Wisdom: Updated Edition, page 2
She twisted around, leaving behind chunks of her hair in my hand, and I had to take more drastic measures. I slammed her head down onto the floor, pressing her face to the hard wood, and I knelt on her back.
I felt guilty about it because this was a five-year-old kid I was fighting, but it felt a lot more like pinning down a piranha. My main consolation was if Milo and I hadn’t intervened, she definitely would’ve killed Bobby.
“Are you okay?” Milo jumped onto the bed with Bobby, and Bobby nodded but looked quite freaked out.
Daisy kept trying to bite me and clawed at the floor. Her pudgy little fingers bled, but she didn’t seem to notice.
Then all at once, she stopped. She lay perfectly still and silent, just long enough for me to think that I had killed her, and she began crying. Not like a whiny brat that didn’t get their way, but like a scared little kid that had gotten hurt.
I looked to Milo for help, unsure if I should get off her and risk her attacking again.
Within seconds of Daisy crying, Mae appeared in the bedroom.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mae shouted and pushed me off Daisy. It was much harder than she needed to, and I went flying into the wall, cracking my skull on the plaster.
Mae scooped Daisy up off the floor, and she had gone back to looking like an ordinary little girl. She hung limp in Mae’s arms, big wet tears running down her face as she sobbed. Her curls were sticking to damp cheeks, and her fingers hadn’t healed yet.
“She almost ate Bobby!” Milo said, and he held up Bobby’s bleeding arm.
“I don’t care what she was doing!” Mae held Daisy fiercely to her, and she glared at us. “She is only a child!”
“She is not ‘only’ anything,” I countered. “She’s a vampire, and she just attacked someone unprovoked!”
“Oh, she’s just hungry.” Mae brushed it off. “And Bobby is a human. She’s not used to being around them yet.”
“You invited us here and assured us that she was safe!” Milo shouted indignantly.
“What would you have done if she killed Bobby? Or if she kills somebody else?”
Mae shook her head, unwilling to look at any of us. “I’m going to go feed her.” That’s all she had to say on the subject, so she turned and carried Daisy out of the room.
“That was so ridiculous,” I muttered.
Milo inspected the wound on Bobby’s arm, but despite the blood, it was fairly shallow. The intoxicating, sweet scent of him filled the bedroom, and my stomach rumbled. Standing this close to him, smelling him, reminded me that it had been over a week since I had eaten.
It had been months since I’d bitten Bobby, but often times when I was hungry, I found myself craving him in particular. Maybe it was because he was the only human I had drank from directly, or maybe it was because we were friendly before I had fed on him. Either way, I hungered for Bobby’s blood more than any other human.
Milo had not taken it well when I had bitten Bobby before, but it had been necessary for a dire situation. Sharing a human with another vampire was unsettling enough to begin with, because we can get possessive about our food and those we care about. Complicating things further, for weeks afterward, Bobby had followed me around like a puppy. Biting intensified the feelings that were already shared for each other, so what was friendly before became a little overwhelmingly affectionate at times.
Eventually it faded back to something closer to normal, but truthfully, I did feel fonder and more protective of Bobby. Not quite what I felt for my little brother, but something like it.
As Milo looked over Bobby’s wounds, he wrinkled his nose in disgust, smelling Daisy on the bite.
“You need to get it washed up and put a bandage on,” Milo said as he let go of Bobby’s arm.
“Good idea,” Bobby said, and he climbed down off the bed. He glanced down at his pants, splattered with droplets of blood, and sighed. “I’m gonna have to throw these pants out. Dammit! I loved these pants.”
Bobby took the whole “getting attacked by demon-child” thing pretty well, but he actually had been aware of vampires longer than either Milo or I had. He got involved with them when he was eighteen, so he had two more years dealing with this than we did.
Once he went into the bathroom to get cleaned up, I looked over at Milo. “Mae has completely lost her mind with this child vampire thing,” I said in a hushed voice.
Milo went over to a mirror to inspect his healing wounds and to wipe away his blood before it dried. The bite marks on his shoulders and arms were already little more than pinpricks.
