Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

“You sound extremely calm about this!” Christian exclaimed. He was not feeling terribly calm about it himself.

“That’s right. I want everyone to stay calm,” Bradley said. “It’s fine. Someone will just want us to play a song just for them, or hold us for ransom, or want to marry one of us. Or all of us. I don’t know and I don’t judge; it takes all sorts in this beautiful world. Nobody panic.”

So soothing was Bradley’s voice, despite the completely lunatic content of what he was actually saying, that nobody did panic until several hours later when they all noticed that Josh had scuttled, crablike, while still sitting down, through the gray dust on the floor and into the farthest corner of the room. He sat there, tense and trembling as a child being punished, until the combined weight of all their questioning stares pressed a cry from

him.

“Have you noticed there’s food for us?”

“Excellent, Josh, look on the bright side,” Bradley said, with a beam of approval. For once Josh did not smile back.

“No,” he said, his voice shaky. “Have you noticed there’s food for us, but there’s no food for him?”

Everyone looked at Christian, and it was as simple as that: the divide between “us” and “him,” so neatly made.

“We’re trapped in here with a vampire,” Josh said slowly, as if this needed spelling out. “Exactly how long do you think it will take for him to start seeing us as juice boxes?”

There was a silence. Pez was glancing cagily, back and forth, between Bradley and Christian.

Eventually, Pez said, “Look, I’m really sorry, but I’ve forgotten: which of you is the vampire again?”

Josh looked despairing, but it made Bradley laugh, and once Bradley had laughed, apparently he thought he was in control of the universe again.

“This isn’t a problem,” he declared. “It won’t be long before Faye comes to save us, right? And we all trust Chris.”

He fixed both Pez and Josh with an imperious stare. Pez looked blank, and Josh’s mouth was a hard line. Christian remembered how Josh and Rory had got along, heads bent together in perfect understanding.

Josh was never going to trust Christian, or forgive him for being what he was.

“I wouldn’t,” Christian said quietly. “I would never—”

“And I’m totally happy to donate a little blood to keep him going,” Bradley said.

Everyone else in the small cell went still, and that actually made Christian feel a little more kinship with the others. Now the line was not between the humans and the vampire, but between the sane and the crazed.

Bradley the lunatic rose from his lotus position with all the easy grace of someone who could do seventeen pop-and-locks in a row.

Christian shot backward with vampire speed, and hit the wall. “No!”

“Aw, Chris,” Bradley said, and sounded very disappointed in him.

“I am not going to feed from a human being.”

“Chris, this is really no time to be a fussy eater,” Bradley told him, and advanced, holding up one arm. But not to protect himself from the vampire, no, that would be too sane for Bradley. “Here comes the vein train,” Bradley coaxed. “Choo-choo!”

“Bradley, stop it.”

“I see the problem,” Bradley told him, and nodded. “You’ve never done this before. You have performance anxiety.”

Christian covered his face and said, “Oh my God, I hate you so much.”

“But that’s okay, I can help! There’s something you guys don’t know about me,” Bradley said. “After I got bored with my modeling career, and before I joined the band, I dabbled in a little bit of acting.”

Bradley struck a dramatic pose, sniffing the air, and then drew his own wrist close to his mouth.

“Ah,” he murmured passionately. To his own wrist. “The blood is the life! The blood is the life!”

Even Pez was starting to look a little embarrassed by Bradley at this point.