United Service

by Regina Morris

  Before Kekoa turned off the lights, he knelt down beside Brian’s bed. He was the closest friend Kekoa had at the camp. During the day, Brian remained distant, and that worried Kekoa. Perhaps with the drugs again in his body, the boy would open up enough to talk.

  A heavy breath escaped Brian’s body, and he rolled over in his bed to face Kekoa. His heavy eyelids squinted open through his mental haze.

  “I’m close to the change. My body feels so different,” Kekoa confided.

  Brian’s eyes widened, obviously understanding the severity of the situation. “Yeah,” he yawned. “I figured you might be, but I wasn’t sure. My older brother turned at 18, but my older sister was … um, older. Twenty–seven, or so …,” Brian said as he nearly drifted back off.

  Kekoa’s eyes narrowed. “Your sister a half–breed?”

  “Uh huh. Half–sister. Father’s side,” he mumbled.

  Half–breeds did mature later. So far, all the camp children who had turned had been purebred, developing their vampire characteristics in their early twenties. All had been killed. “I need to try something if you’ll let me,” Kekoa said as he gently shook Brian back awake. “I want to see if I can compel you.”

  Brian opened his eyes wide and stared at Kekoa in disbelief. “They’ll kill us if they know.”

  “The compelling will be something simple. I just need to know if I can do it yet.”

  Brian halfway sat up in bed. Rubbing his eyes, he said, “Compelling doesn’t work against vampires.”

  “It doesn’t, but you haven’t transitioned yet, so I should be able to do it.”

  Brian swallowed the lump in his throat. “Compelling takes a lot of practice. Make it simple.”

  Kekoa gazed into Brian’s drug–reddened eyes and did his best to compel the boy. “You want to jump on one foot.”

  Brian looked at Kekoa, his half sleepy eyes still bright and not dim at all. He shook his head. “The compelling didn’t work. I heard you talking and I had no wish to hop on one foot.” He frowned at Kekoa. “I’m sorry.”

  Kekoa was disappointed too. “I know it takes practice to compel someone. Thanks for letting me try.” Kekoa’s left wrist had itched over the last two days. Tonight the silver bracelet burned into his flesh. “Brian, before you fall asleep, can you please undo my bracelet? I can no longer touch it.”

  Brian shook his head in fear. “Tyrone. He blistered before they … They’ll notice it gone. What are you going to do?”

  “Unhook it, please.”

  Brian unhooked the clasp and removed the bracelet. He stared down at Kekoa’s bare wrist.

  “I’ll think of something. I couldn’t keep it on any more.” His wrist had red tiny welts on it. Kekoa put Brian to bed and covered him with a blanket. Kekoa felt dizzy as he stood up.

  “You hungry?” Brian asked.

  Kekoa swallowed hard. “I’m pretty much done eating human food. I’m getting weaker and in a day or two I think I will begin aging.”

  Brian rolled up his sleeves and stuck his arm out. His eyes began to close. “Eat,” he said, yawning.

  Kekoa stared down at his friend and wanted to cry. He had never eaten from anyone before and was now being served a meal of one of his best friends. He was afraid. Hunger pains cramped his stomach, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop feeding from the boy without killing him. Kekoa knew each stage of the transition from child to full vampire, but his parents would have shown him how to hunt and how not to kill your dinner. He wondered if his parents still searched for him or not. He could feel his fangs descending within his mouth and desperately wanted to say ‘yes’, but he couldn’t bite his friend. “Thank you, Brian. But I’m still okay for now. Get some sleep.” He tucked the boy’s arm under the blanket and walked to the light switch on the far wall.

