Fatal Retribution (Raina Kirkland Book 1)

by Diana Graves

  Without the blood and ash caked on my shirt, the design was visible. It was the VAMPS shirt Tristan had given me yesterday.

  “Thanks,” I said with a blush. The wet shirt was super tight, and cold, and well, nipples tend to be very noticeably erect under those circumstances.

  “Are you ready?” asked Nenet.

  “Yes,” and she brought my hand to her lips, isolated my middle finger, and put it in her mouth. Her lips closed around the finger and her warm velvet tongue slid over it. Her tongue was not a human tongue. It felt longer, wider and when she flicked my finger with it something stabbed it. I flinched, but I didn’t pull away. She looked at me with her huge eyes as she sucked on my finger, stroking it with her tongue to make the blood come out. I licked my suddenly dry lips and swallowed past the lump in my throat. Nenet slowly pulled my finger from her mouth. I took my hand back and cradled it in my lap. There was a small puncture wound on the tip of my finger. I used my shirt to stop the bleeding.

  “Your blood tastes of many different creatures.” She licked her lips thoughtfully, “Human, witch, elf—and something else that I cannot place. I’m sure it is that part of you that is holding the disease at bay.”

  “So, what does that mean? What’s happening to me?”

  “You are a living vampire. You are partially immune, but the disease does not lay dormant in you. It’s constantly fighting to take you—it simply can’t, not completely, not yet.”

  “I am a living vampire,” I said quietly.

  “Yes. When you die, the disease will finally be able to take you and your body will be reanimated,” Nenet said. “Until then, the disease will alter your body in every way it does a normal vampire.”

  “What part of me is immune?”

  “I can’t say what it is. It tastes like nothing I’ve ever tasted, almost too sweet, like syrup.” Nenet just shook her head, “I simply cannot place it. Whatever’s in your bloodline, it’s something I’ve never had for a meal before.”

  “Then—there is no reason to worry about me?” I questioned.

  Nenet looked to Ruy, “I see no reason to worry about her. She has the virus but she’s in no danger of turning any time soon.” Ruy nodded.

  “What about Nick? Is he dead-dead or—vampire?” I asked.

  “He’s dead,” said Ruy. “But not dead-dead, he will rise as a vampire as best I can tell.”

  I didn’t know if I should be relieved or sad about Nick becoming a vampire. Nick and I weren’t as anal-retentive about elf traditions as Mom and Tristan, but we didn’t eat animals. I didn’t know how Nick was going to handle going from vegan to blood thirsty predator. Though, our uncle didn’t seem to have a problem with it. Then again, I wasn’t alive when he was first infected. His first days as a vampire may have been thick with inner turmoil. I made a mental note to call him when we got home. Perhaps he could console Nick at the very least.

  “You look sad to hear it?” Nenet questioned.

  “Yes, Nicholas is one-fourth elf,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. “He will have a hard time adjusting.”

  I shook my head to clear that thought away, “We need to call our parents. They should know what’s happened.”

  “I believe your brother and sister have already made the calls,” said Ruy.

  “Oh, of course.”

  “I think I should have a word with the good doctor,” Nenet said by way of parting before she stood up and walked out of the door. I stared after her, looking idly at the closed door, but not really seeing it. I don’t know how long I was staring in silence before Ruy interrupted it.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  I looked at him and it took me too long to say, “Fine.” But we both knew I wasn’t fine. Even I could hear the tears in my voice. My eyes burned with the need to cry. My head swam with static thoughts that made me hate myself, because they were useless, just like me. I couldn’t save Nick, I couldn’t save Michael and I couldn’t comfort Tristan. What good was I to anyone I loved? But Ruy didn’t push the issue. If I said I was fine then I was fine. He did lean over the table and place his hand on my shoulder. He squeezed it a couple times, and he felt so warm. I almost let myself go then, I almost cried my heart out, but something stopped me. I could feel a frustrated mind.

  Something must have shown on my face because Ruy asked, “What is it?”

