Conversion Book Two: Bloodlines

by S. C. Stephens

  “Teren, we removed the memory of your face from every other person in that school.” She blinked as she thought about that. “I don’t know how Grandmother missed her, really.”

  Teren interjected, his face sheepish as he twisted to face his parents. “Carrie’s mom removed her when she discovered what had happened. She pulled her, and took her to another school, to get her away from me. Since you weren’t aware how close she and I were, I never told you that she left.”

  Alanna’s eyes widened. “Teren, we rely on you to tell us everything, so we can get everyone. It was the only reason we let you attend a regular school in the first place. If you’ve held back…” I could see Alanna’s eyes calculating all the people they’d have to track down. It was daunting, even to me.

  His head hung down under the weight of her words. “It was just her, Mom…she was the only one.” He raised his head, his pale eyes pleading. I found myself squeezing his hand in encouragement. “And her parents never met me either. It was just her, I promise.”

  Jack finally stepped into the conversation. “Halina went to a lot of trouble to blur you out of the students’ memories, to make sure that no one specifically remembered you. That was very foolish of you, Teren.”

  Teren seemed to crumble at his father’s words. I think they crushed him more than his mom’s. I put a hand on his chest and he looked over at me, grateful for the comfort and looking like he felt he didn’t deserve it. I kind of wanted his parents to ease off, my own anger gone at his clear repentance. He honestly had only made a mistake that thousands of teenagers made every year, and I suppose for all parties, this one had worked out for the best.

  Alanna wasn’t quite done with her reprimand though. “I will give you time, but she has to be wiped. Her especially, since you are such a strong memory.” She shook her head. “She knows too much, Teren.”

  “She knows nothing, Mom.” He tried again.

  Alanna firmly shook her head, not budging on the issue of her family’s isolation. “She remembers you, that is too much.” She raised an eyebrow as she gazed at him sternly. “What if you run into her in sixty years, Teren? She will be old and frail, but you, you will be the same man she knew, young and strong. What then?”

  He frowned. “I was a kid. I look nothing like I did then. I should be allowed to keep my childhood.” He frowned and sounded a little petulant. Alanna sighed, sounding like she’d had this argument with him before. He bristled at hearing a sigh he’d probably heard before. “Besides, she’ll be older; she’ll assume I’m a grandson or something.”

  Alanna looked down and shook her head. “That would probably work for some…” she lifted her head and sadly shook it, “but you’ve left her with too strong a connection to you. She’ll look in your eyes, and see you looking back at her, and she will have no doubt over who you really are.”

  He shook his head, but she cut him off when he opened his mouth to speak. “It’s part of your nature, Teren. It’s part of what makes you a vampire. You have a strong magnetism that humans respond to. In small doses, it’s fine…but you bedded this woman, repeatedly.” She raised an eyebrow. “You were each other’s firsts?” Teren looked embarrassed, but nodded. Alanna nodded in response, his answer seeming to solidify her point.

  Alanna glanced at her husband and then back at Teren. She gave him a look that a parent gives a teenager when they are about to speak about something that will horrifically embarrass said teenager. “Your sexuality is also part of being a vampire; it’s more in your vampiric blood than your human blood. It’s just a vampire’s nature.” Teren flicked a quick glance at me and I flushed horribly, just as embarrassed as if I was young again, and my mom was trying to explain to me where the “boy” part went. Alanna quickly continued to the finale of her point. “This human, that you’ve let get so close to you, will always remember you, if that is left unchecked. Even ninety and senile…she will remember you, Teren.” She shrugged. “Your nature…makes you unforgettable.”

  She smiled softly and squeezed Jack’s hand, Jack looking a little embarrassed too, but giving his son a look of fatherly support. I tried to ignore that Alanna was basically saying that sex with a vampire was so good - no one would ever forget it. I knew that that was true, but I didn’t like some strange woman out there also knowing that was true.

  He hung his head and then finally, nodded. She put a friendly hand on his shoulder and spoke too softly for me to hear. He nodded again and finally lifted his head to look at her. “Why don’t you take your wife home, dear?” Alanna looked over to me sympathetically. “I’m sure you have a lot to discuss.”

  He nodded a final time and then gave her and then his father a swift hug goodbye. Then he took me back to our home and spent the rest of the evening telling me about his greatest childhood mistake. By the time he was finished with his story, my anger was sapped and I held him and consoled him, finally feeling the experience through his terrified, teenage eyes instead of my own jealous ones. Experiencing it that way, I found I could let the horrid images of them having sex go, and could feel his fear, both at the thought of being a father so young, and at having the mother possibly go into hysterics if she ever found out what he was. And she would have, once the baby was born. Now that I was beginning to understand just how rare my initial reaction was, I couldn’t imagine how frightened and alone young Teren must have been.

  I couldn’t forgive him for not telling me (that really should have been something he mentioned while we were trying) but I could understand why he didn’t like talking about it. And after we spent an entire night talking about it, I let it go. Well, I tried to anyway.

  Chapter 10

  Of all the Cities, in all the World...

