“We could be wrong,” he said, leaning slightly forward. “We were before.” He took off the microphone that was clipped to his lapel as he got up, then slung it into his empty chair and walked off the set.
They switched to a story about a monster storm about to hit the Midwest, and Charlie clicked off the TV, picked up her coffee mug, her hand shaking so hard the coffee sloshed over the rim, and headed into the kitchen. She’d deliberately stayed out of range of her mom this morning, because she’d been such a basket case about Charlie’s restless nights and sleepy days.
Or maybe, Charlie thought, Trish had already known that the murder victims had the Belladonna Antigen, that they were just like Charlie. That would explain a lot.
In the kitchen, her mother was holding an official looking letter and crying. That alarmed Charlie even more than the news report had. Dammit, she should’ve stayed in bed and kept having out of body sexual encounters with her imaginary friend.
“What the hell, Mom? What’s wrong?”
Trish O’Malley looked up quick, met Charlie’s eyes, and scrubbed her own with the heel of one hand. “I...we have to talk. I have something to tell you.”
Charlie lifted her eyebrows and felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother cry. Trish tended to be kind of cold. She loved her daughter, sure, but mostly showed it through her overprotective tendencies, not by any real display of emotion or affection. It was like she was afraid to love her too much. Or something.
“Sit down, Charlie.” Trish’s blond hair was as messy as perfectly straight hair ever got. She’d been running her hands through it.
Charlie sat down. “You’re freaking me out, Mom. Is this about The Portland Seven being BDs like me? Because if that’s it, I already know.”
Her mother nodded. “Yes. It’s about that.” She looked past Charlie toward the living room. “It was on the news?”
Charlie nodded. “They said people with BD are vampires’ favorite snack foods. You never told me that.”
“I didn’t see the need.” She kept her eyes elsewhere. But that was normal. “They were supposedly all wiped out three years ago. You were only seventeen. Why scare the hell out of a seventeen-year-old for nothing?”
Right. Why tell me that I’m the favorite prey of a deadly predator that would like to rip out my jugular? Why not just argue with me every time I want to leave the house after dark instead?
“There’s more to your...condition than I’ve told you, Charlie.”
There was more? More her mother had kept from her? Charlie’s knees were shaking, and the sarcasm she tried to inject into her tone fell flat. “It’s not a condition, Mom. It doesn’t have any effect on my health other than making me more likely to bleed to death than your average bear.” Her lack of certain clotting factors were, she had always assumed, her mother’s reason for treating her like a porcelain doll. No sports. No rough housing. No roller skating or ice skating or sledding down steep hills or riding a bike. Her childhood had been miserable.
Her mother lowered her head. “That’s not exactly true. There’s a lot more to it. There just aren’t any...symptoms until later on. And there’s no cure.”
“Well, of course there’s no cure. It’s a blood type for crying out loud, why would anybody want to cure a blood type?” Her mother was scaring her, and she didn’t like it.
“Don’t get upset, Charlie. Sit down, I’ll make you some tea and–”
“Jesus, Mom, just tell me what the hell is going on, will you? You’re scaring me here.” All these years, Charlie thought, treating her like she was fragile, like there was something wrong with her. In all that time, Charlie had never once believed that actually might be the case. The problem, she’d decided long ago, was her mother. She was the one with the condition. If Charlie had to give it a name, she’d call it chronic, paranoid anxiety with overprotective tendencies.
“What symptoms?” she asked. She was still half-convinced her mother would list something like hangnails or frequent bouts of the sniffles.
Trish opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“Give me that.” Charlie snatched the sheet of paper from her mother’s hand. Then she read it and felt as if her blood all rushed straight to her feet, leaving her dizzy and kind of disoriented.
Dear Mrs. O’Malley,
Due to the recent, tragic events in Portland, we are reaching out to all individuals with the Belladonna Antigen to offer our protection in an effort to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. According to our records, you have a daughter, Charlotte Antoinette O’Malley, who possesses this rare antigen and who might qualify for inclusion in a special program we have implemented for people like her. Your daughter is eligible as long as she has not yet begun experiencing the onset of symptoms indicating that her inevitable and tragic premature death is near, which is, at her age, highly unlikely. (If she has begun experiencing symptoms, we still encourage you to get in touch as we have a separate program in place for such individuals.) We’ve scheduled an appointment for you to discuss her safety this Friday afternoon at 1 PM at the Federal Building in Portland. We strongly urge you to attend, if only to learn more about the programs. Participation will, of course, be entirely voluntary.
Sincerely,
Commandant Barnaby Crowe, DPI
Charlie let the sheet of paper fall from her hand to the floor. It floated like a bird, landing lightly at her feet. “Premature death?”
Her mother blinked red-rimmed, wet eyes. “I didn’t know how to tell you, Charlie.”
“Premature fucking death?” She stood rooted to the spot, her hands shaking, her heart pounding. “I’m going to die? When, Mom? How long do I have?”
“I don’t...know.”
“Yes, you do. You do know. You’ve always known. How long?” Charlie wasn’t crying. Why the hell wasn’t she crying? Shock, she guessed. “The letter says symptoms are unlikely at my age. At what age do they become likely?”
