Blood Ties

by Gina Whitney

  Of course Aunt Evelyn’s bootleg air conditioning was acting up. I had my bedroom window raised in a vain attempt to find relief from the sweltering heat. The steamy breeze that gushed through did little to cool down the room, but was sufficient to clear out the stale winter air.

  The blazing weather did have some benefits, though. I had been nursing a particularly strong cough, and the warmth helped me to breathe a little better. The coughing had started about a week earlier, irritating but mild. Now I was hacking so hard and so much, my diaphragm felt like it had done a round with Mike Tyson—the in-shape version that is. I tried everything to get rid of the choppy cough. Humidifiers, zinc, orange juice—none of it helped a bit. All NyQuil did was induced an awesome coma.

  I had the TV tuned to one of those twenty-four-hour news channels. An exposé about violence on college campuses was running. The fresh faces of young women brutalized or murdered at higher institutions of learning scrolled across the screen. I took note of how they were all from the same cookie cutter. They were the archetypes of upper-middle class: cute, toothy, surprisingly fit, equestrian/crew team/lacrosse playing chicks. I was sure Tiffany’s face would pop up at any moment. It didn’t. Darn.

  Growing tired of the news, I decided to direct my attention to the warm, living body next to me—James. Even though he was beyond old in human years, he was respectful of Aunt Evelyn’s surprisingly old-fashioned notions about coed sleeping arrangements. He complied for the most part, but every so often he’d sneak up to my room in the middle of the night to spend time some alone time with me. We’d watch DVDs of horror movies and play daffy card games. Our sublime and ridiculous conversations lasted all night, and even though we’d rehash the same topics, they always seemed brand new.

  James was on his back, shirtless. Unfortunately he made sure to leave on his cock-blocker jeans. I, on the other hand, was trying my best to be as tempting as possible. I purposefully wore a gauzy cami top and butt-crease-exposing pajama shorts—a marked change from my usual oversized T-shirts and slouch socks.

  I rested my head in the crook of James’s armpit, inhaling the slightly pungent odor overlaid with bergamot and ginger accents from his deodorant. His ankles were crossed, and he rubbed his feet together with contentment. I ran my finger up and down his torso, thinking about how he had a way of making life feel easier and lighter. With him, during fleeting moments like this one, I could relax into a state of normalness.

  But an awful, goose-honk coughing spell ruined it.

  James gave me a few pats on the back. “Whoa! You sound like you have a case of whooping cough. You okay, baby?”

  “Fine,” I said right before I coughed up a chunk of salty, metallic phlegm. It tasted like blood. I let it stay in my mouth as I tried to figure out what to do with it. Spit it into a Kleenex? No, not in front of James. Like a nasty bitch, I swallowed it so he wouldn’t be grossed out. After the gulp, I said, “Whooping cough? That was just me being sexy.” He was none the wiser.

  But I really was trying to be sexy. During the past few months, I had pulled out all the Penthouse Forum tricks I could think of to entice James. And they’d almost worked. We had gotten incredibly close to doing the do. The problem was that it was not close enough for me, but too close for him.

  The closest we’d ever gotten was the other night. There’d been so much sex in the air, it was like my room had taken Viagra. The room was inky black; we couldn’t see a thing. Our playful teasing gave way to extended foreplay that was particularly intense. Instinctively, we peeled away our clothing while kissing with hyper urgency. We got up on our knees with our palms pressed together. He pulled back from me, and I felt his face like I was a blind woman. I could feel his mouth open with desire, shallow breaths leaving it. I pressed my naked torso against his, and he clutched me hard. He started pushing me down on the bed. And then he stopped…as fucking usual. He was motionless for a long time, and then quickly got out of bed.

  “I’ve got to go,” he’d said. He’d put on his clothes while walking briskly to the door. As it opened, I could only see his black silhouette against the light spilling in from the hallway. He’d rattled off some apology and then retreated into the house.

  I was thrilled he was back tonight. He was staring down at me like he had a million thoughts rushing through his mind. Though we had not been totally intimate, I dared to ask a strictly after-sex question: “What are you thinking about?”

