force is out looking for your daughter. Nine times out of ten, runaway kids show up back at the house. Or at a friend’s house. So my best advice to you is to just go back home and stay put. I bet that all that happened here was that she wanted to bend the rules a bit and go out for a night at a grown-up bar and have a drink, and things got a little out of hand. Maybe she met a guy at the bar. When you guys came, she probably took off, because she felt embarrassed. Go back home, I bet she’ll be waiting for you,” the officer concluded, as if wrapping everything up neatly.
Caitlin shook her head, overwhelmed with frustration.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t know my daughter. Scarlet does not go to bars. And she does not pick up strange men. She came here because she was suffering. She came here because she had nowhere else to go. Because she needed something. She came here because she’s transforming. Don’t you understand? Transforming.”
The officers looked at her as if she were crazy; Caitlin hated that look.
“Transforming?” they repeated, as if she had lost her mind.
Caitlin sighed, desperate.
“If you don’t find her, people out there are going to get hurt.”
The officer frowned.
“Hurt? What are you saying? Has your daughter been hurting people? Is she armed?”
Caitlin shook her head, beyond frustrated. These local cops would never get it; she was just wasting her breath.
“She is unarmed. She has never hurt a soul. But if your men do find her, they will never be able to contain her.”
The police officers gave each other a look, as if concluding that Caitlin was crazy, and then they turned their backs and continued into the next room.
As Caitlin watched them go, she turned and looked back out, through the broken glass into the night.
Scarlet, she thought. Where are you? Come home to me, baby. I love you. I’m sorry. Whatever I did to upset you, I’m sorry. Please come home.
The strangest thing of all of this, Caitlin realized, was that, as she thought of Scarlet out there, alone in the night, she did not feel any fear for Scarlet.
Instead, she felt fear for everybody else.
Chapter Two
Kyle sat in the back of the police car, hands cuffed behind his back, staring at the cage in the cramped cruiser, and feeling unlike he ever had before. Something was changing inside him, he did not know what, but he could feel it bubbling up inside. It reminded him of the time he used heroin, that first rush when the needle touched his skin. This new feeling was like a searing heat, coursing through his veins – and accompanied by a feeling of invincible power. He felt overwhelmed with power, felt like his veins were going to pop from his skin, like his blood was swelling inside him. He felt more powerful than he ever had in his life, the skin prickling on his face and forehead and the back of his neck. The surge of power within him was something he did not understand.
But Kyle did not care; as long as the power was there, he welcomed it. He looked through blurry eyes as the world tinted red, slowly coming back into focus. Behind the cage, he could see two officers.
As the ringing in his ears began to subside, he started to hear their conversation, muted at first.
“This perp’s going away for a long time,” one said to the other.
“Heard he just got out, too. Sucks for him.”
The police started laughing, and the grating sound cut right through Kyle’s head. The cruiser sped down the highway, its lights on, and Kyle became more aware of his surroundings, started to realize where he was. He was on the same Route Nine, heading back toward prison, the place he’d spent the last fifteen years of his life. He was piecing together the night: that bar… that girl… he was about to have his way with her when… something had happened. The little bitch had bit him.
Realization rushed through him like a wave. She had bit him.
Kyle tried to reach up and feel his neck – the two marks there were throbbing – but he was stopped; he realized his hands were cuffed behind his back.
Kyle moved his arms, and to his amazement, he broke the cuffs with no effort. He held up his wrists in wonder, looking at them, shocked by his own strength. Had the cuffs malfunctioned? He looked at them dangling before him, and wondered: How could he have done that?
Kyle reached up and felt the two lumps on his neck, and they burned, as if the bite had entered his veins. He sat there, looking at the dangling cuffs, and he wondered: Did vampires exist? Was it possible?
Kyle grinned wide. It was time to find out.
Kyle took the dangling cuffs and tapped them against the cage before him.
The two cops turned and looked back, and this time they weren’t laughing; now, their faces bore looks of shock. Kyle’s hands were free, his cuffs broken, and he dangled them there, grinning, as he continued to tap on the cage.
“Holy shit,” one officer said to the other. “Didn’t you cuff him, Bill?”
“I did. I’m sure of it. I cuffed him tighter than hell.”
“Not tight enough,” Kyle growled.
One cop reached for his gun, and the other went to slam on the brakes.
But not fast enough. With incredible speed, Kyle reached out, tore the metal grate off as if it were a toothpick, and dove into the front seat.
Kyle lunged onto the cop in the passenger seat, smacked the gun from his hands, and reached back and elbowed him so hard, he snapped the cop’s neck.
The other cop swerved, and the car reeled across the highway as Kyle reached over, grabbed him by the back of the head, and head-butted him. A crack filled the air as the cop’s blood gushed all over Kyle. With the car careening, Kyle reached out to grab the wheel – but it was too late.
The police cruiser swerved onto the other side of the highway, and horns filled the air as it smashed into an oncoming car.
Kyle went flying through the windshield, head-first, and he landed on the highway, rolling and rolling, as the car flipped and rolled onto its side, too. A car coming toward Kyle screeched its brakes, but not in time – and Kyle felt his chest being crushed as the car ran him over.
The car screeched to a halt as Kyle lay there, breathing hard, and a woman in her thirties got out, screaming, crying, as she ran to Kyle, who lay on his back.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” she said in a rush. “I tried to stop in time. Oh my God. I’ve killed a man! Oh my God!”
The woman was hysterical, kneeling over him, weeping.
Suddenly, Kyle opened his eyes, sat up, and looked at the woman.
Her crying stopped as she stared back at him in shock, eyes wide in the headlights.
Kyle grinned, leaned in, and sank his beautiful ecstatic fangs, growing and growing, into her throat.
It was the greatest feeling of his life.
The
