She wasn't human anymore. She was something other. She'd said it herself, she and James were of one kind and Phil was something different. She belonged to the Night World now.
Oh, God, maybe we should just have let her die, Phil thought, and picked up a shovel with loose and trembling hands. James had already gotten the lid back on the vault. Phil shoveled dirt on it without looking at where it landed. His head wobbled as if his neck were a pipe cleaner.
"Don't be an idiot," a voice said, and hard fingers closed on Phil's wrist briefly. Through a blur, Phil saw James.
"She's not better off dead. She's just confused right now. This is temporary, all right?"
The words were brusque, but Phil felt a tiny surge of comfort.
Maybe James was right. Life was good, in whatever form. And Poppy had chosen this.
Still, she'd changed, and only time would tell how much.
One thing-Phil had made the mistake of thinking that vampires were like humans. He'd gotten so comfortable with James that he'd almost forgotten their differences.
He wouldn't make that mistake again.
Poppy felt wonderful-in almost every way.
She felt secret and strong. She felt poetic and full of possibility. She felt as if she'd sloughed off her old body like a snake shedding its skin, to reveal a fresh new body underneath.
And she knew, without being quite sure how she knew, that she didn't have cancer.
It was gone, the terrible thing that had been running wild inside her. Her new body had killed it and absorbed it somehow. Or maybe it was just that every cell that made up Poppy North, every molecule, had changed.
However It was, she felt vibrant and healthy. Not just better than she had before she'd gotten the cancer, but better than she could remember feeling in her life. She was strangely aware of her own body, and her muscles and joints all seemed to be working in a way that was sweet and almost magical.
The only problem was that she was hungry. It was taking all her willpower not to pounce on the blond guy in the hole.
Phillip. Her brother.
She knew he was her brother, but he was also human and she could sense the rich stuff, lush with life, that was coursing through his veins. The electrifying fluid she needed to survive.
So jump him, part of her mind whispered. Poppy frowned and tried to wiggle away from the thought. She felt something in her mouth nudging her lower lip, and she poked her thumb at it instinctively.
It was a tooth. A delicate curving tooth. Both her canine teeth were long and pointed and very sensitive.
How weird. She rubbed at the new teeth gently, then cautiously explored them with her tongue. She pressed them against her lip.
After a moment they shrank to normal size. If she thought about humans full of blood like berries, they grew again.
Hey, look what I can dot
But she didn't bother the two grimy boys who were filling in the hole. She glanced around and tried to distract herself instead.
Strange-it didn't really seem to be either day or night.-Maybe there was an eclipse. It was too dim to be daytime, but far too bright for nighttime. She could see the leaves on the maple trees and the gray Spanish moss hanging from the oak trees.
Tiny moths
were fluttering around the moss, and she could see their pale wings.
When she looked at the sky, she got a shock. There was something floating there, a giant round thing that blazed with silvery light. Poppy thought of spaceships, of alien worlds, before she realized the truth.
It was the moon. Just an ordinary full moon. And the reason it looked so big and throbbing with light was that she had night vision. That was why she could see the moths, too.
All her senses were keen. Delicious smells wafted by her, the smells of small burrowing animals and fluttering dainty birds.
On the wind came a tantalizing hint of rabbit.
And she could hear things. Once she whipped her head around as a dog barked right beside her. Then she realized that it was far away, outside the cemetery. It only sounded close.
I'll bet I can run fast, too, she thought. Her legs felt tingly. She wanted to go running out into the lovely, gloriously-scented night, to be one with it. She was part of it now.
James, she said. And the strange thing was that she said it without saying it out loud. It was something she knew how to do without thinking.
James looked up from his shoveling. Hang on, he said the same way. We're almost done, kiddo.
Then you'll teach me to hunt?
He nodded, just slightly. His hair was falling over his forehead and he looked adorably grubby. Poppy felt as if she'd never really seen him before-because
now she was seeing him with new senses. James wasn't just silky brown hair and enigmatic gray eyes and a lithe-muscled body. He was the smell of winter rain and the sound of his predator's heartbeat and the silvery aura of power she could feel around him. She could sense his mind, lean and tiger-tough but somehow gentle and almost wistful at the same time.
We're hunting partners now, she told him eagerly, and he smiled an acknowledgment. But underneath she felt that he was worried. He was either sad or anxious about something, something he was keeping from her.
She couldn't think about it. She didn't feel hungry anymore ...
she felt strange. As if she was having trouble getting enough air.
James and Phillip were shaking out the tarps, unrolling strips of fresh sod to cover the grave. Her grave. Funny she hadn't really thought about that before. She'd been lying in a grave-she ought to feel repulsed or scared.
She didn't. She didn't remember being in there at all-didn't remember anything from the time she'd fallen asleep in her bedroom until she'd woken up with James calling her.
Except a dream ...
"Okay," James said. He was folding up a tarp. "We can go.