Blood and Beasts

by L. M. Miller

  She concentrated very hard on the pair of them, trying to hear what they were hearing. There was no harm in trying, although they would probably know that she was. Either way, she was going to try it. She focused on the pair, and within seconds, she could hear their conversation.

  … angry about her defeating you that night. You need to get over that, Alistair! She won! She’s simply a very strong vampire, and that was her night of change. That’ s when we’re always the strongest. It was a full moon. Everything was going for her! Phin was exclaiming to a simmering Alistair, although he presented a very cool front to her and Francesca.

  Stop patronizing me, Phin! The night of change?! The full moon?! That’s all myth! Fairy lore! Alistair was screaming at him in his mind.

  She wanted to take a step back. He was so angry. He was so angry at her. She couldn’t help that she had defeated him. He had been trying to attack her. She was not going to simply lie down and die for him.

  Fine, Alistair! The truth is, she is stronger than you now and ever will be as soon as she completely understands and can control her powers, Phin stated snappily, and she was shocked again.

  Phin sent her a little glance, clearly knowing that she was listening in on their conversation. However, he didn’t block her out, and she wondered why. Alistair was too angry, too controlled by his emotions, to notice her presence in their telepathic conversation.

  You son of a… And exactly when are you gonna tell her that since you drank her blood you can now sense her- Phin quickly cut off that conversation, and she could sense his edginess.

  I’ll tell her, Alistair. You need to leave now though! She’s not blind! Nor is the wolf! Alistair’s cover was faltering as he began to tremble with his rage.

  After that silent conversation, he simply whirled out of the room in a flurry of dark emotions and projected anger. Phin slowly turned to face her, amusement in his eyes. She raised a winged brow to him in question and challenge.

  “Something you need to tell me, Phin?” She asked, slowly settling herself on the bed as far from him as possible.

  “Actually, yes,” he admitted, edging a little closer to her, and she reacted by edging a little farther back. “One, you should not be listening in on mind conversations. I could have easily blocked you since I am advanced in telepathy, as you seem to be. Alistair… is not so much. Two, there is something you need to know about the taking of blood from other creatures,” he stated, and she waited patiently. “Depending on how much you take, how strong the creature is, and how strong you yourself are, all determines how much you shall be able to read from them in the future,” he concluded, and she just stared at him, waiting for more information that was not forthcoming.

  “How much did you take from me and just what can you read from me?” She asked pointedly, and he sighed heavily.

  “I took enough from you. That’s all you need to know,” he stated, and she opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand for silence. “With the blood… fervor, you tend to lose control of yourself. I should have knocked you out earlier and released you, but… We all make mistakes,” he connected his pale silver eyes with hers.

  His eyes were almost white. They were so light in color. It was incredibly eerie, and it did not look natural with his dark features. She really should have brushed up on her vampire information earlier. She never thought she would be one though. She never wanted to be one.

  “I can normally read others’ minds fairly well, so that’s not too different from now. However, I’m pretty sure that you’ll have extra difficulty shielding your thoughts from me, when you can,” she opened her mouth to protest. “But you will be able to… Seph. Clearly, you already have an affinity for telepathy. However, I shall always be able to sense your feelings, your emotions, and you will always have to remember to keep your shield up around me, always,” he explained, and she looked simply livid. “I’m sensing you’re angry,” he admitted, and she nearly snarled at him.

  “Really?! That’s a bit of an understatement! What about Nate?” She demanded, and he looked confused before easily gleaning the information from her mind, which she did not appreciate at all.

  She imagined building a sturdy brick wall between her mind and the pulsing purple beacon that was Phin’s mind in her head. He noticed this but said nothing. He was still in her mind despite her brick wall.

  “Nathaniel? Nate? Your friend?” He asked, and she nodded. “You drank a lot of his blood. We did check on him, and he is alive. Sir Cosmos should have told you that, but he forgets many things. He is very old. He only appears to be around fifty-five, but he is, in fact, centuries old. Yes, vampires, werewolves, and wizards are all immortal,” it was unnerving that he kept answering questions that she didn’t say out loud, so she built her wall even stronger, reinforcing it with steel. “That’s better,” Phin stated, acknowledging her mind ramparts. “Anyways, Nate… He is alive. You took a lot of blood from him. More than likely, you’ll be able to sense his feelings vividly from here, if you tried. Within a mile or so radius, I’m guessing you’ll be able to read his thoughts clearly without even trying. You could probably hear his thoughts right now, but you’d have to try,” he explained, and she resisted the urge to drop her jaw in shock and awe.

  She had that kind of power over Nate now? All because she had bitten him? The ability to read somebody’s every thought and emotion… Their personal memories… This was something dark and unnatural, and this was her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “What? How do I get rid of it?! I don’t want this! How am I supposed to control this? How am I supposed to eat?” She winced as she realized that she asked how she was supposed to eat and was clearly referencing to blood.

  “Eat? Thinkin’ about blood again, Seph? Told ya,” Francesca murmured, rolling over to loll back to sleep.

