The White Blood Trilogy - Complete Box Set Books 1-3 Read online

  “It’ll be risky, but we could take her with us,” said George.

  “Jen, the place we’re going, it’s not as easy as just walking in there with someone like you. There could be challenges that I can’t yet explain. Do you still want to risk that and come with us?”

  “I just don’t want to be alone anymore,” I said quietly, a little embarrassed to have to say it in front of Ben’s father.

  “Okay.”

  Ben stepped in and wrapped his arms around me. I was happy for both the mental and the physical support, and I sank into him.

  “There won’t be another boat for almost a week, so we’re going to have to keep a low profile here in this barn until the time comes to move. Does that sound alright?”

  “I don’t suppose you brought any food with you?”

  “It’s not much, but I grabbed some beef jerky and a bag of chips from the gas station where we filled up the car,” said George.

  He retrieved a small white plastic bag with the junk food in it, and I tore into the bag of chips. The salt and fat tasted so amazing in that barn, and I realized this was the first thing I’d eaten since the disgusting excuse for a lunch they’d given me more than twelve hours before. I finished off the entire bag of chips and munched down half the bag of jerky before getting too sleepy to eat anything else.

  Using Ben’s jacket as a blanket and a pile of straw for a pillow, I curled up and fell fast asleep.

  *

  The barn was dark and silent when I woke. I had no way of telling what time it was, but by the depth of the darkness and the stillness of the night, I figured it to be very early in the morning, still a few hours away from daybreak. Sitting up, I looked around for Ben and George. There was no sign of them anywhere, and a panicked thought fluttered through my brain; what if they’d left me here alone? I had no one to turn to, and nowhere safe to go. The only real person in my life that I could consider a friend was Linda, but there was no way I could burden her with my troubles. Besides, they’d probably be watching her to see if I made contact.

  I used the hay bales stacked next to me to pull myself upright and felt dizzy from the lack of sleep and proper food. What my body needed was a decent meal and a full night of rest, but I was too anxious to try to go back to sleep, and it wasn’t like I had any food on me. I looked at the half eaten bag of jerky and my stomach groaned in protest. If Ben and George planned to hide out here for several days, then someone was going to have to do a supply run.

  Careful not to trip or turn my ankle on anything in the darkness of the barn, I felt along the edge of the hay bales stacked on one side of the wall and used them to guide me forward. Inch by inch, I crept along, half expecting to step on a rake or some other farm tool left lying on the floor. Eventually I made it to the front of the barn where I could see bluish white light showing around the cracks of a door. I pushed it open and was nearly blinded by the moonlight shining into the barn.

  For a minute I just stood there, blinking and letting my eyes adjust to the light. The barn was on the edge of a very large property with an old farmhouse that surprisingly looked like it could still have a family living in it if it weren’t completely dark and devoid of the usual signs of life. What I assumed to be their car was parked only a few feet away with a dirty old tarp thrown over it to conceal it from anyone driving by who might wonder why there was a car parked at an abandoned farmhouse, and I was glad to see evidence that they hadn’t taken off and left me alone.

  One side of the property was a ragged line of trees that looked like it backed on to some kind of patch of wilderness. The nearly full moon illuminated the wide open expanse of rural land almost as well as if it were daylight, but little light penetrated those tightly clustered trees. I was about to head away from them and towards the house, thinking that Ben and George might have been checking it out to see if we could find a more comfortable hiding place when I heard a rustling sound and a barely audible cry of someone in distress coming from the tree line.

  As cautiously as I could, I crept towards the edge of the forested area, trying to be careful not to be seen. Someone was in there. I could hear movement and the low murmur of conversation. It had to be Ben and George, but that sound hadn’t come from either of them. It had sounded more feminine, and it definitely hadn’t been a happy noise. My gut told me to turn and run, but where would I go? Ben and George had been off the whiteblood for long enough now that there was nowhere I could run or hide from them. They could both see in near darkness and move with superhuman speed.

  No, I had no chance to run away from them, but I could at least see what they were up to. I crept towards where I could hear the sound of grunting and hushed words that I couldn’t quite make out. From the way it sounded, I wondered if they were arguing about something. It was easy to imagine them fighting over what they should do with me. It was pretty clear that George felt I was a liability and that they couldn’t be responsible for me, but I had hope that Ben really did care for me and would continue to protect me. It might have been different if I’d had some place to go, but these two men were the only people I could trust right now, even if they were acting in a suspicious manner.

  When I finally managed to creep up on them, I saw them both in a small clearing, bright moonlight shining down to illuminate them hunched over something I couldn’t quite make out. My brain was screaming at me to run away as fast as I could, but still I moved forward, trying to find a better angle to see what they were doing out there alone.

  A twig snapped under my foot and Ben’s face shot around to stare right at me. His mouth and chin were covered in blood, and his fangs hung down menacingly, thick red swollen droplets dripping from them. His chest and shoulders heaved and he had a wild look in his eyes that made me scared he didn’t even recognize me.

