Garlic Is For Vampires (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 12: "I Need You"

I opened my eyes to the sound of Brendon calling my name. My eyes were barely open, but I think he noticed me struggling to wake up.

"Bree," he said. "Oh my God-your neck." I felt his hand touch my neck and I winced, letting out an audible groan when he touched the spot where Dylan bit me. Dylan was a vampire. And I hadn't thought of him as a suspect because he seemed so human. Because he wasn't the only vampire. What was I thinking? I didn't know what to think. I was delirious from the pain and the loss of blood. I gripped Brendon's forearm and held on tightly. He scooped me up in his arms. I tried opening my eyes again and I was successful. Brendon was holding me, his hands covered in my blood. I reached up with my free hand and clutched the side of my neck, where blood ran through my fingers and down my palm, down my arm.

I heard police sirens outside, and an ambulance. Brendon carried me out of the apartment. I heard some of my neighbors gasp and scream as they saw a detective carry a half-conscious, half-naked, bleeding girl out of her apartment, where only moments earlier were there screams and the sound of a struggle coming from the same room. And gunshots from the detective friend.

When Brendon stepped out of the building and paramedics came running towards us, I saw a face gazing down at me from the roof of the building. Dylan looked down at me with blood dripping from his mouth, and I saw him raise a had only to wag his finger at me. I heard Brendon talking to the paramedic and I pointed upward to the roof. Brendon didn't look and Dylan turned and disappeared.

The paramedics hooked me up and placed me on a gurney. If I weren't bleeding I would've asked for a blanket to cover me since I was pretty much in my bra and panties. Brendon was nice enough to keep his eyes on my face but the paramedics checked for injuries. They found deep scratch marks on the back of my left arm that were red and he said the skin around the scratches was hot. He cleaned the scratches and wrapped my arm in gauze, placing tape over the end of it.

The male paramedic beside me dabbed cotton swabs at my neck, and then he applied pressure on the bite. I winced and shivered. The second paramedic covered me in a blanket and slipped a mask over my face. I blinked and looked up at the light in the ambulance. My hand found Brendon's and I slowly let my eyes close.

I heard someone speak over me now. "How are her vitals?" Then I felt Brendon's hand slip from mine and he was gone. I opened my eyes and saw a doctor and a nurse with the two paramedics looming over me. They ran and hurried me down a bustling hallway. Then we were in a quiet hospital room and I winced when they moved my head. The bite and Dylan's strangling hurt me more than I'd like to admit. The doctor spoke some more medical mumbo-jumbo before I felt his gloved hand pull the cotton back from my neck. I expected him to gasp in surprise to see the two little holes in my neck that had released a lot of blood, but he just said, "these bite marks are bad. His teeth dug in pretty deep."

So it wasn't like two little holes, like the way they showed vampire bites in all those vampire movies? It was like an actual human mouth bit me, and one did, so why was I thinking only the incisors would show up? I was way in over my head right now. The nurse prepared a needle for the doctor and then he began to stitch me up. They thought Dylan was human. That was good and bad. They didn't know what he was capable of but they also wouldn't believe me if I said a vampire nearly killed me. I think. I didn't feel like a vampire, or sick at all. Was I changing? Or was I immune? I hoped I was immune, that'd be really nice.

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"Miss Hawk? Bree?"

I opened my eyes and came face-to-face with a police officer. Not a detective like Brendon. Where was he? I looked around my room, acknowledging the second cop, but no Brendon. Had he gone home? I looked back at the police officer, nodding once. His name was Officer Brennan. He had a notepad in his hand with a pen as well.