The Purity of Blood: Volume I

by Jennifer Geoghan

  I lathered up my hair. The bubbles felt so soft under my fingers and smelled so sweet.

  What was Daniel thinking at this very moment? Was he up at the house? Maybe he packed up and left town. He’d looked so angry last night, barely in control of some uncontrollable rage. Would he ever want to see me again let alone call me? Hell, should I even answer the phone if he ever did call?

  When I finished rinsing my hair, I just stood there and allowed myself to feel the hot water as it danced off my skin. I turned up the heat until it was practically scalding. I needed to feel something physical. After a while I finally reached up and switched it off. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t hide in here all day. Wrapping myself in a towel, I sat down on the bench in the little alcove. I was mentally drained. Maybe I should just go back to bed. I slowly dressed, dried my hair and brushed my teeth, but paid no real attention to what I was doing. I only completed the tasks out of some sense of rote repetition. My mind was still at the back door of Capen Hall staring at a pair of black eyes.

  After I walked back down the hall to my room, I tossed my clothes into the hamper and sat down at my desk to consider what to do with the day.

  “Tabitha called while you were gone. I told her you’d call her back,” Darcy said. She was curled up on her bed doing homework.

  “Okay.” I picked up my phone, looked at it and then put it in my pocket. Yep, still had no idea what to say. I looked at the books on my desk. The thought of trying to study today seemed like an exercise in futility, so I put some shoes on, grabbed my wallet and started for the door.

  “Will I see you later?” I asked.

  “Maybe, but probably not.”

  “Alright. I won’t be back for a while,” I said over my shoulder as I started out the door. I was grateful she hadn’t asked me anything else and made my escape before she had a chance to get curious.

  I headed out the front door of the dorm and began to circle the quad aimlessly. The sun was out, but it appeared the cool air of fall was here to stay. Pulling the collar up on my jacket, I shoved my hands deep into my pockets. I thought about calling Tabitha, but knew she’d hear something in my voice that would tip her off to my altered mental state. I’d noticed how acutely aware she was of things like that.

  Tired of circling, I headed off in the direction of town. It would take a while to get there, but time was what I was looking to kill. The academic side of campus was quiet as it usually was on a Sunday. Only a few overly erudite students milling around the steps of the library were visible. Glancing at them as I walked by, they looked like they could be friends of Rodney’s. Well, the guys anyway.

  I continued up the steps that led to the faculty tower quad. I couldn’t stop myself from pausing at the top to glance down at an indentation in the bushes, the very bushes I’d pushed Daniel into.

  An unexpected gust of wind hit my face rousing me from my thoughts. What was I doing? Where was I going really? Was I just going to walk around all day trying to hide from myself? It seemed stupid somehow. I either had to pretend it had never happened, pretend that Daniel was just another teacher and move on, or confront the situation. I mean really, what other choice did I have other than dropping out of school, which wasn’t even an option in my mind.

  I sat down on a nearby rock and considered my two choices for what seemed like a long while.

  Finally having made my decision, I got up and started back in the direction of the dorm. Passing Capen Hall for the back parking lot, I got in my car.

  After taking a deep breath, I started it up and headed towards town. Driving up Manheim Boulevard, I rolled down my window and turned onto Main Street as I continued off into the hills. The road began to twist and turn as I slowly made my way up the mountain until I finally found the turn off Daniel had taken the previous week. I pulled down the unmarked gravel road, and when I got to the fork where he’d turned off, kept to the opposite side staying on the gravel. I wasn’t positive, but I was pretty sure this led down to the house.

  A few minutes later I rounded a corner and the modern glass, wood and stone house finally appeared. Standing out against the trees, it sat in a small, well-manicured field, but there was no other landscaping that I could see.

  The garage door wide open, I spotted his shiny black car parked inside. The instant I saw it, I felt a normal person wouldn’t be doing this. After what I’d seen last night, a normal person would have packed up and ran home to Mom and Dad. I sighed again as I came to a stop beside the garage. Unfortunately, of one thing and one thing alone, I was certain. I was anything but normal.

  I parked in the driveway, summoned some hidden reserve of courage and walked up to the front door. As I held my hand up to ring the bell, I just looked at my hand as it hovered over the button. I was wrong before. This is where the line was, and I was about to cross it. The line that once crossed I could never come back from.

  I moved to push the bell, but before I made contact, the heavy wooden door slowly began to open. Daniel stood there, looking perfect in a dark plumb cashmere sweater and jeans. He silently stared at me from behind those amazing sky blue eyes. I was more thankful than words could express to see they were blue again. I don’t think I’d even considered what I’d have done if they were still the black I’d seen last night. As he stared at me blankly, I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I couldn’t speak. I’d come all the way up here to confront him, but when I stood there gazing into the depths of his soul, I couldn’t utter a single syllable. He seemed sad – no, not sad, maybe detached. Most certainly lost.

  Finally he said “What do you want?” in a calm and even tone. I wasn’t sure how to answer. Surely he had to know why I’d come up here. How could he not?

  “Can I come in?” I finally found my voice again.

