He ran through the snow toward the fallen animal. To my horror, hehad hit it. “Tyrone, no! The poor creature.” It was Tyrone’s blood I lusted for, not that of an innocent coyote I had blamed for Heaven’s crime.
“It’s you or the coyote, Tiffany. Someone had to protect you and the neighborhood.”
I could see that he thought he’d done the right thing.
My thoughts and emotions were a swirling vortex, pushing me deeper into the darkness. The animal took its last ragged breaths and the snow crunched under Tyrone’s weight as he knelt over its body. Why did he think he had a right to kill in my name? I’d never asked for that. All my warring emotions pushed me under. In the darkness, my thoughts floated away, leaving me with nothing but thirst.
The animal’s blood was spilling onto the snow, bright red on pristine white. From the running and the adrenaline of the kill, Tyrone’s blood was pumping. As he hunched over the body of the poor creature, I couldn’t look away from the blood pulsing in Tyrone’s neck. His heart might have been saying “Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom,” but my vision was tunneling, his coursing blood clouding my senses. I heard, “Bite me. Bite me. Bite me.”
I made way to Tyrone and crouched next to him, closing my eyes, too parched to think of anything but quenching my thirst. Poised over his neck, the scent of sawdust and evergreen mixed with the blood. Red blood, white snow, evergreens all around. A Christmas killing in Christmas colors.
He turned to me, solemn but satisfied. “I know you didn’t want to kill anything, but it’ll get Wayne off your back. You can keep the house.”
I leaned in close enough to feel the warmth of his skin. His breath came out in soft puffs in the cold winter air. Saliva pooled in my mouth as the sound of his blood pulsed louder in my ears. I wanted to drink from Tyrone.
“Nooooo!” I cried out. I couldn’t bite Tyrone.
He looked at me. “It’s okay, Tiff. It had to die for you to live. You have to produce a body or Wayne’s not gonna let it go. Do you want yourhouse? Your new life in Valentine?”
He didn’t sayMe?but the idea hung in the air between us.
I wanted all of that, but I wanted a drink. So badly.
My senses warring between desperate thirst and desperation to be someone else—a normal girl with a pulse who didn’t kill the guy she liked—rose to a fever pitch. I dropped to my knees in the snow, breaths that I didn’t even need to take coming faster and faster. My vision tunneled to nothing but Tyrone hunched over the poor coyote before going black.
Tiffany! Tiffany, can you hear me?” Someone was frantically calling my name.
I blinked myself awake and Tyrone’s face came into focus. “Thank God.” He took a breath and asked, “Can you walk?”
“Umm.” I was lying on the snowy trail, the dead coyote a few feet away.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t know you’d be so freaked out at the sight of a dead animal.” He exhaled a frozen cloud of frustrated breath. “I’m dead inside. I don’t even know how a normal person is supposed to feel anymore.”
I stifled a laugh. “Who’s dead inside,you?”
World-weary, he hung his head and sat in the snow between me and the coyote so that I wouldn’t have to see it.
I propped myself up on my elbows. “It’s fine. Really, I’m sorry for…” I smiled weakly at him. What had happened? Had I passed out?
His face lined with concern, he said, “No, don’t be sorry. I was being too single-minded about protecting you, about the damn coyote.” He shook his head and carefully placed the gun behind him, as if I might become overwrought at the sight of it.
“I’m trying to make up for…” Tyrone’s voice trailed off like he couldn’t bring himself to say something.
“What?”
“Jeff.” Tyrone looked tortured.
“What about him?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Stop beating yourself up, Ty.” I rested my hand on his.
“I’m okay. You shouldn’t be worried about me.” He brushed the hair away from my forehead and looked at me with a softness I hadn’t yet seen in him. “You’re the one who fainted. I didn’t realize how delicate you are. And you must be freezing. You don’t even have a jacket on.” He pulled the flaps of my cape around me like he was wrapping me in a blanket.
“I’m tougher than I look,” I said. “You remember how we met.”
“Can you walk?” he asked. “I want to get you inside where it’s warm.”
