Blood Song

painted

glossy black to match the rubberized strips that served as trim and skid stops on the stairs themselves.

This was the room where Warren Landingham gave his lectures on control ing zombies and ghouls.

It seemed a little strange that while I wasn’t a zombie or ghoul, I’d been strapped onto the slab and put

in restraints.

Oh, shit. I don’t like restraints. I have never liked restraints. I have my reasons—reasons that I won’t

go into with anyone ever again if I have my say. Those memories were magical y blunted, not erased,

and I felt an instant wave of pure, high-octane terror.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to take slow, deep breaths the way I’d been taught. It helped a

little. I can do this. I’m alive. This isn’t the past. This is now. I’m not in too much pain, which means

I’m not in bad shape. When I opened my eyes I wasn’t calm, but I had managed to beat back the panic

for the moment.

There were tubes running from my arm to the medical machinery clicking and beeping to my right. But

I felt fine.

So why restraints? And why no injuries? I felt my stomach tighten as another wave of panic prepared

to hit.

I let myself be distracted by the click of heels on linoleum just outside of my vision. The footsteps

were louder than usual, but I recognized the rhythm of the footfal s. Emma Landingham. As ever, she

was the personification of brisk efficiency. Her clothes didn’t wrinkle or her hose run. Ever. They simply

didn’t dare, any more than her honey-colored hair would ever hope to escape from the tight confines of

its bun. I vaguely remembered hearing voices. Had one of them been Emma? I wasn’t sure. But it

would make sense.

“What’s up?” I tried to speak. The croak I managed wasn’t even close to coherent. I cleared my

throat and tried again. “Emma, what’s going on?”

She turned with a swift movement that was the essence of energy contained. I’ve never seen anyone

alive or dead move like that who wasn’t a gymnast. No surprise there. She’d been one. Emma wasn’t

graceful but was capable of explosive movements: power, energy. And she was beautiful: petite golden

blond perfection, as opposed to Vicki’s tal , dark elegance and Dawna’s exotic beauty. I was definitely

the duckling in our crowd.

“Who are you?” Emma snapped the question out sharply without even bothering to look up from the

readout she was scanning. Gee, glad to see she was worried about me.

“Celia Graves.” The “s” sound in “Celia” sounded … wrong, different from usual. It took me a second

to realize why. I had acquired the barest touch of a lisp. I’d never had a speech impediment. I didn’t

even have an accent. Pure plain American English without any tel tale anything. Not even the highly

mocked but reasonably accurate “Val ey girl” dialect.

I tried to lick my lips and found … fangs. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit—

The words ran through my brain over and over. I found myself gulping in air and had to close my eyes

and forced myself to go back to the breathing exercises. When I’d reached the point where I thought I

could speak normal y, I tried again. “What the fuck is going on, Emma?” I tried to sound tough. Pure

bravado.

Fear produces biological reactions. Fight or flight. Neither was a viable option right now, but I wasn’t

going to convince my nervous system of that. Adrenaline rushed through my veins, clearing away the

last of the cobwebs. My body tensed, poised for action. The metal restraints groaned in response. The

metal … groaned? These restraints were built to withstand a raging zombie without strain. That simple

sound implied a level of strength that sent another wave of panic coursing like ice water through my

veins. A normal human couldn’t put enough pressure against the restraints to do that. Which meant I

wasn’t human anymore.

“Tel me about your family.”

She was testing me, making sure I had memories. Smart girl. If I had fangs I’d not only been bit by a

bat, I’d also been at least partial y changed. Which made no sense. Vampires general y just bite you

and leave you. You either get treated and live, or you die. Once in a very great while a master vamp wil

do the whole bite and spel thing to bring someone over, but it’s a rare bat with the power to do it. So, if I

was a vampire, I should be feral and have no memories. But if I was human, I shouldn’t have the fangs

and superstrength.

Shit. How I answered would be incredibly important, not only to Emma but also to the authorities. If I

was tied down, it was because someone was on the way—someone with an extermination kit. The

sooner I proved to Emma I was stil me, the sooner I could get the damned restraints released. So,

calmly as I could manage, I stated the basics.

“I’m the only surviving daughter of Lana and Charles Graves. My sister Ivy died when she was just a

kid. My mother …” I paused, not sure what to say about my mother that didn’t sound seriously awful.

She’s a drunk with the moral sensibilities of a cat in heat? She’l do anything for a buck? I settled for,

“My mother and I don’t get along, and my father left us. We don’t talk about him.” There, that was

diplomatic enough that even my gran couldn’t object. “My grandmother is stil alive. I love her, but she

enables my mom and keeps trying to turn me into a true believer.”

“Let her loose.” The male voice came from inside the room but out of my line of vision. I didn’t know

who it was, but it wasn’t “El Jefe”—Warren Landingham, Emma’s father—or Kevin, Emma’s brother.

Come to think on it, nobody I knew had a voice like that. If Warren isn’t giving the orders, who is? And

why? Warren wouldn’t defer to anybody wil ingly. Certainly not in his own territory, and not about me.

“My father—,” Emma began to protest.

“Your father is stil at his conference in Chicago. Your brother brought me into this as the best hope

Ms. Graves has to survive with her sanity intact. If you don’t care to fol ow my directions, however, I’l

be glad to leave you on your own.”

I could actual y hear her teeth grinding. Emma doesn’t take orders any better than Warren does, and

she has considerably less of a sense of humor.

“It’s daylight. It could hurt her,” she argued.

The man’s voice was smug. “Her waking early could mean that she is more human than vampire. Or

it could mean that there wil stil be a stronger connection to her attempted sire. They wil both have a

compulsion to find each other. If so, it wil give us a better chance of hunting him down before he finds

Ms. Graves and either kil s her or finishes bringing her over.”

I didn’t like either of those options, but the man was right.

I twisted to the right and strained my neck to get a look at the owner of the voice, but he’d moved