Then a pair of knees covered in bloody blue jeans came into my view. The vampire Bill leaned over so I could look into his face. There was blood smeared on his mouth, and his fangs were out, glistening white against his lower lip. I tried to smile at him, but my face wasn't working right.
"I'm going to pick you up," Bill said. He sounded calm.
"I'll die if you do," I whispered.
He looked me over carefully. "Not just yet," he said, after this evaluation. Oddly enough, this made me feel better; no telling how many injuries he'd seen in his lifetime, I figured.
"This will hurt," he warned me.
It was hard to imagine anything that wouldn't.
His arms slid under me before I had time to get afraid. I screamed, but it was a weak effort.
"Quick," said a voice urgently.
"We're going back in the woods out of sight," Bill said, cradling my body to him as if it weighed nothing.
Was he going to bury me back there, out of sight? After he'd just rescued me from the Rats? I almost didn't care.
It was only a small relief when he laid me down on a carpet of pine needles in the darkness of the woods. In the distance, I could see the glow of the light in the parking lot. I felt my hair trickling blood, and I felt the pain of my broken arm and the agony of deep bruises, but what was most frightening was what I didn't feel.
I didn't feel my legs.
My abdomen felt full, heavy. The phrase "internal bleeding" lodged in my thoughts, such as they were.
"You will die unless you do as I say," Bill told me.
"Sorry, don't want to be a vampire," I said, and my voice was weak and thready.
"No, you won't be," he said more gently. "You'll heal. Quickly. I have a cure. But you have to be willing."
"Then trot out the cure," I whispered. "I'm going." I could feel the pull the grayness was exerting on me.
In the little part of my mind that was still receiving signals from the world, I heard Bill grunt as if he'd been hurt. Then something was pressed up against my mouth.