Parasite Life

by Victoria Dalpe

  Sabrina plopped into the living room chair. “This is nice. Better than Isabelle’s dorm, if we survive.”

  I felt awkward in the space, as if it were riddled with traps or hidden cameras. The whole situation was off. It shouldn’t have been this easy to find Hugh. We should be lying uncomfortably on a dorm floor an hour away. This all felt like a dream.

  After sitting in tense silence for a while, Sabrina demanded more stimuli and turned on the TV. Some reality show she liked was on, so it took the focus off me.

  I flipped through an art book displayed on the coffee table and wondered at the drink ring on the glass-top surface. Did Hugh come here and visit clients? Did he come here to drink blood? I forced myself to stop obsessing and tried to relax. At least for the time being we were safe and comfortable, and the trip so far had been a success: we found my father, we weren’t sleeping in a car, and he didn’t immediately try to kill us. And on top of that Sabrina was right: I had to keep marching forward. I couldn’t go home emptyhanded. The stress of the day slowly caught up to me, and before I realized it, my eyes had closed.

  XXVIII.

  Something woke me—a feeling, more than anything. I hadn’t planned on falling asleep. I bolted up in panic, scanning the well-lit room. It took a moment for everything that had happened to flow back. I saw Sabrina sprawled in the chair, snoring softly. The TV was still blaring, some late-night infomercial.

  I was about to stand when Sabrina made a sound of protest and twitched in her sleep. Her arm was draped over the edge of the chair—I followed it down to the floor, where a dark shadow knelt. Quietly suckling. I must have made a noise. The shadow’s head shot up, mouth red, eyes nailing me to my seat. Hugh.

  He rose and, before I could move, was suddenly looming over me. I slid away from him, off the sofa, falling to the floor. I got tangled in the throw, about to yell, when he signaled for me to be quiet and gestured toward the bedroom. Without a word, I followed, confused, as if on a leash. I looked back at Sabrina once. She had turned onto her side, injured arm pulled in like a bird wing, but otherwise seemed unharmed.

  Once in the room I closed the door. I was surprised how much sound was blocked by it. Or maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, given what Hugh was. The television was nearly silenced.

  I glared at him. “What the hell are you doing?!” I hissed, trying to contain my anger.

  He smiled at me. Smiled, almost playfully, and came closer to me. I stayed near the door, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. “I didn’t mean to wake you, I just wanted a taste.”

  He passed me and opened the closet, pulling out a stack of linens and set them on the bed. I was angry but paralyzed, powerless to proceed. He stared at me, expectantly.

  “That’s my friend in there! You can’t just walk in and bite her!” I sputtered, unsure what the appropriate response to this horrible situation was.

  “You need to calm down. And quiet down.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  Hugh rolled his eyes, as if annoyed this was still a discussion. “I’m not going to apologize. You came here to learn about us. Now you know—at the core we are opportunists. We have to be.”

  “That’s not a good enough reason to molest someone.”

  “I didn’t take much at all, I promise. Barely two mouthfuls. Please sit.”

  I eased onto the edge of the desk chair, prepared to spring up. I felt itchy, but Hugh was still taking his time.

  So I watched him. He was tall—not overly so, but enough to intimidate. Square jaw, lined face, coffee-brown eyes that gleamed in the dim lamplight. They were inhuman, too much like a shark’s or an insect’s. I was close enough to reach the door if I needed to, but it didn’t comfort me. He settled onto the corner of the bed.

  “How long has she been with you?” Hugh said this casually as he laid his hand on the pile of sheets, smoothing them.

  I thought about it. “A month, maybe a bit more.”

  “And she knows what you are? So quickly?”

  I nodded. “She found out when I did. . . .” I didn’t know how much to say, what to tell him. I wanted to be honest, but he frightened me. And I was still so angry at him.

  “How is that possible?” Hugh asked.

  “My mother kept it from me. I didn’t know. I guess I chose not to know.” I tightened my jaw. “But it’s my turn to ask a question. Why sneak in like that?”

