“I’m guessing Dr. Hudson was mad about not being able to complete his ‘research’ on us. Remember, Jane busted in before he could expose us to UV rays? Maybe this is his way of finding out once and for all how we react to sunlight,” I said.
“I am going to find that man. And then I’m going to shove a stake up his—”
Grunting, I pushed with my feet again. “I got it, I got it. More pushing, less anatomical threats.”
In the distance, the purple of the sky was giving way to orange, and I could feel the warmth of the sun coming over the horizon. It wasn’t unpleasant, really. And sort of a refreshing change of pace from the constant nighttime cycle we’d been through over the last few months. Though the fact that I almost welcomed the sunrise was a little concerning, in terms of my frame of mind.
“One more time,” I told Ben.
He nodded, and we braced our feet against the door. I linked my fingers with his, as if I could gather some extra vampire mojo just by touching him, and then we pushed with all of the strength in our legs. The door buckled, and the box frame twisted, giving us enough room to slide out. Ben gently pushed me through the opening, cupping his hand over my head so I didn’t smack it against the frame.
When he was out, too, I turned and saw that the padlock was still intact. Goddamn Master Locks. Growling, Ben kicked at the cage. It didn’t budge. I brushed the dirt from around the bottom of the cage and saw that posts on each corner had been buried to stabilize it. And the stamp on the bottom bar of the cage read “Titanium alloy—Made in the USA.” Dr. Hudson had put quite a bit of planning into this crazy vampire trap.
“We’ve got maybe five minutes before sunrise, and we’re in possibly the largest tree-free space in western Kentucky. These tobacco leaves are nice but not wide enough to shade us all day as we lie here unconscious. And on fire.”
“Fair enough,” Ben said. He grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the distant tree line. It was only a mile or two away but seemed to be moving farther from us with every step. There was something wrong with my legs. I couldn’t move fast enough. And the more the sun peeked over the horizon, the slower I moved. It was that same moving-through-Jell-O sensation I’d experienced my first morning at Jane’s house. And add to that, we’d just busted our way out of a metal death box, so our muscles were tired.
“What’s wrong with my legs?” Ben moaned. “I feel so weak and tired. I feel like my dad after Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Fight it,” I told him, dragging him along. The sun was coming up. The sky was a beautiful coral, and I could feel the beginnings of warmth on my face. I couldn’t help but think that if I had to die, at least I would see those colors, I would feel that warmth, and I wasn’t alone. Ben’s fingers were laced through mine, and it felt right to be linked to him in this way when it could all be gone in a few moments.
We skidded to a stop, still too far from the trees to dive to safety. The top curve of the sun was visible, a beautiful, glowing, golden orb peeking over the edge of the world. It was like standing on a cliff, waiting to fall off, knowing this would be my last moment alive.
Ben yanked me close, cupping my face in his hands, and crushed his mouth to mine. I sobbed into his kiss, holding him tightly against me. I threaded my fingers through his hair, trying to memorize the silky sensation against my skin. If I was going to die, this was the last thing I wanted to feel. Ben’s arms around me, anchoring me to him.
That warm light washed over my face, and I braced myself for the pain.
Nothing.
The eyes I’d squeezed shut slowly opened. And Ben was standing in front of me, whole and perfect.
“Why are we not on fire?” I asked him.
Ben shook his head, but before he could answer, his eyes rolled back, and he passed out. He landed in the dirt with a thud, sprawling over a couple of crushed tobacco plants.
“Huh,” I mumbled, before toppling over and landing facedown on his chest.
If this was death—real, final death—it wasn’t so bad. It was dark and cool, and I could smell freshly mown grass and Ben’s spicy cologne.
I opened my eyes to see an expanse of stars above me, brilliant little pinpricks of light against velvety blue. I was tucked into Ben’s side, my face buried against his chest. His hands were curving around my ass, squeezing lightly, which led me to believe that he was OK. Surely he wouldn’t devote the energy to sleep-groping unless he was a hundred percent.
