by Diana Graves
I opened my eyes and Katie, for once, was completely still. She remained in her crouched position over the dwindling meat supply. Goddess, she looked awful. I sighed heavily and walked to the switch that would lift the glass wall. It went up slowly and the meat that had been resting against it fell outward onto the floor with a thick wet thud, but still Katie didn’t move, because I didn’t tell her to. The connection was strong. I could feel it. Unlike with any other mind, with thoughts and feelings of its own, Katie was completely empty. All she had were my instructions. That and her hunger, but apparently my will was stronger.
I left the room, fully confident that she would not move. I needed to clean and bandage her. In the main room of the VCC I found a small cleaning station where I filled a bucket with warm water, grabbed rags, gauze and a white fluffy robe. When I walked back into the room, she was just where I’d left her.
“Come here,” I said, pointing to the floor just in front of me.
I cringed as I watched her turn and waddle toward me, hardly able to walk at all with her gigantic belly hanging out of her shirt and over her thighs. It was swinging heavily like a chunky putrid pendulum.
“Stop,” I said when she was still a good distance away. “Empty your stomach. Vomit if you can.” Katie, the zombie, just looked at me with milky eyes for a moment before she looked down and began dry heaving. I thought the sound of her trying to force it out was gross, but the moment it started actually coming up, lumpy and hardly digested at all, I nearly puked myself! But it was worth it. Her stomach was going down in size. I stepped back to avoid any of her stomach contents from touching me as it flowed out of her and into a pile on the floor.
“Okay, okay, stop that and come here.” She walked over more easily now and stood in front of me. I wanted to take a deep breath, but I knew better than that. I just closed my eyes for a moment, mustering up the bravery I’d need to do what I was about to do, which was strip and sponge bathe a zombie.
…I hated my life sometimes.
I peeled away her torn and soiled clothes, cutting it off with scissors where I had to. Once she was nude I washed away all matter of muck from her, and bandaged all of her open wounds, including her mouth and nose. The trick to not completely losing it is paying attention to small areas only, just what’s in front of you, not the whole picture. That, and not breathing through your nose. Once she was bandaged in white gauze and bundled in a fluffy robe, she looked almost decent. I tucked a strand of yellow hair behind her ear.
“Are you going to kill her?” Raphael asked.
“No.”
“But the others?”
“Leave me alone,” I said out loud.
“What?” Everett asked from the door. I hadn’t even heard him open it. Raphael was too distracting at times.
“Nothing,” I said.
Everett’s eyes widened as he walked farther into the room and saw what I’d done. He set down a large platter of uncooked meats on the floor and walked to my side. “Is she getting better?” he asked with a glimmer of hope in his voice.
“No, not really. I’m controlling her.”
“You can do that! I didn’t know you were a necromancer!”
My head twitched to the side. “No—I’m no necromancer. I’ve had the ability to control minds since I was infected with vampirism, only I was told to keep it a secret.”
“Why?” he asked.
The question was a simple one, but the answer wasn’t simple, and I didn’t feel like explaining it to him right then. As a witch, he had to know well enough that fear leads to hate and hate leads to violence. And people fear telepathy a great deal. Even vamps who can read minds, hide it out of fear of how people will react to them. If people hate telepaths to the point of doing violence, what sort of reaction could someone like me expect?
“The long and short of it; most find mind control very disagreeable,” I said, and suddenly Nick was there. Everett stumbled back with surprise, almost falling on the disgusting floor, but Nick caught him by the arm. “You’re going to have to teach me that one,” I said.
“I don’t think it’s something I can teach,” Nick said.
“Man,” breathed Everett. “Back home the family used to talk about Anna’s kids as having too little witch blood and too little talent. If Nil can teleport and Raina can control minds, what can Tristan do?”
“Be a complete ass,” I heard Tristan say as he came in from the hall. Michael came in behind him.
Tristan stood tall, thin and ever so well dressed in black and gold to match his long black and gold hair. He looked so much like Mom and Seth, what with his narrow face, large black eyes and tall lanky frame.
Michael, I mean Mick…No, I mean Michael. I didn’t like the name Mick. Anyway, he and Nick looked very alike. Same face shape, same big eyes and untamed hair, though Michael’s hair was brown, not red. Michael seemed to even dress like his older brother now, wearing all black.
“When was the last time we were all together?” Michael asked.
“The morning we were attacked by a vampire,” Nick said, and he embraced his little brother in a robust hug, full of all sorts of manly back smacking. They backed away grinning at each other.
Nick turned to Tristan, but he didn’t say anything to our big brother…cousin. Tristan swallowed hard, as though pride was the thing stuck in his throat and he had to swallow it before he could hug his own brother…cousin, weakly. They weren’t smiling when they moved out from their embrace. Tristan looked at me for a moment from under his brow before he leaned forward and gave me just the most pathetic of hugs. Why all the awkwardness? Tristan was a proud elf and strongly opposed killing of any sort for any reason. Nick killed people to protect me once, and Tristan disowned him for that. I killed a lot of people for the sake of justice and protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves. Because of that, I was so on Tristan’s naughty list. But it looked like he was finally coming around.
