Well, since now I've crossed over, as promised, I will be explaining all
the nuances of the crossover for those who have never read Night World, so
you aren't confused. Sorry this chapter took so long; I've been busy up the
wahzoo (ugh, not fun).
Thank you, bella, for reviewing. Somebody likes my crossover! Yay!
This chapter gave me Oreo cravings.
Chapter 8
Emma stared at him for a moment. "First of all, Maxwell Jude Pine, you know I don't believe in magic. So where you got the idea that I'd enjoy this kind of joke . . . I don't even know. Secondly, if you WERE going to turn me into a vampire . . . that would mean you . . ."
"I'm a vampire, yes," Max swiftly responded.
"Which is entirely not possible," Emma continued, "I mean, we may have only been going out for a few weeks, but I did go to junior high with you and you've gotten older."
"I'm lamia," Max explained. At Emma's puzzled look, he continued, "I was born that way. I can age and have kids, just the same as a human, but I could stop aging if I wanted to."
Emma was shaking her head again. "No. This has got to be a dream. There is no possible way I could be standing in my yard at 1:30 in the morning with my ex-boyfriend, who just HAPPENS to be a vampire, and a bag of Oreos. I mean, think of the implications if this was actually real."
"You're more like your mom than you think, you know," Max said wryly, "But if it would help, I can take the Oreos away."
Emma suddenly looked at the Oreos, as if actually realizing they were there. "Hey. You eat these! Therefore, you CAN'T be a vampire, unless all of a sudden vampires are sucking the cream out of Oreos."
"I can eat human food if I want to," Max said, "It just does me no good. In order to survive I need blood."
Emma was still shaking her head. "But . . . no. You can't be a vampire. I KNOW you. I mean . . . I . . ."
Max sighed. "Emma, look at me."
Emma stopped babbling long enough to look at Max. And when she did, her heart nearly stopped. Emma inched back until she hit her front porch, which she plopped down on.
"Holy shit!" she whispered, "You're a vampire!"
Because that wasn't the Max she knew and loved standing before her. This Max had an absolute predatory look in his green eyes and two sharp fangs curving from his mouth. This Max was dangerous . . . lethal, and she'd entrusted her safety to him.
"Yes, I'm sorry. Do you see why I didn't want to tell you?"
"Well, yeah. So then why ARE you telling me?" Emma couldn't think straight at the moment.
"Because you're dying," Max said simply.
Oh. For the first time since she'd learned about it, Emma had forgotten that she had cancer. This was the first time she'd stopped thinking about it for any amount of time.
"And you could stop thinking about it forever," Max said, reading her mind, "Because if you became a vampire, you wouldn't have cancer any more. Ever."
"You said something about something being illegal?" Emma questioned, "I'm not understanding that part."
"Well, there's this thing called the Night World," Max told her, "It's basically a secret society of vampires, witches, and shapeshifters. It has two major rules, which are never to let a human know the Night World exists and to never fall in love with a human. These laws are what are supposed to keep us secret, so humans don't start reorganizing witch hunts and the like. They're to keep us safe. Changing a human into a vampire would be breaking the first rule, and if the human can't keep it secret, it could all be over for us. At least, I'm guessing that's the reasoning for there to also be a law against turning humans into vampires. But considering that I've already broken both of the cardinal rules, it can't hurt me any more to break another. The catch is that you would be in as much trouble as me if we were to get caught."
"A vampire fugitive," Emma giggled nervously.
"Basically. But there's another organization, Circle Daybreak. They think that humans and the rest of us can live in peace. A little too nice for my taste, but they would hopefully be able to protect us if we asked."
"To think all this was going on and I had absolutely no clue," Emma was shaking her head. Now that the initial shock was over, she was finding she could accept things better. I have cancer. I'm dying. My ex-boyfriend is a vampire. He wants to save me by making me like him . . . okay.
"There's always a slight possibility you won't make it through the change, but I bet you will. And a slight chance of dying is better than a complete chance of dying, right? And . . ."
"Wait a second. I never agreed to anything," Emma broke in.
"Well, I just assumed."
"Don't just assume anything, Maxwell Jude. I've just been given two choices: die from cancer, or illegally become a vampire. I can't make a decision like that right away. Give me a couple of days to think about it, at least," Emma said.
Max looked crestfallen. "Whatever you say," he said sadly, "But do give me a call if you want to know anything more. I'll be happy to answer any questions."
Emma nodded, and with that Max walked away into the night.
Emma went back up to bed, but found that she couldn't sleep. She had an out. And while it wasn't the out she'd envisioned for herself, it was still an out.
