by Diana Graves
“You put Isobel through that to teach me a lesson?”
“Well, you weren’t supposed to be dead five fucking years, were you? Nick was supposed to bring you back right away. He was made to feel protective of you. He was supposed to want you alive and well, but apparently he wanted you to be at peace.” And he said ‘peace’ like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Wait, he was made to protect me?”
Raphael looked up and rolled his eyes. “When the Goddess brought you back as a baby she mingled your life forces, so you two would feel connected to each other, the way twins sometimes do. Add to that a serious childhood trauma cementing that connection, yet leaving Nicholas feeling honor bound to keep you safe, having failed to save you from torture.”
My mind was blown away at how very orchestrated my life had been. My death, my rebirth, my tortured youth, my infection, my children, my…everything. Why me?
“It had to be you, and no one else. We needed a child born in Washington. We needed that child to have little chance of leaving the region during their lifetime, who would be of a mature age at the time we theorized Apollo would strike. You were born at the right time and place, and your family had strong ties here. Only eight-hundred and fifty-seven other children fit that description. However, you already had an advanced sense of empathy due to being part elf, you already had vampires in your family line, so you’d be familiar with the disease. And you’re female, which was important to many involved. Feminists,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Why Washington? What’s so special about this place?”
Raphael sighed and hung his head, mumbling something about giving me a history lesson. Eventually he rolled his eyes and said, “Native Vamps, Raina. Do they ring a bell? If there were Native American vampires before the Europeans came here, we can assume Apollo and his people were here first. They probably came over with the Vikings—. But that’s not important. As the Europeans moved over the land, taking what they wanted and exterminating all the vampires they could find, Apollo and his people moved farther and farther west to avoid them. Finally they were cornered in Washington State, but by then this was America and America decided a vampire treaty was in order. That’s why Apollo is here, that’s why Washington State has more vampires fanging about than almost any other state in the union.”
I gave him only thoughtful silence before deciding to accept that answer and ask another question. “Well, why the hell can’t you do it, or a god? You kill Apollo.”
“This has to be a human victory to balance the power. Humans can’t be submissive subjects any longer. If gods are to see human beings as equals, then they must earn their freedom, earn their survival.”
“I’m not human.” I was half human for a while, but death took that from me, and admitting it, saying it out loud hurt for some reason.
“You’re all human, Raina. Were-humans, elf-humans, witching humans, humans who can fly, humans who live in the ocean, humans infected with a hand-crafted disease that changes their bodies a bit. You’re all human because human isn’t defined by having the perfect body or blood line. Human is thinking, feeling, it’s this place, it’s this perfect blend of animal and the divine that you all have.”
His words struck a chord with me. You can be called non-human for only so long before you start to believe it. I looked away and cleared my thought, which meant nothing really. It was a dream after all. “You want me to kill a god all by myself?”
“The greatest and most terrible power gods have over mankind is their trust. The gods tell you what you can and cannot do, and you believe them.” He moved closer to me. It seemed it was his turn to get in my face. “Look at me. Know that I’m speaking the truth when I say if you had even a pebble’s worth of true confidence, you could slay Apollo with a thought. You want to know the big secret. You want to know everything? The gods don’t keep men shackled by faith and broken by lies because you’re inferior beings. They’re afraid of you. They’re afraid you’ll overthrow them as they overthrew the Titans of their home world, because you’re stronger than them. All humans are, but you most of all.”
“I’m not saying I believe you, but if what you’re saying is true, why are you and Mel doing this?”
“We do this because eventually humanity will smarten up and you will overthrow the gods. Apollo wants you all dead before that happens. We, however, would rather coexist. But it’s not just me and Mel. Mel sacrificed her freedom to give you this life as a baby. Others have worked hard, pulling strings behind the scenes. I was chosen to be your mentor. Making myself your enemy was a good way to stay close to you without raising suspicions after you were discovered by Apollo’s priest.”
I shook my head and put some distance between us. He was spouting too much bullshit for me to take in all at once. All I knew for certain was that he was a bad guy, no matter what, he couldn’t be believed. Demons lie, and he was my prisoner. What wouldn’t he say to gain my trust and his freedom? What did he want? Was I supposed to believe all this garbage about human’s being stronger than gods, but fooled into playing the lesser creature, one of servitude and sin?
He shrugged. “Believe what you want.”
“I will believe what I see.”
“And you see so little.”
“What I see is a demon who has lied to me and hurt me and everyone I love. You fucked up my life. You treated my life like a damned game of chess. I won’t play along anymore, Raphael! This is my life, mine! Not yours!” I screamed and lightning raged in the trees in the distance. Rain began to pour hard, but I stared at the demon, a tower of unwavering anger. “You killed me, you brought me back, you tortured me, you infected me and then you killed me again! My life isn’t your plaything.”
“I told you that you weren’t ready for the truth,” he said angrily.
“Go to Hell!”
“Been there, it’s lovely.”
I could feel myself waking. Someone was moving next to me in bed. The last thing I saw was his angry face through a thick curtain of rain.
