Did I Kill

"No, I won't!" Max yelled, bolting upright. He found himself half-naked in the forest, alone, and halfway up the hill. He was wearing only his boxers, and there was no fire to be seen. The trees stood tall and silent, with dew clustering on their needles. The lavender painted the sky with the colors of early morning, and a bird chirped in the distance. As something rustled in the bushes at his feet, Max scratched his chest and pushed his hair out of his eyes. He got to his feet with an antsy feeling of déjà vu. He hated the sleepwalking thing and waking up after a blackout to find himself miles away from home, deep inside Des Pontonniers Preserve. He never had any memory of how he'd gotten there or what he'd done before he'd come to. This morning was no different.

Max wondered, "Did I do it?" Ryan Harley, the other Beta vampire in Des Pontonniers, had warned him that sooner or later, he was going to kill someone. Ryan, who had been born a vampire and had lived in Des Pontonniers when he was in high school, had come back to find his sister, Kate Harley, who was the murdered jogger that Levi had heard about on his father's police scanner the night before school started. Kate was the only survivor of a house fire that killed the rest of the Harley family six years ago. Ryan had left, but now he was back to help Max find the Alpha Vampire and kill him. Ryan had told Max that if he dealt the killing blow himself, he would be free of the Vampire curse.

Max was a young vampire who had experienced only one full moon since his Bite. He was resisting the call of the Alpha Vampire as best he could. He'd already refused to kill with the Alpha once, but Ryan said it was only a matter of time before the Alpha forced him to hunt and to butcher. Max's only hope was to help Ryan find the Alpha first and kill him.

Max began to stagger through the forest as the rustling in the bush grew louder, a bit more frantic. He cocked his head and listened, sniffing. As he bent down, he noticed the print of a single, perfect human-like claw stamped into the damp earth. He laid his hand over it and told himself that it wasn't his. Max didn't change into a vampire exactly, and neither did Ryan. However, Ryan's dead sister, Kate Harley, had turned into a vampire. Max and Levi had seen her in vampire form when they had dug her up beside the burned-out shell of the Harley family home a few days after school had started. They had removed the vampire bane circling her grave, and she had been a girl again. A dead girl. Half of a dead girl.

As Max became aware of something watching him, he tensed. His fingernails lengthened into claws, and he quietly growled, preparing for a potential attack.

Slowly he raised his head. His eyesight bright red, then became human again, as twenty feet away, a beautiful silvery clothed figure stared calmly at him with red eyes, a vampire, he knew. The rising sun cast a glow around it, almost as if it were a magical creature, and it stood statue-still. Max wondered if he was still dreaming. Then the figure turned and trotted gracefully away, slipping among the trees.

School.

"Hey, Max," Levi called from the parking lot of Des Pontonniers High as Max chained his bike and took off his helmet. Before the Bite, Max's three main goals in life had been playing first line in Rugby, getting a girlfriend, and buying a car. Accomplishing two out of three was excellent, but he wished he'd put and stay human on his list. Funny how it seemed a little more important than getting his own wheels.

"Levi, I had another weird dream last night," Max said, as Levi loped up to him and they walked shoulder to shoulder into the school. Levi had on his bull's-eye T-shirt, and it kind of freaked Max out when he wore it. As if it meant that Levi was a target. They both knew the Alpha wanted Max to kill with him, to cement Max's acceptance that he was a member of the Alpha's pack. Who better to take down than the guy Max's mom had once referred to as his "litter mate"?

"Dream? Did you wake up in the woods?" Max asked him. "With rabbit breath?"

"God. No." Scott grimaced. "At least, I don't think so. But there was a fire, and—"

"Fire. Which is a recurring theme in the drama that has become your life," Levi said, aping Max's grimace. "And we know that this is because—"

"Hi, Max," Miley said, bobbing over with a worried expression on her face. She was wearing that black-and-purple top with no sleeves and the heeled boots, and she gave him a kiss on the lips right there in front of the whole school, which was awesome.

"Catch you later, Bugs," Levi said, shoving off.

For a moment, Max thought he might pass out from the sheer amazingness of Miley's kiss. He had been so caught up in the moment that he almost missed what she was saying. Her beautiful face was filled with even more concern than Levi's not-as-beautiful face had been, and he focused hard on what she was saying through his kiss-induced stupor.

". . . missing," she was saying. "He wasn't at his house last night, and Amelia found an odd note in his dresser drawer," she told him. "And his Porsche wasn't in the garage."

Max's mind began to race as he tried to make sense of what Miley was telling him. Amelia. Porsche. Leo Rupert. The pieces slowly started to fall into place, and alarm bells went off in Max's head. Leo Rupert was missing, and it was the morning after Max had had a blackout.

"Wait. Amelia was at his house but he wasn't?" Max asked, feeling a knot form in his stomach.

"Yeah. His parents are out of town," Miley said, and Max could see the concern in her eyes.

He didn't know what to do. Leo was missing, and he had no memory of what had happened the night before. He felt queasy, wondering if he had something to do with it.

"I have to scoot," Miley said, and gave him another kiss.

Max watched her walk away, feeling a sense of unease settle over him. Then, Amelia passed by, looking exhausted and worried. Max swallowed back his dread, trying to convince himself that he had nothing to do with Leo's disappearance.

"I didn't kill anyone last night," he told himself. "I'd know it if I had."

But the nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach refused to go away. Would he really know if he had done something terrible?