by Kay Williams
“You don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about,” Cornwall snapped, the beast in him responding to the direct attack.
“I just don’t see why you don’t just tell her the truth.”
“What truth?” I asked, getting tired of being in the middle of their verbal volleying.
“He is afraid of you,” Carson answered simply.
“Nonsense,” Cornwall snarled.
“He tastes of it,” Carson whispered. “All thin and bile and a twisting bitterness. He is scared of you, this Alpha wildling. The epitome of everything a predator should be. A prime example; and he is scared of you.”
“Taste?” Cornwall looked at his bare hand. “Dependant.”
I could only blink, Carson had not only picked up on Cornwall's taste, but also his nature and the strength of the connection he shared with his inner predator. I would have been tempted to think that Carson had invented some of the information, but Cornwall hadn't corrected him so I had to assume that Carson was telling the truth.
Carson’s slow touch as his fingers grazed my arms felt possessive and Cornwall watched the move with eyes narrowing in a displeasure he had no right to.
“Afraid? Of what?” I asked.
Cornwall took a couple of deep breaths before letting out a frustrated sigh.
“I don’t know. You have a quality. A power. I don’t know what it is but I recognise that it is stronger than me and it sets my animal off. Most of the time we can tease and share and it doesn’t bother me, but occasionally it sets me off. Half the reason it’s so frustrating is because I can’t tell when it will happen.”
A power? The telekinesis? Was it really that simple? All these years of failure because the strength of my abstract was like a force that other people could feel pushing them away and couldn’t stand to be in the presence of? I was like the charms that protected Night Terrors. People couldn’t be in the bar without fearing for their lives, no wonder I had never got a second date. I had seen the way people reacted when walking into the bar and frankly I now felt blessed that I was lucky enough that my dates had stuck around until the end rather than running away before the starters could arrive.
“A power?”
“I can’t describe it to you, Hannah.”
Of course he couldn’t, I had never told him what it was, but even so.
“And you decided that I was the kind of person who, if they had an unspeakable power, would do something evil with it?”
“I never said that.”
“But you implied it, thanks for the character assessment,” I snapped.
“It’s not just me!” Cornwall snarled back.
“All your friends? How many hours did you sit around a table analysing how you felt? Or worse, laughing about it and the ugly pencil thin freak who made you fear for your lives over a dinner table?”
Cornwall automatically looked away and it gave me an answer I wasn’t sure I wanted.
“He is shamed, Hannah. I would imagine their laughter was more born of nervousness than amusement,” Carson offered, but he surprised me by tightening his hands warningly around my wrists and correcting me in a firm voice. “And you are not ugly, unhealthy or a freak.”
I should have been angry with Carson for forcing the issue with Cornwall but though I was depressed with the outcome I was strangely grateful. At least I knew now, it was something I had never considered. Even if ironically it was the simplest of explanations and it should have popped to mind before now, but I had never used my abstract to intimidate people. I wasn’t sure how I was subconsciously managing to do it, but I would work at subduing it.
All Carson had managed to do was prove I didn’t have any honest friends.
Once again the knowledge was like claws.
“Can we go now?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Absolutely.”
Carson and Cornwall spoke at the same time, I didn’t spare a look for the wildling and Carson never expected me to he just entwined our fingers and turned away.
I was half aware of Cornwall’s hurt protest as I let Carson lead me away but I didn’t turn back to it, I didn’t know how our little spat hadn’t drawn the attention of the other guests but no-one stared as we left the museum and I was grateful for it.
Carson tucked my hand into his elbow, holding me close as we descended the stairs.
“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind for tonight but I couldn’t let him get away without telling you the truth, he was letting you think you were the problem when it was he who has issues.”
“Thank you.”
“Why don’t we go for a drink? I’ll introduce you to someone special?”
“Your kind of drink or my kind of drink?”
“Both.” Carson smiled getting his phone out of his pocket and began a text. “Where is your jacket?”
“Back there,” I jerked my thumb at the museum.
Carson stopped, shrugged off his wool coat, and despite my protests wrapped it around my shoulders and guided my arms into the sleeves. It was more than a few sizes too big, hung to my thighs and he had to roll the sleeves up several times.
“You’ll soon warm it up.”
“So where are we going?”
Carson tucked my hand into his elbow again.
“What kind of drink would you like?”
“Bloody Mary?” I smiled.
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” Carson complained.
He hailed a car and opened the door helping me inside before giving the driver directions and making himself comfortable on the seat next to me; he dropped an arm over my shoulders and curled his hand around to run his knuckles up and down my neck.
“Not hungry surely?”
“No,” he agreed. “You just have soft skin.”
“So who am I meeting?” I leant my head against his shoulder.
“Remember when I said I worked for the Council,” Carson began in the slow tones of
a man unsure how I would take the coming news.
“Yes.”
“I am Council, one of the original four Pre-Pause Dependants who worked with the Waking Night.”
