Blood or Love Ch. 07

Note from author: My apologies for such a long, long time in getting back to this! I could mention things going on in life that contributed to such a delay, but I won't try to make excuses. This ended up being a short chapter while I re-acclimated my mind to the flow of the story. I hope to finish it all soon.

***

Chamey opened his eyes. The room swam in a dizzying pattern before it came into focus.

I'm dead, was his first thought. His second was that he'd missed heaven. Sadness overwhelmed him because he wouldn't get to see his sister.

Then it hit him. This wasn't hell, it was a skeevy motel room. He was alive. He couldn't be sure that was a good thing at the moment.

He tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea forced him back to the mattress. His head hurt, everything seemed to hurt, but he managed to raise his arm, which must have weighed a hundred pounds. He turned it over to see the bloody puncture wounds in his aching wrist.

God, it was like coming awake in the middle of a nightmare. It all came back at once, the fear and pain. The vampire.

*

He hadn't been able to think of that thing as his friend, not when it pressed him down into the mattress and drank his blood. It was a monster, just like the one that attacked Trixie. It bent over him, fangs locked into his wrist, its black animal eyes staring down at him.

"That's ENOUGH!"

Chamey tried to push the vampire away with his free hand, but it didn't budge, and it didn't stop drinking. There was no escape from its iron grip.

Chamey's head slammed back on the pillow. He stared straight up at the ceiling which had been reduced to spots and swirls. Beside him, his hand groped for the NoVamp but couldn't catch hold of it. Inside, his pounding heart stuttered when he realized the can had fallen to the floor.

A sob made its way from his throat. He thought of his friend, and what could have been.

Jack said I'm smart, but I'm not. Why'd I ever think I could make any kind of difference? He hadn't helped his sister years ago, and now he was just as helpless as she'd been on her back, trapped beneath a vampire.

No, not just a vampire–his friend. Jack was still in there somewhere. He had to be.

"Jack," Chamey said, his voice low and hoarse, "stop...please stop."

There was no sign that Jack heard him. He didn't stop drinking and there was no release from that terrible grip.

Disoriented, Chamey's head lolled from side to side. He wondered how much blood was still in his body. At that point, he had no idea how much time had passed and whether Jack had taken just a few swallows or a few pints. He just needed it to be over with.

He gasped a few times. After that the only sounds were his panicked heart and Jack's sucking noises. Soon it was all overtaken by the ringing in his ears.

Chamey closed his eyes once more and thought about Trixie. His last thoughts turned prayerful.

Jack's a good guy and please god, let my blood satisfy the vampire inside him so he doesn't kill anyone else...so he can get himself to...

*

Chamey let his arm flop on the bed. A low groan sounded from his chest as he tried to revive himself.

So tired. Not sleepy, just drained in every way imaginable.

But not entirely without hope, because somehow, Jack had stopped himself from taking too much.

Chamey rolled over on his side and swallowed. He smacked his dry lips together and encountered a metallic taste. Blood.

Panic lit through him. It couldn't be.

Jack wouldn't feed me his own blood. Well, Jack in his right mind wouldn't, but what about the vampire? What did Jack do to me? Turn me? Please god, no.

Panic twisted his insides. He was turning into a ravenous beast, the same thing that killed Trixie!

Except, no way–he'd kill himself before he let that happen.

He rolled over on his face. His teeth pressed against his lower lip, and that's when he felt the cut inside his lip and tasted fresh coppery blood.

Relief flooded him. It was his own blood he'd tasted, not Jack's. He must have bit his lip when Jack was drinking from him.

For a second–just a split second, he was disappointed.

If Jack had vamped me, that would mean he wanted to keep me around....

He let that thought go as quickly as it had come. After all, it wouldn't have been Jack vamping him, but that nasty parasite inside him doing it. Apparently it didn't want Chamey anymore than he wanted it.

A sense of warmth filled him. I'm still here, still alive. It's Jack's doing.

Jack had thought he was losing it but maybe he'd overestimated the speed of his descent.

Somehow he maintained the presence of mind to let me go. He wanted to keep me around.

Chamey enjoyed that thought until the awful truth came once again, that Jack might have vacated his mind by then.

Chamey rolled on his side toward the windows. The plaid curtains were pulled tight, but a glance at the clock showed it was ten after four in the afternoon. He'd slept the whole day?

He sat up and a wave of nausea rolled up his belly. It was either lie there and toss up all that pizza or make a run for the bathroom. He staggered off the bed and into the bathroom where he hung his head over the toilet bowl, just in time.

When he'd done all he could do, he collapsed next to the toilet and rested his forehead on its cold, yellow pedestal.

After a while, he climbed to his feet and gripped the small beige sink, steadying himself. He splashed water over his face and rinsed his mouth out, then drank handful after handful of the funky-smelling water. Nothing had tasted so good in a long time. Maybe forever.

When he flipped on the light and looked in the mirror, he almost didn't recognize the chalky face and bleary eyes staring back at him. Dang, he was sick.

There was no time to waste in bed. Sick or not, he had to find Jack. He had to make sure Jack made it to Forsythe Park and into Dr. Kitcher's vehicle.

You know he didn't make it there.

Chamey didn't want to think about that, but he had to. As fast as Jack's regression was going, he wouldn't be able to tolerate the Georgia sun today. He'd be holed up somewhere. Only question was, where?

Chamey glanced at Jack's bed, startled when he saw a wallet and cell phone on the rumpled bedspread. Why didn't Jack take his stuff?

In his weakened state, Chamey staggered to Jack's bed and collapsed on it. His hand came down on something hard beneath the bedspread. He reached under and pulled out a stake.

Oh yeah, my stake. Chamey had forgotten about it since his crude attempts at sharpening it on the plane. Now it was sharpened to a deadly point.

Chamey turned it around in his hand. Jack must have worked on it during one of my bathroom trips. Or naps, he thought in shame. He hung his head over the side of the bed to see, and sure enough, there were wood shavings scattered on the floor.

Chamey lifted his head and looked at Jack's cell. It was off. The battery must have run out. Discomfort filled his gut when he powered up the phone and saw plenty of charge. The ringer was off and it wasn't on vibrate. A horrible feeling settled inside him.

He checked the call list. There were tons of calls from "Kim" and "Benny" as well as a couple from "Kitcher" and "Lab". Heart pounding, Chamey checked the outgoing call list. Nothing. Not one outgoing call since the day before yesterday.

The dank air of the room weighed inside Chamey's lungs. He drew in several painful breaths and expelled them while his mind tried to accept the truth of what he'd discovered.

Jack lied about calling Kim and Benny. Jack lied. Jack was a liar. A vampire.

Chamey gave the mattress a weak punch. "How could I have been so stupid?" he said through gritted teeth.

Of course Jack had wanted to run free, to run wild in full vampiric power with no worries and no conscience.

Now he was out there, loose, gone in every sense of the word.

Chamey pressed the button to dial Kim. She picked up on the first ring.