  Seph sent her a vicious glare before looking down, embarrassed. She couldn’t help it. She wanted blood. She thirsted for blood. She just couldn’t control herself. She wished she could. She never wanted something like that to happen again. Nate…

  “It won’t happen again as long as you realize the signs,” Phin stated, and she glowered at him, not liking the intrusion into her thoughts yet again.

  “What signs?” She sneered, and he smirked, sensing her agitation easily.

  “Your eyes, for one,” he stated, reaching over and removing a small, hand mirror from the nightstand drawer between the two girls.

  He was closer to her now. She could clearly see the back of his head, his neck, and for some reason, her stomach began flipping with anxiety at the very thought of all that rich, warm blood coursing beneath that skin. Her heart began to beat a little faster, although it had recently been slow, or slower than normal. A vampire thing?

  “Your heart won’t beat as fast as a human’s anymore, Seph. Your heart will beat rapidly when you need to feed. It’s one of the signs. By beating rapidly, I mean that it will beat at nearly the normal pace of a human being’s. Right now, I would wager that your pulse is in the 40s. That’s fairly normal for a vampire. It has to do with our anatomy. We have so much extra blood in us that we don’t need to pump the heart as much because it just floods our system, but we need it to flood our system. If you’re really interested in how the vampire body works, I’ll propose the lesson in class someday. I’m sensing that you don’t really care, so long as you know you’re not dead?” He said, raising a barely visible brow to her.

  She frowned at him. She hated how he kept pushing himself into her thoughts. She needed to remember to put those stupid shields up or else nothing would last long as a secret around here. It was probably best if she had shields up all the time and not just for Phin. Clearly, people had unknown and intense talents in this place. Witches and wizards could probably read her like a book. She vowed in her mind, as she threw up her walls, slowly constructing the brick wall in her brain and reinforcing it with steel, that every morning, while brushing her teeth, she would build her walls strong and sturdy and k
eep them up the whole day, not letting them down until she went to sleep. It would be tiresome at first, but soon it would become like second nature to her, like brushing her teeth.

  “What’s with the mirror?” She asked after an awkward silence in which he tried to infiltrate her thoughts, and she managed to thwart him. “I really don’t like when you do that,” she commented, and he smirked.

  “Can you tell me what color your eyes are, Seph?” He asked, holding the mirror in his hands and hiding its reflection from her.

  “Um…” she had to think about that. “They change. Sometimes they’re grey, sometimes they’re darker,” she concluded, and he smirked again.

  That little grin of his was so irritating, and that thought just caused it to broaden, her shields momentarily forgotten.

  “Like mine?” He asked, and she stared into his eyes before shaking her head.

  “No, never that light,” she said, and he kept grinning. “Why do you keep smiling?” She demanded, frustrated.

  “Look,” he held the mirror up to her.

  She stared at her reflection and was quite shocked at it. She looked good, vivaciously healthy. Her red hair cascaded around her shoulders, a luminescent halo. Her fair skin seemed to glow, and her cheeks seemed to be naturally rosy. Her lips were rose-colored, her eyebrows prominent, and her eyes… Shaded by long lashes, her deep-set eyes were very light. They were nearly as light as his, though not quite. They were a pale-grey in color, dazzling, like smoky diamonds. She glanced up to meet Phin’s eyes, so similar to her own.

  “I don’t remember them being this color,” she murmured quietly.

  “I suspect you don’t. I would guess that the last time you looked in the mirror, your eyes were quite dark,” she stared at him blankly. “As time goes on, our need to feed increases, and this is made obvious by the darkening of our eyes. When our eyes are exceptionally light, as both of ours are now, that means that we’ve fed a lot recently. I could probably go three days without blood before my eyes became particularly dark, and I would be sorely tempted by any cut. You, on the other hand, are a fledgling and will probably be very hungry soon enough. You’ll have to drink about a pint of blood at every meal for the first few months, but slowly that will fade to just a glass per meal, and eventually, like the rest of us, you’ll only need a bottle once per day. Strong, grown vampires can survive without blood for a few days. The exceptionally older vampires can go for a week without blood. At least, that’s what our last speaker told us. They generally just don’t want to though. Anyway, at every meal, you can eat whatever you like as well as your pint of blood that you’ll have to finish before we can let you leave. We can’t have any famished vampires running around the school,” he said with a small smile, trying to get her to smile back.

  “So…” she started slowly, and he watched her sympathetically.

  She was trying to put her thoughts together while still constantly thinking about keeping those mental walls up, all of which he noticed and acutely took in.

  “So by drinking the blood… I’ll never attack someone like Nate again?” She asked, voice lilting with hope.

  “I can’t guarantee that, Seph. Certain… factors always apply,” he looked away now, like he was embarrassed?

  “Factors such as?” She had to know, if not for her sake but for the sake of others.

  “Attraction…” he proposed carefully, and she gave him a skeptical look. “As well as blood loss of your own, and your mood,” he elaborated, still not meeting her eyes.

  “Attraction?” She asked, and he nodded.

  “Oh… I guess that’s why I attacked…” she stopped what she was saying as Phin glanced up at her sharply. “So… blood loss… that’s why my eyes aren’t as light as yours? Because you took some of my blood from me even though I had just fed on… human blood?” She said, trying to not think about Nate.