“Oh,” I managed.
“One of the nicest things about you, Hannah, was that when we met and I introduced myself you had no idea who I was, or what I did, you accepted me as a stranger and later trusted me as a friend.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a cab with such a politically powerful man. He might have been long dead but he was also a man who I had teased and laughed with, a man who had given in to his bloodlust, a man who had brought me clothes and compliments and a warning.
“Right.”
“The man I am taking you to meet is called Valdine, again Council, again one of the original four, I trust him.”
“You told him,” I said pushing out of Carson’s arms.
All his talk of keeping to myself, of not drawing unwanted attention in my direction and he was betraying me with his next breath. A little part of my brain told me that as a Councillor he wouldn’t have any choice and would have had to divulge the information, but I still felt a welling sense of betrayal.
“I had to.”
“It was not your secret to share.”
“He is trustworthy.”
“In your estimation,” I replied and when Carson would have jumped to the defence of his friend I continued. “What is there to stop him telling those he trusts, and them telling their friends and then their friends? A secret only stays that way when it is not shared.”
The window between the front seat and the back slid across, revealing the back of the drivers head, hidden under a baseball cap.
“She has a point, Anthony.”
“You could try helping me here.”
The driver aligned the car to the motion-sensitive guides built on the road surface and transferred control over to automatic, before turning in his seat to regard me, sweeping the hat off as he did so. He looked in his mi
d-forties, was well muscled, had dark intelligent eyes but I couldn’t take my eyes off the top of his head, since when was bald that attractive?
“Can’t,” he apologised, not taking his eyes off me. “She’s got a point.”
“Hannah Roberts, Valdine,” Carson introduced us.
“So much for going to meet him,” I complained.
“She whines a lot.” Valdine’s nose wrinkled in displeasure.
“Stop the car. I want out.”
“Hannah. Valdine is very old and has poor manners-” Carson apologised.
“Hey!” Valdine snarled.
“But he is a good man,” Carson finished.
“I don’t care. I’ve been deceived enough for one night I want out.”
How could I have gone from ecstasy to misery is less than twenty-four hours all in the company of the same man?
“I’m not stopping the car.” Valdine's superior than thou expression rubbed up against a raw nerve.
“What makes you think I can’t stop it?”
“How?” Valdine laughed outright this time. “By floating a pencil at it?”
Out of the corner of my eye I watched Carson’s cheeks hollow. Dependants didn’t have enough blood of their own to blush like I could, but their cheeks would cave in delicately around their cheekbones when they were embarrassed.
It seemed that Carson had been called upon to prove his claim and what he was rather proud of Valdine was unimpressed with.
“Don’t be so stupid. A pencil isn’t going to do anything,” I replied. “All I would have to do is take the car out of automatic.”
Now Valdine frowned a little, glancing warily back at the car's console.
“You can do that?”
“Pressing a button isn’t any more complicated than lifting a pencil.”
“You would hurt yourself if the car crashed.”
“You think so?”
With a kinetic shield up, I would be safe inside a shell, the car could veer into a wall and I would be perfectly safe, of course a very bad accident could crush the metal of the car around me but I would easily be able to prise the metal apart and free myself.
I wasn’t invulnerable to harm but whether harm was able to reach me in the first place was another matter.
“Do we have to fight?” Carson complained in the silence as Valdine continued to try and intimidate me with a stare. “This was not what I had in mind and it's not going to get you what you want either, Valdine.”
“True,” Valdine agreed. “My apologies, Miss Roberts, but if you saw how straining lifting a pencil was for Anthony you would be a bit dubious as well.”
“The evening is a big bust for you all around, huh?”
“You have no idea,” Carson grumbled turning his attention out of the window.
“You seem to have made quite the impression,” Valdine commented. “I don’t have to worry about you kidnapping her do I, Anthony?”
“I can’t have friends now?” Carson shot back. “I happen to just like her.”
“'Her' is confused.” I complained.
Carson shot me an apologetic look.
“You know how people can bind their Essences together?”
“Yeah,” I agreed slowly.
I understood the basics anyway, every person was born with a inner pool of raw magic known as Essence. Some people were born with a lot of it , which they could draw from allowing them to cast Spells. Some people were born with almost none, which meant they couldn't. But everyone was born with it. People could bind their Essence together, which meant that people who love across Races could share life spans, energy and health.
Now-a-days it was a common addition to a marriage ceremony.
“Well,” Carson managed finally. “Blood Dependants can’t share their Essence.”
“Because you are dead?”
“We assume so. The virus that drives us interferes with our ability to bind Essence to Essence,” Valdine spoke. “We have discovered that, though we can’t share Essence, we are capable of forming Bonds of Blood which work in the same way.”
“Never heard of it.”
“So far amongst our entire populace there is only one couple,” Carson said. “Uncle and niece almost twenty generations apart, but still family.”
“Pretty.”
