Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

Ophelia patted my shoulder in what I thought might have been meant as a comforting gesture. “We’ll know if his body doesn’t start to decompose over the next couple of days.”

I blanched, and the disgust at that image was enough to make me feel the most like myself I had since I’d woken. “That’s lovely, Ophelia, thank you.”

“Meagan, you’re a vampire now. You waved good-bye to ‘lovely’ yesterday.”

My hands dropped to my sides. “You keep saying that. I don’t know what you mean.”

Jane and Ophelia exchanged another long look.

“Stop giving each other secret face messages and send actual words in my direction!”

Jane sat on the edge of my hospital bed and leveled me with a serious look. “We don’t know what to tell you, Meagan. We’re flying blind here. I’m not even sure you’re a real vampire.”

What did that mean? Was I some sort of supernatural freak? A vampire-shark hybrid? My knees felt watery, and all that warm Ben blood threatened to come up.

Ophelia grabbed my shoulder and gave me a firm shake. “You will not faint, and you will not throw up. Vampires don’t faint.”

“OK,” I said, nodding frantically as I clapped my hand over my mouth. “OK.”

“Get her out of here,” Jane told Ophelia as she waved the remaining UERT members away.

“Where is ‘here,’ anyway?” I asked.

“We’re in a sublevel beneath the dorm,” Ophelia said.

She led me down a brightly lit white hallway. I saw doors marked “Sunblock Storage” and “Backup Blood Storage.” A UERT officer stood guard at every other door, staring silently as Ophelia took my hand and hustled me past.

“Are those guys always here?” I asked. “Like lurking under our dorm at all times, while we’re sleeping?”

“No. The UERT responds to emergency situations involving vampires. Your human police officers would not be up to the task,” Ophelia murmured. “Don’t say anything more until we’re behind closed doors.”

She yanked open a door marked “Interrogation.” That didn’t sound good.

The room looked comfortable enough, if a little small. It centered around a white laminate table and a couple of padded chairs, and featured lights that didn’t threaten the well-being of my corneas.

Ophelia pointed to the chair across the table. “Sit. Do you need anything else to drink?”

Wordlessly, I shuddered and shook my head.

She sat in the chair across from me.

“I’m really sorry about this, Ophelia. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“Vampires are supposed to take three days to rise, Meagan. Every historical text, every vampire I’ve ever talked to, every hieroglyph etched into cave walls has the same story. You’re bitten, you drink the vampire’s blood, you go to sleep for three days, you rise. You’ve been down for barely twenty-four hours. And it’s possible you turned Ben with just a bite. You are turning everything I know about vampirism on its ear, Meagan, and I don’t appreciate it.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t understand. Other than your unusual method of dying—”

“Humiliating, and let’s never speak of it again,” I said.

“Just wait until you hear Jane’s,” she shot back with a smirk. “This makes no sense. Your turning was textbook. Tina called for a volunteer. One of the vampires stepped up and presented his ID card showing that he was one of the campus’s approved volunteer sires. I was still upstairs, directing the staff through cleanup after the party. Otherwise, I would have turned you without hesitation. I’m sorry about that. I would have been a good sire to you, and I think you would have been more comfortable with someone you knew. Nonetheless, your volunteer sire fed you enough blood that Tina was reasonably satisfied you were going to make the transition. Your sire disappeared into the crowd. Tina says his name was James Marsters, but she didn’t have time to take a scan of his ID. Also, he’s not showing up on any of the school rosters, and we have not been able to contact him for a signature on the Council reports.”

“That’s because James Marsters is the name of the actor who played Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was a fake ID,” I told her.

Ophelia frowned. “Yes, Jane said the same thing. I find myself equally annoyed with him for lying during such a crucial process and annoyed with you for knowing that when I didn’t,” she muttered.

And I laughed, despite the incredibly shitty situation, because I was going to have to start Ophelia on one of those Captain America “pop culture she should have been exposed to by now” notebooks.

“Did my sire have double fangs, too?”

Ophelia shook her head. “He only had to bite you once to drain the little bit of blood you had left. I saw the punctures. They were perfectly normal.”

“What about the morons who were playing Ultimate Frisbee with a forty-five-freaking-pound barbell weight?” I demanded.

“Thrown at vampire strength.” Ophelia shrugged. “They babbled something about needing the extra weight to make the game fair, and then they ran away, like the cowards they are. We’re looking at security footage now to help us identify them for questioning.”

“I cannot believe I died in a tragic Ultimate Frisbee accident. Who dies as an Ultimate Frisbee bystander?”

“Morgan and Keagan have been worried sick,” Ophelia said, ignoring my lame lament. “They’re not happy about the fact that they won’t be allowed to talk to you until your bloodthirst is under control. And they don’t know you’re awake already, which puts an extra wrinkle in things.”

She went on. “They stayed in my room last night and didn’t leave until this afternoon, which is, by the way, the first time I’ve allowed humans in my sleeping space during daylight hours in centuries. They insisted, despite my many, many, many attempts to make them leave. I think they just couldn’t face your side of the room without you in it. They’re still more pleasant roommates than Brianna was, even with the ‘hostage crisis’ element to the situation.”

Morgan and Keagan were my suite mates at New Dawn Residence Hall. I roomed with Morgan, and Keagan had a single next door, specially assigned by the housing office because of “problematic snoring.” She’d tried sleep-apnea masks, nose strips, and those jaw adjusters. But nothing could slow down her buzz-saw sleeping noises.

I hadn’t believed that such an adorable petite person could produce such a hellacious racket, but the first night we all spent in the dorm, I could have sworn Satan was chipping wood in the room next door.