  As a usual part of the nightly routine, Kekoa flicked the lights of his cabin on and off to give Rebecca the signal the boys were all safe and in bed for the night. He waited for her to do the same. This act was one of the few communications the two of them had over the years. After seeing her signal, he lay down on his bunk and stared over to Tyrone’s empty bed. He did his best to fall asleep.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sterling woke at the crack of dawn by the pool. His skin felt plastered against the wet pool chair, but at least he no longer itched. The day promised to be long, and they needed to get an early start. His head ached mildly and his skin remained tolerable thanks to the rain last night. Wearing his sunglasses, he squirted three syringes of blood into a glass tumbler and slowly sipped his meal while sitting at the pool. The blood lust would have been hard to bear since he’d be spending the day with Kate again. The third and last rejection hurt, although she did say it was a “lovely offer.”

  Of course she would reject him, and not only for his half–breed status. A woman of quality had better standards than a … well, a male slut. He had spent the night reflecting on his life. He was a disappointment — and someone he didn’t necessarily like at the moment. He wanted to be someone else, anyone else, someone he could look at in the mirror (if his reflection wasn’t fuzzy) and be proud of — someone Kate would want in her bed.

  Thanks to the blessed rain last night, he needed no female companionship. He had slept out in the downpour and wore only a pair of shorts so the rain could touch his skin as much as possible. He sat up and stretched. His sore muscles ached from the pool lounge chair he used as a bed, but his muscles would heal. He stood up and started to walk back to his room to pack, and start the day.

  On the way back to his room, he walked past Kate’s door and thought best to knock and make sure she was up as well. He wondered how she fared last night and if blood lust had ever consumed her. If the desire had, he wondered who she may have been with and whether she would be alone in her room. Lord, he hoped she was alone. At the very least, he hoped Ben had not spent the night with her.

  He knocked on the door. “Kate? You awake?” He heard no answer, so he knocked again, this time louder. “Kate! You need to get up. We have to head out.”

  “Sterling?”

  Sterling listened at the door, hoping not to detect a man in her room. It was a relief when he only heard Kate. “Yeah. We need to leave. Get up.” As he turned to leave, her soft voice called to him.

  “Can you help me? Don’t leave. I need you,” she said through the closed door.

  Sterling paused by the door. He liked the idea that she needed him, but in exactly what capacity? In his best seductive voice he asked, “What do you need me for, Kate?”

  “One minute. I’m coming.”

  After waiting ten times the amount of time for someone to open a hotel room door, Sterling started to worry. “Kate. Open the door. Now.” He heard footsteps coming towards the door and then a thud. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll be right there. Don’t leave.”

  Next the slide of the dead bolt sounded and the lock turned.

  “Open the door and come in,” she said.

  She didn’t sound right. Sterling quickly opened the door and entered her room. She stood a few feet away from the door. She wore a camisole top and running shorts, which was what she probably slept in. A barrette held the hair back off her face and neck. He also smelled peaches again, Kate’s natural scent, and not a perfume. She glanced away from him as she rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. He figured she was wiping the loose hair from her eyes. Her disheveled and tussled hair had a sexy bedroom quality that he found appealing. She wasn’t all made up and trying to look sexy, she just was sexy. He then noticed a drop of blood coming from her mouth, but it wasn’t quite human red.

  “You feed this morning?”

  She maneuvered her lips, as though it was difficult to talk. “I bit my tongue.”

  Odd, but he guessed possible. She seemed a bit off to him. He glanced down at her outfit. Normally Sterling would not have noticed the skimpy clothing she wore. One woman’s body seemed about the same as any other to him. He had
seen the female form so many times he rarely appreciated the beauty of it, although Kate’s body did speak to the man in him. Perhaps it was that he had never been intimate with a vampire before, except in his fantasies. Perhaps it was because she had turned him down the night before. Forbidden fruit. Now wasn’t that a turn on?

  Her body swayed and he thought the movement odd as she stood awkwardly. His mental focus traveled down her beautiful body, past her angelic face, her shoulders, thin waist and hips. His focus traveled down her legs, which he saw were badly bruised. There were so many bruises, and all a deep purple color. None had faded into lighter shades of red and green, but then her bruises would heal with a regular intake of blood. These bruises seemed new, probably only 12–24 hours old, and matched the few bruises he had noticed on her arms at the airport yesterday.

