That’s what the books said. I didn’t have any reason to doubt them. Or Dad, who said the same thing.
This is rapidly getting out of hand. Dad’s phrase, delivered with a straight face and usually a gun in either hand. What are you going to do next, Dru?
I needed a plan. The trouble was, I didn’t have one.
“I suppose I should get the living room cleaned up,” I said to the quiet. “Wait for him to wake up. Then we’ll see.”
The hollow place inside me wasn’t satisfied by that. Dad was dead. He wasn’t coming back. I was alone in the world, and I’d gotten some kid who had tried to help me bitten by a werwulf. There were other things I had to think about, but I was damned if I could remember them. I felt very small and very alone, sitting there on the stairs.
Racking up the score here, kiddo. I shivered, hugging my knees. The snow was really coming down, wind moaning against the corners of the house. It was 8 a.m. and dark out there, except for the directionless glow between the whirling quarter-size flakes from reflected city light. Gonna need a new back door. Unless you’re blowing town.
I couldn’t blow town. Graves would need someone to explain to him what was going on. And someone had killed Dad.
That was what I’d been trying not to think. I mean, I’d killed Dad. But it hadn’t really been Dad. You can’t make a zombie when someone’s still alive.
You just can’t.
Someone turned him into a zombie. You don’t wake up one morning as one of the reanimated. Someone killed him and turned him into a zombie. He wasn’t in good shape, either. There was a lot of trauma to those tissues—they rot quicker when they’re injured before they die.
I felt like I was in one of those snow globes—you know, where you shake them and the entire inside fills with whirling white. Everything inside still and motionless, surrounded by floating bits of ice. I was trying not to think what I had to think next, and succeeding only in filling my head with static.
I don’t know how long I would have sat there if I hadn’t heard a sharp, surprised half-yell from overhead.
Graves was awake. I hauled myself up and trudged up the stairs, the gun cold and heavy in my hand.
I didn’t want to do what I thought I was going to do.
Tough luck, chickie babe. You have to.
He stopped struggling against the ropes as soon as he saw me. The blankets had rucked up away from his toes. The room was warmer, and sweat plastered his long, dead-black hair to his face.
We stared at each other for a few moments. Then he lifted his chapped fingers—lying on his side, it was about all he could do. His voice was husky, and he said the absolute last thing I’d expect a kid who’d gotten bit by a werwulf and tied to a bed to say.
“Kinky.” He arched one half of his unibrow, his eyes burning green around the holes of his pupils. He didn’t look ready to sprout hair or fangs.
We were coming up on twelve hours since he’d been bit.
“I never figured you for the bondage type,” he continued. “How the hell am I going to piss?”
Smart kid.
The gun was loaded with one in the chamber. I clicked the safety off, praying that the next five minutes would go well. I advanced nervously into the room, giving myself plenty of time. The knots looked like they were holding just fine.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions.” I managed to keep my tone even. “If you give the right answers, I’ll cut the ropes off and we’ll go from there.”
He licked his lips. His eyes flicked between the gun and my face, and he went very still.
Something told me he knew I wasn’t bluffing.
That was great. Because I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t kill him on my bed. I couldn’t shoot someone like that. Sure, I’d shot the werwulf. It had been just like a video game, just like Dad trained me.
But . . . I knew this guy. I couldn’t shoot him. He was human.
He was the closest thing to a friend I had now.
I stood beside my own bed, near our scattered sodden clothes from yesterday. I leveled the gun. “First question. Where did you get your necklace?”
He swallowed. He’d gone ghost-pale. His pulse throbbed frantically in his throat. “Hot Topic, in the mall. You’re not going to shoot me, Dru.”
I wish I was half as sure as you sound. I was nerving myself up for something, that was for goddamn sure. “Do you know what it means?”
“Hell, I just got it because it was on sale. People leave me alone if they think I’m crazy and into that cult shit.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed convulsively. “Christ, you’re not going to shoot me, are you?”
It’s either that or have you tear out my throat. Twelve hours is the limit for werwulf changes. If you haven’t changed by now, there’s only a couple of reasons why. I leaned down a little, bracing the gun in both hands, and put the barrel to his temple. Kept my fingers carefully locked outside the trigger guard, because accidents can happen. “Do you believe in ghosts, Graves?”
He swallowed again. His throat worked. “Shit, I don’t know. Don’t shoot me. Please.” His voice cracked.
If he knew about the Real World, he would have answered differently. Was he lying?
I didn’t want to think so. He hadn’t acted like he knew jackshit about it. So that narrowed down the reasons why he wasn’t getting all hairy.
I swallowed. My throat was as dry as the stuff you drop into water to get fog for parties. Frozen carbon dioxide. It burns like hell and you can use it in swamps to make gator spirits angry. “Answer this question very carefully, kid. Are you a virgin?”