The Purity of Blood: Volume I

by Jennifer Geoghan

  As she took the papers, she leaned over and whispered “Don’t even think we’re not talking about this later, because we are!”

  One day in, and I was already so busted.

  The quiz was a short one, and afterwards Daniel picked right up where he’d left off on Friday. When he finally finished and dismissed the class, I watched the usual gaggle of females that occupied the front row rush on him like vultures to a dead carcass. I couldn’t help but stifle a laugh knowing what I now knew. After I shoved my books in my bag, I started towards the aisle with Tabitha close behind me. I knew once we were on the stairs she’d start her interrogation. Fortunately, I caught a momentary reprieve.

  “Miss Donnelly, I need to speak to you for a moment,” Daniel called in a slightly more serious tone than usual.

  When I glanced back at Tabitha, she looked like she was going to burst. Smiling, I shrugged my shoulders at her frustrated smile and started down the stairs to the podium, taking a perverse pleasure in thwarting her plan of attack.

  “I said that’s all the time I had for today ladies and I meant it! Please go to your next classes!”

  Reluctantly they left, but not before shooting daggers at me with their eyes as they retreated up the stairs.

  When they were out of ear shot, Daniel smiled as I approached him at the podium.

  “So, how about dinner tonight?” he asked.

  “I think I’m busy, sir,” Rodney answered as he gathered his papers, not realizing I was standing there.

  “Gee, that’s too bad, Rodney,” Daniel replied, trying not to laugh as he turned back to me with an unusual smile. “How about you? Are you free? I thought we might try something different and go to that restaurant at the top of the faculty tower. I hear there’s a nice view from up there.”

  I waited for Rodney to walk out the door before quietly saying “I thought you didn’t eat.”

  “Yes, but you do and I like to watch.”

  “Okay. That sounds nice, but a little creepy. I might even venture so far as to say kinky.”

  He laughed. “That you find creepy! Now that’s funny.”

  I shook my head in exasperation. I wasn’t sure what kind of friend he was going to make if he was laughing at me already.

  “I’ll pick you up at six,” he said as he gathered up his papers and started towards the door. Suddenly, he stopped and looked over his shoulder.

  “And in case you’re wondering, Miss Donnelly, this is a real date.”

  He smiled the most devastatingly beautiful smile I’d ever seen and walked out before I had a chance to say anything. Not that in the wake of that smile I could have formed a coherent sentence even if I’d wanted to anyway.

  When I finally gathered up what remained of my scattered wits, I ran up the stairs and out the door. When I rounded the corner of the hallway outside, I spotted Tabitha leaning against the wall waiting for me.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for class?” I asked.

  “So, don’t you think Daniel was acting a little out of the ordinary today?” she asked, proceeding carefully.

  “How so?”

  Act dumb!

  “You sure you don’t want to tell me what kept you so busy this weekend that you blew off your friends and didn’t call me back?”

  I looked at my watch.

  “Gee, I’m going to be late if I don’t get a move on. Bye.” I turned and hurried off in the opposite direction, escaping her prying eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I heard her say, but I was halfway down the corridor already. I wasn’t worried. Tabitha wasn’t going to tell anyone anything she didn’t have confirmation of. Now, had it been Darcy, I’d have been horrified.

  The day just couldn’t go by fast enough. My classes seemed endless and as much as I tried to pay attention, it was hopeless. All I could think about was Daniel. I’d never met anyone like him before and it wasn’t just that he was a vampire. In my estimation, he was the first man who’d ever had feelings for me, who actually knew me for more than a casual acquaintance. He was so different from any man I’d ever met. Sometimes he acted like an excited boy, and sometimes, when I gazed into his eyes, it was like seeing the soul of an old man who’d experienced all that life had to offer. I had to admit, the combination was very appealing. It made me wonder what about me would seem attractive to someone like him … well, other than my blood that is. I had to admit, all this baffled me in equal proportion to my not understanding why it was his not being human didn’t seem to bother me at all.

  I’d be lying if I didn’t mention how aware I was of the many things he wasn’t telling me, things about his past as a vampire. Part of me said – they happened before we met and the past is the past. Why should they matter now? But another part of me was whispering – they could be important. They could reveal a part of him he may be hiding for other reasons, dark reasons. I had to wonder how often the dark, vampire Daniel I saw the other night came out. That night at the back of Capen Hall obviously wasn’t the first time. What dark things had he done and did I really want to know the full extent of them?

  Deep down I knew it was dangerous to pretend that he wasn’t some sort of monster. I knew I could only get hurt if I let it go on too long, but I’d come to realize he had a hold on me I couldn’t explain. Maybe it was a vampire thing, some sort of mind control. If it was, it didn’t feel like it. I just hoped he wasn’t toying with me the way our cat toyed with a mouse he’d caught, playing with it happily until he finally pounced and put it out of its misery.

  What was I to him? Student, acquaintance, friend, his date for the evening? Or was I something he’d play with until he was ready to pounce and put me out of my misery?