Probably.
I sat up slowly and looked around. We were still in the tobacco field, which was good . . . right? No one had shown up while we were sleeping to move us to the next level of the Saw killer trap. But we were still in the tobacco field, which meant that Jane didn’t know where we were. That she’d gone to bed at dawn not knowing whether we were safe. And it occurred to me that the idea of causing Jane that sort of worry hurt me.
I would think about what that meant at another time, when I wasn’t pondering how the hell I was going to trek across Half-Moon Hollow to get to Jane’s house. I leaned over Ben, who was still pretty much asleep, and kissed his mouth. He slowly came to life underneath me, moving his hands over my back and moaning softly into my mouth. I nipped his top lip, dragging my teeth across the flesh and sliding my tongue against his.
“We need to get moving,” I told him.
His eyes fluttered open, and he started, like he was still caught in the memory of running from the rising sun. He sat up so quickly I had to roll aside to keep from being head-butted. He covered my body with his and whipped his head around. “What? Why aren’t we little piles of ash?”
“Why are you questioning it? Let’s just be grateful that we’re not little piles of ash,” I teased him. “So we’re not exactly sunproof. We can’t function in sunlight, but we don’t burn. Good for us!”
“It’s kind of like a time-specific narcolepsy,” Ben offered.
“Exactly. And I think we need to get moving before Dr. Hudson and his evil science squad show up to see the results of their experiment.”
“Do we have to leave right now?” he asked, sliding his hands down the cradle of my hips. “We didn’t die. We’re away from the house. This is the quietest, most private place we’ve found in weeks.”
I laughed as Ben bent his head to kiss me. “I’m not going to have sex with you in a tobacco field. That is sad.”
“It’s not exactly the romantic location I had in mind, but . . .” He paused to kiss me again, planting his hand in the dirt above my shoulder so he could arch his hips against mine. Our tongues tangled, all lazy and soft, while his free hand skimmed over my breasts, sliding my shirt ever so slightly up over my belly. I could feel him, hard, between my legs. And we’d been waiting for so long, and I wanted him so much. And if he stopped this time, I might have to test our vulnerability to stakes myself.
OK, fine, I was going to have sex in a tobacco field. It was still less weird than that time I’d made use of a storage closet with Brandon Ross at the haunted house at my high school’s fall carnival. And this time I wouldn’t have anxieties about getting pregnant to the tune of Monster Mash.
Oh, my God, brain, please stop and focus on the kissing.
During my disturbing mental sidetrack, Ben had wriggled my shirt off. His mouth was cool and wet against my neck, and his tongue was doing wondrous little flicks against my jugular. I sighed, dragging my fingers through his hair and pulling at it to keep him there. His hand wandered up to my hips and dragged down my zipper, tracing over a seam that was growing wetter by the second. He applied just a little bit of pressure with his thumb, and I was bowing up off the ground, moaning.
Between those tight little circles and the long, drugging kisses, my orgasm practically sneaked up on me, going from a pleasant throb between my thighs to dropping over the edge, plunging headlong into endless, tingly space in no time at all. It felt different as a vampire. Every sense was
heightened. Every sensation was stronger. And I basically ripped Ben’s pants open as I held on to him and rode out the waves of release.
The button popped off and hit me in the eye, and I didn’t even care. Because I got a look at what had been lurking in Ben’s pants and decided that while Gigi might have ended up with a gorgeous Russian vampire . . . she was an idiot.
But I wasn’t about to bring up Ben’s pretty ex-girlfriend/almost-fiancée right now, because talk about a mood killer.
But honestly, she was an idiot.
What was Ben doing with his fingers now?
I threw a leg over his hips and crouched above him, wrapping my hand around him and dragging my fist up and down. He made this great whimpering noise, clutching at my thighs. His fingernails scraped lightly at my hips, snagging my underwear. As I rubbed my thumb over a particularly sensitive spot, he yanked, and the elastic snapped. The shreds of my underwear fluttered to the dirt.