  “Honestly? I was curious. Curious to see if you would trust me enough to come here, and when I came in and saw her lying there, I was curious what she tasted like.” He shrugged. No shame. “As I said, this is what we are, what we do.”

  “This is not what I do,” I answered stiffly.

  Hugh raised his shoulders, cavalier.

  “Are we . . . even human?” I blurted, heat crawling up my neck.

  I expected him to be angry, but he leaned back, pursing his lips, thoughtful. “At least partially, yes. Your mother was human. And we live, we age, we die. We aren’t immortal like in the movies. But we can live longer than regular people, and we are tougher than regular people. We just lack something, some wholeness. We need the blood and the lifeforce of others.”

  He crossed his arms. “I’m no geneticist. All I know is the vampire gene, or whatever it is that makes us what we are, travels down from either parent. Our infant mortality is high, but we tend to breed true. Unfortunately, when we reproduce, it often kills the mother because she has to give everything. Mothers carrying vampire babies basically are drinking for two.” He paused, meeting my eyes. “So, it’s smart to go the Sapphic route with your little friend out there. Since becoming a mom is pretty much a death wish. I killed my human mother. It’s normal for us.” He smirked. “It does happen in nature, to octopuses of all creatures, but I digress.”

  He was so blasé about his mother dying that it left me speechless. I pictured my mother, sitting beside a cold stove, congealing oatmeal in a bowl before her. I had been so consumed with finding my father, finding the truth, that I’d left her alone. Now I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing out. She might not have been mother of the year, but to be condemned to a slow death by her child seemed especially cruel, for anyone.

  I dragged myself back to the moment. I was so tangled in my guilt I’d missed what Hugh was saying, so I tuned back in. He didn’t seem to notice, anyway. I was getting the impression he liked to hear himself talk.

  “My mother died when I was about five. My father kept nannies and tutors in the house, all of them like Natsuki, or your mother, or your little friend out there.”

  “Her name is Sabrina,” I said.

  Hugh smiled at me like he was pacifying a baby. I clammed up and he plowed along as if I’d never spoken.

  “My father would marry and move, marry and move. Always wealthy widows, or young women with sizeable dowries. This is our way. His mother, my grandmother, was a many-times-over widow before she died when my father was little. That’s just how it’s always been with our people. It has to be, if we want to survive.”

  “Why?”

  “Surely you’ve noticed that most people have a real aversion to our kind.” I nodded. He pressed on: “Self-preservation. And for that reason, we aren’t good at being the face of a business. We work better behind the scenes. We aren’t naturally creative either. But we’re good at pulling the strings. My theory is we are too concerned with filling our bellies to be great artists. But we make excellent muses, and wonderful maddening obsessions, and even better grieving widows and widowers.” His eyes twinkled at his own cleverness.

  I swallowed. “What do you mean?”

  “That you’re young. And ignorant. It’s not your fault. If you had grown up as I had, you’d be more accustomed to my humor.”

  “I could have grown up that way, if you’d stayed with my mother,” I said venomously.

  He chuckled. “You seem like a nice enough girl, but I didn’t want to be anyone’s dad, let alone a little bloodsucker I’d have t
o take care of. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “And clearly nature finds a way, even though you made her sick and basically ruined her life, she had you and raised you. Honestly, my father could barely look at me growing up, and I didn’t want to be like him. Didn’t plan to pass the bloodline along.”

  This was what I’d come for. This was the truth, the one I dreaded most of all. Over and over in my head I thought: I want to go home, I want to be in my own bed. I strangely missed my mother’s silence compared to this pragmatic indifference.

  “Is your father still alive?”

  “My father lives in Edinburgh now, an old gargoyle with a harem of very pale nurses. My mother was from Greece. They met on holiday, and after a whirlwind affair she ended up pregnant and the rest is history. I was like you. Unplanned, unwanted, even. But my father stuck around, cared for my mother and me until she died. Tolerated raising me. He must have loved her most of all to do that. Do you understand?” Hugh caught my eye, and there was a flash of something almost human in his face. A sadness for his mother perhaps? A kinship for being unwanted like me?

