Seven Minutes to Midnight

33

To: vegangrrl_15@ [redacted]

From: amyvaughn@ [redacted]

Subject: Delete After Reading (Part 5)

Draft saved 2017 July 22, 23:11:11

The hour grows late, and my throat is dry.

When I awoke again, I was alone and furious.

At one point I had felt as though I was falling in love with Lane. Not anymore. He had betrayed my trust too many times. It was as it had been in the beginning—when I was around Lane, I found it difficult to resist him (although I did try hard to do so), but when his presence was gone, I realized how little control I'd had over myself and my emotions, and I resented him for that.

His only weakness, as far as I could tell, was that he needed to be invited to get in someplace, and that was only if he wasn't humoring me at that point. And if this rule applied to all of his kind (could I really even call him a vampire anymore?), then it could apply to Samael.

Of course, I had already invited Lane into my house. I wondered how I could keep him out.

He'd already mentioned garlic, and crosses, as being useless. Still, it wouldn't hurt to try, right? It had become obvious to me last night, even as I enjoyed being with him, that he was a liar and a betrayer.

Over one window, I hung garlic. Over another, I hung every cross I owned (I'm sure the Christian contingent of my high school would be surprised at how many I owned—they assume that a Goth is equivalent to Satanic). For good measure, I poured salt across both windowsills. I'd read somewhere that salt kept out bad spirits. And ants.

Silver—I'd forgotten to ask about silver.

It was disgusting, really, how desperate I was to prove something. All I had to go on was Lane's word, which I didn't trust. I needed to prove that he wasn't lying. My brain felt like it was going crazy even thinking that any of this was real.

After I finished with my window displays, I looked outside.

A wolf with glossy brown fur was sitting next to our mailbox.

Protecting me, I thought. Or guarding me from harming anyone else—since Lane hadn't described this Blood Kiss (which made me think of the Kiss performed by the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter books, and that couldn't possibly be the way it was done!)—I wasn't entirely sure that I hadn't already been turned. He'd kissed me, that was definite, and there were certainly kisses that I only barely remembered in my haze of euphoria, but I didn't feel any different. I didn't crave blood. Definitely no heightened senses or increased strength. Did the werewolves know this? They must. Lane had said that the werewolves could sense vampires, so they must have sensed that I wasn't a vampire.

I hoped the other wolves were guarding Lane, and I waved to the wolf sitting outside.

The wolf's head dipped, almost like a nod, and then it rose and trotted away. I spent the day feeling safe and protected. My mother slept most of the day, while I did more knitting and played World of Warcraft. Frank was online, although he wouldn't talk to me much. When he did talk, it was monosyllables.

I was so confused about what had gone wrong with my friends.

The suspicion eating away at me, of course, was that my friends had already been turned. All my questions to Lane about the creation of vampires hadn't shed any light on the subject. But if my friends were vampires already, I couldn't be sure if they had been vampires all along. Both Frank and Veronica had missed school and returned looking paler and... different, somehow. Veronica had grown slimmer, which I had immediately assumed as being a result of her illness. Frank had always been a bit lanky, but now his skin had gotten smoother and paler without the acne, and his hair less gross. Was it all a result of being a vampire?