“Obviously I know that. Daisy almost killed my boyfriend,” he said. “But what are we gonna do about it? You want me to go kill her?”
I didn’t know what I wanted him to do, but Daisy clearly wasn’t safe. This was the first time anything this extreme had happened since we’d been here, but she was more out of control than any vampire I’d seen.
I didn’t have a good answer, and Milo didn’t seem to want to talk about it. I went back to my room to sulk, since there wasn’t anything better to do. Peter came up a little while later to fix the bedroom door, and he warned us that Bobby shouldn’t be left alone anymore.
I was mad at Mae, so I wanted to spend a long time hiding out in my room, but it was hot and stuffy in there. I had to get fresh air, so I went downstairs, and Daisy sat in the dining room. Coloring books and crayons were spread out all over the round table. Her hair had been tied up with a ribbon, and she had changed into a frilly pink and white sundress.
Her fingers had healed up completely, making it possible for her to hold the crayons as she colored. She sang “Across the Universe” in an angelically perfect voice, and I’m sure that her Beatles repertoire was all Mae’s influence.
It wasn’t that I didn’t understand where Mae was coming from. Daisy had been terminally ill, and if Mae hadn’t turned her, she would’ve died. She was Mae’s great-grandchild, and she was an adorable, sweet girl… when she wasn’t a terrifying demon from hell. She was just much too young to have any impulse control, with a painful demanding hunger and overwhelming power, and she was going to be stuck looking like a perfect five-year-old for the rest of her life with all the limitations of an underdeveloped nervous system and immature emotions.
“Hi, Alice,” Daisy chirped. She kept coloring and didn’t look up at me, but she’d stopped singing. Under the table, I could see her legs swinging back and forth.
“Hey,” I said stiffly. I wasn’t the best at interacting with children, especially ones I had just brutally fought. “Where is Mae?”
“Hanging up laundry on the clothesline. She said I could stay inside if I promised not to go anywhere,” Daisy informed me.
Mae had left her completely unsupervised a few hours after she’d nearly killed us. Awesome.
“Do you wanna color with me?” Daisy looked hopefully at me with her honey-colored eyes. She really was a miniature version of Mae.
“Um, no, that’s okay.” I didn’t want to get invested in an activity with her, but I stepped closer to the table to see what she worked on. She had a My Little Pony color book splayed out next to her, but she drew something on a blank page that I couldn’t decipher. “What’s that you’re doing?”
“I’m making a card for Bobby cause I hurt him.” Daisy held up the paper so I could look at it.
From what I could tell, it appeared to be a poorly drawn pink unicorn with a rainbow behind it. The words “sorry Bobby” were spelled correctly but with letters turned around.
“That’s a really nice card.” I forced a smile at her. “I’m sure he’ll like it.”
“I hope so. I didn’t want to hurt him.” Daisy sounded sad and stared off for a second, then went back to coloring. “I need glitter. Peter says he’s going to get me some the next time he goes to town.”
“That’s pretty nice of him.” I rubbed my arms and noticed the heat didn’t seem to be bothering her that much. But when I was a little kid, the heat never seemed to get to me either.
The screen door slammed shut behind me, and Mae came into the kitchen. She smiled tightly, so I figured she hadn’t forgiven me yet. Which made sense because I’d done nothing that I needed to be forgiven for. I subdued Daisy the only way I knew how in order to save Bobby’s life, and she hadn’t really been hurt. She couldn’t really be hurt.
“Daisy told me you were hanging up laundry,” I said.
“I like the way the fresh air makes the clothes smell,” Mae replied, her British accent sounding colder than normal. She wore her loose curls in a bun, and sweat dampened her sundress. She brushed past me and went over to Daisy, admiring her pictures and giving her a kiss on the top of her head. “That’s a beautiful card, love.”
“Thanks.” Daisy grinned up at her. “Alice says that Bobby will really like it.”
