THE HEALING HEART

by Zelda Clemens

  He laughed at my casualness and slid a glass of water and bottle of aspirin to me.

  “Thanks,” I replied with just a little bit of annoyance. I was grateful he knew what I needed, but I hated admitting I was wrong.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” Kyle said, looking past me. I turned and saw a yawning Ellen, very evident bedhead messing up her hair. She still looked gorgeous though, with a pair of shorts and an oversized sweatshirt on.

  “Hey, you two,” she smiled. She sat on a barstool beside me at Kyle’s kitchen counter, waiting for him to give us some sort of food. “Breakfast?”

  His eyes flicked over to me for a second before he stood and took a pan of bacon out of the oven. As for anything else, the box of cereal and jug of milk he set in front of us was all we were getting.

  “Good enough for me,” I laughed, pouring myself some breakfast. Ellen and Kyle were both acting a little weird about everything, and I was quite sure neither one had more than one strip of bacon.

  I went home for most of the day, mainly to check the shop phone messages and see if we had any arrangement requests. Taylor had the shop covered since we were just open Saturday mornings, so I didn’t have much work to do. I fixed myself up a bit so I wasn’t a sloppy mess and remembered to pack myself an overnight bag to keep that from happening again. Kyle insisted Ellen and I both stay over again. At this point – after last night – I wasn’t going to say no.

  I showed up at Kyle’s just after seven, early enough for dinner. He ordered a pizza barely big enough for two people, let alone three, but I didn’t question it. All of us were in proper lounge clothes: sweatpants, t-shirts, and, for Ellen and me, no bras. Spending time with Kyle and Ellen started to feel like I was hanging out with friends in college again. We drank, talked and didn’t have a care in the world. It felt good.

  Until that night rolled around.

  At around ten, Kyle brought out that bottle of wine and poured each of us a glass. I could have sworn that he had more wine than food.

  “Don’t let me have more than three, okay? I don’t want a repeat of last night,” I laughed, taking my first sip.

  “I didn’t plan on it,” he laughed.

  Our conversations went on as normal for a while, until I was about halfway done with my third glass. Ellen and Kyle both sort of shifted in their seats. The clock had just hit 11:30 and I knew we’d probably be heading to bed soon, mainly because Kyle and Ellen both had school sleep schedules.

  “Hannah, there’s something Kyle and I should probably tell you,” Ellen said, piquing my interest. “I know you’re not used to a relationship like this, but…there’s something else.”

  Oh no. “Don’t tell me you’re part of some weird cult or something. Or you’re pregnant. Or that there are more people involved,” I started rambling. Damn, this alcohol is hitting me hard, I thought to myself.

  “No, none of that,” Kyle laughed. He coughed a bit to clear his throat and looked to Ellen, who was looking at me. My eyes flicked between the two of them, waiting for whatever bombshell they were going to drop on me.

  “Have you ever read Dracula?” Ellen asked.

  I nodded.

  “We’re vampires,” Kyle said plainly.

  I couldn’t help the small giggle flying past my lips. “Yeah, okay. And I’m a werewolf,” I laughed, expecting them to join in. When they both stayed quiet, my smile faltered a bit. “Oh, come on. You don’t expect me to believe something like that. It’s ridiculous!”

  “No, it’s actually not,” Kyle said slowly. He moved from the chair to my left to sit beside me on the couch. “Listen, I don’t expect you to be comfortable with this right away, but it’s something you need to know.”

  “Kyle, I know you were my professor at one point but you don’t have to treat me like a child,” I replied sternly. “I don’t know what kind of joke you’re trying to play on me, but it’s weird now. You can stop.”

  The two shot glances between each other before Kyle finally sighed and set his hand on my thigh. “Please don’t run.” A rush of fear suddenly ran through my body. Why was my professor – now boyfriend – telling me not to run? Run from what? If anything, those three words made me want to do just that.

