Dust: A Bloods Book

by Andra Leigh

Eliscity’s days were falling into a routine.

  Dawn would find her in the Playground, bleary eyed and desperately trying to punch Jinx. She would eat with the Family, learning a little more about the new people she lived with. As the morning progressed she would settle into the Playground or her room with a book and attempt to understand the history of the Bloods. In the afternoon she would practice with her wings and watch Raiden and Casamir cause each other bodily harm, then head up to the roof to watch the sunset. After the sun had dipped from the sky she would seek out Laleita. Together they would delve into Eliscity’s past, spending hours in her mind. She met her parents and learnt to recognise her two younger sisters, Celosia and Delora. Sometimes her memories would be as simple as them sitting around the dinner table, her Ma trying to teach Delora, the youngest, the correct way to hold her fork. Other times she would be out on the farm, digging holes or feeding animals with her Papa. Then there were her favourite memories. The memories of him. She was falling in love with the memory of Drae. That much she knew. Her memories never went in order, so she never knew what part of their relationship she was reliving, but that didn’t matter. She clung to every moment she was allowed to remember with him, treasuring the things she learnt. He was funny and kind, but also enjoyed teasing her. He had no siblings but her sisters looked up to him like a big brother, despite having not known him all that long. She didn’t know for sure, but from what she could glean from things said, he hadn’t always lived near them – where they lived was still a mystery to her. His Da was dead. His Mam had never remarried. The old oak was their secret hideaway, perfect since their relationship also seemed to be secret. Animals loved him, especially Chief, who was sometimes a small puppy and other times the young dog who had given her a bunny in her first regression. He was never any older than that, making her think that must have been around the time the Clinic took over her life. Nothing was ever answered as to how the Clinic had gotten her, but she didn’t care.

  For the first time Eliscity felt like there was something more to her than just the different blood in her veins. Despite never being able to remember anything more than the things Laleita was able to show her, she finally felt as though she had a past.

  A life.

  Jinx would wake her from her regressions, carrying her to bed when she found she couldn’t stand. He would sometimes linger at her bedside, brushing a strand of hair from her face or tucking the edges of her blankets in around her tired body. Eliscity would try to deter the behaviour, but often didn’t have the energy. And anyway, he would never stay. And she would always fall into her nightmares alone.

  The nightmare was always the same. The same dream that had haunted her since her escape from the Clinic. The room of her fears – always the room of her fears.

  Then one night it changed.

  The lightning was in her veins and the floor was a sea of blood. She wanted to shriek. To yell and scream until her captors let her go. She wanted to run, to throw up. She wanted to die.

  But there was a storm in her body and it wouldn’t let her fade.

  She felt everything.

  It wouldn’t stop. Her muscles seized. Her bones locked.

  Then her name, barely a whisper, rung clearly over her torture.

  ‘Eliscity.’

  It called to her through her pain, echoing in her ears.

  ‘Eliscity.’

  She couldn’t ignore it. Didn’t want to ignore it. Its familiarity fractured the reality of the room.

  It wasn’t real, she realised. Not anymore.

  This room wasn’t her life anymore. It was a dream. A bad dream that would end. She just had to wake up.

  “Eliscity,” the deep voice called to her again. The room blurred and darkened. The faces of her tormentors frowned at her, trying to call her back. But it was too late. Another face was already swimming in front of her.

  Drae.

  The nightmare shattered and Eliscity woke with a start.

  The chains were gone, the lightning over. But Drae’s face hadn’t vanished. He sat on the edge of a sofa, looking down at her, his thumb stroking her neck. She could hear the wind batter the outside of the room, telling her she wasn’t in her underground room at Vance Manor.

  Without intending to she reached for him, pressing her palm to his chest.

  “Drae?” she heard her sleepy voice whisper. She tried to ask him where she was, but had no control over her voice, confirming what she had suspected the moment she had woken up.

  She hadn’t woken up.

