All Knight Long by John G. Hartness

Author:John G. Hartness
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks Inc.
Published: 2019-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

IN MY EXPERIENCE, there are two ways that newborn vampires wake up: hungry, or hungry and crazy. It’s been a long time since I woke up dead in my crappy little apartment in South Carolina, with my pants around my ankles and my roommate leaning over me, but as far as I recall, I woke up hungry. The first thing I did when I woke up was bite Greg right on his carotid artery, rip through the flesh of his neck, and drain him dry.

The second thing I did was pull up my pants, because when my dead roomie fell on my naked lap, it was a little awkward. Then I started to freak out, because I was covered in blood and Greg, and me sitting half-naked on my sofa, and I was pretty sure I was a vampire.

Then I puked. A lot. Like, everything I’d eaten for several days. Suffice to say I felt like I’d turned myself inside out when I was done. Then I had a dead best friend to deal with, so that was a whole new level of freaking out. The only thing I didn’t do was run screaming out into the morning light, which—while a pretty natural reaction—would have been bad. I’ve always thought that was why there aren’t more vampires. I expect a lot of people wake up dead, freak out, and run out of their house. For about thirty seconds.

Oddly enough, the blood I drank from Greg didn’t come back up. I’ve always just assumed that it was magically absorbed into my bloodstream or something. I try not to think too much about the details of my vampirism. I just accept that it’s magic and move along, until I have to explain the realities of their new life to a fledgling again.

Fledglings like Emily. And that brings me right back to the present, to standing in the Charlotte morgue with a starved twenty-something handcuffed to an autopsy table screaming about her wrists burning. Which they were. The silver-plated handcuffs Bobby used were scorching the crap out of her, but the way she was thrashing around, I wasn’t interested in unlocking her any time soon. Instead, I stepped over to the pull-out drawer where Bobby stores blood and yanked it open. He keeps a half-dozen pints or so on ice in a top drawer, because he knows his boss will never look there. The man is barely five-six and would need a stepladder to see inside. Bobby and I are both almost a foot taller than the Chief Medical Examiner, so we have no problem reaching the stash.

I fished out three pint bags and tossed one to Greg. “Give her this.”

“Why do I have to give it to her?” he asked, looking at the girl straining against the cuffs. Her eyes were completely black, a sure sign that she was both hungry and really pissed off.

“She’s your sister, dude, not mine.”

“Ass,” Greg said, but he stepped up to where Emily thrashed against her bonds and sliced open the top of the blood bag with his pocketknife.

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