Gifts of the Blood

by Vicki Keire

  He nodded once, and then dropped his head as if in prayer or deep thought. He put a hand on one elbow, as if to guide me or keep me from running. “Can you show me this drawing that frightened you so badly you screamed the first time you saw me?”

  I shrugged, trying to act like I didn’t care, but truthfully, suddenly I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to produce the frightening, damning drawing that would prove to him I was crazy and strange. I pointed at my knapsack, leaning up against my dresser, mere feet from where we sat. “It’s over there,” I said in a hoarse whisper, unaccountably afraid of something I’d been eager to show Logan earlier. He looked at me once, sharply, before kneeling to retrieve my black, ribbon-bound sketchbook in one easy motion. He held it out to me.

  When I took it from him, our fingertips brushed.

  His skin was like hot porous metal, radiating up my arm in electric spirals. I sucked in a breath and held it. My fingers trembled as I unbound the book. I tried, unsuccessfully, to still my shaking hands. I had to settle for going slowly so as not to damage my work. I flipped past still life drawings in charcoal and pencil of fruit, flowers, and classmates. Pastel drawings of the historic district, Old Town Square, and our ivy-draped patio followed. Finally, I came to the landscapes: Eddington Forest, the St. Clare and Navau Rivers, and the final sketch from today of the Riverwalk. I took a deep breath as I came to the last one, meeting his intense, flickering eyes over the edges of the page.

  I let go of the breath I’d forgotten I was holding and didn’t take another one. It was gone. Smooth cut edges hugged the spine where my drawing had been excised clean away.

  Someone had taken my drawing. As my gray eyes locked with Ethan’s narrowing river-colored eyes, I felt a sensation like drowning. Something important was happening, something I didn’t fully understand. If the drawing had been “a gift of the blood,” as my Gran used to say, then its theft whispered to the same long buried instincts, awakening them, urging them to watchful protectiveness.

  If someone could steal the products of my strange ability, what else could they take?

  The winter will take him.

  Logan.

  ***

  My entire body shook violently as I smoothed out the last drawing I’d completed before I drew Ethan. It was one of my better ones, really. Our cat Abigail slept underneath a wooden shelf that held a dying plant on our ivy-screened patio. It was done in pastel crayon. I’d spent a lot of time getting the exact hue correct; orange is tricky, after all. Also, Abby is really fluffy, so I’d put in a lot of detail. I felt the warm weight of him next to me, on the edge of my bed. I kept shaking as I flipped the page, searching for some clue besides a cut edge to prove my Riverwalk sketch had once existed, but there was nothing. A big fat tear pooled onto the page and sank into the paper, blurring a patch of Abby’s fur. He lifted the sketchbook from my hands. “There you have it,” I gasped, almost too shocked to breathe. “The horrifying drawing of the future. A fluffy orange cat.” More tears followed the first.

  “You’re a talented artist,” he began, and I burst into more tears. He jumped up, agitated, and tried to give the book back to me. “What?” he demanded anxiously. “I mean it! You are! Orange is tricky!” At his almost exact echo of my thoughts, I crumpled sideways onto my bed and curled up into a ball, my shoulders shaking so violently with muffled sobs I could feel the bed tremble. It was too much. It had been a long day of too much, and now my drawing was gone. He stared at me, incredulous. “I was trying to make you feel better, and I upset you, again.” He fisted his hands in his hair. “I’m terrible at this. I tried to make you feel better earlier today, and I upset you so much you started screaming, and then, when I tried to calm you, I almost broke your wrist. There’s obviously a reason we’re not supposed to get involved.” I gaped at him, crying silently, wishing he would start making sense because I couldn’t handle two dubiously sane people at the same time. He grabbed a t-shirt from the floor and shoved it at me. “Here. Take this. Or is it supposed to be tissues? I don’t see any, and I’m afraid if I leave you’ll start screaming again.” He paced, his fist against his mouth, occasionally stealing covert glances at me. I held the t-shirt in one hand, the closed sketchbook in the other, and let silent tears roll down my face unchecked while I let my brain just lockdown and refuse to process any further information.

