Blood Heavy (Blood Heavy Series)

by S. L. J. Shortt

  Other than a few snappy comments towards each other, the vampire sisters were managing to at least partially get along. They didn’t exactly speak very often but, they could stay in the same room as one another without threatening to kill each other.

  Cass, however, had taken to staying as far away from Jerry as she could. She barely even looked at him anymore and hadn’t even been bothering with her usual smart-assed comments and insults that she seemed to enjoy so much. Obviously, Rachel revealing Jerry’s fantasy had had concerned her enough to stop her wanting to be around him.

  Between that, the nightmares and all the weapons training, Jerry was exhausted. He tried, but failed to hide just how much he was yawning, and due to his magic blood, sleeping pills didn’t really have much of an effect on him. The only real good news was that the hormone cocktail which Parker had made for him was still working. They had all been a bit worried that he might start to develop immunity to it, but so far it was keeping his appealing stink under wraps.

  “Jesus Jerry, you look like shit!” Sarah blurted out when she saw him at school.

  “And you’re a vision, as always,” Jerry smiled.

  “I mean it, Jerry. When was the last time you slept?”

  “I don’t know, what day is it?” he shrugged off.

  “Jerry!”

  “Well, you’d be kinda restless too if you were being hunted by a group of sadistic fanged-ass monkeys.”

  “Here, eat some fruit,” she said, pulling an orange out of her bag.

  “I have been eating fruit.”

  “Jalapenos don’t count, Jerry,” she said crossly.

  “Mmm, love me some jalapenos...” he said, licking his lips. The thought was making him crave a Spicy Italian Sub. Sarah’s annoyed cough pulled his mind away from the sandwich. “Alright mom, calm down. I’ll have a salad for lunch or something.”

  “Good, because you look like a crack addict on a comedown at the moment.”

  “Mmm, love me some crack,” he grinned.

  “Stop doing that!” she said, slapping his arm. He just laughed.

  “So, still no news?” Steve asked, when they were sitting at the lunch table about an hour later. Jerry had made good on his word and was picking at a small salad. Goose sat next to him stuffing some pasta into his mouth, while Sarah continued to scrutinize Jerry’s appearance.

  “Nada. Neither Sophinia, Parker or the telepathic midget have found anything. Meanwhile, there is still a nasty-assed pureblood and her undead groupies hiding somewhere in the area, all of whom wanna order up a steamy hot bowl of Jerry Stroganoff.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not gonna make it easy for them,” Goose said.

  “We take ourselves off the menu for good if we find and kill that winged bitch,” Jerry reminded them, before stuffing a cherry tomato into his mouth.

  “Screw that!” Steve coughed. “Weapons training and military exercises aside, there’s no way a human could stand up to a pureblood. I’ve been reading about them and they’ve got barely any weaknesses. Remove their heads or blow them up, that’s about it, because they never go out in the sunlight.”

  “I’m sure Sophinia could get us a rocket launcher,” Jerry grinned enthusiastically.

  “How you gonna hit this Selena? Her body runs cold, remember, no heat lock,” Goose said. “Nah, I’ve been thinking liquid O2.”

  “Liquid O2?”

  “Yeah, T-1000 style. It’s colder than liquid nitrogen, like minus two hundred and fifty or something. Spray ’em with that stuff and it turns them into an undead ice cube - then its hasta la vista, baby.”

  “Okay, Goose, where you gonna get some liquid O2 from?” Sarah asked.

  “Err...NASA?”

  “That’s what I thought. How about we just stick to letting Sophinia kill her instead?”

  “Whatever. As long as she dies, I’m happy,” Jerry mumbled and pushed his bowl aside.

  “You’ve barely eaten any of that,” Sarah moaned.

  “I’m full,” he shrugged.

  “Jerry, finish your salad or I’m going to get Claire to come hold you down while I force it down your gullet,” she threatened.

  He knew better than to think that she was joking. He pulled his bowl back towards him and started eating some lettuce.

  Later, after the final bell rang, the four of them headed back to Joe’s place. Usually, Sarah and Steve would go off on their own to spend a few hours making googly eyes at each other, but they were worried about Jerry and had decided to stay to keep an eye on him.

  When they got back, the house was silent. Claire was sitting at the table reading a book, but she was flipping the pages over so quickly and violently that it was obvious that she wasn’t in the best of moods. On the couch, Cass sat reading some gossip magazine that she’d bought the night before.

  They had been fighting again.

  “Wow, smell the tension in this place,” Goose whispered to Jerry.

  Claire looked up and shot a warning glare at him. Jerry sighed, dropped his bag and walked over to Cass on the couch.

  “Okay...what did you say this time?”

  “None of your business,” she said, without looking up at him.

  “Well, you’re just a barrel of sunshine today, aren’t you?”

