by Heidi Lowe
At first I shoved her away when she tried to hold me, but after a while I gave in and let myself be comforted. I needed her more than ever now. This was her world, and I would need her help navigating through it.
"Over the course of the next few weeks, your body will go through a number of changes you won't understand nor expect. It's going to be a confusing time for you. But I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."
She held my head in her hands, gave me a serious, sincere look. For the briefest moment, I felt like my old self – the younger human being cared for by the older, loving vampire. There would come a time when I didn't need her protection, but for now I welcomed it.
"Where will I sleep?" I asked. I had so many questions.
She stroked my face. "With me. There's plenty of room in my casket for both of us."
I let out a long, exhausted breath. The old Lissa would have jumped at any opportunity to wake up every evening beside the woman she loved. But what good is love when you're dead?
THREE
Her lair lay on the level below my studio, right at the bottom of the house. There was a complex-looking entry system attached to a steel vault door. It could have given Fort Knox a run for its money.
She keyed in the pass code (which I knew well, seeing as the six digits were set to my birthday, only backwards), and twisted the black spindle wheel until the door opened.
On this visit I took in everything. The previous owner had really pulled out all the stops on the place, more so than the rest of the house. It was a spacious room, closer to the size of a small apartment. Certainly bigger than the dinky studio I'd rented on my quest for independence. There was a refrigerator, a sofa, and a TV fixed to the wall. An old vinyl player sat in one corner. I wasn't sure whether Jean had brought it or whether it had been left here.
There was a bathroom with a fancy shower that had a million and one different dials, and enough space to fit half a dozen people.
A huge arch had been cut into the wall, and glass doors had been added, behind which her casket lay. She was right, it would fit both of us, and then some. It wasn't a coffin in the traditional sense. It was much wider, taller, and didn't have a cover. Inside, soft padding covered the bottom and sides.
I felt her hand on my shoulder, and I spun around to face her.
"The sun will be up soon," she said.
I felt like running as far away as I could and never coming back. This was all absurd. Just a few hours earlier I was a normal girl, still breathing, still able to enjoy a sunrise. Now, that very same sunrise would set my body on fire. What a cruel fate.
It was as if she saw the apprehension in my face, the urge to flee, because she took my hands in hers and squeezed them.
"Tell me what you're thinking," she said.
I blinked away the tears, blinked away the stinging. "How will it happen?"
"We'll lie down, and I'll hold you, and you won't even realize that you've fallen asleep. Just as we used to do."
But it wouldn't be the same as before. Before, I would wake to welcome in a new day. Didn't she understand that this was nothing like before? That I was nothing like I used to be?
I reclaimed my hands, turned away from her and climbed into the box. She followed suit in silence. I felt her eyes watching my back, as she tried to think up something suitable to say to me. Nothing would suffice. What could you say to the girl whose life you'd just saved by taking it?
"Lissa?"
I didn't answer, hoping instead that the sun would rise already, so that I wouldn't have to speak to her.
Her hand touched my upper arm.
"Did you really mean it when you said I should have let you die? Would you really have preferred that?" The panic in her voice was clear, and I realized then that the calm exterior she'd displayed in bringing me down here was just a facade. She was no more assured than I was about what our future held.
"I don't know what I meant," was the only answer I had for her. Anything else would have been a lie, and what was the point in that?
Without seeking my permission, she drew closer to me so that we were spooning, and she tucked her arm under mine, held me tight. I didn't stop her, nor did I care. An empty, numbness had consumed me.
"If you weren't here, I would have no reason to be," she said.
*****
"Lissa, Lissa, wake up!"
Someone shook me awake. When I opened my eyes, a worried April stood over me. Her hair and that puffiness around her eyes said she'd just woken up herself. She was wearing her favorite Powerpuff Girls pajamas, a Christmas gift from me, bought with my allowance money.
"Go away, I'm sleeping," I said, swatting at her.
"The police are downstairs," she said, her voice growing more shrill as she continued shaking me.
That woke me up. The police? What could they want?
Immediately, my mind started jumping to conclusions, thinking badly of Michelle, our teenage babysitter. She'd probably brought her deadbeat boyfriend over, and they'd made too much noise, waking the neighbors. I hadn't met her new flavor of the month, but judging by her history of dating losers, I wasn't expecting much. She was so much better than them, and she knew it, too. Just last week, when she'd babysat for us while Dad was working late, she warned me off boys.
"They're all no good," she'd said, as we sat down to eat popcorn and watch a 15-rated movie. "I'm telling you, Lis, you don't ever want a boyfriend."
That was the night I almost told her that she was right, that I wasn't interested in boys, that I liked girls...that I liked her. It would have been a disaster.
"All right, I'm up," I said to my sister, shrugging her hand off. "What are the cops doing here?"
"I don't know," April said, eyes huge and apprehensive.
Together we crept out of our room, April following behind me. We stopped on the stairs and tried to hear what was being said. But all I could make out was Michelle's sobbing.
It was Lissa to the rescue! I flew down the stairs and into the living-room, ready to be her shoulder to cry on, suspecting that it was boyfriend trouble.
