The Purity of Blood: Volume I

by Jennifer Geoghan

  I cocked my head to the side, nonverbally asking what he meant by that.

  “Oh, there’s plenty of time for all that. Do we have to go through all the gory details tonight?”

  I said I guessed not, but really, I wished he would. From what little I knew of him, I suspected he thought it best to indoctrinate me slowly. It was with great reluctance that I didn’t press him any further, but that didn’t mean I didn’t desperately want to.

  When the microwave buzzed, he brought my food over to the table and watched me eat.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Vampires don’t eat.”

  This was way beyond strange. A few days ago, I was almost frightened of him, and now – I wasn’t sure what I felt, but it wasn’t fear. Of course the bizarre thing was that now I really had a reason to go screaming into the hills.

  I’m sitting at a table across from a vampire!

  What was I supposed to make of that? I mean guessing a thing is all well and good, but knowing, well that’s something else entirely. I think I was still in shock. That was the only plausible explanation I could come up with for my unusually passive behavior. But I wanted to understand more, I needed to understand him.

  He shook his head back and forth.

  “No. Human food is well, – kind of revolting really.” He looked at my uneaten food and made a face.

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. For some reason, I felt embarrassed again.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. As long as I don’t have to actually eat it, I’m fine.” He took a second look at my food and sighed. “But, I do have faint memories of the different flavors and textures. Yes, that’s one of the things I think I miss most about being human.”

  He sort of sighed again and got a far off look in his eyes, as if lost in thoughts or memories he didn’t want to share.

  After I finished, I watched him take the dishes away and place them in the sink. When he turned on the tap, I wandered into the living room and sat down on the sofa. It was quite comfy, which for some reason surprised me. A minute later he walked over and stopped in front of me. I looked up to see him hesitantly gazing down at me.

  “Is it really that hard for you to be around me, because I’m – what did you call me, pure?”

  He rather reluctantly took a seat on the sofa a few feet from me and looked out the window at the last of the fading light on the lake.

  “Well, it’s not as easy as it is to be around other humans. I just have to concentrate more.”

  He inched a few inches closer to me and looked at the bandage on my hand.

  “You seem to heal quickly,” he said almost to himself with a note of relief in his voice.

  There was still a question I wanted to ask, but even with everything we’d discussed, it still seemed somehow indelicate. I paused for a moment, trying to come up with the right words.

  He must have sensed my hesitation.

  ”I can tell you want to ask me something. What is it?”

  “Well … when I was here last week, I sort of wandered down the hallway and into a closet. I found your refrigerator.”

  Seemingly out of nowhere, he laughed. I’d never heard him laugh like that, with no restraint. I guess he’d been hiding a lot from me over the past few weeks. Well, from everyone really.

  “Why are you laughing?” I asked, a little annoyed at his unexpected reaction.

  “What kind of girl finds a fridge full of blood in a man’s house and doesn’t assume he’s some kind of serial killer maniac? Only you, Sara. Only you.” He was still laughing.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” I sarcastically replied, rolling my eyes at this strange twist in our serious conversation. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

  “Well, I suppose I could keep it in the kitchen fridge, but if we ever had company –”

  “You know that’s not what I’m asking.” I wasn’t smiling. I didn’t find this half as amusing as he obviously did.

  “One of the things I love about you, Sara, is that the one thing you haven’t asked me is what exactly it is I do eat. I think you unconsciously know the answer, but your mind seems to have overruled the instinct to be repulsed by it. It really should have been your first question of me. Yet even now, you don’t seem overly anxious to know what my answer might be. You really should be. To me, it says you don’t have a strong enough sense of self preservation.”

  All I could do was try to suppress my smile. Of course, that smile wasn’t really one from humor. It sprang from my sense of irony. If only he knew the whole about the true nature of my sense of self preservation. Odd that he wouldn’t think I was anxious. I must have been hiding my burning desire to know better than I thought.

  “That’s not true,” I admitted.

  In truth, I was afraid of his answer. Had he murdered for blood? Surely the answer was yes. If so, how many? How few could he have killed and I still feel the same way about him? How many deaths would be enough for me to get up and leave him for good?

  Suddenly he calmed himself and looked serious once again. He seemed conflicted, as if he wanted to unburden his soul to me, but was equally afraid of my reaction.

  “No, I don’t attack people like in the movies, but I do need blood to survive. It’s a thirst, a burning thirst if you let it go too long. That refrigerator is stocked with legally acquired blood. I take it intravenously.”

  “Can’t you just drink it?” I asked

  “Yes, I could, but – oh it’s a long story. Do we have to go into all this tonight?”

  He inched a little closer to me, and raising his arm he hesitated a moment before putting it around my shoulder.

  Now it was my turn to freeze.

  Why was he touching me in this familiar way?

  Why did I desperately want him to?

  Shouldn’t I be repulsed by what he was saying to me?

