I was evaluating the overall ick factor of that statement when Zeb Lavelle, my best friend since first grade, strode into my living room.

“Janie, where the hell have you been?”

3

There are many alternatives to drinking human blood, including synthetic blood and animal blood. Warm-blooded animals, such as pigs or cows, are recommended, as reptilian blood tends to be bitter. In order to make synthetic or animal blood more palatable, we suggest microwaving it for thirty-eight seconds at 75-percent power. Dropping a penny into the blood (after microwaving!) also gives it an authentic coppery taste.

—From The Guide for the Newly Undead

“I—”

“Wait,” Zeb said, pulling me off the couch and wrapping me in his long, gangly arms. I could smell traces of aftershave on his skin and French Onion Sun Chips on his breath. I could feel the blood coursing through his veins, see the staccato beat of his pulse at his throat.

Zeb was oblivious to these disturbing developments. “I’m really glad you’re OK…what’s with the pajamas?”

“I—”

“Seriously, where have you been?” he demanded. “I heard about you getting fired on Wednesday, and I came here Wednesday to see how you were doing, but you weren’t here. Did I mention that was on Wednesday? I can understand that you needed a self-pity bender, Jane, but you have to let someone know where you are. I’ve been feeding your psychotic dog for three days. Your mom’s been going nuts, and you know that means she’s been calling me.”

“I—”

“I’ve been able to hold her off from calling the police for this long, but I’ll feel bad if some pajama fetish freak has been keeping you in his basement this whole time.”

“Stop!” I thundered, my voice pitching to a deep smoker’s tenor. The raspy command seemed to settle Zeb down pretty quickly. He dropped to the couch, waiting for my next command. It was the first time in more than twenty years of friendship that he was completely silent and still.

“I’m fine.” I cleared my throat and returned to my normal voice, pushing the words around the strange stretching sensation in my mouth. My teeth felt as if they were growing. “Everything is fine…Wait, you already heard I got fired?”

Emerging from his stupor, Zeb shot me a look both pitiful and withering. Coming from Zeb, it wasn’t that intimidating. Picture Steve Zahn with big brown eyes and less impulse control. “It’s the Hollow, Jane. The whole town knows you got fired.”

“Oh, that’s not good,” I said, sinking next to him.

“Aww, it’s OK,” he said, putting his arm around me again. “I’ve told everybody you were fired because Mrs. Stubblefield was afraid you’d take her job. And that you had proof that she was drinking at her desk.” Zeb grinned, clearly thrilled with his own cleverness.

“Thanks, Zeb.” I nestled into the curve of his neck. He stiffened. This was not a normal move for me. We were in the strictly no-nookie, personal-space-respecting category of platonic friendship.

Just one little nip, a sly voice told me. He’ll barely feel it. Drink your fill. He might even enjoy it. I could picture his veins opening to me, pouring his blood over my lips, like drinking straight from a bottle of Hershey’s syrup. My tongue reached out to trace the path of his jugular.

“Um, Janie, I know you’re upset about your job and everything, but I don’t think this is the way to go,” he said, prying my hands away. Every muscle burned in the grip of my thirst, jumping under the skin. I clutched his shirt, tearing it as I pulled him to me. “I’m sorry, Zeb. I’m just so hungry.”

He laughed, a nervous noise that jangled my nerves. I could smell his fear, a thick tang of adrenaline over the sweat breaking on his lip. My stomach rumbled in response.

Zeb blanched. “How about we order a pizza? My treat?”

I clamped my hands over Zeb’s and pressed him back against the cushions. “Zeb, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”

“Jane!”

I whirled and, I am ashamed to say, hissed as Gabriel threw open my front door. He swept into the room with the slow-motion, flowy-coated elegance you only see in the Matrix movies. Zeb gave a girlish shriek as Gabriel threw me off him and across the room.

“Sleep,” Gabriel told him. Zeb slumped over, and his face melted from blind twitching terror to blissful slumber.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, righting myself from my tumble into the (cold, dark) fireplace. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“It has everything to do with me!” he shouted, so loudly that I felt the echo bouncing around my skull. “I am your sire. I am to guide you through your first days as a vampire. Your first feeding is a rite of passage, a sacrament. It will not be wasted on some hormone-driven frenzy. This is why I wanted you to feed from me.”

“I will not drink it in a house, I will not drink it with a mouse. I will not drink it here or there, I will not drink it anywhere,” I wheezed, hoping I was able to communicate adequate sarcasm through the crippling belly cramps.

“Did you just quote Green Eggs and Ham?”

For future reference, my sire did not appreciate being silently flipped the bird by his panting, twitching protégé.

“Jane,” he said, gripping my shoulders so hard I felt my bones buckle. “My sire sent me out into the world with nothing. I was left in a root cellar to rise alone and ignorant. My thirst was maddening, bottomless. I came upon a couple of sharecroppers sitting on their front porch, enjoying the cool of the evening. I didn’t know how much I could drink. I didn’t realize how fragile they were.”

“You killed them?”

Gabriel nodded. “I didn’t know any better. I wasn’t prepared for what happened. This man is your friend, your closest friend in the entire world. I wouldn’t have you start your life as a vampire with such regrets.”