  James said, “There was a time, for a very long time, when I had no faith in the world. I couldn’t see any goodness in it or a reason to help it exist. Aside from my family, there was nothing to love. Then, months ago, you came back into my life. I couldn’t run or hide from what you brought out of me. Finally I felt alive. So I was just thinking about one word to describe you. Could it be heart? Let’s try soul. Or could it be amour? Only one came to mind: life. You are life itself to me. You were a long time coming. I had to go through much heartache and trauma to be here with you right now. But I’d do it all again.”

  As he caressed my cheek, his faintly glowing eyes flickered. It was a relief to hear that I meant so much to him. Sometimes it was hard figuring him out. The vast majority of the time, everything seemed right between us. He was the ultimate when it came to being smiley and affectionate. But other times I’d catch him watching me with a look of sadness on his face. The kind people have when they’re about to tell you goodbye forever.

  I forgot all that when James rolled over and kissed me. Joy and desire overwhelmed my body. Even though Catherine was still lurking around out there, for now James and I could be just like two regular lovers. I wished these moments could be bottled. That way, in the midst of chaos, I could have them at the ready, like aspirin for a heart attack victim.

  As I tried to pull James on top of me, I caught a sound bite from a television reporter. He mentioned something about Long Island College. I abruptly stopped kissing James and sat up to look at the screen. “Turn it up,” I said.

  James found the remote in the crumpled sheets and increased the volume. The screen filled with Long Island College’s most recent graduating class. The camera panned over all their beaming faces and the proud mamas and papas wiping away tears. The screen fast-forwarded to tight shots of graduates crossing the stage in black gowns and mortarboards studded with craft-store rhinestones reading “Thanks Mom,” “LIU,” or “Hire me.”

  Off-screen the reporter spoke: “It has been three months since the gruesome death of Samantha Beckon.”

  Samantha Beckon—the only girl featured on the exposé who was like me. It was a travesty that she was only profiled because of the extreme heinousness of her death.

  The reporter went on: “But it seems life has gone on for these students.” A montage of seconds-long interviews followed. Graduates lamented Samantha’s death and various campus safety issues. One even mentioned another female—a missing Indian student. To me they seemed more interested in the celebratory activities going on around them than discussing the death of some previously little-known student and some foreign girl.

  The reporter’s faux-concerned voice played over snippets of gleeful students moving out of dormitories and sad, empty rooms. “An initial suspect has since been deported, though not charged with the crime. Will the perpetrator ever be brought to justice? Will new students have to live under the constant threat that the killer will return?”

  I started feeling regret. That was my graduating class. If things had gone as planned, I would have been getting ready for grad school or working some lame accounting job where I got to wear dowdy clothes and sensible shoes. I knew most humans craved extraordinary lives. Some sought activities that gave them constant adrenaline rushes. Others needed to make a difference by some great feat or altruistic deed. When all else fails, infamy will do.

  Well, in my defense, I wasn’t quite human. And my “extraordinary” demigod status had been thrust upon me. Even though I had come to terms with my abnormal circumstances, I still mourned being…w
ell…normal. Not that I had ever been normal in the classical sense. But there was a degree of security in my regular oddball world. Now every day was like jumping out of an airplane with a Russian roulette-style parachute.

  While James concentrated on the TV, my eyes started to water, and I hid them from him. I knew I had to stay centered on not what I had lost, but what I had gained: James. When I turned to him, he smiled, and a sense of relief came over me. Maybe this new normal wasn’t so bad after all.

  Just when everything was about to be alright, I felt a scratching sensation in my eyes as if they’d been blasted with shrapnel. I rubbed furiously, but the debris wouldn’t dislodge. I got out of bed and headed straight to the bathroom.

  “Where are you going?” James asked, propping himself up on his elbows. Shit, he looked really fucking sexy right then. However, he started to warp as my vision blurred.