  “Get bent,” she snapped.

  “Kinky,” Jerry grinned, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Go perv over someone else,” she hissed.

  “Oh, come on! You can’t still be mad at me because I find you attractive?”

  “No, I can’t, because you’re a hormonal teenage loser and I’m a dead sexy chick. Just do it elsewhere,” she said in annoyance.

  That kind of hurt; she thought he was a loser.

  “Sure...I wouldn’t want to inconvenience your afterlife in any way,” Jerry said, his voice waning a bit. He slumped away towards his bedroom.

  “You’re a bitch,” Claire hissed under her breath.

  Cass didn’t respond.

  Later that evening, (after making sure that Jerry ate something) Joe had finished cleaning up the dirty dinner plates and gone to bed, Sarah and Steve had gone home and Goose had gone back to his place for a change. Cass hadn’t bothered joining them and had stayed as cold and as distant as before. None of them had noticed her glancing up at them occasionally. For the first time since they’d met, Claire was actually sleeping. She had passed out on the couch and Joe had even gone to get a blanket for her before hitting the sack. Apparently she’d be out like a light until sometime the next day and then she wouldn’t need to sleep again for at least a week, maybe two.

  Jerry took the opportunity to snag some scotch while his uncle was snoozing peacefully. He took the bottle and a glass outside and slumped down into a deck chair at the back of the house.

  He stayed there for a while, just looking up at the stars and the moon. Every time he looked at them though, his mind automatically wondered if aliens were real or if werewolves were transforming somewhere. The lights from the house faded about fifteen feet out and were replaced by darkness. The same thoughts seeped into his head when he was looking into the blackness.

  What was waiting out there for him?

  He was snapped out of it by footsteps approaching over the gravel. His hand moved towards the weapon on his belt, but he didn’t pull it. He saw who it was.

  Cassandra sat down in the deck chair next to his. She picked up the bottle of scotch and poured herself a glass.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. It sounded difficult for her.

  “For what?” Jerry said, automatically.

  “For what I said earlier.”

  “Well, you’re a vampire. Biting people’s heads off is part of your MO, right?” Jerry shrugged.

  “I guess,” Cass let out a shaky laugh.

  “You gonna tell me what you and your sister keep arguing about?”

  “We have four hundred years worth of issues. How long you got?” she said simply.

  “Parker filled me in on the highlig
hts,” Jerry said, taking a sip of scotch.

  “Really? What did he tell you?”

  “That Claire turned you...and about your parents...” the moment he finished speaking, he wondered whether or not he should have mentioned it.

  She didn’t get angry though; she glanced at him for a second before turning her eyes back towards the dark. “That was a long time ago...I was different back then.”

  “I was different about three weeks ago.”

  “That’s called the past, I know that you and Joe are good with cars, but I doubt you could build a time traveling DeLorean.”

  “Oh, sure I could. Just nip over to a nuclear power station, grab me some plutonium and I’ll zap ya right back, Marty,” Jerry grinned.

  “I’ll pass, thanks. What’s done is done, just gotta live with it now,” she took a gulp of scotch and sighed. “You lost your parents too, right?”

  Jerry hadn’t expected her to want to know more about his past. “Yeah...my mom died during child birth and my dad died when I was nine.”

  “Sorry for your loss,” she said softly. That surprised him even more and made him feel a little awkward.

  “Not much to lose...I never even knew my mom and my dad never wanted to know me...” he said absently and took another drink.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well...he loved my mother so damn much that when she died...I think he blamed me for it...” Jerry said.

  Cass turned and looked at him, part confused, part curious.

  “I mean, he never hit me or yelled at me or anything but...even when he was there, he wasn’t there, if that makes any sense. He’d go away for weeks at a time, wouldn’t tell me where, and then when he came back...no hug, no ‘how you doing?’ he’d just nod and say ‘I’m back’. I’d ask about where he’d been and I’d ask about mom, but he’d just avoid any questions. Every time he looked at me, he saw the thing that killed the woman he loved...he died of a stroke, I think. Part of me thinks he just didn’t want to live anymore.”

  “That’s awful,” she whispered. “Not as awful as murdering your own parents, but it’s still bad.”

  “Yeah, that call’s not exactly healthy.”

  “I’ve made some pretty shitty calls in my life and that one takes the cake, but trust me, there’s a lot worse than me out there. Freaks that get their rocks off drinking blood out of a baby’s skull, type worse.”

  “And that’s what’s coming after me?” Jerry asked.

  “Not exactly. Black Forest are nasty, but they aren’t crazy. They’re doing this because they want power, not to get their twisted jollies.”

  “I take it they aren’t believers either?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. It would certainly explain why they are so scared of dying,” she shrugged.

