Chapter 2
Fifteen years later
Miami, Florida
What a waste of five years.
Bianca drew a heart around his name, then a huge X.
“I probably shouldn’t have come back to Miami,” she said into the phone pressed to her ear, wishing she could talk to him without the butterflies in her stomach. “I should’ve just sold all dad’s things after he died.”
“I wish you’d told me he died when you left last year. But I’m glad you’re back,” was the smooth reply.“
She rolled her eyes.
“Sorry to hear about your split,” she managed. “She was a nice lady.”
“Thanks. It’s been a bit rough lately for both of us. I could use a friend. I’m sure you could, too.”
Not falling for it this time.
At her silence, he continued.
“If you have time while you’re in town, we could get together for coffee or something.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.
“Might as well. You’re too sweet to get over me,” he teased.
“Just because I dropped at your feet whenever you called for five years doesn’t mean I’ll do it now. It’s been a year since I found out you were married and we split!”
“Hey, I really am free this time. Got the divorce paperwork to prove it.”
She’d pined for him for five years, accepting his excuses of flying around the world for work while he just went across town to his wife. She’d left town a year ago to get away from two heartbreaks: papa’s death and Aaron’s unavailability, only for him to call out of the blue when she just so happened to be in town. She blamed Jonny for that one. He’d always wanted a big brother and idolized Aaron.
A part of her still longed for him, to smell him and feel his skin against hers. She’d fallen for him the day she met him seven years ago. He was her world, but she’d been nothing more than an afterthought, strung along with promises for years.
And now, he could deliver what he’d always promised: a life together.
“I’ll even bring the paperwork with me,” he offered. “Lunch, nothing else. If we still click, we’ll go from there.”
She chewed her lip. By the confidence in his voice, he expected her not only to agree, but to resume her place on his arm.
“Lunch,” she agreed slowly.
“Great! How about a week from Sunday? I’ll send you an email of where and when.”
“Fine.”
She hung up, sick of him and her weakness. She’d sworn off men - especially this one - a year ago! Of all the Jonny’s childhood injuries she’d healed, she couldn’t fix her own heart!
Uncurling from the couch, she started to the bedroom of her father’s small Miami apartment. Jonny stayed after their father’s death while she moved closer to her mom on the west coast. He hadn’t changed a thing, as if expecting papa to come home at any minute. Saddened, she considered calling him to check in when a sudden pounding at the door made her jump.
Aaron!
Her heart soared. She clawed her way into a sweatshirt as she hurried to the door. The pounding didn’t stop until she wrenched it open.
“Kyle?” she asked, looking up at the freaky-looking youth in Goth clothing and multiple facial piercings.
He pushed his way into the small apartment and flung the unusual Miami rain from his clothes.
“Jonny’s not here,” she told him.
The pale, dark haired youth was drenched, but it was the wild look on his face that made her stop in the middle of the foyer and watch him pace with agitated energy.
“You ok?”
“I don’t know,” he said at last and flung himself into a chair, planting his hands against his forehead. “I feel funny, like really cold.”
She was used to the teenage fits of temperament after spending the summer with her newly turned 20 year old brother. She tied her hair back and straightened the sweatshirt, somewhat relieved it hadn’t been Aaron at the door after all.
“You want some cocoa?”
“B, I did something wicked wrong!” Kyle said, following her into the kitchen. “I have to tell you about Jonny.”
“He’s visiting our grandparents. He’ll be back next weekend,” she said. “You wanna call him or something?”
“No, B, he’s … “
Kyle met her gaze, flushing. She leaned against the counter. There was blood on his trenchcoat. It mixed with the rain to drip pink puddles on her ceramic floor.
“Are you hurt?”
“Jonny didn’t go to your grandparents!” Kyle blurted out. “He was seeing this girl, and he told you he was going to go so you didn’t think he’d spent the night with her and … you know … “
“Jonny’s not in Indiana?”
“He’s in trouble, B, and it’s all my fault!”
“In trouble how?”
