Nightwolf

“Ah,” Ezra says, following my gaze. He glances up at me. “So how is she?”

“In a coma,” I tell him grimly. “No brain activity, according to Solon.”

“What, he’s a doctor now?”

“You know how he is,” I say, tapping the side of my head.

“She going to pull through?” he asks, and even though the gum in his mouth snaps, the smell of artificial peppermint, I can hear the sorrow in his voice.

“I hope so,” I tell him. “No one knows much at this point. Kind of a wait and see situation. But I know they’re doing all they can.”

He chews for a few moments. We both watch through the doors, occasionally seeing Amethyst appear from behind the curtain, walking around her mother’s bed, talking to her.

“And how are you?” Ezra asks, eying me.

I sigh, lifting up my shoulders in surrender. “I don’t fucking know.”

“How was the trip?”

“It was good. You know. Until…”

“Did you finally fuck her?”

I give Ezra a loaded look.

He grins. “You finally fucked her. Thank god, maybe you’ll be more tolerable now. How was it? How was she? Everything you dreamed of?”

“Shut up.”

“You were never one to kiss and tell, were you? You know I fucked the girl from the party. The cute blonde.”

I fold my arms across my chest and turn my attention back to the ICU. “Good for you.”

“Yeah,” he says, sounding proud of himself. “So, what, you guys like boyfriend and girlfriend now? Fuck buddies?”

I frown in disgust. “What are you, ten? Ezra, I swear you talk like you were born fucking yesterday.”

“Gotta roll with the times, bro.”

“Oh, please don’t call me bro. We adapt to our times, we don’t go out of our way to sound like idiots.”

He ignores me. “So, you guys serious, like a couple?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I shoot him a look of annoyance. “Because of many reasons, dickhead, one of which is the fact that we were barely together before we got the bad news. Now we’re here and honestly our relationship is the last thing on our minds.”

“You’re lying. It’s on your mind. So, what are you going to do?”

“Nothing.” There’s nothing to do about any of this.

“You live in the same house, might as well move into the same room like Lenore and Solon did.”

“We are not Lenore and Solon.”

“Yeah, no shit, you’re much easier to deal with.”

I sigh again, running my hand down my face. I have a headache and I never get headaches. I’m tired, I’m hungry, strangely horny, I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m a fucking mess, and it feels like the day is just starting.

“So why—” Ezra starts but I cut him off.

“Amethyst is a human,” I remind him.

“You don’t say,” he muses sarcastically. “So what?”

“If I’m going to be with her, I’m going to want her forever. She won’t live forever.”

“Turn her into a vampire.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “The fuck, Ezra. You know I can’t. She’ll go mad.”

“Yeah, but they’re only mad for a couple hundred years, give or take. After that she’ll level out and you’ll be together.”

I shake my head adamantly. Vampires are “born” two ways. One is that you are born naturally to either two vampires or a vampire and a human. They’re born human, as I was, and then turn into a vampire with age (females at twenty-one, males at thirty-five). The other is the “classic” way that the myths talk about. You’re bitten, drained of blood, basically die, and then come back when a vampire gives you their blood in return. The only problem with this method is that the vampires that are created go mad. Their bloodlust is uncontrollable and they lose all sense of morality and humanity. It became such a problem that eventually it was made illegal, though I’m not sure if anyone has been punished recently. No one wants to be responsible for creating a mad creature that may or may not come out of it for hundreds of years.

In fact, I’ve only met a handful of vampires who were created this way, who once were mad. One of them is Solon.

“I would never do that to her,” I tell Ezra, thinking of how Solon murdered his first love. “Ever.”

“So, you’re just going to have blue balls for the rest of your life?” I glare at him, and he gives me a faux smile. “Sorry, for the rest of her life.”

“Did anyone tell you recently that you’re still an asshole?”

He shrugs, chews gum, and goes back to staring through the window into the ICU. “I really fucking hope she pulls through,” he says after a moment, his tone finally serious. “She’s a better mother to me than my own mother. When was the last time my mother left Italy to come visit me? Never. But Yvonne, you know, she’s here with us every day. Sure I don’t always eat what she cooks, but she does do a fucking fantastic prime rib, really raw and bloody, you know, just the way I like it. I’m going to miss that.”