  His visual canvassing of her body ended as his eyes focused on her feet. They were bleeding. A trail of her purple blood marked the carpet from the door back to the bed. “Kate! What happened?” He closed the door and walked over to her.

  “It’s nothing. I can’t even feel the cuts, but I need your help.” She turned her body to walk back into the room when she stumbled. Sterling caught her from the fall and carried her over to the bed and placed her gently on the mattress. On the floor, near the bed, began the blood trail with a smashed, broken drinking glass. She must have stepped on glass shards.

  How much of a klutz would you have to be to do that?

  “Let me remove the splinters of glass. Lay down.” He sat at the end of the bed, his still wet shorts marking a stain on the comforter. He put one of her cut feet in his lap. Blood dripped on his white shorts. “How’d this happen?” he asked, as he started removing bits of glass from her foot.

  “Aaahhh! You’re hurting me!” She tried pulling her foot away from his hands.

  He didn’t have the patience for her to be a baby about this. “Sweetheart, when you step on glass and grind it into the bottom of your foot, it’s going to hurt! You can’t heal with the glass still in you, and I’d rather you not bleed all over the hotel while you wait for the shards to work themselves out. Now stop moving so I can help you.”

  She stifled her cries and any other complaints as he tended to her feet.

  His eyes narrowed as he studied the cuts left by the glass. “You’re not healing, Kate.”

  “I know. That’s why I needed your help.”

  He stared at her, “Why aren’t you healing?”

  “I’ll heal, in time. Repairs take a few minutes.”

  Sterling watched as her body healed itself in seemingly slow motion. “There. You’re fine,” he said, letting go of her legs.

  “Thanks.”

  Sterling’s eyebrow rose and he pointed to her feet awaiting an explanation.

  “It’s another side effect. Slow regrowth.”

  Sterling had never heard of such a thing, but guessed anything could be a side effect of an ability. He swallowed hard as he looked down at her long, sensual, and … bruised legs. There had to be an explanation for all that bruising, and unfortunately he could guess how she got them. Once again he figured an abusive boyfriend or husband used her as a punching bag. He had seen this scenario many times before. Had there been a man in her room last night?

  “Kate, where did you get all of these bruises? You can tell me.” When he noticed she looked away, he added, “You’re safe here with me.” She still refused to offer any eye contact with him and used her hands to rub her eyes as she shut them. “Kate. You’re really nice. And it doesn’t matter if you’re not interested in me, I still would like to help you.” When she still wouldn’t make eye contact, he said, “Please look at me.”

  She glanced up and her eyes startled him. He saw no spark in them. “No Sterling, I’m fine.” Her beautiful gray eyes were replaced by dull looking glassy eyes that were gunmetal gray – the eyes of the dead. He gasped at the sight.

  Before she could continue her sentence he interrupted, “You’re not fine! Kate, who has hurt you? I’ll make sure they can’t hurt you again. I promise you that.” His stomach twisted to think of someone beating her like this. And what was going on with her eyes?

  She began to cry. “No one is hurting me, Sterling. It’s me. Okay? It’s me. I fall a lot.”

  “Stop lying, Kate!” Sterling had heard that too many times from battered women. “Stop covering up for him.” He lifted his hands in frustration, his jaw tightening. “I would kill or die to have a woman such as you in my life. And some asswipe treats you like garbage? Worse yet, you take the abuse and lie for him.” He looked down at her face, her tears still falling. “I’m not going to let you be abused.”

  As she protested there was no one abusing her, he touched the biggest bruise on her leg and let his hand tell him the facts. His bare fingertips traced the outline of the bruise and he mentally received an image of her falling into the corner of a metal planter just outside her hotel room last night. That would leave this type of mark, he figured. He looked over at her as he touched the next bruise on her leg. She had tripped and fell down some steps on her way to her room.

  He let go of her legs. “Okay. They seem to be accidents.” She had appeared klutzy yesterday, but this accident–prone? The story didn’t add up, but he saw no other evidence to the contrary.

