Tate took a long breath. “You’ve wanted to kill me for months. Here’s your chance. Just do it.”
In the next second, Bones’s fangs were sunk deep into Tate’s neck. The machines picked up Tate’s skyrocketing pulse as he gasped, stiffening. Dave gripped my hand and I clenched back, watching as Bones drank the life from my friend with deep, long pulls of his mouth. That pale throat worked over and over as he swallowed. The sounds from the EKG monitor slowed, decreased, and then made only intermittent, brief bleeps when Bones lifted his head.
He licked the spare drops of blood around his mouth before pulling out a blade and making a gouge in his own neck. Then Bones pressed Tate’s lolling head to the wound, keeping the tip of the knife in his neck so it didn’t close.
Tate’s mouth moved, at first feebly lapping at the blood, and then sucking with more vigor. The EEG monitor began to make alarming noises. Bones dropped the knife as Tate, eyes closed, clamped his teeth around his neck and tore at it. Bones held Tate’s head, not flinching as he chomped at him for more. Tate gnashed and sucked as the minutes ticked on, his heartbeat skipping longer and longer in between blips until at last there was…silence.
Bones tore Tate’s mouth free, wrenching it loose and staggering back. The EEG went haywire while the EKG showed a straight flat line on its monitor. A great tremor wracked Tate’s body, rattling the clamps holding him. Then he slumped in his restraints, motionless. Dead, but waiting to rise.
The hours dragged by with painful slowness. Bones sat on the floor of the cell, looking like he was resting, but I knew he wasn’t asleep. Every so often, his gaze would flick over to Tate’s still form. I wondered if he could feel changes in the energy around Tate. Lord knew the EEG could. It hadn’t shut up the whole time. Bones must have wanted to smash it more than once by now, with all the bleeps and squawks it made.
Bones had helped himself to two of the blood bags after Tate—died? Passed out? What was the term for the state Tate was in now, anyway?—even though Bones hated bagged plasma. He’d likened the taste to rotten milk, for an analogy I’d understand when I’d once asked him why he didn’t just eat that instead of biting people. But with what he’d drained into Tate, Bones needed a refill, taste preferences notwithstanding.
Juan yawned. It was after midnight, and so far, we’d done nothing but watch Tate lie there. Still, no one seemed to want to tear their eyes from the screen.
“You can all get some sleep, I’ll buzz you when there’s any change,” I suggested. I was used to being awake late. Being half vampire had its quirks.
Don gave me a tired but firm look. “I think I speak for everyone when I say hell no, I’m staying.”
There were grunts of agreement. I shrugged, defeated, and turned my attention back to the screen.
The only warning I had was Bones standing up. Then, suddenly, Tate’s supine body was a seething mass of motion. His eyes were open, every muscle strained against the clamps, and a howl so unearthly feral it rocked me back in my seat came from the speakers.
“Jesus Christ,” Don muttered, his former slump gone.
Tate’s scream grew impossibly louder. Through the blur from the frenzied scissoring of Tate’s head as he fought against his restraints, I saw his mouth was open…and fangs were clearly visible as he continued to howl like he’d just come straight from hell.
Bones had said new vampires woke up with a burning, mindless thirst. That reality was playing out before my eyes. Tate didn’t seem to be aware of where he was, or even who he was. There was nothing left of him in the gaze that scoured the small room he was trapped in.
Bones had none of my inner panic at seeing my friend in such a condition. He went over to the cooler, drew out a few blood bags, and walked over to Tate.
I couldn’t hear what he said, because Tate’s screams drowned it out, but I saw Bones’s lips move as he dropped one of the bags right onto Tate’s gaping mouth. Nummy, nummy? my frozen mind supplied. Or, Bottoms up?
It didn’t matter. Tate didn’t drink from the bag—he tore at it until his face was covered in red and his snapping jaws made him look more like a great white shark than a man. Bones, unperturbed, plucked the plastic remains from Tate’s face, nimbly avoiding his fingers getting chomped, and then dropped another bag onto Tate’s mouth. It met the same garbage-disposal fate as the first one.
I glanced away, disturbed. That made no sense, because I’d known what to expect, but hearing it and seeing it were two different things. To my right, I also noticed Juan looking away from the screen. He rubbed his temple.
“It’s still him.”
Dave’s voice seemed very soft in the sudden break from Tate’s screams as he slurped. Dave nodded once at the monitor.