“I’m sure he will.” Mae glanced up at me, and some of her anger dissolved. She sat down in a chair next to Daisy and colored a picture of her own. “Daisy ate and took a nap, and she’s been coloring just fine all evening. She’s fine when she eats.”
“I’m sure she is.” I couldn’t really argue with Mae. What could I say while Daisy was right there coloring? So I changed the subject. “Have you heard anything about the air conditioning?”
Mae shook her head. “But it’s cooled off since the sun went down. Outside, it’s not that bad at all.” She looked up at me. “Peter’s sitting out there.”
Since coming here, I’d tried to spend very little time alone with him. But the heat was still stifling inside the house, and I could really use a break, so I went outside.
The one thing I would say about the outback is that the stars were amazing. Without all the light pollution from the city, they twinkled above me like nothing I had ever seen.
I stepped down off the front porch to get a better look at them. It really was much cooler out here, so I let the night enchant me for a moment. I heard a sound to my left and looked over to see Peter sitting on the end of the porch, his legs dangling over the edge.
“The sky is really brilliant,” I said.
“It is,” Peter agreed. “It’s not something I’ve gotten accustomed to yet. I’ve spent too much time in the city.”
I took the few steps over to join him. “Is that why you came out here?”
“You know why I came out here,” Peter answered quietly, and he kept staring up at the sky. His face was impossible to read, the way it always was.
Shortly before he left, Peter had confessed his love for me, but I couldn’t reciprocate. Well, maybe parts of me could, but I refused to. Not when I had Jack, and I loved him. Then everything had happened with Mae and Daisy, and Peter had seen his chance to escape from me. Again.
“But you like it out here, right?” I asked, almost willing it to be true. “Away from all the hustle and bustle of the city life?”
Peter sighed. “The weekly flights to Sydney to visit the blood bank are irritating, but the silence and isolation is nice.” He paused, thinking. “I don’t suppose I like it anywhere very much anymore.”
“Was that some kind of dig at me?” I asked.
“Alice, I’m not trying to fight with you.” His eyes glowed green in the darkness, even without any light, and he let out a long breath. “I can’t win with you. I’m either being cruel, or I’m asking too much of you. Whatever I say, it’s never the right thing.”
“You didn’t say anything wrong. I just want to know that you’re happy.” I paused, then went on, “Are you happy?”
“Don’t ask me that,” Peter said gently. “Don’t ask me questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”
“How are Mae and Daisy doing?” I asked, but honestly, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know the answer to that question, either.
“Not well,” he admitted. “Daisy isn’t getting any of her bloodlust under control, and Mae refuses to admit that that’s a problem.”
I stiffened. “Daisy has been doing stuff like today?”
“She’s never around humans, or it would be far worse.” He lowered his voice, in case Mae might be inside listening. “Daisy went after a wallaby or a koala a few nights ago.”
“A wallaby and a koala don’t look anything alike,” I pointed out.
“It was something small and furry and gray-ish.” Peter held his hands about a foot apart to demonstrate the size. “It was a bloody mess by the time I got a hold of it.”
“She killed it? Why?”
“She tried to eat it,” Peter whispered.
“No way. That doesn’t even… I thought animal blood wasn’t edible?”
“It’s not.” He gave me a meaningful look. “She just gets so... irrational and violent and intense when she’s hungry, and she can’t even differentiate animal blood from human. She can’t always tell apart food and inanimate objects. She’s attacked pillows and stuffed animals and a damn tree stump once.”
I had been around animals since I turned. Jack has a dog, Matilda, but I never once wanted to eat her, no matter how hungry I got. Her blood didn’t even smell right. I couldn’t even imagine attacking a pillow or a tree stump.
“Holy hell,” I said under my breath.
“She’s attacked both Mae and me on several occasions,” Peter confessed quietly. “We feed her every day, but it’s not enough. I know she’s only been a vampire for a few months, and she was so young to start with, but...” He paused and licked his lips. “Instead of making progress, I feel like she’s only regressing. Every day she has less control.”
“What’s gonna happen with her?”
“She’s going to live out here forever, and we’re going to hope for the best,” he said. “There’s not much else we can do.”
