Of the Blood

by Joshua Laack

Chapter 30

  As soon as he thought about it, Andrew was moving. The air was rushing by his face, and the wind echoing in his ears. It was exhilarating to be moving at such a fast pace. He wondered if he could go faster. He concentrated and he could.

  The houses he was passing as he ran should have been a blur, but Andrew found to his amazement that even at this incredible speed he could still register details and see things around him, though some of it was just a little blurry around the edges.

  All of that and he still wasn't tired and didn't feel as though he was at his limit. Andrew put all the effort he could muster into running and focused all his thoughts on it. The world on either side vanished in a blur. The only thing he had time to see was what was in his line of sight. There was no way a human would be able to even register that he ran past. He laughed out loud. He was Blood and he loved it more than he could have imagined.

  His house appeared in his line of sight. As soon as Andrew thought it, he was stopped in front of the house. For some reason, he felt a hesitation there. It was as if he shouldn't be there. A whisper in his mind told him that he should be trying to find Johari first, not going home. He ignored the whisper. This was his house, why shouldn't he go in? He opened the front door.

  A noise came from the kitchen, so he headed in that direction to see who was home.

  “John? Is that y...” Andrew's mom was standing at the kitchen counter, slicing some vegetables for a stew that she liked to make. Her head turned as her son entered the room. The sudden look of shock and then of fear that flowed into her face chilled him to the bone. “Oh my God! Andrew! No! This can't be real! This isn't possible!” Her lips were barely moving as those whispered words came out, but Andrew heard them as clear as day, as if she had shouted them even. He wondered for a single instant what was so wrong, and then he realized why he didn't belong here. He was dead.

  They had buried him, gone to his funeral and wept over his casket. Andrew had a sudden image of his mother standing above him weeping. He tried to think of some explanation that might make sense to her. Nothing came to him.

  “You are not my son! Get out of my house!” Mary's eyes were wide and her breathing ragged as she screamed. The chopping knife in her hand raised and she came at him. In that instant, Andrew took in her trembling hand, her flaring nostrils and eyes with pupils dilated far beyond normal. He registered that she was attacking him and saw her begin to move. Just before she reached him, Andrew grabbed for the knife in an instinctive attempt to protect himself.

  He wasn't sure exactly how it happened, but his hand moved too fast and the knife came down on top of it. Instead of cutting in, the knife bounced off the side of his hand and then his mother crashed into him. His hands caught her as she started to bounce back and fall. He heard a tearing noise and smelled blood. That was strange. Andrew couldn't understand where it was coming from since the knife hadn't cut him.

  Andrew lowered his mother to the floor and stepped back to see what had happened. The knife had turned as she crashed into him. The vision from his dreams that had faded from his mind came flooding back in all its fullness as he stared down at his mother on the floor. She was to weak to even cry out. Blood poured out from the long gash ending with the knife sticking out below her chest. It flowed onto the floor forming a rapidly expanding puddle. Andrew stumbled back even farther as her eyes stared up at him, and even with death close, it was obvious that the foremost thought in her mind was terror at the sight of her son.

  It had been only moments since Andrew entered the house, and he heard his father rushing down the stairs to see what his mother was shouting for. He stared down one last time at his mother and two teardrops trailed down his face.

  “I'm so sorry,” Andrew whispered. Then he turned and ran, leaving the door wide open in his rush to get away from what he had done. He didn't notice where he was running as everything blurred around him. He ran, trying to leave the horror of what he had become and what he had done behind him. No matter how fast he ran, it was still there. Andrew had killed his own mother.

  At that moment, he realized that he was back at the scene of his own accident. The place that had almost killed him however long ago, and that he now wished had left him dead in reality. He was standing beside the road, and his sharp eyes took in the few chunks of glass left on the concrete and a lot more along the side, as if someone had tried to sweep them up. The car itself was gone, and there was no sign of the truck or any pieces of it that Andrew could see. A terrible thing, erased and already forgotten by most people.

  Andrew stared off down the road, in the direction that the truck had come from and there he saw another one coming. It was farther away than he would have ever been able to see before, but he didn't even notice how much his vision had improved. Instead he waited for the truck that he was hoping would end his life here as it was meant to end.

  He waited in the ditch where he knew that the driver couldn't see him. Andrew wondered what the driver would think that he hit. It didn't matter. He just wanted to be where he belonged, back in the ground, where he couldn't hurt anyone ever again. At the last moment, he jumped in front of the truck. He was moving so fast and was so close to it that the driver never even saw what he hit.

