Alarm crashes through me, and my heart speeds as the creature flings the table aside, his fingertips stretching into claws. And then he’s right in front of me, having crossed the room in the instant it took me to blink, his hands gripping the front of my sweater. My back against the counter, I want to scream … but I can’t seem to.
“It is beginning.” The man’s expression is wild and strangely ecstatic, those golden eyes probing mine, boring into me and melting my resistance. “The Dark Star rises!”
And then he whirls, letting me go, just like that. Taking off at a sprint, he leaps straight through the broad front window, the thick glass exploding out of its frame; his claws rake the sky as he sails up into the night, rising impossibly, effortlessly.
My veins burn as I watch him finally reach the apex of his jump, backlit by the moon, and begin to arc down again. The buzz under my skin subsides, my heart thumping so hard my ears ring. Adriana says something, but I can’t hear her—pressure is building in my head, shadows squeezing my vision into a pinhole as the vampire disappears from sight behind the buildings across the street.
I take a step, and then the pinhole closes, darkness washing over me as I crash to the floor.
4
When Emergency Medical Services arrives at Sugar Mama’s, I’m awake again, dazed and suffering a splitting headache. Gunnar insists he’s fine, but the woman who got bitten is going into shock—either from a loss of blood, or … you know, shock—so it takes a minute before the paramedics get to me. As they check my pulse and vital statistics, they subject me to a battery of questions, like When’s the last time you ate? Were you bitten? Have you consumed any vampire blood? I do my best to answer, but I’m rattled by the way they have their crucifixes out the whole time, just in case—even though they know I’m not Turning.
The thing is, Turning involves a whole exchange of fluids; a vampire sucks its victim nearly dry, then feeds them back some undead blood before delivering a killing blow. The body is then interred in the earth, where the immortal blood inside it lives on—replicating, reawakening the lifeless tissue, generating new and horrifying attributes. When the brain is reactivated, the creature rises again, crawling from the grave with its memories and personality completely intact. Only now it lives forever and hungers for blood.
If the organic tissues are too compromised before the victim is buried, the change won’t take place—because, as powerful as it is, even vampire blood can’t undo a cremation or reattach a severed head. But even a small amount of it can still heal burns and flesh wounds; it can knit bones and close brain lesions; and it can temporarily imbue an otherwise normal human with heightened sensory perception and increased strength.
Unsurprisingly, this is one of the reasons humans hunt vampires as much or more often than vice versa.
I’m given a clean bill of health only moments before my parents arrive, shaken and frantic, and they hug me so hard I’m tempted to ask the EMTs for painkillers. All the way home, I endure a new round of questions—Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are you okay?—but I’m not sure how to answer, because now I’m starting to wonder … what if I really am the Chosen One?
Hear me out: I know it sounds ridiculous, but why not? For as long as there have been supernatural beasties crawling the Earth, there have been legends about humans called to fight them and protect mankind. The oldest records have been purged of almost everyone but the straight white guys—Beowulf, St. George, King Arthur—while the modern accounts tell of warrior girls and goddesses, gifted with otherworldly powers and fated to play a key role in humanity’s battle against the undead.
But why can’t it be me this time? Why can’t it finally be a gay kid with terrible math scores but a good skin-care regimen? After countless folktales about swaggering jocks and brave, beautiful girls, why shouldn’t it be my turn?
I felt that vampire enter Sugar Mama’s. That strange prickling sensation that pebbled my flesh with goose bumps—the same one I experienced the night I walked Daphne to her car, just before we realized there was something on the neighbor’s roof—it was a warning.
Plenty of legends describe Chosen Ones developing special abilities to aid in their mission: strength and agility, accelerated healing, extrasensory perception … and with the Nexus in play, nothing is too weird or wild to consider. The vivid dreams, these histories I don’t recognize could be the result of some burgeoning power connecting to a mystical record of those who once shared the same calling. We’re linked across centuries, across lifetimes, and now the torch has been passed to me. No wonder Jude did the whole sexy, come-with-me-if-you-want-to-live act; he must know what I am, what I’m soon going to be, and he intends to stop it from happening.
And maybe he’s not the only one. It is beginning. The wild-haired vampire looked at me like he was searching for something, and once he’d found it, he smashed clear through a window to escape. What I can’t understand is why he didn’t just kill me when he clearly had the chance—Jude, too, for that matter. But I’m not exactly planning to look this gift horse in the mouth, either.
I’m also not planning to tell my parents about any of this. Not only will they think I’ve lost my mind, but if I’ve truly been chosen by the powers that be, then I need to keep my identity secret. The same myths that tell of swashbuckling jocks and warrior girls also tell of vengeful monsters and heaping piles of dead loved ones.
* * *
If I have dreams that night, I don’t remember them when I wake up the next morning, my mind still spinning with questions. In the harsh light of day, the thought of being chosen no longer sounds cool. A life of battling monsters is generally a short one—and as far as supernatural gifts go, getting the creeps when vampires are nearby is … kind of disappointing.
School is little more than background noise to my mounting anxiety. Adriana can’t stop talking about last night, asking how I am and if I’m still coming over for dinner, until I want to jump out of my skin. She means well, but my nerves are utterly frayed. All I can think about is getting to the end of the day so I can go back to the art room.
The afternoon I lost time, I didn’t just black out; I went into a trance, or something, and sketched a detailed scene that felt familiar, even if I couldn’t explain why. It was some kind of psychic phenomenon, my dreams taking over, and I need to know what else is hiding in my subconscious and looking for a way out. I want to draw something else to see if it will happen again.
The art room is empty when I arrive, the lights off, and Hope’s dookie sculpture sits abandoned and draped in cloth—and, let’s be honest, it’s never looked better. Fresh watercolors dry on a clothesline strung beneath the ceiling, landscapes and still lifes in cheery colors; and in a corner, facing the wall, stands the easel I was using last Wednesday.
I move toward it, and my heart flutters. If I see that sketch again, the angry crowd and the women in black, will it return my lost memories? Do I want it to? Because there’s always a chance that this little plan will unlock something even worse than a two-hour blackout; that I might end up losing an entire day, or somehow conjuring forth whatever apocalyptic nonsense Jude the Vampire was talking about.