  Before I knew it, I found myself cozying up to his side as I placed my confused head in the crook of his arm. I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. He smelled so good, like clean clothes and freshly mowed grass. I could feel how muscular he was under his thin sweater and in his strong arm as it wrapped securely around me. I shouldn’t feel safe here in this house – under this vampire’s arm … but I did.

  Somebody, please tell me why?

  “What’s the worst thing about being a vampire?” I asked. I needed to know more.

  He leaned back into the sofa taking me with him. When he didn’t answer me right away, I peered up to see him carefully considering his answer. He looked down into my eyes and said “Right now I want to rip out your throat. It’s a natural instinct, so natural that it doesn’t even feel wrong or like something I should feel guilty about wanting to do. At this moment, this is the worst thing about being what I am. As a vampire, you lose part of that moral compass God gave you, and you have to fight to get back what most humans take for granted.”

  Even though I heard the sincerity in his words, I knew he wasn’t going to harm me. To his surprise, I nestled closer up against him and laid my head down on his chest.

  “This is going to get all kinds of complicated,” he said softly as I felt his fingers in my hair.

  My mind was full of questions. Questions I knew were important I be asking him, but I wasn’t. After all, what did I know except that somehow or another I’d managed to fall into company with a vampire, and I was reasonably sure he had some sort of feelings for me. A hundred different questions begged to be asked and answered, but for reasons unexplained none of it seemed to matter. Somehow, I was content to simply curl up on the sofa with him and watch the last of the setting sun in silence.

  “So have you been studying?” he asked. “I’m thinking about a quiz tomorrow.”

  I chuckled under my breath. We seemed so normal on the outside. It was on the inside that we were both so different. I only hoped if he ever knew all there was to know about me, that he would feel the same as he did right now.

  We sat there for a long time. So long that I heard th
e grandfather clock in the hall strike seven. If I was going to go, I should probably get moving. That is if I was going to go at all. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing here at this point. I mean, where was all this going anyway? I had my doubts there was a future for two people so very different as we were.

  “We should probably be getting you back to campus,” he said softly as he lifted his arm up from my shoulder. “You need your rest.”

  “I was comfortable here,” I answered, my face pouting a little.

  “Yes well, I have no excuse to keep you here like last time.” He reached down and gently patted my ankle. “So back you go.”

  He got up and gallantly offered me his hand. After taking it, he pulled me up and I followed him out the front door and over to my car. When I started round to the drivers’ side, he stopped me.

  “Your keys?” he asked putting out his hand. As I looked at them in my hand, he silently took them.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to drive you home,” he answered, ushering me over to the passenger door, which he then opened for me. After I reluctantly got in, he gently closed the door behind me. I’d never ridden in the passenger seat before. This would be different.

  When he slid into the driver’s seat, he looked around the cars interior. A frown crossed his face, his lips setting into a hard line. Shaking it off, he put the key in the ignition and started her up.

  “How are you going to get home?” I finally asked as he looked over his shoulder and eased off the break.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he smiled my way. “I could use a good run anyway.”

  I let it pass, but it didn’t escape my notice that it was about a twenty minute uphill drive from campus, so that would be a long run.

  “Besides a gentleman always sees a lady to her door.”

  He backed out and slowly started up the long driveway towards the road.

  “You know, that’s not the norm anymore,” I added for his edification. “Gentleman like behavior, I mean.”

  “Much to the detriment of the race, I assure you,” he answered solemnly, but with a trace of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

  After a few minutes I asked “So 1905. Did you date a lot back then?”

  He laughed. “Is that what you were thinking about? No, I can’t say that I did. Around here people didn’t date, they courted. A man would state his intentions for a woman to her father and request permission to court her. It was a much more civilized time. But no, I never courted anyone either. I was young and wanted to make my fortune first.” He sighed, remembering something unsaid. “So are you sure you’re not dating this Ben guy? Because I think he has feelings for you.” He tried to sound humorous, but I could tell it was a serious question.

  “No, I’m not dating Ben. We’re just friends.”

  “Good, let’s keep it that way.”

  “Alright, but as long as we’re on the subject, let’s talk about your legion of female admirers.” This time he really laughed.

  “God help me, if I was ever going to kill anyone, they would be at the top of the list. I continually brush them off, but they keep coming back. I just don’t get it.”

  I looked over at his face. It was true, he really didn’t get it. I was surprised to say the least.

  “You’re kidding me, right? Because it’s obvious to me.”

  He glanced my way as if asking me to explain myself.

  “Well, you’re a very good looking man …or vampire … whichever you prefer. You get a sort of look in your eye sometimes and in the tone of your voice. Well, whatever it is, it draws us in like moths to a flame. Some of us can resist, but others continually fly into the fire.”

  “You can resist?” he asked with a suggestive tone in his voice.

  What was this I was seeing in his eyes? Hope, fear, curiosity? I couldn’t tell in the shadows.

  “I’m not saying it doesn’t take effort, but yes, I think I can.”

  “Humm … That’s too bad,” he mumbled to himself causing me to smile.

  After a pause in conversation I asked “So what happens tomorrow?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re … friends now, right?”

  He looked over at me as if to ask that’s all we are?

