Strange-it didn't really seem to be either day or night.-Maybe there was an eclipse. It was too dim to be daytime, but far too bright for nighttime. She could see the leaves on the maple trees and the gray Spanish moss hanging from the oak trees.
Tiny moths
were fluttering around the moss, and she could see their pale wings.
When she looked at the sky, she got a shock. There was something floating there, a giant round thing that blazed with silvery light. Poppy thought of spaceships, of alien worlds, before she realized the truth.
It was the moon. Just an ordinary full moon. And the reason it looked so big and throbbing with light was that she had night vision. That was why she could see the moths, too.
All her senses were keen. Delicious smells wafted by her, the smells of small burrowing animals and fluttering dainty birds.
On the wind came a tantalizing hint of rabbit.
And she could hear things. Once she whipped her head around as a dog barked right beside her. Then she realized that it was far away, outside the cemetery. It only sounded close.
I'll bet I can run fast, too, she thought. Her legs felt tingly. She wanted to go running out into the lovely, gloriously-scented night, to be one with it. She was part of it now.
James, she said. And the strange thing was that she said it without saying it out loud. It was something she knew how to do without thinking.
James looked up from his shoveling. Hang on, he said the same way. We're almost done, kiddo.
Then you'll teach me to hunt?
He nodded, just slightly. His hair was falling over his forehead and he looked adorably grubby. Poppy felt as if she'd never really seen him before-because
now she was seeing him with new senses. James wasn't just silky brown hair and enigmatic gray eyes and a lithe-muscled body. He was the smell of winter rain and the sound of his predator's heartbeat and the silvery aura of power she could feel around him. She could sense his mind, lean and tiger-tough but somehow gentle and almost wistful at the same time.
We're hunting partners now, she told him eagerly, and he smiled an acknowledgment. But underneath she felt that he was worried. He was either sad or anxious about something, something he was keeping from her.
She couldn't think about it. She didn't feel hungry anymore ...
she felt strange. As if she was having trouble getting enough air.
James and Phillip were shaking out the tarps, unrolling strips of fresh sod to cover the grave. Her grave. Funny she hadn't really thought about that before. She'd been lying in a grave-she ought to feel repulsed or scared.
She didn't. She didn't remember being in there at all-didn't remember anything from the time she'd fallen asleep in her bedroom until she'd woken up with James calling her.
Except a dream ...
"Okay," James said. He was folding up a tarp. "We can go.
How're you feeling?"
"Ummm . . a little weird. I can't get a deep breath."
"Neither can I," Phil said. He was breathing hard and wiping his forehead. "I didn't know grave digging was such hard work."
James gave Poppy a searching look. "Do you think you can make it back to my apartment?"
"Hmm? I guess." Poppy didn't actually know what he was talking about. Make it how? And why should going to his apartment help her to breathe?
"I've got a couple of safe donors there in the building," James said. "I don't really want you out on the streets, and I think you'll make it there okay."
Poppy didn't ask what he meant. She was having trouble thinking clearly.
James wanted her to hide in the backseat of his car. Poppy refused. She needed to sit up front and to feel the night air on her face.
"Okay," James said at last. "But at least sort of cover your face with your arm. I'll drive on back roads. You can't be seen, Poppy."
There didn't seem to be anyone on the streets to see her. The air whipping her cheeks was cool and good, but it didn't help her breathing. No matter how she tried, she couldn't seem to get a proper breath.
I'm hyperventilating, she thought. Her heart was racing, her lips and tongue felt parchment-dry. And still she had the feeling of being air-starved.
What's happening to me?
Then the pain started.
Agonizing seizures in her muscles-like the cramps she used to get when she went out for track in junior high. Vaguely, through the pain, she remembered something the P.E. teacher had said. "The cramps come
when your muscles don't get enough blood. A charley horse is a clump of muscles starving to death."
Oh, it hurt. It hurt. She couldn't even call to James for help, now; all she could do was hang on to the car door and try to breathe. She was whooping and wheezing, but it wasn't any good.
Cramps everywhere-and now she was so dizzy that she saw the world through sparkling lights.
She. was dying. Something had gone terribly wrong. She felt as if she were underwater, trying desperately to claw her way to oxygen-only there was no oxygen.
And then she saw the way.
Or smelled it, actually. The car was stopped at a red light.
Poppy's head and shoulders were out the window by now-and suddenly she caught a whiff of life.
Life. What she needed. She didn't think, she simply acted. With one motion she threw the car door open and plunged out.
She heard Phil's shout behind her and James's shout in her head. She ignored both of them. Nothing mattered except stopping the pain.
She grabbed for the man on the sidewalk the way a drowning swimmer grabs at a rescuer. Instinctively. He was tall and strong for a human. He was wearing a dark sweatsuit and a bomber jacket. His face was stubbly and his skin wasn't exactly clean, but that wasn't important. She wasn't interested in the container, only in the lovely sticky red stuff inside.
This time her strike was perfectly accurate. Her wonderful teeth extended like claws and stabbed into the man's throat.
Puncturing him like one of those old-fashioned bottle openers.
He struggled a little and then went limp.
And then she was drinking, her throat drenched in copper-sweetness. Sheer animal hunger took over as she tapped his veins. The liquid filling her mouth was wild and raw and primal and every swallow gave her new life.
She drank and drank, and felt the pain disappear. In its place was a euphoric lightness. When she paused to breathe, she could feel her lungs swell with cool, blessed air.
She bent to drink again, to suck, lap, tipple. The man had a clear bubbling stream inside him, and she wanted it all.