Max had mentioned a whole world. There was a whole world out there of vampires and other things. She would never have guessed that Max was a vampire. In her safe world, magic didn't exist. But if Max was a vampire . . . why, anyone could be. Kristen could be one. Emma looked over at her slumbering stepsister. Well, except no. Max said that vampires weren't allowed to fall in love with humans, and so if Mark, Sean, Kristen and Michael were vampires, Mark wouldn't have been able to marry Stephanie.
Honestly, what did she have to lose? She didn't want to die. She had thought that she was ready to die, until all of a sudden this came along. Now she knew that she wasn't.
I'll have to find out more, she thought, and finally drifted off in a fitful sleep, filled with dreams containing cancer . . . and blood.
The first thing next morning, Emma called Max.
"Hello?" he said.
"Wood?" she replied, "Daylight? Garlic? Holy Water? Running water? Changing into a bat? Reflections? Thresholds? Souls?"
Max laughed, realizing what she was asking.
"Wood is deadly," he explained, "A stake to the heart will kill a vampire, but even one that's misplaced may end up killing us because of wood poisoning. Garlic and holy water don't have an effect one way or another on us. You've seen me cross running water, and you've seen my reflection and you KNOW that I walk around during the day. Vampires can go into dwellings without an invitation, contrary to popular myth, and as far as I know, there aren't any vampires strong enough to shape shift. We leave that to the shapeshifters. And I would like to think I have a soul. It would kind of be hard for me to have a soulmate if I didn't. Basically, human myth is full of mistakes where vampires are concerned."
Emma nodded. Okay, that was better than she'd expected. "You said something last night about me never getting sick again," Emma said, "Explain that, please."
"Well, it's like this. Vampire blood is the ultimate elixir. It heals any disease, and if you get injured with anything other than wood, you heal incredibly fast. The stuff's potent. But there's only one thing it can't do. Carry oxygen."
A light went off in Emma's head. "So that's why . . ."
"Yep. That's why we need to drink human blood; to get oxygen in our bloodstreams. But the thing is that our vampire blood fights it off like a disease. That's why we need to drink blood every day. It's not like being hungry; you go into bloodlust and it's like suffocating."
"You make it almost sound natural," Emma marveled.
"Well, not quite. It's not necessarily a picnic, but if you compare it to the alternative . . ."
This sounds like a bad visualization technique, she thought. Imagine you find out you're dying . . . how does that change everything? And then imagine you've been given a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor. How does that change everything? And imagine still there's a world alongside your own filled with the creatures of myths. Then how does that change everything?
But it did change everything. Even more so than the money. Because the secret world, the Night World, Max had called it, could be her key to salvation.
"If this blood's so powerful, couldn't you just give me a little and have it heal me?"
"Maybe if you had the flu. But you have cancer. It's all or nothing."
And that was that. All or nothing. "Okay," Emma said finally, "I'll do it."
After all, what did she really have to lose?
"The biggest problem I'm seeing is the logistics," she added practically, "If I go downhill, my family's going to go crazy-overprotective. I need to find a way that I can get away from them with them not suspecting anything."
And then she had it.
"Max, I have a secret, too," she confessed, "Though it's nowhere near the magnitude of yours." And with that, she told him about the One Last Wish money and the invitation to Jenny House. "I thought it was crazy, because I wasn't going to be alive the whole summer. But maybe I could convince them to let me come for a shortened time . . . would you be able to come down to North Carolina?"
"Of course, Emma. Anything for you," Max said, "And I know what you could do with the money, too. If you gave, I don't know, half of it to me, I could use it to set up a new account for you once you die. You would have money to start out your new life with."
Somehow Emma doubted that her benefactor intended for her money to be used as a starter kit for her undead life, but Max's reasoning was sound. And if her one last wish was to become a vampire, who could argue?
That night, she tried to persuade Mark and Stephanie to let her go to Jenny House.
"I think it would be good for me," she said, "I know I always feel like I'm alone, and if I went someplace where there were other sick kids, it would help me come to terms with things. I would truly realize I'm not alone. I know I won't be here much longer. I thought maybe they could give me a shorter session or something."
When they got Richard Holloway on the phone, he was very understanding. "Usually we want our guests to stay the full summer, but under those circumstances, I can understand why you'd want it otherwise. Why don't we take her for three weeks, and of course we'll send her home straight away if anything starts to go wrong."