  “You believe me?” I finally asked, after what seemed like miles of watching him pace.

  “Of course,” he said matter-of-factly. “Which part, exactly?”

  I cleared my throat. It felt like swallowing sand. “About the drawing?”

  He nodded to the bed. “May I?” he asked, as if afraid. I nodded. He carefully put at least a foot between us as he sat. “I believe you about the drawing,” he said heavily. He smiled a little. “In fact, I much prefer it as an explanation for your reaction to me earlier today than to think you felt that way on your own.”

  “Oh.” I turned my head so he couldn’t see my blush. I hadn’t thought about how insulting my first reaction to him must have been. But then, until just a little while ago, until his matter-of-fact acceptance of my ability, I hadn’t cared. “Oh! I meant do you believe that someone took it?”

  He shook his head, exasperated. “Obviously. The edges were cleanly cut.”

  “But… why? Why would someone do that? And how would they know?”

  He was silent a long time, staring off at the patches of moonlight that crept in through the big bay window that took up most of my bedroom’s front wall. His eyes were a little unfocused, his head tilted as if listening intently. I studied his profile, thinking of him as lines and angles, of mysteries and secrets. Logan must have fallen asleep; the apartment was silent. The only noise was the faint sound of people and traffic from the square. “I don’t know,” he finally murmured, as if the silence had given him an answer. “I wish I did. But I don’t like it.” My scraped-up side pressed into the sheets beneath me. It throbbed dully, reminding me of other aches. Full-body tiredness crept across me like steam from a hot scented bath I suddenly wanted. I felt pleasantly foggy and slow.

  “Ethan,” I murmured into my forearm. I wondered where he would go. Did drawings come to life have places to sleep? I imagined him picking random paintings from his imagination and stepping into them. “If I was a drawing come to life,” I said, swinging my legs over the side of my bed, “I would pick a different famous painting every night to sneak into.” He had moved, again without me noticing, to the very center of my bay window. He stared at the sky as if looking for something specific. I joined him there, leaning my forehead against the cold glass. “Starry Starry Night,” I sighed. “I’d like to sleep under a sky like that.” The full chill of October after dark hit me, seeping through my thin ripped t-shirt and chilling me all the way down to my toes. I shivered violently, but it didn’t break my dreamy lassitude. “Do you have a place to stay, Ethan?” I heard myself ask. I knew I should be horrified, giving a stranger-than-stranger the option to stay, but I wasn’t. I just shivered some more and looked at the sky, trying to see what Ethan found so fascinating up there. I could see only light pollution haze and a few pinpricks of white, meant to be stars.

  Warm fingers draped a soft leather jacket around my shoulders. Behind me, he lifted my tangled dark brown hair from beneath the collar of his jacket and smoothed it so it hung across my shoulder blades. I leaned backwards into his touch as Abigail had nudged him for petting. Later, I would wonder at this. Later, I would be angry at myself for relaxing so completely and unwisely with someone who’d scared me senseless earlier that very day. But for now, I was conscious only of Ethan’s fingers untangling my hair and a growing sense of peace, stronger than anything I’d felt since before Logan’s diagnosis.

  “What else, Caspia?” he almost whispered, warmth and the scent of new growing things all around me. “What other paintings would you visit, if you could?” His arms wrapped around me, tight with nervous care. Sleep pulled against me like waterlogged socks.<
br />
  “I want to live in that Escher drawing,” I murmured. My eyes fluttered closed. “The house with all the crazy stairs.” I felt movement and warmth.

  “Relativity.” He supplied the name absently, as if his thoughts were far away. I opened my eyes to find we were no longer by the window, but back on my bed. I lay stretched out on my uninjured side, covered with his jacket. He knelt by the side, his blue-green tinted eyes clear again and even with mine. I reached out for him but my hand felt so heavy I pulled it back under his jacket. I remembered feeling sedated when I first woke up, after meeting him for the first time in Mrs. Alice’s shop and panicking like hell.

  “Hey,” I tried to demand, but I sounded more like I’d been drinking. “Did you do something to me earlier? Outside Mrs. Alice’s shop?”

