Blood Thirst

by Lena Hillbrand

  All that from one little shovel, one little careless mistake of leaving it out. And now everything in her life felt different, exciting even. She didn’t care no more about killing bloodsuckers. In fact, the one she met might just be her best friend nowadays.

  Since she’d met Draven, she’d thought of things she hadn’t done much thinking on before. Deep-like thoughts about stuff like life and living forever and weighing that against having her family and their love, and about things like freedom and what it really meant. And things she’d never wanted to think on, like if her family was good people. Or if a bloodsucker could be a good person and a human be a bad one. If a bloodsucker could be called a person at all—she could surely call Draven that—and if they were all like Draven, or if he was the only goodish one there were. Didn’t seem like real good odds of that. But were it possible to be a soulless bloodsucker and still have a better heart than a living, breathing human being?

  When she saw a scrap of fabric, Sally stopped digging and fell down on her knees, digging with her hands just like one of the dogs when it unearthed a bone. She didn’t rightly care what she looked like nohow. She surely was glad her folks favored the shallow grave. As she dug, she noticed she’d started up crying again, and she scolded herself for being such a woman. She didn’t know what’d come over her—she seemed to cry all the time here lately.

  She knew what she planned was just about as crazy as a chicken with its head cut off, but she didn’t rightly care. She’d done made up her mind about this, and she were in it come snow or high water. Though she surely might loose a monster on herself and her family, she reckoned she could judge a person’s heart, even an inhuman person. And she just couldn’t believe bloodsuckers, least not this one, were so evil as her family judged.

  She wondered what Angela would do if she dug her out and found she’d turned into a bloodsucker, too. One way or the other, she was gonna find out about her sister, even if she had to sneak on back here as a bloodsucker and dig up her sister’s grave. She’d do it, too. Dig up Angela. Just as soon as she finished digging up Draven.

  “Yoo-hoo! Sally!” her uncle hollered from back at the house.

  Sally jumped about a mile and stood up. “Be in shortly,” she called back.

  “It’s getting dark. What you doing out there?”

  “Just watching the sunset, Tom. I’ll be in afore dark.”

  She squatted down again and swept her hand over Draven’s face. She couldn’t never get used to how cold he was. He had dirt all over him, and he looked a sight worse than her. After she brushed dirt out his eyes as best she could, she started digging around his body a little. He sat straight up from the waist all at once, popping up stiff like a dead person. She never could get used to how he stood up like that, neither, like the time she stepped on the head of a rake and the handle came flying up at her. That’s how Draven shot up sometimes, his whole body rising up stiff as a board.

  He sat real still while she uncovered his legs, but he started gurgling and such, so she stopped and looked at him. He’d opened up his eyes, ringed in black, and his whole face was so dark it done looked like he’d turned to dirt in the ground.

  Sally could tell he was having some trouble trying to speak. “You wanting me to pull that stake out your neck? ‘Cause I will, but I reckon it’ll hurt something fierce.”

  Draven’s head nodded the slightest bit. She’d have to pull the stake out eventually, and hurting a thing so it’d feel better later seemed like an okay thing to do, so she grabbed the stake and yanked it right out. Bloodsuckers didn’t have the kind of blood humans had as far as she’d seen. A human would have let out torrent of blood, but Draven only had a sluggish trickle that started flowing down his chest, soaking into the collar of her Pappy’s shirt.

  She got up real close and put her hand over the wound. Draven looked at her with those big sad eyes, and she felt real sorry she hadn’t stopped that dang Henson boy and her uncle from staking him so many times. Or at least that she’d taken all the stakes out afore they buried him. But she might’ve left him in the ground if she knew he were just hibernating in there. Thinking about him suffering in there all that time had started her thinking on this-here thing she’d decided on. But talking to her uncle had changed her mind for good.

  Draven lay over sideways, and his eyes glazed over same way a deer’s got right before it died, when it had its throat cut and knowed it was all over, but it hadn’t quite gone yet. Sally weren’t gonna stand for none of that tonight.

  “You listen here, mister,” she said. “You sit right back up and let me get you outta here. I ain’t having no laying down and dying tonight. I know you’s in pain, but that can’t be helped nohow, so get back up and let me take the rest of these here stakes out.” She yanked out the other two while she talked. Draven made some right awful sounds, but he didn’t scream none, which was good, ‘cause if Tom found out what she’d done, she’d probably get buried alive herself.

  “Now we got to hurry,” she said. “I can’t be out here much longer without drawing some suspicion on me, and I know you’s gonna be weak and slow from your wounds, so I wanna give you the best head start I can.”

  Draven stayed quiet while she rolled him sideways to unlock the chains and unwind them. He didn’t move, but lay there and let her do what she would.

  “Now you ain’t gonna get all suicidal-like on me again, is you? I’m letting you go. You got that? I’m risking my neck to get you out of here, so you best make it worth my while by getting.”

