Blood Awakens

by Jessaca Willis

  With a disapproving tilt of the head, Sean glared at him.

  “Sorry,” His shoulder bobbed as he added, “I don’t know my own strength.”

  Gently, Sean and Mara lowered Graciela’s body next to her brother’s.

  “Are these two from Surviving and Thriving?” The doctor’s grim gaze became stone as he addressed Sean. “I take it things were as bad as we thought there?”

  “Worse,” he replied with great sadness. The images of their fallen brothers and sisters would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. “These two aren’t from S.T. though. They’re from Guatemala.”

  Darach’s eyes bulged. “What the blazes were they doing all the way in west Texas then?”

  “Making their way to California.” Remembering the coincidence would’ve filled Sean with appreciation, had he not been so worried about the two of them. Especially the young woman, Graciela. She’d been out for a number of hours now. “They’re good people, Darach. They needed our help on the road, and they need it again now. Can you help me heal them?”

  “Of course. I’ll do what I can, but neither of them look like they’re injured. What’s the story?” Darach asked loudly, snapping on a pair of medical gloves.

  Beneath his bushy brow, his brown eyes were focused. A scar stretched from his tear duct back to his ear, but it was only noticeable up close. Hoping to conceal it, Darach had grown a voluminous beard that dangled from his chin, as long as his eyebrows were thick.

  “When we found them, the woman was being attacked by the same people responsible for Surviving and Thriving.”

  Darach snapped to face Sean, inquisition burning in his eyes, but Sean held firm. “We’ll explain it all later, but for now, all that matters is making sure these two are okay.”

  Darach swiveled between Sean and Mara, both the epitome of relentless stone. “Fair, I’ll wait for my briefing later.”

  “The boy is Santiago.”

  Darach arched one of his caterpillar brows. “The boy? He’s hardly a few years younger than you.”

  It wasn’t meant as an insult. It was just that he seemed so young, even though he looked his age. Precious seconds dwindling, Sean decided against justifying it. “He’s an empath and hasn’t developed enough skill to control his ability yet. We think he fell under from exertion.”

  There was a spark of accusation in the way Darach addressed Mara. “Couldn’t bother to charm him?”

  “I did. The utorian must’ve severed our connection.”

  The cogs seemed to be churning behind Darach’s skull. “You couldn’t just re-charm him?”

  Sean witnessed the shame that shadowed Mara with that question. It had been the first thing they tried after they’d realized, but there’d been nothing left in her to give. Struggling on her words, Mara said, “The utorian takes a lot out of a person. I didn’t have the energy to do it again.”

  He couldn’t stand seeing her like this. Mara was always so hard on herself, like she expected herself to have unending energy and fortitude, but even she was only human. “It was probably good you couldn’t, honestly. Start the unlatching process sooner rather than later. Before it became permanent.”

  “That’s not a thing.” There was a hint of amusement buried beneath Mara’s taciturn exterior.

  The doctor peered at the young man with a wind-up flashlight so it would shine. Both hands floated above Santiago’s abdomen, and Darach closed his eyes. They hovered patiently, Sean and Mara soundless as they watched him work.

  When he was content with his examination, he turned back to Sean. “I think you might be right. Trey, it won’t do him any good to stay here. He’s not within USTOTA’s boundary. Where do you want him, Sean? In the jail?”

  Though the jail was secluded and the safest place for an Awakened with no control of their power since it was within the boundary, something told him that if Santiago woke up in a cage, there’d be trouble. And he couldn’t say he’d blame him. “No, that wouldn’t be right. Go ahead and put him in my house. The guest room is still under protection of USTOTA.”

  “And the girl?” Darach asked as Trey shuffled out of the room effortlessly, his haul in tow.

  The doctor swung a chair around to Graciela’s bed next. He went through the usual medical processes. He checked her pulse, opened her eyelids, and counted her breaths. “She’s been like this since the attack?”

  “Not exactly,” Sean said. “We think she was sick before the attack.”

