She had to do nothing of her own will but obey the strong call spiraling through her to partake. At this point she knew she could not pull back from the thing her body yearned for most in all the world. The blood spilled over her incisors, chilling them, and she could feel the coldness sweep through tiny openings in her fangs. The blood swept through hollows and into small veins in the roof of her mouth, moved rapidly into larger veins at the back of her head, and coursed down through her neck into her blood system. It moved like cold snakes entering her body.
She knew it as life. She sensed how alive the blood was, how new, fresh, and sustaining. She thought she could feel it mingling with her own pooled, coagulating dead blood, reviving it. Her brain exploded with ecstasy, and her body quivered with electric currents of pleasure. She lost herself in the rush of feeling that came on the heels of the commingling going on from her head to her feet.
Without warning, someone placed a hand to her forehead and forced her back. Her mouth released the bag with a sucking noise that sounded as loud as timber falling and her eyelids flew open. She felt droplets of blood slide down from her upper lip and felt her incisors retract of their own volition, pushing back up into the recesses of her gums with a shriek of pain that caused her to bring her hands to her face.
She wanted more! Why were they depriving her?
She wasn't finished, though she could see the bag was emptied. She needed another one, and another.
"There, there," her father said, lowering the empty blood bag to his side. "Sit down, Dell. Let it work the magic."
Her mother led her back to the bed and she sat, stunned and mindless except for the desire for more. It was not blood, but life. She felt no revulsion toward it now. In fact, she wanted it as much as she'd ever wanted food or drink since the day she was born.
It was as if tiny sparks had ignited in her brain and her neurons were firing off cannons. She felt invincible, able to conquer anyone and anything; she felt as if she might fly.
"Stay calm," her mother said, brushing back the hair at her temple. "This will pass soon and you'll feel like yourself again."
Oh, God, why hadn't they told her that becoming one of them would give her this much strength and vitality? Why hadn't they been happier for her when she had called to her mother to show her the sores that indicated she was going to become one of them? How had they kept this gift from her for so long, kept it all to themselves, leaving her weak and prone to death or accident in her frail human form?
"It's pretty cool, huh, Dell?" Eddie asked. He jiggled around on the chair like a younger child unable to keep still.
"Hush, Eddie," her mother said.
"But Mom, it's immortality. It's a great event. She'll have those feelings over and over again forever, and we ought to tell her."
She blinked and gave herself over to the renewal taking place in her body. She'd never felt so alive, so healthy, so fine and wonderful as this ever in her life. And all it took was blood, sweet blood, blood with living cells that brought her to life with such force she knew if she were ever denied the sensation, she would roar like a lion and take down armies with her bare hands.
"Oh, Jesus," she said softly. "I have to move about. Mom, let me go."
She shook off her mother's touch and rose from the bed in one swift motion that a mortal wouldn't have been able to see. She sped to the door of her room, down the hall and into the kitchen. She felt her parents and grandparents gathering at her back. She saw Celia bending over at the sink, washing a cup and saucer, and her scent was strongly human and female. At the kitchen table sat Carolyn, looking up from a sandwich in her hands, startled to see her cousin out of bed.
Dell could sense everything, every movement around her, every thought. There was a fly behind the curtain at the window, buzzing, seeking exit. The tiled floor protested mightily as her feet stepped across it. The compressor on the refrigerator hummed like an aircraft readying for takeoff. Outside the walls she could hear a dog snuffling along the sidewalk, birds taking wing or landing a flutter on tree limbs. In the house next door she sensed their neighbor as she searched for keys to the car, muttering below her breath at how memory always failed her.
The world was open and furious with sound and sensation. Dust motes filled the sunny windows, twirling like universes. Water sang in the pipes below the sink. She could even hear the whine of electricity that whipped down the wire in the walls to the outlets, feeding the appliances. Life! Life everywhere, in every atom, all of it weaker and without a tenth of the power she knew she possessed.
She turned around and stood immobile, eyes wide in surprise at the world she'd been allowed to enter. "It's marvelous," she whispered. "It's heaven. Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me fear it so long?"
"You should come back to bed," Grandma said.
Her mother spoke to her silently, by thought waves. It's not all heavenly, Dell. We have to be careful.
