by Angela Foxxe
He shook his head. “No. I drink human blood. That’s it.”
“Drain them of it?”
“I drink from a donor bag,” he said with a bit of a smile. “It keeps me energized.”
“So you really are a vampire?” she frowned.
“In essence, I guess I am. I still need to feed on blood at least twice a week.”
“And sunlight?” she pressed on, her palms clenched.
He looked up to the ornate ceiling. “I knew it would come to this. All the questions. You remind me of someone.”
He looked at her face and he knew she wanted every question she had answered.
“I can walk with daylight around, but only because I have something that most of the nightwalkers don’t have.”
“Garlic? Crosses? Churches?”
He laughed outright, a short laugh, but it was a laugh with ridicule on it. “Well, media and the general population has a funny way of showing what we’re like. I’m not allergic to any of those, thank you very much.”
“You eat human food?”
“It’s food. I don’t eat it in copious amounts, though. That’s why I like my steaks rare. My digestion doesn’t do well with food that’s been cooked through.”
“Your kind gets indigestion?”
“You could call it that,” he said.
She was quiet for a while. She had so many questions in her head, questions she wanted to write down and tick off one by one every time he answered.
“That thing earlier… was it like you? He looked human before he attacked me. I didn’t see fangs. I don’t see you have fangs.”
“They don’t retract. We don’t have fangs. Our fingernails grow sharp. We can slice skin open with our nails. That’s how we drink blood.”
“But that thing--”
“It was like me. I suppose that nightwalker hasn’t had his fill of blood as of late.”
“You turn into something like that?” There was a flicker of distress in her eyes.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got my blood lust under control. That’s why I get bags of blood every week. I buy it,” he added, seeing the look on her face.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Why? Are you afraid I’d do that to you?”
She didn’t say anything.
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he told her in a quiet voice. He had seen what he could do before, and Lily was gone because of who he was.
“Are you still human?” she asked. “We…we did it in the lab. How is that possible? I mean, if you’re dead?”
“Not quite dead. Hovering somewhere in between. I have humanity left in me. That should count for something.”
“So you’re no longer human.”
“I believe I act like any other normal, proper human being. I might think just a bit differently. My senses have been heightened since I was turned, just like when I engage in sexual acts,” he said proudly, knowing she enjoyed it thoroughly.
Her face reddened but she ignored what he said last. “Turned? Like someone bit you and stuff?”
“Oh, someone bit me, alright.”
She looked alarmed. “Was that the one earlier?”
Gabriel shook his head. “It was someone else.”
“What if he’s after you?”
“Can’t be. He’s dead.”
“You killed him?” she gasped.
“My sire? No, he killed himself. Probably got bored from everything. Most of the older ones do that. When they feel they’ve done or tried everything they’ve wanted to do. He was past three hundred years old.”
“What was his name?”
“William Hockley.”
She paused for a moment. “Is that why you like restoring old houses and manors? And you keep visiting the Victorian Era exhibit. Were you from the 1800s?”
“I was born in 1868. A long way from London, but this house was our original London home.”
Isla looked around, realizing that the room was exquisitely decorated with antiques and furniture that looked like the Victorian Era had never left. She also realized there were no lights to begin with. Just a room filled with crystals and candles. “You have no electricity?”
“This room doesn’t. It’s my place of respite.”
“And I’m here…”
“It’s the safest place for now. Until that nightwalker makes another move. I’ll know.”
“You can sense them? Can you fly?”
“Jesus, what have you been watching or reading?”
She shook her head, almost smiling. “I just thought you’d have super special skills.”
“Well, I know I’m tougher than most humans. I’m faster too. I also have a bit of OCD.”
“Obsessive compulsive disorder?” she asked quizzically.
“Yes. I can’t help but want things in order, counted properly. I think it’s a nightwalker thing.”
“How many are you in the world? Are there a lot of you in England?”
“I haven’t met any in a while. We prefer to keep to ourselves. I had met some before, they formed covens. I heard many were killed years back.”
“Who killed them?”
“Hunters,” he replied, “they’re born with a compulsion to hunt us down. I don’t know how it started, but I do know there were active seekers of our kind back then…” His voice trailed off, remembering something unpleasant.
“You were with William for a while, though?”
He nodded. “He was my sire. Where he wanted to go, I went. It was an attachment, an older nightwalker teaching a younger one the ways of the world. And no, we weren’t gay, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She blushed a little, it crossed her mind. “What happened to your family? Did you have any?”
His facial expression changed. He leaned back against the headrest and looked at the ceiling. “I did. They all died. My mother, my father, my younger sister and brother.”
“Did you kill them?”
“I wanted them to live forever with me, however long forever was for nightwalkers.” His voice trailed off.
“Did William take them away from you?”
“I asked him to,” he replied, clenching a hand. “Not everyone can take it, the turning. It was worse than hell, the pain of changing into a nightwalker. Your body feels like it’s being burned alive, like your lungs are drowning with water, and you can loudly hear your heartbeat slow down every second you breathe. It’s too much to handle. I guess it was too much for my family…”
“You couldn’t do anything?”
