Page 23 of How a Vampire Falls

“There’s a really tall one on wolf land, or so I’ve heard. I’ve never seen it, of course. I think I’ve visited all the rest within a few miles of town.”

“We should visit one.”

Together they leaped rocks and roots, never slowed their pace, and Leslie’s heart felt like a rising balloon. She didn’t have to check her speed with him. She didn’t have to conceal her ease of movement with him. She could be a vampire.

She could be herself.

“Okay, here it is,” she whispered ten feet from the edge, then skidded to a perfect stop as Ryker did the same.

“I was running full out like this the first time I came here.” The words poured out of her like one of the nearby waterfalls. “I wanted you to experience it the same way I did. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

For a long moment, she enjoyed the view she had returned to countless times. The sheer drop, the distant mountain slopes, the gently waving treetops far below their feet, and the far slope back up to the road that eventually took drivers away from town and toward the highway. Ryker was so quiet, he must be equally taken with this place. She turned toward him. “So what do you…?”

He stood stiff and motionless. His eyes were too wide, fixed and almost frightening, as if only the predatory part of his nature was looking out of his eyes, instead of the full Ryker. He wasn’t blinking. At all.

“Ryker?”

Nothing. He could have been a wax figure of himself.

“Ryker, what’s wrong?”

She took a step toward him, but his eyes didn’t track her. He continued to stare at the vista in front of them, arms stiff at his sides. He still had not blinked. Leslie set her hand on his arm. No response. What was happening to him? Should she call Mom?

No. No, she had to figure this out for herself. For Ryker.

Leslie slid into the space between him and the ledge. No response. Hoping he would take a step back from the edge, she nudged him with the flat of her hand.

Ryker fell like a tree.

Leslie dropped to her knees beside him. He continued staring, now up at the inky sky. Leslie waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing. She put a hand on his chest and waited for his heart to beat. When she thought it had stopped altogether, that somehow he had justdiedalthough that was scientifically impossible—unless this was one more thing she didn’t know about her own kind?—his heart gave a single thump against her hand.

“Okay, good,” she said as tears welled up. “Ryker, can you hear me? Please come back. Please say something. Please move.”

Nothing.

“Ryker, I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know how to help. Please.”

His heart thumped again. Then, as swiftly as they’d been running, he sprang up and leaped backward five feet into the air. He landed in a crouch over a hundred feet back from the drop. Leslie darted to him in a split second and grabbed hold of his hand.

“Ryker?”

“Sorry,” he said. The velvet of his voice was shredded, and his eyes still looked half-feral. “Crap. I’m sorry, Leslie.”

“For what?”

“Going away like that.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I’d rather not.”

She put an arm around him, unsure how she knew he needed it. He flinched, but he didn’t pull away. “Do you think it’s fairnotto tell me?”

He scrubbed his palm up and down his hair until the style was beyond ruined, dark-blond strands now spiked in every direction. At last he said, “No. It just sucks that this happened now, while…while I’m still trying to prove I’m worth your time.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing the last two days?”

He blinked. Finally. His eyes lost their wide, wild stare. After a few more seconds, he shrugged. “Part of the gig, since I showed up here uninvited.”

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