Bloodlines

by Lindsay Anne Kendal

  I drove a mile out and stopped the car. I was about to call his name when he appeared in front of me. I dragged myself out of the car and leant against the door.

  “You shouldn’t be out,” he said seriously.

  “I don’t care.”

  “What if you were attacked again? You couldn’t fight back properly in your state.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Oh, really!” He mocked. “So move away from the car; it’s not a leaning post.”

  “I’m fine here.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I know who you are,” I told him.

  “I gathered that, but you could have waited until tomorrow to tell me.”

  “No I couldn’t.”

  “I admit I’m impressed. It didn’t take you long to figure it out. I thought it may have taken you a few days.”

  “Maybe I’m not as thick as you think,” I shot.

  “I don’t think that at all. Well, I do at the moment – look at you – but in general I don’t.”

  “What exactly is your job here?”

  “So that’s what you’ve dragged yourself out here to ask. See now I’m disappointed, you could have at least come out in that state just because you wanted to see me,” he smirked.

  “How do you know that’s not another reason?”

  “I don’t,” he said, walking towards me. He stopped a few inches in front of me and looked deep into my eyes. I swallowed hard. “My job is to assist you in what’s to come,” he told me. “Oh and protect you as best I can.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Hey, do you really think I wanted this job.”

  “Then why accept it?” I asked.

  “Because my queen asked me specifically. Out of all the dukes, demons, lords, she asked me to protect you.”

  “Tell her I don’t need you.”

  “Oh I’ll tell her, but she won’t change her mind. You’re her connection to this world, her creation, she looks at you as her daughter and she wants you protected. It’s strange; you look the double of her sometimes. Especially when you look pissed off; you both squint a little. That’s normally people’s cue to get away from you.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You haven’t met her yet, but you will one day.”

  “Will I?” I asked wide-eyed.

  “I promise you will,” he said in a rather kind voice. “Do your friends know you’re out?”

  “No.”

  “Oh dear, you’re going to be in trouble,” he laughed. “No car on the drive, not in your house; they’ve probably realized you’ve gone by now.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You should get back to them.”

  “Why now? Why has she sent you now?”

  “Someone is pissed off. They’re on earth and they shouldn’t be. This someone is starting a war, and you and your friends are their next target.”

  “So why doesn’t Lilith come and get whoever it is and take him back to hell.”

  “Oh dear, you do have a lot to learn.”

  “You know I’m sick of being told that,” I snapped, slamming my hand on the car. “Everyone says that, and they don’t teach me anything.”

  “See, you looked like her then,” he told me.

  “Fine, to hell with you…literally,” I got back in my car.

  “Hang on,” he said; holding the door so I couldn’t close it. “Lilith cannot walk this earth long enough to take him or her out. She isn’t allowed to – it’s the rules. Just like the big man upstairs can’t stay on earth for long. The last time one of them broke the rules it caused a war.”

  “So why can you come here?”

  “I’m not the big man or woman; they are the ones who are bound by the rules. Anyone or anything else can come to the earth. They can influence people, corrupt, fill them with love, fear, hope. But if they try to act directly…well, it gets ugly. Listen, I know this is confusing for you, but if I tell you everything all at once it will overload you. You need to learn a lot of this as you go along.”

  “Ok,” I sighed.

  “I’ll tell you what I can when the times come.”

  “Can I ask you one more thing?”

  “Go on,” he smirked.

  “Lilith first gave her power to my ancestor Elizabeth. I found something that she had written; she said: “When the time comes I will stick to my end of the deal.” Do you know what that means?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve got an idea, but I’ll enquire for you before I say anything else. I don’t want to give you the wrong answers.”

  “Would you?” I asked, rather shocked.

  “Maybe I’m not as horrible as you think I am.”

  “I didn’t think you were, just a little annoying.”

  “Oh good. Now go home, get your strength back.’

  He shut the door and stepped away from the car. I started the engine and wound the window down.

  “I didn’t mean what I said before; you know about babysitting,” I told him. “It’s nice to know you’re there.”

  He nodded and smiled, and then I drove off.

  When I pulled up the drive to the house, I turned the engine off and made the car role back to where it was originally parked. I went in through the back again and quietly closed the door behind me. When I turned around all of them were standing there.

  “Been anywhere nice?” Jake asked sharply.

  “Not really,” I told him, holding on to the kitchen counter.

  “You can hardly hold yourself up and yet you go out on your own,” Lucian said. “What’s wrong with you? Have you got a death wish?”

  “Why didn’t you take one of us with you?” Danny asked. “Why are you being so secretive?”

  “I don’t have to answer to you. I’ll do what I want when I want. Jesus, I get questioned on every move I make, on everything I do. Why can’t you all just back off a little and let me breathe?” I snapped.

  “You could have died tonight,” Lily said.

