“If I pull that out, you’ll bleed to death.”
“Trust me, I won’t. We have to get out of here before they follow us on foot, and I don’t want to run with a stake in my chest.” I continued to struggle with the splintered wood.
“This is insane! You were just thrown from a car and stabbed in the chest, but you act like you’ve only stubbed your toe.”
The sound of a truck door opening made my heart pound. I grabbed Charlie by the shoulders and in an urgent voice said, “If we don’t get out of here now, we’re both dead. Do you understand? Now rip this thing out of me!”
Charlie grabbed the cross with both hands and pulled while I pushed away from it. Finally it broke free. Blood poured from the open wound, and I cried out and fell to the ground.
“I told you it was a bad idea,” he said and helped me up.
Two figures stepped into the beam of the headlights. A deep, raspy voice called down. “Leave the girl, and you might just live.”
Charlie pressed his torn shirt to my wound.
“You leave your girl, and I’ll leave mine,” he shouted back.
The figures turned to each other. The shorter of the two jumped down the gully at an impossible length.
By this time, my wound had healed, and I no longer felt any pain.
“Let’s go,” I said, grabbing Charlie’s hand. As I turned to run, Charlie bent down and picked up the bloody wood cross. We didn’t make it far before the two vampires appeared before us, blocking our escape.
Charlie stepped in front of me before either of the vampires could speak, holding up the cross like a weapon. Something must’ve happened to his shoulder in the accident, because he flinched at the movement.
“What do you want with us?” he asked. “We don’t want to fight—”
Charlie’s words were cut short by the vampire’s meaty hand, which had closed around his throat. Charlie’s eyes widened when the vampire easily lifted him off of the ground.
I reacted quickly, grabbing the cross from Charlie’s hand and driving it into the vampire’s heart. His shocked expression lasted only a moment before he crumbled lifeless to the ground. Charlie dropped to his feet gasping.
The second vampire lunged for me, but I was ready, my powers having grown even before the car rolled. I raised my hand palm-up in the direction of a tree not far from us and closed my fingers. Its roots let go of their hold on the earth, and when I jerked my hand in a downward motion, the tree crashed upon the charging vampire, barely missing Charlie. The tree limbs pierced through the vampire but just missed his heart.
“Let’s go!” Charlie said, grabbing my hand to run.
We raced up the gully toward the idling truck. I hopped behind the driver’s seat and jammed the clutch into reverse. The truck was clawing its tread into the road before Charlie could close the door.
“I think we’re okay,” Charlie said after we’d driven a few miles. “We’re not being followed.”
I glanced into the rearview mirror. Only darkness reflected back.
“Do you want to tell me what happened back there?” Charlie asked. “How you’re acting like you weren’t just thrown from a car?”
“I’m a fast healer.”
“You might have blood that clots fast but not that fast. Are you using magic?”
Lights from a gas station appeared over a small rise in the road. I pulled into its parking lot and drove behind it. When I stopped the car, I turned to Charlie. “I am a fast healer,” I repeated. “Look.” I pulled down the top of my blood soaked shirt just below the clavicle where the stake had pierced me. “See? There’s nothing there.”
He touched it lightly with his fingers. “How is this possible?”
“I don’t know how else to tell you other than to just come right out and say it, so here it goes: I’m immortal.”
“But how?”
I faced forward out the frosted window. “Boaz.”
“He bit you? But wouldn’t that make you a vampire?”
“I wasn’t bitten. I was injected with his venom, but it had been altered. I received only the immortal part of it, not his power or blood lust.”
“Why would Boaz do that?”
“It’s a long story,” I said and wrapped my arms close to my chest. Even though the heater was on in the truck, I couldn’t get warm.
“I think it’s time I heard it,” Charlie said.
“I do, too.” I took a deep breath and began my story at the beginning, speaking first of my powerful and abusive parents, the pact they’d made with Boaz, the way I’d naively and foolishly fallen for Boaz, how he turned me, and finally I ended on the necklace and how Lucien had saved me.
When I was finished, Charlie stared at me with his mouth open. “And I thought my life was difficult.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. The timing never felt right.”