  Before I could ask what he meant, he looked down at me with red covering the irises of his eyes and two short fangs protruding from his gums. I would’ve shot back and looked to Ellen, but I already knew she looked the same. I couldn’t pretend to listen to Kyle. I stood up and I ran.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t make it very far before Kyle was standing in front of the door and Ellen stood behind me, keeping me trapped. The only way out was upstairs, and I knew if they could stop me from making it fifteen feet to the front door, they could stop me from making it upstairs.

  “Don’t hurt me,” I begged, the only sound I could get out of my mouth.

  “We won’t,” Kyle assured, stepping forward just a bit. I instinctively stepped back, nearly running straight into Ellen. Both looked normal again with no red eyes and no fangs. “We don’t hurt people. We just wanted you to know before things got too serious.”

  “Do you want things to get serious? Because this is a good way to freak someone out,” I said.

  “Of course we do,” Ellen said behind me. “We wouldn’t have told you this otherwise.” There was a moment of silence as my gaze flickered between the two supposed vampires. There was no way this could be real, right? That was ridiculous. “Let’s all sit down and talk about it, okay?”

  I simply nodded, letting them both lead me back to the couch in a dumbfounded stupor.

  “You know how unrealistic this all sounds, right?” I asked, more as a rhetorical question.

  “We do,” Kyle said. “I can’t say I reacted much differently when Ellen first told me what she was.” I looked over to Ellen who just shrugged in agreement.

  “I don’t really know what to ask. Should I be scared?”

  “Absolutely not,” Ellen said firmly.

  “Are you going to – God, this sounds so stupid – are you doing to…drink from me?” Just hearing those words leave my mouth felt wrong. It didn’t make sense. It sounded like a movie, especially considering how many of those were floating around theaters.

  “Only if you’re okay with it,” Ellen said, resting a hand on my knee.

  “But we can’t say we don’t want to,” Kyle muttered beside me.

  It felt like the blood was rushing straight to my head and for a minute, I figured that might be a bad thing. What if they lost control? What if they hurt me unintentionally? Oh God, everything turned into such a mess.

  “If you want to take some time to understand everything, we’ll understand,” Kyle said, running his hand up and down my back in an attempt to calm me down.

  I leaned forward and rested my head in my hands. “I just don’t know what’s happening,” I murmured. “How is this possible?”

  “To be honest, we really don’t know,” Ellen said. “I turned almost two hundred years ago,” Holy shit, “but other than who turned me, I can’t explain anything. I know how to control myself and I know what I physically can and can’t do, but I don’t know how this is possible either.”

  “So you’re, what, two hundred forty years old?” I asked her.

  “Two hundred thirty-three, thanks,” she said sarcastically, throwing in a little laugh. “I turned shortly before my thirty-sixth birthday, just under two hundred years ago. I met Kyle about fifty years after that.”

  I looked to the man on my left. The man I had only known for just under two years. Ellen had known him for more than a century.

  “So I’m…one hundred eighty-five?” Kyle said, uncertain of his answer. “I sort of lost track after I hit a hundred.”

  “This is so weird,” I muttered. I couldn’t make eye contact with either of them and I almost felt dizzy with everything they were throwing my way. “I think I need time to figure this out.”

  “Okay,” the both said in unison.

  �
��You can stay in the same room you were in last night,” Kyle said.

  “I think I’d feel better if I went to my own place.” Kyle’s shoulders slumped slightly at my comment, but he just nodded in response, helping me carry my bag to the door so I could drive home.

  “At least text me when you get home, okay?” Kyle said.

  I nodded and quickly backed out of his driveway and onto the street.

  *****

  The next morning, I still felt numb from the previous night’s confession. Vampires. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Vampires were something of fantasy, not something to mess around with and date. Even with all the doubt swirling in my mind, I forced myself back into my car and over to Kyle’s again, pulling into his driveway unannounced around noon.

  He opened the door before I could even knock.

  “Sorry. I heard you pull in the drive,” he said sheepishly. “Come in.”