  She’d left behind her nightmare and entered a memory. Without Laleita. She didn’t know how it had happened, but she wasn’t complaining. Having Drae caress her neck was far preferable than having thin metal rods stabbed into her veins and lightning shot down them.

  She expected Drae to lean in and kiss her. Hoped for it. But instead she was surprised by what happened next. Her hand, still pressed flat against Drae’s chest, pushed him away.

  His fingers left her throat to flick a strand of hair out of her eyes. She batted his hand away. Drae chuckled deep in his throat. Despite the way she felt herself huff, she knew she wanted to climb into his arms. Instead she pushed herself into a sitting position, blatantly attempting to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. She was on a sofa in a sitting room she didn’t recognise from any of her previous memories. A small bundle of fur was curled up in her lap, nudging a wet nose into the bodice of her dress. It was Chief. And he was tiny.

  As her past self absently scratched the pup behind his ear, she squinted at the window, displaying only night through its glass.

  “The storm’s stopped,” she said.

  “About an hour ago.”

  “An hour!” She gave Drae an astonished look.

  He shrugged one shoulder, not taking his smouldering green eyes off her. “I was going to let you sleep. But Mam just made it home from yours and said I should give you the option of going home or staying here now the storm’s passed.”

  Eliscity tossed the blanket that had been laid over her aside and jumped to her feet, the puppy cuddled happily in her arms. “As nice as the last day and a half has been –”

  “Yes the avoidance and cold shouldering has been so much fun,” Drae grinned.

  “ – I’ll be going now,” she finished.

  “Okay, I’ll take you.”

  Eliscity paused, her heart pounding in her chest where Chief snuggled into her. “I can walk next door by myself. I’ve done it many times now.”

  “You may be dead set on hating me, but in case you forgot we were just hit by the storm of our generation. So you’ll have to forgive me while I be a gentleman and ensure you don’t drown on the way home.

  Dead set on hating me… what did he mean? Her entire body hummed and fluttered with him so close. That definitely wasn’t caused by hatred of any sort.

  But rather than throw herself in his arms, she huffed, “I can swim just fine.”

  Drae followed her out of the room, apparently unperturbed by her abrupt manner. “Well the dog can’t yet, so shall we leave him here, maybe?”

  Eliscity looked down at the puppy, as if surprised to find it cuddled in her arms. She handed him over to Drae, her arm prickling with heat where it brushed against his. Eliscity could feel her past self try to ignore the sensation.

  Why?

  This must be a memory of before they were together. But why had she fought her feelings? There must have been a reason. It didn’t make any sense to her.

  “Bye, Mischief,” she said to Chief as Drae popped him into a basket already holding two puppies with similar black and white markings.

  “Mischief?” Drae queried.

  “I see it in his eyes,” she whispered dramatically.

  After saying goodnight to Drae’s Mam – a tall, thin woman with a pretty face who looked comfortable covered in the mud from outside – Drae was true to his word and walked her home.

  It was drizzling heavily, but was nothing compared to the rain that m
ust have been the storm they’d spoken of. The ground was mud and rivers. She could see shed roofs and panels laying metres from their walls. Fences had been flung over and trees uprooted. Only the houses had survived with minor damage. A broken pane here or a missing awning there.

  ‘Next door’ ended up being a ten minute trudge through the newly renovated marshlands.

  Stuck in the memory, Eliscity desperately wanted someone to tell her why she was trying to ignore her feelings. But the subject was never broached during their struggle to make it through the sludge and debris.

  Making it to her front porch, Drae’s hair was dark and shiny with rain; his smile lighting his green eyes with intensity.

  His eyes said so much.

  Kindness. Compassion. Trouble. Laughter. And patience.

  “Goodnight, Eliscity,” his rough voice soothed.

  “Night,” she mumbled. Opening the front door, she slipped inside, watching his retreating back for a moment before closing it.

  Muttering, “You do not like him,” to herself, she stomped into the hall.

  “‘City, is that you?” a man’s voice called from kitchen.

  “Yes Papa,” she answered, detouring to the right.