  “Well, last week you kind of gave me the brush off and I was a little confused. I guess I’m just looking to know where we stand now.”

  Oh, God! How was he going to answer?

  “Yes, we’re friends,” he said, looking back at the road. “What more, I don’t know. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

  I sat silent for a moment.

  “I feel like we’re more,” I finally whispered.

  “We are,” he whispered back as he reached over and took my hand to give it a gentle squeeze. “I just need time to figure it out.”

  My heart began to race again. I think he did have feelings for me. I suddenly felt myself breathing faster. This was all happening so fast. Did I like him? Yes, I did. Of course, he was the first vampire I’d ever met, I was fascinated by him. But what was there other than this odd fascination I had with him?

  I kept feeling an odd tightness in the muscles of my belly. I wasn’t sure what it was, except that it somehow felt good and I’d only ever felt this way around him. This was wrong and I knew it. I should put a stop to it now, before … well, before it was too late. Too late for what, I wasn’t sure, but whatever ending we were building to, I didn’t see a rosy outcome for the human half of this equation.

  I sighed as I turned my head and looked out the side window. As he gently held my hand in his, he tenderly caressed my knuckles with his thumb. I wasn’t sure I could walk away from him now even if I’d wanted to, not when he looked at me that way.

  Help me, God. Show me what to do! I’m lost.

  He came to a stop behind Capen in the same spot he’d parked last night. After he jumped out and opened my door for me, we walked over to the back door in silence. When we came to a stop at the bottom of the cement stairs, we looked up at each other at the same moment.

  “How about going in the front entrance tonight?” Daniel asked with a raised eyebrow.

  I assented with my eyes and we strolled up the hill around to the front of the building.

  When we approached the main entrance no one seemed to be around. It was quiet and the air strangely still. He looked down at me just as he had the night before, like he wanted to express some affection for me, but just like last night, something seemed to hold him back. Meeting him half way, I reached over, took his hand and gave it a squeeze, then letting it go, I turned and walked up to the front doors. I couldn’t find the words to say goodbye, so as I pulled on the handle, I looked over my shoulder and smiled. He was watching me, a small smile hiding at the corners of his mouth. But his eyes said so much more.

  Friends?

  After giving him a shy smile of my own, I went through the door and headed upstairs to curl up in bed alone.

  When I woke in the morning, although I’d slept well, I didn’t feel rested. Taking a deep breath, I got out of bed. My body seemed filled with a strange nervous energy that made me unusually fidgety. I think I was just anxious to get to class and see Daniel.

  I sped through my morning routine so fast I was early enough to arrive on the steps of the lecture hall even before early bird Tabitha. A first for me. While waiting for her arrival, I pulled out my text book and scanned the last few chapters we’d gone over. I wasn’t taking any chances Daniel hadn’t been kidding about that quiz. When I glanced over the top of my book to see Tabitha approaching, I jumped up to go, but she held up her hand to stop me.

  “Look who’s early today? Sit back down there. We’ve still got fifteen minutes before class starts and I’d rather sit out here than in that stuffy lecture hall.” She took a seat beside me. “So what happened to you yesterday?” I looked at her with a question mark on my face. “You never called me back. Darcy promised she’d tell you I call
ed.”

  “Oh, she did. I’m sorry. I guess I had a lot to do and kinda forgot. Forgive me?”

  “I’ll think about it, but seeing as you also blew us off for the festival too …”

  “I guess it was a busy weekend,” I mumbled. I still felt a little guilty even though I knew she’d already forgiven me. It was probably because of my glaring lies of omission. Fortunately, she wasn’t the type to hold a grudge.

  Then she kind of laughed and said “What, have you got a secret boyfriend or something?”

  She was joking of course, but as I tried to laugh back, I turned my head so she couldn’t see my expression. I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t betray my curiosity to know the answer to that question myself.

  “Let’s head in, shall we?” I got up and started up the steps.

  As we took our usual seats in the lecture hall, I pulled out my notebook while simultaneously watching the side door like a hawk. Tabitha was talking but I didn’t hear a word she said, all my attention was focused on the handle of the door.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Rodney finally stumbled in through the doorway followed by Daniel, looking as confident and sexy as ever. I watched as he gracefully strode up to the podium and set up his notes. Then he looked up at the class, scanning the room as if appraising the alertness of the student body on this particular morning. When his eyes finally fell on me, he paused for a long moment, then quickly smiled before moving on and beginning his lecture. Next to me, Tabitha ever so slightly shifted her position in her chair. I didn’t look at her. This time I knew she’d caught the look I’d exchanged with Daniel and I didn’t want to see what she was thinking on her face.

  “Alright class. I hope you took some time to study over the weekend because we’re having a quiz this morning. So, books away.”

  As Rodney started up the aisle, passing out the quiz as he went, Daniel glanced up and winked at me. I blushed horribly and hid my face behind my hand. It did no good, Tabitha caught me red handed, or red faced as the case may be. When I passed the pile of quizzes her way, I again avoided her gaze.