Lies in Blood

by A. M. Hudson

  I imprisoned my smile, shaking my head, watching the bright sun turn to shadow over David’s brown hair as he disappeared under the eaves of the house, flicking a quick grin my way before heading inside.

  How could that man irritate me so much, then blast it all away with one look? I groaned, running after him. “Would you wait up?”

  He held the door open with his foot, signing both himself and me in to the logbook. “I’m just giving him a hard time, Ara. You know that, right?”

  “No, you’re doing everything you can to make sure he’s afraid to even look at me.” The door closed behind me, locking into place as it shut.

  “Can you blame me?”

  “No,” I said, folding my arms. “But don’t try to play innocent when I accuse you of being nasty.”

  “Fine. I’m being nasty. Get over it.” He handed me a visitor’s pass. “If he’d never spirit bound you, we wouldn’t have a problem.”

  I groaned, rolling my eyes, then held up the badge. “What’s this for?”

  “I want you to come to the restricted block—see Max.”

  I lowered the pass, toying with it for a second as the image of Max on the day I first met him flashed in my mind. He was so small and so thin, and his eyes were so hollow and dark. But it wasn’t the eternal sadness of his little soul that haunted me the most. It was the way the keeper’s metal stick speared his ribs and broke his skin, the child screaming then just laying there—all instinct to fight dead inside him.

  “It’s okay.” David cupped my hand and steered the badge up to my chest, pinning it to my blouse. “He doesn’t remember anything now.”

  I nodded. “I heard it took several sessions with Jason.”

  “Yes, but last night, Max actually slept.”

  I smiled at my feet. “What about Joshua—his brother?”

  David hooked a finger under my chin to roll it upward. “They’re both fine. Come see.”

  When we cleared the second security gate and locked it behind us, I heard a little voice squeal my name and a flash of gold hair tied with a pink ribbon caught my eye across the room, appearing beside me a second later. “Look what I can do, Ara.”

  “I’m watching, Lacey.” I stood back, folding my arms, a smile holding a certain amount of excitement and interest across my face.

  “One, two, thr—” Lacey grunted on the last word, tipping herself forward as both hands came down to the ground and her feet went vertical, the cuffs of her jeans sliding up her skinny ankles a little.

  I clapped. “Yay! Well done, Lacey. And did you practice with the hula hoop today?”

  “Yep. I can do it for three minutes now,” she said, holding up four fingers.

  “Aw, well—” I reached out and pulled her close for a hug; her tiny arms wrapped my waist, her head sitting just under my ribs. “Maybe you can show me when I come back from visiting with Max and Joshie.”

  “Okay.” She pulled away and placed both hands behind her back, smiling up at me. She was the most adorable child out of this group—her blond hair and bright smile lighting my every visit.

  “Ara?” David said softly, closing the security gate behind himself and a sharp-faced man with dark, receding hair—the kind of man who looked like he’d spent too long working in an office and not enough time in the sun, enjoying things, like a smile.

  “Go play, Lacey,” I said softly, touching her shoulder. “I’ll come by later.”

  She toddled off and sat in the art corner beside her little friend.

  “This is Ross Johnson,” David announced, and Ross offered his hand. “He’s come by to assess Charles.”

  “Great.” I shook his hand and dropped it quickly, fighting the urge to wipe it on my jeans. “I’m sorry we had to call you in, but we can’t really send our head psychologist in with Charles, because she’s Lilithian.”

  “Yes, I’ve been made aware of the basics of the case. Now, I understand this is the second group of children to come through the House?” He motioned around the room.

  “Yes,” I said, taking a half step away from the other children in the hopes Mr Johnson might follow. This wasn’t really the place to discuss this. “Over there we have Lacey and Harry, and the other two from this group were Charles and a three-year-old girl we’ve named Sophie—both in the secure wing.”

  “And what of the first group? Where are they now?”

