The Blood In Between (The Safe Haven Trilogy Book 3)

by Randall G Ailes

“Michael, I have bitten my arm. My blood flows freely. My wound is against your mouth, taste it…suck it. Do it, and you will feel your heart beating. Drink not and you will die. Find my arm before you and feed your hunger.”

  I opened my mouth, only slightly and blood seeped in. I fought against actually swallowing what had flowed in but my resolve was not very firmly planted and before I knew it, blood traveled down my throat. And it went down like human brandy, a burning trail ending not with my stomach but flowing within me until it found my heart and from there surging throughout my body. Breathing was painful as everything seemed to be waking again. My breaths, the blinking of my eyes and my trembling body absorbed this fuel where aching cold was replaced by an inner fire.

  Then I felt his arm pull away and I was irritated as an opium dependent might be; angry and annoyed, but then it was replaced. I at first thought, it was still don Lucido’s wrist but as I started to drink once more I felt a change of temperament and visions of Beatrice appeared before me, and yet within me. I knew these next sips were from her arm and that with each swallow I saw things from her eyes, knew things from her perspective and I experienced her emotions. My draw from her arm was less lengthy than when I had fed from don Lucido, but still came the onslaught of nourishment, thoughts and memories. All of which would take time to digest…a long time for some of it.

  And then her arm was withdrawn and another came in its place, the blood from this one imparted a wild, rebellious whirlwind of bites and slashes. These were spurred on by horrendous pain, both physical and the kind that eats from the inside and is ever restless. I sensed something feline and experienced the sound of a cat purring, which I found at once disquieting and yet comforting among a tangled mess of emotions. I didn’t have to search too far to know this was contact with the Lady of Darkness.

  There were others of course, who added to the feast of vampires, others who drank their fill of my blood and then contributed their own to my body being refilled and revived. Some I knew, some I did not. Still, I was overwhelmed with the emotions and histories their vampire blood brought to me. Elena and Santos, Edwardo and Ferdinand were the familiar. I was flooded with information and lust, and on into me it rushed as others added into the mix. I became dizzy, and don Lucido made me walk the streets in conversation with him to smooth me out and settle me down.

  “Don’t try to sort it all out. Save that for when you sleep. You’ll be doing much more of that now and you have been given so much information to consume. Spend your sleep going through those. It will take a long time to experience. If fortunes are with you, time is one thing you’ll have in abundance. To try and make sense of all of it now will make you dizzier than you already are. Walk with me now and try to keep focused here in these streets of Glyn.”

  But I soon lost focus and returned to my home…our home in la Coruna. The pain I was going through was too much. It demanded my full attention. I do not know if it was the last throes of life ebbing out of me or the new blood now pumping through my veins, or the combination of the two in this mighty change thundering within me. I remember being sick but not able to expel anything. I retched and heaved and coughed and clawed. I jumped to the ceiling and stayed there without a fall. I walked sideways on the walls. I was drenched with sweat and was hungry for meat, rare meat…uncooked meat. I screamed and called out and howled at the moon and I picked it out of the air with my clawing hand and consumed it in one gulp. Then I spent what seemed like a year or more feeling guilty for destroying the moon, everyone’s moon…my moon. I missed it…longed for it and searched for it everywhere day and night, even in the moonlight which made perfect sense in the frame of mind I was in but little sense later when I reconsidered it. The point is I lost track of my senses. I lost the ability to determine what was real and what was not. Somewhere in all of that I not only lost my mind but I lost my life.

  --------

  Elsewhere in the house, Charlotte paced the room in her voluntary imprisonment. If she got too worked up it might broadcast to others her unrest. She certainly did not want to interfere with what was going on down the hall and up the stairs. How bittersweet it was to know that Michael was being turned at this very moment. He was being accepted into the House of Del Rio and becoming a vampire. She could never be part of that bloodline although she might possibly be a part of the family. The family members she knew were welcoming and considering where she had come from, that was generous. Due to her own bloodline, she was viewed suspiciously. Housed here with them and under their protection, she was not allowed to participate in Michael’s transformation. Charlotte understood but was hurt by this exclusion. She was surprised it mattered to her at all, but don Lucido and the others she knew might give her a place with them once more. This was an acceptance and a pardon of a kind and maybe even an apology for not being able to protect her. It was odd to feel some measure of kindness and welcoming. It was more than she would allow herself. She was the last member of the Tilson family. Her mother, father and two brothers had been beheaded. She was told this had happened because her family had been infected. Each had been a host for a Lorn. Why she had been spared was a mystery. She too, had supposedly been carrying a Lorn inside her. Desmondo Milan had told her that her family really had been just fine and Lorn-free, that this was all a lie that served Lucido Del Rio’s purposes. But, Desmondo had tortured her physically and mentally. He had relentlessly twisted her thoughts and cruelly guarded what news she might be allowed to hear.

  What she knew was, she did not detect any differences in her family’s manner. It was difficult to believe that her family had been taken over by other beings and manipulated. It just seemed she would have recognized something. Well, there was one thing that came to mind if she really had to be honest. The way her mother had acted when Michael had been washed in the horse trough and held there naked for examination. That was a strange moment and certainly out of character for her mother and…quite embarrassing. It had though, eventually brought Michael more directly into her life. They had been paired together since she had been brought under don Lucido’s care.

