The Frenzy Series (Book 2): Frantic (6 page)

Last night, I washed and changed into a pair of Dara’s jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, but I was still freezing. Shivers shook my body until I curled onto the mattress, covered myself with a thin blanket, and fell asleep. An hour later, the vomiting started.

Tage helped me while Roman stared at us from outside the bars and Dara was simply pissed off. “So let me get this straight,” Dara fumed. “She took all of this from Saul, we get nothing to eat for two days, and now it’s being vomited all over the basement? This is just great!” She threw her hands up in frustration. Tage rubbed my back as I vomited into a bucket.

“Why can’t you feed?” I asked, wiping my mouth on my forearm.

“Because no one but Saul showed up for the rotation,” Tage answered softly.

Roman growled, placing the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I’ll talk with the Elders. Someone needs to help us, or else we’ll have to feed on our own. Period.”

“Diplomacy is dead here. We should just feed. Maybe they would understand how good they had it with the treaty,” Dara suggested. Her silky blonde hair was braided around her head like a crown and not a strand was out of place.

Rapid knocking came from the front door. My stomach was cramping. “You okay?” Tage whispered.

“No,” I answered. He handed me a wet rag and I wiped around my mouth. “Thanks.”

Dara ran to get the door. “Roman!” she yelled.

“My hearing isn’t so great right now. I can’t tell who it is,” I said to Tage. “I’m dying, aren’t I?” When I first turned, I was able to hear everything so acutely!

He scowled. “No, you’ll be fine. We have to figure this out is all.”

“I’m a vampire who can’t drink from animals, other vampires, or even humans without puking the blood back up. I’ll die.”

He shook his head. “We won’t let you.”

“I hope I die fast. I should just have Roman twist my head off. I can’t do this for years and years, let alone an eternity.”

Tage shook his head. “Without blood you won’t last that long, so we have to figure it out fast. And we will.”

I smiled. “My hearing sucks, but I hear the tone of doubt in your voice.”

Tage looked toward the basement door, where three sets of feet were coming back down the stairs.

“Porschia?” Ford asked tentatively when he looked into the cell.

“No! I don’t want him to see me like this,” I whispered, trying desperately not to cry. Bloody tears would surely freak him out.

Tage slid the blood-filled bucket beneath the cot, keeping it accessible, but not drawing attention to it. Around my shoulders, he wrapped the knitted blanket he’d brought me earlier.

“Hey, Ford.”

My brother’s eyes took in all of the blood. The walls, the mattress, the floor and the blood. Then he looked at me. I expected him to say how I deserved to be in there, but he didn’t.

“You don’t look any different. Maybe a little pale.” He took in my clothes; modern, or as modern as they were the day the infection killed their original owner.

Ford didn’t look like a teenager pretending to fill adult shoes. He looked like my baby brother. “I’m fine. How’s Mother?”

With everything going on, I’d almost forgotten about her. He wasn’t safe with her in the house. Mother had obviously lost the final piece of her mind when Mercedes fell.

Ford cleared his throat. “Father has her locked away right now. He’s been giving her herbs to help keep her calm.”

“Is it working?”

“Sometimes it seems like it. Other times it doesn’t.”

“Ford, go stay with Mrs. Dillinger. Maggie will give you a safe place to stay. You can have my room.”

He shifted on his feet, shoving his fists into his pockets. “I check on her for you, you know. Make sure she has split wood by the back steps and plenty inside, too. I go get her water. She’s a good cook.”

I smiled. “She is.”

“She wants to know where you are, but I don’t know what to tell her. Father, and of course Mother know what happened, but no one else in the Colony knows yet. But Mrs. Dillinger is getting worried.”

“Tell her I’m sick.” It wouldn’t be a lie.

“She knows you aren’t home.”

“Tell her I’m at Saul’s. Send him over to her if he’ll go.”

Ford nodded. “You know he will.”

“I don’t know if he’ll want to do anything for me now. I almost killed him last night.” Admitting that out loud was one of the hardest things I had ever done.

“Why?”

“He came to see me and I attacked him.”