  “But even with all his love, she lived only until I was almost six. So how is it that Vivian is still with us now? She must have been bringing in . . . help.”

  “Hitchhikers,” I murmured, feeling as if I had just broken some secret trust.

  “Really? I never would have thought Vivian to be so ruthless. She must care deeply for you.”

  I snorted, an ugly sound. “I don’t think it was love that motivated her. I think she had me to spite you. I think she wanted to prove something. She didn’t want me. I’ve brought her nothing but sadness and sickness. Like you said, I basically ruined her life.”

  Hugh nodded, but there was no real sympathy there. “For anyone to truly love us, they must give themselves. We need them. It’s what we are. And they need us in a strange way. They are unique. You have noticed how hard it is to really connect with other people?”

  I lifted one shoulder in a defeated shrug. “I feel like I’ve spent my entire life trying to find someone who’d even make eye contact with me. I never realized how strange it was until Sabrina came along. My doctor as a child, my mother, Sabrina, and a janitor. Four people in seventeen years.”

  “You’ll get used to that. Most people will cross the street to avoid us. So, you need to treasure and nurture those who don’t run. You need to be in a city—more people equals more friends. That’s why I surround myself with artists, and believe it or not, people in high finance. Those communities have more of our kind of people. They’re drawn to us: they want to be victims. They like the risks and they take care of us in turn. It’s an ecosystem, Jane.”

  “I don’t want to kill anybody.” I folded my arms tightly. “Can’t I feed off animals or something? Like get crates of rabbits or guinea pigs or . . .”

  Hugh shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. It wouldn’t be so bad if that were true. But what we are missing is so much more than blood. It’s them. Humans. It’s their life, their essence. We take everything.”

  I was numb. “So there’s no way to get what I need without killing?”

  “You’ll take it all and then there will be another,” he replied.

  I stared at the blank wall, thinking of Sabrina beyond it, my heart aching. “That’s so horrible.”

  “Jane, I don’t do it because I’m cruel. But it is what I am. It is what you are. I want to live. Don’t you?”

  “But . . . my mother got away. . . .”

  “The only thing that saved your mother was you, inside her. I hoped if we caught the pregnancy early enough you wouldn’t have gotten into her head, but nature is a strong thing. Without a hungry fetus inside her, she would have stayed with me.”

  “Why does it matter if she left, if there was always someone else waiting in the wings?”

  “Because she was mine, and she did have a real talent.” The way Hugh spoke about my mother was macabre. To him, it seemed like we were all little more than animals, driven by our biology. I swallowed. Would I be this detached one day? Silence stretched between us.

  “You really don’t remember how many people you’ve . . . loved?”

  “Why would I want to? If I really counted back, I suppose I could.” He paused. “Look, I know at this point in your life it seems unfathomable to forget someone like Sabrina. But she is your first love. You will understand with time. They come to us, they seek us out. Even when we hurt them, they come back. Surely you’ve noticed this? How they return even after they swear they won’t. Even when they hate us, even after we take too much.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of earlier today—how angry Sabrina had been, how terrified. But she’d come around. I had thought it was because of what we shared, but—

  “It’s almost—” I hated to say it, hated to think it, but I needed to. “You’re saying they want to be victims.”

  Hugh grinned. “Now you’re beginning to understand. They find you. They want to connect with us, they want us to love them. They want what we give them.”

  I hated that I believe him, but what little I’d experienced said it was true. “But we give them nothing. . . .” I felt like I’d been stabbed in the gut.

  Hugh began to pace, seeming too big in the confined space. “Not true. We need them to survive. Maybe that’s what they want. To be needed. Most people want love that ravages, that consumes, that devours. We live because they let us. It’s romantic, in a way. The ultimate sacrifice.”

  “Then maybe I should just kill myself,” I said.