  Before that moment, despite playing a little baseball in phys-ed, Andrew had never taken the time to imagine what the ball would have felt like as it was struck by the bat. He did ponder it at that moment. A whoosh of air from the front of the truck, a solid strike and then he was flying through the air, off into the opposite ditch from which he had jumped.

  He landed on his backside and rolled head over heels multiple times before coming to a stop. Andrew ended up in a sitting position in the grass, facing the spot where the truck had struck him. He had flown almost sixty yards and rolled another ten or fifteen. He sat there for a moment, waiting to die. To his disappointment, he realized that not only was he not going to die, but that the truck hadn't done much damage to him at all.

  No bones seemed to broken and although there was some of his blood now mixed with his mother's on the tattered remains of the suit, the mass of cuts that it had come from were already closed in the moments he had lain there. His new body was going to be much harder to kill than his old one. At this particular moment in Andrew's life, he wasn't all that excited about that.

  He lay in the ditch for a long time. After several hours, a sort of numbness settled over him. Andrew realized that since he couldn't die, he would have to learn to live with the death of his mother, with what he had done. The truck driver, who hadn't even stopped to see what he hit, couldn't help Andrew. He had another thought. Maybe living with her death was a more fitting punishment than dying would be.

  Andrew decided as he sat there that he would learn to live with this pain. He would never forget it, but use it to make himself stronger, so that he would never hurt anyone else. He needed to find Johari. She could help him learn that control. She could keep him from hurting anyone ever again.

  Andrew jumped up and began to run, though not as fast as he could, in the direction that he knew would take him to her house. Now that he was headed in the direction that he should have gone to begin with, he felt better, but tears still filled his eyes as he struggled with the image of his mother he couldn't get out of his mind.

  Andrew could have run faster and gotten there sooner, but he forced himself to walk instead. He had to concentrate to walk at a normal human pace, but he just didn't feel like he deserved the joy of being able to move so fast. At this slower speed, it took Andrew a long time to reach the house.

  Just as he was walking down the driveway, the sky, which had been changing colors without him noticing, broke into a glorious golden gleam as the sun pushed its first tiny sliver of the day over the top of the horizon. The light sparkled across the sky, lighting up all the things around him with a beauty that he never imagined was possible. Then a figure with a beauty all her own appeared into that glow that outshone it and everything
around her.

  Johari was standing in the middle of the driveway as Andrew came around the curve toward the house. He saw her standing there, ivory skin glistening in the light. He stopped walking to drink the vision of perfection. She was so much more beautiful than he had ever realized or could have seen with his old eyes. Andrew's new vision drank her in, storing every detail of this image away into his mind.

  The sunrise sparkled across her wavy brown hair as it flowed down and around her face. Ripples of light curved around her form creating a halo that far surpassed the vision he had first seen in his backyard and then again in the classroom door. Those blue eyes glistened like polished jewels and for just a moment, Andrew's sorrows and regrets vanished into the back of his mind and he felt so much joy as he stood there, just looking at her.

  The realization hit Andrew then that he could be with her forever. Then he noticed the look on her face as she stared at him. She looked shocked, as if she had not expected to see him again. The expression of shock on her face was so similar to his mother's that the whole thing came crashing back in around him. Andrew fell to his knees there on the gravel drive, weeping for his sin.

  “I killed her,” he whispered to the air. “She was so afraid and I couldn't control myself and then she was bleeding in my arms and I... I... I killed her.” He looked up at Johari and whispered, “I killed my mother.” Then she was beside him. Her arms wrapped around him as she pulled him to her chest.

  “Oh Andrew! I am so sorry.” She paused and then whispered. “I thought you died and were gone from me forever.” She pulled back, placed her hands on his face and looked him in the eyes. “It's all going to be okay now. I am here. There is nothing that you could have done that we can't work through now that we have each other.” Her gorgeous voice sounded so sure as she spoke that Andrew felt hope that she was right.

  The flow of tears faded and he felt that there was a chance that he could get through this with her beside him. Andrew looked into her eyes, eyes that were watching him hungrily, and he discovered that all of his human love and emotion was still with him, but even more magnified because his mind was capable of so much more. He loved this impossible creature with a passion that he felt for nothing else, and that he knew he would never feel for anything else ever again. The two pulled each other back into a tight embrace and just stayed there on their knees, holding each other for a long time.