  “I know that, but I didn’t. Look, sometimes I want to be able to keep things to myself. Everyone else in the world has that right, so why don’t I? Why does my life have to be an open book for everyone to read?”

  I was getting annoyed and it took its toll on my body. My legs started to shake and the room spun for a minute.

  “I need to go to bed,” I told them.

  “Oh no, if you can drive around doing god knows what you can face us,” Tyler said.

  “Guys, back off!” Lily pleaded. “Look at her, let her be.”

  “No!” Lucian said. “Not until we know what’s going on with her.”

  I tried to walk past them but they pushed me back. I couldn’t move my legs quick enough to steady myself so I fell backwards and crashed into the door.

  “Stop it!” Lily yelled as she ran and stood in front of me. “Leave her alone!”

  “Don’t get involved,” Jake told her coldly. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me. I’m in this too and she is my friend. If you want her you’ll have to go through me.”

  “Fine,” he raised his hand and she rose with it.

  “Leave her alone!” I shouted.

  He moved his hand and kept her pinned against the wall on the other side of the kitchen.

  “What are you hiding?” Danny asked me.

  “Put her down!” I said, getting more and more annoyed.

  My eyes changed and I felt myself healing, slowly regaining my strength.

  “Answer the question!” Lucian demanded, his eyes now turning.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked, looking at them all in turn.

  “What sort of a question is that?” Tyler asked.

  “Get out of my house!”

  “Ohh, or what?” Jake taunted. “What’s the little wounded soldier going to do?”

  I jumped to my feet and sent a shockwave at them. They crashed against the wall and Lily was released.

&nb
sp; “Run!” I told her.

  She ran through the back door. I fired energy balls at them continuously; I couldn’t do much more for fear of killing them. Eventually one by one they released a purple haze. It came from every pore in their body and then disappeared. The guys were on the floor coughing and wheezing.

  “Are you all yourselves?” I asked.

  All of them nodded, still choking. I breathed a sigh of relief. They picked themselves up off the floor and within a few minutes they were ok.

  “Lily, it’s safe,” I shouted as I made my way over to them. “What happened?” I asked them.

  They told me how when they had noticed my car missing they came to my room. When they saw I was gone they split up to look for me. Each of them said they had been attacked by a purple mist and been knocked out. When they came to they couldn’t control themselves. They knew something was inside them, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. Jake walked up to Lily and threw his arms around her, apologizing over and over again.

  “This is getting ridiculous!” I snarled, walking out into the back garden.

  “Keira, I…” Lucian began.

  “Come on!” I shouted, looking in every direction. “What are you waiting for? We’re all here. Come on, you bastards!”

  Nothing came, but I felt a little better for shouting my mouth off.

  “Come back inside,” Tyler said.

  “When it finally shows its face I swear to god I will deliver it to Hell’s door personally!” I raged

  I walked in and straight up to the wall that the energy balls had hit. I put my hand up to it and fixed it.

  “Go home, get some rest. Tomorrow we start looking for a way to protect ourselves.”

  “From what though?” Danny asked.

  “From possession for now,” Lucian answered.

  After the guys left, Lily and I went straight to our rooms. I took Eligos’s ring out of my pocket and put it on my dressing table.

  “Here’s your ring if you want it,” I said out loud.

  I was calm again now and realized just how tired I was. I went into my bathroom, brushed my teeth and put my shorts on again. When I walked back in the room I looked over at the dressing table. The ring had gone and there was a piece of paper in its place. It read:

  Thank you for my ring.

  I didn’t mean it when I said I didn’t want this job. I actually jumped at the offer, and not just because it was Lilith that asked.

  I couldn’t help but get a big smile on my face. I folded the note up and put it in the drawer of my bedside table. The smile stayed on my face until I fell asleep.

  Chapter 23

  Life or Death

  Over the following three weeks nothing happened. Nobody was attacked or taken over. There were no arguments and everyone seemed to have gotten closer. We spent a few days after the attack looking for ways to protect ourselves. Eventually we found an old book at Danny’s house containing old protection spells. The night we found it we all gathered in my cellar and cast a spell that prevented any sort of possession on all of us, including Lily. That made us all feel safer around each other.

  We never told the guys’ parents what had happened or about Eligos. We didn’t want them to worry any more than they had too. It was bad enough they knew something was coming for us. I never told any of the guys what I had found out about Eligos; I even pretended not to know his name. I wanted to keep him as my little secret for now. On the odd occasion they spoke about him they referred to him as ‘him’ or ‘he’. Or as Tyler put it ‘the demon dude’. We put a spell on the house too; it was meant to stop any demon from entering, but when I tried to walk in, I couldn’t. It was like an invisible wall was stopping me, and if I pushed against it, it sent an electric shock through my body. So that put an end to that idea.