“But I’m so hungry,” I whined. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt or will feel again,” he said, smiling sadly. “You’re being consumed from the inside out; all you can think of is feeding, filling up that emptiness.

“Let me make it easier for you,” he said. “I’ve fed recently. I can nourish you.”

“That’s what they all say,” I said, slumping to my knees. My throat was closing up. I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t concentrate long enough to remember that I didn’t need to breathe. “Go away. This is too—” His hands were at the base of my head, pressing my mouth to his throat. I groaned, repulsed but still drawn as he dragged his nails across his jugular.

I resisted, but the smell of his skin and of the blood dripping from his wound was like freshly baked brownies. It sounds bizarre, but I’m trying to put it into terms of a smell humans can understand. It was as if I’d been sequestered on a fat farm for three days and someone was waving Godiva under my nose. I wanted Gabriel’s blood. I needed it with the instinctual urgency I’d felt on the side of the road.

It was revolting and compelling. I reached out, tentatively stretching to catch the first falling drops with the tip of my tongue. My teeth ached; that new stretching sensation I realized was my fangs extending. I scraped them across Gabriel’s throat, sinking into the skin. The blood gushed, lukewarm, over my lips. I swear I purred, relaxing into the curve of him. He wrapped my hair around his fist and pulled me closer. I lapped at the wound, lazily nuzzling his cheek. He sighed and rubbed my back, whispering to me.

I had flashes of images. At first, I couldn’t tell whether they were from my head or Gabriel’s. I think they were a mix of both. Gabriel reaching for my hand in the bar, squeezing it. Gabriel walking me to my car and the sad smile he gave me as I drove away from the restaurant. Big Bertha’s taillights in the distance as Gabriel followed me home on that dark stretch of road. Gabriel’s lips moving, telling me everything was going to be all right as I took my last breath. Gabriel watching over me as I slept in his house, reading passages from Emma aloud as he waited for me to rise.

When my stomach was finally filled, I pulled away. Gabriel grumbled a quiet protest. I let the images slosh pleasantly around in my brain as I watched the wounds on his neck close and purple into faint bruises.

“Did that hurt?” I asked, touching a fingertip to the fading mark.

He cupped my face in his hands and wiped at the corners of my mouth with his thumbs. “That wasn’t a pained moan.”

“Oh,” I said, my voice thick and stupid. “Oh.”

“You’re a rather messy eater,” he commented.

“You should see me around barbecue,” I said, yawning. “It gets ugly.”

“Well, I’m afraid I won’t have that pleasure,” he said, resting his chin on the top of my head. I raised my eyebrows, not quite catching the joke.

“Is feeding always like that?” I asked. “So…cozy?”

“No.” He stopped to pluck a pine needle out of my hair. “You set the tone. You needed to be soothed, so you were soothed. With a willing partner, feeding can be as violent, as sexual, as clinical and cold as the vampire wishes. And with a human, the sensations are much more intense. They’re more susceptible to our charms.”

Vampire. There was that word again. And suddenly, I was awkward. I couldn’t decide where to settle my weight. I wondered if I was crushing Gabriel’s arm. I wondered if I had vampire morning breath.

“Is Zeb going to be OK?” I asked, watching my friend snoring happily on my couch. “Before we, um…before, when you said that Zeb was my closest friend in the world. How did you know that?”

“Well, as I said earlier, before you ran out of my home like a crazy woman”—he shot me an arch look—“I told you, you have a very organized mind. If I want a piece of information, I can just pluck it out.”

I grimaced. “So, you read my mind?”

He grinned sheepishly. “No. You tend to ramble a bit when you’ve had too much to drink. You told me about Zeb at the restaurant.”

“That would be your version of humor, I assume?” I asked dryly.

Gabriel actually looked contrite for a second. It passed in favor of a brighter, intrigued expression. “You’re not all that experienced in the sexual arena.”

If this was a sitcom, I would have just spit water all over him.

“I told you that?” I gaped at him. I couldn’t think of a response rude enough, so I moved away under the pretense of checking on Zeb.

Gabriel relaxed against the wall, watching me prowl the room. “No. But I would be able to tell anyway. You smell different from most people. There’s an innocence about you, a freshness. It’s like the difference between cracking a good egg and a bad one.”

“So, I smell like a good, decent egg. Nice.” I stopped in my tracks. “Wait, is this a nice-ish way of telling me we had sex and I was lousy? That’s how you can tell I’m inexperienced? Because, if so, that’s just rude. And what were you doing at Shenanigans? And how did you find me on the road?”

Gabriel looked wounded. “To answer your questions in order: The only body fluid I exchanged with you is blood—”

“That’s very comforting, thank you.”

“The bartender at Shenanigans is a vampire pet. He keeps pints of screened donated blood behind the bar. If you know to order the Tequila Sunrise special, he mixes palatable liquor with a healthy dose of blood.”

“What’s a vampire pet?” I asked, suddenly overwhelmed by a vision of humans on giant hamster wheels.

“A human who is marked and kept by a vampire as a companion and a willing source of blood,” he said. “They often serve as daytime protectors and help the vampire stay in contact with the modern world. It’s a beneficial relationship for both sides.