“I put them in that situation. It imitated symptoms of the consumption before they died, which was popular back then. So everyone believed they died of tuberculosis, and I was the lucky arsehole son who wasted my father’s inheritance. I was the eldest son, the only one who survived among his heirs.”
“Is Gabriel even your real name?” She suddenly realized he could have lied. There were many realizations that night, and his name was one of those.
He shook his head. “I haven’t been entirely honest, and I think you’d understand. I’d be dead by now if people found out I’m still alive after a hundred and forty-seven years.”
“Damn, I almost forgot you were that old.” She shook her head, incredulous.
“I guess you slept with someone old enough to be your great, great, great grandpa,” he joked feebly.
She didn’t laugh, but she stared at him. He was perfectly preserved in his youth. She wondered how long it would take for him to age. He was still handsome to look at, like he belonged in some commercial for a testosterone-laden product, with his brooding eyes and sculpted face.
“We still age,” he interrupted her. “I think it’ll take another hundred years for a few wrinkles to appear.”
“Can you read minds?”
“I deduce better as a nightwalker,” he said. “That’s years and years of living, and years and years of seeing humans lie.”
“Do you miss being human?”
He was
silent for a while. “Being like this has afforded me the ability to do many things. But sometimes, I miss it. The warmth is what I miss most.”
“You’re not ice cold…”
“Yeah, I’m not. Just a slight chill. I still have blood running in me, although it’s slower than the average. So I still bleed. I know there’s a scientific explanation for this, unfortunately, I’m not interested in that kind of science. I’m just glad I heal quickly. Pretty useful. I haven’t been hospitalized in decades,” he laughed.
“You didn’t tell me your name.”
“Aidan,” he responded. “But no one’s called me that in years. I leave London years at a time. Enough to say I’d probably had a son abroad, or that I’d died and a relative was inheriting what I have. In fact, I just got back three years ago from Italy. It’s getting difficult now that there’s internet everywhere.”
“You adapted quickly.”
“I invested in Google.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Is that why you only pretend to work?”
“It’s still hard work. It isn’t easy to run these companies, you know. Real estate and banking.”
“Which bank?”
He shook his head and smiled. “You don’t need to know.”
“At least I’d know where you sort of work. What other skills do you have?”
“I can speak eight languages fluently.”
“Which ones? I think you’re the first person I’ve met to actually speak eight languages.”
“French, Spanish, Italian, German, Mandarin, Dutch, Russian and English. English today is quite different from before, though.”
“You’ve got remnants of it.”
“Old habits die hard.” He looked at her, pleasantly surprised she didn’t show any signs of fear anymore. It was like that with Lily…
“Gab- Aidan- well, what do I call you?”
“Gabriel. You knew me first as Gabriel.”
“Alright. Gabriel. Why did that nightwalker attack me? Did you know who it was?”
Gabriel tensed. He closed his eyes for a second, then he clasped his hands in front of him, before he stood up, walking for the fireplace. He looked at the flames flickering and didn’t face Isla when he spoke again.
“He wanted something from you.”
“My blood?”
He shook his head, still not looking at her. “No. Something else. An object. He’s been after it for years. I last saw him in 1895.” There was a flash of pain on his face.
“Who is he?”
“He’s my brother.”
*
The nightwalker groaned, knowing full well it would take hours or a day at least to heal the wound caused by Aidan. He was a tall and thin and pale person, with dark hair that was almost black. He had a high forehead, sculpted cheekbones, and thick eyebrows that gave him an aura of superiority.
Damn you, Aidan! He cursed to himself as he took out the small blade with some difficulty. It had been embedded deep into his knee. Aidan surely used gloves. That bastard.
Wait, he thought, I’m the bastard.
He almost laughed at his own joke as he hobbled away from the pocket park. He had thought it would be with her. Aidan hadn’t been that visible in years. And Aidan still walked in daylight. It was something he couldn’t have. There were only two reasons why Aidan would allow himself to be openly seen by the public with a normal human. One, he couldn’t resist her blood, and two, she had something he needed, desperately.
That same thing he had wanted to have for so long. He had been tracking the news since the moment he saw it. That mass grave unearthed an hour away from London. He had been there the night the tomb was made. It wasn’t even a tomb, per se. Bodies had been dumped there, fresh from death. They had been drained entirely.
He was hungry that night. Hungry for blood, and even more hungry for revenge. Aidan had taken everything from him, their father, the gemstone, and even Lily… He could pry the gemstone from his brother’s hands, but Aidan had to be dead for that to happen, dead and he had to have the right to wield it.
The gemstone that Lily had kept away from him was his last bastion of hope for walking in daylight, and becoming far more invincible than the others. He could be at par with his brother. He would heal faster. The gemstone owed allegiance to its wearer over time, according to the legends, or if the owner had accepted death completely.
