by Rose Haven
“No,” she said, although she knew it was true. She knew it as well as she knew her own name. In fact, she knew it far better than she knew her own name. She needed to drink the blood of a human. Every other fact seemed hazy.
“The little bit I gave you should last you a few hours. Do you think you can get up?”
“I…”
He didn’t wait for her to finish. He put one arm around her waist and the other under her knees to carry her.
Eliza nuzzled her face closer to his neck, wanting him in an all-new, grotesque way.
“Don’t bite me,” he said and his words had a strange vibrating quality and she wondered if he was trying out his hypnosis.
As much as she wanted his blood, she was too weak to resist him. She could barely keep her eyes open.
Chapter Five
When Eliza woke she smelled shampoo and the edges of dark curls brushing her nose. No. He wouldn’t have brought me to Rachelle. No!
Then she realized that if it had been Rachelle, her mouth would have been watering. She would have already plunged her teeth into her wrist. No, this woman didn’t have the same fresh, living taste that Eliza wanted so desperately. This must be her mother.
“She’s awake,” she heard Levi say.
Eliza propped herself up on her elbows. Her head seemed to be throbbing even worse than before. She could tell that the lights weren’t actually that bright but it seemed to hurt to keep her eyes open. Maybe there was some truth to that vampires in sunlight thing. Oh, God. Vampires. Was she really one of them?
Eliza couldn’t quite place where she was. She only knew that she was back in the human world. She could smell them. Everywhere. She could hear their hearts beating and each beat was like a hammer on her already throbbing brain. She didn’t care about any of it, she was just relieved to know that she was so close to satisfaction. Any minute now, she would feel the blood coursing through her veins, every cell drinking in the pleasure.
The house had a dusty smell and she saw a cabinet full of Precious Moments figurines. A well-worn Bible sat by the side of the bed. Where was she?
Levi sat on her left and her mother sat on her right. This moment felt strangely similar to when she woke up in the hospital and saw Rachelle and her father staring at her like she might sprout horns and wings any moment. But this time, she might actually sprout horns and wings. She really didn’t know.
“Here,” her mother said. “Try to drink this.”
She poked the straw of a rosy pink drink toward Eliza’s mouth.
“Gross. What is it? Who is it?”
“It’s a strawberry milkshake,” her mother said. “You used to like them.”
“What? No. Levi said he was taking me to get human blood.” A sentence she never thought she would say…
“It might not be too late. Try this first.”
The thought of a sugary, sweet milkshake might make her want to vomit if she actually had anything inside her to eject. She didn’t want that. She wanted that beating heart in the other room. She realized that she wanted that blood more than she had ever wanted anything, even more than she had wanted Levi. That thought made her want to try to cry again.
She had loved how it felt to want someone so desperately, especially when she could take him whenever she had the urge. They could stop and make love anytime they wanted, and often did. She had relished every minute of that uninhibited, passionate wanting. Meeting that simple, but profound need had made her feel alive. But this was different. This was a loss of control. The desire for blood had consumed her and taken away her humanity. She just wanted to go back…even a few days…to a moment when she had wanted Levi more than anything and just the simple act of making love to him gave her everything she needed.
“You haven’t made the transition yet,” her mother said, holding up a dagger. Eliza didn’t understand much of what was going on, but her mother holding a strawberry milkshake in one hand and a dagger in the other was especially confusing.
“Look,” Levi said and he reached over her to take the dagger from Vivian. He gently unclenched Eliza’s fist and she saw a faint cut across her palm. She gasped as she saw Levi take the dagger across the same line. Tiny droplets of blood popped through her skin. Very tiny droplets. She was no doctor, but she had a feeling that she should be bleeding more than that.
Levi had the dagger up and smiled.
“I don’t understand,” Eliza said meekly. The only thing she had learned from this was what she already knew, she didn’t have nearly enough blood in her body and she needed more. Now.