Trish lowered her head, closed her eyes. “The life expectancy of people with Belladonna is mid- to late-thirties,” she said softly. “But there are exceptions.”
“Where? What exceptions? You just waited until I was twenty to tell me I probably won’t live much past thirty?”
“I’m sorry. I just...I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“God.” Charlie’s whole world had been turned upside down in a single conversation. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what to do. My God. My God, Mom.”
Her mother touched her shoulder, looked her in the eye for once. It was rare. Now she knew why, maybe. Maybe Trish couldn’t face her. Maybe she didn’t show affection because she didn’t want to get too attached to someone who was just going to croak in a few years anyway.
“I’ll call work for you. You can stay home today, and we can talk about–”
“I’m going to work. I’m going...at least out. Somewhere. I need to...I need to go. I need to just...go.”
She turned and walked almost blindly to the door, yanked it open, and startled someone who was standing on the other side, apparently just about to knock. Through blurry vision, Charlie saw an older woman with wild red hair, a multicolored kaftan and about six too many strands of beads around her neck.
“Excuse me,” Charlie muttered, trying to duck around her to get out of the apartment.
But the woman put both hands on her shoulders, holding tightly, and scanning her face way too intently. “Charlotte?”
Charlie frowned and looked up slowly. “Who wants to know?”
“Roxanne O’Malley,” she said. “I’m your grandmother.”
“I don’t have a grandmother.” Hell, just cue the “Twilight Zone” theme already, she thought.
“Yes, you do. Let’s go back inside so you can pack your things while I tell your mother how this is going to go down.”
“How what is going to go down? Hey, let go of me!”
But the alleged grandmother had exc
hanged her way-too-personal shoulder squeeze for a death grip on her upper arm and was marching her right back through her apartment door, closing it behind her and turning the locks as if expecting armed hit men to show up at any moment.
Charlie’s mom said, “Did you forget something, hon–” as she came in from the kitchen. But then she stopped and just stared at the older woman’s face with her mouth open, that letter in her hand again, and whispered, “Roxy.”
“Wait, you know her?” Charlie asked.
Her mother’s gaze shifted back and forth between them and she nodded. “She’s your grandmother. Your father’s mother.”
“Told you,” Roxy said, snarky and sarcastic, but with a teasing light in her eyes. She released Charlie’s arm, held out her hand toward Trish, palm up, and snapped her fingers until Trish handed her the letter. Then she read it as Trish said, “I don’t know what to do. If she’s in danger–”
“She’s in more danger than you know,” the redhead replied. “You have to let me take her, Trish. I can keep her safe.”
“What?” Charlie took two backward steps away from her mother and the stranger. “No, now wait a minute, here. No one’s taking me anywhere.”
“Don’t you think the government is more qualified to do that than you are, Roxy?” Trish asked.
“You telling me you trust those morons?” Roxy shook her head. “Don’t. Not ever. Fortunately, they don’t know you have any connection to me. I’ve been dealing with these government goons for a long time. You have to let her come with me. It’s the only way to keep her safe.”
“No.” Charlie threw up her hands and sat down hard on the sofa. “No, I’m not going with some crazy lady I never met before just because she shows up with this line of–”
“God, you look so much like her,” her mother whispered, her eyes darting from Charlie’s face to Roxy’s over and over.
“Pack a bag, Charlotte,” the older woman said. “We don’t have much time.”
“I can protect her fine right here,” her mother said. “They’ll help us. The letter says–”
“It’s what the letter doesn’t say that you should worry about. You know what their help consists of? I shudder to think.” She turned to Charlie, her bright green eyes beaming into her. “I’ve seen what they do to our kind, Charlotte. You don’t want that. Believe me.”
“Our kind?” Charlie frowned. “What do you mean, our kind?”
Her mom kept talking like she hadn’t even heard her. “If she just vanishes, they’ll know–”
“Not yet they won’t. I just finished a lovely little hack job into their systems, removing your names from their watch list. I also did a global search-and-replace in all Charlotte’s health records, changing her blood type to good old ordinary A positive. Sure, they might figure it out eventually, but by the time they do, she’ll be off the grid. Like me.” She sent Charlie a conspiratorial wink. “You’re welcome.”
“For what? Mom, what the hell?”
“You should come with us, Trish,” Roxy said.
Charlie’s mother looked at her sadly. Then nodded, as if she’d made a decision she had no right to make. “Go pack some things, Charlie. Anything you leave behind, I can have sent to you later.”
“Bring everything you want, Charlotte,” Roxy said. “Anything you leave behind, we’ll replace.”
Charlie shook her head. “You can’t make me go anywhere. I’m an adult, I can make my own decisions.”
Her mother didn’t look her in the eye. So they were back to that, were they? “She’s right, Charlie. It’s for the best. You have to go.”
“I won’t. You don’t want me here, fine. I’ll get my own place. I’ll bunk with a friend till my promotion comes through, but I am not going with her.”
“Yes, Charlie,” her mother said. She lifted her head, met her eyes, looked stronger than Charlie remembered ever seeing her look. There was determination in those eyes, and resignation and insistence. “You are.”