“When the Bond hit the Dependant he became irrational,” Valdine said.
“He was not irrational,” Carson scowled. “He was in love for the first time in four hundred years!”
“In love with his niece?” I repeated.
“In a healthy way,” Carson stressed. “I envy him.”
“But he kidnapped her,” I prompted.
“It was 2263, a Portal was going to drag San Diego into its own harbour, and he was feeling things he hadn’t felt in four hundred years. Love, hope, happiness. He just wanted to keep her safe.”
“And Valdine is worried that we have this Bond?”
“I wish,” Carson said softly, meaningfully. “We do not have a Blood Bond. But I do like you very much.”
“Only because when you Bite me I give you wonderful powers.”
“Yes,” Valdine teased. “Pencil floating will become a new Olympic sport.”
“Do shut up,” Carson scowled. “You are just upset because I got them first and you didn’t.”
I wondered how it was possible for such old men to sound and act like such small children.
“Do you always bicker this much?”
“Yes,” they both spoke at the same time and they both made it sound like the others fault.
“What I would like, Miss Roberts,” Valdine turned his attention back to me. “Is a blood sample.”
“No.”
“Would it sway you at all to know why I want it?”
“No.”
“Hannah,” Carson gently took hold of my hand. “This is the reason why I broke faith with you. Please?”
If he had tried to Bespell me to get his way I wouldn’t have thought twice about crashing the car and never speaking to him again, but he just held my hand gently, his thumb moving across the skin, his eyes hopeful and at the same time undemanding.
“Alright,” I agreed, it was shameful that I knew I was being played and yet couldn’t rally a defence.
“Try and imagine a world where you can only eat one kind of food,” Valdine began.
I opened my mouth to say I had heard the bagel analogy before but Valdine swept an eyebrow up daring me to interrupt him so I held up my free hand in surrender and settled back against the seat.
“The truth is, Hannah, we are Dependant on you, and before the Pause that wasn’t a problem. We could sniff out a good meal, Bespell you, lead you into the shadows, take what we needed without harming you and without you even being aware of it. Now that’s considered a violation of free choice and Human Rights meaning we have to demean ourselves in order to get your attention.”
“You mean the Blood Bars?”
“We have to whore ourselves in order for us to survive.”
“You don’t like people much do you?”
“I like people fine,” Valdine corrected me but it caused Carson to muffle an amused snort. “But like most people I enjoy a quiet evening in.”
“Not possible I guess.”
“Not even with contacts,” Carson agreed.
“For several years we have tried to create a blood substitute.”
“Doctors use cloned blood for surgery,” I started.
“It doesn’t take,” Valdine shook his head. “We have tried cloned blood, plasma, every potion and remedy and variation. But our bodies reject it, just like we reject blood drawn into bags. Like organ transplants can still sometimes prove to fail despite all attempts. If it's not fresh out of the vein, it's no good.”
“How do you think I can help?”
“Carson absorbed your abstract, I don’t care about the power, I care about how he absorbed it.”
“Because if you can implant that absorption gene
into cloned blood you can have a supply at home.”
“Fridges of packets we can heat,” Valdine agreed.
“You mean like boil in the bag rice?”
“Precisely.”
“It would mean a lot to the Dependants if we had that option,” Carson said softly.
“If I can manipulate the gene, if there is even a gene to manipulate,” Valdine continued. “No-one would have to know where it came from, we have been experimenting with donated blood for some time and there doesn’t have to be any paperwork with your name on it if that’s what you want.”
I knew that if I didn’t help them I would end up having nightmares about talking bagels.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Rest,” Valdine replied, surprise flicking across his face. “Anthony Bespelled and drained you, you need to recover over the next couple of days.”
The car pulled up against the kerb and idled quietly.
“See,” Carson smiled. “I told you if you asked nicely she would give you have a couple of pints, for a scientist you are far too pessimistic.”
“Get out of my car,” Valdine scowled.
Still holding my hand Carson tugged me out of the car and onto the street, he pushed the door shut and waved Valdine off while I looked up and down the street.
We were in a little back road that had several large bungalow like houses lining each side, all of them had front gardens to some degree, driveways and garages, the display of wealth made a mockery of my one bedroom flat that was stacked neatly on top of two others.
“Come on,” Carson said pulling me towards the nearest one. “It's getting cold and I owe you a drink.”
# # #
“You are making it far too difficult for yourself.”
Carson frowned at me and lost his mental grip on the pen he had been trying to lift but had only managed to clatter about on the coffee table.
“You do it then.”
I wasn’t one for showing off, I had too many bad memories of it, but for Carson I found myself lifting the pen with my kinetic strength.
“It’s only a pen, you are tackling it as if you are trying to lift the Great Wall of China.”
“Show off,” Carson grumbled, his cheeks hollowing slightly.
I put down the mug of tea he had made for me and got up, I came around the table and though he jerked in surprise he let me sit down on his lap.