  Sofia had been around and had transformed my overgrown mass of grass and weeds into my own little Garden of Eden. At the back of the house I had picnic tables, a little pond, a beautiful black statue of a woman that was also a water fountain, surrounded by assorted flowers, and two large comfortable swings overlooking a rose garden. To the west side of the house I had a BBQ area and a deck with four round tables, each with four chairs. To the east of the house were sunbeds and a lawn with a few little trees towards the driveway.

  She was really proud of it and I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. We had all tried to help her while she was doing it, but she wouldn’t let us. Tyler did warn us that she liked to be left to do it herself, but I had to at least offer. The only time she asked for help was when she had to move the tables and put the statue into position. So Danny and Tyler took care of that bit for her. As a thank-you for everything she had done, I sent her and David out for a meal in one of the nicest Italian restaurants in town. It was somewhere she had always wanted to go, but had never gotten around to it. I didn’t tell her what I was doing. I turned up at her house unannounced, and told them I needed their help with something. Both of them came with me, no questions asked. When I parked outside the restaurant she glared at me. When I told her I’d booked them a table they both went berserk. They tried talking me out of it, but I wouldn’t listen.

  I’d spent time with Danny’s and Jake’s parents too. I got questions thrown at me, but luckily all their mothers had spoken over the phone so I got different questions off each of them. Danny’s parents, Michelle and Corey, were really nice. They found it highly amusing when I told them how Danny and I were with each other at first. They wanted to know what my granddad was like and what I could remember about my dad. They approached the subject very carefully, since the last thing they wanted to do was upset me. They learned quite a lot about me that day. Sadly, I didn’t learn anything new from them though.

  Jake’s parents, Jason and Melanie, were really down to earth. They were so laid back I’m surprised they weren’t horizontal, and Jason was really funny. He had a very dry sense of humor, so we got on great. They told me how much they liked Lily and how they hoped they would stay together always. Melanie said it was nice to have another woman in the family. They didn’t ask me questions like the other guys’ parents had. They just wanted to make sure I was happy living in Salem and that all the guys were being nice to me. That was their main concern. Again they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

  Lily and Jake’s shop was now up and running and they were doing really well. They were there Monday – Friday between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m., so I only saw them evening and weekends unless I was in town and popped in for coffee. I spent most of my time with Tyler and Lucian, and occasionally got time to myself. When I was with both of them at the same time I noticed a little tension between them. I found it quite amusing at times. Like when we went to the movies, Tyler didn’t want me to sit in the middle of them. He wanted it to be me on the end, him in the middle and Lucian on the other end. Neither of them wanted the other one getting too close to me.

  I went for lunch a few times with Lucian –back to the café facing the harbor and clothes shopping afterwards. That afternoon we finally got the chance to go inside another church. Lucian stayed close to me just in case anything went wrong like last time. I walked warily towards the altar, but nothing happened. No statues started to bleed, no wind came at me, and all was peaceful.

  “See, this proves that you were being messed with,” Lucian said to me.

  “I just wanted to make sure, although I suppose if I had been blown away again I would understand.”

  “Why? I thought you wanted to do this because you didn’t understand.”

  “Back then I didn’t, but I didn’t know about the demon inside me then, did I?”

  “Well, then this proves something else too then.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “That you’re not evil like you thought. You may have demon in you, but you have a warm and loving heart. Obviously the big guy upstairs can see that. That’s why you’re still welcome in here.”

  “You’re too nice to me you kno
w.”

  “Nope, I just feel like you need to be reassured with the truth sometimes,” he said, smiling.

  We all went out together every Friday and Saturday – sometimes to Rusty’s but mainly to Heaven and Hell. Lily loved the place and shocked them all when she came out dressed as gothic as I was. I think Jake went weak at the knees when he saw her. Once again Tyler would go into a mood if I got up to dance with Lucian, so I tried to dance with them both evenly, just so there was no favoritism. When we were together at home, we all had a laugh and a mess around. But you could see everyone was a little tense. Things had been quiet for so long – we knew it wouldn’t be long before something came at us. This was the quiet before the storm, as we called it.

  If we heard a noise outside we all braced ourselves for a fight, even though most of the time it was just the wind against the side of the house. Whenever there was a flash of lightning or a rumble of thunder, they would check to see I wasn’t annoyed at something. If I was in a good mood and I hadn’t caused it, we would be on guard again. Every little thing made us jump.

  I hadn’t seen or heard anything from Eligos since the night I was attacked. It had been two weeks and yet I could still see his face every time I closed my eyes. I wanted to call out to him, but what would I say if he came? I was sitting out on my swing one Saturday morning with a mug in my hand, staring out in front of me, thinking about him.

  “Are you ok?” Lily asked, sitting down beside me.

  “Yeah, sorry I was in a world of my own”

  “Ever since you met that guy, you’ve been going off into your own world at every given opportunity. You like him, don’t you?”

  “What? Course not,” I said, acting as though what she had said was complete rubbish.