  I shook my head but said, “Someone isn’t very happy.” It was an empathic slip. I accidently read someone’s emotions and that had never happened to me before. Maybe I was so hurt, so emotionally compromised that I opened that part of myself without meaning to—maybe.

  My guard opened the door and held it for the doctor. Out of the bio-suit, I could see her bleach-blond hair, cut short and sporty. She did not look happy.

  “Just the young lady I wanted to see,” she said.

  “Me?” I asked.

  “Nenet just gave me her assessment of your condition, but I don’t trust her voodoo.”

  “It’s not voodoo, Tasha,” Ruy said.

  “Still,” she said, with her hands in the air. “I would like to run at least one of my own tests to accompany the opinion of that woman.”

  “Vampire related blood tests have to be sent out. It could take weeks or longer to—, “Ruy started.

  “I know that,” she interrupted. “There are other tests that would add more weight to this diagnosis than the taste buds of a—creature.”

  “For instance?” he made it a question.

  “For instance, anywhere between one and ten hours after infection the vampire is consumed by the unquenchable thirst for blood, even before the turn is complete. This has been true in one-hundred percent of cases throughout recorded history, except in the case of living vampires. If after ten hours Raina still has no cravings, then I’ll diagnose her as a living vampire, and not before.”

  Shit…

  THE

  IMPOSSIBLE

  THEY HAD CLEANED the VCC thoroughly while I was gone. There wasn’t a spot of blood, nothing but shinny immaculateness. Michael was lying next to me on a clean new bed, and Nick was on the other side of him on his own bed. They were both strapped in, dead to the world—for the moment at least. I wasn’t strapped down. I was sitting cross legged on my paper covered bed, biting my nails while I replayed what had happened this morning over and over again in my mind. I wondered what would have happened if I had demanded that Nick allow me to walk with him. Would he still be alive if I had been just a bit pushier? If I had been there surely the vampire would have attacked me instead of him. And Nick, with all his skill, would have had time to react, perhaps deliver a killing blow with his superior magic. I wondered if Katie and Tristan were running similar scenarios in their minds.

  My nameless guard stood by the elevator for a while, but eventually he sat in one of the powder blue chairs that occupied the middle of the room. He wouldn’t talk to me or even look at me. He kept his eyes down.

  “How much longer?” I asked. He ignored me.

  Time seemed to pass slowly. I quietly cried until I fell asleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I woke the guard was fidgeting with his cell phone.

  “How long was I out?” I asked. The only reaction I got was a glance, and that was it. I couldn’t take any more of his rudeness. Not after what I’d been through. “Hey! What’s wrong with you? I just want to know how long I’ve been in here. Is there some rule that you can’t talk to me or something?”

  He looked at me then, but his face was unreadable. I just shook my head. “My brothers are undead and I’m infected. Answering me is the least you could do.”

  He stood up abruptly. “Shut up!”

  “Why!?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath. “Just-shut-up,” he said slowly. “I know you’ve been through a lot today and that your life isn’t all sun shine and rainbows right now, but my best friend was burned alive this morning, so if you don’t mind—.”

  “The vampire was your friend?”
I interrupted. “Who was he? How did he get out of the VCC after he was turned? I mean, he was a new vamp, right? He had no fangs yet. That’s why I thought he was a zombie. This place looks pretty secure. How could he get out?” I was totally rambling, but the prospect of knowing the man behind the crime was all consuming. I wanted to know his name, his profession, his family, his pets, his—anything and everything, but most of all I needed to know how he escaped the VCC!

  “I can’t tell you those things,” he said, and he settled back down in his chair.

  “But he was your friend, the man who did this. I just want to understand. I need to know.”

  “It’s not my place to tell you such things.”

  “Please.”

  But it was no use. He closed his lips, turned his head, and wouldn’t say another word. Nothing I said would solicit another response.

  I hadn’t eaten since this morning and my stomach began growling loud just before the doctor walked out of the elevator with several nurses and Nenet at her side.