What had happened today with Bobby wasn’t a fluke, and as cute and innocent as Daisy looked coloring at the table, she was equally as dangerous.
I stood outside with Peter for a while longer, but a tense silence fell over us, and I escaped back into the house. My bedroom was still too warm to sleep in, so I tried to put a fan in my window.
Earlier, Peter had brought a giant old metal box fan up from the basement, and it had to have come with the house. Spider webs clung all over the fan, and when I tried to brush one off, I felt the familiar burning sting of a spider bite. It scurried away, not that I would’ve killed it anyway, and I stared at the red bump on my hand.
“Did a spider get you?” Bobby grimaced and leaned in my doorway.
“Yeah. The damn things are everywhere,” I grumbled.
I went back to trying to get the fan to fit in my window, and Bobby came in and sat down on my bed, as if I’d invited him in. Once I got it wedged enough where I thought it could work, I turned the fan on, and took a step back as dust sputtered out.
“Nice.” Bobby waved his hand in front of his face.
“I had to do something before I died of heatstroke,” I said once the dust explosion settled. The fan seemed to be working, so I shrugged and lay down on the bed. “I am so sick of this heat.”
“Tell me about it.” He leaned back against the wall with his legs crossed underneath him.
His commiserating would’ve been more convincing if he wasn’t wearing purple jeans and a tee shirt. Admittedly, the tee shirt was paper thin, and I could see the black designs of his tattoos through it.
“You’re wearing pants,” I said. “You can’t be that hot.”
“Yeah, but they’re purple pants,” Bobby said as if that made some kind of distinction. “Hence, I’m awesome.”
“Do you even own shorts?” I balled my pillow up under my head so I could look at him more easily when I was lying down. “I don’t think I’ve seen you wear any.”
“Just swim trunks. Shorts aren’t my thing.”
“How does Jack’s wardrobe make you feel?” I asked, smiling sadly at the thought of him. Jack wore Dickies shorts almost every day of the year, regardless of the weather. He was ridiculously fashionable that way.
“It works for him, so more power to him.” Bobby scratched at the bandage on his arm that covered up Daisy’s bite, and he wrinkled his nose. “She bit down right into my nautical star! I bet I have a scar that totally wrecks it.”
Bobby had a sleeve of tattoos that ran all down his arms, but most of them were black and shades of gray. The only one with color was a green nautical star on the back of his arm, and that was the one that Daisy got.
“She bit the back of your arm?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. I don’t even know what she was thinking. All the good veins are on the underside of my arm. It’s like she doesn’t know anything about being a vampire.”
“You need to stop picking at it, though, or it will scar,” I told him, because I didn’t want to think about Daisy anymore, and because it was true.
Bobby continued scratching at it, so I pushed his knee gently with my foot, and he stopped. He leaned back, resting his head on the wall. “Between the spiders and Daisy, this trip is gonna be the death of me.”
“I really wish I hadn’t let Milo talk me into it,” I said in agreement. “What is he doing anyway?”
“Sleeping. He says it’s too hot to sleep during the day,” Bobby said. “He’s probably right. But luckily for me, I never sleep anyway.” Bobby’s insomnia had made him a perfect fit for our lifestyle. “I can’t believe I’m wasting my last week and a half of winter break here. When Milo asked me to go to Australia, I was thinking Sydney hot spots and kangaroos and coral reef diving.”
“I know, right? Mae said they were living off the grid, but I thought we’d at least visit the grid.”
“And just think, you could be wasting your time here and then going to school as soon as we get back,” Bobby teased, but I shook my head. “Oh, come on. You should at least graduate.”
“I didn’t let Milo talk me into going back to high school, and I’m not going to let you,” I told him.
Milo dropped out of school at the beginning of his junior year because of the whole turning into a vampire thing, but he’d gotten it under control enough and could handle going back. He’d enrolled in some swanky private school in Minneapolis to finish out the eleventh grade, and classes started on January twenty-first. The same day, Bobby started the new semester at his art school.
