Underdead Read Free Page B

relief. He hadn’t turned into a freak on me, after all. “Free will,” I said, “though it’s less a well-formed philosophy than wishful thinking. If I didn’t think I had some choice in what happens to me, I wouldn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.”
    In reply, he muttered something in Latin.
    A light bulb went off in my thick skull. Not that I understood Latin. I didn’t. But I was familiar with people suddenly shifting into the dead language. I’d seen it at work a hundred times. My eyes narrowed. “You’re an English teacher,” I accused him.
    “No.”
    “Philosophy? History?”
    “No.” He shook his head. “I just read a lot.”
    “What do you do then?”
    The laughter seemed to fall from his face, and I wondered if I had inadvertently brought up a sore subject.
    “I guess you could say I’m in…Human Resources Management. Nothing exciting. And yourself?”
    “I teach middle school science, but my background’s in ecology.”
    My degree is officially in biology, but I had loaded up on ecology classes because the labs were mostly held outdoors. I discovered early on that I much preferred wearing heavy boots and tromping around in mud to the more traditional latex glove and petri dish route. I liked studying outside so much that I’d signed up for astronomy and geology classes as well. Of course, there’s a price to pay for a self-indulgent education. Mine was that the only job I could find upon graduation was teaching earth science to eighth graders.
    “Ecology,” Will said. “That’s a subject I know little about. I so rarely get out during the day. It’s only at night that I have the flexibility to study things that interest me.” His voice was flat, the animation I’d glimpsed earlier gone.
    Great. In addition to being financially useless, my educational interests repelled men. I shifted the conversation back to books.
    “I like to read Thomas Hardy novels at Christmas,” I said. “They’re so outrageously depressing that even if you have to spend your holiday hearing about your aging relatives’ medical issues, and then go home to find your tree on fire and all your presents stolen by pirates, you still can’t help but feel as if you’re having the best Christmas ever.”
    This got him to laugh again and his eyes, lightened to a brilliant sapphire, met mine in shared amusement before the humor in them gave way to something else. My breath caught as he stepped slowly, purposefully, into the space that separated us. I was dimly aware that the band had started up again after a short break and the porch had emptied. Completely. We were alone out there.
    He spoke in a low gravelly voice that intensified his faint accent. “You’re not at all what I expected.” He reached forward to capture a long lock of my hair and watched it slide slowly through his fingers as if mesmerized. “Gold and orange and red, like the sunrise.” He traced a finger lightly down my cheek. “You’re as lovely as daybreak.”
    He closed the remaining distance between us.
    I’m a “third date, first kiss” kind of girl but that night I didn’t care. Soon—too soon—he broke away abruptly and studied me for a long silent moment at arm’s length.
    An odd mix of triumph and regret seemed to war across his face, but before I could decide what I’d seen or ponder what it meant, he pulled me tightly against him and I was lost once again in his kiss—until a sharp, ravaging pain jerked me out of my hormonal fog. I wrenched myself away and took a staggering step back. What the hell did he think he was doing?
    He had bitten my neck.
    Hard.
    I wanted to yell for help, to give him an earful of what I thought about weirdoes who bit people, but the words froze on my lips. I just stood there staring wonderingly into his eyes, those blue, blue eyes as he pulled me toward him. I was terrified yet curiously unable to move away, as if I were in one of those dreams when you try to run and nothing happens.