by Devon Ashley
“I’ve read this book. The true monster of the story was the creator. He had less humanity than his creation. And you’re not the same person I took off their hands back then.”
“Why did you?” she asked, puzzled. She was clearly a nightmare back then – cocked and trigger-happy. “After what I did?”
“It wasn’t entirely your fault. And I felt guilty for not checking up on you better.”
“Two hundred years later and I still have yet to live.”
He gently stroked her head. The repetitive circles soothed her aching mood, melted her troubles away.
“No rush. We have longer than most people do. We’ll have our life eventually.”
Abby murmured. Noel gently placed his hand upon her heart. Thub-thump. Thub-thump. It repeated rhythmically, like the soft musical vibrations of a distant bass.
She smiled. They rarely heard their own heartbeats. It was joyful to hear, a reminder that they were indeed amongst the living. The joyfulness, however, was a Catch-22. Their hearts only worked when necessary to flush the blood through the lines, to heal or to fight a possible infection. Abby’s encounter left her badly damaged. Her heart would continue to work until her body had completely recovered. Then it would lay dormant once more, until called upon again.
The fact that her heart was beating was why Noel endlessly shoved food down her throat. Her body required the necessary nutrients and energy components to keep her heart and lungs going strong.
She sighed. Her body ached as she forced herself into a sitting position. “Could you hand me the wastebasket next to you, please?”
He leaned back, grabbed it and placed it between them. She held the book over it and squeezed hard, trying to light it on fire.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving a proper farewell to the Abigail that was spawned in this hellhole.” She squeezed harder but nothing happened. “God, I suck,” she blurted in frustration. She held out her free hand to him.
He looked between her hand and her face, contemplating. “You do realize this book is probably worth fifty grand?”
Abby shrugged. “When have we ever cared about money?”
Frowning, Noel dug the lighter out of his pocket and handed it to her. “It’s just for once, we could make money legitimately.”
“By stealing?” she glared.
“Restitution.”
True. The Order certainly owed Abby an amends for a lifetime of neglect and abuse. However, her snap and murderous tirade may have made her the greater evil in the end. Eh, she thought. “Honey, they’ve got a whole bookcase of first editions back there they won’t even miss.”
She lit the book on fire and tossed it into the wastebasket. They watched as the flickering light grew in energy and completely encompassed the book. The edges browned first, folded in on itself and charred from the outside in. The flame reached the gilded lettering on the cover and slowly melted the golden metal to a blur.
“I wonder.”
Noel watched with curiosity as Abby dipped her hand into the fire. Just as she suspected, it didn’t burn her. When she removed her hand from the basket, a small flame rested in her hands. She squished her fingers into a tight fist and the fire extinguished.
“Does this mean I can’t burn to death? Salem would have been so cool for me!”
Noel chortled. “So why the sudden use of the big, bad power?” he asked, his eyes reflecting the sporadic waves of the flames between them.
“Didn’t use it, did I?”
“You tried,” he accused.
Abby’s throat burned with each inhalation. The smoke became blacker, thicker. Instinctually, she waved her hand toward the fire in hopes to blow the cloud across the room – nothing happened. Oh yeah, no powers.
Forgetting she was at a point in her life where she absolutely had to breathe to survive, Noel quickly transferred the can to the floor on his side of the bed.
She continued to wave the remaining smoke with her hands. “Before confrontation I saw the light. I created a fire without setting the burn off, but when I used the wind in anger the burn got all trigger-happy.” She was slow to add, “So you may have been right about the burn being associated with how I use the powers.”
Noel closed his eyes and chuckled.
“Shut up,” she said playfully. The subject matter was a disagreement they had been arguing about for their entire existence together. Admitting she was mistaken was hard enough.
“I’m just saying –”
“Shut up.”
“– if you had just listened to me in the first place –”
“Don’t say it,” she forewarned.
“– you could have started using this power two hundred years ago,” he finished teasingly.
“You really can’t keep from saying I told you so, can you?”
He closed his eyes again, a smile crossed his face. “Just…let me savor the moment. I was right, you were wrong.” He released a satisfying sigh and got up to leave. “I feel it.”
“What?” she asked, knowing full well she shouldn’t encourage him.
“The balance of power in this relationship has finally swayed my way again. I was right, you were wrong.” He playfully danced his way out of the room.
“Eh,” Abby grunted, waving him off. She was too tired to argue. Later she would have to retrieve him to help her pack Valerie’s belongings. No way was she going to call him back before the euphoria wore off.
One more week of rest and Abby and Noel were about ready to move on. Her jubilance to leave quickly turned to dismay when Noel finally came clean about the night she returned from confrontation.
“Are you sure?” she asked for the third time. Her insides had already numbed.
“I’m sure what I saw but I have no idea if the blood penetrated the wound.”
“Jesus, Noel! Have you told anyone? Sergei? God, please tell me you didn’t tell that jerk Nicodemus?”
