Page 16 of Crimson Storm

Shane’s eyebrows lifted and he blew out a long breath. “That’s a lot. What about for just you?”

“I’m not leaving my friends,” I answered immediately. “Why are you even offering to help us escape?”

“This is not what I signed up for. I love my Uncle Terry, and I owe him for taking me in after my parents... well... I owe him. But this is wrong.”

He gestured to indicate our basement prison.

“I’ve tried to talk to him, but he won’t listen. He’s desperate. The doctors have told him he’s got only weeks left to live, if that long. He plans to keep you down here until you’re thirsty enough to give in and do it. And Glenn’s talking about shortening the time frame by threatening to push all of you out into the sun tomorrow morning. He’ll be driving here tonight after he gets off work. I don’tthinkhe’d really daylight you, but I don’t know for sure. Terry wasn’t doing too hot today, and Glenn’s really worried about him. There’s a chance he’ll follow through and decide to start from scratch with some willing vampires.”

“Well if he’s planning to start from scratch, maybe he’ll release us.”

Shane shook his head in a definitive way. “No. He won’t. He’s afraid if you don’t willingly participate, you might identify them to the police and press charges. Kidnapping is still illegal, you know, even kidnapping vampires, thanks to the Accord. I think escape is the only answer. You have to run—tonight. To do that, you’ll need blood.”

I thought about it for a few moments. He was right. These weren’t reasonable men.

No amount of talking would convince them. And I had no interest in sticking around to find out if Glenn would carry out his daylighting plan.

“Okay. You said you had access to some blood?”

Shane nodded. Then he slowly lifted his arm toward me, pushing up his sleeve and exposing the inside of his elbow.

There was a bandage over it, and underneath, a fairly fresh cut.

The blood in that water bottle hadn’t come from a blood bag. It had come from Shane.

I staggered backward, shuddering with a blend of revulsion and unholy temptation. “No. I can’t. I won’t drink from you.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I know I won’t turn from being bitten one time.”

“What makes you say that?”

He shrugged, and another surge of tempting blood warmed his cheek. “I just know, okay? It takes more exposure to the venom than that, so I’m not worried.”

“I still can’t do it.”

“Can’t you just put the vow on hold for a night? I mean, this must qualify as special circumstances, right?”

“It does... but there’s a reason I made that vow.”

I hesitated. There was no way I could explain to this human about my unusual vampire heritage, that I might be able to turn a human with a single bite—or about what had happened with Josiah and how I’d vowed to never let it happen again.

Shane was offering to help us in our hour of need. He was offering his own blood. Maybe he deserved honesty—but I simply couldn’t give it to him.

“For some of us, drinking blood is more than sustenance. It’s... a problem,” I said.

That much was true. I went on with my fabricated excuse.

“You know how some people can drink alcohol or even do drugs recreationally and they don’t become addicted? While others do?”

He nodded. “Yeah. My Uncle Glenn stopped drinking because he said it got to where if he had one drink he’d have fifteen and wake up with no memory of where he’d been or what he’d done the night before.”

“Exactly. Well, blood is like that for some vampires.”

That was also true. Not for me personally, but Ihadmet several recovering blood addicts during my time at the VHA. Kelly was one as well.

It was a plausible reason not to drink from the vein—one Shane could understand.

“Maybe it’s an addiction gene they had while human or something, no one knows,” I said. “But for some vampires it’s addictive. It’s impossible for us to follow a twelve-step program or go to rehab because we can’t avoid drinking blood altogether. We have to have it to survive. It’s literally the only form of nutrition our bodies will accept. We can’t digest food or any other liquid—our bodies absorb the blood we drink directly.”

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