“That dagger is made of bronze,” her mother said. “Bronze reacts with vampire blood. Our blood would turn black as soon as it touched the blade. Vampire hunters use daggers like this to test their victims.”
“It means that you’re not a full vampire yet,” Levi said. He clasped his hand against her faint cut protectively.
“But you’re very close,” Vivian said. “You’re dying. We think that food and water will help bring you back from the brink. It’s not too late.”
“It hurts,” Eliza said in a weary tone, and both of their brows furrowed as if her words had hurt them too. “Please make the pain stop.”
“Just try the milkshake first,” Vivian said. “We won’t let you die, baby, I promise. If it’s too late to save you as a human, we’ll save you as a vampire. That’s why we’re here.”
“Where?”
“Her name is Helen,” Levi said. “She’s the woman I drink from. She’ll let you drink from her too, if needed.”
“She would let me?”
“Yes,” Levi said. “She understands what we are. She’s eighty six years old and lives here alone except for a home health nurse that comes in twice a week.”
Eliza wanted to ask more questions, but it hurt to talk. However, Levi probably read her reaction because he winced slightly.
“I know it’s not an easy thing to accept,” he said. “But it’s the best I can do. She appreciates my visits. We actually have a lot in common. Although she jokes that she’s too young for me.” He smiled slightly. “When I first told her I was a vampire, her eyes lit up like she was a little girl again. She said that she had thought she’d seen everything…and was glad that she hadn’t. She loved learning that there was more to the world than just what she knew.”
Watching him smile as he talked about Helen, Eliza actually felt jealous of this octogenarian, but she knew that should be the least of her concerns. Of course, she was simultaneously jealous of Levi. She wanted to sink her teeth into that paper skin.
As if reading her mind, Levi added, “I would introduce you, but I’m afraid you might murder her. Some other time, hopefully.”
“Just the milkshake, and then we’ll talk about bringing the old lady in. But not until I see the bottom of this glass,” Vivian said.
The edges of Eliza’s lips hurt as she smiled slightly. This reminded her of when her and her mother used to bargain how many green beans she had to eat before she could have ice cream. This was just much…weirder.
Her mother put the straw to her lips. Eliza tried to hold her breath so she wouldn’t have to smell the repulsive scent of milk and sugar. Pretend it’s blood. Pretend it’s blood.
Eliza began to drink, trying to swallow so fast that she couldn’t taste it. After she had drank half the milkshake in a few swallows, she got an epic ice cream headache and stopped to wince. However, as the pain subsided she noticed that she did feel better. Her mind felt clearer and the pain in her body had lessened. It was working.
She kept working at the milkshake until it was gone. She was grateful that her mother didn’t offer to bring Helen in because she probably still would have said yes, but she felt strong enough now to try to wait a little longer. Levi came in with a large glass of tepid water and she realized how desperately thirsty she was. Since the water wasn’t cold, nothing stopped her from swallowing most of it in a few gulps.
“Better?” Levi asked.
Eliza wiped away some water that had dribbled down her chin and nodded. Then she looked Levi in the eye. The words started coming out of her mouth before she knew what was happening.
“I don’t want to be like this,” she said. “I don’t like myself this way.”
“I know…”
“I need to get away. I don’t think I should see you anymore. I just want to go home to my sister.”
Levi’s lips parted as if he might say something, but he must have thought better of it because he closed his mouth and swallowed, looking down at the floral print comforter. He nodded absently, first at the floor, and then he nodded at Eliza, like he didn’t know where to look. He looked so lost.
He dropped her hand, stood, and walked out the bedroom door.
Chapter Six
Eliza stared at her ceiling fan and listened to the clock ticking. Another tortuous night with no sleep. It had been twenty-seven days and thirteen hours since she had last seen Levi. In that entire time, she’d probably gotten a good eight hours of sleep…total. She had never imagined she’d have to fight so hard to be human. It was too late to enroll in school for the semester, but she had found a job interning at a law firm. A year ago, she would have been thrilled. Now she dreaded going into those fluorescent lights and listening to the mundane whir of the coffee machine. Being human was a battle. She had to set alarms for herself reminding her to eat and drink, and she forced herself to go through the motions of sleep for at least five hours a night.
