The Vampyre's Best Friend
Chapter One
After Sophie had been Marked, I'd gotten us a ride to her house. When her dad saw her new, not-filled-in crescent, he'd gone completely pale. He wouldn't say anything, and had just sat there with his mouth open. I'd made her pack up all her stuff and we walked a block over to my house, which had been (thankfully) empty. Mom was at a business conference in Miami, and my dad wasn't around. And Patricia...was never coming home again.
We'd been sitting in my room in silence, when Sophie finally burst out, "What am I gonna do?"
I blinked at her in surprise. "You're gonna go to the House of Night," I said, surprised she'd even needed to ask that.
"What?" Her eyes shone with fear, and she'd been very near hysterics. "How can I go there? They're bloodsucking monsters, Isadora. Think sbout it. They killed your sister, for God's sake!"
I stood up quickly, now angry. "They did not kill Patricia! She was too weak, so her body rejected the Change. They wouldn't kill a fledgling."
"Oh, really? You believe that crap about them 'rejecting the Change'? Do you not remember that crazy-evil Neferet bitch? She wanted all humans dead! All of us! She even killed off those fledglings to start a war against us! If that freakish all-power chick and her bumpkin friend hadn't been around, we might all be gone. Vampyres. Are. Evil. They killed Patricia, for the love of God! I'm not going!"
I had to resist the urge to get up and slap the girl I'd called my best friend for fifteen years. She was pushing all the right buttons to drive me crazy, but she was pushing them wrong. "Look. You keep forgetting that the 'freakish all-power chick and her bumpkin friend' were vampyres, too. And you know what really happened to Patricia? She liked to party. She'd sneak out of the House of Night to go party with humans. She hated those walls like I hate the walls of SIHS, and looked for any excuse to leave it. Well, she'd been leaving too much, and ignored the adult vamps' advice about staying on-campus for Thanksgiving. Mom, her, and I were hanging around the house when Patricia started to cough. Nasty, wet coughs. Then blood just started to pour from her. Her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her ears, and I held her until she died in our arms."
There was a long silence after I told my tale, and I was breathing heavily. Sophie didn't say anything for a long while, processing what I'd just said. She didn't look at me as she asked, "So...they really do reject the Change?"
I swallowed. "They do. And do you know what happens when a fledgling is away from adult vamps for too long?"
Sophie shook her head.
"They start to reject it anyway. I think Patricia wasn't strong enough to begin with, and her habit of sneaking out didn't help at all. So, in a way, she accidentally committed suicide."
She swallowed, and I watched her carefully as she grabbed and release my bedspread, over and over again. I knew she was nervous and scared; that much was obvious. I sat down on the bed next to her and hesitantly began to put my arm around her. My hand was barely on her shoulder when she flung herself into me and started to bawl. I wrapped my arms around her and made soothing noises, stroking her hair gently. "I'm sorry, Isa-Chan. I'll go to the House of Night. I'll go."