  “Any blood lust yet, Joe?” she asked the guard.

  He stood up straight and I half expected him to salute her. “None,” he said.

  “I have pizza lust!” I chimed in, but was ignored.

  “What did I tell you, dear doctor? She is a living vampire,” Nenet said.

  “Impossible—,” one of the other nurses said with wonderment in her voice. “Actual cases of living vampires are so rare.”

  “That is why I’m skeptical. Living vampires only occur when the infected are only partially humanoid. If Raina is a living vampire, then her father or her mother can’t be what they say they are,” the doctor said. She was staring at me from the other side of the glass and tapping a pen against her plump lips.

  “My parents are here?” I asked.

  “Yes. They arrived around nine this morning. They both maintain that your father is human only and your mother is half witch and elf, but if that were the case, you would have turned with Michael.”

  “So there’s no explanation?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Can I come out now?”

  “I want to run another test to be sure,” she said. “It won’t take long.”

  ♦

  I understood the doctor’s mistrust of Nenet’s assessment. Nenet wasn’t a doctor, and if she was going to report my infection to the health department she needed more to go on than Nenet’s word. However, I really didn’t like her much after ten hours of isolation, and I was feeling something close to hate for the woman after thirty minutes of being bathed in a bright light. She sat me in a chair with the light hanging directly over me. I felt nauseous. I wanted to hang my head between my legs, but for her benefit I had my head bent back so the light was shining bright on my face.

  “See, I’m not burning. Now let me go!” The light dimmed without warning. I looked at the good doctor from across the room, not that I could see her quite yet. “Satisfied?”

  She smiled and said the wonderful words I had longed to hear. “You’re free to go.”

  I stood fast and instantly regretted it. I felt like I was going to be sick. “Told you so?” I murmured while I tried to hold back the contents of my stomach, as meager as they were.

  “Yes. I have come to the conclusion that one of your parents is lying,” she said. “I’ve taken blood samples from all of you and I will get to the bottom of this. But, no matter who’s lying it doesn’t change the fact that you are now a living vampire.”

  After the doctor left I dashed for the restroom to vomit what I could.

  THE CHANGES

  A WAVE OF sensations hit me as I left the restroom, sharp pins and needles all over my body. My head felt like it was going to explode, and it sent me crashing to the floor. I screamed, bringing nurses and other staff running to my aid. “Slow your breathing,” they said calmly. “You’re hyperventilating.” Breathe slowly? How the hell was I supposed to breathe slowly while my entire body burned! But the sensations faded just as quickly as they’d flared, leaving me quivering on the floor, eyes unfocused.

  “What’s wrong?” a man in scrubs asked.

  “Nothing,” I heard Nenet say before I could respond. “Her body is going through the changes. That’s all.”

  “Nothing!? I thought you said I wasn’t going to turn!” I yelled as loud as I could, which wasn’t very loud since I could hardly catch my breath.

  “You aren’t,” she said calmly. “Turning means you’re dead. You aren’t dying but you are changing.”

  “What the hell does that mean?!”

  “Exactly what I said,” she answered.

  “What other changes can I expect?”

  “All of them except death. Like I said before, you’ll be a vampire in every sense of the word but you won’t be dead.”

  “If living vampires go through all the changes then why put me through all those tests?” The crowd dispersed, leaving Nenet and I alone in the hall.

  “Tasha was only looking for blood lust and light sensitivity. They are distinctly tied to the death of the infected humanoid. You wouldn’t experience them unless you were turning. I’m heading down to the VCC,” she said, cutting our conversation short. I watched her walk away.

  I was still on the floor, trying to picture myself with vampire strength and speed, when another wave of almost indescribable sensations ran through me like electricity, both hot pain and tingling vibration. I doubled over, which sent my glasses to the floor. I didn’t scream this time, but I think something close to a whimper came out of my mouth. People stopped to ask what was wrong, but I couldn’t breathe let alone talk. Instead I ignored them. They couldn’t help, no one could.

