Bloody Stubborn by Judy Colella (bill gates best books .TXT) 📕

Cement is not a great surface on which to relax. Or sleep. Or whatever the hell it was I doing at the moment. I was on my side, staring stupidly at a large black ant, my right shoulder and hip aching in a way that only something cold and unyielding could make them ache. This told me nothing about how I’d gotten there, or what, exactly, my reason could possibly be for lying there like that. On cement.

I blinked and swallowed, noticing now that my throat hurt, too. Not because it was in contact with the cement, but because… well, I had no idea why. Slowly, I levered myself up to a sitting position, still staring idiotically at that damned ant. Why was I doing that?

Ah. I knew why a second later. I was clearly trying to avoid looking at the splashes of blood on the right front of my shirt and a small pool of the stuff under the spot where I’d been lying. Yuck. I must have been hurt, but how? By what?

I put a hand to the side of my neck and it came away red and slick. More blood. More yuck.

The strangest part of all this was how my body was beginning to react, to change. I suddenly noticed that everything I laid eyes on was in ridiculously sharp focus. Ridiculous, I say, because I also realized I was no longer wearing my glasses. Yeah. Those devices that enabled my astygmatized, nearly legally-blind eyes to see almost, but not quite, at the twenty-twenty level. How was this possible?

Then my ears checked in – I could actually hear that friggin’ ant scraping its front legs over its feelers as it groomed itself. What the heck? Experimenting now, I took a deep breath through my nose…and almost gagged. The stench of a garbage can’s contents assaulted my olfactory nerves in an almost violent manner, which would hardly have been unusual had said garbage can not been located all the way at the end of this place I was in – ah! An alley. Yes, I was in a dark, smelly alley populated by odors, sooty walls, and a black ant.

I gave my head a quick shake, hoping to clear it. Instead, the sound of my hair swishing almost deafened me. This was not pleasant. But maybe I was actually dreaming. Possible? Why not? Nothing made awake-type sense. Then again, if this was real…panic began to set in. Heart-pounding, nerve-wracking …wait. Something was missing. Normally, when I was in any kind of adrenaline-inducing anxiety mode, the sound of my heart pounding in my ears was unmistakable. So why didn’t I hear it now?

Carefully, I put two fingers against my carotid artery like I normally did after exercise or jogging to make sure my pulse was within normal parameters. Aaaaannnndddd…….

Nothing.

No pulse.

Now I panicked in earnest. What was happening to me? Why didn’t I have a heartbeat? Was I a ghost? How did I end up lying on my side in an alley in the first place, and why had I been bleeding? What time was it? When had all this started? And why did the rat that skittered across my path right then look so appetizing? Not the meat of it, but the blood.

Blood.

Some kind of punctures on the side of my neck.

Heightened senses.

No heartbeat.

And suddenly, no more pain, either.

No!

Eyes wide in horror, I glanced quickly around, knowing without knowing how that I wasn’t alone in this place. But where – ah. On the fire escape over there.

The shadow lengthened, becoming a human shape, and impossibly jumped down from the second story where the platform ended to land easily on the same cement I’d been obsessing about a few minutes earlier.

“Welcome.” The voice was deep, seductive, and came from a creature whose looks matched the sound. His age was impossible to guess if one tried to gauge it by his features. These were smooth, youthful, beautiful. But his eyes! Ah, no, they glittered in a very inhuman way and because of a trick of the light, or perhaps the way the skin around them folded, looked older than time itself.

“What do you mean?” I knew what he meant but was too suddenly angry for polite conversation.

“I’ve made you one of us. You belong to our, ah, family. So welcome.”

“Uh-huh. Because of course, you sent me an invitation first which I naturally accepted, right?” Arrogant bastard, I thought. The son of a bitch had killed me, turned me into a monster, and now expected me to be beside myself with gratitude?

He laughed. Under other circumstances, I would have enjoyed the sound of it. “Come. Let me teach you how to feed.”

“How to feed? What am I? A damn cow? No thanks!”

“Oh, now, please. I know you’re feeling the hunger, and I promise you it will only get worse.” He took a step closer.

“Hold it!” I didn’t want him anywhere near me at that point. He’d already made me his midnight snack, apparently, and I was furious. “Let me get this straight. You freakin’ bit me, drank my blood, turned me into a flipping vampire, and now you want me to – to skip off into the night with you, noshing on passing pedestrians as we go?”

Both of his perfect eyebrows shot upward. “You have a most unusual way of putting things, but yes, basically.”

“I refuse to kill anyone.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“Oh, yes I do. Now piss off.”

He sighed. “I’m so sorry you feel this way. What is your name?”

