Obediently, I did as he asked. Bo slid around me and off the bed. When he offered me his hand, I saw that his form was looking weaker than it had before he’d fed me. When I put my fingers in his palm, I saw that I was in virtual y the same state—somewhere just shy of completely visible.
“It’s dark and we need to feed. We both need more blood.”
I was immediately uneasy.
“Where are we going to get it?”
“The woods.”
At Bo’s words, vivid imagery flashed through my mind. I thought of kil ing sweet, innocent animals just for their blood and saliva gushed into my mouth. But it wasn’t from thirst; it was from nausea.
“Wil they die? Wil we have to kil them or can we just take a little bit and let them live, like humans?”
Bo’s expression said he hated his answer, but that he had to give it.
“We have to kil them, Ridley. For one thing, it takes much more animal blood to satisfy our bodies and keep our form.
Also, they’re life force isn’t as hearty as a humans, so ones left alive turn mad after only one feeding. We can’t let them live. I’m sorry.”
It was so distasteful, I dared not consider it.
“I don’t think I can do that, Bo. I just- I can’t…”
“Yes, you can. You just have to try.” Bo tugged on my hand, swiftly putting an end to the conversation. “Come on.”
I let him lead me from the hidden room back into the main house, down the stairs and out to my car. Bo opened the passenger side and helped me in before he rounded the hood to slide in behind the wheel.
“We could run, but there’s no reason to waste any energy until we can get you built up,” he explained, very matter of fact.
We rode in silence to the edge of woods. Bo parked in the same spot we’d used several times, right beneath the No Littering sign that had been tagged with obscenities. He cut the engine and got out to come around to my side.
I let him help me out and we walked, hand in hand, into the woods. Though the forest wasn’t as brightly lit as, say, noon, I could stil see as clearly as I could if the sun had been setting. I could plainly make out branches, leaves, roots and fal en trees, as wel as the shift of tiny bugs and things darting and scuttling about on the forest floor.
When we’d gone far enough that we could no longer see the car, Bo stopped.
“What are we—”
“Shh,” he whispered. “Listen.”
At first, al I could hear was Bo’s breathing, his heartbeat and the loud sounds of woodland creatures scurrying about through the underbrush. But then I heard a heavier rustling and I listened closely, trying to block out al the other sounds so that I could hear more clearly.
Twigs snapped, leaves crackled and bracken broke beneath the weight of a much larger creature, a creature with footsteps that sounded nearly human. I could tel they were deliberate as whatever it was picked its way through the forest. When the movement stopped, I heard a blowing sound.
“Smel ,” Bo whispered.
Tipping my chin up, I stuck my nose into the air and inhaled deeply. A strong and offensive animal scent assailed me. My first instinct was to grimace, but beneath that smel was another aroma, one that made my mouth water a tiny bit. It wasn’t even in the same league as the smel of Bo’s blood, but I could identify the sweet coppery notes of something similar in the air.
“Why can I smel blood? Is it wounded?”
“No,” Bo murmured in response. “You can smel things now that scent the blood, like pheromones and other hormones. Blood has a very distinctive smel that seeps through the skin. You couldn’t smel it before.”
Briefly, I wondered about Bo’s delicious scent and how it had always seemed so strongly identifiable to me. However, my tangent was curtailed, as Bo’s next words brought me sharply back to the present.
“I want you to chase it, okay? Pay attention to the sound of it. That wil tel you which direction it’s running. Pay attention to the smel , too. You can track things that way. I’m going to run around and flank it. I’l meet back up with you in a few minutes.”
“You just want me to chase it?”
“Yes. That’s al . Just chase it.”
I had to admit that I felt a tremendous amount of relief that he didn’t expect me to hunt the poor thing and kil it. I knew I didn’t have the stomach for it. At least not yet.
“This is a good way to get you used to moving so quickly, too. You need to know what it feels like so that you don’t do it in front of anyone else.”
“Okay, so you just want me to start running toward it? Do I need to make some sort of noise or something to spook it?”
“When you get close enough for it to hear or smel you, you won’t have to spook it.”
“How far away is it now?”
“Probably a couple hundred yards.”
In my head, I stretched two footbal fields out, end to end, and imagined myself looking al the way out across that distance. That simple exercise added some perspective to the true sensitivity of my heightened senses and I was duly amazed.
“I can smel something and hear it moving from that far away?”
“Pretty cool, huh?”
Bo grinned. The action accentuated his handsomeness and my stomach flipped over. I couldn’t help but smile in return. He was positively captivating.
“You ready to give your new body a whirl?”
Not really I felt like saying, but instead, I nodded.
“Take off,” he said, pointing straight ahead.
Reluctantly, I turned to walk away. When I’d moved several feet, Bo cal ed out in a hushed voice, “Run!”
With a start, I pushed my feet into a faster pace until I was moving smoothly over the forest floor. I looked down and could stil see every leaf with crystal ine clarity. My eyes darted left and right, taking in the passing scenery, and I increased my speed, careful to mind my footing.
I edged myself on, faster and faster, until I felt like I was moving at the speed of light. No matter how fast I went, though, my surroundings never blurred. They simply passed by in quick-yet-clear images, like I was seeing them in high-speed snapshots.
I weaved in and out of the trees, my body reacting to every command quickly and with an amazing agility. It was as if the response time of my muscles had dwindled to the point that it seemed to coincide with the thought.
By the time I quit playing and remembered what Bo had said, I had no idea where I was. I stopped and sniffed, realizing that the scent of the animal was very faint and very far behind me. Quickly, I turned to head back the way I’d come, letting loose and running as fast as I could.