Breathlessly, Taylor shuddered.
"I killed someone." She looked at David, blurting the words out as if purging them would rid the taste of his blood from her mouth. "I ate him, David. I mean, who the hell does that?"
"A vampire, Taylor, that's who." He rolled his eyes at her, a habit that was occurring too frequently for her liking. "That's what you are."
His words were biting. They remained distant from each other, he stood at the doorway to her bedroom, and she had crumped onto her comforting bed the first chance she'd gotten. David had not moved to bridge the gap between them, and she wasn't sure how to feel about that. She wanted space, but at the same time, she craved the feeling of his touch.
"I gave you an out, Taylor." He shook his head. "If you didn't want this, why the hell didn't you take it?"
She couldn't explain to him that the out he'd given her was a double-edged sword. By revoking her halfling status, she'd be condemning her family to hell, or eternal damnation, or wherever vampires went once they died. She could be human, but she would lose him. And, despite their differences, she couldn't do that. But she didn't know how to say it, how to be so blunt about her feelings towards a man who couldn't even bring himself to cross the room and touch her, goddammit.
"I couldn't do that to Michael, and Laddie, and even to my mom." And to you, she wanted to add, but she knew better of it. "They may not care about me, but they're my family whether I like it or not. Blood is blood."
Those words meant more to her now, now that she had fed from another human being. Blood meant even more when you could taste it, than when you could feel it pulsating through your veins.
Taylor had expected him to understand her choice, to respect it, but instead of moving to hold her as he had the night before, David simply scowled. And that anger, that emptiness, was what broke her.
"I thought you would be happy, David. I'm not killing you, I'm not killing your brothers. I thought you wanted this? I thought you wanted me. The other night - "
David cut her off abruptly with a short and deep-throated laugh. He'd given her a chance to make the expected choice, the right one, and she'd thrown it away just as quickly as it was given to her. Taylor was a girl who wanted to play in the darkness without getting her hands dirty, and she was finding that was no longer possible. Vampires needed to feed.
"I never want this. I never wanted any of this." He spat at her, his dark eyes gleaming in the moonlight trailing through the open curtains.
Taylor sunk lower into her bed as his dark combat boots stalked away, down the stairs and out the front door.
()()()
David was alone in the others had undoubtably sensed he and Taylor's fight, resulting in his rotten mood and their decision to sleep in the basement of Max's for the day. He sat in an abandoned wheelchair Paul had picked up off the boardwalk one night, a bottle of Whiskey in his lap that was only 1/3 of the way full. This was the only taste he'd seemed to retain from the years before he was turned, but its affect was slightly more mellowed now. Perhaps that was the vampirism, or maybe it was the fact that he'd been downing the same bottles for over a hundred years. Most of the time, it was the taste he craved more than the drunkenness, but tonight he needed both.
He'd pushed her away, again. He'd denied her, again. And why?
Lucy's words echoed in his head. 'You're not the hero in this story, you know, David?'
He could not save Taylor; hell, ever since he'd met her, he'd only made things worse. He'd meant what he said - he hadn't asked for any of this, not for her, or for any of the bad things that had happened to her since their meeting. Weeks ago, she was happy, she was with her family, she was alive.
And now, now she was as bad off as he was. He took another long swig from the nearly-empty bottle.
()()()
Some miles away, Taylor's head was pressed deep into the pillow, and images of the red-shirt-and-blue-shorts Americana girl from a few nights before danced in her head. She had been right then - she'd never be able to compete with girls like that. Quite literally, they had what David needed: fresh blood.
And, now that she had been turned fully, she did not. He'd lost interest as her blood chilled and left her veins, as she became what he was.
But, if that was the case, then what was the other night? He'd held her and literally told her how to kill him, how to take back her life. Confused and exhausted, Taylor wiped at her tearstained face; she'd cried more here in Santa Carla over the past few months than she had when her parents announced their divorce.
Her body twitched anxiously - a warning that dawn was quickly approaching - and Taylor moved to shut the blackout curtains, taking extra precautions to be sure that she wouldn't burn up during the daytime. Although, everything being as it was, that wasn't a totally bad idea.
She snorted uncharacteristically as she marched back to her bed. She was good at a lot of things, but being sad wasn't one of them. When things didn't go her way, Taylor had always been quick to pick herself back up and start again - maybe that was what she needed to do now. She had to find way to press the reset button, to begin a clean slate.
But not right now, she knew. Right now, she had to get some sleep, or she'd be one cranky vampire in the morning. A subtle smile on her face, Taylor settled back into her bed, and thought about Phoenix.