  He gave her a single nod.

  “That would be about right,” he assented slowly, and she thought about that.

  “Won’t it scare the other kids? Students?” She asked pointedly.

  She was unsure how many other vampires there were. Maybe there were a lot of them, and she would fit right in. Then again, maybe she, Phin, and Alistair were the only ones… That was a shoddy group to be a part of. Phin seemed all right, but Alistair… She did not like him, and he didn’t like her, so that worked out.

  “There aren’t that many vampires. Vampires have a tendency to… fight amongst themselves if they stay together for too long, and they also tend to be wanderers. With you here, that will make ten of us,” he said, his smile a gleaming beacon of white light.

  “Ten? Ten out of the entire school?!” She repeated, astonished.

  She was shocked, nearly horrified. She was definitely going to stand out now. He nodded again, a little regretfully this time.

  “How many students are there in the whole school?” She asked, dreading the answer.

  “Not too many,” he answered carefully, and she glared at him, waiting for the answer. “We make up about five percent of the student population. There are roughly five hundred students at this school, a little less than one hundred students per grade since we have six grades or levels here. Vampires are just rare, especially to recover one before they’ve made their first kill, been killed, or escaped into the wild to thrive on their own,” she blinked at him, lost again.

  “Live on their own? We could live on our own now?” She asked, and he nodded warily.

  “We could, but we would be rabid… animals. It is better to learn sophistication now, to learn how to harness our powers-” she cut him off.

  “So, all vampires that don’t attend this school are rabid?” She asked, and she could sense that she was frustrating him, much to her satisfaction, which he sensed.

  “No… But those that do attend this school find life afterwards to be much easier to tame. When another speaker comes wandering through here, little vampire, you can ask him or her any questions you like. Ask them if they attended this school or one like it. Ask them how difficult or easy it has been for them to control themselves, or if they have not controlled themselves, for that matter,” he said, rising to his feet with agitation.

  She rose to her feet also. He noticed this perceptively. She was keeping everything in balance. She would either be at equal height to him, or as equal as her 5’3 self could be, or she would be higher than him. Truth be told, if he sat down, he would be at about head height for her. He was over a foot taller than her, but she didn’t allow this little fact to intimidate her.

  “School starts in about thirty minutes, Seph. You could go to your room and get situated, but to be honest, you don’t really have enough time. You need to go to the Main Hall and have your pint of blood, just in case. Your eyes are already dark gray. Don’t skip any meals here either, Seph. It’s much more dangerous than gaining a few pounds, which you won’t anyways,” he stated, starting to head towards the dark walnut door.

  “Um, Phin?” She called, and she knew he senses her nervousness and apprehension as easily if she had broadcasted it on a radio. “I would never skip a meal. I enjoy my food. I’m not a stick,” she watched as his eyes skipped over her form.

  She was not overweight, but she clearly did not skip on meals.

  “Also, I don’t know where the Main Hall is. I don’t know where my dorm room is. I don’t know where my first class is, what my classes are, what I’m supposed to or can wear,” she listed off her worries, and he held up a hand to quiet her.

  Sighing wearily, he glanced at his watch.

  “Try to keep up,” he said before striding out.

  That turned out to be a lot more difficult than it seemed. Phin was over a foot taller than her and had a much longer leg span. She had to take two to three steps just to equal one of his. Therefore, she had to walk twice as fast. He was talking to her as they walked, running, in her case, through the huge hall. She took in everything as best she could while still keeping up with him and l
istening as well.

  The school was huge and archaic-looking. The floors were all marble, white and black marble, sometimes blood-red, sometimes a brilliant gold. She was sure that had meaning, but she didn’t have time to look just yet. She thought it was beautiful. The school was designed in a slight Moorish fashion with huge archways and large windows. Open doorways were everywhere. She glanced to their right to see that they were walking around a large circular courtyard, springy grass bright green, resilient even. The courtyard seemed to be the center of all activity as students either milled through it, munched on their breakfast there, or ran across it, hurrying somewhere or other.

  “The dorm rooms are directly across from us now. Everything is connected, but you can tell that it’s the dormitories because everything is white,” and sure enough, across the courtyard was an all-white section of the circular building which had to be the dorm rooms now that Phin had explained it. “Your dorm, in fact, is on the sixth floor, the top floor, and your room number is eleven. You and Francesca share that room,” he passed over a key to her, small and golden. “Keep that safe,” he advised, and she nodded, tucking the key away in her pocket.

  “Here’s your schedule,” he passed her a sheet of paper with her classes, teachers’ names, and room numbers on it, as well as the general locations of them all. “It’s not too difficult. I can give you directions to where your first class is, but I have class too,” he skimmed over her schedule a moment. “Oh, you have the Guth Man first,” he flushed a slight pink… somehow. “Sorry, I mean, Sir Howie Guthrie. He teaches HU or History of the Universe. His class is in the Gold Hall and will be the third door on your left,” he stated, pulling that memory from his first year at school.