by M. Leighton
In the kitchen, Lacey absently chopped vegetables for the salad as I browned ground Italian sausage for the spaghetti sauce. She hadn’t said a word since her one comment in Brady’s room and every time I looked at her, she was watching Brady and Trace where they sat in the living room.
Once I’d put the sausage in the pot with the rest of the ingredients for the sauce, I grabbed a knife from the drawer and walked to stand beside Lacey. Taking a rinsed red bell pepper in hand, I began removing the stem and seeds, silently debating what I should say to her. It was a short debate, as she quickly took matters into her own hands.
“What’s wrong with me, Peyton?”
I was surprised by her question, surprised enough to stop what I was doing and look at her. She did the same. As I looked into her eyes, I saw an awareness that I hadn’t noticed the first time I’d seen her change. She knew something was up. And, somehow, she knew I had answers.
“What do you mean?” I asked tentatively.
“You know what I mean. There’s something inside of me, something dark and…different.” Lacey’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “Tell me Peyton. I need to know. What’s happening to me?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A thousand questions, options and deliberations ran through my head in a split second. How did one go about telling one’s best friend that she was a life-draining succubus?
Lacey reached out and wound her fingers around my wrist. “Peyton, please! Just tell me.”
I could see that my silence worried her, almost as much as her other concerns it seemed. I licked my lips, buying myself a few more seconds while I worked out the best way to tell her. As it turns out, that wasn’t enough time. Instead of finding a tactful way to ease her into it, I just blurted it out.
“You’re a succubus,” I stated flatly. I didn’t want her to think I was kidding. But she did anyway.
“Peyton, I’m serious!” she declared. I could tell she was near tears.
“I am serious, Lace. Why on earth would I choose something like that to joke about?”
“But those things aren’t even real,” she reasoned. I could see a gleam of something in her eye, however, that said it fit.
“I didn’t think they were either.”
“How would you even know about something like that? I mean, why am I even asking you?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. I was kinda wondering the same thing.”
“Well, I guess it makes sense. You’re the dorkiest of the two of us.”
We both laughed, tensely, but like a crowbar, it seemed to dig into the space between us and open things up a bit.
“This is why you’re my best friend. No one can compliment me quite like you.”
“I know, right?”
We both giggled again before things drifted back into serious waters.
“Peyton, how do you know this? Why would I even think to ask you?”
“I don’t know, Lace. All I can tell you is that something strange is happening to me, too. I can see things in people that just aren’t…right. And I know things. Weird things. Things that scare me. Things that don’t make sense. But, then again, they sort of do. I don’t know,” I said, sighing and letting my head fall back on my shoulders. “I feel like I’m losing my mind and finding it, all at the same time.”
“So, you see…things in other people?”
I lowered my chin and met Lacey’s eyes.
“Yes.”
We watched each other as she toyed with both her knife and the idea of asking a question she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted the answer to.
“So, um…what is…uh, what is Brady? He’s something different, too, isn’t he?”
As we stared solemnly at one another, I debated keeping that information from Lacey. There were two reasons I did not. One, that knowledge might someday save her life as well as someone else’s. Two, I desperately wanted to confide in someone, to tell them all the strange things that were happening to me and to everyone else. And Lacey was my best friend. I trusted her with my life. Always had. I just never imagined that lives might one day actually be at stake, lives including those of the people I loved most. I would never have dreamed the extent to which our friendship would be tested. I prayed that it wouldn’t break under the strain.
“Lacey, if I tell you these things, you have to promise me that you’ll never tell another soul, okay?”
I knew the look on my face conveyed the seriousness of the situation. Her sober expression promised me that she understood.
“You have my word, Peyton. Just between us. Always.”
I paused once more for a brief second, but then I jumped in head first.
“Brady’s a vampire.”
I saw Lacey pale the tiniest bit. She nodded slowly, as if digesting what I’d told her.
“Has he, um, bitten anyone yet?”
“No, he has no idea.”
She kept nodding, her eyes straying to where Brady sat in the living room.
“So he doesn’t know about me?”
“No.”
“And I’m a succubus?” she asked almost conversationally.
“Yes, I believe so.”
“And that means I what? Suck people’s souls or something?”
“As far as I know, you feed on life forces.”
“Anyone’s life force? I mean, am I gonna have to drop out of school because I can’t be around people?”
“I don’t think so. So far, I think it’s only Brady that you’re really…interested in. I’m not sure why yet.”
“So what would’ve happened if you hadn’t come in? Would I have hurt him?”
I could hear the panic rising in Lacey’s voice as she gave deeper, more serious thought to what I’d told her. All things considered, I still thought she was taking it awfully well.
“I don’t know.”
“Is that why you’ve been trying to keep me away from Brady? You think I would’ve hurt him?”
“No. Yes. Sort of. I mean, it was for your safety, too. I don’t know what you would’ve done to each other. Remember, he’s dangerous, too.”
“Dangerous,” she repeated almost robotically.
