Blood Heavy (Blood Heavy Series)

by S. L. J. Shortt

“Everybody’s worried about you, Jerry. Your game face isn’t as good as you think it is. I can hear you all the time inside that house and I know how little you sleep, and when you do, I hear the things you moan. I see how little you eat; so do the others. You’re falling,” she stated it as a fact.

  Jerry looked away. He didn’t want to hear this.

  “Look, this is just how I deal with this shit, okay?” he said heavily.

  “No, this is how you think you should be dealing with this shit. You aren’t dealing with anything.”

  “What, you psychic too now, because your mindreading smurf gave me all this crap already!”

  “Rachel...she’s a sweet kid and you have no idea how powerful she is. Unfortunately, that means her mind tricks are very high level. Her brain works so fast you wouldn’t believe it. She’s got more than enough time to scan your brain and think up the perfect thing to say. All that Professor X wisdom she lays on people, its bullshit though. She’s smart, she’s psychic and she means well, but she doesn’t often tell people the truth, she tells them what she thinks they need to hear,” Cass said. Amazingly, she didn’t sound the slightest bit bitchy.

  “So, what is the truth?” Jerry had to ask.

  “The truth is that you either deal with this world, or you don’t. If you don’t, you end up in the puzzle factory with a straight jacket on and a permanent line of drool dripping down your chin. If you do...this is it. You’re in for life. This world...once it’s got its hooks into you, it doesn’t let go. I’m sorry Jerry, but cure or not, you’re never going to be able to walk away from this,” she was looking into his eyes, speaking the facts.

  That’s why the information hurt so much. He couldn’t say that it hadn’t occurred to him, but it was a thought that he’d pushed right to back of his mind. He hadn’t wanted to believe that his old life was gone for good. Not until now.

  “So...tell me,” she said, moving around to face him, “what’s really going on inside that head of yours?”

  Jerry floundered as he tried to find a way to brush off her question. The things she had just said had hit him too deep. They had tweaked nerves that nobody else had been able to reach and it had pushed all his black thoughts to the front of his mind.

  He gulped down a big mouth of scotch, hoping the burn in his throat would help, but it didn’t. Not really.

  “I’m eighteen in three months...” he said, in barely more than a whisper. “I’m supposed to be worried about acne and girls and homework...not this!” he couldn’t stop the tears from appearing in his eyes. He could only turn away and hope she didn’t notice, but she could probably smell them or something. “I’m not supposed to be havin’ nightmares about my friends and my family having their throats ripped out!”

  “Jerry -”

  “I DON’T DESERVE THIS!" He cried, angry tears pouring down his cheeks. “They don’t deserve this! It’s not right! It’s not fair!”

  Cass reached over and put a soft hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off straight away.

  “You asked me why I don’t believe? My friends, Joe - I love them; they are the best that human kind has to offer, and now they’re all in danger! They’re going to die and it’s my fault! I’ve already killed them just by existing! What God could let that happen? What kind of sadistic super powered son of a bitch could do this to me?! It’s not fair!”

  “That’s called life!” Cassandra interrupted, “nobody ever said it would be fair, or easy, or good. It just is!” Cass roared, an animalistic grit coloring her voice. “What were you expecting? A fairy-tale ending where the nice guy gets the hot chick and they go and live happily ever after? That’s not how this shit works! This isn’t a bullshit Disney flick! Life and pain go together, hand in hand. You want one, you’ve got to take the other; it’s that simple. At least you know how it ends.”

  “Nobody knows how it ends.”

  “You die, that’s how it ends!” she declared, and her tone was too hard and stark for Jerry to fight against. “There is no such thing as immortality...Sooner or later, everyone meets the Reaper.”

  Jerry silently turned his glass over in his hand. What was strange about this was that it was coming from a girl who had lived for hundreds of years. She would never grow older than her twenty year old body, and yet she seemed to think that she had a deadline on her lifespan. What was even stranger was that her words seemed to make him feel better. Maybe it was true that once you accepted mortality you no longer feared death.

  “I’m not pretending that this isn’t hard for you and I’m not going to promise that you will make it through...but for Christ’s sake, suck it up, or you’ll be dead before you can even pull your gun.”

  He was shaking from her words. His cheeks were wet and his eyes were red.

  “I don’t want this...what’s wrong with me?”

  “Maybe nothing...maybe this is exactly how you’re supposed to feel,” Cass said honestly.

  “I’m supposed to be a freak?”

  “You’re supposed to give us hope!” she yelled back instantly. “And you do!”

  That really surprised him. Cassandra struck him as the type of person who wouldn’t want to be human again.

  “You want the cure?”

  “No...I’ve made peace with what I am.”

  “Bull!”