“Seth told us what happened. Is that Katie?” Tristan questioned as he got a good look at her.
“You should have seen her ten minutes ago,” Nick said. He turned to Everett. “By the way, that was not teleportation, it was cloaking, but I can do both.”
Color me surprised. “You were here the entire time?” I asked him.
He shook his head, “No, I popped out for a quick drink and then popped back in. Don’t worry, it’s normal for people to talk to themselves—though, your self-talk is weird.”
I gave him an awkward look. Yeah, self-talk…just little old me in here. No demons lurking in my spongy grey matter.
Michael approached Katie, his full blood sister, with caution and a deep frown. He touched her gauzed cheek as she stood there like a statue. Tears fell from his eyes when he looked down at her. Blood was seeping through the gauze on her legs, and through the fluffy white robe at her shoulders.
“The dead don’t bleed,” said Michael.
“She’s not really dead or alive. She’s somewhere in the middle,” I said.
“What’s going to happen to her?” Tristan asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Are those wounds going to heal?” he asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know?” Michael asked, his words thick with tears.
“I know that she was infected with an altered strand of vampirism; one that prolongs the period in which vampires are in a blood rage, maybe indefinitely. The hunger vampires feel while in a blood rage is magnified to the point of self-mutilation and consumption. Healing is stunted, if not eliminated completely. She’ll burn in the sun, but it won’t kill her.”
“And I know why!” shouted Gabriel as he burst into the room.
VAMPIRE BY DESIGN
“SORRY,” GABRIEL SAID, with an enthusiastic grin. I didn’t like the look of it. This was not a happy time. He moved closer to Katie, “You can control her. Fascinating!”
“You said you knew something,” Nick reminded him.
“Yes, yes. Before Detective Fillips left this morning, I asked her if she had any infected cadavers I could study. She graciously had three delivered this afternoon and I’ve made some amazing discoveries.”
“You work fast,” Nick remarked.
“I move fast, Nil,” he replied before getting back on topic. “As you might already know, with a normal vampire, the vampire virus exists in every single cell of the body. It changes the DNA, it changes just about everything to better suit the virus, which acts more like a parasite if anything. Whole organs are rearranged, repurposed or recycled completely. The immune system is enhanced, the brain is more accessible, muscles and the nervous system are given top priority, with maximum nutrients. That’s why vampires heal fast, have high cognitive abilities, immense strength and lightning fast reflexes. One downfall, the virus is sensitive to the sun’s rays. Daylight kills it. That’s why vampires burst into flames in sunlight.”
“What does that have to do with Katie?” asked Michael.
“Everything, Mick. I believe what Katie has is a weaker version of vampirism. Normal vampirism enters the body through the blood. It infects every organ, changing it, yadda, yadda, yadda. This strand doesn’t go that far. The infection lives in the blood, but it can’t live almost anywhere else. For whatever reason, it dies off once it hits, let’s say, muscle or bone. However, the moment it hits a nerve, which is almost instantaneous when infection occurs, it travels directly to the brain via the nervous system. Once there it does all kinds of terrible things.”
“It’s all in the brain,” I said, “So, what exactly does that mean?”
“It means that the brain is vampire, but the body isn’t. The reason why vampires are blood raged for the first few days of infection is because they’re going through so many changes internally, and they need that blood and even flesh to facilitate those changes. As a civilized people, we sedate our newly dead and feed them intravenously until they wake. However, these vampires aren’t changing internally. Their organs are human, but their brains think otherwise. They’re stuck in a blood rage. They don’t heal like a vampire. What inhuman strength they seem to possess is simply the expenditure of muscle power unhindered by the feeling of pain that would normally stop a man from clawing through walls, or breaking chains.”
“But they do burn a little in the sun,” said Michael. “That’s what they said on the news.”
“The virus lives inside the blood, and veins and arteries aren’t very far underneath the surface. The sun hits the skin, its radiation travels deeper and the virus burns in the blood.”
“Wait!” I shouted as an idea struck me. My whole body reacted to the idea; pulse and breath quickened, eyes dilated, because it came to me just as I was taking in the information, connecting the dots.
“Are you understanding more? I think you are,” Raphael joked. I ignored him.
“Does anybody have a cutting tool?”
Everett handed me a pocket knife, and I gave him a nod of thanks.
“Have you come to the same conclusion I have?” Gabriel asked me. “Do you see the answer?
“Maybe,” I said, but I was already wondering why no one had tried what I was about to try before. Had it seriously not occurred to them? Could Gabriel really be the first doctor to study the zombies and come up with what he had? Probably. Gabriel was a vampire and as such he moved faster, his brain worked faster, and thanks to Alistair, he had all the best medical equipment at his disposal. He had every advantage.
“Raina,” Tristan said. “What are you doing?”
“I think I know what she’s doing,” said Nick.
“Nick gets it,” Raphael remarked.
“Explain it to me, then, please,” Michael asked him.