  It seems she was meant to be a prisoner. This is what Desmond had told her. She remembered this topic coming up once as they lay together briefly after having been bedded by him. He’d said, “You really had little choice but to fall in love with young Michael. What were your other options for love? You were kept together as a unit. What else could you do but turn to each other, when all around you were vampires?”

  “It wasn’t like that.” She had said.

  “Wasn’t it?” Milan had returned. “Del Rio isn’t above using people for his purposes. He goes where he wants, takes what he wants, and ruins people’s lives with a wave of his hand. Look at the village he leveled. Do you think people didn’t suffer losses of life…of property…of their own hopes and dreams?”

  “But you threw him into a burning building, and Veria, too. He wasn’t himself. He was going through a stage…the wildness, I think it is called, part of his recovery….”

  But Charlotte had gone too far in defending don Lucido. With a snarl, Milan was onto her with breathtaking speed, his hand around her neck and pushing her head upward, bringing her face to look straight into his. “You would do well not to come to his defense or sing his praises…EVER! ...but certainly not within my earshot. He has stood in my way many times through the centuries and ruined many of my own plans. He should have stayed dead and would have if you and your Michael hadn’t interfered. And your sweet Veria? She was meant for pleasure of men and nothing more. It’s the same for you. Meant for a quick wiggle under the sheets. Damn, she was bread for it but resists this at every turn.”

  Their faces were close and his grip was tight. There would be bruises if she survived this, which she hoped she wouldn’t. His spittle sprayed onto her face and his foul breath lingered before her nose. Milan paused as he held her, a quick snap away from breaking her neck. But, he gazed upon her and then turned her head this way and that, as if appraising the
mouth and teeth of a horse. Though he had seemed to be at the point, a wild rage was about to begin. Milan quieted and a cruel smile spread slowly across his face.

  “You are designed for pleasure as well, my little harlot. And you are a prisoner with no hope of rescue. And just like the Daccota tramp, you are locked into your beauty… forever the pretty little trinket to sparkle and dazzle and submit for pleasure.”

  One hand still on her throat, his other hand played upon her, roughly and in tender areas.

  “Let me show you how to dazzle and submit for pleasure.” Milan said.

  And for the next several hours, she was a ragdoll.

  39

  Charlotte remembered all of her imprisonment, second by second and relived the haunting torture of it often. Her pregnancy wasn’t an easy one on its own accord, but the insults and torments from the others she was around during this time, were demeaning and disheartening. It was a toss-up as to which she contemplated more, her escape or taking her own life. But she was watched too closely for either of those to be realized. Though Charlotte was treated cruelly, she was also held in a certain sense of awe and was treated at times with a degree of reverence in regard to the baby she carried. So far as she knew, no one had any idea what would happen to this child-to-be. Would it survive? Would it be any semblance of normal? What if it were a monster? Would Charlotte even survive such a birthing? Would she be allowed to tend to her newborn?

  Safe now in the confines of Michael’s home, she could still remember her incarceration. Milan turned her after he fed upon her in front of Michael. He had taken her with him after setting the barn on fire. She had swooned from loss of blood, and remembered well the last thing she had heard was Michael pleading and the haunted horses, screaming as the flames consumed the barn. Charlotte went, then, into prolonged sickness beginning when she collapsed. She was only helped slightly when Milan took her away and fed her his blood. This was the beginning of a long line of betrayals to herself, to Michael and to the House of Del Rio. She did not want to drink his blood but he bit his own wrist and planted her mouth in it. Still she would not drink.

  “I can understand that you wish to die but the decision you make also condemns your child. The infant inside you has been fighting for life since the first beat of its heart. If you want to see this baby, the product of you and your Michael, indeed if you wish to ever see poor Michael again, you will feed from me and do it quick before I take my arm away and make the decision for you.”

  And so Charlotte drank feeling lowly and traitorous. Yet she was hungry to save her baby and wanted to believe she would see her beloved Michael again. During her stay, she would be made to feel wretched for choosing to live, choosing to become a vampire while a baby grew in her womb. She expected that a Lorn would be imparted to her through this feeding. How would she know if one was, or was not inside her? If it was true that her father, mother and brothers had been Lorn infested, then what don Lucido had once told her might also be true, that not all people make good hosts for the Lorn. Those going through puberty were not desired. It was something about the whirlwind of changes going on inside. If that was true, then perhaps the changes pregnancy brought would prove to be just as repelling. This turned out to be true and figured into her decision to escape from the House of Milan.

  Escaping from Milan was to leave taking nothing and to get far away from him as quickly as possible. She wasn’t used to being a vampire and was given little helpful information about being one…operating as one. It was a confusing and intimidating landscape not unlike navigating a foreign country alone and unguided. How to hide, how to select a target and feed, how to live among a population, how to manage being drunk on power, she knew next to nothing about these or at least their subtleties. But one thing she thought of as she left, came to her from experience with Michael when they were on the run. She should move in unexpected ways and leave little evidence along her course that would indicate her presence. Though Charlotte was untested and uneducated in the ways of a vampire, if she could buy herself some time it might be possible to learn those skills. Charlotte had spent so much time wanting to die during her captivity, her freedom and her appreciation of it were slow to come. But maybe with enough time….

