Running out of options, Graciela blinked with trepidation, as she stared into the eyes of her soon to be murderer.
She saw it then. Beneath the burning of hunger, flecks of light danced in the shadows of his sea-green irises. Like reflections of sunlight on the ocean’s surface, they shimmered and beckoned. If she stared long enough, she swore the allure of the sea-green abyss would tug her soul to the depths below. But she struggled to blink. Everything, everywhere felt pressure. Worst of all on her mind, skull squeezed tightly by the constricting blood within it.
“Sweet dreams,” he growled. “Today is the day you die.”
Her heart beat like a bell tower, the reverberations making it difficult to breath. To add to the discomfort, Graciela now found her vision failing as well, quivering from the power of him. This was it. This would be the way she died.
She blinked. And then she blinked again. Though her sight was quivering, it wasn’t weakening. In fact, it seemed to be growing stronger. The longer she looked into his blood-crazed eyes, the easier it was to see beyond them.
At alarming speeds, surpassing the natural ability of any human, Graciela began noticing every flare or speck of color variation.
Confusion seemed like a warranted emotion, but she barely experienced it past wondering what was happening. Even without the answer, she knew whatever it was felt right. Those eyes felt like home, like she belonged in them. No, not like she belonged to them, more like they belonged to her. Like they were hers for the taking.
“Hoy no,” she whispered.
Both of their eyes dilated, a gust of ice bellowed down her spine. She felt the pinpoint of her stare penetrate through those dazzling eyes of his, then another chilling sensation, only this time sharper and unbearably prickly. Suddenly she felt herself thrashing, despite the straps she knew to be holding her in place. She was both air and solidity, and she twisted in a space between everything and nothing.
Never once did their eyes break though.
The world around them became nonexistent, a mass splatter of senseless mud. She shook so finitely the base of her head ached.
Finally, a darkness encased them. When she finally realized her eyelashes were resting on her cheeks, she almost didn’t want to force them open just yet, afraid of what she might find, afraid Fintan’s power had already killed her.
If this was death, it felt a lot like life though. Oxygen filled and emptied from her lungs, even if she did feel slightly suffocated.
An invisible force field left her encased in a dense, gelatinous mold. It formed around her even though it was apart from her. Inside its squishy liner, the heat crept in. As if she were relearning to move, she wriggled a finger, then another, which felt like they were waking up from millennia of slumber. They felt foreign and achy.
She ran her tongue across her lips but froze, fixated on an unfamiliar caterpillar of wiry hair. She could’ve sworn she was licking a mustache. But last she checked, she didn’t have one. Before she could think more on it, the person before her started coming into focus.
It was all she could do to keep from screaming at the sight of her own lifeless body slumped in the blood-sucking contraption.
Graciela faltered back a step, then two. But the more distance she took, the more of herself she could see and therefore the more reality sank in. She was no longer in her own body.
Graciela lowered her gaze to her hands. But these weren’t the tawny hands that she had cooked with for the past twenty-three years, nor the dexterous fingers that she’d used to secure patients to IV’s at the hospital.
They were paler and much wider than her own, although they moved at her will. If she thought about looking at the backside of them, they flipped over obligingly. She attempted to stretch and flex each one individually, which they also did with ease, even if there was an extra weight and sluggishness to them. Her middle finger tightened every time it moved, and the left index finger popped when extended, something new that her own hands had never done.
Connected to the hands, Graciela found two arms that also weren’t her own, though also appeared to be under her command. The left arm was covered in veins and shackled at the wrist by slate paint that had long ago faded.
There was no denying it now. These arms belonged to a man. They belonged to Fintan.
She had somehow swapped bodies with this man. There was no frame of reference for what was happening—for what had just happened. She was almost more frightened now than she was earlier.
Looking back at herself—the shell of her left in the straps—she noted that she was still breathing. The tube sticking out of her arm still pulsed red, but her cheeks were beginning to pale. Graciela stormed over to her familiar body and tore each strap undone.
The body fell, and when Graciela reached to catch it, she was surprised to see the weight of it held easily in her grasp. Strength had always been foreign to her, though always secretly admired. Gently, she lowered herself to the ground, not a sweat to be broken.
It was really true then. She was Fintan. Somehow, she had managed to take over his body.
All this time, Sean had been right. Something was different about her.
Graciela couldn’t help the giddy grin that followed. One of the Awakened. Finally. She’d dreamed this day would come, when she too became one of the gifted. No longer would she be seen as a helpless girl, but an equal. Someone who could stand her own and fight.
The glee left with another glance to her former self. There’d be no point in being Awakened if she couldn’t be herself though. But she didn’t even understand how she’d become Fintan, let alone how she would return to her own body. Examining her slack muscles and vacant aura, she noticed the gaping hole on the crease of her elbow from where the needle had been torn. A fresh streak of red dribbled to her wrist. The beauty of the blood was akin to that of a garnet: shimmering, vivacious.
A new sensation pulled at her. An insatiable need, somewhere between arousal and annoyance, gnawed at her insides.
Thump thump. Thump thump.
At first, it was just the beat of a fading heart. Subtle and weak. Helplessly pumping away as it lost more of its fuel by the second.