“Of course not. Even if it is happening, that’s not a conversation I want to have anytime soon.”
Abby sank heavily into the bed. “What are we gonna do?”
“Come clean. We need to know if she’s having any side effects she’s not sharing. They could be so mild she’s completely dismissing them.”
Abby pursed her lips and shook her head back and forth as she stared blankly into nothingness. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
She somberly left the room. Her journey through the manor was long. She felt heavy, as if lead weights had been placed upon her shoulders, causing her to slump further down.
Chapter Forty-Three
On what was to be her last day at the manor, Emily had once again drifted to the conservatory. She was lying face up on a bench, staring up through the conservatory windows at the cloud-filled sky. The sun was trying hard to push through and successfully managed a peek here and there.
A gentle rustle moved through the foliage, making a bee-line straight for her. Darby and Mira, along with all the other hunters, had already left the school and returned to their designated cities. That left either Abby or Noel, so she wasn’t surprised when Abby emerged through the tropical plants. What did surprise her was her demeanor. Emily had never seen her look worse, except on the day she almost died. She was pale and sickly looking, even for a dead person. Her eyes were raw and avoiding her gaze.
“What’s wrong? And what are you doing here?” Emily rose and checked on the sun. “We should go inside.”
“No, we’re fine right here. You need to sit down.”
“Me? You’re the one that looks like she’s about to pass out.”
“Emily,” she started, pausing. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
“About what?” She had a suspicion she didn’t want to know this time.
“I was afraid to tell you everything before, because of the attitude you had toward my condition.”
“Which condition?”
“It’s just…you were a little too interested in how ou
r blood infected others and how to become more like us, that I neglected to tell you something extremely important. And if I had, this may not have happened.” Abby began babbling. “Or maybe it would have anyway, cause it would’ve been more plausible to go through with it.”
Her beating around the bush caused Emily’s anxiety to rise. After everything that had happened, she was too weak to take the apprehension.
“Abby! Just spit it out already. What didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.
Hesitating, Abby quietly replied, “I never died against Eraticus. Or at any other time. I’ve never actually died.”
Emily felt the breath leave her body. Numb, her body just hovered, gently swaying back and forth.
“I was already a vampire when I faced Eraticus. The damage he caused that night wouldn’t have killed me, just slowed me down.”
Emily fell backwards onto the bench again. Her head was swimming. Not dead? Impossible. “But you’re a vampire. Of course you’re dead,” she stammered.
“No, I’m a pure vampire and I’m not dead. Truth is, none of my kind is. I can touch crosses, walk on consecrated ground, drink holy water if I want. I can eat and breathe just like the rest of you, and sometimes absolutely have to.” Abby moved a few feet to her right and gently swayed her hand in the sunlight. “And though the sun will definitely burn my skin, it won’t in the way you think.”
“I – I don’t understand,” Emily whispered breathlessly. She watched as Abby’s hand absorbed the warm rays without catching on fire. “It’s not possible. You’ve been alive for two hundred years. You haven’t aged. Vampirism made sense.”
“I was honest about the blood. It stops the aging process. But to become a pure vampire, you have to be alive for the transformation to take place. The dead or the dying are unable to pump the blood through the body quick enough to beat the real p53 and lignands. If it doesn’t win enough cells to sustain the body, the body dies.”
Emily was confused, so much that her head was pounding. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Noel’s been monitoring you for the past few weeks. You’ve been feeling tired?”
“Well, yeah. But I’ve got a broken arm, and the pain killers and antibiotics were keeping me run down.”
“Were?”
“I stopped taking them a few days ago. They numbed me and all, but I was just so tired all the time.”
“And are you still tired?”
“A little, but they haven’t completely flushed out of my system yet.”
“Honey, no.” Abby sat next to Emily and held her hand. “Drugs don’t take that long to leave the system. The night you helped Noel work on my wounds, do you remember that?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Do you remember my blood soaking through the bandage on your arm?” Abby asked.
Emily gasped. She knew where this was going now. But it was absolutely ludicrous! “You’re not suggesting that your blood got into my wound? Barely anything got through to the skin.”
“But the point is, it reached your skin. All it takes is a tiny amount of blood to infect you.”
Emily paused. “Are you saying I’m transforming?”
Abby’s hesitation scared Emily. It was much too long.
“It takes a certain amount of blood to successfully convert the body. Without it…” Abby faded off, paused, then started back up again. “Our blood is poisonous. That small amount will travel through your body, poisoning it as it goes. Every cell it comes in contact with will go through cell death because you don’t have the decoys to keep it from happening. Your body is gonna try to keep making new cells to keep up with the dying ones, but eventually your body will fade. Emily, you’re tired and feeling run down, not because of the medication, but because your body is slowly dying. It’s exhausted.”
Tears had already begun to fall from her eyes. As soon as Abby reminded her that her blood was poisonous, she knew. She knew why Abby looked so pale, why she was holding her hand.
