“Of The Becoming,” he says. “The first stage is lust. The second stage is bloodlust.”
“Lust? What does that even mean?”
“You’ll see. You might even enjoy it…if I’m feeling charitable. If I’m not, you’ll be in pure agony, begging me to end it.” Then he flashes me a smile and tips his chin to me. “Take care, Lenore.”
He leaves the room, keeping the lights on this time.
I take a moment to try and take stock of the situation, to try and make sense of everything that just happened.
But I can’t.
It’s too much, too unbelievable, too fantastical.
The only thing that does make sense is that my parents have left me here to die.
And they might not even be my parents.
Chapter Seven
Red moon rising over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Me, in the back of a car, staring out the window, feeling so much wonder. Not at the moon, which is singing me a song, but at the bridge, at the cars, at seeing the ocean from this height, moonlight gleaming on the water.
I turn forward in my child seat and look at the people in the front seat. There’s a man with kind eyes and a funny laugh, he’s driving. Then there’s a woman with long blonde hair pulled back into a braid, her arms wrapped in bandages.
They are not my parents.
But I know they will be.
“What’s your birthday, Lenore?” the woman asks me.
I’m too young to speak, too young to know.
But I say, April 17th inside my head and the woman nods.
“Then we have nineteen birthdays together before you must die,” she says, turning in her seat to smile at me. “You know you have to die, right? A girl like you shouldn’t exist.”
A girl like me.
“Until then, we will love you,” she adds. “And you will love us. And we will pretend that we are happy, even though deep inside, we know the clock is ticking.”
“Okay,” I say in a small voice.
I glance up at the rearview mirror.
And now Absolon is driving the car.
He grins, with fangs that glint in the moonlight, and with one smooth movement, he brings the car over the lanes, accelerating, and then the car is bursting through the guardrails, and we plunge down, down, down.
Falling.
Dropping.
Into icy water.
The last thing I see are the lights of San Francisco.
* * *