  He waved me off. “That’s a bit extreme. But—do what you want.”

  “Wow. Thanks, Dad.”

  He gave another of his long-suffering sighs. “Just keep in mind that we are a tough little species. We want to survive. And trust me, it gets easier over time. You need to unlearn your idea of what a normal life is, or a normal relationship. Once you do, you won’t feel so bad.”

  “You don’t know me. You have no idea what I feel.”

  Hugh laughed fully now, walked up to me and bent to face me where I sat on the bed. “I can see your eyes, Jane. They are a killer’s eyes. I can see the lie that you cling to so desperately. You will kill that girl out there, and before she is even cold in the ground, you will have another. Or a few at the same time. And each time it happens, you will grieve for that love, but each time you will be too hungry to stop. We have to keep moving on to survive. In time, their loss will be like the changing of the seasons or the inevitability of the tide. It will just be. How. Things. Are.”

  He stepped away, resting his hip on the desk. His legs crossed as well as his arms, posing like a menswear model. To see him, you would have never believed that Hugh hunted people, that he killed people. “You came here for the truth Jane, that’s the truth.”

  In a flash, I could clearly picture the life my mother would have had if she hadn’t become pregnant. The one where my mother remained his plaything. She would have withered away until there was nothing left, inside or out. Hollowed out and fragile as blown glass. Fate had marked her the moment she crossed Hugh McGarrett’s path. Her life had been forfeited a long time ago.

  And then there was Sabrina, sleeping peacefully, curled up with a blanket, trusting me. She had known me for less than a month and already she had opened her veins and her heart. I swallowed, a stone lodged in my throat. I had so wanted her to like me for me. To care for me because I was a person who deserved love. I didn’t want to face the reality that the one person I’d really connected with was compelled to be with me out of some strange suicidal pheromone.

  I could feel Hugh watching me. I ignored him, tried to shut out everything in the room, in my mind. Blot it all out.

  “It’s a terrible life. Cruel and . . . lonely, no real friends or real love,” I whispered. I finally met Hugh’s stare.

  He frowned and moved away from me, stalling. He tried to act like a seasoned nonchalant killer, but I’d hit something vita
l. “Any life can be those things, Jane,” he finally said, his voice softer than I expected.

  He had responses for my anger, for my childish disappointment, even, but it was clear that the truth spoken plainly disoriented him. It brought out a sadness. I could almost feel the shift in him, as if the room’s temperature had dropped a few degrees. He sat back down on the bed, the mattress settling.

  “It’s not terrible. It’s just not as easy as regular people have it. This is who we are, this is what we are. We aren’t serial killers, we aren’t maniacs or sadists. We are just trying to survive, and if we could drink animal blood, or synthetic plasma, or take a pill, obviously we would. But we need that love, that energy. It feeds us almost as much as the blood itself does.”

  I leaned forward resting my elbows on my knees.

  “I don’t want to kill my friend. So what do I do? Is there any way to survive and avoid doing that? Any way at all?”

  “Sure.” He said it so easily that my head shot up, eyebrows high.

  “But you told me that—”

  “You let her go.”

  Hugh opened his hands wide. “And you find another, someone you care about less. That’s all. If you stay near each other it will continue. The only absolute way is to send her away from you.”

  I choked. “If I send Sabrina away . . . there’s no one else. My whole tiny, shitty town treats me like a pariah.”

  The unspoken fact was I didn’t want to send Sabrina away. She was my friend, my only friend. We’d barely spent any time together and already I was supposed to send her away, and be alone again, or eventually kill her.

  Hugh regarded me thoughtfully, hand over his mouth, rubbing the stubble at his chin. “I suppose you could stay here for a while. It’s a big city, and you wouldn’t be alone long.” He stood.

  My eyes welled up. I exhaled a shaky sigh, forcing myself not to cry. I avoided Hugh’s eyes. “Thanks for the offer. But my mother needs me still. She can’t be left alone. And if I break it off with Sabrina I’d be all alone.” I felt utterly hopeless.