  “Sick like what?”

  “I’m surprised her lungs didn’t burst, she was coughing so much,” Mara said.

  “Like maybe she has the flu?” Sean suggested.

  Darach gave a pensive nod. “We’ll find out.”

  The three of them stood there in silence while the examination continued. To an outsider, it might have looked as if the doctor was wasting precious time, staring at Graciela’s body as if the answers would come to him via telepathy. To some extent, there was truth in that. Both Sean and Mara knew, however, that he was channeling his gift, syphoning through her system in search of an answer in her veins. After all, like Sean, Darach was a blood guide.

  Except Darach had one advantage Sean didn’t: medical training.

  Neither of them ventured to interrupt him. Periodically he tilted his head at a thought or flipped through his medicine cabinet.

  When he was ready, he addressed both of them.

  “I can’t find anything in the blood, but she’s definitely dehydrated and has a fever. Add that to the fatigue, it’s possible it’s just influenza. I’ve never seen someone this weak and immobilized from it before though.”

  “Like I said,” Sean began. “We found them on the road. They had been traveling for a long time. Months, I think they said. And most of the time she was the one supporting him. It could just be that exertion finally caught up with her.”

  “That’s a possibility too. I’ll administer some fluids and get some nutrients back into her, but she might just have to come out of this on her own.” With haste, before Sean could say anything, Darach strode to the other side of the medic tent to retrieve supplies—a plastic bag of liquid, a long clear tube, and a shiny, sharpened sliver of metal.

  “Thanks,” Sean’s hand patted Darach’s shoulder when he walked by. “When you’re ready to have her moved, I’ll send a roider to take her to my place.”

  Alarmed by the suggestion, Darach almost missed her vein with the needle. “Why? She’s not Awakened. She could stay here in the infirmary, easily.”

  “You’re right, she’s not Awakened.” Like Sean, Darach could tell based off scent alone. One of the perks of being a Blood Guide. “But her brother will be wondering where she is, and I think it would be the best place for them to rest.”

  He seemed to ease. “You got it, boss.”

  Though Sean would’ve liked to stick around for the recovery process, as the Head Sentient of the sanctuary, he had paperwork to attend to.

  Mara accompanied him to the strategy tent, where dozens of reports awaited them.

  “You read the local ones, and I’ll take the ones from the other Unions?”

  The suggestion didn’t surprise him, as Mara always preferred reading the Atlantic Unions reports. More than suspected, he knew it had much to do with her hoping for word from Italy.

  “Why break tradition?” Nodding to his friend, the two grabbed a chair on either side of the circular table and began sorting through the numerous disheartening backlog of reports.

  °°°

  During the week that followed, Sean visited his living quarters often to check in on the two siblings. In the interim, he’d decided to sleep at the guard station in the jail to give them privacy, or sometimes he’d pass out folded over his strategy table.

  Santiago had recovered within a matter of hours, but Graciela remained comatose for a number of days, a scalding fever and an unknown illness preventing her from breaking consciousness.

  During those seemingly endless days, Santiago ne
ver left his sister’s side, likely terrified that she might give her last breath. Sean couldn’t blame him. He would’ve done the same had it been Samson laying there. Frequently, Sean walked in to find him praying to whatever Gods he believed in, a custom that had almost entirely died over the last dozen years.

  Sean had his own faith too, at least a little. These days he found himself aligning most closely with the Tara Prana rather than the ideals of Nihanism he had been loosely raised on. Although, even that religion he had his qualms with, which was why he, for the most part, considered himself spiritual rather than religious. Still, though he didn’t believe in it all, the basic concepts of Tara Prana he felt were logical: the world was ever-changing and always would be.

  But it didn’t matter what Sean believed. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought actually. The only thing that mattered was what Santiago believed. And he definitely wasn’t into the Tara Prana.

