“It was,” she sniveled. “It’s
all
my fault.”

I rubbed her back and told her it was in no way her fault and she soon drifted off to sleep. I probably should have stayed in her room with her, or had Kiera stay with her, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly at that point.

Once I knew she was totally out, I stopped by the bathroom to take a leak. There was an army of tampon mice across the bathroom sink, the rim of the tub, and across the back of the toilet. Every one of those tampons had little black noses, eyes, whiskers, and ears drawn on them. I wondered how long she’d been up and what else she’d done in that time. It was hard to pee with all of those beady little eyes watching me, but I managed. As I turned to leave, I discovered that the vacuum cleaner was in the bathtub. I shook my head and headed back to my room.

When I got back in bed, I whispered to Kiera, “Beware of the mice in the bathroom.”

“What?” she whispered back. “There are mice in the bathroom?”

“A whole army of them. I hope you don’t need tampons anytime soon.” I yawned. I think she got up to check out the mouse army, but I was out a second later so I couldn’t really tell ya for sure.

The next morning I woke to Kiera smacking me. Hard. She was standing beside my side of the bed, and I discovered, at that moment, Laney had crawled in bed with us. She was on my side, and I was spooning her. Shit.

“I have no idea when she showed up,” I said as I untangled myself from Laney. Kiera folded her arms over her chest once again. “Dammit, Kiera! I didn’t even know she was there!”

She huffed and dropped her arms. “It’s not that! You left the damn seat up again.”

“Oh.” That was slightly a relief, and something I needed to work on. “Laney, wake up,” I said and gave her a little nudge. She didn’t respond. I said it again, a little louder this time and nudged her a little harder. She moaned very faintly. I pulled her hair away from her face and Kiera gasped first. She had two fresh holes in her neck. Panic shot through me and I jumped to my feet. “Laney!” I shouted. “Laney, wake up!” she didn’t move.

I don’t know why, but I carried her to the couch. I tried to sit her up, but she just slumped over. She was almost a blue color and she was completely unresponsive.
Oh shit, oh shit.
I ran my hands through my hair while Kiera checked Laney’s pulse and it was clear to her that I was panicking.

“This is not the time to panic, Carter,” Kiera snapped. “We need to call 911.”

“I don’t know if we can.” And I didn’t. What do you say to the operator in a situation like this? If I said a vampire bit my friend, they’d probably cart my ass off in a tight, white jacket.

“Then what do we do, Carter?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted. I couldn’t think! My mind was fully freaking out!

“Her heart rate is really slow,” Kiera said. “And her body is cold. We need to do something, and fast.”

I did the only thing that came to my mind. I shoved my barricade to the side and I ran out the door. I heard Kiera call after me but I had no time to tell her what I was doing. I ran straight to Professor SaVan’s office. No shoes, no shirt, just running as fast as I could. Thankfully, I still had shorts on but I don’t think that would’ve stopped me.

It was early but some classes had already begun. I busted through one in progress that was being held in Professor Stuart’s old room. I startled a shitload of people when I threw the doors open, and when my half-naked ass bolted down the steps, I freaked out the other half of the class.

The dude lecturing shouted something after me but I paid him no attention. I ran down the hall toward Professor Amber’s. I pounded on her door. For all I knew, she had a class and wasn’t even in, but I got lucky. She answered and before she could say a word I blurted out, “It’s Laney!” I gave a really fast and brief rundown of the past few days and then waited for her response.

“She sounds as if she is in a state of fevered delirium. You said there was blood loss?”

I nodded like a lunatic. “Yeah, I think Oliver’s brother has bitten her, several times.” I was full on pissed at myself for not staying with her the last time I’d put her to bed. I was also pissed at myself for only checking Laney’s bedroom window. There were other windows in the apartment, and I didn’t check a single one of them.

“Have you called Felix?”

“He’s not answering.”

“Well, that is odd,” she said and crossed to where her phone sat on her coffee table.

“Please come check on her,” I pleaded.

“Carter, I can’t leave the campus,” she said this to me like I knew why.

“Why?”

She looked up at me from her phone and she seemed somewhat bewildered. “I have a sun allergy. I thought for sure you knew this about me.”

“You’re shitting me!” were the words that next flew from my mouth, and I wished they hadn’t.

Amber straightened her back. “Mr. Thomas, I will not have you speaking to me in such a manner,” she scolded.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “What about Laney? Can we cover you up or something?” I was desperate.

“I’m sorry, I cannot risk it, but I will do what I can to get her help.”

I didn’t listen to anything else. I ran. I ran back home as fast as I could, bounding up the steps two at a time.

“Any change?” I asked as I burst through the door. Kiera shook her head. She had Laney covered in her favorite fleece blanket on the couch and Kiera was sitting on the coffee table looking down at our unconscious friend. It was clear that the seriousness of the situation had finally hit Kiera and she was trying not to cry. I pulled her into my arms and held her while I told her where I’d gone. I explained that Amber said she’d send help. Kiera calmed down and found her voice.

“Oliver called just a minute ago,” Kiera said. “He said that he and Felix are on their way.” She looked up at me. “It was weird though, his name didn’t come up with his number.”

I thought this was very weird too. I picked up my phone and discovered that the number we’d been calling for the last two days was Laney’s cell number. Someone had changed my contacts so that all of my calls to Felix and Oliver would go to Laney’s missing cell. I realized right then that Laney’s missing phone had to have been taken by Oliver’s brother and why, when I left voicemails, there had been no recorded greetings for either of them. I bet that bastard actually checked every message and listened to me frantically ramble on. I also realized that he’d been in the apartment every night since Laney’s phone had gone missing.