Mark had been a little leery, but Richard Holloway's words had comforted him. That meant it was settled, Emma thought with satisfaction. She was going to go to a camp for sick kids in North Carolina . . . and was going to come out a vampire.
Thank you, bella, for reviewing. Somebody likes my crossover! Yay!
This chapter gave me Oreo cravings.
Chapter 8
Emma stared at him for a moment. "First of all, Maxwell Jude Pine, you know I don't believe in magic. So where you got the idea that I'd enjoy this kind of joke . . . I don't even know. Secondly, if you WERE going to turn me into a vampire . . . that would mean you . . ."
"I'm a vampire, yes," Max swiftly responded.
"Which is entirely not possible," Emma continued, "I mean, we may have only been going out for a few weeks, but I did go to junior high with you and you've gotten older."
"I'm lamia," Max explained. At Emma's puzzled look, he continued, "I was born that way. I can age and have kids, just the same as a human, but I could stop aging if I wanted to."
Emma was shaking her head again. "No. This has got to be a dream. There is no possible way I could be standing in my yard at 1:30 in the morning with my ex-boyfriend, who just HAPPENS to be a vampire, and a bag of Oreos. I mean, think of the implications if this was actually real."
"You're more like your mom than you think, you know," Max said wryly, "But if it would help, I can take the Oreos away."
Emma suddenly looked at the Oreos, as if actually realizing they were there. "Hey. You eat these! Therefore, you CAN'T be a vampire, unless all of a sudden vampires are sucking the cream out of Oreos."
"I can eat human food if I want to," Max said, "It just does me no good. In order to survive I need blood."
Emma was still shaking her head. "But . . . no. You can't be a vampire. I KNOW you. I mean . . . I . . ."
Max sighed. "Emma, look at me."
Emma stopped babbling long enough to look at Max. And when she did, her heart nearly stopped. Emma inched back until she hit her front porch, which she plopped down on.
"Holy shit!" she whispered, "You're a vampire!"
Because that wasn't the Max she knew and loved standing before her. This Max had an absolute predatory look in his green eyes and two sharp fangs curving from his mouth. This Max was dangerous . . . lethal, and she'd entrusted her safety to him.
"Yes, I'm sorry. Do you see why I didn't want to tell you?"
"Well, yeah. So then why ARE you telling me?" Emma couldn't think straight at the moment.
"Because you're dying," Max said simply.
Oh. For the first time since she'd learned about it, Emma had forgotten that she had cancer. This was the first time she'd stopped thinking about it for any amount of time.
"And you could stop thinking about it forever," Max said, reading her mind, "Because if you became a vampire, you wouldn't have cancer any more. Ever."
"You said something about something being illegal?" Emma questioned, "I'm not understanding that part."
"Well, there's this thing called the Night World," Max told her, "It's basically a secret society of vampires, witches, and shapeshifters. It has two major rules, which are never to let a human know the Night World exists and to never fall in love with a human. These laws are what are supposed to keep us secret, so humans don't start reorganizing witch hunts and the like. They're to keep us safe. Changing a human into a vampire would be breaking the first rule, and if the human can't keep it secret, it could all be over for us. At least, I'm guessing that's the reasoning for there to also be a law against turning humans into vampires. But considering that I've already broken both of the cardinal rules, it can't hurt me any more to break another. The catch is that you would be in as much trouble as me if we were to get caught."
"A vampire fugitive," Emma giggled nervously.
"Basically. But there's another organization, Circle Daybreak. They think that humans and the rest of us can live in peace. A little too nice for my taste, but they would hopefully be able to protect us if we asked."
"To think all this was going on and I had absolutely no clue," Emma was shaking her head. Now that the initial shock was over, she was finding she could accept things better. I have cancer. I'm dying. My ex-boyfriend is a vampire. He wants to save me by making me like him . . . okay.
"There's always a slight possibility you won't make it through the change, but I bet you will. And a slight chance of dying is better than a complete chance of dying, right? And . . ."
"Wait a second. I never agreed to anything," Emma broke in.
"Well, I just assumed."
"Don't just assume anything, Maxwell Jude. I've just been given two choices: die from cancer, or illegally become a vampire. I can't make a decision like that right away. Give me a couple of days to think about it, at least," Emma said.
Max looked crestfallen. "Whatever you say," he said sadly, "But do give me a call if you want to know anything more. I'll be happy to answer any questions."
Emma nodded, and with that Max walked away into the night.
Emma went back up to bed, but found that she couldn't sleep. She had an out. And while it wasn't the out she'd envisioned for herself, it was still an out.