That meant she spent about five hours a night, lying awake and thinking of Levi. Sometimes this led her hand to stray south. Sometimes it led her into a cold shower at three am, which usually turned into a hot date with the showerhead. Eventually she would stop thinking about him. Right?
As much as she had enjoyed her time with him, she wanted to be a human. She wanted to find a human man and get married. She wanted to have babies. And she wanted her and her human husband to grow old together. That’s what she had wanted all of her life, and she wouldn’t let lust change that.
At least, this is the story that she had told Rachelle. She didn’t want to go through telling her the truth again. And she couldn’t tell her about their mother. Maybe one day, but no good would come from it now. Even more than she missed Levi, Eliza missed Rachelle. Although they still shared an apartment, Eliza avoided her as much as she could. She felt like she was teetering on the brink. One skipped meal or one paper cut on Rachelle’s finger might trigger an uncontrollable blood lust. Even when they did talk, it was different now. Eliza’s life had changed forever, and she couldn’t tell her sister. They used to recount every detail—what they ate for lunch, what they wanted to eat but didn’t, and every last word their crush had spoken so they could analyze. Now it was all small talk at best.
Rachelle knew very little about Levi and everything she did know, she hated. She assumed that Levi had been abusive. Only a controlling, evil man would have been so selfish with Eliza’s time. Eliza tried to explain that no…she was the one who had been selfish, but Rachelle wouldn’t listen. She said that Eliza was brainwashed. Eliza would have almost rather that have been true. At least that would explain her obsession.
She found herself imagining that she would roll over and find Levi next to her. She would reach her arms around him and find him hard and ready. Then she would crawl on top of him…
Eliza screamed into her pillow in frustration. She thought she could still smell him in her hair and in her clothes. Every once in a while she’d think she tasted him on her lips like they had just kissed.
Eliza swung her legs around and hopped out of bed, still completely full of energy. She knew she would never fall asleep in the state she was in, so she decided to try something different. With the light still off to avoid waking her sister, she found clothes, socks, and running shoes. She wrapped her unruly hair into a hairband and padded into the living room as quietly as she could.
She closed the front door behind her, aiming for only a gentle click. The cold air covered her arms with goose bumps, but she loved the feeling. The cold. The dark. It was all so comfortable. She ran down the sidewalk at a much quicker pace than she used to. A year ago, running this fast would give her a stitch in her side and leave her gasping for air. Now it was easy. Perhaps she should put her half-dead skills to good use and start training for the Olympics.
The familiar streets looked so odd in the darkness. The quiet was even stranger than the dark. No car noises, no kids playing, nothing except the sound of her breathing and the blood rushing through her veins. Her blood. She kept reminding herself of that. She was still human and still generated her own blood. No matter how much she craved blood, she didn’t need it.
As she turned a corner to begin pounding up a hill, she detected the faint scent of blood. She tried to ignore it. It was probably a wounded animal. The scent of blood surfaced from time to time. Even a kid falling and scraping his knee several blocks over could be enough to pique her senses.
However, this was different. The smell was too pungent…and too familiar. This was the blood that she had been smelling and craving for the past three weeks. Rachelle.
She thought she had been running fast before, but now she crossed the barrier between fast human and inhuman. She might have been flying. Based on how quickly she passed the houses, she might have been running as fast as she usually drove down this same street.
She bounded up the stairs to her apartment just as quickly, seeming to take the stairs five or six at a time. As she approached her front door, the smell of blood grew stronger. Her own blood seemed to electrify in a mixture of fear and want. She flew through the front door and followed the sound of Rachelle gasping and screaming. As much as she had feared it to be true, she hadn’t hoped to be imagining the scent. But now that she heard her sister’s cries, she knew that this was all too real.