And while I liked that pair a lot, I couldn’t complain, as he let me guide him inside me, full and thick and . . . warm. It had been so long since I’d felt warm I almost didn’t recognize it. But Ben was warm to me, and I bent to kiss him, to slide my tongue along his lips as he moved inside me. He wrapped his arms around me, pinning me to his chest. I couldn’t seem to get close enough. Nothing seemed like enough. It didn’t satisfy this need thrumming through my whole body.
I could feel my fangs drop, scraping against my bottom lip. I dragged them gently across Ben’s throat, making his hips stutter and his head drop back. He moaned, and his own fangs slid out. He planted his feet in the dirt and rose to meet my thrusts as I traced the line of his jugular with my sharp little double canines and bit down. His hands clutched at my back with crushing force, and I felt his fangs sink into my neck. I expected pain, but instead I felt that delicious coil of pressure between my legs spike.
His blood filled my mouth, cool and sweet and savory all at once. It was every fantastic flavor I’d ever tasted, and it was mine. The more I drew into my mouth, the more Ben drank, and this heavy cord of sensation seemed to drag through me.
This orgasm didn’t catch me off guard. I could feel it building from the tips of my toes, tightening my thighs, making my nipples draw into hard points against his chest. He took one last long drink at my neck, and I yelled, feeling every cell inside me expand and contract in one rippling wave.
Ben shouted nonsense against my neck, slumping to the ground underneath me. I laughed, melting on top of him in a boneless heap.
I wasn’t moving.
For a year.
Eventually, Ben persuaded me that my yearlong-nap plan wasn’t valid, because Dr. Hudson was eventually going to show up. And given his tendency toward neck injections, we didn’t want to be around when that happened.
After shrugging into our clothes (using my hair clip to make an emergency button for Ben’s damaged pants), we stumbled home, coming up with increasingly elaborate plans to hurt Dr. Hudson as we traipsed through the woods. Our best plans involved a jar of honey, a grizzly bear, a rubber duck, and a pair of gardening shears. The walk seemed to take longer with the soreness between my legs, but it was kind of pleasant spending this time with Ben. I was used to boys sliding out of my bed before the sweat dried and promising to text me, which they never did. I’d never had a guy walk me home, his fingers wrapped in mine as we hopped over fallen trees and little creeks.
After we agreed on the honey-bear-duck-shears plan, we talked, just talked, about nothing related to the Council or school or Jane. We didn’t talk about my parents or his, our pasts. We just talked about movies we liked, foods we used to enjoy, which professors we’d loved and which ones we’d created accounts on Rate My Professors just so we could warn people about them. It was nice having the sort of conversation we might have had if we’d stayed human, like a glimpse of an alternate universe where we were just two normal college kids, not the next generation of neovampires who might or might not make it to see the next year, depending on whether Dr. Hudson managed to get the drop on us.
We ran the final mile to River Oaks, as fast as our blood-deprived bodies would allow. I was going to drink a gallon of Faux Type O when we finally got inside. Unfortunately, my plans for a Thanksgiving-style throwdown were interrupted by Jane sweeping across the lawn at top speed and clotheslining both of us into a hug—a hug that ended with the three of us rolling into a sort of Twister people-ball sprawling across the grass.
“Someone’s elbow is lodged in my left boob,” I grumbled. “Ben, is that you?”
“Sadly, no.” Ben’s voice was muffled, because he was facedown in the grass.
“Jane, please move your elbow,” I muttered as we untangled ourselves and sat up, but Jane would not be distracted by my chest pain.
“Don’t ever do that to me again!” she yelled, throwing her arms around us and, frankly, squashing us to her in a damned unreasonable fashion. “Where have you been?”
“Sleeping in an open field,” Ben said sheepishly. He glanced at me. “That sounded less lame in my head.”
“But hey, turns out we don’t burst into flames in the sun, so no harm done,” I added brightly.