  My last class ended at four, giving me two hours to obsess about what I was going to wear tonight. I’d heard my friends talk about the restaurant he was taking me to. It wasn’t really fancy, but I still didn’t want to go in my usual jeans and sweater combination. I pulled out everything in my closet that had potential, which let’s face it, wasn’t much. After trying on a dozen different combinations, I settled on a fitted black denim skirt that came to just above my knees and a plum colored silky blouse. I tried it on and looked in the mirror. Yes, this would do. Nice, but not too nice, like I was trying too hard or something.

  Staring at myself in the mirror I wondered if the blouse might be too low cut. It showed a lot of neck. I had no idea what the protocol was here. I didn’t want him to feel like the penniless kid with his nose pressed up against the window of the candy store.

  But then again, what did he mean by the word “date”? Did he mean date as in a time and place to go eat together, or did he mean a romantic date? Looking in the mirror, I saw my shoulders slump. He probably just meant as friends and I was reading way more into this than was actually there. I mean look at me, I was a mass of uncontrollable red hair with boobs that were way too big. If I was a guy, I’d certainly ask Darcy or Tabitha out before someone like me.

  I must have lost track of time because just as I’d finished rehanging my clothes in the closet, I heard a strange noise coming from the window. It sounded like a bird pecking on the glass. When I turned in that direction, I heard it yet again. Curious, I walked over and pulled the string on the blinds only to see Daniel standing below, looking up at me as I opened the window.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in a loud whisper, not wanting to attract the attention of my neighbors.

  “You’re not answering your phone,” he said, smiling as he held up his phone.

  “Oh, shoot! I forgot to take it off silent after class. Sorry about that.”

  He smiled again.

  “That’s alright. This was something I’d always wanted to do anyway.”

  I shook my head trying not to laugh. “Come around to the front door. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

  I took a moment to grab my purse and double check myself in the mirror. It would never be the reflection I wanted it to be, so this was going to have t
o do. Slipping into the only nice pair of pumps I owned, I headed for the door.

  Daniel sat waiting for me on the low brick wall just outside the front door. If I’d have taken a guess, I’d have said he’d done what I had and tried to dress nice without looking like he was trying too hard. Of course, he always looked much more fashionable than I could ever hope to. I guess that was one of the side effects of money. He’d never mentioned it, but I assumed he had plenty judging from his clothes, car and house.

  As I pushed the door open, he stood and sauntered towards me.

  “You look lovely this evening,” he said politely.

  All I could do was roll my eyes and say “Thanks, so do you.”

  He gestured in the direction we were to walk, and as I started off, he came along side me. The sun had just dipped behind the tall trees lining the quad, and the cooler breezes of evening were beginning to make their presence known. It didn’t bother me, but I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my jacket for warmth.

  “It doesn’t look like we’re going to get much of an Indian summer this year,” he said, noting my reaction to the chill.

  “I don’t mind. I love the Fall. This is my favorite time of year. I love to feel that nip of cold in the air. Seems like the heat of summer will never end at home. I’m always looking forward to this weather.”

  It only took a few minutes to walk across campus to the Faculty Tower and take the elevator up to the top floor. As the door opened he asked “Have you ever been up here before?” I said that I hadn’t. “Neither have I. The Professor and I don’t get much of a view from our side of the building.”

  The hostess gave us a table next to the windows with one of the best views. The room seemed oddly quiet except for some soft music in the background. There weren’t many people dining here this evening which I attributed to it being a Monday night. Through our window Mount Mohonk loomed in the distance, bathed in warm red light from the reluctant last throws of the setting sun. The white tower at its summit looked strangely pink in the amber light.

  After a minute, our waitress came over and gave us menus to look over while she took our drink orders. She seemed much more interested in Daniel’s order of water than my diet soda, but perhaps it was the man ordering that had captivated her attention. She was practically drooling on her order pad. Daniel didn’t seem to notice, his eyes were fixed on mine, smiling a strange, enigmatic smile I didn’t understand.

  “So what looks like it would be something good to watch me eat?” I asked slyly, as I peered at him over the top of my menu.

  “Very funny,” he shot back with a sarcastic smile. “But I’m sure if I looked hard enough, I could come up with something.”

  When the waitress came back, I ordered the fettuccini alfredo and grilled vegetables. After she wrote it down, she looked at Daniel who said he wasn’t hungry and would just nibble on mine. She gave him an odd look as she walked away, but didn’t say anything.

  After she left, we fell into conversation about class and Tabitha. I think he was curious to know more about the girl who got to sit in the seat next to me every other day in class. As we talked, I found myself examining him closely. Eventually, it occurred to me that he didn’t really look seventeen. If I recalled correctly that was how old he’d been when he’d died. So why did he look older than that?

  “You’ve got that look on your face again.”

  “What look?” I asked, rousing myself from my thoughts.

  “The one you get when you’re thinking about asking me something. What is it?”

  He sounded resigned, as if he’d finally accepted his fate.

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “No, but you have … subtleties I’m beginning to pick up on.”

  Something about his statement horrified me.

