The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner Page 0,4
barely noticed. It was rare for me to get real y clean blood, because I fol owed the dregs rule. Diego seemed to fol ow the rules, too. He must have smel ed what he was giving up.
Why had he done it?
Chapters 2
When the second body was empty, my throat felt better. There was a lot of blood in my system. I probably wouldn't real y burn for a few days.
Diego was stil waiting, whistling quietly through his teeth. When I let the body fal to the ground with a thud, he turned back to me and smiled.
"Um, thanks," I said.
He nodded. "You looked like you needed it more than me. I remember how hard it is in the beginning."
"Does it get easier?"
He shrugged. "In some ways."
We looked at each other for a second.
"Why don't we dump these bodies in the sound?" he suggested.
I bent down, grabbed the dead blonde, and slung her limp body over my shoulder. I was about to get the other one, but Diego was there before me, the pimp already on his back.
"I got it," he said.
I fol owed him up the al ey wal, and then we swung across the girders under the freeway. The lights from the cars below didn't touch us. I thought how stupid people were, how oblivious, and I was glad I wasn't one of the clueless.
Hidden in the darkness, we made our way to an empty dock, closed for the night. Diego didn't hesitate at the end of the concrete, he just jumped right over the edge with his bulky burden and disappeared into the water. I slid in after him. He swam as sleek and quick as a shark, shooting deeper and farther out into the black sound. He stopped suddenly when he found what he was looking for - a huge, slime-covered boulder on the ocean floor, sea stars and garbage clinging to its sides. We had to be more than a hundred feet deep - to a human, it would have seemed pitch-black here. Diego let go of his bodies. They swayed slowly in the current beside him while he shoved his hand into the mucky sand at the base of the rock. After a second he found a hold and ripped the boulder up from its resting spot. The weight of it drove him waist-deep into the dark seafloor.
He looked up and nodded to me.
I swam down to him, hooking his bodies with one hand on my way. I shoved the blonde into the black hole under the rock, then pushed the second girl and the pimp in after her. I kicked them lightly to make sure they were in, and then got out of the way. Diego let the boulder fal . It wobbled a little, adjusting to the newly uneven foundation. He kicked his way out of the muck, swam to the top of the boulder, and then pushed it down, grinding the obstructions flat underneath.
He swam back a few yards to view his work.
Perfect, I mouthed. These three bodies would never resurface. Riley would never hear a story about them on the news.
He grinned and held up his hand.
It took me a minute to understand that he was looking for a high five. Hesitantly, I swam forward, tapped my palm to his, then kicked away, putting some distance between us. Diego got a weird expression on his face, and then he shot to the surface like a bul et.
I darted up after him, confused. When I broke through to the air, he was almost choking on his laughter.
"What?"
He couldn't answer me for a minute. Final y he blurted out,
"Worst high five ever."
I sniffed, irritated. "Couldn't be sure you weren't just going to rip my arm off or something."
Diego snorted. "I wouldn't do that."
"Anyone else would," I countered.
"True, that," he agreed, suddenly not as amused. "You up for a little more hunting?"
"Do you have to ask?"
We came out of the water under a bridge and lucked right into two homeless guys sleeping in ancient, filthy sleeping bags on top of a shared mattress of old newspapers. Neither one of them woke up. Their blood was soured by alcohol, but stil better than nothing. We buried them in the sound, too, under a different rock.
"Wel, I'm good for a few weeks," Diego said when we were out of the water again, dripping on the end of another empty dock.
I sighed. "I guess that's the easier part, right? I'l be burning again in a