Tage interrupted. “Not true. He offered to let her feed from him and she just took a little too much.” He pinched his fingers together to show just how much I took over the amount I should have. “There was no
attack
,” he emphasized, using air quotations. But who knew how much was too much? Tage continued talking to my brother as if I wasn’t beside him. “Porschia has tiny fangs. It’s hard for her to feed on anything but humans, and right now she can’t go outside. She has to learn to control her urges first.”

“Frenzy, right?”

“Exactly.” Tage smiled. “So Saul came here to help, and Porschia, being a brand new night-walker, took a little too much. That’s all.”

Ford tore his eyes from Tage and looked around the room. His eyes took in the cell, the cold, bare floor, the cot with its new and old stains, and the bucket beneath it. “Is that why you’re in the cage, Porsch?”

“Yeah. When I get hungry, I can’t control myself.”

Tage interrupted again. “But we’re working on that.”

Dara rolled her eyes and then marched upstairs. Roman turned to Ford and brusquely said, “You’ve seen that she’s fine. Now talk to Saul and see if he’ll help with Mrs. Dillinger.”

“Sure. Uh, I’ll be back soon, Porschia.”

“Bye, Ford.”

As Roman saw Ford out, Tage eased out of the cell and locked the door behind him.

“How did
you
do it?” I asked, curious.

Tage blew out a long breath and rested his forehead between two bars. “Honestly?” He looked at me with a very serious expression on his face.

“Please.”

“It wasn’t easy, but I had this friend. He helped show me how to curb the cravings before going around people. At first it was almost impossible to control myself, even if I was full. The sights, the light, sounds, and smells – everything was too much. It was overwhelming and I wanted to kill everything and run away, all at the same time.”

He pursed his lips. “But each time got a little easier. My eyes adjusted to the light. My ears to the sound, my nose to the smells. And then I could finally walk around without wanting to tear everything apart and eat it.”

I let out a quick laugh. “That’s how I feel. Everything is just too much, and my emotions are all over the place, too.”

“I wasn’t very emotional before I turned, so while mine were heightened somewhat, it was nothing like…” he added, motioning to the ceiling above me. I’d almost brought the house down. Literally.

“Can you help me with the rest of it?”

Tage’s icy blues burned into me. He pressed his lips into a thin line and pushed off the bars. “If we can figure out how to feed you properly, it’ll help. And when we go out, we’ll go at night. Less temptation that way.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I have no idea how to help you feed.”

I stepped in the front door, shrugging my coat off. Snowflakes sprinkled onto the hardwood, melting on contact. Father was stoking the fire and the whole house was warm. My cheeks stung from the temperature difference. He turned to me, asking, “Is she okay?”

“As okay as she can be, I think,” I said, lying through my teeth. Tage had tried to tuck her chuck bucket under the cot, but I saw the blood and smelled the bile. She was sick, but then again, so was Mother. Only she was a different kind of sick than Porschia and Mercedes. Father had no idea how to fix Mother. The herbs were only taking the manic edge off, but she was still restless. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

From overhead I heard her pace the floor, turn, and pace back. Four steps. Turn. Four steps. Turn.

Father swallowed, letting go of the handle of the poker he’d been using. The glowing end brightened in the fire. “She has turned, then?”

“Sort of.”

“What does that mean?” He stood up and crossed the room.

“They said her fangs are shorter than normal and she’s having trouble feeding from large animals.”

“What’s she eating?”

“They’re still trying to figure that out, but for now she’s staying in the house. Porschia wants to keep away from everyone until she is confident she can control her urge to feed.”

“She was always concerned with the welfare of others.”

I shoved my fists in my pockets, clenching them tightly. “She isn’t dead. Don’t talk about her in the past tense.”

Father braced himself against the door frame. “No, she’s far worse off than that. I’m not sure who’s better off—her for living eternally, or Mercedes for dying, albeit slowly.”

“Jesus, Father. They’re still alive, just different.”

“They’re damned. Both of them.” He left out the part about he and I being Hell’s newest residents, and the fact that he looked like he’d aged twenty years in the last two days was a testament to that. Father looked up to where the repetitive noise was still making its way back and forth across the ceiling above us. “And now, so is she.”