Isaac Murdoch shook his head, knowing he wouldn’t get very far with this silver-caused injury. He needed help for tonight. He reached for his mobile phone and dialed a number as he rested against an ivy covered wall.
“I need your help. Now.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
He had taken her home as soon as the sun broke through the clouds. He drove her himself. Gabriel didn’t dare mention about the pocket watch just yet, not when he was still gaining her trust.
“How can you move around with the sun? What talisman or object do you use, aside from sunblock?”
“Very funny,” he said. He pointed to his index finger. There was a small, partially polished gemstone atop the ring. “This kind of gemstone is pretty rare.”
She looked at it, saw the edges and grooves, saw how it partially sparkled with a tinge of red on it as the sun hit his hand. It looked like any other gemstone one could buy online.
“And the others don’t have it?”
“I suppose not. And Isaac doesn’t have it either. So he thought because I was seeing you, that you’d have it.”
“Why would he think I’d have something as important as that?”
“He probably saw me with you. I didn’t know he was still stalking me,” he muttered.
“This is your brother and yet you’ve never seen him since?”
“Since our father died. He was my older half-brother. My father had quite a scandal when he impregnated a woman who wasn’t his betrothed. Isaac didn’t live with us, but father provided well for him. Isaac just wasn’t the heir, I was. So from childhood, he resented me. We competed for our father’s affections as children. Silly of us as kids, actually.”
“And he became a nightwalker? The same time you were turned?”
Aidan shook his head. “I’m not sure how it happened. When William and I parted ways, I suppose he found my brother, thinking he’d make a good companion. I think William realized later on Isaac wasn’t quite ideal for him. Isaac was quite erratic, you see. He wouldn’t listen to his sire and went about attacking and killing many people. I supposed he was part of those fairly sensational Jack the Ripper murders,” he said, almost jokingly.
“What? That’s been unsolved for over a century. Besides, I read the cuts were clean. Precise.”
“Isaac wanted to be a doctor. But, like many of our time, we enjoyed our opium. His opium use increased when our father died. His mother had died when he was nine years old, and he was sent to live with my father’s relatives, a few miles away from our ancestral manor. It was too bad he didn’t finish his studies. He would have made a good doctor that time…”
“Didn’t you help him at least?”
“My thoughts were far from him. I disliked him immensely and we were openly hostile.”
“You had your own issues.”
“Precisely. I wasn’t much of a nice and responsible son. I loved to waste the night away with merriment.”
“A party boy, I see. That’s a far cry from what you are now.”
“I still enjoy my liquor. Except I never get drunk. Only a bit buzzed. And if I take drugs, the effects quickly disappear.”
“Which would be disappointing for an addict.”
“Listen, Isla,” he changed the topic. “I want you safe, no matter what.” His voice was firm and serious.
“How do you plan to do that?”
“Stay at my place.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You’re safer in my house,” he insisted.
“No, you don’t get it. I have a 9-5 job, well more of a
9 until whatever time I finish job.”
“And it landed you in trouble. Because you were affiliated with me. And he thinks you have something he needs.”
“Does he really? Or maybe he was just pretty hungry…” she weakly said.
“I want you safe. I want you close to me.”
“I have a job.”
“You’re defenceless.”
“I know a bit of karate. I was a blue belt before I left the States.”
“It wouldn’t do much against him,” he said, shifting to park. His engine hummed quietly in the neighborhood. A few people were walking about already at six in the morning. It was a quaint picture, a pittance to last night’s incident.
“I have a job. I can’t lose this internship. It’s my future.”
“Isn’t living a part of your future?” he said. Then he shook his head. “Look, stay at my place. I’ll drop you off and pick you up every day. How’s that?”
“What will-”
“I’ll pay off your living expenses. I want you safe.”
“You barely know me,” she said, her voice notching up a pitch.
She was distressed, he knew it. It overwhelmed her. Like how it overwhelmed Lily. This wasn’t an easy choice to make for her. He had known Lily for a longer time than Isla. Moving in to be safe was almost out of consideration. Almost.
“What do I tell my flatmate? We work in the same place.”
“I don’t quite like her. She ogles us,” he suddenly said with a frown.
“Ogles us?”
“I saw her twice. She pretends she doesn’t care, but she’ll come running for that window and look at me and you.”
“For what?”
He shrugged. “Beats me what the women of this century think of. Some gossip fodder maybe.”
She said nothing. Then she held onto the door handle but he held onto her arm, firmly at first, then he released it.
“I will come to get you later from work. Then we’ll come back here so you can pack.”
She nodded once and exited the car without another word. He watched her as she walked into the apartment building, and from the corner of his eye, he saw her roommate by the window. He waited for a few more minutes, until he saw her figure inside the flat.
He didn’t want to sound too forceful, but he needed to see if the gemstone was still there. The rarest of all diamonds, a single cursed red diamond that could make them daywalkers. It was what Isaac wanted after all these years. The gemstone that couldn’t be his back then, was most probably with Isla. She had no idea how much danger she was in, and he had done his best to persuade her of this “danger,” while still keeping her in the shadows.