  “I can’t see how you guys can just believe in that crap. I believe in what I can see. I had to see a vampire in order to believe in them. I’ve never seen a burning bush or an angel, or whatever.”

  “I guess that’s why they call it faith, Jerry,” she snorted.

  “You said faith wouldn’t save me,” he reminded.

  “It won’t, but it sometimes makes people feel better.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Jerry, when we were human, we didn’t believe in vampires. They turned out to be real, so who’s to say what else is real. Even we don’t know about everything that’s out there,” she admitted.

  “And you’re expecting to run into some floaty white light rockin’ a harp, with wings, halo and all?” he asked, laughing at how ridiculous it sounded.

  “Don’t be a moron,” she huffed. “If I were to ever run into an angel, I think the first thing they’d do is turn my tight little ass into a pile of dust. Or I could live for a thousand years and not see one...doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Why are you so anti-heaven, anyway?”

  Jerry reached under his shirt and pulled out the locket that Joe had given him. He took it off and handed it to Cass. The moment she touched it her skin sizzled, and she dropped it, before glaring at him as if he’d done it on purpose.

  “Damn! Sorry, I thought it was fake silver,” he said quickly.

  “Dick!” she hissed.

  “Seriously, I didn’t know,” he picked the locket off of the floor and just showed it to her instead.

  She took a quick glance at it, while sucking the burn on her finger. She saw the angel engraving on it and understood why he was showing it to her.

  “Apparently, my mom used to say that she was my dad’s ‘angel’. But then she died and my dad became a living ghost, so that was obviously a little inaccurate. Cute little metaphors are the extent of my belief in that crap.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly the greatest reason to snub faith,” she said.

  “Really? If angels...if God exists, then what the hell is he waiting for, huh? The world is going down the toilet as fast as anyone can pull the flush and he doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass. I mean, freakin’ monsters are real! They’re out there eating people alive as we speak and he ain’t doing a damn thing!”

  “Wow, you really know how to make a girl feel special,” she said sarcastically, but she wasn’t offended.

  “I didn’t mean -”

  “It’s okay. You’re right. I am a monster,” she said without emotion.

  “No, you’re not. You aren’t exactly normal, but -”

  “I’ve got no pulse. I’m four hundred years old and I drink blood. That equals monster. The things I’ve done, when my soul was buried beneath layers and layers of blood lust...playing nice now doesn’t make up for a damn thing.”

  Every word she spoke filled Jerry with admiration. She was so real and yet so unreal at the same time; it was hard not to be impressed by her. Four hundred years of living inside an insanely beautiful vampire body, a body that had fed on him not too long ago, and he couldn’t get enough of her.

  “I’m angry and bitter and I’m a world class bitch, but I’ve got no illusions,” she continued, “I know what I am and it isn’t some brooding tortured wuss. I’m not going to stop enjoying myself, I’m not gonna be an undead clergyman, like Sophinia, and I’m not going to be a deluded idiot like my sister. I’m just going to be me, and carry on being me for as long as I can...because when I do finally take the big nose dive downstairs...the good memories might actually make it hurt just that little bit less.”

  “So, you really believe in Hell?” Jerry asked.

  Cass gulped down the last of her scotch, then held out her glass for Jerry to refill it, which he did. She took a sip and then pulled out a cigarette and lit it up.

  “I met this Voodoo priestess once, back in my wild days. Believe it or not, I was planning to kill her, because I’d heard a rumor that feeding off magic users gives you a hell of a buzz. I burst in on her and I’m about to go for the kill and she just stands there, looking at me. She’s not even the slightest bit afraid of me...in fact, it was like she’d been expecting me, or even waiting for me. She starts spouting off all this crap about the natural order of things and the balance between life and death. She told me that nothing ever really dies, it just goes somewhere else. I don’t know why but that stuck with me.”

  Jerry nodded. It wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever heard of, and it fell into line with the scientific stuff he’d read about. Energy can’t truly die, so did that mean the same for the soul? Was the soul even real?

  “What happened to the priestess?” he wondered.

  “I tore her throat out,” Cass said, without remorse. “Like I said. Monster.”

  “Damn,” Jerry breathed.

  “That was back in eighteen eighty,” she shrugged. “I didn’t climb on the wagon for about another ten years...but, I think she helped me get there. I brushed off all my other kills like they were nothing, but her...it stayed with me. I can still remember her face,” Cass shuddered with the memory, and for a tiny second, regret fell across her face.

  Jerry looked away, finding it difficult to co
mprehend what vampires must feel when the blood lust took hold of them. He couldn’t imagine killing an innocent person, let alone not feeling anything while he did so.

  “So...I’ve been baring my soul like a weepy little ditched prom date...your turn,” she said, trying to sound cheerful.

  “Huh?”