Blood Awakening by Jamie Manning Read Free Book Online Page A

because Erik and I are a couple of badass vampire hunters and we got them running scared!” The two of them broke out in a deep, rooted laughter that instantly lifted my spirits. The sound bounced around our tiny room, and I knew right then that I wanted that sound around me always.
    “And you’re both so modest, too,” I added, laughing a little myself, reveling in the normalcy of the moment. This was the type of life I longed for: typical, ordinary, boring.
    “Watch it!” Kayla interjected between laughs. “I’m proud of myself, that’s all. I’m proud of all of us. We’ve been through a lot.” She kept looking from me to Erik, the three of us connected by an unseen but very powerful force: Death. Death connected all life, I supposed. But we were bringers of death, in a sense; we stood out from the norm.
    “I know, I know,” I laughed. “I am, too.” And I truly was. Though killing anything (vampires or not, they were once human) bothered me to no end, I was glad that I wasn’t going through everything alone. At first, I hadn’t wanted Kayla involved in the whole “gotta kill vampires to survive” thing. Now, I couldn’t imagine her not being in my life. Or Erik, either, for that matter, though admittedly for different reasons. I felt myself blush and moved around the room. “So are we gonna get moving or what?” I asked, stepping over to the sink to pretend to brush my hair so my crimson cheeks could return to a normal pallor.
    “Ready when you guys are,” Kayla quipped, hopping from the bed. “I’ll go turn in our keys and check out. Don’t forget the suitcase, Ava. Meet you at the car.” The realization that Erik and I were once again alone began pressing down on me. I took a few more seconds staring into the mirror, my reflection throwing fear back at me; why was I so scared to be alone with him?
    Because he’s not Chance. And you so want him to be.
    My internal voice was dead-on sometimes.
    “So,” I said, stepping away from the sink and finishing up packing the suitcase. “Ready?” Erik still sat on his bed, his rather small suitcase resting beside him. I crossed the room to the door before he stopped me.
    “Wait a minute,” he said, his words falling sweetly on my ears. I closed my eyes for a moment before turning to face him. He had risen from the bed, statuesque in the middle of the room. “I wanted to apologize for earlier,” he went on, nervous tension evident on his face. “I was out of line.”
    My heart caught in my throat. Did I want him to apologize? The word No flashed in my mind, brilliant and all-consuming. I suddenly realized that I liked him touching me, talking to me, flirting with me. “It’s fine,” I said, shrugging off our late-night encounter on the balcony like its meaning was irrelevant.
    “I promise it won’t happen again.”
    Six simple words that stung when I heard them.
    I had been pushing Erik away ever since I felt the connection between us growing stronger after Lila’s death, not wanting him to get close to me. And now I had gotten what I wanted; Erik vowed to stay away—or at least at a respectable distance. So why did I feel like my stomach had fallen to my knees?
    “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I added. Unfortunately Erik didn’t hear me, having already left the room. Though I couldn’t be certain, I had a feeling that he wouldn’t be keeping that promise for long.
    The drive to Boston University was a quiet one. Erik was busy paying attention to the thick traffic littering the roadway, while Kayla made mental and physical notes of visual landmarks in case we needed to find our way back. Kayla had asked Erik to drive since he had more experience (though I doubted much), so I sat quietly in the back of the car, my mind spinning with all my problems: Erik, and the fact that somehow he had wormed his way into my heart; Chance, who I loved more than anything, keeping his distance; and the fact that I still had a long way to go before