“No.”
“Like magic.”
“Magic,” I said very slowly. “Like witchmagic.” Like Aislin’s witch magic?
He slid the plate of eggs across the counter to me. “Maybe, but it could be 485/695
something else. In our world there are a ton of things that would be able to wipe out a person’s ability to feel.” I was just about to take a bite of my eggs, but his words made me drop my fork. “You think they wipedout my emotions.”
“It’s possible, but like I said, there are tons of possibilities. With what you’ve told me, though, I’m starting to think that some kind of magic was involved.” I wasn’t hungry anymore. With all the stomachaches I was getting lately, I wondered if I was getting an ulcer.
“Gemma are you okay? You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “My stomach just feels a little queasy.”
“Food looks that bad, huh?” He joked, trying to lighten the mood.
I summoned a small smile. “No, it looks really good.” I took a bite. It did taste good.
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Laylen scrapped the leftover bits and pieces of egg out of the pan and into the garbage, and then rinsed the pan off in the sink.
“You’re not eating,” I asked, scooping up another forkful of eggs.
He shut off the faucet. “No…I don’t eat.”
“Oh.” I felt so stupid. Of course he didn’t eat. He was a vampire after all. “Gotcha.” I ate my eggs and watched him with curiosity as he wiped down the countertops and stove. If you’d have asked me a day ago whether I would’ve ever thought that I’d be sitting in the kitchen with a vampire, eating eggs, all while trying to unravel the secrets that belonged to a group of people whose mission it was to save the world, I’d have told you no. Then I would’ve run for my life because I’d have thought you were a total psychopath.
“Laylen,” I dragged my fork through my eggs. “Can I ask you a question?” 487/695
He tossed aside the towel he’d been wiping the counters off with and turned to face me. “Sure. What’s up?”
I hoped I wasn’t crossing a line here.
“How exactly did you get turned in to a vampire?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, muscles flexing, and leaned back against the counter, looking confused. “I don’t….I can’t remember.”
“Is that how it normally works?” I shoved another forkful of eggs into my mouth.
He shook his head. “Memory loss isn’t a side effect from getting bit. Something else had to of happened to me…the only thing I can remember about that night is coming out of a club alone and thinking I heard a noise from behind me. When I turned around, everything went black. I’m not sure if I blacked out or what, but when I did come to, I was sprawled out in alley with a bite mark 488/695
on my neck.” He pointed at the immortality mark on his forearm. “And of course this lovely little thing was on my arm. It took me a few days before I figured out I’d been bitten by a vampire. I started getting all of these weird…cravings. But luckily, because I was a Keeper to begin with, the cravings were fairly easy to control.” He made his way around the island and took a seat on a barstool next to mine. “What’s really strange is that I’ve been told by other vampires that the change is supposed to be this big, memorable experience, yet I can’t remember a single thing about it.”
I had a flashback to when Alex had opened up one of shoji doors back at the Black Dungeon, and I’d witnessed the vampire about to bite the seemingly willing man.
My gut instinct told me not to ask, but curiosity got the best of me. “Do humans let vampires bite them?”
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His eyes widened. “Wha—why would you ask that?”
They say curiosity killed the cat. “Because when we were in the Black Dungeon, and Alex and I were running from the Death Walkers, he opened a door and there was a woman vampire getting ready to bite a man.
And the man seemed…well, he seemed really relaxed for someone who was just about to get bit.”
By the look on his face, I could tell I was making him uncomfortable. “Yeah…some people do.”
“Why?” I scrapped the last of my eggs off of my plate. “Wouldn’t that mean they’d turn into a vampire themselves.” He shook his head. “That’s not how it works. They’d have to bite you, and then you’d have to drink their blood. Really, it’s this whole big ordeal. See, and there’s another problem with me turning into a vampire. I 490/695
know I wouldn’t voluntarily drink vampire’s blood.”
“That does seem strange...” About as strange as me not being able to remember the details of my life. Hmmm…are we seeing a connection here? “So when you turned into a vampire, did you have to die or anything?” The reason I’d asked was because in a few of the vampire-themed books I’ve read, the humans who would drink the vampires blood would have to die right after in order to turn into one.
“No, I had to die,” he said charily.
I choked on my eggs, bits and pieces spewing from my mouth and nose. Ewe…so gross. “You died?” I coughed.
“Yeah, but I don’t remember that part either. I just know that I had to die in order to be what I am now,” he said with a matter-of-fact attitude.
I eyed him over, taking note of his pale skin, his extremely red lips, and his 491/695
abnormally bright blue eyes. As bad as this was going to sound, I had to admit, for a dead guy, he looked pretty good.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “So I still don’t get it. Why would someone let a vampire bite them?” He gave a quiet laugh. “You really ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“Sorry,” I said, feeling stupid.
“No, it’s okay.” He took a deep breath, which puzzled me. I mean if he was dead, then why was he breathing? But since he’d just pointed out that I ask a lot of questions, I decided to stick a tack in that one for now.
“Human’s let vampires bite them for a few different reasons. There’s the whole thrill of the danger that being bit brings. Sometimes it’s out of sheer curiosity. But most of the time, people do it to stimulate their…desires” Okay, so I’ve felt embarrassed before, but never absolutely mortified. Wow. It had been awhile since I’d felt the prickle. I could 492/695
feel my face heating up, so I let pieces of my hair drift down across my face.
“Yeah…so anyways,” Laylen said, in an attempt to change the subject and remove the awkward silence that had gripped the air.
“Going back to that prickle thing you were talking about. Do you feel it every time you experience an emotion? Or does it just happen every once and awhile?”
“It only happens when I experience a newemotion,” I told him and then shivered, suddenly feeling cold.
He considered this. “Hmm…I don’t think I’ve heard of anything like that. But seeing as that there are hundreds of different forms of magic out there, there are a lot of things I haven’t heard of.”
“So how can we find out?” I shivered again. It was getting really cold.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you cold?”
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I rubbed my hands up and down my arms. “I’m freezing. Aren’t you?”
“I always run cold.” He glanced around the kitchen, and then he jumped up from the stool and sprinted over to the window.
“What are you looking at?” I stood up and walked over beside him. “Is there something out there?”
“What the—” He jumped back, curse words flying. “How the heck did they find us?”
“What are you…Oh!” I panicked. “The Death Walkers are here!”
He looked at me, his beautiful bright blues eyes flooding with a sea of fear. “Yeah, there right outside.”
Chapter 24
“Shouldn’t we be hiding or something?” I asked Laylen.
After discovering a swarm of Death Walkers marching across the desert toward the house, Laylen had grabbed me by the arm and sprinted down the hall back to the room where Alex and Aislin had transported from. Then he’d started throwing books off of the shelves. What was the purpose of this, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe he was having a momentarily lapse in sanity—too much stress or something. I don’t know But what I did know was that I was freaking out.