  Sean wasn’t sure if the praying helped Graciela, but it seemed to help her brother. Santiago had tended to her every need, never short the dutiful brother that Samson would’ve been to him, were he still alive. When her eyes would flutter open, Santiago would be right there with a bottle of water. When she’d hurl said water and whatever acid remained in her belly, he’d quickly grab her golden-brown locks and push a bucket in front of her face.

  At first, Sean took time out of his day to observe the two of them, to help put Mara’s mind to ease. She always was a little skeptical about meeting people on the road and bringing them back to Hope. And admittedly, she had every right to be. They’d had bad experiences in the past, which was why he complied with her wishes to keep a close eye on the siblings, at least for now.

  But after a while, Sean began checking in on them just so he could witness how close they were, to feel that sense of nostalgia for the relationship he’d lost with his brother. Seeing the way Santiago and Graciela interacted with one another was enough to convince him that they were good people.

  Lightly, Sean rapped at the bedroom door. “Hey, sorry to bother you, but do you have a minute?”

  From knelt knees, Santiago pushed himself up off the floor with the help of the bed. “Sure, come in.” Once up from the ground, Santiago sat in the maroon leather chair that hadn’t moved from Graciela’s bedside since the day he had dragged it over from across the room. “What is it?”

  Sean leaned against the edge of the bedpost. In his hands, he fumbled with a book. “I thought you might be getting bored so I brought you some light reading materials.” With an awkward gesture, he extended the book out.

  Eyeing the book with intrigue, Santiago ripped it from his hands eagerly. His eyes traced over the uninscribed cover before flipping through the first few pages. All traces of enthusiasm vanished. “Don’t you have anything more…fictional? Something…I don’t know, with some fantasy in it?”

  The request caused Sean to falter. “Aren’t we living in enough of a fantasy already?” Sean chortled, but once he saw Santiago’s somber expression, he resumed his original neutral businesslike tone. “I should’ve phrased that differently. This is the AwA Compliance Manual. Everyone who chooses to live at Hope is required to read it. I figured since you’re up here with Graciela all the time, and most of what she’s doing is sleeping, that you probably had enough time to get started on it.”

  Everything in Santiago’s expression soured. “Thank you so much.”

  He didn’t bother to hide the wince. “That’s not the only reason I came up here. As the leader here, making sure policies are followed is part of my job. Making sure everyone reads AwA’s rulebook is just one of the things I have to do. But truly, I’ve been checking in with you so much because I want to make sure she’s doing all right, that you’re doing all right.”

  Everyone hoped Graciela would pull through. Santiago most of all, but Sean considered himself a close second.

  It seemed to soften Santiago. “I get it. There are rules to being here. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. Graciela says it just comes naturally.” Though a faint, heartening grin twitched his cheeks, his expression was brimming with sadness. “We’re doing fine though. Thanks for asking.”

  When Santiago stood from his chair and resumed his place kneeling beside Graciela’s bed, Sean knew it was time to leave. “If you need anything, let me know. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  As he walked out the door, he caught a glimpse of Santiago reaching for the AwA manual.

  Chapter Twenty

  Santiago

  Graciela’s condition didn’t improve for almost a week: bouts of sleeping followed by moderate eating, drinking, and vomiting. The stress alone nearly made Santiago sick himself, constantly worrying whether she would pull through.

  The irony wasn’t lost on him, that for months prior the roles had been flipped, and it was his sister who had worried for his health.

  On the sixth day, while Santiago painstakingly read the manual Sean had given him, Graciela opened her eyes and stayed conscious for over two hours before taking another nap, a considerable amount of progress given the state of her just twelve hours prior. Santiago worried though. Graciela had often told him about patients who became more lucid during the days prior to their death, almost as if they were given a chance to say goodbye to everyone they loved.

  He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He did everything in his power to make sure Graciela was well, demanding that Dr. Darach Gallagher visit thrice daily and that she not be bothered otherwise so she could rest and heal. It was the least he could do, given all that she had done for him.