  George lifted his head and turned towards me, his face just as bloody, his eyes just as wild. I looked down between them and saw a full grown deer lying there in the grass, it’s body still twitching while its lifeblood drained from several bite marks scattered about the neck.

  I clamped my hand to my mouth to stifle a scream, and I turned and ran as fast as I could. Just enough light filtered through the trees so that I could see where I was going well enough, but periodic dark patches concealed roots and branches that jutted out and threatened to trip me up. Somehow, I made it through the undergrowth and out into the brightness of the field, only to step into a shallow divot that caused me to roll my ankle and go flying forwards.

  I landed hard, using my forearms and elbows to catch my fall, and my momentum carried me over into a roll so that I was lying on my back. Ben was there in an instant, approaching me slowly, his hands in the air to show that he meant no harm.

  “It’s okay,” he said calmly, “there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Pushing myself up into a seated position, I watched him carefully for any sign that he wanted to harm me. He seemed calm and rational, but a part of my brain was screaming at me that he was a vampire and not to be trusted. “Why did you kill that deer?”

  “Jen, I’m sorry you had to see that, but please remember that my father and I have no way to change our vampire nature. If we don’t feed, we grow weak. Out here we have no access to the whiteblood that kept us alive in Facility 47, so we have to resort to hunting like you saw us do just now.”

  “You only feed on animals?” I wanted to believe him, but with his fangs out and blood still still smeared across his face, he looked like he could just as easily sink his teeth into my neck for what would probably be a more satisfying meal.

  He seemed to realize what he must look like in that moment, and he wiped at the drying blood on his face in an effort to remove it. “Let’s talk in the barn,” he said as he offered a hand to help me to my feet.

  Reluctantly, I reached out and accepted his help, allowing him to pull me easily into a standing position. He seemed so strong, like it was no effort at all for him to lift my weight from the ground. He might as well have been
picking up a piece of paper or a feather.

  Just outside the barn, he paused at an old fashioned iron pump and cranked the lever a few times until water gushed out of the spigot. He ran his hands under the water, and in the moonlight I saw it stained red as it spilled to the ground. He dipped his head down to the slashing water and cleaned his face until it was free of blood.

  “Hopefully I look a little less gruesome now,” he said with a look that made my heart break just a little. He’d retracted his fangs, and he looked like a sad puppy embarrassed of something it had just done wrong.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I should have realized that you’d still need to feed somehow, but to be honest it never occurred to me. Everything is different here than it was at the Facility, isn’t it?”

  “It is different, but for my father and I, it’s for the better. The whiteblood was the only blessing in that place, but since we’ve been out, my father has been showing me how to control my cravings for human blood by feeding from animals.” He gestured back towards the tree line. “What you saw back there was no doubt very unpleasant, but it’s what we need to do to survive. The alternative is unthinkable.”

  We were inside the barn now, and I sat on a section of hay bales stacked against the wall. Ben sat beside me, close enough that the side of his leg and arm pressed tight against me, and I realized that we really were free in a way neither of us had been in the facility. No one was monitoring us, no guards stood outside, and no one could tell us whether we could or couldn’t be together.

  “I’m glad you’re here with us,” he said after a long silence. “Of course, I regret involving you to the point where you wound up in prison and became a fugitive from the law—I’ll never forgive myself for doing that to you—but I’m happy to have you near me. I hated having to leave you behind.”

  “To be honest, I’m glad I’m here too. The Facility was not a good place for me to be working, I can see that now. Other than Linda, I basically had no personal life, and I barely even knew her.” I picked a piece of hay from the bundle and twisted into pieces. When I spoke again, it was almost a whisper. “You’re the only good thing that’s happened to me in years.”

  Ben reached for my chin and turned me to face him. He leaned in close and kissed me on the lips, and I flashed back to the first time I dared let myself think that I could be attracted to him. His lips and tongue felt so wonderful, and in that moment, there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

  After a long and passionate kiss, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his strong embrace. “I’m going to protect you through all of this,” he said softly. “I swear I won’t let any further harm come to you.”

  We sat like that for several moments until a loud rumbling gurgle escaped my stomach. I laughed and pulled away a little. “Does that mean you’re going to buy a girl some breakfast? You might have eaten, but I’m starving and I can’t handle any more jerky.”

  The sound of a foot scuffing the wooden barn floorboards sounded from nearby, and George was there leaning against the doorframe with a grin on his face. “Well I suppose we should head into town and get the lady a meal then.”

  Chapter4

  Hidden beneath the oil stained and ragged looking tarp was a beat up old Toyota Corolla in a shade of blue that hadn’t been sold for at least fifteen years. The trunk lid was a slightly different color from the rest of the car, a clear sign that it had been replaced over the years. I stood there looking at the car while George held the passenger side door open for me, and I wondered if it would even start up.

  “You’re not impressed with our magnificent carriage?” asked Ben, smirking from the Driver’s side.

  “Does this thing even run?” I asked.