  Draven sat up then, and when Sally freed his arms, he helped her unwind his chains. But instead of scramming, he sat breathing real deep in and out. Then he took her hand up and kissed it. Sally didn’t rightly know what to think of all that. But Draven didn’t let go, just sat there with his lips on her hand and then her arm, looking at her until she sighed and nodded. “Ah, heck, go ahead,” she said. “I know you want to. Just make it quick and get it over with.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and the cold way his breath blew over her arm felt just like the cool breeze that evening. She sat and let him suck on her arm for a good minute, but when she started to feel a little dizzy, she pulled at her arm.

  He pulled real hard once with his lips, licked her arm with his cold tongue, and wiped his dry, dirty thumb over her skin to dry it. It made her feel all shivery-like and sorta nice, too, in a shy kinda way.

  Draven looked at her. “You wish to evolve, yes?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I can’t tonight. I gotta get back before Uncle Tom gets to worrying. I don’t know what I want no more, Draven. I sure like you, though, and I know you’re not gonna come back and kill my family or lead any other bloodsuckers out here and kill us. Right?”

  “Yes. I swear to you.”

  “Good. ‘Cause if you do, I hope you’re cursed to die in the most awful way.” Her dang tears started up again, and Draven put his arms around her. He was real cold, she could feel it even through her shirt. For the first time, he were completely free and unbound, and he could’ve just run off, but he didn’t. And he didn’t kill her, neither, which he could have.

  “What’s this, Sally?” he asked, his voice already losing that awful rough sound from the stake and going back to the smooth, warm one.

  “Nothing, I’m sorry. I sure am gonna miss you around here, but I know you ain’t gonna last. Tom’s real mad about you biting him, and that dang Henson boy got it in his head to put you in the grinder tomorrow when the new folks get here as a good spectacle for them. They aim to make that an example and let the folks know we can take care of a bloodsucker who crosses our land. I ain’t too smart or nothing, but I reckon you’d die from that.”

  “Yes.” Draven looked real sad, too, and it made Sally cry all over again.

  “I know my family done wrong to you, and I’m right sorry I let them and didn’t do nothing all that time. It ain’t right no matter what you are. I reckon you can’t help it that you gotta eat, and I can’t rightly hate you j
ust ‘cause I’m the thing you eat. You been real nice to me, and I’m sure glad you offered to change me over, but I don’t know if I wanna do it no more.”

  “Then don’t. You cannot change your mind later.”

  “You strong enough to get out of here now? I gotta fill in this here hole, and it’s near dark already.”

  “I will help you,” Draven said.

  Together they filled in his grave.

  Both of them stood, and Sally handed Draven a backpack. “This here’s one of your packs. I can’t find th’other one, so I don’t know which one you needed more, but this is what I can find. I hope it has something you need.”

  Draven turned the bag upside down, looked at the bottom, and then righted it and put it on. “Thank you.”

  “All right then, I reckon I best be going.”

  Draven reached for her so fast Sally didn’t even know he meant to touch her before he had her in his arms, hugging her so tight she near lost her breath.

  “Thank you, Sally. I owe you my life. I wish there were some way for you to contact me if ever the need arises. My name is Draven Castle, do not forget. If ever you have access to the information system, you will look for me, yes?”

  “Sure I will.”

  “I hope this thing you have done for me will not turn your family against you.” He put his hand to his throat and made a face, and Sally knew it cost him to say the things he had to say. But she let him, ‘cause she reckoned those were things that he had to get said before he left.

  “I sure hope so, too. I reckon if they get to suspecting I did it, I’ll just say you done hypnotized me. But I need you to take the chains in your backpack so I can say you got away your own self.”

  “Sally.” Draven put his hands on each side of her face and lifted it. “I told you once I could never love a human, that it was wrong. But I was wrong. I love you.” He kissed her forehead, and she had the strangest urge to kiss him. But when she put her face to his, he turned away. “In the real way, Sally. Not like that. You have…given me life, made me want it. Talking with you, knowing you, has been the only thing in the last half year that kept me sane…I want you to know I owe you my life.”

  “Thanks. I reckon I love you, too.”

  “I cannot repay you for this…but I want you to find that other bag.”

  “I can’t bring it out here, Draven. I go in and come back out with a bag, Tom’s gonna see me.”

  “Not for me. For you. In the bottom, there’s a hidden pocket under the lining. Inside, I hid the money for the sapien girl, for when I found her.”

  “Oh no,” Sally said, wishing he’d done told her that before she went to all this trouble. “I reckon I could find a way to get it to you, but it might take a good while.”

  “No, Sally, it’s for you. I know it’s not anything compared to what I owe you, but it’s all I can give you now. It contains perhaps eight hundred anyas. It is not for your family, Sally. It’s for you.” He looked at her hard, still holding tight to her.

  “Holy mother of Moses,” Sally said, hardly daring to breathe. “That’s more money than I’d use in six lifetimes.”

  “It is not so much. Find a home, away from your uncle, perhaps all of them. You are not a child anymore, Sally. You do not have to indulge him. And you can take care of yourself, I have seen that. They cannot force you to participate in anything you know is wrong. You’re a better person than any of them will ever be.”