  “The bathroom. Be right back,” I said while bumping into the door I couldn’t see. I stretched my arms out as I made my way cautiously to the bathroom mirror. I tugged at the chain pull of the hanging lightbulb. It swung like a pendulum, taking my reflection from lightness to darkness.

  My vision cleared up just enough to see red eyes with vertical slits staring back at me.

  I thought, Okay, all the coughing made me burst a blood vessel in my brain, and I’m hallucinating—for real this time. I blinked, but the coin-slot slits didn’t go away. “Agh!”

  James rushed into the bathroom—Mr. Rescuer himself. He took one look at me and shook his head with remorse. “My blood has interfered with your Awakening.”

  My arms flailed, emphasizing my point, and I paced rapidly across the floor. “What the fuck? I can’t go out like this,” I yelled between coughs. James tried to calm me down by wrapping his arms around me.

  And I bit him.

  Shocked, he released me. Hell, I was shocked too. James remained calm and maintained control as blood trickled down his arm. “It’s okay. It must all be part of the plan.”

  What plan? I didn’t care about destiny, fate, karma, or any bullshit words James used to spin this situation. I was on the verge of growing a forked tongue and slithering. Oh, hell no! I closed my eyes and willed them to go back to their ordinary state. They did. Fuck kismet. I won.

  But as soon I was about to bust into an old school break dance, my eyes glowed and turned a milky white. What? Now I’m a bogeywoman!

  I gripped the sink and closed my eyes again, trying to repeat the magic trick of changing them back. The sink started to quake as I focused with all my might. I kept telling myself, “I’m in control. I will determine the outcome of this.” The vibrations loosened the sink from the wall. I opened my eyes when one of its screws hit the floor.

  James looked over my shoulder. Both of our reflections stared back at me. “Stop it,” he said, turning me around. “Right now your eyes are not your problem. Your situation is not your problem. Catherine is not your problem. You are.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. This is not your fight. The burden is not on you.”

  “All this training…all this magic you’re learning will be for nothing if you don’t get your mind straight. If you can master yourself, you can master everything. Submit to it all. No more resistance. Now, to change back, control your emotions. That’s the only way.”

  Who the hell did James think he was? That Zen crap only worked in self-help seminars. And seriously the people who attended those didn’t deal with shit like this. The worse things those people had to deal were bitch bosses, trying to get laid, or, excuse the irony, finding their stupid path. James was supposed to be indulging my dismay, and instead he was telling me to buck up. I wanted to slap the piss out of him.

  He squinted and stared into my eyes. “Look.”

  “Screw you.”

  James whirled me around and forced me to confront the mirror. “Look!”

  My pupils were round again, even though they were an animalistic, creamy amber color. I lowered my head, knowing I had been totally out of place with my outburst. “Forgive me?”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me. I understand.” There was nothing more he could say. We both looked at me in the mirror.

  James had played two specific roles in my life up until that point: bodyguard and leader. But now he wasn’t standing behind me as a bodyguard. He wasn’t standing in front of me as a leader. He was standing at my side as a partner.

  I didn’t want to tell Aunt Evelyn about my eyes. Mind you, there were flaws in my plan to wear sunglasses all day long… indoors…hoping no one would notice. But I knew as soon as she found out, there’d be some other training or ritual I’d have to endure. I just wanted a break.

  James didn’t see it that way, and told Aunt Evelyn immediately. And just like I’d thought, I was about to be subjected to some more witchy rigmarole.

  Aunt Evelyn pulled out an old doctor’s bag she had procured from an antique store over in Amityville. The black leather was dry and cracked, with a well-developed patina. Its smell, reminiscent of an old library book, was strong, having endured at least a century of previous use. Aunt Evelyn handled the artifact with a light hand, opening the scaly, crocodile-skinned split handle with kid gloves.

  “I’m not even going to ask why you have a doctor’s bag,” I said.

  “You never know,” Aunt Evelyn said, searching through it. She nicked her wrist on a small scalpel and bled a little. “Sit,” she told me. The whole time I was stifling a cough; I didn’t want one more thing to worry her.