  “Do you want to?” he asked trying to hide his disbelief.

  After we stared at each other for a long moment, he finally stepped aside to allow me by. I guess not caring anymore what would happen next, I walked into the living room. He followed, but stayed by the doorway as if not wanting to be too close to me. I was drawn to the spectacular view out the glass wall on the far side of the room. Stopping just short of it, I looked out over the shimmering water on the lake below.

  “Why did you come here? I’d have thought I’d be the last person in the world you’d want to see today – or ever.”

  I turned from the window and faced him. He must have been looking at my back, but averted his gaze when I looked his way.

  “To be honest, I don’t know how I feel.” I decided to be honest with him. “Part of me wants to run home to Wading River and never come back.” He looked up to meet my eyes and took a deep breath. “But I think a bigger part, a part I don’t understand, wants to run across this room, grab hold of you and never let go.”

  I couldn’t believe I was saying this out loud. I wasn’t even sure where it had come from, but it was true, undeniably so. I must be making the world’s biggest fool of myself. I’m sure this is the part where he kicks me out of his house and tells me never to come back.

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. We just stared at each other from opposite sides of the room.

  “You should have listened to the first part,” he murmured. “That’s the smart one.”

  As my heart fell in my chest, the room started to spin around me and I reached out with my arm to steady myself on the arm of the sofa.

  “But I’m glad you didn’t,” he added softly. “You look like you want to ask me a question.”

  He paused, I think wanting and yet not wanting to hear what would come out of my mouth next. I could physically feel the waves of apprehension coming off him. It mixed with my fear and confusion, creating an incredibly tense atmosphere between us. I knew what I wanted to ask, but it sounded too absurd.

  “Is your real name Daniel Bennett?”

  He didn’t move a muscle except in his eyes. I could see them sink as the words left my lips.

  “What wo
uld you do if I said yes?”

  I thought about it for a moment. To be honest, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  “I don’t know. Tell me and we’ll find out.”

  “The answer is – yes, it is.”

  Now I wasn’t moving. I actually forgot to breathe and stood there stock still until I must have started to turn blue. Perhaps sensing my distress, Daniel quickly crossed the room to gently take my arm.

  “I think you need some air,” he murmured in my hair as he gestured towards the door in the wall of glass.

  I looked down at his arm under mine only to stare at it. Realizing I’d frozen by his side, he stopped his movement, waiting to see if I was having an adverse reaction to his touch. After a moment, I looked into his face. He’d been watching me, waiting for me to pull away, but I didn’t. Maybe I’d wanted to at first, but I couldn’t. He seemed lost somehow, like some small part of him was desperately trying to cling to me like an anchor. Gently, he led me out onto the balcony and sat me down on a deck chair. Not knowing how to feel or what to say, I looked out over the lake while he sat down beside me.

  “Why are you still here?” he asked curiously, still with that same hint of sadness in his voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean any person with an ounce of sense would have run screaming out that door and never come back. – But you’re still here. I don’t understand. You don’t even seem frightened of me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “But you should be. I’m a frightening thing, Sara, and you’ve seen it first hand.” He shuddered as he said the words.

  “Maybe I’m just too stupid to know any better, but – I need to know. Are you a …”

  I stopped midsentence, not sure if I could get the words past my lips. I looked up at his face for my answer. He was staring at me with pained eyes waiting for me to say the word he obviously didn’t want to hear.

  “A what?” he finally asked.

  But I knew I had to say it, and forced it out of my mouth in a whisper.

  “A vampire.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment then looked back out at the lake. Then after a pause, he got up and walked over to stand at the railing. Without turning around to face me, he said “Yes, I am.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the gut, but punched in a way that had realigned my skewed vision of the last month of my life. Things seemed to align now making sense where before everything was a jumble.

  He slowly turned to face me. I wished he’d smile or even look impassive. Anything would be better than the expression of anguish he now wore.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Sara. We shouldn’t be this close to each other. It’s too dangerous. Even now I can tell that the cut on your hand hasn’t healed over yet. It was hard enough before, but now …”

  I looked down at the bandage I’d crudely wrapped around it.

  “I don’t understand. You’re around people all day, why would I be any different?”

  “First of all, I’m alone with you. Second, you …” He stopped and looked away for a moment. I think he was embarrassed. “You just smell so damn good.” He looked like he was beating down a demon inside that was trying to escape. “You have no idea what you are.”

  “What am I?” I asked confused.

  “You’re what we call a pure.”

  “I’m pure?” I asked, more than a little taken aback.

  “It’s not what it sounds like,” and he kind of rolled his eyes and smiled. “It means you have pure blood, blood free of genetic diseases or impurities. Well, not one hundred percent free, but as free as anyone I’ve ever encountered. You have to understand that, the purer someone’s blood is, the more alluring it is to us.”

  “You’re telling me I’m alluring?” Again I was confused and stunned at the same time.