  But not long after, she had become overcome with grief for having left her newborn child which kept her mired in the dark swamps of remorse. And then…and then…and then there was something else, something else horrible and treasonous…something demanded of her…something implanted, something treacherous…something she wanted no part of and yet she could not remember it, except the face of Milan with the witch woman watching in the background. Milan staring fiercely into her eyes and saying, “If you ever wish to see your child again….”

  Charlotte had all but forgotten this little snippet of memory until she came in contact with the family Del Rio once again. Their interactions with her were so different than her stay with Milan and his cold group, like the warmth of the sun upon ice. And with this melting, came familiarities of how being alive could be when living with less vicious people. It awakened fond memories long discarded. It awoke something else as well.

  40

  They all slept, exhausted from challenges each one faced. No one kept watch, not over Misty, or Ruby, or each other. Misty was on her own on this night. She looked like death warmed over, but there was brain activity, a strong heartbeat and breathing was regular. She was hooked up to technology beyond what Cinnamon had ever seen. Ruby lay sleeping in the room where she had sat with Cinnamon and Persephone. She was unguarded and though the door was closed, it was unlocked. Enos and Constance returned to their room. Cinnamon went back to hers. John, Persephone, Millie and Sanford found ways to their rooms as well. The house was exceptionally quiet throughout the night.

  In the morning, in the Skye’s suite, they gathered around Misty’s room. Misty was showing promise. She had made little improvement on her own but it was very good that she wasn’t backsliding. Her status had leveled and maintained. The Havens were quite optimistic that Misty had held her own through the night. There was a sense of urgency to work once more with the billion-interlocking-pieces jigsaw puzzle inside Misty, and the four Havens were spending the day, working inside her, doing that. They would concentrate on the vital and the easy with hope that enough pieces would be interconnected enough to get Misty to help as well. No one wondered whether all the Kings horses and all the King’s men would ever put Misty back together again. This wasn’t the first time such an endeavor had been undertaken.

  Cinnamon sat in the med room, where everything with Misty was taking place. It felt a little weird to be there. So much of the technology around her she did not understand. And, although much was being done to bring John and Persephone’s daughter back among them, it was quiet and serene. It was quiet, as if she was there by herself. Across the hall, the hosting bodies, the companions of John, Persephone, Sanford and Millie were comfortably prone and inactive at the moment. This made them vulnerable and Cinnamon understood that she had been entrusted to safeguard their welfare.

  Cinnamon heard whispering again though, and felt she was being watched. She moved to the doorway and leaned against the frame. Across the hall was the room where she had originally seen John’s vacant body. When he had leapt from it and wrestled Michael for control of his body, a struggle that had gone on for months. In the end, Cinnamon had convinced John to re-inhabit his own body once more. To view John’s relaxed form now reminded her so much of that time. Cinnamon turned and glanced at the closed door at the end of the darkened hall. She had been nearly everywhere in the great house…except beyond that door. She contemplated making a few strong strides right now and yanking the door open.

  The hallway in the opposite direction led out into the rather large living room area where Cinnamon had unnervingly encountered shadows and whispers before as well as the everyday goings on of the Skye family. Currently, Enos and Constance were just arriving and making themselves known. Cinnamon moved int
o the room, pointed out the coffee and a wide variety of fruit and pastries.

  “I see our guest is still sleeping.” Enos said, finding a seat at the table.

  “They’re keeping her ‘under’ for the time being. It’s easier for us and I think, easier for her too. She has recently lost a loved one.” Cinnamon said.

  “I’m all for it.” Enos said. “Guard duty, as a past time, soon loses its excitement. I do want to contribute but I won’t be hurt if I’m passed over for guard duty.”

  “But, we’re happy to help out and…well, do our share.” Constance quickly offered.

  Cinnamon was sipping her coffee, closed-eyed. But when she opened them it was apparent that she hadn’t been lost in the coffee experience. She squinted her eyes and regarded Enos. “Is there something else you’d like to do?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I want to take this war to the Lorn. I’ve had it with running and hiding and then being surprised when they make a move. Wouldn’t you just love for them to experience the run and hide of war? Wouldn’t it be nice if they had a taste of that?”

  “How would you do that?” a worried Constance asked before Cinnamon did.

  “I don’t yet know the whole story about all of this but I know my story with them. I may be a peace officer but that doesn’t mean I don’t know tactics. I have felt their eyes watching me since Myrna Ransom and I’ve hid. I’ve cowered and I’ve danced to their tune far more than I ever thought I would, and it took until these last few days before I figured out why?”

  “I’m afraid you are going to say something about a plan that equates with risking your life.” Constance said in a small voice.

  “Well, fear no more, Connie. I do have a plan and it does involve risking my life.”

  “Somehow that response didn’t reassure me very much.”