swollen and sore, and his vision wasn’t any too clear. But the form that took shape, very slowly, before him, was that of a man, probably no more than a few years older than he was himself, and yet way, way older in some unnamable way.
“I…know you,” he managed to mutter. “I’ve…seen you before.”
“Yes, you have. I pulled you out of the river when you fell in, back when you were ten or eleven. And I dragged you out of the car wreck that killed your parents when you were sixteen, just before it went up in flames. There were countless other times when I helped you out of one scrape or another. None quite this serious, though.”
Seth’s mind was spinning, because all of a sudden he did remember. “How come I didn’t remember—I mean, until now?”
“Because I didn’t want you to.”
The guy hadn’t aged, Seth realized. Of course, he’d been beaten senseless, and his vision was blurry and it was dark, but somehow he didn’t think it was a mistake. The guy looked exactly the same as he had those other times. Dark hair, brooding features, deep-set eyes that almost looked haunted. “Who are you?” he managed to ask.
“Your protector, for lack of a better term.”
“Why?”
“Not by choice, I’ll tell you that much. The rest will have to wait, Seth. You don’t have a lot of time.”
Seth nodded, and it hurt when he moved. “I’m dying, huh?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Your mortal life is ending. There are internal injuries. A ruptured spleen, I think, though I can’t be sure. You’re bleeding inside. It won’t be long.” “I didn’t think it would be over this fast.” Seth tried to look around, but there were only out-of-focus shapes in the darkness now. His vision was narrowing, shrinking inward, so he squinted at the man again. “What is it you want me to do, before I…go?”
“I’m a vampire, Seth. I wish I had time to tell you all that entails. But I can only give you the barest of basics. I’m one of the undead. I live by night, and blood, not food, is my sustenance, though I do not need to kill in order to live. That’s a myth. I never age. I’m powerful, strong, fast. My senses are heightened beyond anything you can imagine, and there are extra ones, as well. All of this can be yours, too, if you choose to become what I am. You need only tell me.”
Seth stared at him and wondered if he was hallucinating.
“The alternative is death, and whatever waits beyond that,” the man went on. “The choice is yours. But you need to make it soon, Seth. You won’t be able to remain conscious much longer.”
And in that moment, everything became crystal-clear to Seth. Everything in his life fell into place, all the pieces interlocking, to form the outline of a jigsaw puzzle. There were still pieces missing, almost the entire inside of the thing. He couldn’t see the design, the picture, only that outline, that form. For the first time he could see its shape, see that it was real. This was the destiny he’d been sensing all his life. This was the first step on the path of the life he was meant to live—the path that was going to lead him to her, at some point along the way. He was sure of it. This was the beginning of something big. And as it turned out, it was something far bigger than even he had ever imagined.
“I want to live,” he said. “I’m supposed to. There’s something I have to do.”
“Is there? And what would that be, Seth?”
The man sounded almost amused. Didn’t matter. Seth knew it was real. “I don’t know all of it yet. There’s a girl—a woman—God, she’s something special.”
“Really?” Amusement was shaded by something far darker now. “She have a name?”
“I don’t know it…yet. But I know I have to find her. And I know there’s more—something major I have to do. So I’d better take you up on this…this vampire thing. ’Cause the alternative is to die, and I’ll never get it done that way.”
“You’ll never get anything done that way. So be it, then,” the vampire replied. And then he leaned over, and even as Seth told himself there would probably be some far less dramatic way to accomplish the thing than the one so common in pop fiction, the man bent closer, tipped Seth’s head back and sank his fangs into Seth’s throat.
He felt them pierce the skin, pop into the vein. There was pain, sharp and somehow good, and then there was the most incredible sense of release—not orgasmic, but more like a pressure cooker suddenly letting off steam. It rushed out of him, this pressure and tension and frailty, and pain, too. It rushed out of him with the blood that was rushing out of him, into the vampire’s hungry mouth.
He tipped his head back farther, willing the stranger to take it all, and he felt his life ebbing away, flowing out of him with every swallow the vampire took. And then the creature lifted his head away, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and lowered Seth to the ground.
Seth’s vision cleared, and he lay there on his back, in that alley full of trash, staring up at the glittering stars far, far away.
“You’re dying now. Just as you begin to do so, Seth, I’ll bring you back. Don’t be afraid. Just relax and let it happen.”
Seth tried to nod, but he sensed that nothing moved. Then, just before it all went black, he glimpsed her. Just for an instant. Her long, thick, copper-red hair hung over one shoulder, and her huge brown eyes pleaded with his in a way they never had before. He saw her more clearly, felt her more clearly, than he ever had. Her eyes were darkly lined, exotic and slanted. Her body was small, lithe but incredibly powerful. She was wild, he sensed, and then he sensed something else. She was caged.
She was begging for someone to help her. For him to help her.
It wasn’t a dream. Not this time. It was real. He was really seeing her, somehow, in his mind. It wasn’t a dream. Everything inside him reached for her, yearned for her, and then everything in him simply stopped. There was darkness, silence, no sense, no feeling, and then…
Bam!
Sensation slammed into him like an electric jolt. He went as rigid as a flat-lining patient when the paddles were applied.
But there were no paddles. There was only a wrist, which he was holding to his mouth with both hands, and from which he was drinking just as greedily as if he were dying of thirst.
He felt beyond feeling.
He sensed beyond belief.
He tasted and saw and heard and smelled a million, million things all at once, and knew them all. Jerking the wrist away from his mouth, pulling his head back, he sat there, blinking, reeling.
“It’ll be all right,” the vampire said. “It takes some time, but you’re going to get used to it.”
Somehow, Seth doubted that. “God, she’s real. I mean, I always knew it, but I doubted—I wondered. But she’s real. She’s so real, and she needs me.”
The man frowned at him. “Who needs you?”
“The girl,” Seth told him. “We have to find her. We have