I flexed my arm, pumping it for good circulation before I'd cut into it. “You, Nick and I were infected with an altered vampire virus, as well. But the blood running through our veins was changed in a different way. Apollo changed Katie’s virus to make the perfect killing machine; not destructive to the planet, completely organic and biodegradable and everything. However, the man that created our brand of vampirism had healing and immortality in mind. It’s basically the traditional vampire virus on steroids.”
“Other vampires may have come in contact with these zombies, and the virus might not have been enough to help counteract the damage this new virus had done, but maybe your strand is strong enough,” Gabriel interjected. “But let’s use a syringe instead,” he said, and he pulled an incased syringe out from a deep pocket on his long white coat and offered it to me. “Here, Raina.”
I handed Everett back his knife and offered up my arm to Gabriel instead. “You have more practice extracting blood from a vein,” I said.
Pressing his thumb down on the bend of my elbow, he slid the needle in almost effortlessly as the other’s looked on. Michael was staring at the needle with anxious eyes as it filled with dark, almost black blood. Tristan looked skeptical, but he put a reassuring hand on Everett’s shoulder, because Everett looked damn near in shambles, both physically and emotionally. Nick grabbed my other hand and gave it a squeeze. Did I look nervous or scared? Yes, but I didn’t realize it was showing until his hand touched mine.
“Good,” Gabriel said as he pulled the needle out. A small drop of blood filled the hole he’d put in my arm. I watched it clot, dry up, and flake off, leaving no wound behind at all.
He carried the syringe over to Katie. “Are you sure you have complete control over her?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Nil,” Gabriel said without turning to look at Nick. “Can you undress her? If this works, I wouldn’t want her healing over her bandages.”
“Yes,” Nick said with great reluctance in his voice, and as he untied her robe and let it fall to the floor, Michael turned around, having no wish to see his sister naked. Michael, after all, was one-hundred percent human-Christian, with all the hang ups on human nudity that went along with that.
Tristan was still holding Everett, so I helped Nick unwrap all the gauze. Tristan let out a sound of shock and disgust at the sight of Katie’s mangled body, ravaged by her own hands. Once her naked body and its gory wounds were bare to the world, Gabriel approached her.
“There’s no telling how damaged her circulatory system is at this point. I’m going to have to deliver this directly to the heart,” and he positioned himself in front of her. He grabbed her shoulder to steady himself and with a vampire fast downward stab, that forced the needle through her breastbone and down into her heart, he pumped the blood in and pulled the needle out just as fast.
“If this is anything like our infection, we should see some response to the blood shortly,” Nick said.
“So, it’s a waiting game now,” Everett said quietly.
Gabriel’s cell phone went off from inside his pocket. Beethoven’s Fifth. He threw the used syringe into a nearby garbage can and answered his phone.
“Hello,” he said. It was Alistair, calling to let us know Detective Fillips had arrived, and that she wasn’t alone. Some armed military men and a man named Sergeant Kelley were on their way down to see Katie. Our not-at-all-a-zombie vampire. “I understand.” He hung up.
“Shit,” Nick said, as he’d heard everything I heard. Michael looked good and scared.
“What?” Tristan asked. “Who was that?”
“I’ll stall them as long as I can,” said Gabriel before he left the room.
SAVING KATIE
EVERETT AND MICHAEL were both panicking, but for all their grief and worries there was nothing they or anyone could do. Our only hope was that my blood would kick in, and sooner rather than later. The rest of us busied ourselves with cleaning up the room. Maybe we couldn’t make Katie look more presentable, but we could make the room look less nightmarish. The meat was gone, the walls and floors were clean, the gurney was wiped down and the sheets were changed. Everything was clean and a strong scent of bleach and lemons was in the air when I heard the elevator doors
open out in the common area of the VCC. They were almost here.
“They’re coming,” I said.
“Oh God!” Michael cried. “They’re going to kill her!”
“No, they won’t,” I said. “I won’t let them.
“If they see her like this, they’re going to shoot her in the head,” Everett said. “She’s as good as dead.”
“I can see a little healing I think,” said Nick, but he didn’t look truly confident in that statement, and she didn’t look different to me.
Tristan put his black dress coat back on, as he’d taken it off while we cleaned. He fussed over himself, clearing out his throat and holding his head high, preparing for the men to walk through the door. It was like some kind of ritual for him, like a nervous tick, only it was a series of movements.
They were getting closer, so close I’d bet even Everett and Tristan could hear the footsteps coming down the hall.
“They’ll have to shoot me to get to her,” Everett said as he positioned himself directly in front of Katie.
I felt a spike of emotion. I thought I was blocking everyone perfectly. Who did that come from?
“Who do you think?” Raphael asked sarcastically. “You can’t both control someone and block their emotions at the same time. You know that. That lesson was a hard earned one.”
He was right. I couldn’t block and control at the same time. And since I was blocking the men and controlling Katie, that emotion must have come from Katie. She didn’t have emotions before. Her mind was nothing but static.
“I felt something from Katie!” I said instantly, and I tried to focus in on exactly what emotion she was feeling. “She’s scared!” I said, and there was a knock at the door.
“What?” Nick asked. “If she’s thinking then it’s working, right?”
