Maybe her scent had something to do with her abilities. She’d told him in the past that she had an electrical malfunction. He hadn’t known what that meant until she had taken his hand and shown him her memories of some of things she had destroyed in her childhood.
He could only see what people allowed him to see, and only when in direct physical contact. If someone was emotional upset he would sometimes pick up memories accidentally, but he didn’t touch very may people, so it was a rare event. It was like watching a mini movie. He literally saw the person’s memories.
And as he saw them, they became his memories, as well. The memories that people gave him became as real to him as if he’d been there himself.
He found Beck’s abilities more interesting. Her dreams of the future were rare, but when they happened they were nearly always accurate. The seeing of ghosts, while amazing, seemed to serve no purpose. She’d told him once, that as far as she knew, no one on either side of her family had had these problems. He had told her that they weren’t problems, they were gifts, but she didn’t see it that way. ‘These ‘gifts’ have only ever brought me problems,’ she’d told him.
It was her parents that had made her feel that way. Once they’d noticed her differences, they had turned on her. They had abandoned her. They had allowed her to live in their home; they had fed her and clothed her, but they had withdrawn their love. Thank God she had had Bev to get her through. They weren’t just sisters, they were best friends. And now she had him, at least for a couple more days.
He’d tried to stay away from her as much as possible when she was growing up. He had not wanted to interfere with her life too much. He knew if he stayed around her that he would run the risk of changing the essence of who she was, and he’d certainly not wanted that to happen.
He had only wanted to stop the worst things from happening to her. Her scars from being run over and bitten had not bothered him at all, but he had thought they had affected her self-esteem. The hit and run had caused a lot of damage. The car had broken her right arm, leg, several ribs, and her hip causing her to walk with a permanent limp.
The impact had thrown her, causing a break in her left arm, a broken rotator cuff, and scarring to her face with what she had called ‘road rash’. She’d had several surgeries to repair most of the damage, but had been left with many scars. The dog bites had left scars on her arms and right breast. He’d been afraid that saving her from these things might take away from her strong disposition, but that didn’t appear to be the case.
She was just as stubborn and willful as he remembered. She would be too much for most men to handle. She would not be a woman that cowered behind her husband. He liked her that way. She was an extremely intelligent and strong-willed woman. She could hold her own in any conversation, and was not intimidated by anyone.
You would have to have known Beck intimately to know that she had any self-esteem problems. Now he knew that the external scars had not been the only problem, it had also been the damned rape. She’d been raped, and he had not been there to save her. He had been busy scouring the United States for vampyres who might know where he could find Elderson.
No one had known. If she had only told him about it, he would have been there. He would have stopped it. He wanted to go back to Clarksville and kill Alex Whitman, but he did relish the thought of Whitman pissing and shitting in a bag for the rest of his life. Modern medicine would make sure that he had a long, semi-healthy life of being miserable.
Saving her from the accidents had seemed to help, though. She wasn’t a bit shy about her body now. She seemed like a different Beck. He’d loved the Beck he had met in the past with all of his heart, but had to admit that he felt a stronger pull to this Beck. He also had to admit that it was a relief that when she went back this time, she would already know what he was.
He’d wasted so many moments before telling her what he was the first time around. The waiting had been for nothing. When he’d finally told her that he was a vampyre, she had taken it in much the same way as she had this time…with acceptance and without fear. She’d gotten along well with his whole clan, and they had loved her immediately.
***
For the first time in years, his mind willingly went back to his family. His clan’s father was Daryl, and Rita was their mother. He also had three sisters: Saphira, Heidi, and Jenny. Saphira was 5’6” with long black hair and big brown eyes. She had the best sense of humor out of all his sisters, and a loud laugh he was sure could be heard a mile away.
Jenny was 5’8”, had short brown hair, startlingly clear eyes, and was the quietest of his sisters. She’d had the hardest time coming to terms with what she had become and had been sad most of the time.
Heidi was 5’7”, a bit heavyset, medium length, dark red hair, nearly black eyes, and was his favorite sister. She was also Beck’s favorite of his sisters. They had become very close before Beck’s death, and the loss had affected Heidi deeply.
He also had three brothers: Bruce, Harley, and Leso. Bruce was 5’8”, had close, cropped, dark brown hair, blue eyes, and was very stocky and muscular. He was a favorite of the women at the brothels in the city, and very much enjoyed his women. Harley was 6’6”, lanky, and was uncommonly strong even for a vampyre. He had short, light red hair, and light green eyes that were always dancing with mischief. He was the clown of the family, always making everyone laugh. He and Saphira were constantly cutting up.
Saphira and Harley ran a sort of daycare service for the ‘working women’ in the city, though most of the daycare was at night since that’s when most of the women worked. It always made him smile to think what these women’s reactions would have been had they ever found out that they were leaving their angels with ‘blood sucking monsters’. But, to Saphira and Harley’s credit, they had never eaten a single child.