“His girlfriend is so hot but she’s like a vampire,” Kyle said and ran his hands through his wet hair again.
“Vampire?”
“He went to see her yesterday, and he asked me to stop by and meet all her friends tonight. I went. Fuck … I mean, shoot, B, it was terrible. They really are vampires! They were killing people in front of me, and his girlfriend bit him, and now he’s going to be a vampire. They said - “
“Kyle, are you on drugs?” she asked, baffled by his story.
“No, B, I promise. I’ve been clean as long as Jonny.”
“Jonny’s on drugs?”
“Not anymore. I didn’t want to come here but I know about … he told me - and I never told anyone I swear it - about your healing ability.”
He’d been Jonny’s best friend for ten years, and they’d started the Goth-vampire stage when they got to college. She never thought much of their black clad, piercing decorated vampire girlfriends but couldn’t help being irked that Jonny had told his friend her biggest secret!
“What’re you telling me, that Jonny’s hurt?”
“I think so.”
“You think he’s been eaten by a vampire,” she said.
“Just bit his … actually, it was his arm, right here. She bit him there.”
“Kyle, you’re scaring me. But, whatever. We’ll talk about the drugs later. I’m going to get him.”
“I’m not going back there,” he said resolutely.
She studied him, alarm swirling through her for the first time.
“You’ve been inseparable for ten years,” she said. “What gives?”
“I don’t know, Bianca,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t go either. We should just call the police. They can go. We’ll stay here. You’ll be safe.”
She’d never seen him so upset in all the years she’d known him! She retreated to her bedroom to grab her purse.
“Show me where this party is,” she told him. “You sure you’re not hurt?”
He gripped his forearm in the same spot he’d told her Jonny had been bitten but shook his head. More blood trickled onto her tile. She frowned, uncertain what to think of his story.
She planted her hand on his forehead, coolness flowing through her. His arm was wounded, and something akin to poison ran in his blood. She couldn’t quite understand what the poison was; it wasn’t a normal infection, and yet it couldn’t be anything else.
“You were hurt,” she murmured, pitying her brother’s friend. “And if you tell anyone I can do that, you’ll be in big trouble.”
He stared at her, trailing her out the door.
“I feel strange,” Kyle murmured.
“How far is this party?” she asked, rustling around her handbag. “Oh, wait, don’t shut the - “
The door to the apartment clicked shut, locking automatically.
“I forgot my keys,” she groaned. “You have a car?”
He nodded and led them into the rainy night. His ancient, rusted Camaro was illegally parked in front of the building. She almost scolded him before stopping herself. The kid was upset about something. His body assured her he wasn’t on drugs, and she couldn’t grasp that any normal party would upset the usually jovial young man.
Something was really wrong.
She pushed fast food trash from the passenger seat and sat, giving up on the jammed seatbelt after a few useless tugs.
“B?”
She glanced at him.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“The healing thing.”
She rolled her eyes, irritated that her brother hadn’t taken his promise to her seriously. Of course, if he was on drugs and running around with a vampire chic at parties instead of going to Indiana like he was supposed to, she shouldn’t be surprised he’d spilled the beans.
“I don’t know. It’s just something I do,” she replied.
“Have you ever told anyone? Like a doctor or scientist or something?”
“It’s not your normal conversation starter,” she said with a small laugh. “Hi, I’m Bianca, I have magic voodoo healing powers.”
He smiled, and she gazed at him, wondering when he and her brother had grown from youths into handsome young men. His features were no longer soft, his body filling out. She was so used to her brother that she didn’t notice him grow up, but she saw it in Kyle.
His knuckles were white as he clenched the steering wheel, and his tall body hunched forward.
Her unease grew as they reached a seedy neighborhood outside of Little Havana. It wasn’t somewhere she’d ever venture, even in daylight. There were thugs in the streets, bars on the windows of sagging houses, and cars on blocks.
He continued through the streets and slowed when he reached a dilapidated, boarded up church on a corner. Light strobed through cracks in the boards, and the sidewalks teemed with shady looking characters dressed all in black.
