Dead Awakenings by Rebekah R. Ganiere

they had come to get her. “Did he get what he wanted from the computers from where you found me?”
    Luca glanced at her sideways as they walked down a corridor. “Yes and no. We found some information that might end up in a lead. But we didn’t find everything.”
    “Well, that’s not cryptic, is it?”
    Luca let a smile cross his face. It was small, but she caught it anyway. Something inside of her fluttered. The thought that she could make him smile felt like a victory.
    They walked past the Forgotten. Most sat motionless on the floor or on their beds. Luca turned a corner and then another. They went through a door and came to a wall with a keypad. There was the click, and part of the wall swung inward. She stepped through behind Luca and straight into a study. On this side the door was a bookcase. The room had a mahogany desk with a large leather chair. Dark wooden bookcases full of books lined the walls. It was a picture-perfect old gentlemen’s smoking room.
    They walked into an open family room. There was a sectional couch and a mounted flat screen TV. Cabinets of DVDs and video game machines lined an entertainment center. How had it all gotten there?
    The room opened into a pristine white kitchen with a stainless-steel fridge in the far corner. Spotless granite countertops smelled faintly of bleach. Luca opened a fridge stocked with tall slender cylindrical bottles in different colors and removed two.
    He set the bottles in front of her. “Punch or orange?”
    She took the orange bottle and opened it. It smelled like orange Gatorade. She took a sip. It tasted like orange Gatorade. Once she started drinking she couldn’t stop. Halfway through the bottle Luca put his hand on her wrist. “Slow down. You need to pace it. Too much too quick won’t feel very good. Your body needs to metabolize what you’ve already had first.”
    Her skin tingled and tightened a bit.
    “So is this all we ever eat?” She shook the bottle.
    “No. We eat other things as well. But we eat on diet.”
    “On diet?”
    “Yes, those of us who choose to live here in Haven House choose not to eat human flesh, except in certain instances. We eat fresh animal organs instead.”
    The memory of attacking the man at the hospital flashed into her mind. The horror at killing him was replaced by the memory of her hunger. He had smelled so delicious, his flesh had—she stopped herself as her vision sharpened and her mouth salivated. She dropped her eyes to the counter so Luca wouldn’t notice.
    “So what are those certain instances?” She stuck a fingernail under the edge of a label on the bottle and began to pick at it.
    “Well, first and foremost our tissues are dead. That means we are unable to heal ourselves. If we get hurt we have to have human tissue to help us mend. It’s the only tissue that has all the amino acids and DNA components needed.”
    “So a few days ago when I bit you…”
    “Yeah.” He picked up his bottle and took a drink. He didn’t make eye contact with her. “I had no choice. You left quite a large hole in my arm. Going off diet is risky for us. When we eat human tissue it heightens our senses. Makes us stronger, faster, and more aware.”
    “Like when we rage?”
    “Exactly.”
    “So that’s why the other night when I was upset, you were able to hold me against the wall, whereas the night before I was able to knock you over.”
    “Right.” He dropped his gaze to the counter.
    “Why is that so bad? It seems like if we have the problem of not being able to heal, the extra reflexes would be something we could really use.”
    He thought for a moment. “Remember that guy that you attacked when we were leaving the hospital?”
    She let her hair fall across her face so that he couldn’t see her and continued to pick at that very stubborn label, but she didn’t say anything.
    “I’ll take that as a yes. Do you remember how you felt when we tried to pull you off of him?”
    “I couldn’t