Ooh. That did it. “What?” It came out as a near-shriek. “You did this to me and didn’t even know my name?” I then called him several things my mother would have smacked me for, and turned to leave.

He was in front of me in a literal flash. Crap.

“Where are you going, lovely lady?”

Lovely – “You’re nuts. I’m going home.”

“My name is Ryland. May I walk with you?”

“Only if you allow me to periodically stomp on your foot as we go.” I would have simply smacked him with one of my shoes, but for some bizarre reason I didn’t seem to be wearing them.

He smiled, in no way perturbed it seemed. “Please tell me your name.”

“Please tell me why you did this to me.”

He shrugged and started to walk away only to turn and beckon me toward him with one hand. “I’ll explain as we walk.”

If I had the ability to scale walls I was unaware of it, and didn’t feel like experimenting. I nodded, jaw out-thrust with annoyance, and joined him.

“You see,” he said, taking me gently by the arm like an old friend, “I was initially attracted by your scent.”

“White Shoulders?”

“Blood-filled throat.”

“Oh.” Gross.

“But as I watched you leaving the bar, I also saw how lovely you are. You could say it was love at first sight.”

Refusing to let myself think of the pun version of that phrase, I shook my head. “I don’t believe in that nonsense.”

“Well, after you’ve been around a few hundred years, maybe you will. Tell me, why don’t you drink alcohol? The lack of it in your bloodstream was one of the things that caught my attention.”

“You talk weird.”

“I’m very old.”

“Great. Well, I was – oh, no! Damn, damn and damn! I’m the designated driver! I remember!”

“What do you remember, sweet lady?”

I really wanted him to stop calling me things like that. “I remember leaving the bar to get a sweater from my car – the air-conditioning in that place was ridiculous. I was out with three of my girlfriends…aw, heck. If they – if anything happens to them, I’m blaming you, Rye Bread, or whatever your name is.”

“Ryland.”

“Right.” We had exited the alley several minutes ago and I recognized my surroundings. We were actually heading away from where I’d parked the car, so I turned around, dragging him with me. “This way.”

“Yes, that’s where your vehicle is, but I thought we’d go for a little stroll first."

He knew where my car was? How? “Wait. Where was I when you, uh, when you did whatever the hell it is you do?”

“I followed you from the bar. You were about to open your car door.”

“And?”

“And I approached you, spoke compulsion into your ear, and you went with me into the alley.” He didn’t sound even a tiny bit apologetic.

I caught myself about to say, “You suck,” and changed it to, “You’re a creep. You know that?”

“Yes, I suppose I am by your standards.”

“You know nothing about my standards!” I disentangled my arm from his and stormed away, determined to get to my car and home without further interference from Mr. Undead.

“Of course I do,” he said calmly, standing a foot in front of me again and stopping my progress abruptly. “I was like you once.”

“What – alive?”

“Yes. Alive and human. I haven’t forgotten everything about it.”

“Goody for you. Get out of my way, please.” I pushed past him. He was not going to get his way. He had already done that once.

When I reached the car, he was leaning back against it, arms crossed, staring up at the night sky with a beatific smile on his magnificent features. I decided I hated him.

“If you’ll tell me your name, I’ll leave you alone.”

I took out my keys. “For how long?”

“At least a week.”

“Ha. I doubt that.”

“I could just break into your car and check your registration. Of course, I’d have to damage something in the process.”

“Why are you such a bully?”

“Because I can be. What’s your name?”

I wasn’t ready to give in. “Miranda.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yup. And that’s all you’re going to get. Remember – you assaulted me. Hell, you murdered me! And now you want me to tell you my name like we’d met on the dance floor?”

“Well, if you consider that life is a dance, we really did.”

I stared at him for a few seconds, then said, “That, Ryland, is worthy of a kick in the shins.”

“How violent you are!”

“Me?! You killed me, remember?” Outrage is hardly an adequate word to describe what I was experiencing right then.

“You’re very stubborn.”

“I am, indeed.”

“So am I. What’s your name? I promise you, I’ll give you no peace until you tell me.”

“Oh, and you will give me peace if I do?”

“Yes.”

I unlocked the door and opened it. “Eleana,” I spat. “My name is Eleana.” Hope you choke on it, too, I added silently as I got into the car. I didn’t check to see what he was doing when I started the engine, but took off into what was left of the night, hoping the whole sunlight thing was only a myth. Since I arrived at my house several minutes after the sun was up and didn’t burn to a crisp, I had to conclude that it was.

But that didn’t change the fact that I was, inexplicably, undeniably, a new-born vampire. Crap.

Ryland hadn’t lied. He left me alone, as promised, and as promised, the hunger had grown worse. By the third day my need for blood was so desperate, I found myself looking for stray mosquitos. In this