  By day eight, Graciela was sitting up in bed again, for multiple periods of time throughout the day. She was maintaining conversations and even regaining some pigmentation to her skin. She ate a lot, enough to feed three people, but he supposed that’s what happened when, for a week, your body had no other nutrition except that which came from a tube and was immediately hurled up again.

  On the ninth day, Santiago began allowing visitors, outside of Sean and the doctor. To his surprise, Mara was one of the first ones to step through the door, even before Sean’s daily morning visit, which usually came fairly early.

  She was wearing a tight-fitted jade-green tank top that was practically camouflaged given the splotches of dirt and sweat that stained her stomach, back, and sides. The pants she had chosen had a little more give, cargo capris that bubbled slightly at her calves. At her waist was the knife she carried with her everywhere, even though when given a choice she seemed to prefer a spear or a staff. On the adjacent hip was slung a bag, which Santiago knew from previous dreams held a bottle of water and her secret dance shoes.

  Boyish glee swept over him at the sight of her, much to his chagrin. Luckily, she paid him no mind and promptly came to Graciela’s bedside.

  She stared at his sister intently but addressed him, “How is she?”

  Good morning to you too, he thought. “She’s better, healthier every day.”

  Hardly before he finished answering, Mara leveled him a piercing glare. “I tried to visit sooner, but I was told I wasn’t allowed to.”

  There was only a hint of remorse in him when he answered, “I didn’t want anyone bothering her unless they were her doctor.” Of course he’d wanted to see Mara, but for the time being, he’d needed to be there for Gracie, undistracted.

  “Listen here, I know she’s your sister, but I am responsible for the safety of the people in this community. You two are now a part of that. I know you’re new, so you didn’t know, but I just wanted to clear that up with you. No one tells me where I can and cannot go, what I can and cannot do. Got it?”

  The way he saw it, there were two choices he could make here. One, he could rise to the challenge and assert himself as someone who doesn’t stand to be talked to in that way. It was likely that there would be nothing to gain from that choice. For one, Mara was a person in charge here, and he was a nobody. Secondly, he wanted so desperately to be on her good side that arguing with her didn’t sound appea
ling.

  The other option would be to bite his tongue—and the poison that was readied on it—and say something pleasant like, “I wasn’t thinking. Graciela’s health was all I was worried about. I didn’t mean to stop you from doing your job. You saved my sister’s life. I should’ve let you in.” Inside, his stomach twisted into knots from forcing himself to quiet his desires to lash out at her. Was this what Graciela felt every time she silenced herself for the sake of another?

  It left him feeling violated. If she didn’t leave soon, that voice screaming that Mara was wrong, that Graciela was his sister and therefore he could decide who did or didn’t see her, might break through his lips. Careful not to come across glib, Santiago swallowed the brimming vigor. “Thank you for coming by. She has been most alert around lunchtime. If you wanted to come back and talk to her, then would be a good time.”

  Though he avoided the eye contact, afraid she would see the inner struggle he was having, he was pretty sure she detected it anyway. Out of the corner of his eye, as she left the room, he could’ve swore she bared her teeth at him the way wolves did before striking.

  When he was sure that she had left the room, through grinding teeth, he spat out profanities to vent through his frustration.

  Ultimately it was a gentle hand to his shoulder that stopped him.

  “¿Qué pasa, hermanito?”

  He couldn’t believe his eyes, and all sense of anger blew away like a gust of wind.

  For the first time in over a week, she was standing, and Santiago let tears brim his eyes as he enveloped her in his arms.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Santiago

  “You’re telling me I have to stay within two hundred meters of this thing?”

  At his outrage, Mara’s merely scowled and shrugged.

  As infuriating as she was in this moment, just by looking at her, everything in his body ignited, as much from frustration as from lust. The way her eyelashes batted lazily to the ground and how her lips pouted with the same indifference had him in a dreamlike haze of slow motion ecstasy, but lined with the fire of infuriation. His heart had never beat stronger, his lungs never pumped more air.