“How long do I have?” she asked emotionless, completely numb.
“I don’t know. This has never happened before.”
A sudden spark of hope rose within her. “Then maybe I won’t die. Maybe my body will develop a resistance to the blood.”
Abby was shaking her head in disagreement. Why was she doing that?! “You don’t know that!” cried Emily. “It could happen!”
“The only way to stop it is to stop the cells from completing cell death.”
“You mean infect me for real?”
She hesitated. Emily knew Abby was dead set against the idea. She felt she would be damning the person to a life of regret.
“Yes.”
“You’d do that?” Emily asked, her spirits lifting. “You said you wouldn’t wish your life on your worst enemy.”
“Of course not. Then my enemy would never die either.”
“When can we do it?” Emily asked eagerly.
“We need to get you home first. We can’t do this under the Order’s roof.”
Home? Was she nuts? I’m dying here! Anxiously, she asked, “Can I wait that long?”
“Don’t worry. Noel and I only took so long getting here to keep up appearances. We’ve got a quicker means of travel at our disposal. We’ll be home by tomorrow.”
Emily nodded in agreement. Before Abby could turn to leave, she asked something that confused her. “If the mutated line of vampires descended from the same bats as you, why are they dead and you’re alive?”
“The mutations began with the cannibal and continued from there. The first elders weren’t dead either, but like I said before, we wiped out the elders when this all began. When those they feasted on turned, it was only after they died from blood loss. That was their very first mutation.
“At first they wanted the raw meat, so they developed sharper incisors to rip the flesh. Then they just wanted the blood, so the incisors grew longer to pierce the veins. Next they started hunting at night to keep from being seen. That caused them to become sensitive to sunlight.”
“Can they actually be burned to death by sunlight?”
“I’ve never seen it happen. Legend has it the vampires were wreaking havoc on the population. In order to control them a little, the gods cursed them with sensitive skin that burns and blisters easily to keep them from feasting twenty-four seven.”
“So the mural in the lobby of the manor isn’t quite right?”
“Are you really surprised?” Abby grunted.
“No, not really. But you would think that we of all people would have that right.” Emily tried to rub and soothe the wrinkles folding across her forehead. “One more question, since we’re somewhat on the subject again. Eraticus.” Abby looked at her curiously. “Why did he abandon you? Your aura must have been so strong. Devouring it would have kept him satisfied for a much longer period of time.”
Abby pressed her lips hard, thinking. “I believe he had every intention of returning for it once I finally died. He was a little ticked off at me for getting in that shot. Apparently, even demons have egos. But he was willing to wait as long as it took for me to die. I suppose the longer it took, the better in his mind. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t there when he returned and had no interest in a rematch. We used a spell to keep him from finding us again.”
“But you found the sword. Why didn’t you lift it? You spent a hundred and fifty years looking for him.”
“We did lift it. But Eraticus wasn’t stupid enough to seek me out. How he found me the first time is a mystery. I had been a vampire for awhile, yet he found me on the day I actually would have turned twenty-five. When he didn’t come, we figured we’d never get close enough without him realizing it, so we cast the spell again and sought him out in secret.”
Abby left her in peace to deal with the ten million thoughts flying through her mind. It was all too much information for her to process. She was literally, in a sense, dying. Tomorrow she would become something else, something strange, something she
still didn’t fully understand. How many mores secrets had Abby and Noel kept from her? How many of those would concern her, possibly endanger her more than expected?
A month ago, she wanted this so badly, even though she thought the life involved a constant night life and a new fear of the sun. The idea was alluring. Immortality at a ripe age, an increase in power, a newfound importance with the work that she did, being included in secrets and missions that so few knew about. But now this new life scared her and it was approaching faster than the speed of light. There was no changing her mind or going back. Her future was set. Either this new life of the unknown, or death. There was so much she didn’t know or even understand.
Was this how Abby felt when she was tossed out of the manor? Thrown into a world she didn’t know how to live in? Abby at least had Noel to keep her in good company, to love her. How could Emily possibly find that now? A relationship was hard enough to keep just being a hunter. How could she have one now, knowing that her age would officially freeze within one day?
Questions and doubts continued to fill her head. She sat alone in the conservatory for several hours, camped out next to the largest fountain, trying desperately to drown out her thoughts with the loud splashing of water on rock.
Once Emily regained her composure, she made her way to the Chancellor’s office. She wasn’t interested in talking with Ethan, or the Chancellor, but she knew she had to speak to one of them. She stood at the door, unnoticed. Chancellor Moore was engrossed in his journal.
“I’m leaving,” she finally said.
He didn’t even bother to look up. “Be sure to be back by sundown. Curfew is still in effect while you’re here.”
“No.” That drew his attention. “I’m leaving with Abby and Noel.”
He leaned back in his chair and twiddled his thumb in his hands. “Emily, I’m sure whatever the problem is, we can come to a reasonable negotiation. You don’t have to completely leave the organization.”