Hourglass. Claudia Gray

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       Chapter Six

      MAYBE IT WAS THE CRUSHING BLOW OF LOSING our saved money. Maybe it was the exhilaration of having been so close to Lucas after we’d been kept apart so long. Or maybe it was the rush of blood and the sweet relief of being full after weeks of hunger.

      Whatever it was that distracted me so much that night kept me from remembering that drinking blood had consequences.

      “Bianca?”

      Raquel flipped on the small flashlight she kept beside her bed. The beam seemed almost unbearably brilliant, and I rolled away from her. “Turn that thing off, would you?”

      “Were you having a bad dream or something? You kept groaning.”

      “It wasn’t a nightmare exactly—just kind of overwhelming, you know?” Luckily, Raquel didn’t pry further, and I had a moment to myself to think.

      The real reason I’d been groaning was because I was in complete sensory overload. I could hear every footstep or cough along the belt of old subway cars the Black Cross hunters slept in. I could hear water dripping farther down the tunnel and the light, quick scurrying of mice.

      I’ll have to remember where to find them later, if I need them—

      “Bianca?”

      “I wasn’t having a bad dream,” I mumbled, bringing my forearm over my eyes to block out the light. In the long run, drinking blood made me more able to deal with bright light or sunshine. But just after, it seemed almost blindingly bright. “These bunks are really uncomfortable, you know?” I could feel the plastic ridges of the old seats against my back, even through the pallet I lay on.

      Any criticism of Black Cross was usually Raquel’s cue to insist that everything was totally great. This time, she simply sighed. “It would be nice to have a real bed again. Dana and I were saying, maybe, we could save up and get a hotel room sometime—oh. That’s what you and Lucas were trying to do, wasn’t it?”

      “Basically.” That was close enough to the truth.

      “I’m sorry Eduardo got up in Lucas’s stuff. That was really unfair.”

      “Lucas worked so hard for that money.”

      “It sucks.” Raquel sighed.

      I was grateful for proof that Raquel hadn’t chugged the Black Cross Kool-Aid, but mostly I longed for darkness and quiet. “I just want to go back to sleep and forget about it for a while.”

      “No point now.” The flashlight stayed on; I could tell, just by the faint glow around the edges of my vision, even through my closed eyelids and the forearm across my face. “They’ll turn the lights on soon. It’s morning.”

      I groaned again.

      If drinking blood again had affected me powerfully, that was nothing compared to what it had done to Lucas.

      “Stop sulking,” Kate said to him as we loaded the transport bus for our afternoon patrol later that day. “Or do you want to argue some more about hoarding cash?”

      “I’m not sulking.” Lucas winced as he spoke. The light in the parking garage was dim, but it hurt my eyes—and, I could tell, his, too. “I just don’t feel so hot.”

      At first Kate looked skeptical, but then she held her palm to his forehead. The heavy men’s sport watch she wore made her wrist look almost fragile. She frowned. “You feel a little clammy. Is your stomach bothering you?”

      “Sorta.”

      I sought Lucas’s eyes; when our gazes met, he gave me a small, awkward smile. Obviously we were both thinking the same thing: We should have expected this.

      Human bodies simply weren’t meant to endure the demands of vampire power.

      Kate paused for a few long seconds, and I wondered if she’d tell him to go on patrol regardless. Most of the time, she acted more like his commander than his mother. But then she shrugged. “Head back to the bunks. Get some rest. Bianca, you go out with Milos’s team. You and Raquel can partner up.”

      “Okay,” Lucas said. Although I knew he would hate being stuck at headquarters for an entire day, I thought he sounded sort of happy. Maybe he didn’t get much evidence that Kate really wanted to take care of him, and he liked what little he got.

      We went out on patrol in one of the fancier neighborhoods in the city, where the lowest buildings were twenty stories high, and all the facades were cool steel or white stone. Doormen in uniforms stood every thirty feet or so along streets lined with the kind of expensive cars I’d seen Lucas admire in magazines. At first I thought this area seemed too secure to be a big vampire hangout—but then I realized that the elegant surroundings reminded me of the vampires of Evernight. This was the kind of existence those vampires tried to claim; maybe this was the kind of place they’d stake their turf.

      “We used to have a base down here,” Milos said as he strolled along the sidewalk with me and Raquel. He sounded almost friendly, which was more weird than encouraging. “Those were the days, man. We had a deal with a couple of the fancy restaurants in the area—they’d give us some of what they had left over at the end of the night. I almost got sick of shrimp bisque. I’d about kill my grandmother for rich food like that now.”

      “What happened?” Raquel said, squinting against the summer sunshine.