Lacey squeezed her eyes shut and clamped a hand over her mouth. I could tell by the trembling wrinkle in her brow that she was fighting off tears, fighting off panic.
“Hey,” I said, pulling her hand away from her mouth. “If it helps any, it seems that I absorb whatever kind of…powers are close to me, so I can sort of sympathize with you. I’m a freak, too,” I said with a grin. And it was true. I hadn’t really thought of it in those terms before, but I knew Lacey would particularly appreciate that.
She opened her eyes and, when she saw my grin, her lips curved up into a tentative, shaky smile. “You’re the freak,” she teased, “not me.”
“But we already knew that.”
“Yeah,” she said, her smile widening. “We knew that.”
Suddenly overcome, Lacey threw her arms around me and hugged me tight.
“So we’re in this together then, huh?” she whispered into my hair. “Just like always.”
“Yep. In it together. Just like always.”
She pulled back and waggled a finger at my nose. “And you’re gonna keep me from hulking out and killing people, right?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You don’t hulk out, Lacey. Far from it.”
“What happens to me exactly? I mean, I can’t really remember a whole lot, just a lot of extremely strong and extremely bizarre sensations.”
“It’s really hard to describe,” I admitted, struggling to find the words that would convey the beautiful horror that she represented. “I wish I could just show you,” I lamented, resting my hand lightly on top of hers.
And then I felt it. I felt it run down my arm, into my hand and out my fingers like an electrical current. The images of Lacey that were forever etched into the dark recesses of my memory cascaded down my muscle fibers and nerve ends and flooded hers, making thei
r way into her mind’s eye. I could practically visualize the path that the pictures took, almost see them lighting up her head like a hundred-watt bulb.
She gasped, her fixed stare assuring me that she was seeing something not in our surroundings, but rather something inside her mind, something I’d put there. Wishfully. Accidentally. Needfully.
I wasn’t sure how it happened or why, but I was both thrilled and amazed with this one particular turn of events. It didn’t feel like the confusing burden that the other things I’d been experiencing did. It felt like a gift, an actual gift that I could use in helpful ways. At that point, the other things did not. I had trouble seeing how any of them could be useful at all.
“Can you show me Brady?” she whispered.
In my mind, I conjured the still-fresh memories of Brady’s appearance and I concentrated on them, as I had subconsciously done on Lacey’s. Only that feeling of transferring, that feeling of sending something from my mind to hers, didn’t come. It was as though all I could send her were images of her. That or I didn’t know how to control the use of this newest development any more than I knew how to control the rest of what was going on.
Too bad supernatural powers and abilities don’t come with instruction manuals, I thought sarcastically.
“I’m not seeing anything, Peyton.”
“I’m doing exactly what I was doing before. It’s just not working.”
“Well why not?”
I snorted. “Like I know. Dude, I have no clue what the bloody crap is going on with any of us, much less how to work any of this stuff.”
“Why can’t I see Brady? Why can’t others see us like this? Why just you?”
Her question struck a chord within me. Although I made a point not to ponder it, I’d asked the same question dozens of times. And I still had no answers. Information about other people, other gifts, other issues were all I seemed to have access to at that point, and even that was still extremely limited.
“I just don’t know, Lacey,” I sighed, feeling bone weary all of a sudden.
Lacey said nothing for several long seconds, but then she pulled her hand from beneath mine and wrapped her fingers around my own, squeezing.
“Hey, maybe we can get out of third period tomorrow and meet at the library. Might as well make some use out of those thousands of books, right?”
“And look for what?”
Lacey shrugged.
“I don’t know. Myths. Legends. Fairy tales. Local freak accidents. Hollywood’s makeup artists,” she added with a grin. “I don’t know exactly, but we can’t be the first people stuff like this has ever happened to. Isn’t that kinda where legends get their teeth?” When she thought about what she’d said, she snorted attractively, poking me with her elbow. “Oh, no bun intended.”
I rolled my eyes, but was secretly pleased that she’d at least paid enough attention in class to know what a pun was, even if she just referred to it as a piece of bread. Lacey was always far more concerned with socializing than she was with any kind of academic pursuit. Fortunately for her, she was bright enough that her grades didn’t suffer for the most part. Now, when it came to SATs and the vocabulary section, that might be a problem. But otherwise, she was pretty sharp. Not that it mattered. I wouldn’t have her any other way. It was always a source of great amusement for both of us when she horribly misused a word.
“So, what do you think? This must be a good idea! I mean, when have I ever suggested we go to the library? Um, never! That means it’s pretty important,” she declared, nodding her head as if to help convince me of the truth of her words.
“I would go based on that reason alone. I’m curious to see if the walls actually start to bleed when you walk in. Maybe I should video it.”
“Oh, you’re funny,” she responded caustically.
“Well, we can’t very well go tonight, so let’s finish up this salad, have some spaghetti and kick some boy butt on Guitar Hero. You down?”
“Psh, I’m all over it!”