GOOD MORNING
I DON’T KNOW when Alistair came to bed, but he lay dead to the world at eight in the morning, when the kid’s movements woke me. The first thing Thomas did when he left the bed was pull back the thick drapes and peek out of the window. A blinding beam of sunlight cut through the room.
“Thomas!” I scolded. He looked back at me. “Daylight,” I explained, and he let the drapes fall back.
“There’s a building on fire out there, a tall one,” Thomas said. “It looks like it’s been burning for a while, mom. I didn’t see any people. I didn’t see any cars either, or hear any sirens. I don’t think anybody’s going to put out the fire.” He came back to the bed and I hugged him.
Isobel sat up in bed, her small hand on Alistair’s back, her eyes on the window. She seemed to have chosen Alistair as her new favorite person; clinging to him until she fell asleep.
“Are you hungry?” I asked them.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” asked Thomas.
“I’ll be fine. Most of the rooms here don’t have windows, and most of those that do are heavily tinted.”
“I mean, don’t vampires need to sleep during the day?”
“No, it’s just our natural rhythm. As long as I stay out of the sun, I should be fine.”
“We should get down to the cafeteria, then. I don’t know when it stops serving breakfast.”
“Okay.” I got out of bed and offered Isobel my hand to help her out as well, but she just looked at my hand. “Don’t you want to eat?” I asked her. She nodded. “Then, we need to go.” She shook her head.
“Do you want to stay with Alistair?” Thomas asked her, and she nodded. He turned to me. “I can stay with Isobel if you want to go get breakfast,” he offered.
“Alright, cucumbers for her and what would you like?”
“Toast, tea with milk and two sugars, and a banana,” said Thomas.
“Wow, your taste buds have matured sin
ce last I fed you. No fruit loops or pop tarts?”
“Toast,” Isobel said quietly. Thomas looked at her like she’d grown a second head.
“You would like toast, also?” I asked her. She nodded,
I smiled, though it didn’t quite reach my eyes. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
The halls were full of people walking and standing about, some looked rather scared or angry. One man in particular was talking louder than most.
“Yesterday I was pulling my hair out. My wife left me, my house was foreclosing and there were rumors that Boeing was going to have hundreds of layoffs. I was so fucking miserable,” he said loudly to no one in particular. “Now I’m hiding from flesh-eating zombies in a vamp commune. Fuck, when it rains it pours!”
I didn’t see a single person I knew on my way to the cafeteria, which was packed. Bastion staff were scrambling to feed everyone. I never waited so long in line for four slices of toast, two pieces of fruit, two cups of tea and a pint of blood. An hour after I got in line I was balancing everything on a tray and heading back up to Alistair’s room, when I heard someone call my name. I turned and found Everett heading my way.
“Raina!” he yelled, and I waited for him to catch up. “What are you doing up?”
“Taking care of my kids. How’s Katie doing?”
“Wow, you’re pulling double duty—Katie’s not good. She won’t eat or sleep. All she does is cry. I’m afraid to leave her alone. Tristan is watching her right now, but I think you should talk to her. You know what she’s going through, all the changes. You might be able to help her.”
“Nick would probably be better suited to talk to her,” I said as we continued on our way. “He went through something similar when he first became a vampire; starving himself and whatnot.”
“Nil tried talking to her last night. I think he made it worse.”
I paused when we reached the door. “Sounds like Nick’s style. If you stay with my kids, I’ll attend to your wife, but first we eat,” I said before I opened the door and we walked into Alistair’s room.
A NEW LIFE
KATIE WAS SITTING on the floor, huddled by the heater in an old pre-turn of the century apartment, lavishly furnished in earthy greens and golds with just a touch of brilliant blue here and there. Her skin was a shade of blue-grey paleness, indicative of a blood starved vampire. Her blond hair was hiding her face and a sheet was hiding the rest of her. I came in as I knocked on the door, but she made no move to acknowledge me.
“Raina,” Tristan said by way of greeting. He was sitting at the dining table, drinking a cup of black coffee.
“Morning,” I said, and I set my own mug down on the table. It was empty, but the large thermos I set down beside it wasn’t. It was filled with hot blood.
Tristan looked tired, the skin under his eyes was dark and puffy, his long hair a bit tousled and his normally perfect posture bent. “Should I leave you two alone?” he asked.
“Probably a good idea. You look exhausted.”
“Yes, the sofa in the sitting room has been calling my name for a while,” and he sluggishly left the table, leaving his coffee behind and trudged away, deeper into the apartment.
“Katie,” I began.
“No,” she said before I could say anything more. “Go away Raina. Just leave me alone.”
“I will, if you eat,” I said.
“No! Can’t I have that? Can’t I make that decision for myself?! Or is my life not my own anymore? I didn’t want this. I sure as hell didn’t want to belong to ALISTAIR!”
“You don’t really belong to Alistair. That was just for show. The paperwork he signed means nothing, really. But I get that you’re upset, Katie, I do. I felt the same way when I was infected. We didn’t ask for this sort of life, vampirism and all. We didn’t want it, but you have to make the best of things.”