  They looked at each other, and Sally started up crying again. They could hear Tom calling for Sally from back at the house.

  “Circle ‘round the house and go down the road that goes southeast,” she said hurriedly. “You’ll come up on a road right by a stream. Turn left and follow that ‘til you find an old abandoned town that’s all fallen down. Take that road right through town and keep going, and you’ll come to Princeton in a few days, I reckon. That there’s where you’re likely to find your girl. It’s the only city in these-here mountains.”

  Draven kept her in his arms and pressed his lips to her forehead while she swallowed back tears. Even with him being all covered in about thirty layers of dirt and grime and filth and blood, she still wanted to hug him back real hard, so she did.

  “You said your sister was the good one,” he said real quiet. “But I imagine you’re the better one. Perhaps she had a good heart, but yours is good as well as your mind and body. I imagine you can do more with that than only a good heart. Your family does not deserve you, Sally. I hope you find one that does.”

  He kissed her forehead again, pulled away, and wiped her tears off with his thumbs.

  “Now you just go on, before Tom comes out. You done got me all dirty.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, and one more thing. My family’s coming back along that road I done told you about. They better get back here alive. And if I was you, I’d stay off those roads and in the woods a little. You know they can kill you, too.”

  “I will not harm them.”

  “All right then. Good luck finding your girl.” Sally watched the bloodsucker start off through the woods, and when he disappeared from sight, she turned and headed back to the house. She could hear Tom hollering, and she wondered how she could explain her appearance. For a minute she tried not to cry, but she was real sad. Draven had said the nicest things anyone had ever said to her. And she’d just let him go free. But like he said, she were a woman, and women cried, so she let herself cry some.

  When she’d had her cry and got too irritated with listening to Tom hollering for her, she wiped off her face as best she could and headed in. She left the shovel out by the woodshed again, but she knew it would still be there come morning. She didn’t reckon she’d ever see the bloodsucker again.

  Part Three

  FREEDOM

  45

  At first, Draven moved slowly. For the past six or seven months, he’d rarely moved his body more than to change position and ease a bit of pain. Seven months was nothing, a snap of the fingers, compared to his long life. But it felt like the longest part of his life. More had happened to him in the past year than in the rest of his life combined.

  Only that wasn’t entirely true. Only more pain had happened to him.

  As he moved through the trees now, he remembered how the forest had frightened him when he’d come upon it the past winter. How every twig had seemed lethal, every branch a menacing weapon waiting to impale him. Now he smiled at the thought. The woods posed no threat. It was the people in the woods who were dangerous. What they could make from the wood. Once, he’d imagined a broken limb as the most dangerous thing he’d encounter. He’d watched his every step, each movement holding the potential for disaster. Now that he knew the truth of that fear, the exact sensation of being impaled by a wooden object, perhaps his wariness should have grown.

  But it hadn’t. Why fear an indifferent tree branch when he’d been staked dozens, perhaps hundreds of times? When he knew what it felt like to be staked with hawthorn, cedar, pine, ash, and aspen. When he knew the different pain of a wound healing from each, the difference between a thick stake and a small sliver, a dagger and an arrow, a blunt, a splintered, and a smooth stake, a serrated blade and a grooved one, one notched and one swirled. Now he knew what a stake felt like going in and coming out fast, or slow, if it had been carved with the grain or against. He knew the feeling of a short blade and one that went all the way through, of a burning stake and one coated with ice.

  A branch on a tree was not a weapon. It was only a branch.

  A human had to make a stake. A human had made the stake that went into his throat, and a human had put it there. And a human had taken it out. He must remember that, too. He must remember his promise to Sally. He intended to keep this one.

  Draven touched his throat. His skin had closed over the wound already, and his leg hardly hurt. The speed with which his body was healing amazed him. Once, a year before he’d known of this place, an escaped sapien had staked him, and he’d healed m
ore slowly than he did now. Considering all that had happened to him, his resilience surprised him. Although he was still hungry, he’d almost forgotten the sensation of hunger’s absence, and he hardly noticed the discomfort.

  His side and his thigh still ached, especially his thigh. The wounds from which Sally had removed the three stakes that morning had healed almost completely. Irritation set in, making them itch as they healed and ejected the dirt that had entered the wounds before they closed. The three newer wounds hadn’t closed fully, and cold night air chilled the wetness of his spilled blood. But for now, he worried only about running into the vigilante humans. He had entered the mountains without weapons last winter. He had thought the forest, animals, and time would be his only enemies.

  He had been a fool, and he knew that now, and he knew also that he needed to find a good weapon. But he couldn’t stop until he’d departed the forest in which Sally’s people hunted, where they might chance upon him on their way home. So he maintained his pace, stopping only briefly to tear his shirt into strips and wrap it about his wounded limbs. After so long without clothes, they now felt strange to Draven. In addition, the fibers in the material clung to his broken skin, as irritating as if it were full of a thousand microscopic needles.