  "Other than scare the hell out of you, you mean?” He snorted. “I sincerely hope so.”

  “You are so not answering my questions,” I accused through half-closed eyes.

  “You are so resistant to… routine persuasion,” he sighed. He traced my half-closed eyes with his fingers. The gesture seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “I think you might be in danger,” he said.

  “Is that why I drew you? Why you came?” I asked.

  He looked absolutely, positively grief-stricken. “I’m not here for you at all.” He visibly sagged after the words left his mouth, like he’d just admitted to the darkest sin of all. “But it didn’t make a difference, did it?” He laughed bitterly. “I… interfered. Like my half-cursed brothers. I’m no better.” He moved so quickly I couldn’t track him. One second he was staring at me by my bed, and the next, he was at the window, palms flat against the glass as if in supplication.

  I tried to sit up but sleep threatened to drag me under like a drug. “How do you do that? Move so fast?” I complained. “And what do you mean, I’m in danger? Or that you interfered? With what?”

  “How is it,” he countered, turning to me, his voice low and dangerous now, “that you’re still awake and asking questions?”

  “I’m stubborn like that.” I tried to sound fierce, but I wasn’t very convincing. I could barely keep my eyes open and my vision was starting to fuzz. “And don’t forget your jacket when you get the hell out of my…”

  “Keep it.” My eyes were mere slits, struggling to stay open against a sudden vivid light. “You might need it. It offers some protection against… cold, and… other things.” He sounded frustrated, and the light flared painfully. Still I tried to keep my eyes open, desperately curious about the light, about Ethan, about…

  “Sleep, Caspia. I’ll see you again. Sleep.”

  The voice came from inside my head. I fell into the same warm white blankness from before, when I’d hit my head outside Mrs. Alice’s store. Soft white warmth enveloped me, but this time it had Ethan’s voice, his scent, and his strength. For the second time in one day, I relaxed into deep, calming sleep. But unlike before, this time I dreamed.

  Light. Sheltering light softer than thought wrapped around me while storms gathered and lightening lashed the ground as far as I could see.

  Chapter Five:

  Neighborly

  From underwater, I watched as two huge clear globes of air fought their way drunkenly to the surface. They exploded on contact, sending ripples and waves in outward spreading circles while smaller silver bubbles of air followed them up. I hugged my knees to my chest, ignoring my burning lungs and blinking rapidly as the hot water stung my eyes. Long strands of reddish-brown hair floated lazily past my face like aimless seaweed. I ignored them, determined to shut out the world as completely as I could for as long as my lungs would let me.

  The scrapes along my side stung, but not as badly as the burns along my right hand and forearm. I’d purposely left the water plain, even though I had enough bath additives to stock a small store. No gardenia or jasmine salts to agitate eyes and injuries; I craved peace and quiet. The huge claw foot tub was my refuge, my equivalent of a meditation room or chapel. After last night, I desperately needed some time to get my head together before I started another whirlwind day. Cocooned in hot, silent water, I tried to set my thoughts into something resembling order.

  Point one: I’d drawn one of my visions yesterday, and it began unfolding in the same day. I frowned underneath the water. I’d never drawn a person before, especially a strange one who seemed intent on becoming involved in my life. I blew more bubbles as I realized the error in my thinking. I did draw people. I’d been doing it all my life. I drew Grandmother’s accident, and the Everly’s surprise twins. The difference, I realized, was that these were all people I knew well before I drew them, and that my drawings weren’t so much of them but of events surrounding them. That was what was so shocking about Ethan’s sudden appearance in my sketchbook and then again in real life. I didn’t know him, and I had no way of knowing if my drawing foresaw his arrival in my life or pointed to some event involving him that hadn’t happened yet.

  This was a good segue into point two: the strange symbols surrounding Ethan in my drawing and his ominous appearance in general. He’d been surrounded by a storm of darkness and frightening objects. He’d been furious. So if my drawing represented a forthcoming event, it was bound to be bad. For at least the fiftieth time since waking, I wished for my missing drawing so I could study it again. I ran through what I remembered, lightning fast: soaring light like doors in darkness, bloody talons, broken knife, ragged book, smashed heart. Remember it. Be ready.