But then it became something more.
Thump thump. Thump thump.
The aroma of nectar filled her nostrils, and she could practically taste its sweetness on her tongue. The air around her seemed to bloom with the ecstasy of it. All she could think about was the enchanting scent, a tiny whisper grating at her thoughts, urging her to walk toward it.
Thump thump.
“Mistress,” it whispered. “Release us.”
“Feed upon us.”
The aroma of nutmeg and apples begged to be devoured, for her to unleash herself into the presented meal, and Graciela couldn’t help but feel like she should. Something about the aura around her said she would be all right, that all she had to do was get closer to the body on the ground.
A thousand voices chanted for her to approach the helpless form. It no longer bared semblance to anyone familiar. In her mind, it was just some unknown human. There was barely even any connection to liveliness whatsoever. This wouldn’t be immoral. It would be just. She salivated as the apple pie scent pulsated under her nose, dying for a taste. The hunger, too strong to resist.
Finally, Graciela opened her eyes, unaware that they had even closed. A tune hummed from her lips, one she had never learned but somehow knew intrinsically. The droplets of blood seeped from the woman’s mouth. Something about the brown wavy hair of her sent a pang of guilt to her chest, easily ignored for the ruby puddle taunting her own lips.
At the same moment a singular droplet flowered onto her tongue, something sharp burned from her core. Abruptly, her humming stopped. Fire, boiling. In a singular instant, the illusion crumbled. Through the haze of bloodlust, Graciela became acutely aware that the body she was drinking blood from was her own, but the new, urgent presence of pain demanded her attention from freaking out on the matter further.
She’d almost forgotten about Bram. He’d been so quiet up until that point. But there was no mistaking the warning in his voice. Then she saw herself, her former body, paled on the floor, the metallic taste of blood fresh on her tongue.
Graciela gasped and stepped back as Bram had instructed.
His eyes never left hers as she sidestepped away from her former body, but her focus never left the sight of herself on the ground. Horror didn’t quite cover the way she felt. Before Bram snapped her out of whatever blood trance had imprisoned her, she’d been prepared to drain her own self of all the blood left in her. And the need was so powerful and overwhelming, it had been un-ignorable, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
Had Bram not intervened when he did, she would’ve killed herself, without hesitation, without shame. Like her life had no meaning at all. A part of her wondered if this was what it was like for all Sanguinatores, for all blood guides. If it was what it was like for Sean.
If this was what being Awakened was like, she felt sheepish for ever wishing it upon herself. Graciela never wanted to put anyone else in danger like that again.
After checking her pulse, Bram stepped back beside her—beside Fintan. Unreadable, as always, Graciela wondered what he planned to do and began considering that he might have an escape in mind. The only problem was that any escape involving her former body and leaving the new Graciela-in-Fintan’s body behind didn’t bode well for her.
It was beginning to make her skin crawl, not being herself. Not only was being a Sanguinatore exhausting, but if the people of Hope were to come in and find the three of them, it likely wouldn’t end well for her while she was Fintan. Graciela needed a plan. Surely there was a way back into her former self.
Outside the battle cries howled louder as Hope’s army challenged the Sanguinatore legion.
Bram’s eyes were closed, angled at the ground, to where Graciela’s unconscious body lay in a heap. “Why couldn’t you have just stayed fake dead?”
Graciela cocked her head—or rather, the new, hopefully temporary head of Fintan—and half laughed. “What?”
“Sorry, Fintan.” He drew her in with a steady breath, unmoving as the air that had stilled around them. A slight buzz seemed to fill the space as he said, “You shouldn’t have let your guard down. Rule number one: always control your own life force.”
Before Graciela could comprehend what Bram was saying, the air was sucked from her. Panic clutched at her throat. After everything she’d fought for, she didn’t want to die, not with her friends fighting to save her.
The blast that erupted from Bram’s throat was something between a battle cry and a siren sounding an alarm. Graciela felt a tearing burn from head to toe, as her body split open. Blood poured out in a tidal wave, and she screamed so loud her ears went numb, ultimately ringing with piercing silence. Her attention turned to her former self, to the eyes she tried to blink. But she couldn’t control that body any longer, and she found herself reaching for a void, eons away.
But only for a fraction of a second before the body she inhabited ceased to exist, expelling her from inside of it.
The remnants of Fintan exploded like a volcano, shreds of him bringing color to the drab tent and dessert sand. A red mist settled on the dessert floor. The gory mess, an inkblot test of viscera and blood, streaked in every direction. It almost mimicked a butterfly, one with half of its wings torn off.
Bram wobbled above the sacrilegious mandala of human remains, head slumped from use of his power.
To her surprise, Graciela hovered above like a weightless cloud. All that she could see was a yellow glow, an amber lens filtering her vision. She had no arms, no legs. With no other explanation, she knew innately that she had been reduced to nothing more than a soul.
If this were death, it wasn’t what she thought it would be.
No longer in corporeal form, Graciela glided like a ghost, unbound and without limitation. Surely, any second now she’d be swept away by a valkyrie and taken to whatever afterlife awaited her.