The Queen had Rachelle pinned down in her bed, holding her hands behind her back and immobilizing her legs with the weight of her body. Her mouth was latched on to Rachelle’s neck. Rachelle was whimpering and squirming but looked weak. How much blood had she already taken? Eliza hadn’t been gone for that long, but it would have been long enough to take quite a bit of blood.
“You bitch,” Eliza growled.
The Queen stopped only long enough to turn around and sneer at Eliza, blood grotesquely oozing down her mouth and neck.
Eliza pounced, for once trying to shed all of her human self and draw purely on the vampirism. She needed to be an animal to defeat an animal. Although she was prepared to rip off the Queen’s limbs with her own bare hands, it wouldn’t be easy. With one easy swipe, the Queen knocked Eliza back and flung her across the room, not even looking up from her feeding this time.
Eliza tried again, this time wielding her sister’s dresser lamp. Once again, the Queen knocked her back easily, both Eliza and the lamp went careening back into the dresser. The lamp shattered and Eliza reached for her wounded head and felt the moistness of blood.
“Fuck you,” Eliza screamed, as little good it would do.
She then remembered the dagger her mother had given her. Bronze was used to test whether or not someone was a vampire, but she had also said that bronze weapons were used by vampire hunters. Perhaps that would be the edge she needed.
Eliza dashed into her room and grabbed the dagger out of her bottom drawer. It still had a glint of red from her own still-human blood. When Eliza had made it within five feet of the Queen, she stopped feeding, dropped Rachelle, and turned to face Eliza. She must have smelled the bronze coming.
Eliza eyed her sister’s still body, her throat constricting with terror, but she had to focus on the Queen.
“How dare you come into my home?” Eliza spat.
“It’s just my monthly feeding. Completely in-line with vampire law,” she said icily.
“And it just had to be my sister.”
“I’d been craving her ever since I got a whiff of her in the fall. She’s as decadent as I had hoped.
Why don’t you have a taste? I think I’ve left you a few drops.”
“Go to Hell.”
The Queen shook her head back and laughed. Her laugh was sinister enough, but the blood dripping down her chest and glinting on her teeth made her look absolutely maniacal. How could anyone call this woman their Queen?
“Now that,” The Queen said, pointing a bloody finger at the dagger, “is against vampire law. As are you, my dear. I’ve just fed, so I’m stronger than ever. Is this really the time you want to attack? It seems foolish to me. I suggest you put down your illicit contraband and let your Queen pass.”
Now it was Eliza’s turn to laugh coldly. “You’re not my Queen.”
“Quite right, I suppose. You’re a girl with no home. Not a human. Not a vampire. An aberration.”
Eliza eyed Rachelle again, watching her back to see if she was breathing. Even if she was alive, she hadn’t moved her head and might be suffocating against the mattress. She needed to call 9-1-1. No more games.
Eliza did her best to stab the Queen in one swift motion that she wouldn’t see coming, but instead the Queen knocked her hand aside at the last minute and the dagger clattered to the floor. The Queen moved so quickly that Eliza hardly knew what was happening.
All she knew was that now the Queen was on top of her. She used her hand to press Eliza’s forehead, pinning her to the floor and her other hand to grasp Eliza’s hand while she drove her knee into Eliza’s chest.
“Too bad I just ate,” she said. “I’d love to suck you dry. I guess I’ll have to settle for something more…pedestrian.”
She moved her hand from Eliza’s forehead to her neck and squeezed.
“Don’t worry,” the Queen said. “You won’t die. Not really. I’m simply saving you from your limbo. Righting a wrong.”
Eliza couldn’t move and she certainly couldn’t scream, the Queen had made sure of that. Even if she did live, she wasn’t sure if she would ever scream again. The Queen’s supernaturally strong hand had crushed her neck. She could feel her wind pipe collapse far before she began to suffer from lack of oxygen. Eliza tried to kick her legs, but seemed to be only able to make tiny movements. She knew it was useless. The Queen would kill her. Perhaps she had killed her already. But Eliza was going down fighting, even if she could barely move.