  “Well, what do you want to hear?!” she shouted. “This is what I am! I can’t be human again and I wouldn’t survive it if I did. But there are others that will, and they need you. You give them hope and that’s a good thing. That gives me hope,” she said, her voice quivering.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want my sister to go to Hell! If she’s human again...she’s got a much better chance of...redemption.”

  That was the last thing he’d ever thought would come out of her mouth. Cass and Claire despised each other.

  “I Thought you hated her?” he asked quietly.

  “She’s my sister. I never stopped loving her...that’s why I hate her so much,” Cassandra confessed. “I want her to be human again...”

  She was right. He’d been hiding his anger and sadness all this time because he thought he should. He’d never really embraced what he could do for others. But he should have, because thinking about it now made him feel better. Cass’s brutal truths had actually cleared his head. He’d been convinced that he’d condemned everyone around him, when in actual fact he might be able to save them.

  He was starting to understand, and more importantly, he was starting to accept.

  “I hope I can get her there,” he said.

  “So do I,” she nodded and took a long pull of her drink.

  Over the next hour they put the serious issues in their lives aside and started talking about other things. Mostly, Jerry just kept asking her about the famous people she’d met over the span of her four hundred years.

  “I was in England for most of Queen Victoria’s reign. I never got to meet her,” Cass said. “I heard she had good taste though.”

  “What about Napoleon?”

  “I got out of Egypt about a week before the battle of the pyramids started. That’s about as close as I got to him. He was a tiny little guy,” she smirked.

  “Yeah, Claire said you guys try to steer clear of human wars.”

  “We try...I was in France when the Germans invaded in World War I. Luckily, gas doesn’t work on us, but Europe still wasn’t a nice place to be back then,” she said, gulping down another glass.

  Jerry refilled her glass and his own. They’d almost gone through the whole bottle.

  “And where did you pick up all those fighting moves, grasshopper?” he asked with a smile.

  “You know, you pick stuff up from here and there. I spent a few decades in China and Japan. Learned a lot over there. I was agile, even when I was human. When I was young, my parents insisted that I learned to dance. They said it would help me find a suitor. Back then, being able to dance was an important part of wooing someone. They were hoping tha
t I’d be married by the time I was sixteen and popping out babies shortly afterwards.”

  “Sixteen?”

  “Age wasn’t important back then, Jerry. As long as your reproductive organs worked, you were old enough to use them. Of course, people didn’t live as long as they do now,” she said simply.

  “Arranged marriages...I never liked that idea,” Jerry said.

  “Why not?”

  “Why can’t people just fall in love? I mean, it’s kinda sweet when animals imprint and mate for life and all that, but humans are a little more complicated. To me, an arranged marriage just sounds like your freedom being taken away.”

  “Ahh, that’s sweet Braveheart. You gonna start singing the national anthem next?” she mocked.

  “You’re lucky I need the bathroom,” he jokingly warned.

  “Oh, I’m terrified.”

  “You should be. I’m a badass vampire killer,” Jerry grinned and wobbled as he stood up.

  “You’re drunk,” she laughed.

  “Yeah, you’re a punk!” he mumbled, and slurped down another gulp. He put the glass down on the ground next to Cass’s and started to walk away, swaying as he went. He was quite a bit more inebriated than he’d thought he was.

  Cass giggled to herself, watching him try and walk properly. He was starting to grow on her. The kid definitely had heart, unfortunately, that just meant that that particular organ would probably get ripped out a lot quicker. It made her want to protect him. Maybe Sophinia knew what she was doing when she had put them together.

  She reached down and picked up her glass. As she took a swig, she suddenly felt a wave of guilt pass over her. He was right, he didn’t deserve this. But she knew all too well that the innocent ones didn’t skate by in this world.

  Then a second wave of something hit her, but it was different. She felt warm all over. Her vision blurred slightly and her body tensed up. It wasn’t the alcohol. She’d need at least another bottle before she started to feel anything.

  She looked down and realized what had happened. She was holding Jerry’s glass. It wasn’t just his blood that was different, it was everything. His saliva was on the glass and she’d just gotten some in her mouth.

  Even as she worked it out, she stopped caring. Everything in her body started to tingle and burn with desire. She couldn’t stop herself from licking the glass and getting a second dose. It felt so good. Nothing she’d ever had before could match the lust she was now feeling.

  She wanted more. She needed more.

  Cass quickly shot back into the house and up to the bathroom door, just as she heard the chain flush. A moment later, Jerry walked out. He jumped and almost fell backwards after walking straight into her.

  “Cass? What’s up?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, she just moved closer to him, breathing hard with her eyes locked on him. Jerry was very surprised and started to back up, but he hit the wall. Her mouth opened and her fangs extended. She grabbed hold of him and moved her face so close to his that her nose started brushing his hair. She was smelling him, but his scent was covered.