  “Do I have to say that to you? To let you into my house, I mean,” I asked immediately. Kyle looked taken aback by my sudden questioning, but answered anyway.

  “Yeah. Any vampires have to be invited inside private residences. If it’s a business, it’s different. Hotels aren’t the same.”

  Ellen stood in the living room doorway, smiling as she saw me walk in.

  “Hey,” she said quietly. I could tell they were being more cautious with their words and actions after how I acted the night before.

  “Can you blame me, though?” I asked, finishing my thoughts out loud. “You guys told me you were vampires, for fuck’s sake.” My voice felt like I was shouting, but it was just because of how quietly the others were speaking.

  “Whatever you need to do, we’re fine with it,” Kyle said. He rested a hand on my lower back and I stiffened for just a second. Part of me remembered he was still the Kyle I knew in college, but another part of me knew he was deadly. He let out a quiet sigh of disappointment when he felt my body go rigid, but led me to the sofa so they could explain everything to me.

  “Is there anything you want to know?” Ellen asked cautiously.

  I just shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to ask,” I replied.

  “What were your questions?” I asked Kyle.

  “Do you want me to ask them or answer them?” he laughed quietly.

  “Answer them.”

  “We drink wine to curb the cravings.” That comment made me shudder slightly. Cravings just sounded dirty. “It’s not like smoking or alcoholism. We can control our cravings. It’s more like chocolate. You know how sometimes you could just really use a chocolate bar?”

  I nodded, a small smile breaking past my lips. “It’s like that. We do need it to survive and we can drink blood more than once a day, but we only really need it once or twice a month.” He paused to think of what else I might want to know.

  “We can’t read your minds and we don’t sparkle in the sun,” Ellen continued for him, snapping my attention back to her. “We would burn in the sun but there are certain gems and stones that keep that from happening. That’s why Kyle and I always wear these rings.” She held her hand out to show me a light blue ring on her middle finger. “It acts like a sort of barrier. Like I said with most things, though, I have no idea how it worked. The woman who turned me just handed me this and left.”

  “Most of what we tell you is from personal experience,” Kyle added with a smile. Something about his smile comforted me, and I found myself grinning with him.

  “Oh!” Ellen exclaimed. “Don’t worry about your period. We need blood from the vein.”

  I laughed at her comment and turned to see Kyle grimace.

  “You know how Kyle said blood is like chocolate? That’s blood from here,” she said, touching my neck, “or here,” touching my wrist. “Blood from down here,” she continued, resting her hand at the very top of my thigh, “tastes more like raw broccoli.”

  “Oh my God,” I laughed, unable to contain myself any longer. “Don’t worry about that. I’m still on birth control so I only get it once a year.” She seemed surprised at my comment, but it really wasn’t a big deal. “I don’t want any bad dates accidentally knocking me up. Especially not at thirty-six.”

  There was a moment of comfortable silence between the three of us. I was letting the new information sink in, but now it started to feel more normal, if a thing like that can ever be said about vampirism.

  “Are you okay?” Kyle asked. “Because if you want more time, we want you to be comfortable.”

  I let out a loud sigh. “I think I’m okay for now. Let’s just go about things as usual and we’ll see how this all plays out, okay?”

  They both nodded and our day went on like a usual weekend. They both had school in the morning, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be staying overnight – though I did pack another overnight bag just in case – but I knew I could stay and lounge with them all day.

  “Are you staying tonight?” I asked Ellen as the clock hit eight.

  “No, I should probably head home. I still have a few papers to grade before class tomorrow and I’ll need a full night’s sleep for my class,” she laughed.

  “You’re welcome to stay if you’d like,” Kyle added, so I knew Ellen leaving didn’t mean I had to as well.

  “Okay.” I looked up at him and smiled. I liked Ellen too, but I’d rather spend my first night with a vampire with Kyle since I knew him so well. Once he sort of ‘broke me in’, I’d be fine around Ellen every night.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Ellen smirked as she walked out the front door. “See you both later!”