As soon as we entered the room, everyone turned to look at us – the two police officers and a red-faced, tearful Michelle. The solemn expressions the officers wore made me feel uneasy.
"Michelle, what's wrong?" I asked.
"Oh, Lissa, it's horrible. I'm so sorry." She flew at us, enveloping and all but smothering us.
I wanted someone to tell me what was going on, and what was so horrible.
"It's your dad. He was attacked by...by vampires."
April gasped.
"Is he all right? Is he in the hospital? Which hospital?" What were we still doing here? We should have already been at the hospital with him. He'd be expecting us.
"Lissa, he isn't at the hospital. He...he didn't make it, sweetie."
"No! No..."
*****
"No! No! No!"
"Lissa? Lissa, what's wrong?"
I was still screaming when my eyes sprang open. I sat up with a start. Jean was right beside me, exactly where I'd left her. She put an arm around me, swept my hair out of my face.
My heart thumped in my chest.
"It's okay, honey, you were having a bad dream," she said, rubbing my back.
I shook my head. Sweat clung to my forehead, soaked my T-shirt. "No, it wasn't a dream. It was the night my father died. It was like it happened just yesterday. There were so many things about that night that I'd pushed from my memory, that I'd forced myself to forget. But I remember it so clearly..."
"Your memory is repairing itself."
"What does that mean?"
"We don't have the luxury of being able to forget. When we heal, our memory heals, too."
"So I'm going to remember everything that's ever happened to me, everything I've ever done? But that can't be. I'll go crazy!"
She wiped my tears away with her hand, then dried that on her top. Another thing spoiled. The blood would never come out.
&nbs
p; "It will get very crowded in your head for a while, but you'll learn to drown out the memories until you don't notice them."
"I don't want to remember everything. I don't want to relive that night." And what about all the other days and nights, all the bad decisions I made, all the women, all the loss? There was a reason why our memories deteriorated over time. Being forced to relive everything really would send the population to the loony bin.
"You'll get used to it, I promise."
"I don't want to get used to it," I yelled. "And I'm sick of you trying to normalize this. It's not normal. You can't make me feel better about being a fucking monster!"
"You're not a monster, Lissa," she said, casting her eyes down solemnly. Of course, calling myself a monster meant that I was also calling her one. She'd always been sensitive about that word.
I almost collapsed as I climbed out of the box, and Jean, in a split second, was by my side propping me up. A sudden dizzy spell gripped me.
She helped me to the sofa.
"You need to feed. You went to sleep without feeding."
"Don't call it that," I said, sickened by the word. "It makes me sound like an animal. A bloodsucking leech whose only purpose on Earth is to steal the life from living things."
"Okay, you need to drink." She opened the refrigerator and pulled out two blood bags. The sight of them, even though it never had before, made me well up. Jean had never drunk in front of me; she'd spared me the agony of watching her do this despicable act. The only time I'd ever witnessed it was when she was taking from me, but we were always in the throes of passion, and thus I'd never really noticed.
She perched herself on the arm of the sofa. "I know you don't want to do it, but you have to."
I shot the bags a hateful look, which I then turned to her. "Get that away from me."
She sighed. "Lissa, you have to keep your strength up."
"For what? What's the point? I'm a scourge on the earth. That's what people think of us."
"That's not true. It doesn't have to be like that. You don't have to be a monster, or feared, or any of those things. But if you don't drink, if you don't keep yourself nourished, your hunger will manifest itself in other ways..."
I swallowed and looked at her to elaborate. I didn't like the sound of any of this. "What other ways?"
"You'll get hungrier, and that hunger will control you. I learned that the hard way. I don't want you to have to." She tore a little hole in one bag with her teeth, then extended it to me. I thought I would gag when I smelled that metallic scent, but I didn't.
Still, there was no way that stuff would ever touch my lips. I pushed the offering away. "I'm not drinking it."
"You have a duty of care to the people around you to keep your hunger satiated. The punishment for one of us taking a human life now, whether accidentally or purposefully, is death." She drank from the bag, downing the whole lot in one go, and I watched her without blinking. Before all of this, I got the feeling that she was embarrassed by her condition, and she tried desperately to hide from me all the things that made her non-human. Now that we were the same, there was no need for that.
"The supply is running low down here. I'll see if Robyn dropped some more off today."
For a moment it looked as though she wanted to kiss me before leaving, but she must have read the look in my eye, a look that told her I didn't want her to touch me, because she left without giving me one.
Alone, I picked up the second blood bag and held it up, examining the red liquid swishing about inside. Who had it belonged to originally, and did they know what purpose it would be used for when they donated it?
"I'd rather die," I said aloud, assuredly. I couldn't imagine being so hungry that I would ever stoop this low, become this depraved. It's amazing how different things seem when they're happening to you, when you're seeing them through your lens. Everything about Jean had fascinated me. Her vampirism was sexy in a dangerous way, and I'd loved being on the precipice of that world without truly being a part of it. Now that I'd been tossed kicking and screaming into it, suddenly it wasn't cute, or sexy, or fascinating. It was dark, and scary, and uncertain.