Jane spluttered. “You—what—why? What would possess you to do such a thing? And what was your plan if you did happen to burst into flames like every other vampire in existence? Did you think about how it would have affected those of us who live with you and are responsible for you, if something had happened to you? People who care about you? And oh, my God, you’re making me sound like my mother, which is probably the most unforgivable part of all!”
Jane held up both of her hands and took three very deep breaths through her nose. Over her shoulder, I saw Gabriel and Dick come out the front door of River Oaks to watch the proceedings.
“OK, back up,” Jane said. “I’m trying to remain calm, even though I have spent the last sixteen hours or so absolutely terrified for you and worried sick.”
“Wouldn’t you have to be calm in the first place to remain—”
Jane shot me a look that made me shut my mouth immediately.
“So please explain to me how you ended up ‘sleeping in an open field’ instead of, say, calling your foster sire and letting her know that you needed help getting home?” Jane asked.
I sighed. “Dr. Hudson lured us to a secluded floor of the office with misappropriated Post-its. He injected us with what I suspect to be vampire-strength horse tranquilizers and locked us in a wire mesh box out in the middle of a tobacco field. We think it was an experiment to test how sunproof we are, since he didn’t get to complete his initial tests. Also, we’re hoping that it was an experiment and not Dr. Hudson being a raging sociopath.”
Jane’s face drained of what little color it had. “He did what?”
“It’s true,” I said. “I saw him sneak up behind Ben and inject him, right before I went down.”
“Turns out that when the sun comes up, we just sort of drop wherever we are, even if we’re fully exposed. I mean, we’re unconscious, and I imagine that if someone wanted to kill us, they could. But still, we don’t burst into flames, which is fun.” Ben jerked his shoulders.
“Yaaaay for us,” I cheered wanly.
“He locked you in a box and left you for dead?” Jane cried, her eyes bright with unshed tears and hot, seething anger. She threw her arms around us again, squeezing us tightly together. “I’m going to—I can’t think things violent enough to meet my need for bloody vengeance, but I’ll call Ophelia and get some ideas from her.”
And then she launched into a very long, profane rant that eventually dissolved into angry tears.
“Can we just focus on the fact that we found another cool thing that we can do?” I asked.
“No!” Jane sobbed, tucking her face into my neck. “I couldn’t find you. I passed out for the day, not knowing where you were or whether you were safe. I didn’t kno
w if I would ever see you again! I didn’t— You can’t do that to me again, OK?”
I put my arms around Jane and patted her awkwardly. “OK.”
Ben gave me a little “I told you so” smirk, nodding toward our foster sire. I rolled my eyes and continued patting Jane’s back. She sniffed and wiped at her cheeks.
Her voice went from weepy to steely in a matter of seconds. “Listen to me, both of you. You are not to speak to Dr. Hudson again. If you see him, come get me or an undead emergency response team. If you can’t get away from him, keep him monologuing. Evil smart guys love to talk about their brilliance. That will give me time to get to you. With a UERT. I cannot emphasize the UERT part enough. Understood?”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“He is going be fired and disciplined. If he approaches you, he’s doing so at his own peril.” Jane pushed to her feet and took out her cell phone. She dialed angrily, which cracked the screen of her phone.
“Which is going to hurt him more, being fired or being disciplined?” I asked as she stomped toward the house.
“Disciplined,” she growled.
Ben pulled me to my feet, and I finally grasped the sheer number of cars that were parked out in front of Jane’s house—Iris’s bright yellow Dorkmobile, Miranda’s black SUV, Jolene’s minivan, Nola’s sensible sedan. A big truck with a “Clemson Construction” logo on the door rounded out the collection. I guessed that belonged to Sam Clemson, who specialized in undead-friendly home renovations.
Ben and I approached the porch, only to be treated to another sneak-attack hug from Dick and then Gabriel, who threw himself around Dick’s side and wrapped his arms around all three of us.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Dick said, and didn’t add any sort of funny quip or defensive joke. That meant this was serious.
“I’ve never been so happy to see Jane tackle people in our yard,” Gabriel said. “Which happens more than you would think.”