  The kitchen was warmer than the rest of the house, the coals in the cooking chamber glowing with heat. Blankets, chairs and pillows were arranged around the small space. Her family had clearly hunkered down to wait out the storm in this room, using the coals to keep warm as well as heat food.

  Her Ma was bent over the cooking chamber, her Papa buttoning up his large woollen coat. Celosia looked miserable, her red hair in disarray as she camped under a large pile of blankets. Delora, on the other hand, seemed positively gleeful.

  “Wasn’t it wonderful!” the small, wide eyed girl whispered.

  Mud dripped off Eliscity’s skirts, pooling around her feet. “Just splendid.”

  Delora nodded her head animatedly, the sarcasm lost on her.

  “She kept asking to go dance in the rain,” Celosia drawled with a tired, scornful frown aimed at her younger sister.

  “Oh, darling.” Her Ma straightened and bustled over to her. “You stayed safe? Warm?”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  “Thank the Dead. Golly knows we needed the rain, but oh, too much. Is the Niall house okay?”

  “The basement flooded, wet maybe half their stores. And a section of roof collapsed, but we managed to patch it before it could cause too much damage.”

  “Oh.” Her Ma fluttered a worried hand over her heart. “And the poor puppies?”

  “Doing fine. They’re so cute. Even if they are to blame for me being over there when the storm hit. I could have been stuck anywhere. A barn. School. The middle of an open paddock. But no. I got stuck there.”

  Her Ma’s voice turned stern. “Oh now, you stop talking like that. That Draejin is a lovely boy, so kind. Issa raised a good boy, and you’ll stop treating him so un-neighbourly.”

  Eliscity appeared to ignore this, turning instead to her Papa. “Why are you putting your boots on?”

  “I’m going out to check the lines and animals.”

  “I can come. Give me a moment to put on a coat.”

  “No, no.” Planting a kiss on her damp hair, before messing it up further, he strolled over to the kitchen door. “Won’t be much to be done tonight, just what’s necessary. It’ll be a long clean up. You head up to bed and get some rest.”

  Eliscity shut her bedroom door a few moments later. Stripping off her wet, dirty gown and kicking it away with a sigh, she climbed into bed thumping the soft pillows. Lying awake, staring at the ceiling, she wondered what her past self was thinking of. Drae? The reason why she was denying her feelings for him?

  Finally she closed her eyes to fall asleep and woke up in Vance Manor.

  Throwing her covers off, Eliscity hurriedly pulled on a shirt and pants. She suspected it was still early, just before the time her and Jinx were scheduled to train, but she wanted to speak to Laleita about what had happened. Her room was empty, so Eliscity moved her search downstairs into the Playground.

  Hearing Laleita’s voice murmur up through the staircase opening she started the descent, but pulled up short when a man’s low tone reached her ears. Casamir.

  If it had been anyone else with Laleita she would have happily burst into the room, but now she hesitated. Paused on the top landing of the spiral staircase she told herself she should backtrack. Go back to her room.

  Instead she found herself straining to hear the words that were being spoken.

  “…like that. It is what you make it.” She heard Casamir say.

  “And in this case it’s something that can’t be made.”

  “Say’s who?” Casamir growled.

  “Me,” Laleita said. “I will not endanger an innocent life. Not in this world. Not when I don’t know what that life could even begin to be, Cas.”

  “You know I’m not asking you to do that, Leat. I would love it if it were a choice we could have, but I get why it isn’t.”

  “But it’s how I would want my life with you to be,” Laleita said almost too quietly for Eliscity to hear.

  “Are you spying?” a voice whispered in her ear.

  Jumping, she spun around and found herself face to face with Neith, a towel folded over his arm.

  Wincing, she whispered back, “I think the correct term is eavesdropping.”

  “Honesty,” Neith chuckled. “How rare.”

  She shrugged. “If you were Jinx I would have lied through my teeth.”

  This amused him. “I often find Jinx believes lies before obvious truths anyway.”

  “He does?” She frowned.