  Teren and I didn’t talk much about Carrie after that and he didn’t meet up with her while she was in town. I think he wanted to; sometimes when we were at home, I’d catch him staring at the door, lost in thought. I think he wanted to see her, just to make sure she was okay, that her life had turned out well. As if he were somehow responsible for every bit of sadness she may have had over the past ten years, because he’d let her remember one tragic event that had happened when they were kids. But he didn’t leave my side. Maybe he felt like he’d done enough damage, and was kissing up to me by not seeking her out or maybe he was nervous that she’d notice his changes. Either way, two weeks went by, and while I wasn’t sure how long she was in town for, most vacations don’t last longer than that.

  I relaxed tremendously after that second week passed and I didn’t see her again. I know it wasn’t her fault that she had a history with my man, but I didn’t exactly want to sit around and compare notes with her or anything. Once she left, I surprisingly found myself grateful that I had run into her at all. Teren may have never brought up that part of his history without a little prodding. He could just be secretive like that, if he thought he was protecting someone, and he didn’t want to hurt me or expose Carrie to his family.

  I was getting to be a little better with the fact that he hadn’t told me. I mean, we really did jump right into this relationship head first and never really sat down to discuss our pasts. And there were certainly a lot of things in my past that he didn’t know. For instance, I’ve never told him about the guy who slipped me a roofie at a party (thank god for girlfriends and nothing happened) or the guy who had become so obsessed with me in college that I’d nearly had to get a restraining order on him to get him to back off. There were a lot of little skeletons in our closets that Teren and I had just never had the time to sit down and look at. And he repeatedly assured me that Carrie was the biggest, the one he’d been trying to hide from his family, and had inadvertently hid from me as well.

  But he couldn’t hide her from his family forever, not thanks to my sort of public declaration of their past, and eventually Alanna or Imogen did tell Halina. It became immediately apparent when they did. She showed up on our doorstep, looking hot and fiery, a thoroughly pissed off vampire. I hid out upstairs while he and H
alina “discussed” the situation that was Carrie. I’m not sure what they said exactly, since most of it, at least from Halina’s side, was in heated Russian (apparently being really mad got her to revert to her native tongue). Teren responded in English for the most part, but catching just one side of a conversation was frustrating and after awhile I stopped listening.

  When she slammed the door and left, all I’d gotten was the fact that Carrie had indeed left town and Halina wanted to know where to find her. Teren didn’t know, or wouldn’t say, and Halina was on the warpath to find out. She wanted her wiped more than anything, much more than she’d wanted Ben’s memories. I had a feeling that she’d take everything from Carrie, just to teach Teren a lesson. Assuming she ever found her that is.

  But not everything was stressful. Amid the drama of Carrie’s surprise visit, Teren and I had the big ultrasound. He walked me into the lab where they ran the tests, his nose wrinkling at the antiseptic smell that bothered even my sense of smell. We sat in padded waiting room chairs and he rubbed my shoulders while we waited. He’d been doing a lot of massaging after our spat. I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t necessary, that he really didn’t need to keep buttering me up. He was good at massages and my body was sore, and aching in spots I hadn’t expected to ache in, and I wasn’t about to ask his heaven-sent fingers to stop.

  A short, plump woman with platinum hair and raspberry scrubs called my name and after Teren helped me stand up, we walked over to the doorway to greet her. She held her clipboard to her chest as her pale eyes took in our excited faces. “First timers?” she asked brightly.

  I nodded eagerly and Teren chuckled, rubbing a spot on my back as we followed the nurse through the door and into a hallway leading to several small exam rooms. She nodded her head as she walked us by spaces full of various complicated looking equipment. We passed other patients, some getting tests done that were not nearly as joyous as the one we were about to take, and I tried to contain my joy and not smile merrily at the more dour faces.

  Sweeping her arm, the chipper nurse said, “Well, we’ll take good care of you.” I bounced into the room with her and plopped my growing body down onto a flat, padded bed.

  Teren walked in before her and she encouraged me to lie down while she shut the door and flicked off the light. The room had no outside windows, like my doctor’s office did, and the space darkened dramatically. Teren froze where he was by the closed door, momentarily closing his eyes as he didn’t know how dark the room was, didn’t know if that odd glow he couldn’t control would be too bright. The nurse didn’t catch his pause and walked over to me, turning on a couple knobs to warm up the machine as she started going on about how exciting the first pregnancy was. I only partially listened to her as I stared at Teren. He was still standing close to the door, behind her, ready to slip out of the room if his eyes were too perceptible.

  It wasn’t exactly dark though; a couple nightlights cast a soft light and the machine itself had a glow that made it almost seem bright, the closer you got to it. My breath held as I watched him put a hand in front of his face and open his eyes to look at it. I could see the glow from where he stood, back in the darkest section of the room. He could see it too. He looked up at me, tossing a quick glance at the nurse. His face looked torn; he wanted to stay, but he couldn’t if she’d notice.