  When the pain finally subsided I sat in the hall with my head between my legs. I assured the worried people surrounding me that I was fine…for now. When the crowd dispersed once again, I searched for my glasses. I expected to fumble in my blindness until I touched something that felt like my glasses, but I could see everything with perfect clarity! Everything was so crisp. I saw minuscule detail, as though everything were magnified times ten. Just seconds ago I couldn’t see a foot in front of me without my glasses. Holy Bananas!

  “Weird,” I said out loud, and my voice sounded so strange to me. It crashed recklessly through my ears to tickle my mind. My senses were going haywire: sight, hearing and smell. I smelt at least two dozen different colognes and perfumes lingering in the air, and cleaning products, and beyond that: wounds, disease, and death. This was a clinic after all. Twenty feet down the hall a door opened. Cool air raised goose bumps on my arms, followed by an overwhelming scent of pine and soil, smells of the forest. I breathed in deeply and closed my eyes. I could taste it on the back of my tongue.

  “Hello,” came an exquisite voice, a man’s voice. I looked toward the door and found a man standing there. Handsome didn’t cut it, and attractive was also too mundane a word. He was beautiful.

  He was short; just a little taller than me. He had an athletic body, both slender and muscular. Long, long black hair swung weightlessly as he walked down the hall. He was wearing a white shirt with a grey tie, dark blue jeans and shiny black cowboy boots. His thick brows were pinched in worry as he walked toward me.

  “You must be Raina. They told me you were a living vampire and—are you okay?” he asked. My nerves felt exposed and his voice teased them like something electric, making a shiver run down my spine.

  “I’m going through changes,” I said. I was unable to look away from how beautiful he was. He had smooth dark skin with a grey quality. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.

  The world screamed through me. I could feel, smell, taste, hear and see more than anyone ever should. Part of me liked everything about what I was feeling and seeing, but another part of me was scared by how alien it was, and that part was louder. It screamed inside me, “Stop, please!”

  “How do I control myself?” I ask him, not that he should know.

  “You could simply wait it out, or y
ou could...” He was talking, but his words were lost to me.

  “Your eyes,” I said when I noticed their color, a thousand different shades of gold. “How amazing, it’s like looking into the sun.”

  “Can you hear me, Raina?” he asked.

  I felt my legs going weak again as another debilitating wave ran through me. My body lost all fortitude and I thought I was going to hit the floor hard, but he closed the distance between us in a blink and caught me by my waist just before I hit the ground. I looked down at his arms wrapped around me, and leaned into him, taking in his scent. I breathed in the smells of the forest and blood. It was an intoxicating scent, the scent of a Native American Vampire.

  “Focus,” he said.

  “How?”

  “You must think of something unpleasant, something sad. Distract your mind.”

  I took in a shaking breath. “I’m afraid of what’s happening to me. Isn’t that enough?” I asked through tight lips.

  “Fear is too exciting an emotion. You must feel sadness or nothingness.”

  “Think of something sad?”

  That wasn’t too hard given the circumstances. I thought about watching Nick die. About what no longer being human would mean for Michael. He’s never felt the sting of rejection and the injustice of discrimination before. I thought about all the pain and all the hard times yet to come for my brothers and slowly my thoughts became more than a jumble of sensations. The vampire loosened his hold on me and I looked up into his eyes. He was still gorgeous.

  I swallowed past the lump in my throat and nodded. “Thanks. I’m fine now. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “It is not your fault, Raina.” Hearing him say my name made my knees go weak, just a little. “You are a new vampire…living vampire at least. As you said, you are changing. Most vampires are dead or dying through this process.”

  “Why did no one warn me or at least give me pain-killers?”

  “From what I hear it has been a mad house since you and your siblings arrived. They should have warned you though, but they could not have given you any medication. It would have affected the way the virus altered your mind, and caused a chemical imbalance. No, with a little time you will gain control of yourself.”