She heard the blaring trance music before she opened the car door and smelled the unmistakable scent of marijuana mixed with incense and body odor.
“Stay here, Kyle,” she said, looking uncertainly at the intimidating scene before her.
“I’ll go get him. Do you know where he is exactly?”
He shook his head and squeezed the steering wheel until one of his fingers popped.
“Here’s my phone. If I’m not back in twenty minutes, go someplace safe and call the police, ok?” she said, placing it on the dashboard. “And I’m leaving my purse.”
“You’ll lose it if you don’t,” he said wisely, accustomed to helping Jonny help her search the house for keys, purses, and anything else she lost.
“Yep,” she agreed. “Wish me luck!”
“Wait!”
“Whatsup, kid?”
He looked at once panicked and guilty. He hesitated, then shook his head.
“Nothing.”
She gave his teenage temper the benefit of the doubt and patted him on the shoulder as she left the car. Her heart quickening, she started towards the entrance of the church. Several of the men in black eyed her.
The interior of the church was packed with bodies writhing to the deafening, throbbing music. At under five and a half feet, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to find her brother among the people around her.
Most of them were men. She didn’t notice until she’d jostled her way into the center of the church. All of them wore eerie red contact lenses. A shiver of alarm went through her, but she gritted her teeth and pressed on, hoping to find her brother fast.
The church was hot and loud, the scents that overwhelmed her outside stifling. She found a chair jammed against the wall and stepped on it to see the crowd.
She didn’t see her brother’s bleached hair and familiar face anywhere in the crowd. She hopped down, oblivious to the attention channeled her way by the red-eyed men around her. Light spilled across the church as a door leading to the chambers in the rear opened.
She made her way to the hallway and breathed more easily at the less crowded space. Men and women lined the halls, most making out. Several of the rooms on either side were open, revealing couples in various stages of undress, a room with junkies shooting up and potheads lighting up, and a room filled with what looked like people sleeping.
She reached the exit at the end of the hall and stopped, puzzled. Jonny hadn’t been there at all. She faced a shorter hallway leading into what may have been a kitchen at one time. Worried that something had happened to her brother in the time between Kyle leaving and her arrival, she crossed her arms and climbed the stairs to the kitchen area.
She froze, Kyle’s words returning to her.
A naked, unconscious woman lay atop the island in the center with five of the men with red eyes chewing on various parts of her body, one on each leg, one on each arm, and one at her neck. She backed away, heart racing.
“What’s this?”
Someone snatched her arms from behind and shoved her into the kitchen. She looked away from the scene, unwilling to believe what she saw was real.
“That’s B.”
“What’s a B?” someone else snickered.
One of the men drinking blood from the naked woman straightened, and she gasped.
“Jonny!”
“Hi B,” he said, eyes glazed and blood running down his chin to his white polo.
“Jonny, what are you doing here?” she demanded, pulling away from the man behind her.
“It’s his initiation day,” the man said.
She faced the speaker and took a step back. He was large and thick with glowing eyes and teeth sharpened into fangs.
“Talon, this is B,” Jonny said in a breathless voice.
“A pleasure, B.”
She took a step back, overwhelmed by the scene before her. She stared at her brother, who seemed unaware of where he was or what he did. Talon looked her up and down in a way that made her skin crawl before he took her arm. He sliced her forearm, watching in satisfaction as it healed before his eyes.
She wrenched away.
“The kid wasn’t lying,” he said. “You and me, babe. This could be fun.”
She turned to run, panic flying through her at the feral look he gave her. He snatched her and half carried, half dragged her through the kitchen’s opposite door. She struggled, but he wrapped his arms around her in a hold she couldn’t break.
“Jonny!” she shouted.
“Do what I say, bitch, and I might not kill him!” the man named Talon snarled.
“The police are on their way! They’ll be - “ she cried.
“Shut the fuck up!”
He shoved open a door to the dark night and carried her to an awaiting car. She planted her legs against the frame of the car.
“Jonny!” she screamed.
Fiery pain tore through her as he stabbed her in the neck.