Only, no one ever came and she never was. The likelihood of this being the end of her life seemed less and less likely by the second. Which was decidedly a good thing. But if she weren’t dead, then that meant she was still alive, and if she was still alive, maybe, hopefully, she could return to her body.
For someone without limbs, she was still able to move with relative ease. As long as she focused her thoughts, the orb of light that was now her would float in whatever direction she willed. It was possible that if she were to rejoin her floating soul to where it belonged that the two would fuse back together or something. At least, that was her hope.
The glowing orb she was, Graciela swam through the air, seemingly invisible to Bram. To her astonishment, after a short while, she started getting the hang of it. Weightlessness was truly magical to experience, she almost didn’t want it to end.
But she needed it to end. Being without a body, her soul floating freely in the world without an anchor, was chilling.
The closer she came to her body, the warmer she felt, comforted by her own physical presence.
Stopping short of her face, she lowered her non-corporeal self to the tip of her nose and inched her way up to a tear duct. It would be a tight fit but something told her that the eyes were the key. After all, Fintan’s eyes were the last thing she remembered seeing before the transfer.
She shimmied underneath the heavy eyelid. Then, like a vortex Graciela was sucked into the dark shimmering abyss of her own eyes. Fireworks. Blurs and wisps of light charged around her and the cracking jaws of life twisted her heart and lungs out of slumber.
Graciela coughed and panted trying to catch her breath, her lungs stiff and achy from inactivity. She knew enough as a nursing assistant to know that they couldn’t have been completely dormant while she was away. They must’ve gone into a comatose-like state so that they could preserve the body while keeping its functioning at minimal capacity. Still, they burned with each breath.
Tentatively Graciela felt at her face, her familiar round cheekbones and wide forehead. She almost couldn’t believe that she was herself again. A moment of silent rejoicing ensued.
Bram had yet to notice her, transfixed by the bloody work of art before him. For a brief second, Graciela considered leaving him there, afraid of who she would find if she attracted his attention. After the things she had witnessed, after the things she herself had done, she wasn’t sure who she could trust anymore. Were all blood guides driven by such perverse thoughts?
At the same time, she couldn’t bring herself to just leave him there. Bram had just saved her life, and she owed him for that.
Reaching for her pocket, Graciela grabbed a handful of flowers and cautiously approached her, dare she say, friend. With timid hesitation, she shoved the petals under his nose.
Bram turned to her with a quizzical look, confusion stirring his eyes. Slightly muffled, he asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m making sure you can think straight again,” she said, tucking the flowers back into her satchel, slightly abashed. “Are you okay?”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “Am I okay? I’d be more worried about yourself. You lost a lot of blood.”
Graciela nodded, unable to vocalize a response. The shock of what had transpired was finally settling in. It was all so much to take in. Graciela was almost murdered at the hands of a Sanguinatore, but in the knick of time had discovered she was Awakened and instead of him killing her, she’d almost killed herself, just in time to be rescued by a boy she barely knew, but seemed to have a knack for saving her.
“How long have you been awake?”
“I—” Graciela dizzied herself with a million unanswered questions, none of which she wanted to bring to his attention at the moment. “I just woke up.” Graciela averted her eyes to the ground in a desperate attempt to erase the image of the stout man exploding from her memory. To forget the tast
e of her own blood soaked into her tongue. She choked back the flood of guilt thrashing about inside of her. Not only for the man, but for Bram too. Though she had only been a blood guide for a few minutes, Bram had been one for who knew how long. There was no telling how many times he’d had to learn to quiet those voices. Or maybe it was something he still practiced. Maybe it never got better.
It was only then that she noticed she’d been shivering, lip beating against the other one as her jaw quivered beneath. Exhaustion hit like a cannon to the chest. One tear broke free, a waterfall following closely behind it.
Bram winced, but outstretched his arms regardless. “Come here,” he said, loosely clinging to her back and sides. “You’re fine. You’re alive.”
Numbly, Graciela nestled herself into his embrace, reassuring herself of the same. The dampness of his shirt smelled bitter and salty against her cheek, but she paid it no mind. Despite everything, she was alive, and that was all that mattered. That, and getting to the others before they got themselves killed.
When he broke their hold, Graciela was still dazed. Horrific images flashed with each blink, invading every thought, until she decided to stop blinking. When she finally peered up, Bram was standing shirtless before her.
“What are you—”
Bram tore his shirt into strips of frayed cloth until there was nothing left to wear. He balled one of the strips into his palm and with soft, gentle hands, placed it on the crook of her elbow, using another piece of cloth to wrap it in place. “We have to stop the bleeding, before Zane smells it and comes back to kill me for releasing you.”
Warmth bloomed within her as he did the same for her other arm. As he worked, the hint of the tattoo she’d glimpsed back in Mexico was stamped crisply on his bare chest: Flaws Make Perfection.
“Technically, Fintan released me,” Graciela said.
A secret chortle escaped him before Bram cleared his throat, scaring away his happy disposition. “This makes twice now I’ve saved your life,” he said, tying off the second wrap on her arm. The other had already begun to bleed through, but at least it seemed to be slowing. “This time, stay fake dead, will ya?”
Blood Awakens Page 33