Then there was Leso. He was 5’11”, had short black hair and brown eyes. He was his favorite brother because he was his true, blood brother. Richard had changed him himself. Leso was his younger brother by four years, but had been twenty-nine when he changed him, so he guessed they were technically the same age now. Leso had been a construction worker and had been working on an apartment building when he had fallen from the 4th floor, landing onto the cobblestones below.
He’d been taken to London hospital, but there had been little they could do for him. They had told Richard that Leso’s insides had burst, and he would likely pass before the night was over, advising him to go and say his final goodbyes. When he had seen Leso, he realized that he was in a great amount of pain. He could tell right away that the doctors were correct; there was a huge amount of internal damage. Leso’s stomach was already distended with blood. Leso was the only human that knew what Richard had become. When Richard knew he was no longer a danger to humans, Leso was the person he had gone to.
Their father had left them when they were very young, and Richard had helped entertain Leso while his mother washed clothes for people who were better off than they were. He remembered his mother scrubbing clothes in the winter, her chaffed and bleeding hands wrapped in cloth so as not to get blood on the clean laundry.
She had worked very hard to make sure her sons had a roof over their heads and never went hungry, although many nights, she did. She had passed on after a short illness when he was twenty-seven. She went peacefully in her sleep, and though greatly saddened by her passing, he was enormously grateful that her suffering had been short.
When he’d come to his brother and told him what he had become, Leso hadn’t cared. He only cared that Richard was back. Watching his brother at the hospital and waiting for him to die was almost more than he could bear, but it had not been his idea to change him into a vampyre. It had been Leso’s idea. He’d been sitting by Leso’s side, holding his hand, talking to him about random things to try to occupy his mind and bring him some comfort.
Back then, they would tell the families that the patient was dying, but not the patient themselves, and advised the
m not to tell the patient either. They said that it would cause the patient ‘undue stress in their last days and hours’. He had tried to go along with that. He had not wanted Leso’s death to be any harder than it had to be, but Leso wasn’t a stupid man.
They had given him a lot of morphine and the scent was almost as strong as the scent of his blood. Richard was surprised that he was not unconscious. He’d been talking about a mutt they ‘d had as children, when Leso turned to look at him. His face was pale and haggard-looking.
The pain was taking its toll on him, and the morphine had stopped impeding the pain.
“I’m dying,” Leso said. It had been a statement, not a question. “Can you help me?”
“I can’t heal you. That’s not an ability I have, though I wish it were.”
“You can save me though, can’t you?”
Richard’s skin crawled at the thought of what Leso was asking of him. “You don’t want to do that, Leso. If you didn’t know about me, you wouldn’t know such things as me existed.”
“But I do know about you. Will you help me, Richard?” he asked from between pained, clenched teeth.
Richard didn’t think Leso understood what he was truly asking for. He’d admitted to himself that it was tempting to give Leso what he wanted, but it was for selfish reasons. It would be nice to have the last member of his family with him, and not worry about ever having to see him die. He knew there were other vampyres around because he could sense them, but had never met any of them. He was tired of being alone, but he could not do this just to alleviate his own loneliness.
“You don’t understand what you’re asking for, how much it changes who you are.”
“It’s true that I don’t know about the changes, but I do know you. You were a decent man before you changed, and whether or not you realize it, you still are. Had you not told me, I would not have known anything happened to you. Except for some small changes, you appear to be the same person I’ve known our entire lives.”
Richard tried to explain that he only appeared to be the same. He told him about the thirst for blood, the heightened sense of hearing, sight, and smell, and tried to make him see what he would be sacrificing.
“If I die, I’m giving up everything. Please, I don’t want to die, not yet,” he pleaded.
Richard knew he only had a minute or so to decide. He could hear Leso’s heart racing as it tried to keep what little blood he had left flowing through his veins.
“I won’t be like you; bitten and left alone. I’ll have you to help guide me through it,” Leso said weakly, his life fading fast.
In the end, he had given Leso what he had asked for. He pulled the curtain to give them some privacy and returned to his brother’s side.
“This is going to hurt more than you can possibly imagine,” he said softly, and then bit the tiniest piece of Leso’s little finger.
He didn’t have to bite him on the neck to do the job; that was something that came from some writer’s imagination. He only needed to make a small opening for the toxin to get into his body. The only reason a vampyre needed to bite someone’s neck was to feed. The neck contains some of the largest veins in the body from which to drink.
Leso’s entire body stiffened, but he didn’t scream. Richard was pretty sure that when the toxin had taken hold in his body that he had screamed. It had only lasted a few moments, but the pain had been excruciating. He never knew if Leso’s body was too far gone to recognize the pain, or if he was just that tough, but he was pretty sure it was the latter.
Leso had always been a tough kid, never crying over cuts and scrapes like most kids, but no one could fight the toxin for long. Within two minutes he heard Leso’s heartbeat slow, and then stop. He went to get the nurse to tell her that Leso was gone.
