Free Throat by R. A. Nelson Page A

have screamed, should have jumped up, run for the door, anything. But I was somehow still locked inside the seizure, experiencing that feeling of endless, openmouthed comfort. So I only stared. That’s all I could do.
    The vampire was not seven feet away. I could see his black, creased pants. His dirty white shirt with the cork buttons. Eyes with no color. There was a lavender glow about his entire body. Not blue, like with everyone else. Lavender with an edge, as though the blue of his original color had been mixed with blood.
    I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. As if there wasn’t room for anything else inside my mind.
Only room for him
. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing.
    “So this is your … room,” the vampire said. He spoke the words slowly, the hint of a bottoming-out snarl in his throat. “How nice to have found you home in bed.”
    He watched me and I watched him and we waited.
    Wirtz
.
    I heard the word like a sound inside my head, not a voice, but more like the ping of a small bell. The vampire’s lips hadn’t moved. He hadn’t spoken it, but somehow I knew that was his name.
Wirtz
.
    The vampire stared at me without any particular expression. My mouth was wet at the corners and my face felt as if it were immersed in cotton.
    The vampire, Wirtz, turned his face away slightly. I could see the pinkish flap of torn scalp on top of his head. He was looking at something else. So I looked there too.
    A pair of tiny sneakers was on the floor next to my dresser. The sneakers had yellow and blue flowers and pink laces.
    Manda
.
    Wirtz looked at her shoes and licked his lips. His tongue was unnaturally long and slightly squared at the tip rather than pointed.
    “
Delikatesse,
” the vampire said, nostrils flaring as he inhaled deeply. As though he was tasting something on the air.
Tasting her
. “A delicacy, you know,” the dark man went on, looking at me again. “Very new blood. So warm as it slides down your throat, it almost burns. But that is not the best part. New blood is also very energetic. As I drink from someone so young, I can taste the lack of age. The lightness of the years. But drinking young blood is also something like eating new fruit. So … 
scharf
 … tart.” He extended a long finger, pointing at Manda’s shoes. “You will watch as I drink from her,
Mädchen
. You will see it in my face, the tartness of her sweet young blood.”
    I was still trapped in the middle of the seizure, but now I started to feel a trembling sensation in the cottony thickness wrapped around my face. A rippling from deep inside, trying to bring me up to the surface.
    “Come to me,” Wirtz said. “You must answer my Call. It wouldbe so much better for her if you would come on your own, as you should. It is unnatural that you have resisted, stayed away from me for so long.”
    I couldn’t remember resisting anything. This sure didn’t feel like resisting. It felt like … 
surrender
.
    I started to push back on the inside. Wirtz turned his head the other way now, looking around the room as if trying to remember everything there. My soccer posters. Bookshelves. Nightstand, laptop, the quilt on my bed.
    He looked at me again. “I will find you, you know. I will never stop looking. Come to me now and I will let her live.”
    I was still locked inside my mind but could feel the tumblers beginning to fall. I was coming up from someplace that was very heavy and deep and far away. But I was surfacing. The more he stared at Manda’s shoes, the faster I rose to the surface.
    “I am your father,” the vampire rumbled. “I created you. You are one of my children. How did this happen? How did you make your escape? Help me to remember. The last thing I know, I saw … 
Lichter
 … lights. After, nothingness. You did this?
Unbegreiflich
. Inconceivable. You have hidden secrets from your father. Come to me so I may learn them too. These secrets will not buy your life.” He glanced at