Sixteen Going on Undead (8 page)

“Shield? What the heck are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you know?” He frowned then lowered his head to kiss me. The touch of his lips was too quick. He spun away and walked back toward the window. Like I was a robot trained to follow, I stumbled along, stopped to slip my bare feet into flip-flops and was soon steps behind him.

“There is a shield of protection around you at all times, or most of the time. No one gets close to you except you let them, or...someone else does.”

“Someone else? What’s with the riddles, bloodsucker? If you’re trying to say something you need to just come on out with it. How can I have protection around me? I’m not magic or whatever. I’m no one special. And who else would be able to protect or unprotect me?”

He shrugged and stepped up onto the windowsill like we weren’t on the second floor. “It’s stuffy in here. Come out for a walk with me.” He held out his hand, and although my mind cringed at the thought, I found myself resting my palm in his. I was in some serious trouble if he decided to rip out my throat while we were away from my house. Then again, he could have done it right here. Maybe I was already dead.

“You’re not dead...yet.”

I turned away to run, but he caught me by the shoulders and spun me around. I closed my eyes, but he tightened his hold. “Open your yes, Tanesha.”

“No, you’re not
glamouring
me.”

“Do you think I can’t do it unless I look into your eyes? That’s Hollywood.” He ran a thumb over my lips, and I looked up at him. He winked at me, and I felt it, that pull, that control fall over my head like melted butter.

“You lied,” I whispered as he guided me onto the windowsill, grabbed me around the waist, and propelled us both over the ledge to plunge to the ground. I thought I was going to give up the ghost right there, but I survived. Lorcan touched down first with me digging my fingers into his chest. He didn’t even flinch. After a few minutes, I calmed enough to let go, and he stepped back.

“See, that wasn’t so bad.”

“I hate you.”

He took my hand with a smirk spread over his full, deep rose lips, and we started walking down the yard to the alley. I must have lost my mind. It was the middle of the night. If my mother knew I was out here, she’d beat me black and blue and ground me until I was twenty-five. I had never snuck out of the house, except that one time last year to go to a party. I got away with it, but only because the party had turned out to be
lame,
and Ronnie had snuck out to pick me up when my ride wanted to stay. Ronnie had been mad at me for weeks for not including him in my plan. I had promised to include him if ever I did something crazy like that again, but it really didn’t interest me. Until now.

I couldn’t call Ronnie to join me and Lorcan. I just couldn’t. I wanted this time all to myself, which was probably a huge mistake.

Lorcan rested a hand over his chest. “You break my heart.”

I gave him a doubtful look. “Does it beat?”

“Come and see for yourself.” He leered, wiggling his eyebrows.

“So not cute.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ll
pass,
thanks.” After we had left my block and continued on toward the park in silence, I decided to get some answers to my many questions. “So, why me? You made me think I’m somehow special. Why?”

He squeezed my hand. “That’s not up for conversation right now.”

“What?” I yanked my hand away, stopped, and put my hands on my hips. “You broke into my room and did who knows what before I woke up.” I was telling myself the blood thing wasn’t real. “I deserve to know what’s going on, especially since it has to do with me.”

Lorcan shoved his hands into his pockets and spun away. After a while I jogged to catch up to him. No matter how much of a fit I threw, I couldn’t make him talk about what he wasn’t willing to share. In my head, I knew I should be screaming my head off, scared, running in the opposite direction, but there was something about all this that was, if not familiar, at least...expected. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like I had been waiting for someone to wake me up, but that was ridiculous.

“So you’re not going to talk to me about it?”

“Nope.”

“Then what can we talk about?”

“Anything else.”

Chapter Five

We were in the park at the fountain they had just built two springs ago. The water had been turned off, along with the lights, but I stared in shock when Lorcan only waved his hand over it, and the bubbles began. The blue, green, and red lights danced beneath the surface, lighting the area, and his pale face. I shivered. Who was he? Where did he come from? Had he always been a vampire?

“Unlike you, I am no one special,” he said. “And no, I’ve not always been a vampire.”

I blinked and then grumbled, “Stop reading my mind, damn it.”

He laughed. “Sorry. You’re an open book. Getting into your head is easy. I almost don’t have to try. You just hand it all over to me.”

I pulled off my flip-flops and stood on the narrow stone bench running around the fountain. While I walked, I concentrated on closing my thoughts off to him, so he couldn’t read my mind. I didn’t know if it was possible. A light pressure around the edges of my consciousness let me know he was pressing to get in.

“Not yet, beautiful,”
he whispered in my head.

I growled and lost my footing on the fountain. When I would have pitched face first in the water, his hands came around me and pulled me back to his chest. I elbowed him to get free and ran to leap over the side to the ground. I think I landed on a pebble and hurt my foot, but I wasn’t giving his big head the satisfaction of knowing. Hobbling to a grassy spot on the opposite side of the circle, I pretended not to hear him laughing behind me.