It hadn’t been hard to retrieve his body, because back then it was normal to have the funeral at the families’ home, and the burial at their family cemetery. They released the body to the family after the death certificate was signed.
He collected the body the next morning after the doctor had been there to make it official. The viewing and wake had been that afternoon. There had been a handful of people in attendance, mostly their mother’s old friends; Lillian, that lived in a cottage down the street, and Gerthel Milam, that had sometimes helped their mother with the washing.
There were also some of the guys Leso had worked with. He remembered how Ms. Milam had commented on how good Leso looked, ‘He looks like he’s sleeping and may wake up any minute’, she’d wept. He remembered thinking she didn’t know how right she was. He’d known that Lillian was only there to do her ‘Christian duty’. She’d never really cared for Leso. He had stolen some apples from her tree when he was seven years old and she had never really forgiven him.
If it had not been for the fact that he knew some of the mourners would go to the cemetery, he wouldn’t have bothered to bury Leso at all. It was unavoidable, however, as some of Leso’s friends had volunteered to be pallbearers. He could have carried the coffin all by himself, on the tips of his fingers of one hand, but he had accepted their offer and thanked them. The next morning, he had buried his brother. After the burial, he’d shaken hands and accepted condolences. He explained that he would be leaving to deliver the news to an old friend of Leso’s that had not yet heard of his death, and he expected to be gone for awhile. He couldn’trisk someone stopping by to check on him. That night, he dug up his brother and waited for him to rise.
He’d caught two deer and staked them in the backyard, because he knew Leso would need to feed immediately. He only had his own experience to draw expectations from, and so really didn’t know what to expect. He assumed the change was different for everyone, and he was right. When Leso awoke, he didn’t recognize Richard. He lunged at him as if he was going to feed on him. It took a lot of wrestling and snapping of teeth before he was able to get Leso out of the backdoor and to the deer in the yard.
Leso fell on the deer like a starving man. He completely crushed the first one, but by the second one, he was starting to get the hang of it. When he finished, he stood and faced Richard, who had dropped into a defensive crouch, ready to defend himself against Leso should it become necessary.
“What’s your problem?” Leso asked.
“What the hell is your problem? Are you finished trying to attack me, yet?”
Leso had thrown back his head and laughed. He’d been fine after that, and could make the claim truthfully that he had never sustained his life with the blood of a human.
He and Richard could stay in any given place for no longer than ten years before they had to move on, due to people possibly realizing that they weren’t aging. It wasn’t hard for them to move on. They didn’t make any close bonds to humans, and they didn’t own any property except their childhood home. Finding new construction work was never difficult because they were young, hard workers who could do twice the work of other men. {They could have done fifty times the work of other men, but that would have looked a little suspicious.}
They were living in a cottage 200 miles outside of London in the Fall of 1873. He and Leso had both been reading and had simultaneously stopped and looked at each other. Three minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Richard had hesitated in answering but thought, if they were there for a fight, they probably wouldn’t have knocked. When he opened the door, he was greeted by an older man, about 6’ tall with long, flowing, silver hair, and an average build.
“You are vampyres,” the man stated.
“As are you,” he countered.
“May I come in?” the man asked.
Richard asked in response, “Is there going to be a problem?”
“Goodness! I should hope not,” the man answered.
Richard opened the door wider and stepped aside to allow the man to enter.
The man stepped inside and looked around politely. “You have been here three years?”
“I take it from your statement that you know we have.”
/>
The man looked around for a few moments longer and then stated, “I have been rude, forgive me. I am Daryl Young. My family and I are staying on the other side of this charming town. I would like to invite the two of you to my home to introduce you to my family and make you an offer. I promise it is a friendly invitation. You are free to decline, of course, and we will leave you in peace.”
Richard felt that the man was sincere, but looked at Leso anyway. It was not only his own life that would be at risk if he was wrong.
Leso nodded, and Richard turned back to the man and said. “We accept.”
“Wonderful! We’ll expect you at 7:00 tomorrow night,” Daryl stated happily, handing him a piece of paper with an address on it.
Richard stopped Daryl as he turned to leave. “Don’t you want to know our names?”
“You are Richard and Leso Jaxon. I would not have walked in here blind, young man.”
“Then you have the advantage,” Leso said.
“All will be explained tomorrow night. Until then, goodnight,” Daryl politely said and disappeared into the night.
He was pulled away from his thoughts of the past when Beck rolled over and threw her arm over him.
Chapter Three
When Beck woke up, there was no Richard in sight. She’d just finished getting dressed when the dorm room door opened.
“How do you keep getting in and out of the dorm without someone stopping you? This is an all girls dorm, you know.”
“I have unforeseen skills… and a piece offering,” he answered holding out a bag.
She would have kept arguing, but she smelled bacon.
“Eggs, scrambled light, crisp bacon, biscuits and gravy, and coffee-regular.”
“Ha! A lot you know. I don’t drink coffee with my breakfast.”
“Open the bag.”
The Undead Heart (#1 in the Blood Thirst Series) Page 6