Bloodlust

chapter eighteen

-18-

 

Midway through the day, I’m absolutely stir-crazy. There are tons of channels but there is absolutely nothing good on. I’m not in the mood to watch any of the movies that James has either. I look at the closed black curtains. They’re doing a pretty good job of blocking out all the sunlight. I stand up and walk towards the curtain. I pull it open gently and the small ray of light immediately burns my hand. I hiss and pull it away, letting the curtain fall shut again. The pain is horrible and a wave of nausea rolls through me. The sunlight did that? How the hell did James gain immunity to it?

If I’m going to talk to Alex about killing James, and if I want to see my friends, I have a pretty small window of time between when it gets dark and when my friends will have to go to sleep. Not only that, but I have no idea when James will let me out of the apartment, especially unsupervised. If I saw my friends right now, I’d probably forget they were my friends and think they were prey. I groan and look at two people yelling at each other on the soap opera I’m watching.

 This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

 

James comes out of his room around sunset. “James,” I say. He ignores me as he walks to the kitchen. “James,” I repeat but he continues ignoring me. He comes back into the main room and heads towards his bedroom, “James.” I whine.

“What?” he asks clearly annoyed.

“I’m bored from watching TV all day long. There’s nothing to do,” I say.

“So?”

“You’re the one who’s supposed to be responsible for me,” I say.

“Fine,” James snaps, “Do you really want something to do?”

“Yes,” I say quietly.

“Then I’ll get you something to do,” James says as he storms out of the apartment. I sit there in stunned silence and he’s back within a few minutes.

“Here,” he says as he drags a girl about my age inside. “Have at it.”

 Her scent immediately hits me and I’m at her neck in seconds. James hasn’t even closed the door yet and her blood is pulsating into my mouth sending little electric waves of pleasure through me. I moan because her blood is so warm and fresh. I listen as her heartbeat gets faster and faster and it just makes me feel more and more euphoric. She’s my prey and I’m going to kill her. I listen as her heartbeat starts slowing down and I’m so happy that I’m killing her. I’m finally doing what I’m supposed to do. The blood stops flowing and I drop her unceremoniously to the floor.

I feel like I’m floating and that nothing could go wrong. “Thank you,” I tell James as I lick the blood from the side of my mouth.

“What are you going to do with the body?” he asks me, his voice deadly calm.

I just killed someone, but I don’t care. I can’t believe that I don’t care when I just killed someone. I’m actually really giddy because did what I wanted to do. I was successful at my first kill. Is this how James feels when he kills someone? This giddy excitement that makes me want even more. As much as I hate it, the fact that I was successful is almost better than the blood. Is this how it’s going to feel from now on?

I remember that James asked me what to do about the dead body in front of me. “I guess we could burn it,” I suggest as I look at the pale cold corpse in front of us.

James shrugs. “That’s a pretty good idea,” he says. “I’ll put the body in garbage bags and then we can burn it in a dumpster. Putting it in garbage bags is a little less conspicuous.” We stare at the body in silence for a few seconds. The girl’s face is pale and lifeless. There are no marks on her body. “I usually leave the person so they’re barely alive,” James tells me. “They’re so out of it they usually kill themselves by accident or just die on their own.”

“Or you shove them in front of a bus,” I say bitterly, thinking of Christopher.

James glares at me for a second before he grabs the body and walks away. I hear dull thunks coming from the kitchen. I close my eyes, knowing what the noise is but pretending I don’t hear it.

James comes out of the kitchen a few minutes later with three garbage bags. He hands me two. “Don’t try anything,” he growls as he hands me the bags. I follow him out of the apartment silently and hold my breath as we go to James’ car. We toss the bags in the trunk and I don’t take a breath until James and I are both in the car. We drive to the bad side of town to a darkened building; the side where the dumpster is. We get out of the car and James and I toss the body silently into the dumpster.

“You can do the honors,” James says as he hands me lighter and lighter fluid. I nod as I hop up on the side of the dumpster and squirt the lighter fluid over everything. I toss the lighter on top and watch as everything ignites when I hop down. James and I lean on the hood of his car as we watch the flames spread and grow. I don’t feel any guilt for burning the body I killed. I try to make myself feel something. I can’t believe that I feel nothing. She was alive less than an hour ago.

“Congratulations on your first body disposal.” James says as he straightens up. “Let’s go.” We get in the car and the drive back is silent. The walk back up the apartment is even more so.

“I didn’t feel anything,” I say quietly. “The fact that what we were burning was a body.  A body from a person that I killed…I don’t even feel guilty.”

“I feel the same way every time I watch someone die,” James says. “You never feel bad about it. If anything, you feel guilt for not feeling guilty.”

It’s weird but I kind of feel like I’m warming up to James. It’s not his fault that he was turned and feels the way he does. I can tell that he hates the way he feels but I know that we don’t have a choice. It’s the way we are now. As much as we want to care and feel any guilt for what we’ve done, we can’t. The feeling is just gone. It doesn’t exist.

But James probably knew that I knew Christopher; he was stalking me and he had to have seen me with him. If he knew that I was friends with Christopher, why would he kill him?

“What are you thinking about?” James asks me.

“You,” I reply.

“I figured,” he shrugs. “You’re either thinking about me or being a vampire.”

“Well there’s nothing else to really think about.”

“True.”

I sigh and look around the apartment, the place I’ve been trapped for the past few days. “Are you going to keep doing this?” I ask him.

“Keep doing what?”

“Holing up in here all the time and bringing me people to feed on when I get bored.”

“Well do you want to go out tomorrow night?” James asks me.

“Yes,” I say, my instincts already yearning to go outside, planning how to kill and hunt my prey. “Please.”

“Well,” James says, “it’s close to morning, so sleep tonight and then we’ll go out when it gets dark tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“Off to bed then.” We head to our rooms. “What happened to your hand?” he asks when I reach for the doorknob.

“I opened the curtain up yesterday,” I say as I look at the faint burn, “I wanted to see what would happen.”

James comes over and takes my hand, looking at the burn. “It takes awhile to build up an immunity to the sun,” he says. “It’s pretty painful and it’s not fun,” he lets go of my hand, the ghost of a smile on his face.

“How long did it take you?” I ask him.

“A long time,” he says and he looks at me quietly for a few seconds. He grabs my chin and lifts my face closer to his. Our eye contact doesn’t falter as he presses his lips gently to mine. He moves back and he still has that phantom smile on his face. What the hell was that? What the hell did he just do? I watch him as he turns around and opens his door.

“What was that?” I ask him when I can finally speak. He just ignores me but I swear he smirks as he closes his door behind him.

I go to my bed, still confused and I fall asleep almost as soon as I lie down.