  “Four kids have been adopted out to loving Lilithian and vampire families, and it seems they’re all doing remarkably well. The other two are in observation.”

  “Right.” Ross typed something on his tablet, nodding as he did. “Max and Josh, correct?”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering back to the first day I came to the Damned House and saw Max playing in the sunbeams by the window. “We’d held high hopes for Max. But, at night, when we had no control over the sunlight, he’d become monstrous and hard to handle.”

  “Yes, we had to restrain him after he tore the hair from a little girl’s scalp on his first night,” David said. “He was just too traumatised, and it seemed the dark only aggravated his torment.”

  “Right,” Mr Johnson said. “And Katy, your head psychologist, mentioned that Charles and Sophie showed signs of dissociative personality disorders.”

  “Yes, which may actually have been present before they were turned.”

  He wrote something else down, and I checked over my shoulder to see if Lacey and Harry were listening.

  “Why don’t we take this discussion into the secure section?” David suggested, winking at me.

  “Yes, of course.” Mr Johnson looked up then at Harry and Lacey, realising finally that we weren’t alone.

  “Ara?” Harry called, holding up a large rectangle page. “Look what I did.”

  I left David and Mr Johnson by the security door and wandered over to the art corner, my eyes going wider when I got a closer look at Harry’s picture. “I love this, Harry.” I squatted down and pointed to the house sitting under a sunny sky. “You’re using so many colours now. And, can you tell me—” I aimed my finger to the red apples in the tree. “What colour is this?”

  “Um.” He considered the apple for a moment, scratching just beside his nose. “Purple?”

  I looked over at David. His smile grew.

  “Very close,” I said. “But we call that one red.”

  “Argh!” Harry folded over his page, slapping his brow. “Stupid! Stupid! Stu—”

  “Hey,” David said gently, appearing suddenly beside Harry, gently taking both his hands. “Do you want to know something, Harry?”

  Harry looked at David. He idolised his king and wanted to be just like King David when he grew up, which saddened my heart immensely, knowing the Damned might never actually grow up. But his love for David had allowed them a certain connection neither had with anyone else at the House, and David could always get through to him.

  “When I was a little boy,” David started, “I always got the colour red and purple mixed up. They look exactly the same, don’t they?” His eyes slowly drifted onto mine, sparkling with a grin, asking me to play along.

  “I’m never gonna get this right,” Harry said, dropping his head between his hands.

  “You will.” David lifted his face again. “Because all you have to remember is that the colour red—” He pointed to the apple, “—is the same colour as blood.”

  Harry sat up straight.

  “And you like blood, don’t you, Harry?” David finished.

  Harry nodded.

  “Okay.” David stood up, tousling Harry’s orange curls. “And if you keep getting the colours wrong, guess what?”

  “What?” Harry said.

  “It’s okay. No one’s going to hurt you, son. We like it when someone makes a mistake around here because it means they’ve got another chance to learn. And what do we get when we learn something?”

  Harry’s eyes lit up. “Chocolate!”

  “Right.” David reached into his pocket and pulled out a Hershe
y’s. “Here you go, buddy. You learned that blood is red today, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then you can have this.”

  “Thank you, King David.” He jumped up and threw his arms around my husband. And my eyes watered. I loved seeing the children happy. It was just so easy to make them smile. All they wanted was a little love, a little encouragement, and when given anything—didn’t matter if it was a flower from outside, a pin from my hair that one of them liked, or a new pack of pencils—they were just so grateful it was heartbreaking.

  David patted Harry’s hair, holding back his own tears.

  “Okay, see if you can draw me a picture of a puppy, and I’ll come back after I’ve taken Queen Ara to see Max and Joshie, okay?”

  “Okay.” Harry sat back down and tore open his chocolate bar, leaning in to share with Lacey.

  “Come, My Queen.” David draped his arm over my neck. “I believe we’re invisible in the presence of sweets.”