I squeezed the bag, daring it to burst. Each minute, my hunger raged on. Soon it became the only thing I could think about. Not even my dream, the vivid memory of one of the worst nights of my life, held a place in my thoughts.
The pounding of my heart against my chest frightened me. So too did the sudden bout of sweating. What the hell was happening?
"Lissa, honey, can I come in?" Sandra's face appeared on the security screen by the door. Disoriented, perspiring, and seemingly on the verge of having a heart attack, I keyed in the code, getting it wrong a couple of times as my fingers fumbled.
"Are you all right, honey?" she asked in her sing-song southern accent. "You don't look so hot."
My heartbeat sounded thunderous in my ear, magnified as though a drumming troop played right by my head. The room started spinning.
Why was my heart beating so heavily? Why could I hear it so clearly?
"Lissa?" Sandra said, and as she stepped closer, the beating seemed to get louder.
It was like an echo. I looked around the room, as if the sound was blasting from speakers in all corners. I pressed my hands over my ears, hoping to drown it out, but to no avail.
Sandra reached out a hand to touch me, worry creasing her brow, and I noticed her neck. Not the neck specifically, but that faint, light vein whose pulse would have gone unnoticed and remained invisible to anyone else.
My body began to tremble, my head grew tight, and the beating became louder than ever. It wasn't coming from me, but from her.
What happened next happened so quickly, I wouldn't have had time to stop it even if I'd wanted to. Even the sharp pain of the fangs tearing through my gums for the first time couldn't prevent me from leaping at Sandra, going straight for her neck.
"Jean!" she screamed, pressed against the wall, helpless and terrified.
I was thrown back before the new additions to my mouth could pierce Sandra's flesh. As Jean restrained me, Sandra took her chance to flee the room, not even risking a glance back, and slammed the door shut behind her.
Whatever spell I'd been under broke while I was in Jean's arms, now that we were alone again, and the temptation of fresh blood was gone.
"Oh my God!" I whispered, my hands shaking as I held them over my mouth. The fangs retracted as easily as they had appeared, and equally as painfully. "What have I done?"
"It's okay, Sandra will be fine. She's just a little shaken up." She sat me on the sofa, my body still shaking.
"I tr–tried to b–bite her..." I couldn't believe those words were coming from my lips. "I couldn't st–stop myself. I was so hungry."
She nodded slowly. "That's why I told you to drink. You're still so new to your condition. You won't be able to control your hunger in the early stages."
"I'm a demon!" I burst into tears and buried my head in Jean's chest. "I would have killed her if you hadn't walked in."
"But you didn't. That's all that matters." She was so good at this, at comforting me, it was as if she'd been made just for it. I held onto her for several minutes and let her calm me. Her voice alone did the trick. This world was unfamiliar to me, but she wasn't.
"It won't always be like this. In the beginning, as your body adjusts to the condition, you won't be able to control urges like that when you're hungry."
"You should have seen the way she looked at me, Jean. She was so afraid. I don't want anyone to look at me like that again."
She lifted my head, wiped away my tears with her thumbs. "Don't ever give anyone a reason to. Will you drink now?"
I took a deep breath then nodded reluctantly. I was certain it would make me gag the moment the first drop hit my lips, but this method was the lesser of two evils. Whoever donated the bags would probably have taken this over the other option any day.
She bit a hole in the blood bag then handed it to me. I took it
from her with a shaky hand, closed my eyes and brought it to my lips, tipped it and let the liquid drip into my mouth.
When I opened my eyes, the bag was empty. Jean watched me intently.
"How was it?" she asked in a tone that suggested she already knew the answer. Well, she did. This had been her poison for over fifteen years, so whatever I had to say about it, she'd already experienced. She would have known that it was perhaps the nicest, most refreshing thing I'd ever tasted.
"I don't understand," I said, gawking at the empty bag, envious of it for those little droplets that still clung to the plastic inside and wouldn't come out. "That's not how it tasted before."
"It's different now. Let's just say your taste buds are refined."
"Does all of it taste like that?"
"Everyone's blood tastes different, though similar. It's a bit like wine. No two wines taste identical, yet they still taste like wine."
I just stared at the bag in wonderment. I wouldn't have believed it had I not experienced it myself.
She rubbed my shoulder. "Would you like some more?"
I shook my head, even though another bag would have gone down a treat. This was a slippery slope, I mused. It was one thing to need it for survival, but quite another to drink for enjoyment, for the taste. Because if you started down that path, who knew where you'd end up?
"Lissa, it's okay for you to want more. You haven't fed– sorry, drunk in a whole day."
"I don't want any more," I said firmly, handing the empty bag to her. "How many times do I have to do that?"
"A couple of bags a night should keep you going, if you're not doing anything strenuous."
"Where does it come from? Is there, like, a farm where humans go to be milked of their blood, to feed freaks like us?"
"Nothing like that," she said, sounding hurt. "People donate. They're paid for it. That's where some of our taxes go, to the blood banks. No one is forced, and no one is hurt in the process. You don't have to worry about any of that."
I gave a derisive snort. "Sure, this all sounds completely normal and above board." Vampire tax, paying blood banks... What the hell had I just signed up for?