  “Well, no. I think he prefers not to question lies,” Neith amended. “Which to me, is the same as accepting them.”

  Before Eliscity could reply, Jinx’s voice intercepted.

  “What are you two doing?”

  He stood at the mouth of the hall leading to the library and his room, eyeing them suspiciously.

  “Why, discussing the best method of roasting tomatoes, of course,” Neith said, smiling broadly between the two of them before heading in the direction of the bathhouse.

  As Jinx gave her an incredulous look she expected him to call her out on the lie, instead he said, “No one should ever ask your opinion on anything to do with cooking.”

  Eliscity raised an eyebrow at him. “And no one should ever ask you to give motivational speeches,” she retorted drily.

  “I happen to be very good at motivation.”

  “You make me want to stick lit candles in my ears.”

  “Well, that’s motivating,” Jinx said as he proceeded past her, into the Playground. She followed him, forgetting about who was already in there until she spotted Laleita and Casamir sitting together on a sofa. Jinx gave them an easy smile and wished them a good morning. She tried the same, cringing when it came out sounding far too lofty, like her voice was attempting to point out the fact she had just listened in on their private conversation.

  “Oh, the bread,” Laleita exclaimed, jumping up to check on the baking loaves she’d forgotten about.

  Eliscity and Jinx moved over to the training space and begun their warm up exercises. Casamir joined them and while she was hesitant in partaking in a lesson that involved him, he turned out to be a good teacher. He showed her some close-contact moves, focusing on how to distract or loosen an assailant’s grip and challenged her to act instinctively; even if her instinct was to carry out an action she hadn’t necessarily been taught. He added that Jinx fought too clean and that fighting for her life was never going to be clean. In other words, use elbows, use knees, and go for the sensitive spots. By the end of the session Eliscity felt like she had successfully learnt how to flail her limbs around and hoped that technique came later.

  She didn’t get a chance to speak with Laleita about her dream until midday. They were refilling flasks with water in the tunnels.

  “It felt real,” she explained.
“Not like a dream, but just like the other regressions. My mind was my own, but I had no control over my body. It was a real memory. At least I believe it was. Is that possible?”

  “Of course it’s possible.” Laleita secured the lid onto a flask. “You said you only ever had to get through your wall of trees once?”

  Eliscity nodded.

  “When you put an archway in that wall you pierced the barrier to your past memories. Perhaps the barrier will repair itself with time, but because you’re aware of it and utilising it as an entrance regularly I don’t think that will happen. The place your mind goes in regressions is not dissimilar to a dream state, controlled not by the consciousness but the subconscious. So it stands to reason that while asleep your mind recognised the state and slipped naturally into a memory bubbling close to the surface.”

  “So it could happen again?”

  Laleita considered the question while filling another flask. “Yes,” she answered simply.

  Taking a side of the large container filled with flasks each, they tramped their way back up to the Playground.

  The thought of being able to discover her past without the help of others made her feel both anxious and giddy. She was beginning to realise that it would never return to her in a rush of seamless knowledge. She was only ever going to know the memories that she relived in her unconsciousness. It was hard to say if that was going to be enough for her.

  Her afternoon fight sessions were used to develop her wing technique. Today was no different. She did her best to forget about her dream and Drae as she shook out her wings opposite Jinx. Between the afternoon sessions and her own time she was spending practicing with them, she had been making progress, though it was still something that required her full attention. Sometimes a movement would feel natural then she would attempt the same movement again only to struggle with it. It was as if she would be one with the wings of her lineage only to suddenly slip into battling with the wings of the Fae she had been Blooded with.

  They spent an hour practicing a complicated twisting movement, designed to quicken her full body dodges, which involved shifting each wing in different directions rapidly.

  After that she read a chapter from The Bloods Encyclopaedia on Pyres; small bats with translucent skin that had fed on the blood of anything they could bite into. They’d been a Bloods without remorse or compassion and were sometimes compared with the Lycephal; a two headed snake who also enjoyed biting.