  The bag was filled to the brim with holistic treatments: copper bracelets, marble cold stones, herbal concoctions, spices, and oils. Aunt Evelyn pulled out a doctor’s pen light. “I’m coming in,” she said as she held my eyelid open.

  My eyes changed, and I looked like a human-lizard crossbreed. I couldn’t help but notice the thin trickle of blood running down Aunt Evelyn’s arm, originating from the cut on her wrist. My heart beat faster the closer her wrist got to my face.

  She studied my eyeball. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “We have changes in our eyes at puberty, but not like this. Your pupils aren’t even responding to light. You’re undergoing tremendously rapid changes. Your eyes… Do you have any control over them?”

  “Not really. Can you make it better so I can at least go out in public?” I could smell her blood—not only what was coming out, but what was in her veins as well. It made me hungry, and I wanted to eat her. My fleur-de-lis lit up, and my fangs popped out. I lunged forward, grabbing Aunt Evelyn’s wrist, and bit her. She yelped, not so much in pain, but more frightened. My teeth clamped down on the bone and cracked it some. James pried my mouth open while Aunt Evelyn yanked back her wrist.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said, weeping through a hacking cough. Blood spurted out of my mouth. “What’s happening to me?”

  Aunt Evelyn was at a loss. “I don’t know, sweetie. I need some counsel on this one.”

  James, Aunt Evelyn, and I sat around a crystal ball. The large, glass orb was on a three-legged pedestal atop a fringed satin cloth. A black tapered candle, the only light source in the room, allowed me to barely make out the embroidered pattern on the fabric. We held hands and our knees touched, forming a hexagon around the tiny table.

  “Close your eyes,” Aunt Evelyn said. She and James did. I kept mine open. She tilted her head back and opened her mouth like one of those carnival gypsies channeling spirits. I waited for the table to tip.

  “So we’re about to wake the dead,” I wisecracked.

  Aunt Evelyn opened one eye and looked at me. “Stop kidding and close ’em up.” She closed her eyes again. This time I took the directive so I could see what was going to happen next.

  “Pool your energy,” Aunt Evelyn said. But she sounded strange, wraithlike.

  The table began to move a little, then shake harder, and rose up without the crystal ball falling off. It then slammed back to the floor.

  “Now open your eyes
,” Aunt Evelyn said quietly. We all had fuzzy spheres in front of our foreheads. The balls floated away and met up above the crystal ball. They circled, then joined into a larger ball that dropped into the crystal ball. Grayish clouds started to swirl inside, then gave way to light-pink coils winding their way through some kind of nothingness in the crystal ball. I thought it would foretell a lovely future for James and me. However, the pink turned crimson red and then black. A frosty image came into view, distorted like a funhouse mirror.

  “Catherine… She’s not alone,” Aunt Evelyn said with a grave look. “She’s been making protégés. Lots of them.” The crystal ball clearly revealed Catherine. She was surrounded by dead bodies covered in blood. “She has been feeding… Gathering the soul energy of those she has murdered. She has become powerful. Almost unstoppable. The spells to hide you are no longer effective.”

  My childhood home appeared in the crystal ball. “Catherine has been in town. She’s been to your house. She’s hunting, and she’ll be here soon,” Aunt Evelyn finished.

  Catherine stared right at me. Suddenly the apparition in the crystal ball rushed the glass. It was trying to break out so it could tear me apart. The glass cracked, and a puff of sulfuric smoke escaped in Catherine’s place.

  I pushed the funky refreshment out of my face. Aunt Evelyn brought it back.

  James intervened. “You’re coughing up blood because you’re changing into some thing. We’re not even sure what. Catherine is on her way. We need you strong. So drink it.”

  “Tell me what’s in it,” I demanded.

  He and Aunt Evelyn looked at each other like the jig was up. James broke the news. “Well, I guess it’s time. When you ingested my blood, your Ancient’s appetite was whetted. It wants more. On top of that, your body needs blood to complete its awakening… Its transformation. What you’ve been drinking is fresh sheep’s blood.”