  “Intoxicating really,” he said, with a bit of a haze around his eyes. “I have to really concentrate just to be around you, and your fresh cut isn’t helping any.” Then he shook his head and snapped himself out of his haze. “I usually do my best to avoid people such as yourself, but it’s impossible to avoid all of you. You can’t tell a pure by what they look like on the outside. Sometimes by the time I get close enough, it’s too late.”

  “What happened to you last night?”

  “You saw what I look like when I come close to losing control. You don’t know how close you came to dying last night, Sara.” But I think I did. “Why did you do that?”

  “Cut myself?”

  He nodded.

  I blushed, suddenly embarrassed for some reason.

  “It was the only thing I could come up with. I guess I’ve had my suspicions for a while now. After you said goodbye last night, I couldn’t wait. I needed to know the truth. And I knew whatever it was; you weren’t going to tell me voluntarily. I came up with that as sort of an experiment. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to happen, but I needed to know.”

  “It was a stupid thing to do,” was all he said in reply, but I could tell he was a little pissed at me.

  After a minute, I said “You haven’t asked me if I’m glad I know the truth.”

  He looked up, surprised by my statement.

  “Well, are you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Aren’t you scared of me? You really should be.”

  I thought about it for a moment.

  “Yes, I should be, but no, I’m not. If you were going to kill me, you’d have done it before now.”

  “To be honest, I’ve never told a human what I am before. I’ve heard stories about how they’ve reacted from other … others like me, and they all reacted badly.”

  “I guess that’s understandable.”

  “But it makes it all the more difficult for me to understand you.”

  Did he want to understand me?

  “I guess subconsciously, I’d already decided that whatever the answer was; it was already too late for it to matter.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, as he sat down beside me again.

  I didn’t answer. There just weren’t words. I simply leaned my head against his shoulder and took a deep breath. He stiffened at my touch, but after a few moments hesitation, he began to relax.

  As a cool breeze swept up from the lake below, we sat there looking over the water in silence, each deep in our own thoughts. Mine all seemed to dwell on the question – so what happens now?

  Chapter Eight

  SARA

  His arm still around me holding me close, we sat on the deck in silence until the late afternoon shadows crept across the waters of the lake below us.

  “You must be getting cold,” he finally whispered in my ear. I could feel his breath on me.

  I was cold, but hadn’t wanted to say anything. I was so comfortable under the arm he now had wrapped around my shoulder. He’d slipped it around me, pulling me closer to his side some time ago. As I reluctantly straightened up, his arm fell away.

  “A little I suppose. What about you?” I asked.

  He paused. “No, not really. I … um … don’t get cold.”

  I raised an eyebrow his way as if to illicit more of an answer.

  “Is that a vampire thing?”

  “Kind of. Well, – yes.”

  “You never get cold? Not ever?”

  “It’s sort of hard to describe.”

  He stood up and indicated for me to head inside. As I did, he followed behind me.

  “I guess it’s not that I don’t feel the cold, it just doesn’t bother me. Neither does heat,” he added. “I … um … don’t get tired or have to sleep either.”

  Suddenly he looked uncomfortable and changed the subject. “You’re hungry, I’ll fix you something to eat.” With a smile over his shoulder, he walked into the kitchen.

  “How do you know I’m hungry?” I asked, traipsing behind him.

  He popped his head out from around a kitchen cabinet. “I should probably mention that I also have very good hearing.” A
sly smile played on his full lips.

  As if on cue, my stomach growled loudly. I glanced up in time to see one of his eye brow arch as he tried not to laugh.

  Quickly looking away, I blushed. How embarrassing.

  “If I recall, all you have is potato chips,” I said, changing the subject. I watched as he opened a few cabinets, searching through what appeared to be mostly long shelf life items.

  “I stopped by the store last week and picked up a few things just in case I had human company again.” He paused for a moment as if just realizing how strange that sounded.

  “Anyway, I picked up some more fruit cocktail since you seemed to enjoy it so much last time. I have to admit, I really didn’t know what to get. There’s just so much to choose from in stores these days. When I was your age, we didn’t have grocery stores like that, at least not around here. You pretty much ate what you grew or killed.”

  His back to me he was still looking through the cabinets.

  It was then that it dawned on me that I had no idea how old Daniel really was. No, wait a minute, I did. I racked my brain, recalling the details of what I’d learned about him. He was seventeen when he … well, died by all accounts. That would make him about a hundred and twenty four years old now. Staring at his young, healthy body while he moved about the kitchen, I suddenly felt dizzy.

  I took a seat at the kitchen table and watched as he pulled a microwave dinner out of the freezer.

  “These seem to be very popular with the college students so I thought you might like it.”

  He popped it in the microwave and hit buttons, but it took him a minute to figure out how to get the oven to work.

  “Exactly how old are you?” I asked, needing some sort of confirmation from his lips.

  Still facing the microwave, he froze. Perhaps this was another question he hadn’t wanted me to ask. After a moment, he slowly turned to face me. Taking a deep breath, he reluctantly said “I think you know the answer to that question already. I turned a hundred and twenty four this year.” He sighed as that sad expression spread across his eyes again. “Old by vampire standards.”