  Kyle and I sat in silence for a minute, letting the show on television break the tension. Even after the news of him being a vampire, I still felt comfortable just sitting beside him. Spending the day with him and Ellen helped me grow more comfortable with the whole vampire thing, but I knew I’d still feel a little uneasy around Ellen. Knowing Kyle for as long as I did – and at the age I first met him – helped me relax.

  “Do you want me to make you any dinner?” he asked. “I don’t have to eat real food but I do have some to snack on.”

  “How does the food thing work?” I asked, following him into the kitchen. “If you don’t have to eat but you only need blood a couple times a month, how do you survive?”

  He shrugged and opened his fridge. “I wish I knew. Sometimes I do get genuinely hungry and food can curb cravings a little bit, but I don’t need it like I did as a human.”

  “That’s so weird,” I whispered. Kyle laughed quietly at my comment. “So do you have super hearing and super speed like in movies?” Ugh, I sounded like a teenage fangirl.

  “Yeah, actually. Well, super speed isn’t very ‘super’. It’s just faster than normal. I’m probably about as fast as Usain Bolt. The hearing, though. That’s pretty intense. Like right now, I can hear your heart beating clear as day. I have to focus on it to actually hear it, but it’s still there.”

  I felt my heart start to beat a little faster at his comment, but I couldn’t make it slow down at all. He quirked an eyebrow at me once he heard the rhythm speed up, but quickly turned back to making me some sort of taco dinner.

  I asked Kyle a few more questions while I ate my food. He sat and answered, occasionally grabbing little bits of cheese and lettuce that fell from the taco shell and eating them anyway.

  “Okay. This is hard for me to ask so bear with me if I change the subject a couple times,” I said with a light giggle. My heart started beating out of my chest and my mind was already racing at what I was going to ask. I hadn’t even fully comprehended everything they told me, so I surprised myself with the words that left my mouth. “Tonight…will you – oh, God, I hate using this phrase. It just bothers me a little bit, you know?”

  Kyle just smiled and nodded even though he had no idea what phrase I was talking about. Damn, he’s good at listening, I thought to myself. “Will you…drink from me?” I finally mustered the courage to ask.

  Kyle’s eyes grew wide at m
y question. “I…I mean, are you sure? You don’t have to jump into it that quick. You can take some time to really get used to it.”

  I shrugged. “This is the only thing that’ll be different, right? I mean, you don’t burn in the sun or sleep in a coffin. So the only thing I’ll need to get used to is…your diet.” I cringed at my final word. It still didn’t feel right talking about people and blood like food, but I doubted it ever would.

  “That’s true,” Kyle nodded. “If you want to, that’s fine. It has been a couple weeks.”

  I swallowed hard at the next question I was going to ask. The worst part of all of this is asking questions, I thought. “How do you and Ellen usually ‘eat’?”

  “Ellen volunteers at a blood bank. Sometimes she snags a couple extra blood bags. They last a couple months so no one really notices.”

  “I thought you needed blood from the vein?”

  “We do, just not directly. We can drink from a bag the same way we would drink from a human.”

  With those heightened senses of his, I know he can hear my heart rate pick up a bit at his words.

  “It’s been years since either of us has drunk from a human. We’ve been on bags for at least twenty, maybe thirty years.” Longer than I had known him. Something about that was comforting to me.

  “That’s enough vampire talk for now,” I decided. “Let’s just go back to having a normal night of watching movies and talking and stuff, and we’ll see how things go later, okay?”

  Kyle nodded and followed me back into the living room, picking up where we left off with one of his favorite Disney movies.

  *****

  As ten o’clock rolled around, Kyle stretched and relaxed back on the couch. “I should probably go to bed soon. I have to be up at six thirty,” he yawned. “You have to be up early too. Doesn’t the store open at nine?”

  “Yeah, but I’ll just wake up when you do. It takes me a little longer to get ready anyway.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here on your own until you need to go. I obviously trust you with quite a bit. My house and belongings aren’t nearly as important as, you know, my life,” he laughed.