Blood & Magic (Book 1)

Chapter 7

It was exactly as I'd feared. The lightly tanned flesh of his arm was marred by a jagged line of torn flesh. It didn't look infected, so at least there was that.

"This really hurt you know." He said it causally. I was pretty sure he was trying to make me feel less guilty. It didn't work.

I shook my head. "I don't understand... I bit a vampire. There was a vampire about to attack me that night. He was covered in dirt and had red eyes and...."

Before I could get more frantic, he cut me off, his voice firm. "And you'd been drugged. I'm not sure what it was that you ingested, but when I saw you on that bench, you looked terrible. I was going to offer you a ride home, or just to sit with you until you felt better. But..."

"But instead I went all Cujo on you."

He laughed. "That's one way to put it. After you bit me, I stood back and kept an eye on you to make sure you were okay. When your friend found you, I waited until she had you in her car before I left the party myself and took care of this." He held up his wrist.

"Really?" I couldn't believe it. I was on that bench between the "attack" and Winnie's "rescue" for what felt like a long time. That meant he spent that entire time lurking in the shadows protectively, instead of tending to his injury. The injury I had caused.

He shrugged. "I swore to my people — our people — that I would watch out for you." He looked thoughtful. "Although, clearly you don't need the help. I think, once you'd attacked me, I wasn't so much looking out for you, as I was the helpless humans wandering around."

"Ha, ha," I said sarcastically. But really, I was grateful. It was a wonder I hadn't attacked Winnie. Why hadn't I attacked her? I voiced my question to Charlie.

He shrugged in reply. "Maybe at the time I approached you, you saw me as a threat, so you hallucinated me into a threat."

I nodded. That kind of made sense. "I guess. I mean, I've known Winnie for years, I probably wouldn't think she was a threat. I've only known you a few days."

I was still trying to process everything when the front door opened. In walked my parents.

My heart pounded in my chest and I just stared at them.

I must have looked like one hell of a mess; mom rushed forward, not even bothering to hang up her coat, and knelt on the floor in front of me.

"Katie? Are you alright?" she asked, grasping my hands, her eyes frantically searching my face.

Dad cautiously made his way into the living area and looked between Charlie and myself.

"Dad, Mom, this is Charlie. He's from school."

Dad nodded curtly. "We know about Charlie."

"You do?" I asked in surprise, struggling up from my lounging position on the couch. I then realized I didn't ask Charlie how much they knew about my history.

"So you know... what I am?" I couldn't bring myself to say the actual words out loud again.

"Oh sweetheart, we wanted to tell you, but we thought we were protecting you by keeping it a secret," Mom cried.

I shook my head. "I'm not even human, wouldn't it have been better to have prepared me for this?"

Until this moment I had simply felt numb, I was absorbing the information Charlie was giving me with little emotional reaction. As soon as I realized that my parents had known all along and never bothered to tell me, all of the emotions that had been locked up erupted like a volcano.