“Why, Raina?”
“Because, that’s what people do when shit happens.”
“No, why didn’t you listen to me? I told you to let me die,” she cried.
“You’re my sister…”
“I remember everything,” she said and she finally looked at me then, her eyes swollen, but she didn’t have blood enough to make them bloodshot from crying. Even so, she was beautiful again. She’d healed nice and fast. “I remember eating my own skin, I remember the taste of it. I ate so much raw meat. I even ate my fingers a bit, and my lips and my cheeks, I ate and ate and ate. Haven’t I eaten enough?”
“You puked a good bit. The rest of it was used when you turned. You’re blood starved, Katie. You have to drink this,” I said touching the thermos. “If you don’t, bad things will happen to you.”
“Bad things have happened to me. What’s worse than this?”
“If you aren’t already feeling it, you’ll begin to feel an uncontrollable hunger—again. Then your body will start to rot, and it will decay until you’re in shambles and begging for death.”
“I want to die. I don’t want to live like this,” she said, and she turned back around, looking at the wall instead of me.
“Do you remember when Nick starved himself? You were with me when we took him to the hospital. He’d been starving himself for a very long time, and still he wasn’t dead. How long do you want to sit there rotting?”
“I don’t want to drink that stuff.”
“You’ll think differently once you smell it,” I said as I unscrewed the cap on the thermos. I set the cap down and poured the steaming blood into the mug I brought. It poured out so red and a little thicker for having sat in the thermos. It smelled rich with iron, sweet and salty on the back of my tongue. I swirled the blood in the cup, aerating it like a fine wine. Katie was beside me in a rush of sheets. The quickness of her movements shocked her more than me, and she steadied herself on the table with both hands.
“How did I do that? I just thought and now I’m here…” she stammered.
I shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes. “Your brain sent signals to your extremities and they followed through. Only, now everything is faster and stronger. You’ll have to be careful of your strength and reflexes. I’ve only been a vampire for a few days, but I’ve found it best to think of the world and most of the people in it as being made of thin paper or something very easily broken. I keep that in mind and I naturally touch things gingerly,” I said the last part as I offered her the mug of blood.
She took it hesitantly and stared at it. “Whose blood was this?”
“Alistair said Bastion Fatal’s donors are mostly their guards and other non-vampire members of the collective. They get paid to donate blood once a month. I don’t know any names if that’s what you’re asking for.”
“I want to drink it so badly.”
“Because your body needs it badly.” She nodded in agreement. “Bottoms up,” I said, and I physically guided the cup to her mouth with a single finger pushing at its bottom until it reached her lips and she began drinking.
In just a few large gulps it was gone. “More,” she said breathlessly. I filled it again, and again she drank it down. She drank two more cups and then the thermos was empty.
“You should get some rest, Katie. You’re more tired than you know.”
“But I want more.”
“You can have more when you wake up.”
She put the cup down and looked at me with disappointed eyes, and already I could see some massive improvements in her complexion. But her disappointment gave way to depression.
“I wanted to have kids, and now I can’t. I loved bathing in the sun, and now I can’t. My favorite part of every day was watching the sun come up over the mountain range, all pink and orange across the sky—I don’t have that anymore either, not even that simple thing.”
I could have told her that she’d find new wants and desires, new favorite things that fit with her new life, but I didn’t. “I’m sorry,” was all I could think to say in that moment, because my mind was already somewhere else…Speaking of kids and our feature, h
ow was Detective Fillips and did the military buy her story?
“I am tired,” she said with her eyes downcast. “I think I’ll head to bed.”
“I’ll send Everett back. He looked like he could use some sleep himself.”
“Thank you.”
VIDEO CALL
I WAS SITTING in Alistair’s office and I can honestly say, I’ve never seen a more impressive design. It had a high quality craftsmanship meets new-aged tech, all very well blended in a large open floor space. The only items on his long wood desk were a pad of paper, a heavy pen and a touchscreen multi-lined phone pad. I touched the screen to activate it, and thankfully everything was designed to be user-friendly, or idiot proof, same difference. I scrolled through his contacts list until I came across Fillip’s cell phone number. I pressed the button that would dial her number and I was left staring at a picture of her that looked like her official EI photo from her badge or something. When she picked up her phone a live picture of her standing outside in the sun came on the screen. She was wearing her usual black EI uniform. I could only see a few scrapes and bruises on her face and neck.
“Morning,” I said.
“It's a little early for you, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I adjusted for the kids.”
“I didn’t know vampires could do that,” she said as she began walking along, passing other officers from different departments and branches of the military. Behind her I could see a green metal railing and a huge green tower with long cables, and beyond that dark waters and snow topped evergreens. She was on Tacoma’s Narrows Bridge.
“Said the woman in charge of policing vampires,” I chuckled.
“Yeah, well, you’re not normal— Anyway, I’m sure Damon is happy with your new sleeping schedule.” Just hearing his name said so casually hit me like a punch to my gut and I knew my face betrayed my pain because she asked, “What’s wrong?”
