Eleventh Grade Burns(63)

A monster. Otis was a monster. Maybe Joss and the Slayer Society weren’t so wrong after all. Maybe vampires really were horrible beings, bent on human pain and destruction. Maybe their use of stakes wasn’t entirely misguided.

Despite his horror, Vlad found himself moving closer to Otis’s victim. The scent of the man’s blood was almost too much to bear. He wanted it. Desperately.

But more than that, he wanted his uncle back.

“Otis! NO!”

Otis seemed to have just noticed him for the first time. Blinking, he looked up from his impending meal.

Vlad shook his head sternly. “I’m not going to let you do this, Otis. It’s wrong. Look at him; he’s terrified!”

The vampire Otis glanced briefly down at the man, as if the very idea that humans could feel terror had never occurred to him.

“You call this hunting. You chase innocent people through the woods, terrify them, then kill them. That’s not hunting, Otis. It’s not sport. It’s murder and you know it. If this is the vampire way, then I’m really glad my dad took me away from Elysia. It’s ... it’s horrible. And you’re horrible for doing it.”

That scary light left Otis’s eyes at last, and he looked sober again and filled with shame.

But Vlad didn’t hang around long enough to be sure. He took off running, the wind whipping through his hair, moving with vampire speed until he was back at the hotel. He stepped into their room and closed the door, lying on the bed for what seemed like an eternity.

Otis would feed. Of that he was certain.

Disgust filled him, and guilt too. He’d never spoken to his uncle that way before. But then, it wasn’t his uncle he’d been speaking to. It had been the vampire Otis, someone he didn’t even know.

After a long time, the door opened and Otis stepped inside. His eyes were red, his expression drawn. He didn’t meet Vlad’s gaze, but sat on the foot of the bed, his shoulders slumped. He was quiet for a long time. Then, as if unable to stand the silence anymore, he spoke. “It hurts that you see me as a monster, Vladimir.”

“I never said that Otis. I never said you were a monster.”

He’d thought it. Oh yes, he’d thought it. But he would never admit that to his uncle, never reveal that for a moment, he understood Joss’s motives.

“You don’t have to say it. And ... you’re right, to an extent.” Otis sighed, burying his head in his hands. “It’s so difficult to resist gorging myself on their blood. Every day in Bathory, I somehow manage, always teetering on the verge of a thirst-fueled madness. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you manage to refrain from slaughtering the entire town. You’re immensely strong. Far stronger than me.”

Vlad raised an eyebrow. He’d never thought of himself as particularly strong before. “What about Nelly? You two cuddle all the time, but you don’t seem to be chomping down on her. You’re strong too, Otis.”

Otis shook his head. “That’s different. I don’t think of her in that way. But everyone else ... especially the humans I don’t know by name ... it’s immensely difficult to resist.”

Vlad swallowed hard. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to be a vampire used to taking meals by force and then going stone sober. It had to be an awful habit to break. “Did you kill that man, Otis?”

He looked up then and closed his eyes. Vlad couldn’t be sure if his expression was one of relief or regret. “No. I did not. I wiped the experience from his memory and returned him to Times Square. Then I went for a long walk before returning here to beg your forgiveness.”

Vlad sat up, reached forward, and squeezed Otis’s shoulder. Otis placed his hand over Vlad’s and met his eyes.

“You don’t need to, Otis. There’s nothing to forgive.”





25





THE PRETRIAL


AFTER A SHORT SUBWAY RIDE, Otis and Vlad headed back to V Bar. The city had come alive in the nighttime hours, something that was the absolute opposite of life in small town Bathory. Even V Bar was overflowing with customers, so it took Otis a minute to garner the attention of the bartender. Once he did, the bartender led them through the cellar door in the sidewalk to the storage area beneath. He closed the metal doors over them, and Otis moved to the small glyph behind a table and brushed it with his trembling fingers.

This was it. The moment that determined whether Otis would live or die.