  Point three: My drawing was missing. Someone had sliced it neatly free from my sketchbook. Someone had stolen my property and my proof. My hands curled into fists, the injured one throbbing mildly in protest as my burning, oxygen-deprived chest matched my suddenly blazing anger. Someone had been in my house and stolen my property. I wasn’t sure which upset me more: the drawing and all it represented, or its theft and the violation of my home. I couldn’t think of a motive or a suspect. Logan hadn’t known the drawing existed, Amberlyn didn’t understand its significance, and Ethan had been with me the entire time.

  Lack of oxygen finally drove me to the surface in an explosion of droplets. I flipped my hair backwards, out of my eyes, and gripped the edge of the tub. Ethan. Point four, and by far the most unsettling. I thought about the black leather jacket folded neatly across the back of my winged-back reading chair. I awoke slightly before the alarm, nestled underneath it with all my clothes on. He’d covered me with it and tucked me in. That much I remembered, along with his light piercing eyes and his promise that he’d see me again.

  That, and the dreams.

  I squirmed in the tub, letting the hot water swish around me in mild waves as I remembered the Ethan dreams. Storms swept across my dreamscape; I remembered a world of mist and wind, pierced occasionally by lightening. I drew with my fingers in the thick mist, shadows streaming from my fingertips in thick jagged lines. I stood on tiptoe and carved great dark rips in an otherwise hazy white world. "This is dangerous, Caspia," someone said from far away. Ethan. "It's not allowed. You'll draw their attention." But I didn't want to stop. His river-colored eyes flared slightly as he grappled with me. In my dream he held me close, around my waist.

  I blushed, quite a feat when I was flushed from the hot water anyway. I had no business dreaming about a man I barely knew who had an as-yet undefined role in my life and could do things like move faster than my eyes could follow. And speak cat.

  As if on cue, Abigail nudged her way into the bathroom through the connecting door to my room. She looked at me with queenly impatience. “Oh, ok already,” I grumbled, climbing out and toweling vigorously. “Breakfast in five, your highness. You have to wait like everyone else.” She flicked her tail to show her displeasure and stalked back out the door.

  The black leather jacket tugged at the edges of my thoughts as I rifled quickly through my closet. I held two long-sleeved shirts up in front of my full-length, freestanding mirror. My long hair was starting to dry around the edges, framing my face wit
h wild wispy strands. I was tall for a woman. At five foot nine, I towered over most of my female classmates, including the petite Amberlyn. I would never qualify as thin or tiny, but my tall frame and the fact that I walked almost everywhere, carrying all my belongings and purchases, kept me reasonably fit. Former boyfriends had gone so far as to describe me as "energetic" and "graceful." I twisted at the waist, my eyes lingering on the small of my back, remembering Ethan’s steadying hands on me last night. I'd been anything but graceful with him around. He’d kept me from falling. And his jacket… what was it? “For protection,” I murmured, remembering.

  As I slipped the warmer of the two shirts on, I knew that, contrary to good sense and even some compelling evidence, at some point last night I’d decided to trust Ethan. It had been my own senseless, mad dash across the concrete outside Mrs. Alice’s shop that had gotten me injured. Ethan had let go immediately when he realized I was hurt. I remembered his look of horror, like he didn’t realize how fragile I was. I remembered the way he held me around the waist, as if I was breakable, and the way he’d moved me around my own room.

  Because I was wobbly, for a human. And he was inhumanly fast. I sank onto the edge of my bed with a groan. “Christ, Ethan, what are you, and what are you doing here?” I asked his jacket. “Do I even want to know?”

  “Know what?” Amberlyn’s springy curls were confined in a ponytail, but they still managed to bounce in time with her cheerful walk straight to my closet. “What to wear? Because it can’t be that hard, and breakfast is getting cold.” She turned and started rummaging. “I, for one, like my coffee hot.”

  “Jesus, Amberlyn!” I shouted, grabbing the first pair of semi-clean jeans I found on the floor. “Don’t you believe in knocking?”