Free Hunger Chronicles (Book 1): Life Bites by Tes Hilaire Page A

here I am my own person—or vampire as the case may be. Back at the hive—well, Brian is right. The vampire who turned me is powerful. That makes me powerful too, though not powerful enough to be anything more than a slave to him and his queen.
    We walk the streets at a brisk pace, meeting no opposition. Where is a lone zombie when I need it? My teammates are not going to be happy if I ask them to hang at the Humvee while I track down a snack.
    I’m gnawing on my lip and almost miss the soft shuffle of sound from around the next corner. Is that? Yes! A heartbeat. I break into a jog just as the zombie stumbles around the grimy building. A threadbare suit hangs off an emaciated frame, the listless eyes are vacant as it stares at us—uh, hello, prey—and the hollow planes of its cheeks give little hope of a tummy filling meal. Still, beggars can’t be choosers as my father would say.
    Before anyone else can react, John cuts it down at the knees, sending the zombie to the pavement in a pool of blood. It makes a pitiful sound like a moan. Five other guns lift up.
    Hell no. “Hold your fire!” I yell, jumping forward.
    Convict glares at me.
    “I need to feed.”
    “No way. Nuh uh,” Convict says, his voice rising with each word until spittle starts to fly from his mouth. “You are not going to bite that sucker in front of me.”
    “Then I suggest you turn around,” I say, brushing by him. Not like I have a choice. Not like I want this any more than he does.
    “Private Harper!” A gun ratchets behind me. The skin on my back twitches. And then Convict delivers in a deadly calm voice, “Do it and you’ll be off my team, as in O-F-F.”
    I hesitate, my feet sticking to the blood-stained asphalt before the zombie that is bleeding out. I don’t think Convict will really kill me. Leave me behind maybe, but not kill me. Still, his words strike closer to home than any well placed bullet ever could. The desire to fit in, to please, is almost as strong as my instinct to leap onto the fallen zombie and suck the blood down my throat before the rest of it drains onto the pavement.
    My stomach rumbles. The clawing hunger tearing a path past my esophagus and threatening that place that holds that last bit of humanity. Nope, no contest.
    I reach down and grab up the writhing zombie. There are some things in this world worth dying for, but popularity is not one of them.
     

 
     
    8.
     
    Then…
     
    My phone vibrated across the Formica table of the food court, making me jump so high I practically dropped the fry I’d been about to stuff into my mouth. With an I-can’t-believe-you glare at my companion across the table, I snatched the antiquated Motorola up and keyed through screen after screen to retrieve the text.
    OMG!
    I knew, of course, who the message was from. Carrie. Best friend and confident since sixth grade. We’d been two misfits who’d hit it off at our first awkward lunch period together. She’d been as hopelessly shy as I, until she got her first cell phone. Now Carrie couldn’t stop talking—as long as it was via a keypad—or touch screen. I tried not to be but I was extremely jealous of her pretty new iPhone.
    I considered ignoring the text, but one glance across the table had me deciding to play along. I rubbed my greasy hand off on my napkin and typed back. ? Short messages. That was all I could handle on my phone. Took too long to key through all the letters and pick out the right one.
    Five seconds later my phone was buzzing again. Damn that girl was fast.
    I candy. My high noon.
    I started to crane my head to see behind me and was rewarded with a kick in the shin. “Ow! What was that—”
    I glared at the girl sitting across from me and closed my mouth. There was nothing like Carrie’s glare to suck the insubordination out of you. I envisioned her as a drill sergeant someday—as long as she could find and download a mean-ass ring-tone ending in “Do we have an understanding, soldier?”
    Her