She got to her feet again, rising slowly, facing them both, trying to make her voice as firm as her mother’s had been. “I am not letting anyone take control of my life from me,” she said slowly. “Especially not now that I know how little of it I have left.”
Roxy’s eyes turned sad. “So you know about the side effects of Belladonna.”
“Only because I read the letter,” Charlie said. “It’s not like anyone seemed to think this was information I might have a right to know.”
“She’s still in shock,” Trish pointed out. “She only found out a few minutes ago.”
“You must be reeling, then.” Her grandmother reached out, as if to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but Charlie dodged it. Shrugging, Roxy dropped her hand to her side. “Don’t be so sure your time is short, Charlotte. I have the antigen too.”
Charlie frowned at her. “How have you managed not to die?”
She shrugged. “Clean living? Yoga? Or maybe it’s genetic. I hope for your sake that’s the case. I am the oldest living member of The Chosen, Charlotte.”
“The Chosen? What the hell are The Chosen?”
“You are. I am. Everyone with Belladonna is. If you trust me, maybe there’s a slim chance I can keep you alive long enough to become the second oldest.”
# # #
At sundown, Killian woke to the startling absence of Charlie’s essence.
That sense of nearness, that feeling that he was closer to her than he’d been since he’d started following her siren’s call, was gone. It was just gone.
He’d jumped to his feet in the cave where he’d spent the day, and for a few seconds, he panicked, pacing in circles like a crazy person, hands in his hair. And then he stopped himself, realized what he was doing. He was the most laid back person he knew. He didn’t freak out.
I have to get to her. I have to.
Still, he forced himself to take a few deep breaths, stop acting like a human and use what he had. He didn’t often have to. Oh, once in a while to avoid humans. Never to find one.
He moved out of the cave, out of the woods, onto the road where it was open and he could feel more. Then he stood there, closed his eyes and opened his mind.
Charlie. Charlie. I know you’re out there somewhere. Charlie O’Malley. Make yourself known to me.
Suddenly he stopped, because he felt her. Not near. Far away and getting farther, but he felt her. She was still there, inside his head, just not as strongly as she’d been before.
Are you real? she whispered inside his head. If you are, come and find me. I want to see you. Touch you. Know that I’m not losing my mind.
Killian was stunned. Never had any human being ever spoken to him telepathically. He hadn’t thought it was possible.
I’m coming, he told her, though he had no idea if she could hear him.
Now, hours later, he was following his sense of her along a mostly deserted stretch of forgotten road that ran more or less adjacent to I-84. He stopped in a spot where the trees thinned out and exposed the vast expanse of sky. There were crickets chirping like a symphony, birds calling out here and there. He heard an owl hoot, then a nighthawk’s triumphant cry and the squeak of the mouse it had captured. He felt the breeze on his face and smelled a dozen piney scents and a thousand others. Tipping his head back, he looked at the stars. Galaxies upon galaxies.They made him feel small. And they made him feel alone. More alone than any person could ever have been.
He’d never been this lonely before her. He’d been so close...so close to her, only to have her run away.
But he was close again now.
A car door slammed, and a girl’s voice, raised in what felt like frustration more than anger said, “Are you kidding me? This is the middle of nowhere.”
And then he felt that very familiar buzz of awareness vibrating through his psyche, the one that was jacked up, more powerful than any he’d felt before.
“Is there even cell service out here?” asked the girl. It was Charlie. He was closer than
he’d ever been, hearing her actual voice for the first time. The buzzing intensified, high pitched and vibrating in the base of his skull. He tipped his head back and shivered. What the hell was this?
Killian opened his senses wide, smelling, tasting the air, feeling her energy and honing in on it to the exclusion of everything else. He knew he’d be better off staying far from her, far from every human. But he couldn’t help himself. Her emanations were racing up and down his spine in a rush of awareness that was sensual. Delicious. Arousing. Even more than they had already been, because he was so much closer now.
He followed his sense of her off the road and across a field of buttercups and Indian paintbrushes and tall lush grasses that brushed the legs of his jeans and sent puffs of pollen into the night air as he passed. Then he headed through a copse of small evergreens. Red pine, he thought. Their scent was so powerful, and his sense of smell so expanded that it nearly overwhelmed him—that redolence, that tang. He could taste it, the smell was so potent. But it was her smell that drew him.
He kept moving forward, but he was far from stealthy as the essence of her grew stronger the closer he got, until suddenly, she was everywhere around him and all through him. Her scent. The sound of her voice. The frequency of her soul, like a radio signal he was tuning in to. He was driven, like a hound on the scent, ignorant of everything else around him, walking through briars and not feeling their thorns, plowing through undergrowth instead of picking his way around it. He had to get closer. To see her. To touch her.
To taste her.
The bloodlust came to life inside him, so closely tied to sexual arousal in his kind that there was no separating the two. Feeding was an orgasmic experience for a vampire. Drinking blood from her, that would be explosive. And so he crept nearer to get a look at her and, he told himself, that was all he would do. But it felt like a lie.
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