  My head turned as we walked away, my eyes staying on Harry long enough to see him enjoy his first bite. “You’re good with kids, David.”

  “Kids are easy.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Just feed them sugar and they love you.”

  I laughed. “I’m sure those principles will change when we have our own baby.”

  “Of course.” He tugged me closer and kissed my hair. “Because she won’t be allowed any sweets.”

  “Any?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “If she’s anything like her mother, no amount of sugar could possibly make her any sweeter.”

  “Aw.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” Mr Johnson muttered flatly.

  David shook his head, ignoring it, for the most part, and keyed in the code to the security door.

  ***

  The tall, lanky boy with sandy-blonde hair stood up as we approached. Between us, a glass window sat as a divider from the hallway: a bullet proof, smash proof, and soundproof one that was mirrored on one side. Max couldn’t see us, but we could see him. Josh, however, had the finely tuned instincts of an adult vampire, a very old adult vampire, turning his gaze directly on us before we even stopped walking.

  “How is he?” David asked, and only then did I notice Katy had popped up beside him in her long white coat, clipboard in hand.

  “He’s showing progress, David. We closed the curtains today while he was playing in the sunlight, and he looked up, but he didn’t screech or back into the corner this time.”

  David smiled, his eyes staying on Max. “Jason asked to do one last session with him. What are your thoughts on this?”

  “I have to say, I agree.” She took one step closer to the glass, her loving eyes on the two boys as if they were her own children—the very reason we hired her and made her immortal. “He has no memory of his past before he came to the House, but he’s showing signs of repression. I’m worried it might all come back to him at once if we don’t dot every ‘I’, so to speak.”

  “And this present behaviour is what he commonly exhibits now?” Mr Johnson asked, peering into the room like Max was some science lab monkey.

  “Yes.” She turned her head and smiled warmly at him. “It’s almost like he’s a normal little boy.”

  “And what about Joshua?” the stern man asked.

  Josh looked up again. There was no way he could hear us, but I got the sense that he just ‘felt’ us talking about him. “We’re looking at giving him a position in the Rehabilitation Organisation,” Katy said.

  “Really?” I almost squealed. I’d never even thought of that, but it just seemed like such a perfect position for Josh. “I think he’d make an excellent carer.”

  “We think so too.” Katy nodded. “He shows deep empathy and compassion with the children, and seems to have a good rapport with them, too, even with Charles and Sophie.”

  “With Sophie?” I said slowly, my head reflexively angling toward the other two windows across the hallway. The lights were out in those rooms—the children preferring total darkness as they huddled in the corner, staring blankly at the walls.

  “Yes. I watched him yesterday: he stood in front of the glass and placed his hand against it—” She pointed to Charles’ room. “And Charles walked over, slowly, at first. But then, he placed his hand against Josh’s.”

  David and I looked at each other then back at Joshua, while Mr Johnson took more notes.

  “Does Josh want to be adopted when we find a family to take Max?” I asked.

  “Yes. He’ll stay here in the Organisation’s employ until such a time.”

  I nodded. “And Max?”

  “We’re predicting another few weeks of counselling and training, but if Mr Johnson concurs—” She presented him. “We’ll move Max back into the House next week.”

  I thought about Lacy and Harry. “Are you sure he’s stable enough?”

  “I wouldn’t move him if I thought otherwise,” she said reassuringly. “I love those kids as much as you do, My Queen. I’d never put them in jeopardy.”

  “Okay.” I clasped my hands and took a look around. “You’ve done really well here, Katy.”

  “No.” She smiled, looking in on Max again. “I think we all have.”

  The gentle hum of David’s lungs expanding took my mind from thoughts of the day ahead to a peaceful state of sleep. The silence in the cavity where a heart should beat, and the warmth of his arms around me after my blood had fuelled his body, were two of the things I would never take for granted—having spent too many nights just trying to imagine what it felt like to lay this way with him again. But, despite the tight embrace I fell asleep in, as my mind rose from deep REM, I suddenly felt too much space around me.

