Free Vicious by Olivia Rivard Page B

either.”
    She took a deep breath as though preparing herself for the next sentence.
    “What you guessed in your stupor last night is correct. We are vampires.”
    The piece of croissant I was chewing fell clumsily out of my mouth. If this were a cartoon, the sound of a falling bomb whistling its way down to earth would be audible above me. The big boom noise would have crashed across my face at the word vampire .
    “We aren’t what you know as vampires. There is no ancient magic or eternal life in our story. We exist because science made us.”
    I kept trying to eat nonchalantly, but I dropped everything in my hand. I did not dare go near the orange juice for fear of the mess I would surely create with a liquid.
    “How is this possible?”
    “I can’t really explain that.”
    “Well, who made you?”
    “I can’t explain that to you either.”
    “What can you explain?”
    “Just that we were made, and we escaped. Now a group of us live here in New Orleans. Lea was one of us when we escaped, but she went down her own path.”
    “So all the legends and myths, are they true?” I asked dumbfounded.
    I think a piece of beignet fell from my lips and onto my lap as I spoke.
    “Like what?”
    “Like you can’t die? Or are you already dead?”
    “I assure you that I can die. Although we heal exceptionally fast. And no, I’m not dead. My heart beats just like yours, but it beats at a much slower pace.”
    “What about sunlight?”
    “What about it?”
    “Does it burn you alive or melt you or something like that?”
    “We can go out in sunlight, but we prefer not to. Our eyes are adapted to seeing at night better.”
    “What about a stake in the heart?”
    “It would hurt a lot, and it may kill us depending on how deep and how long it was in there. None of us have ever had that happen that I know of.”
    “What about holy water or crosses or garlic?”
    “Nonsense,” she responded as she snickered a little at the idea.
    “What about drinking human blood?”
    She paused. “I think you know from last night that that one is regrettably true.”
    “But you said you don’t do that anymore.”
    “Yes. I have learned to find my sustenance in other ways. I no longer kill human beings for food.”
    “What do you do for food?”
    “That is…private and…gross. Let’s skip that one.”
    “But you did kill humans at one time?”
    “Regrettably, yes.”
    A shiver ran down my spine like a squirmy, cold lizard, and I took another bite of a beignet to try to mask the affect her words had on me. How could this all be possible? This had to be a joke. This couldn’t all be real. I must be drunk. Maybe she slipped me something last night?
    “How do I know this isn’t some sick joke?”
    “You know what you saw last night. Feel your neck. Does that feel real enough for you?”
    I touched my neck and felt the pain run through my sore throat.
    “Reality hurts,” I said with a wince.
    She smiled and sat at the edge of the bed again.
    “Why did you help me? Why do you continue to help me?”
    “Because it was my fault that you got in this mess in the first place. If Lea hadn’t thought that I was with you, she wouldn’t have attacked you.”
    “I still don’t understand. She thought I was with you? What did she think that we were going to do?”
    I blushed suddenly as I realized the sexual innuendo I had inadvertently made. Anna stood up and faced away from me and towards the curtain. I could see from her shoulders she was tense. Was it possible to embarrass a vampire?
    “Something happened to a boy recently, and she thought I was looking to do that same thing to you.”
    “What happened?”
    She didn’t answer. She remained silent, and I decided to not press the question even though I desperately wanted to know what had happened to this boy and if the same thing might happen to me. It seemed to be a really sore subject for her.
    Instead, I took the opportunity to gulp down some orange juice and put my