Blood Red

Heidi frowned. “Of course I’m going to marry him.”

“I’m glad.”

“When did I say I wasn’t going to marry him?” Heidi pressed.

Stacey, coming to the table with fresh coffee, answered flatly, “Yesterday.”

“Never!” Heidi protested.

Lauren looked at Stacey and then at Heidi. “Uh, yes,” she murmured.

“Tell her. You have to tell her the truth,” Stacey insisted.

Lauren stared at Stacey again. Just what “ truth” was Heidi going to believe?

“You were bitten by a vampire,” Stacey said. “You have to know all this, and you have to get with the program.”

Heidi’s jaw fell. She looked at Lauren accusingly, as if Lauren had forced them to move to a crazy house.

“A vampire?” Heidi demanded. Stacey was quiet. Heidi picked up her coffee cup, and her fingers were shaking. “A vampire,” she repeated tonelessly.

“Yes, actually,” Lauren told her.

“Who’s the vampire?”

“We think you were bitten by a vampire named Stephan,” Lauren told her.

Stacey took a seat at the table and leaned toward Heidi. “Think about it. When you were at the hospital, you let him in. Thankfully, he went after you and didn’t suck the remaining life out of Deanna.”

Again Heidi’s jaw dropped. “You are all stark raving mad,” she said, and started to rise.

Stacey set a hand on Heidi’s arm. “Think hard. Make yourself remember yesterday. Remember Bobby and I coming in. Remember Lauren! Think about going to dinner with Mark and then coming back to the hospital. None of it was a dream. None of it was in your imagination. It was all real.”

Heidi looked pale and uneasy. “All right, yesterday was strange. I’m sure I had a fever. Maybe a bit of whatever made Deanna so sick.”

Lauren started to reply, but she didn’t get a chance to. Stacey had decided there was going to be nothing gentle about getting Heidi to see the real picture and kept going.

“You bet it’s the same thing. Deanna would have died if she hadn’t gotten to the hospital when she did. And she could have died again when you let that monster into her room. Fortunately he decided he would try poisoning you, as well. But luckily Mark recognized your symptoms right away, and we were able to get you back here before anything worse happened. But he’s still out there, and you’re weak—”

”I am not weak!” Heidi flared.

“Wait!” Lauren spoke at last. “Stacey, this…man is extremely powerful, and Heidi had no idea what she was up against. Stephan has hypnotic powers. I was almost frozen myself when I came across him, and I was armed and knew what I was up against.”

“You were armed?” Heidi demanded.

“Water pistol,” Lauren told Heidi. “Holy water.”

“Forget that for now,” Stacey interjected. “It’s incredibly important that you think back and remember everything,” Stacey said to Heidi. “Vampires really do exist, and Deanna and you have both been tainted. He has a gateway to you now, unless you really understand the danger and fight against him,” Stacey said firmly.

Again Heidi just stared.

“I do remember going to dinner with Mark. He wouldn’t let me eat my hamburger,” she said thoughtfully.

“He knew, once he was with you, that you’d been tainted,” Lauren told her gently.

Heidi shook her head. “You guys have all had a few too many. I know something is very wrong, but vampires?”

Before either of them could answer, Heidi’s cell phone began ringing. It was Barry, Lauren knew. She recognized the ring tone.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Heidi began.

Both Lauren and Stacey could hear the anger in Barry’s voice, though they couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“No!” Heidi said. “I didn’t! It must have been someone’s idea of a practical joke. I would never—”

The phone went dead in Heidi’s hand. Tears were apparent in her eyes as she stared at the other two women.

“He…he says I called him yesterday and said that it was off, that I was sorry, but I wanted to sleep with other men. And then I hung up on him!”

“I’ll call him,” Lauren said quickly. “I’ll think of something to say. I mean, we all know how much you love him. And how much he loves you.”

“He hates me!” Heidi said, distressed. “I didn’t call him, I would never have said those awful things.”

“You did call him. And that’s the problem. He’s your fiance—he knows your voice.”

Heidi burst into tears.