  “The bruises hurt if you poke at them.” She moved her legs almost effortlessly. “Look Sterling …” She glanced around the room biting her lip. Finally she said, “You asked me yesterday about my gloves and why I wear them. I wear them because I can’t feel my body.”

  He tried to let that sink in, but it didn’t. “What do you mean, you can’t feel your body?”

  She took a deep breath. “Simply put, my body doesn’t work right. When I’m awake I can’t sense it. My hands and feet are numb. During the night my feeling comes back, but the sensations always go away when I’m awake. I can’t even walk at times.” She held up her arms, her hands in fists as they flailed about.

  Sterling knew several different abilities in vampires, but as far as he had seen, he was the only one whose ability came with horrible side effects. “You seemed fine yesterday. What happened?”

  Sighing, she said, “I slept. I pierce my body with pins during the day so I can feel my hands and feet. Since I’ll feel the pins when I sleep, I removed them so they won’t hurt me.”

  Sterling thought back to her restless nap on the plane. It explained a lot.

  She continued. “I can’t even control the movement of my hands without piercing them.” She tried again to move her fingers and failed. She managed to bring her hand up to her face and she again rubbed her forehead.

  Sterling thought back to how she walked yesterday. All the tripping now made sense. He reached up and touched her hand. “That explains why you trip. It also explains the bruises.” He thought back to the noise he heard before he entered the room. “When you opened the door just now, did you fall?”

  “Yes.”

  His hand gestured towards the floor. “What’s the story on the broken glass you stepped on?”

  “I didn’t plan.” She nodded toward the pins on the bedside table and Sterling noticed she bit her tongue again. She did it on purpose.

  “My mother usually helps me do this. I can’t get the pins in without the use of my hands. My gloves cover up my pins so no one can see them, and so they don’t get caught on anything.” She sighed, and then continued, “I can’t feel my entire body. The problem is worse on my hands and feet, that’s why I put pins in them. The pain of the piercing forces my body to feel them. The pain allows me to walk and to use my hands, because I can sense them that way. But this morning, I had no help. When you stood at the door I knew I had to walk over and let you in so you could help me, but I couldn’t walk. I managed to slide the glass off the nightstand. Then I swung my legs around and stepped on it. As soon as the glass punctured my skin, I could feel my feet well enough to walk over.”

  Sterling studied her. She lived trapped in he
r body just like he did. He always had thought his bad side effects were due to his half–breed nature. Vampires didn’t normally talk about their lineage if they were half–breeds, but he was curious to know. The more blood a vampire drank, the younger their appearance. They could never appear younger than their Jahrling Year, the year their fangs were fully grown in and they stopped eating human food and could feed off human blood exclusively. Half–breeds developed later in life, which was why his base age was twenty–seven. Kate’s age seemed to be in her early twenties. He had assumed she was purebred, especially since she cast off the scent of being a predator while sleeping. “Kate, can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Ah, sure.”

  His eyes furrowed. “I don’t mean to insult you, but are you a half–breed?”

  “No. My parents are both vampires.”

  He hated to admit this, but he was the one who brought the topic up. “You must have noticed that I’m a half–breed.”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I don’t know any adult half–breeds. The numbing of your body sounds like it could be a negative side effect of an ability. I’m the only one I know with a negative side effect, I assumed it was because of what I am.”

  “Your mother is human? Doesn’t she want to turn and live longer?”

  “My mother died giving birth to me. My parents were married very young, even before my father’s Jahrling Year, before he had the ability to turn her. Since our women aren’t fertile until after their Jahrling Year, I suspect he didn’t think a human woman that young could get pregnant. Before he knew it, I was conceived and then there were complications …,” he trailed off.

  “And of course she couldn’t be turned while pregnant, even if he had achieved the ability,” Kate said

  Sterling bit his lower lip. “I was my mother’s death sentence.” After a moment of awkward silence, Sterling asked, “What exactly is your ability?”