Pulse. Part 2

"What the h.e.l.l were you thinking..."

"Aaron sent me a before he died. He sent me a note. He said he was in danger. Do you know anything about this danger?"

"Yeah." She wriggled out of his grasp. "It comes in a gla.s.s bottle. Look a you need to leave."

"Vampire Wine was the least of Aaron's problems."

"Vampire Wine?"

"You don't think vampires get by without sucking human blood without some sort of relief?"

"What?"

His face fell. "You didn't know!"

His face fell. "You didn't know!"

"Get. Out."

"My dear lady." He took her hand; she pulled it away.

"Get out of the car. If you want my wallet a take my wallet a and get the h.e.l.l out of my car. I don't know what you've been smoking a or what the h.e.l.l you're on to think attacking me was a good idea a but whatever it is, I want you out. "

"You didn't know..."

"Out!"

"As you wish." He left as soon as he had come a she saw a flash flit across the parking lot and then she was gone. She needed to process this. A vampire? No a that was crazy. Vampires didn't exist. But...her mind flashed back to Stuart, his preternatural flight across the library quadrangle, the way he had vanished, that strange power Jaegar was able to exert over her, his flight across the lot now... Perhaps it made a strange sort of sense. She buried her head in her hands, feeling the tears come again a tears of stress and anger along with pain. She had experienced too many surprises today. She had revoked his invitation. He had no choice but to leave the vehicle. He glowered at her from a distance. Even from fifty feet away he could see the tears running down her face. Seeing her wrapped around her knees, sobbing, he couldn't help but feel pity for her a even wanting to hold her. He shook away the sensation. You're a vampire, he told himself. Don't be "humane."

She was his ticket to power, nothing more.

And yet his powers had failed him that morning? He ignored it.

He had to focus on the mission. Her.

He concentrated hard on her, willing her to forget that he had ever told her anything, wiping her mind clean. He saw her face relax; her eyes brighten with joyful forgetfulness. The tears dried quickly on her eyes as she looked around, confused, wondering how she got into the car. She had forgotten everything.

chapter 3.

Kalina spent that evening trying to piece together the previous day. She had blanked out on two occasions, losing whole chunks of her memory. What had happened?

She couldn't sleep that night, playing the day over and over in her mind. She remembered meeting Stuart, who had vanished as quickly as he had come, and she remembered a mysterious man on the street, and then something had happened in her car to upset her, but she couldn't remember what it was. Too much stress, she reasoned. And she hadn't been sleeping enough, anyway. The nightmares since Aaron's death had been too much to bear. When she arrived at school the next day, she greeted Maeve on the steps. She and Maeve had been best friends for years, through boyfriends and heartaches and broken promises a they had always been there for each other.

"How are you doing?" asked Maeve. "You look like you've been having a rough time. There are bags under your eyes."

"Couldn't sleep," said Kalina. "Bad dreams."

"You should try Diazepam. It's what my mom takes when she can't sleep." Maeve's mother took a lot of medications for a lot of different ailments.

"Justin would never prescribe it. He's paranoid about side effects a he probably had to memorize them all in med school. Yeah a the last thing I need is to be less alert."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm..." Kalina sighed. "I don't know. Had a rough few days. Keep forgetting stuff."

"Since Aaron?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"I hear that happens, sometimes. When people are traumatized."

But she wasn't traumatized. Or at least, she hadn't been. But she couldn't help feeling that something was wrong.

"Maybe I'll go crazy. Like those soldiers coming back from Iraq."

"You're not crazy." Maeve linked her arm through hers. "You're going through a rough time. That's all."

"I hope so," Kalina looked down.

The bell rang, and it was time for history cla.s.s. The crowds of students swarmed the hallway.

"Hey, who's that?" Maeve laughed and turned her head around.

Kalina craned her neck to see a tall, slender male body. He had already pa.s.sed them by a all she could see was the back of his head, his light crop of hazel hair.

"I heard we were getting a transfer," Maeve said. "He's not so bad. Not bad at all." She pursed her lips.

"Yeah, well," said Kalina. "I've had enough of guys for the time being."

"Not for you, silly. For me." Maeve shrugged. "If I could ever get up the nerve..." Maeve was notoriously shy around boys. Kalina could spot a gaggle of girls flocking around the mysterious boy.

"Look at them a like honeybees on a summer's day," she said.

"I could be one of those honeybees," said Maeve, laughing.

"Good luck," said Kalina. "Better you than one of them." Most of the other cheerleaders on the squad cared for little more than the status achieved by hooking up with the latest football player. Besides, she couldn't think about guys right now. She had too much on her plate. What had happened last night? And why couldn't she remember anything?

Lost in her thoughts, she b.u.mped straight into the boy, to the envy of the honeybee contingent, who t.i.ttered and wondered unsubtly why they hadn't thought of such a tactic themselves.

"Kalina!"

She looked up. It was Stuart.

"We keep b.u.mping into each other, I guess." He gave a nervous laugh.

"I guess." She considered him. "Aren't you a little old to be a student."

"I'm eighteen." He looked uncomfortable. "I took some time off a did a couple of years abroad, not-for-credit, doing stuff for the winery. I'm graduating a bit late."

"Abroad, where?"

"China," he said, just a bit too quickly.

She smiled. "I've always wanted to go to China. One of my birth-parents was Chinese."

"Do you speak it?"

"No..." she shrugged. "Never met them. Adopted!" She deflected any follow-up questions. "So, you're the new guy."

"I'm the new guy."

"Hey a can I talk to you for a second?" She took him by the arm and led him away, much to the chagrin of the other girls. When they were out of earshot she continued.

"Hey a what happened last night?"