********
Strangely enough, the library walls remained unaffected by Lacey’s impromptu visit.
“See? No blood,” Lacey pointed out with a satisfied smile. “They are imperious to my presence.”
“The library walls are arrogant?”
Lacey looked at me in confusion for a moment before the corners of her mouth started to twitch.
“They are…” she began, wrinkling her nose as she searched for the right word. “They are…”
I grinned as I waited, practically able to see the wheels turning and the vocabulary pages flipping inside her mind.
“All right, smarty. A little help here.”
“Um, impervious maybe?”
“That’s it!” Lacey exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “I wasn’t that far off.”
“Phonetically, no. But contextually, you were way wrong.”
“My god, Peyton! Speak English.”
We both giggled as Lacey turned three hundred and sixty degrees to inspect the library.
“So, where do we start?”
I shook my head at the question. Nevertheless, I gave Lacey a refresher course on how the library works. I showed her how to look up titles by subject on the computer and then how to find them among the stacks and stacks of books. She was like a kid in a candy store once she got the hang of it. She actually had some really good ideas on book topics to search for and, as a result, we found some titles that turned out to be quite helpful.
“Omigod, Peyton, listen to this,” Lacey commanded in a loud whisper. It was almost two hours after we’d arrived when she found something useful. She began reading aloud from the book in which she had her nose buried.
As opposed to the vampire turned via infected bite, vampires born into this condition can survive, though not comfortably, on a diet consisting of both human blood and human food. The vampire-born individual can also tolerate sunlight to a greater degree, although sustained exposure can result in permanent and sometimes fatal brain damage. One of the most significant differences between the vampire-born versus the vampire-turned is their bite. A born vampire’s bite is toxic to human tissue. One bite from this vampire will either kill or turn a human, whereas a turned vampire must bite a human on at least three separate occasions to have any adverse effect, their venom naturally much weaker.
“So if Brady bites anyone, he’ll either kill them or they’ll turn into a vampire,” Lacey finished, summarizing the very obvious and very alarming facts for me.
I felt a little short of breath, but forced myself to look at the positives.
“True, but he needs less human blood than other vampires. Maybe if and when he has to drink blood, we can get it for him without him having to bite anyone.”
Thoughts of having a blood drive for my brother ran through my head. The vision was in some ways comical, as it was replete with a red and white truck, little old ladies equipped with needles, tubing, orange juice and cookies, and shelves overflowing with plump plastic bags of dark red blood. Although it would never happen quite that way, I couldn’t write off the idea of actually drawing blood out of my own body to sustain my brother if it came to that. I was hoping it would not, that part of my odd gifting might be to uncover a way to stop all this or reverse it or…something. But if it would save his life, I wouldn’t hesitate to do that for him.
After a few thoughtful seconds, Lacey continued reading aloud.
With regard to killing a vampire, a creature widely considered to be immortal, cinematic portrayal is correct in that a wooden stake to the heart is fatal. Any amount of sun exposure to a turned vampire is fatal as well, but only prolonged exposure for a natural vampire is problematic. The exact amount can vary, so ultraviolet rays are still considered a danger to any and all vampires including the natural. Otherwise, vampire are essentially impervious to—
Lacey paused abruptly, looking up to give me a cheeky grin. “Impervious! Did you hear that, Peyton?” After a short bark of laughter, she continued.<
br />
Otherwise, vampires are essentially impervious to any weapon, wound or machination. On a side note, vampires are also unaffected by both crosses and garlic.
When she quieted, flipping through pages and scanning them for more interesting, noteworthy tidbits, I resumed looking through the book I’d chosen, one called The Legend of Two Lakes: Where Culture and Myth Collide.
…and scientists maintain that there is a convergence of natural energy in the center of the Two Lakes community. Compasses cease to work, spinning erratically when brought within the town limits. Many electrical devices short out quickly due to unpredictable power surges. Supernatural phenomena of every variety and origin have been documented from the earliest of civilizations. A catalog of such documentation can be found in Exhibit C at the back of this book…
… intensity of energy was believed by the Druids to have drawn the eye of two very powerful heavenly bodies—siblings, in fact—Arrina, The Goddess of the Sun, and Arma, the God of the Moon.
As a result of an ongoing war between the two, exceptional abilities were granted to the sons and daughters of Two Lakes, each being shackled to either the sun or the moon. The two deities reasoned that the Order which managed to rise to dominance would be an indisputable indication of which sibling was more powerful.
For centuries, the creatures of the day and the night battled and shed blood in their uncontrollable urges to dominate. It was when their numbers began to decrease dramatically, threatening extinction of the gifted children of Two Lakes, that the great singular God positioned the earth between the sun and the moon and, in the darkness, created an answer.
This ‘answer’ has long since been prophesied by Druidic holy men. Through the ages, all have agreed that the ‘answer’ is a child, a daughter to be exact. The holy men foresaw that this girl would be born inside an eclipse and would be gifted as an oracle.