“So who are you?” I demanded.

He bowed like they did in the olden days or those shows from the past. “I am a simple vampire, in love with a beautiful black girl named Tanesha.”

“Boy, you are not in love.” My voice shook when I said the words.

“Who says I’m not?”

“You promised you’d talk about anything except me, so you better spill it, or I’m going home. And what was that with the waving of the hand? You can do magic?”

He dropped down beside me and reached for my hand. I let him take it to hold in his lap. “Not magic exactly. Not like witches and warlocks type of stuff. More like...” He paused seeming to search for the right words. I squinted up at him, trying to probe his mind. I got nothing. The flick of his eyebrow let me know he knew what I was trying to do. I wanted to punch him.

“A vampire comes with certain enhancements. The way I look at it is
,
should the human race evolve, kind of like using more of your brain power, anyone, no matter who they are, could do what I do.” He glanced down at me and smiled. “Do what you did back in the bedroom.”

“
Wha
—?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t notice.” He shook his head. “If I’ve learned anything at all about you, Tanesha Johnson, is that you have a strong mind, but you use it to block out anything that is hard to accept. That’s why you haven’t freaked over all you’ve learned about lately. I guess that’s a good thing.”

He looked up at the full moon. I found myself glad that he wasn’t a werewolf and considered whether they were real as well. A tremor went through me, and I shifted closer to his side. It couldn’t have come off more like I was flirting, and looking to be hugged, if I had been Butterfly herself.
Lorcan’s
strong arm came around me. A feeling of unreality washed through my head. This whole experience was mind-blowing.

“Back at the room, you used your own power to shove me hard enough to knock me out of my cloak.”

My eyes widened. “I did? How? What cloak?”

He wagged a finger in front of my nose. “Uh-uh, no talking about you. Almost got me. But I can tell you about my cloak. I can bend the shadows around me until I become like one. That is vamp all the way, and I’ve loved doing it ever since I became a vampire.” He closed his eyes with his face still raised like he was basking in the sunlight. I supposed he couldn’t ever do that now. “At first I hated it, felt like it was a curse, but now I’m used to this life. The best thing is being able to travel to places and hide in plain sight, wherever there is a shadow. I can people-watch and get into their minds to know what they’re not saying.”

“In other words, you’re nosy with everybody, not just me.” I thought about what he had said, about me using power. I didn’t have any, but again, he was acting like I was special in some way. How? “I’m not a vampire, am I? Did you feed me blood?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Lorcan, answer me! Am I dead? Or...or...
undead
?”

“No.”

“Then how can
I
—”

“
Shh
!” He stiffened, and his facial expression became alert. He tilted his head and then jumped to his feet, pulling me along with him. In a heartbeat, he shoved me behind him so my view of the circle was blocked. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want, Lorcan. You’ve disobeyed orders long enough. Give her to me.”

“Go walk in sunlight,” he snapped.

I didn’t recognize the voice, but by the tone, I knew it was someone older, a man. I tried to look around
Lorcan’s
body, but he threw his arm out, causing his long black coat to block my view.
“You mustn’t look into his eyes. Stay behind me.”

My stomach did flip-flops. I was scared out of my head. His words confirmed that he had lied about needing me to look into his eyes to glamour me. I wondered what else he had been lying about. Did they send him to get me, or to kill me? The man had said he wasn’t following orders. My throat went dry.

While the two of them argued, I backed away from Lorcan, into the trees. I didn’t want to be with him anymore either. I didn’t trust him. What had I been thinking? This boy, as fine as he was, had been sucking my blood, admittedly even at times when I didn’t remember him doing it. He had been replacing it with his own. I couldn’t even begin to figure out why my doctor’s blood tests hadn’t seen that much. Must have been more vampire magic or
mojo
or whatever the hell he called it.

I spun around and high-tailed it through the trees. If I circled around the park, I could come out on the street opposite mine and get to my house by the front. But then I realized I didn’t have my key and wouldn’t be able to get in because Lorcan and I had jumped from the window. That’s all I needed was to have to ring my doorbell to get in. My mother would not believe that I had somehow fell out the window and walked around the front. I was in serious trouble.

A rustle in the leaves behind me and the crack of branches set my teeth on edge. I had come to a stop to catch my breath and consider what to do. I ducked behind a tree and struggled not to breathe so whoever was out there wouldn’t hear me.

“Stay right there.”

I don’t know how I knew this time, but I was positive whoever was speaking in my head was not Lorcan. Blake had said they were all like a big hive, connected by their thoughts. Was I in the loop now that I had
Lorcan’s
blood in me? Is that why I had powers like him? I closed my eyes and listened to the night around me, but I couldn’t pick up anything other than crickets. Where was the evolution stuff when I needed it?

“Who are you?”
I asked the person who had spoken, but he didn’t answer.