  I felt tears sting my eyes that he may miss this and found myself reaching my hand out for him. He tilted his head as he watched me, even more torn. And then he took a deep breath and came over to me. My heart increased as I watched him walk past the technician. She was busy prattling on about the miracle of life while she ran through a few steps on the computer, and really wasn’t paying any attention to the undead man walking past her.

  Keeping his gaze down, he went around to the far side of the bed and sat in a spinning stool. He shifted the rolling contraption so that he could both hold my hand and be closer to the nightlight. Taking another deep breath, he lifted his head to look at me. I swallowed as the glow was still really perceptible to me. But then again, I knew it was there. I tried to see the whites of his eyes as an outsider would, but I was so used to it, it was a little difficult. I shrugged, not knowing if it was noticeable to others or not.

  “Hey, relax, dear. You’re all tense.” The jolly nurse was stroking my arm and I made myself not worry. She started taking my vitals and asking me if I’d loaded up on water (because apparently having a bladder close to bursting is how they get the best picture), and then she looked over at Teren, finally.

  She was listening to my heart and I knew it had just started spiking as her gaze locked on Teren’s. He immediately shifted his gaze to my face, but the nurse frowned and tilted her head, like she swore she had just seen something weird, but wasn’t sure what. Teren’s fingers tightened around mine and I was pretty sure he was holding his unnecessary breath.

  The tech turned back to me. “You nervous or excited about this, honey? Your heart’s all over the place.” I let out a nervous chuckle and felt Teren’s fingers relax as he lightly laughed as well.

  Without looking at Teren again, she squirted some really cold, blue liquid on my stomach and rubbed it around. I had to laugh as the twins started to kick and squirm. The liquid was as chilly as Teren’s touch and they were responding, just like they did when he touched me.

  “Oh, active aren’t they? Well, that will ease up when things start getting tight in there.” She took what looked like a handheld grocery store scanner and rested it over my stomach. As she twisted it around, she shook her blonde head. “Twins. Brave woman. A girlfriend of mine had twins and those two have aged her at least a decade.” She laughed and looked up from the computer monitor to my face, looking a little worried that she’d offended me, or scared me. “I’m sure it won’t be like that for you though.” Her tone clearly said that she thought it would be just as tricky for me, but she didn’t want to freak me out.

  I smiled and nodded encouragingly, like I was sure my children would be perfect angels and nothing like her girlfriend’s. I wasn’t sure what they’d really be like, but I’d love them no matter what. Just as I was busy picturing black-haired, blue-eyed toddlers crawling around my feet, the nurse pointed to some hazy, gray blob on the screen.

  “And there is a good one of a face.” I stared at that stupid screen until she shifted it, nodding, like it was the best face I’d ever seen, but really, all I saw was an abstract gray and white swirl of indistinguishable features.

  Teren squeezed my hand, and looking back at him, I saw tears in his eyes. He’d seen it, whatever it was. His eyes faintly glowed at me as he smiled and stroked my hand. I sighed and looked back at the screen, hopeful to see something that resembled a child today. Then she spotted something and focused the image on it. Then I gasped. It was five perfectly distinct digits that were unmistakably a hand. I started to cry and felt Teren’s cool hand brushing a tear off my cheek. The nurse smiled over at us and went on about other body parts that she and Teren could clearly see. He was quiet, listening to her, but not commenting, not wanting to drawn her attention back to him, but he squeezed my fingers whenever he saw something. I never saw anything else that resembled anything other than a gray blob, but that one hand made my day.

  At the end of the test, she looked at each of us with a crooked grin. “Do you want to know the sexes?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  Teren and I both looked at each other and then simultaneously shook our heads. That was one thing we’d both agreed on earlier. We wanted the surprise. It had annoyed my mom to no end when I’d told her that we weren’t going to find out. She’d used the excuse that she needed to know if she should buy pink things or blue things, but I’d been firm on my decision and told her to stick to yellows and greens. We’d decided that some things were just meant to be surprises, and babies were one of those things.

  The technician nodded and wiped off my belly, helping me adjust my clothes and sit up. Teren wrapped a cool arm around my waist, his slightly glowi
ng eyes beaming at me. She flicked the light back on and we both blinked in the suddenly bright room. I exhaled a true sigh of relief that we’d gotten through that without him getting caught, and without caving on the babies’ sexes. And as the nurse merrily tucked away the machine, she assured us that everything was well within the spectrum of normal, and she saw nothing to worry about. It made me obscenely happy to hear that my kids looked normal.

  When we left the lab it was dark outside and as we walked through the orange light of the parking lot lamps, a happy smile was on my face as I thought about that tiny little hand floating around in my body. I imagined the baby attached to it was sticking it into its mouth and sucking on it. I’d read in one of my baby books that they sometimes did that in the womb. Teren was grinning ear to ear as he described the face to me. His vision had seen it in even more perfect detail than the nurse had seen it.

  He was describing the tiny, button nose he’d seen, when he suddenly stopped walking, grabbing my hand to stop me as well. I looked back at his concerned face searching the darkness. I looked over the lot to the other side of the street where a cluster of trees were thick with shadow. Teren made no protective move like he did sometimes, so I thought maybe he was sensing something he knew, like maybe a relative.