I stared down at my fiancé and wondered how we’d gotten so lucky as to not have him pay us a visit. I hugged her tight, thankful she was alright.

“When will they be here?” I asked.

“He said about an hour,” Kiera responded. Then, very quietly, she asked the same question that was swimming around in my head. “What if she doesn’t make it?”

There was a knock on the door and I rushed to answer it. It was Professor Amber. She was covered in some sort of thick, dark cloak. She quickly stepped inside and asked me to cover the windows. I rushed around the apartment covering them and shutting our bedroom doors to block those windows while she told us that she had contacted Felix and that he and Oliver were on their way. That explained why Oliver called my phone.

Ambrose had a black doctor’s bag like Felix's and she pulled all sorts of devices from it, then she took a seat on the couch beside Laney’s resting body. She listened to Laney’s heart and took her blood pressure with normal doctor’s equipment. Then she pressed her ear to Laney’s chest and listened. Next she lifted Laney’s eye lids, checked her eyes, then stood and turned to me.

“Diagnosis?” I asked.

“She’s clearly lost a lot of blood. If he comes back for her before we can get her a transfusion, I’m afraid she will be lost.”

I thought I was going to vomit. “Then let’s get her some blood!” I said.

“I’m afraid it is not that simple. She needs blood from a relation, and from what I understand, Laney does not have any living relations close by.”

“Why can’t you just give her the same blood type?” Kiera asked, and I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it.

Amber straightened herself even more than she already was and folded her hands together. “I am afraid that will not work in this situation.”

Kiera pushed. “Why?”

Amber’s eyes narrowed. “There are many things of this world you have yet to understand. Things I am not at liberty share. Please, take my word when I say a
regular
,
human blood transfusion
will
not
suffice.”

Kiera and I exchanged a glance of confusion and right about then Laney’s eyes fluttered. I dropped to my knees beside the couch and spoke to her, hoping the sound of my voice would bring her back.

She struggled to open her eyes and halfway won the battle. She tried to focus on me and her eyes flitted to my scar. “What happened?” she asked, her voice nothing more than a strangled whisper. She lifted her hand like it weighed a million pounds and gingerly brushed the scar over my eye. Her arm dropped and her head lolled to the side. Amber pushed me aside and checked Laney’s pulse again.

My phone rang. A number flashed across the screen, Kiera told me it was Oliver’s number and hastened me to answer.

“What’s going on?” Oliver’s frantic words poured into my ear from the other end. “Kiera said Laney was unresponsive. What happened?”

“I’ve been trying to call both of you,” was the first complete sentence I was able to form.

“Neither of us have received any calls from you.”

“I think your brother messed with my phone,” I began and it probably wasn’t the best place to start.

“Wait, my brother? What about him?”

“Laney said he’d been here. I thought she was dreaming. She did too.” I told him that she had bite marks, and about how loopy she’d been last night. I told him that she just woke up for a minute and asked about my scar. “Amber thinks she’s suffering from some sort of delirium from blood loss.” Amber corrected me, stating it was a fevered delirium. Which didn’t make sense to me since Laney was ice cold.

“Carter,” Kiera said in an uncertain voice. I turned to her and Amber’s focus went from me to Kiera as well. “She’s barely breathing.” My stomach twisted and my heart skipped a beat. On the other end of the line Oliver’s voice cracked when he asked me to put Amber on the phone. She stepped away from us and spoke quietly into my cell while Kiera and I sat with Laney. When Amber was finished with the call, she handed back my phone. Kiera and I stared at her as she took at seat in the chair near the couch. She sat regally, just like she always did, and gave the two of us a polite smile while she folded her hands in her lap.

“So?” I finally asked, and her blue-green eyes settled on me.

“No need to worry. We will take care of Laney,” she smiled slightly again and I had a sudden fear that they were going to change Laney into a vampire. It wasn’t that I had a problem with her being a vampire—I had a fear that she wouldn’t make it through the transition. Especially in the state she was in.

“How?” Kiera asked, and if it had been a ladylike thing to do, I bet Amber would’ve rolled her eyes. Instead she informed us that because Oliver had recently fed from Laney, his blood should be sufficient since their blood had now lingered together in his system.

“But I thought his blood was tainted,” Kiera said, and I was thankful she was there because I would probably just be staring blankly at a wall.

“That has all been resolved,” Ambrose told us.

Kiera looked at Professor Amber, and with a bit of attitude, she said, “I thought you were the astronomy teacher? How is it you know so much about medicine too?”

Amber tipped her head to the side and eyed Kiera as if she were a troublesome annoyance. “I have studied many things in my time. Medicine, among many others, happens to be a useful skill. What is it you study?” Amber asked Kiera.

Kiera straightened her back before responding and I imagined that if this was an episode of one of those nature shows, these two would soon tear each other’s throats out. Silly girls.

Oliver made quite the entrance when he arrived. He came through the front door so fast he nearly ripped it from its hinges. He dropped to his knees right in front of Laney. His knees hit the floor with such a thud that if it had been me doing that same thing, I’d probably have broken something. Like my kneecaps. Felix was right behind him and Amber quickly took up a spot in a dark corner since the door was left open.