  I opened my eyes and blinked until the blur wrapped the corners and the featureless walls of a dark room—the space decked out with a single bed, a table and a lamp, with curtains hanging over what victims who came here would assume was a window. It wasn’t. This room was designed to contain the screeching terror they’d express when they realised this would be the last room they’d ever see. But the cement walls and iron door couldn’t lock away the screams of the past. I could still hear them—hear every cry ever muttered, every whimper and every plea. The quiet prayers for mercy were embedded in the bloodstains on the walls—deaths by the hundreds having occurred in the one tiny space. And there were twenty more rooms like this, each one authorised by signature of the queen.

  With Loslilian being so far away from towns or cities, we’d approved for the vampires residing here to have their particular dietary needs shipped in, provided they disposed of the bodies thoughtfully and quickly, keeping all kills discreet and private.

  But, unless I’d been typeset on the menu as ‘meal of the day,’ I really had no reason to be down here.

  I sat up fully and tucked my legs to my chest. The iron door was closed, probably locked, making the room as dark as it was cold. I always imagined these rooms were a little more inviting, maybe pleasant. But, then, how was a room of death supposed to feel?

  Being immortal hadn’t made accepting the death of humans any easier, and that was precisely why I had never come down here.

  “Hello?” I called, but it seemed like everyone had gone to bed. Except for the shapeless figure I spotted in the corner. I held my breath, waiting for it to move—praying to God it wasn’t a dead body. Not that a dead body would move, but . . . you know what I mean. It’d be pretty darn scary if it did. My life story had gone from normal to vampire in just a few weeks, and I wasn’t about to start adding zombies.

  “Hello?” I said again, this time a little quieter. And the figure moved—just once, just a breath taken and held, then, it turned its head and looked my way.

  I pressed my back to the wall, making myself smaller.

  “Who’s there?” it said, easing my rapid pulse.

  “Jason.” I exhaled his name.

  His eyes narrowed, searching the wall, his gaze sweeping pas
t me several times. He shook his head at himself then and turned away.

  “Please?” a small voice muttered.

  My eyes focused on a balled-up shape between him and the wall—its skin reeking with the sweat of fear.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” she said.

  “Shh.” Jason squatted down, brushing her thick, dark hair off her face. “I promise, no harm will come to you.”

  “What do you want with me then?”

  “Nothing you can’t handle.”

  “Where am I?” she said, her voice calming a little under Jason’s spell. “Where’s Jeff?”

  The vampire looked off to one side. “He’s . . . at peace now.”

  “What?” Her eyes went wide enough that I could suddenly see the whites. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s taking a walk through Purgatory,” Jason said, cupping her ponytail. “He’s looking for you there.”

  “What are you doing?” Her voice quivered.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” He yanked her hair, angling her head sideways to lengthen her neck. “I’m just going to kill you.”

  A scream split the seconds into minutes, the realisation of her own death sinking in only as Jason’s teeth did, breaking her skin and severing the windpipe until the cry became nothing but a gurgled whimper. The thick, warm scent of blood filled the air, burning my nose and throat. I rolled onto my hands and knees and pressed my wrist to my nose, heaving. If this was a dream, it was an awfully real, awfully vivid one. I could smell the dirt on the floors, feel the chill of death fog the wintry air; hear her screams like they were right in front of me. But it didn’t fit—Jason didn’t look right in here—killing that way. I always imagined him to be the compassionate kind of killer—one who’d make love to his victims and kill them gently, so they didn’t know. I just never pictured him as an attack killer.

  But, for some reason, I found it oddly sexy—in a very twisted, vampirish kind of way.

  “Right. That thought just crossed the line, Ara-Rose,” I said, pinching myself. “Wake up.”

  “Ara?” Jase stood suddenly, his arms falling by his sides as he slowly turned at the shoulders.