Max had mentioned a whole world. There was a whole world out there of vampires and other things. She would never have guessed that Max was a vampire. In her safe world, magic didn't exist. But if Max was a vampire . . . why, anyone could be. Kristen could be one. Emma looked over at her slumbering stepsister. Well, except no. Max said that vampires weren't allowed to fall in love with humans, and so if Mark, Sean, Kristen and Michael were vampires, Mark wouldn't have been able to marry Stephanie.
Honestly, what did she have to lose? She didn't want to die. She had thought that she was ready to die, until all of a sudden this came along. Now she knew that she wasn't.
I'll have to find out more, she thought, and finally drifted off in a fitful sleep, filled with dreams containing cancer . . . and blood.
The first thing next morning, Emma called Max.
"Hello?" he said.
"Wood?" she replied, "Daylight? Garlic? Holy Water? Running water? Changing into a bat? Reflections? Thresholds? Souls?"
Max laughed, realizing what she was asking.
"Wood is deadly," he explained, "A stake to the heart will kill a vampire, but even one that's misplaced may end up killing us because of wood poisoning. Garlic and holy water don't have an effect one way or another on us. You've seen me cross running water, and you've seen my reflection and you KNOW that I walk around during the day. Vampires can go into dwellings without an invitation, contrary to popular myth, and as far as I know, there aren't any vampires strong enough to shape shift. We leave that to the shapeshifters. And I would like to think I have a soul. It would kind of be hard for me to have a soulmate if I didn't. Basically, human myth is full of mistakes where vampires are concerned."
Emma nodded. Okay, that was better than she'd expected. "You said something last night about me never getting sick again," Emma said, "Explain that, please."
"Well, it's like this. Vampire blood is the ultimate elixir. It heals any disease, and if you get injured with anything other than wood, you heal incredibly fast. The stuff's potent. But there's only one thing it can't do. Carry oxygen."
A light went off in Emma's head. "So that's why . . ."
"Yep. That's why we need to drink human blood; to get oxygen in our bloodstreams. But the thing is that our vampire blood fights it off like a disease. That's why we need to drink blood every day. It's not like being hungry; you go into bloodlust and it's like suffocating."
"You make it almost sound natural," Emma marveled.
"Well, not quite. It's not necessarily a picnic, but if you compare it to the alternative . . ."
This sounds like a bad visualization technique, she thought. Imagine you find out you're dying . . . how does that change everything? And then imagine you've been given a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor. How does that change everything? And imagine still there's a world alongside your own filled with the creatures of myths. Then how does that change everything?
But it did change everything. Even more so than the money. Because the secret world, the Night World, Max had called it, could be her key to salvation.
"If this blood's so powerful, couldn't you just give me a little and have it heal me?"
"Maybe if you had the flu. But you have cancer. It's all or nothing."
And that was that. All or nothing. "Okay," Emma said finally, "I'll do it."
After all, what did she really have to lose?
"The biggest problem I'm seeing is the logistics," she added practically, "If I go downhill, my family's going to go crazy-overprotective. I need to find a way that I can get away from them with them not suspecting anything."
And then she had it.
"Max, I have a secret, too," she confessed, "Though it's nowhere near the magnitude of yours." And with that, she told him about the One Last Wish money and the invitation to Jenny House. "I thought it was crazy, because I wasn't going to be alive the whole summer. But maybe I could convince them to let me come for a shortened time . . . would you be able to come down to North Carolina?"
"Of course, Emma. Anything for you," Max said, "And I know what you could do with the money, too. If you gave, I don't know, half of it to me, I could use it to set up a new account for you once you die. You would have money to start out your new life with."
Somehow Emma doubted that her benefactor intended for her money to be used as a starter kit for her undead life, but Max's reasoning was sound. And if her one last wish was to become a vampire, who could argue?
That night, she tried to persuade Mark and Stephanie to let her go to Jenny House.
"I think it would be good for me," she said, "I know I always feel like I'm alone, and if I went someplace where there were other sick kids, it would help me come to terms with things. I would truly realize I'm not alone. I know I won't be here much longer. I thought maybe they could give me a shorter session or something."
When they got Richard Holloway on the phone, he was very understanding. "Usually we want our guests to stay the full summer, but under those circumstances, I can understand why you'd want it otherwise. Why don't we take her for three weeks, and of course we'll send her home straight away if anything starts to go wrong."
Mark had been a little leery, but Richard Holloway's words had comforted him. That meant it was settled, Emma thought with satisfaction. She was going to go to a camp for sick kids in North Carolina . . . and was going to come out a vampire.