  And then her lips were on his. Her tongue pushed its way into his mouth, hard. The more she got, the more she wanted. Jerry managed to push her off him for a second, but she came straight back at him, begging for more.

  “Cass, what’s wrong with you?!” he gasped.

  “Shut up,” she breathed and kissed him again. This time it was harder and more violent. She wasn’t holding her strength back.

  She couldn’t wait anymore. Nothing else mattered. His scent made vampires horny, his saliva drove them wild and his blood made them invincible. She’d lost control.

  Suddenly she yanked him out of the bathroom and shoved him through the door of his bedroom. He went flying backwards and landed on the bed. She was on top of him instantly. She grabbed his hand and forced it onto her ass.

  He couldn’t deny that he wanted her and squeezed causing her to moan. Then his senses came back to him and he pulled his hands away. He shifted his head so that she couldn’t kiss him anymore, but that only exposed his neck.

  She stopped, looking straight at the now healed wound she had given him before. Memories of his blood came rushing back and her whole body burned for it. She opened her mouth and readied her fangs.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw her. He panicked.

  “Cass, don’t!” he breathed, struggling, but she had him pinned.

  She moved in. At the last second, Jerry snapped his head back and her mouth fell on his again. This time he kissed her back and she groaned in pleasure. He took the opportunity to flip her over so that he was on top of her whilst her guard was down.

  “We can’t do this,” he whispered.

  “You want me,” she breathed and dug her nails into his back. They didn’t break the skin but they did rip through his shirt. She tore it off completely in a second. A moment later her hand went for his belt and snapped it off. “I want you!”

  Jerry’s moral safeguards disappeared. He did want her and he wasn’t so high and mighty as to turn her down, but he was scared. He was a virgin, but that wasn’t the real issue.

  What if she bit him while they were having sex? She’d kill him.

  He kissed her again as she stripped his jeans off of him. Within seconds she had clawed her own clothes off as well had and wrapped her legs around him. Her skin was getting hotter and hotter with every kiss he gave her, and he could have sworn that just for a moment he felt her heart beating.

  She forgot her strength more than once. She squeezed his arm so hard that his muscles ached and held him so tight that he couldn’t breathe, but it was good. She brought her mouth to his neck at least a dozen times, but never bit down on him. The sexual draw of his saliva was stronger than her lust for his blood. She didn’t need to drink from him because she’d already felt the bliss that came from doing so.

  The alcohol, combined with living out his greatest sexual fantasy, had taken away any reserves Jerry had had about this. He knew it was wrong and that it would definitely cause problems, but at that moment he didn’t care. He was enjoying having their bodies locked together too much.

  It made him feel alive again.

  CHAPTER 17 – FAMILY MATTERS

  Joe’s House – St. Cloud.

  Cass was sleeping peacefully, curled up in a ball on the bed. Maybe it was overdosing on the saliva or maybe it was the ecstasy that had hit her when Jerry peaked, but it had knocked her out like a light a few moments later. Jerry was out cold and lying next to her.

  Both of them were shocked out of their snoozing by a jug of icy water being poured all over them.

  “What the hell are -” Jerry barked, before seeing Claire’s livid face looking down at him. Joe, equally pissed off, was standing behind her. Slowly he turned to see a very naked Cassandra lying there. “Oh...”

  “Holy shit!” Cass gasped, as the memories of last night flooded back to her.

  “You want to explain just how the hell this happened?!” Claire hissed through gritted teeth.

  “I’m kinda curious about that myself,” Jerry mumbled, his face turning red.

  “What?”

  “I went to the bathroom and when I came out she was a raving sex maniac.”

  “What?! This isn’t my fault, it’s yours!” Cass shrieked indignantly.

  “Mine? I didn’t do anything!”

  “Whatever is in your blood, it’s in everything! Sweat, tears - hell it’s probably in your goddamn piss!” she yelled, causing him to look a little uncomfortable. “And it’s in your saliva. I accidentally drank your drink, your saliva was on the glass and it got in my mouth.”

  “Wait? Jerry’s saliva makes you super powered as well?” Joe asked in surprise.

  “Not exactly...his smell makes us horny, his saliva has about fifty times the punch,” Cass said.

  “Okay, I did not know that!” Jerry said, holding up his hands.

  Cass sighed angrily and stood up. She didn’t giv
e a crap that she was naked, she just started grabbing the clothing that wasn’t completely torn apart and slipping it back on. She was a stripper after all. Joe looked away while Claire continued to glare at her sister in outrage.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?!”

  “Well how the hell was I supposed to know that he’s got vampire roofies in his freakin’ mouth?!”

  “Any kind of control is just beyond you, isn’t it?!”

  “You mind letting me get dressed before we talk about this?”

  A low growl slipped out from Claire’s mouth and she turned and marched out of Jerry’s bedroom. Joe looked at his nephew for a second and shook his head.