Poison Blood, Book 2: Absolution

by Neha Yazmin

  Chapter 15: Shielded

  Obviously, it wasn’t the end of me. I’d just passed out. For a very long time. What woke me was a call from Lydia. My phone was in the pocket of my jeans and its obstinate ring-tone brought me back to consciousness. At first, I had no idea what the sound was. Vampires don’t faint or have any period of unconsciousness, so I felt even more disoriented as I came around and smelled green grass and dry earth.

  Chest throbbing a little, head aching and almost clogged up, I put my hands over my ears to drown out the ringing. But it wouldn’t stop and nor could I block it out. Moaning the way one does when roused from a deep sleep too early, I eventually became more aware of my surroundings. I was in a garden, the one above my basement flat. I also detected the direction from which that annoying ring-ring was coming.

  Reaching for it instinctively, I brought the mobile to my ear and pressed the ‘Answer’ button.

  “Christian?” Lydia sounded irritated. “What took you so long? Why haven’t you been answering my calls in the last three days? Why did I have to start calling you? Why haven’t you been reporting back to me?”

  Her barrage of questions caused all the memories from last night to flood my brain and force out the fog. What made me jump upright in a flash was the realisation that I had been unconscious for three days. Three days? My mind raced.

  “Well?” Lydia pressed, truly fuming. “What happened to you?”

  Ellie. Ellie happened to me. As soon as I thought of her, I knew where she was. My sense of smell and hearing confirmed that feeling. She was in my bed, the conversion complete. Not too long ago though, maybe just a minute or so.

  Oh! That’s why Lydia had called me. She must have seen Ellie was a vampire now – since I’d been too out of it to shield her like I’d planned – and wanted to know why and how that came about.

  Why I hadn’t informed her of this as soon as I bit the future Slayer.

  Feeling for my shield, I realised it was still intact, concealing me and my flat from everyone that I’d wanted it to in the last few weeks. Everything else I’d been screening seemed to be hidden too. Even in unconsciousness, my ink hadn’t run off the lenses it had obscured.

  Before I collapsed however, I hadn’t gotten around to veiling Ellie from her seekers’ awareness or from Lydia’s foresight.

  “Answer me damn it!” Lydia demanded angrily, pulling me from my panicked thoughts.

  “I’m sorry Lydia, I just–” I stopped before the truth slipped out in my anxiousness.

  The voice that had spoken from behind the white light, a light which was now tinted pink due to it mixing with the red of Ellie’s poisonous blood, had given me my alibi. The idea was to tell Lydia that I’d pretty much destroyed Ellie and dumped her in a river. Considering how much damage I’d done, there was no way she would survive.

  I would report that Ellie never reunited with her family – Lydia could send more agents to confirm this because Kim would definitely send out a search party. She probably reported Ellie missing on the very night she ran away from home, or as soon as she spoke to Ellie’s friends and found that none of them had seen her

  In sum, the Slayer was gone.

  I couldn’t very well tell Lydia that I was absolutely certain that Ellie was dead due to the small chance that she might one day discover Ellie is an immortal. I’d be proven a liar. No one could know that I changed Ellie, as that would lead to the question of why, when I so vehemently refused to consider Lydia’s plan to recruit the girl for The System.

  And if I had come around to Lydia’s way of thinking, why wasn’t I bringing Ellie to headquarters?

  But I had no choice but to bring her to headquarters, now that Lydia had seen Ellie the vampire. Perhaps she had a vision of Ellie joining The System, which would mean I had changed her and brought her to London. Was that why she hadn’t sent anyone to check up on me while I was in a comatose state?

  “You just what?” Lydia’s frustrated question snapped me out of my reverie. “What are you playing at, ignoring my calls and not reporting back to me?”

  “I’m sorry, I was–”

  “What?” she cut me off. “You were what Christian? Stop stalling – it’s not like you. How close are you to killing the Slayer?”

  “Huh?” My confusion frenzied my mind. Our conversation so far spun in my head. Thankfully, our brains are just as quick as our bodies and so I was able to recuperate the next second. “How close?” I said calmly as my mind concluded that Lydia didn’t know anything. Anything other than the fact that I’d not spoken to her for three days.

  I couldn’t fathom how it was that she didn’t know anything.

  “Yes! How close?” she snapped. “How much longer Christian?” she complained. “Mac is not very happy with you. Nor with me. With every failed attempt of yours, he is getting evermore frustrated. And suspicious. Of me,” she seethed. “He thinks I’ve convinced you to change her and that we have our own agenda. Damn it, Christian, I think he might even suspect that you and I are planning to–”

  “So, you weren’t planning to turn Ellie into your ultimate weapon?”

  “Ellie?”

  “That’s her name.”

  “I know that–”

  “And she’s gone.”

  “Since when do you call her–” Lydia came to halt as she processed what I’d said. “Gone?” she whispered.

  “Yes. The Slayer is no more.” It wasn’t a lie… not entirely. The human Slayer didn’t exist anymore. As a vampire, was she really a Slayer? She hadn’t gotten her powers yet. Her veins no longer ran with poison blood and without that, she was simply a stronger version of a vampire.

  And completely oblivious to it too.

  I told Lydia the lie provided by the light and she believed it, clear that she had seen no vision of Ellie as a vampire. How was this possible? I hadn’t done anything to hide Ellie from her foresight before I fainted, and I wasn’t doing anything to hide her now, but I sensed that she was hidden. Hidden in the same way that I was.

  To the same people that I was…

  Impossible, I thought as my mind fleetingly wondered whether Ellie was somehow sharing my shield. Did I split it with her when I created her? That couldn’t be. I’d never heard of inheriting the abilities of our creators. If that were the case, I would have some of Lydia’s psychic abilities, which I was sure I didn’t.

  And it didn’t feel like my shield had been halved either. It was still the same… only it wasn’t just mine anymore. That’s right, I realised. It belonged to both me and Ellie now. When I used it on myself, it did the same to Ellie. She’d be protected from everything I was protected from – including Lydia’s foresight.

  Ellie and I, we were one now. Sort of.

  “So why didn’t you tell me?” Lydia asked, dragging me back to our phone conversation.

  “I got some of her blood on my jacket so I threw it in the water with her. My phone was in its pocket,” I explained smoothly. “It took me a little longer to get a new phone with the same number as I was so busy keeping an eye on the Slayer’s family and whether her body was found.”

  Lydia bought this story too, assuring me she would relay the message to Mac as soon as she hung up. I was relieved that we were having this conversation over the phone. Face-to-face, would I be as convincing? She had known me for a hundred years, had the century equipped her with the ability to detect whether I was being dishonest?

  It didn’t matter now. Now, I had to get back to Ellie – she was moving about in my bed. From the shuffling sound of her skin against the bed-sheets, I could tell she was still lying down.

  “So when are you coming home?” Lydia asked, her tone less strained. She would have been celebrating the end of the Slayer had she not wanted Ellie for herself.

  “Soon,” I replied. “I just need this day to… finish up here.”

  “I understand. I’ll see you when you’re back in London.”

  “If you’re not off chasing some sp
ecial vampire.”

  She sighed. “It won’t be the same anymore.”

  “Why not?” I laughed.

  “We just killed the most powerful vampire we could have ever had before she even became one.” The disappointment was evident in her tone.

  “You can’t know that. I still think Amber’s the one that deserves that title. Ell–” I stopped before I used her name. “For all we know, the Slayer would have simply been a little stronger and faster than the average vampire. We had no reason to believe that she’d have any magical powers.”

  “But she was the Slayer, Christian,” Lydia stressed, exasperated. “She would have been special.”