Stuart opened his mouth to speak, but before he could answer, up sauntered Genie Coltran. She was the head cheerleader on the squad, and Kalina's main rival for a college scholarship. Kalina couldn't help feeling predatory as Genie took his arm.

"I want to show you around," she said. "You have to meet everybody! I'm like your chaperone, okay?"

"That's very kind," said Stuart, straightening his back. "But I think I've found myself a chaperone already."

Genie withdrew. "Suit yourself," she said. "See you in history." She went off to lick her wounds. "See you at cheerleading practice, Kaley. Don't be late!"

Kalina laughed. "You didn't have to do that."

"I've seen it all before," said Stuart. "It's not my thing."

"So, are you going to tell me?"

Stuart flushed. "It's complicated," he said.

"I like complicated." She crossed her arms. She had a feeling that Stuart had something to do with what happened last night, and she wasn't about to let him off the hook until she found out what it was.

"How about I meet you after school?" said Stuart. "We'll talk about it then?"

Something in his inflection made it sound like Stuart was asking her on a date. She blushed, in spite of herself. He had Aaron's voice, Aaron's smile. She remembered when Aaron had first asked her out, using precisely those same words, and warmth flooded the s.p.a.ce between her ribs. It was good to feel that warmth again.

"Okay," she said.

"I'll see you then, Miss Kalina."

"Meet here at three o'clock? My locker's number 204."

"Come by the house at three thirty?" said Stuart. "The Greystone Wineries a you know the building."

She nodded.

chapter 4.

Stuart arrived home moments past three. His vampire abilities were often useful in these minor ways; no sooner had the bell rung that he found a suitably secluded spot in the parking lot from which to fly a moving so quickly that he would have appeared little more than a blur to anyone who saw him. He had been living here for months, ever since he returned after Aaron's death. Although Greystone Wineries had workers working the field and winery, the place seemed so empty without him; the vines withered on the sides of the house, and the light cast eerie shadows over dusty floors. The workers had left for the season, and now even the grapevines were in desperate need of care. He wasn't proud of the place a it hadn't been particularly well-kept. But then again, only Aaron lived in the main house. Their parents Gerard and Marilee Greystone were long dead. Stuart and Jaegar had left years ago, right after their deaths. They'd told outsiders of a father and a mother, of course, and it was so easy for Aaron to use his powers to be convincing a he was the youngest of the vampires, but in many ways perhaps the most skilled at that particular power. He had a puppy-like earnestness that would have convinced listeners even if he hadn't been exercising hypnosis at the same time. But it was only ever Aaron, since that terrible day they did not speak of, since those two graves were dug, that had run the wineries. Stuart didn't really get into the wine itself since Aaron had a winemaker's nose, but when he can, he did help Aaron with sales to the bars and restaurants. And now Aaron was dead. It didn't seem real. Stuart had been alive so long that death had become what happened to other people a to human people a even, at times, to those he had accidentally killed, before he learned to overcome his vampire nature. It had been a struggle; young vampires were no more capable of understanding their actions than men on hallucinogenic drugs. Some, like Stuart, eventually mastered their urges. Some, like Jaegar, chose not to. It was a point of contention between them a it always had been. Stuart argued for a conscience; Jaegar argued from nature.

"Humans kill chickens and cows," he had always said. "And we don't fault them. Humans kill pigs a pigs are very intelligent creatures, and they kill dolphins and tuna fish. And we say it's part of the food chain. Well, Stuart, my dear brother, we're part of the food chain."

"But we don't have to kill humans! Not with Vampire Wine."

"And humans can eat tofu!" Jaegar always laughed it off. "But they don't. At least, not most humans. The sensible ones."

They had disagreed on everything a always had. The only thing that they had ever agreed upon was Aaron. Ever since Aaron's birth they had both loved him. Their father Gerard, their young stepmother Marilee, Jaegar, and Stuart had lived at Greystone Wineries. Then there was Aaron, Marilee's son. He was so young a at first a half-human, half-vampire that could still age from babbling infancy to adolescence. A baby halfvampire a it had frustrated them at first, confused them, brought up human feelings of protection neither was aware of before. For seventeen years, they had watched a creature grow up alongside them a watch his blood circulate, his heartbeat, his organs stretch and grow as he aged. And then his mother turned him.

They couldn't blame her a what mother wants to see her child grow older than her a and Aaron's mother would never look a day older than seventeen, when Gerard turned her.

"It's not natural," she had tried to explain. "A son older than his mother."

But then again, they had never been natural.

Stuart heard a thump from the other room. The p.r.i.c.kly hairs on the back of his neck stood up. There was someone here. Thump. He tightened his hand on the dagger he kept hidden in his belt. He sniffed the air and stalked over to the door to the living room.

"Jaegar," he called, as he opened the door.

"Ah, brother dearest, you're home!" said Jaegar, lightly. He was sitting at his desk with the Greystone Bible in hand. "I'm just catching up on a little light reading; hope you don't mind."

"Not remotely," said Stuart, stiffly.

"I've been finding such interesting things, you know? This book is truly one fascinating piece of work." He continued nonchalantly flipping through the pages.

"Chock full of clues a did you know that?"

"What did you find out?"

"Well, that's my business, isn't it?" said Jaegar, pretending to be hurt. "I did all the research!"

"Just tell me what you know!" Stuart's voice grew louder. "Is it the girl or isn't it?"

"Temper, temper!" said Jaegar. "Really. Let's see."

"'Emeric Greystone. Born 1044. Died 1100. Nice long life. Edward Greystone. Born 1067 died 1110.' Respectable. What ill.u.s.trious ancestors we have!"