  George patted the roof of the car and winked at her. “Sure she does. We didn’t want to steal a nice car from someone who would actually miss it, so we liberated this from a wrecker not too far away from here. Once we threw a fresh battery in there and fixed a bit of wiring, it was just a matter of grabbing some spare license plates we found in the back of the shop before we had ourselves a vehicle that no one would look twice at.”

  Reaching into the back seat, Ben grabbed a plastic bag and pulled it into his lap. I slid into the seat next to him and watched him pull out three hideously ugly trucker hats and some cheap dollar store sunglasses. He slipped on a cap with the name of some farm supply company on it, put on the plastic sunglasses, and turned towards me.

  “Today we’re not wanted fugitives,” he said. His voice took on an awful southern twang. “We’re just some friendly farm folk headin’ into town to grab some breakfast at the drive thru.”

  I laughed and donned my own hat and glasses, wondering if these disguises would really fool anyone. Ben started the car and pulled out onto the dirt country road, and I was happy to have the sunglasses, as ugly as they were, for the little protection they offered against the blinding sun rising over the horizon. I went to pull down the sun shade, but after pulling it just a little too hard, it came off in my hand so I dropped it on the floor next to my feet.

  “Can you guys really be out in the daylight like this?” I asked.

  “I was surprised too when I found out,” said Ben. “It’s not the most comfortable place for us to be, but we can tolerate it. From what I understand, the really old vamps can’t deal with it as well, but since my dad and I are relatively young in vampire years, it’s not that big a deal.”

  “After being locked up in the Facility, I’d deal with a lot of discomfort to stand under blue skies again,” said Ben from the back seat. “I never thought I’d be able to live like anything even resembling a normal human being again, and I’m happy to have even these moments.”

  We all rode in silence for a while after that, enjoying the sunrise and the picture perfect cloudless sky that came with it. I rolled down the window to get some fresh air flowing through the moldy smelling interior of the car, and leaned back in my seat, enjoying the quiet normalcy of the moment. It was easy to picture us heading into town on some innocent errand. For a few seconds, I could almost forget that we were some of the most wanted fugitives in the state.

  “I hope fast food is okay,” said Ben, turning into the drive thru lane of a McDonald’s. “It wouldn’t exactly be the best idea for us to go inside anywhere right now.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m so hungry I could eat anything.”

  We pulled up to the menu and ordering station and I leaned over Ben to give my order to the disembodied voice coming through the speakers. It was early enough that there was no one in line in front of us, and a few minutes later I was sitting in the parking lot with a greasy paper sack containing enough food for at least two people. Ben and George wouldn’t be able to eat any of it, but I was so hungry that I almost choked stuffing the first Egg McMuffin into my mouth. I washed it down with a long sip of orange juice and took a large bite from one of the three hash browns I’d ordered.

  “I take it that you’re okay with our choice of restaurant,” said George with a chuckle.

  “Oh yes,” I said around a mouthful of English muffin, sausage, and cheese. “I don’t normally eat fast food, but this is so good right now.”

  “I must not be fully converted to vampire yet, because that sausage patty smells fantastic,” said Ben with a laugh. “I wonder what they’d say if I ordered one blood rare.”

  We all laughed at that, and the picture of us as a happy family grabbing breakfast before running errands in town was easy to hold on to. I wanted so badly for it to be real, but as I wiped grease and salt from my fingers with a napkin, I felt a quiet unease settle over me alongside the weight of all the food I’d just consumed.

  After giving me a moment to throw out my garbage and risk a quick duck inside the McDonald’s to use the restroom, George had moved into the driver’s seat, and I climbed into the backseat beside Ben. We pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the road, and with the windows open, it was just loud enough that Ben and I had a bit of p
rivacy to talk if we kept our heads close together. Since I was leaning my head on his shoulder, that was easy enough to do.

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” I said as we left the town limits and hit the long open stretch of country road that would take us back to the barn. “How exactly did you become a vampire? If you did all of this just to get your father out of the Facility, then you must have had yourself turned, right?”

  “Once I discovered the truth of what had really happened to my dad, I became obsessed with trying to find a way to get to him. My whole life, I thought he’d abandoned me, and then to find out that he was still alive…” Ben shook his head. “One of the places I was going to get information was a vampire bar. There was a girl who worked there who was kind to me and gave me a lot of information, and after a few weeks of me visiting the bar we sort of started dating. Eventually, I asked her to turn me as a favor.”

  “As a favor? Why would she do that for you? It would be a huge risk for her to turn you with the hunt out for her kind.”

  Ben fidgeted in his seat a little and I sat up to look him in the eye.

  “I guess there’s no way around it,” he said with a slight sigh. “She was in love with me, and I used that to get what I wanted.”

  “Doesn’t that sound familiar,” I said with a huff. “Is that just what you do then? You charm women so you can get whatever you want?”

  “No, it’s not like that at all,” he said.

  “So you were in love with her too then?”

  “No.” Ben shook his head. “It’s complicated, Jen. I freely admit to taking advantage of that girl to get her to change me. I knew how she felt about me, and I told her that I could never love her back. I even explained why I wanted her to change me.”

  “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to trust anything you say to me.”