  After some time, Johari pulled away and stood up. Before Andrew could react or say anything, she grabbed his hand and pulled him up as well. His weight was still nothing for her to move. “Come inside. We can talk about anything you want to know about or need to share.” Andrew wondered as he followed her into the house if he wanted to talk about it. He thought to himself that it would be better just to put it aside for now. At least until the burning pain of it had numbed within him.

  They just got into the house and the phone rang. Johari answered in English, but switched to Aramaic. Andrew found that he could still understand everything that they were saying. A male voice was talking on the other end of the line, but Andrew couldn't believe the words that his ears were hearing. Johari stared at the phone for a moment after she placed it back on the receiver.

  “Is it really true,” Andrew asked breathlessly? Johari turned to him and smiled, her face filled with joy for Andrew.

  “Yes, it's true. Your mother is still alive. She is in the hospital now. The knife missed anything vital and your father got to her in time. She is expected to make a full recovery.” Andrew was only half listening to Johari as she was speaking. His mind heard it all and set it aside for him to replay later, but at the moment, most of his focus was on one thing, the news that his mother had survived. Between the nightmare and the horror of what he had seen on the floor of the kitchen, Andrew never considered the idea that she might survive.

  Relief flooded through him as the reality clicked in his mind. Joy lit his face and Johari's as well as they shared in the unexpected peace and happiness. She threw her arms around Andrew and he hugged her back, smile still on his face.

  Andrew knew that he still needed to learn to control his new body, but now it was because learning control was a part of that new life. Sure he made a mistake. It was one that could have haunted him for the rest of this long life, and a part of it would still haunt him, but not ever close to what it might have been. Whatever part of fate it was that had spared him the anguish of a life built on pain, Andrew was grateful for it.

  After they laughed and celebrated together for a few minutes, the phone conversation returned to Andrew's mind. His mind was so much more incredible than his old one that it was difficult to imagine that he survived before as limited as he had been. He found that he could replay the whole conversation in his head, word for word.

  “What did the other Blood mean when he said that the council is going to call?” Johari stared at him.

  “I haven't followed our rules as well as I was supposed to. As I mentioned before, we are not to reveal ourselves to humans. The fact that I did means that I must appear before the council for my lack of judgment. They will decide what to do about it.” She stopped, but Andrew could tell there was more.

  “Is that all?” She slowly shook her head.

  “No. The council will also be deciding if you are a threat to us. They need to know that you will be a good addition to our kind.” She smiled at him. “Don't worry, once they know a little about you, they will be as thrilled as I am to have you among us.”

  “I am sorry to be the cause of so much trouble for you,” Andrew said. Johari smiled at him and reached up to touch his face.

  “It is not your fault. I was the one who made the decision not to tell my superiors that you knew.” He pulled her face up to look into her eyes. She winced as his hands moved. Andrew let go in a rush.

  “I'm sorry. I'm still getting used to this whole new body thing. I probably shouldn't touch things until I get better at it.” Johari smiled and pulled his hands back onto her face.

  “I understand what it's like to struggle with a new body. You won't permanently damage me, so I am one of the best things for you to touch as you learn.” Andrew smiled at her as he held her face for a moment. Then, moving with care, he kissed the top of her head. Then he began to kiss all over her beautiful face until his lips reached hers.

  He believed that the feeling he had when he kissed her before was the best thing that he would ever feel in his entire life. Now Andrew discovered that he had been wrong. That was nothing compared to the explosion that rocked through his body now. Lines of power flared into being within him, awakened for the first time from their slumber at his death. The light flowed out of him and into Johari and then back to him. He was shaking as he tried to stand up to the intense waves. He could only take it for so long before he had to pull away. He looked at Johari, standing there in all her beauty, shaking just as hard as he was.

  “Impossible,” she said softly, shaking her head. “I imagined many times that you could be like me and that we could have the rest of time to explore the world together, but never in one of those dreams did I ever imagine that you would be able to continue to amaze me. I thought you would just become like me. I was wrong. For some reason, you changed when you should not have. On top of that, even though you have become what I am, you still do things that should not be possible. I don't think you will ever stop surprising me.”

  “I too hoped for this life. My dreams didn't even come close to imagining what this is like. I hope that I can continue to amaze you as much as you amaze me.” They stood there, in the center of the living room lost in each other's gazes, thoughts on the unexpected eternity before them.