enough to kill me a couple
times over but he couldn't stop feeding.
I brought the blade down low on his neck,
afraid that I'd chop straight through and take Ray's head off, too.
The blow severed its spinal cord but it wasn't enough to kill it
and the wound started healing immediately, bone re-knitting, gaping
muscle and blood vessels straining toward one another to reform. I
brought the blade down a second time, cutting clean through and
into Ray's flesh.
They both dropped to the floor, the vampire's
head rolling to a stop at my feet.
I sank to my knees next to Ray, examining his
upper back. It was a nasty wound -- about an inch deep and eight
inches long. I rolled him on his side.
"No, no, no!"
His throat was ravaged, so much blood gone
from his body the wound wasn't even bleeding any more. I pushed him
onto his back and put my head against his chest as I listened for
any sign that he was alive.
"Please, daddy!" I clutched his shirt,
pressed myself tight against him as sobs began to wrack my body.
"Don't leave me, daddy. I can't lose you, too."
One second I was holding him, the next I was
pinned hard against the wall. Ray's hands gripped my shoulders, his
stare feral and hungry. He pressed his cheek against mine and I
heard him inhale.
For a second, I thought everything was going
to be okay. Yeah, he was injured badly and clearly in shock. But
he'd just inhaled and the dead don't breathe -- not that anyone can
tell, at least.
But they do scent.
That's what he'd just done -- scented me like
I was dinner.
"So thirsty, baby girl..."
Nineteen is too young to die. I swallowed
hard and slowly shook my head. "Daddy, no...please, please,
please."
He pulled back a little at the sound of my
voice, studied me and raised his curled hand close to my face. I
had half a second to recognize the new danger. It was just like
when that guy outside Albuquerque tried to steel the truck from us.
He'd put his pistol through the window and ordered daddy out.
Told him to stick his hands up.
I shook my head again, pleading with him.
"Don't, daddy, please."
The strike to my temple came too fast to see.
One second I was standing on my own two feet, begging Ray not to
kill me. A heartbeat later, I was unconscious.
**********
I woke in a clean bed, with satin sheets
covering my naked body. The dirt that had caked my skin in our
boarded up hide out was gone. My hair was freshly shampooed. For a
second, I thought I'd just woken up from a very long and very, very
bad nightmare.
But the bed and the room were unlike any I'd
ever seen outside of a magazine. This was a rich man's room. The
whole place screamed money, from the four-poster walnut bed with
its velvet drapes to the huge dresser with a plasma television and
mini-bar on the opposite wall and on to the marble-tiled bathroom I
could see through the open door.
Head throbbing, I slowly sat up, the sheets
falling to pool around my hips. Upright, neither my ears nor my
eyes wanted to function. All I could hear was something like the
muted drone of a huge engine. My vision would clear for a few
seconds and then everything would start swimming together
again.
Sinking back against the mattress, the pain
ebbed. Gingerly, I touched my temple, felt the small lump and tried
to remember how I'd gotten it. All I could remember was the house,
daddy with his machete, three bloodsuckers newly dead and one of
them shattering a boarded up window.
I had to find Ray. He'd tell me what the hell
was going on.
Memories coalesced.
Ray...the bloody machete falling from his lax
grip.
Ray...
No-no-no.
Whatever it was, I didn't want to remember,
not yet. Closing my eyes, I pushed my hands under the blanket, my
fingers gently traveling over my flesh in search of injury.
Reaching the top of my thighs, I gasped. Not only had someone
washed me, they'd shaved me, too. My mound was completely smooth,
the silky blonde hairs gone.
I opened my eyes, my sight slowly adjusting
to normal. Above me, secured to the