  “Well, I was just thinking that you look older than seventeen. If I had to guess, I’d say you look more like twenty-two or twenty-five.”

  I watched him closely as I spoke. I guess I was trying to pick up on some of his subtleties now. He didn’t look offended, so I continued. “If you, pardon me for saying, died when you were seventeen, how come you look older? I thought … your kind didn’t age.”

  He chuckled to himself. “Yes, there is a lot of misinformation out there about – my kind, as you say. That we don’t age is only one of them.”

  I looked at him with what must have looked like bewilderment.

  “I don’t follow. You don’t look a hundred and twenty four either.”

  “Yes well, I suppose that’s a good thing. No, our aging process is a little more complicated than that. How quickly one ages depends on a few factors. The more we give in to our basic desires as vampires, the quicker we age. When living a true vampire lifestyle, we estimate the body will age physically about four to five years for every calendar year. The average lifespan of one that lives like that is about fifteen to twenty years at most. However we’re very territorial creatures, and if you wander into another’s territory and hunt, they kill first and never get around to asking questions.”

  The waitress brought my food, undressed Daniel with her eyes, then left. Trying to ignore her, I took a bite. It needed salt so I liberally sprinkled some on as he watched me closely.

  When I looked up, he raised an eyebrow.

  “I like salty food,” I said by way of explanation. “So how is it that you look the way you do then?”

  “The reason why living the way we were originally designed to ages us so fast is the blood. Our bodies are, for all intents and purposes, dead. When blood is ingested through the normal way of feeding, the body has to process it, forcing the dead organs to work. When they do it taxes the body and causes it to age faster. My mentor discovered over a century ago that if we took blood intravenously, directly into our veins, it bypassed this process. Basically we got all the benefit without most of the drawbacks. Of course we slowed down the process even more by using animal blood instead of human blood.” He stopped for a moment and watched me eat. “You know this really isn’t appropriate dinner conversation.”

  “Don’t stop on my account, this is fascinating. So you’re fridge is full of …”

  “Pig’s blood.”

  I made a face at that.

  “Sometimes, Sara, I think you’re the strangest human I’ve ever met.” He smiled as he shook his head. “But as for your original question. When someone is bitten and transforms into one of us, no matter what their age was before, when the transformation process is complete, they will either have aged up or back to the age when their body was at its peak of physical abilities. For men it’s usually somewhere between about eighteen to twenty-four years of physical age. For women, a few years older maybe. When I transformed, I aged up a few years to about twenty-three or so and haven’t aged a whole lot since then.”

  I swallowed another bite of food.

  “So you’re saying that if an old man was bitten, he’d become young again?”

  He nodded yes.

  “Wow, I never saw that in a movie.”

  “Yes well, these are trade secrets that are carefully kept away from the general public. The less of the truth they know, the harder it is for them to detect us.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said as I swirled the last bit of fettuccini on my fork. “You said before that you were old by your standards. Why is that?”

  The waitress walked back and collected the dirty dishes.

  “So did you save room for dessert?” she asked.

  “What would you recommend?” Daniel asked.

  “There’s a nice cheese cake and a decent apple cobbler.”

  “She’ll have the cobbler,” he answered. As the waitress walked away, I gave him a questioning look.

  “What? I like to watch you eat apples,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “So, my question?”

  “Not many of our kind are either able or willing to live like us. It’s not easy, especially at first to make the transition from ing
esting human blood to going cold turkey – if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s a jolt to the system. It also changes your personality, from being controlled by the animal side governed by instinct, to the human side governed by reason. Don’t get me wrong, it’s much better to live by reason, but in some situations those instincts can keep you alive.

  “If you’re one of the ones that live the other way, they see no reason to change. They are what they are and quite frankly don’t see the benefits we enjoy as much compensation. I’d equate it with a drug addict. He gets his high and thinks people who don’t live like him are fools. Does he know he’s killing himself? Yes, I think he does, but he just doesn’t care.”

  The waitress came over with my cobbler. It was hot with vanilla ice cream on top. I dived right in. It was beyond wonderful.

  “I was lucky. I never had to live like that. I’m the only one of my kind that I’ve ever heard of that has never tasted human blood.”

  “How is that?” I asked, suddenly confused. What was he, a virgin vampire?

  “Well, my mentor helped me through my transformation process. He’d already stopped feeding on humans by then and brought me up that way.”

  I was devouring my cobbler. Not that I was glad he was a vampire, but I was relieved I didn’t have to share it with anyone.

  “Was he the one that … bit you?” I hesitated when I asked. I wasn’t sure if it was an inappropriate question or not.

  “No. He probably saved me from being killed by my attacker.”

  He didn’t seem particularly bothered by the question. I think the topic in general was uncomfortable for him to talk about, but again I wasn’t exactly sure why yet.

  “Oh,” I said as I paused to consider this and ate the last of my cobbler.

  When I finished, I leaned back my chair and asked “So do you ever think you’re missing something by not having ever tried it? I mean it must be good or else others wouldn’t care so much about not stopping.”