Dell could not believe her, chose not to believe her. She was in love with all things, living and inanimate. She understood instinctively their compositions and the life they had once lived, as in the case of wood and plastic and vinyl, or were living at the moment, such as the blood and the food in the refrigerator, the animals outside, the neighbors in the houses surrounding her own. This intimate knowledge and understanding of the world was like a tremendous power surge and it made her giddy.
She could fly, she knew she could. She could walk up the wall to the ceiling, as Eddie had done. She could crush iron and bend steel and make things move with just the power of her will. She could … she could do more, she knew, but wasn't sure yet exactly what. But something stupendous, something she'd never even imagined yet.
Her parents came to her and each took one of her arms, as if to restrain her. "Come back to your room," her mother said.
"Yes, do as your mother says, dear." Grandma stepped out of the way so Dell could be led across the kitchen.
"Why? I feel fine, I feel great! I don't need to go to bed. I don't ever want to sleep again!"
Dell's two paternal uncles came to the doorway and stared at her. Boyd and Daniel had come all the way from San Antonio at their brother's urging, and now they gave her looks that spoke silently of love and understanding. Behind them she caught glimpses of their wives, her aunts. All of them vampire. All had undergone this same event in their lives and they knew both her agony and her newfound thrill of joy.
It seemed nearly everyone in the family had arrived at the house and now they were all watching her, commanding her to do as they bid.
"Mentor is on his way," her father said, leading her into the hall as Boyd and Daniel and their wives moved silently back into the living room. "There's more to this than the initial sense of power. There's also . . . danger."
She let them lead her back to the room, though she knew if she caught them by surprise, she could have shaken her parents off like pesky insects. She felt the strength in her arms rippling through her and imagined how easily she could heft cars and small buildings and blocks of stone.
In some ways she realized she was acting like someone hopped up on a narcotic. She'd seen kids at school act if as they were superhuman, as if they owned the planet. They were deluded, of course, and she knew she was not, but she was still behaving like a drug addict nearing euphoric frenzy. She must listen to her parents, her family. She must sit and wait for Mentor to tell her what she could and could not do. There were secrets that had not yet been revealed to her, that's what her mother was trying to say.
But it was going to be hard to do as she was told. It was going to take all her willpower to keep from running out of the house and throwing up her hands to the sky to thank heaven for her new life.
"Okay," she said, "Okay, I'll relax. I'll try, really."
She felt her mother's hand tense on her upper arm and knew that she was worried about her. She turned her attention to her father and found his mind also gnawing at worry like a termite on fresh wood.
"Not me,"
Eddie said at her back, where he trailed them down the hallway. "I'm not worried one little bit."
Dell smiled, and remembering, moved her tongue to her incisors to feel for them. Now she knew the blood was not drunk. It was not like food that had to go through the digestive system to be turned into energy. It went straight into her veins and arteries, straight into her heart and brain, renewing all the organs to their original healthy living states. It made her live again. It was the means to survival. And she would do anything for it. Anything.
~*~
Mentor used the door as a human would, though it was within his power to migrate through solid objects. He always forced himself to be as natural as the Naturals when possible. To understand their anxieties and problems, he had to have intimate knowledge of their lives and to do that, he must live and act as they did. There were times he lived as the Predators, too, using his abilities to their fullest, and now and again he lived as the Cravens, shutting himself up in the house, drawing the curtains, letting his mind die down to a weak signal. To be of service, he had to know intimately the inner workings of the different clans' emotional lives.
He did not bother to knock, knowing those inside would know he was there. He stepped across one of the Cravens lying at the foot of the door, head pillowed on outthrust arm, staring up at him with wide eyes. "You should get up and out of the way in order to help yourself," he said casually as he left that one behind.
Mentor's "patient," the vampire he had been summoned to help, was toward the back of the house in one of the last bedrooms. The vampire was a Craven named Dolan, and it was rumored Dolan was on a suicidal rampage. Any act of undue aggression, even one involving only the self, Mentor tried to stop. Unfortunately, Dolan meant to do harm to others of his kind before destroying himself. And that was not going to happen. It was against all moral law to destroy your own kind unless there was just cause.
Mentor stepped into the room and said to Dolan, "I've come to stop you."
Dolan was an old vampire, crouched in the corner, his back to the door. He had both arms over his head and was shivering as if he were cold. Mentor said, "Don't try to make me feel sorry for you. That's not going to work. What you're planning to do is against our law. I can't stop you from ending your life. But I will stop you from taking anyone with you. Do you understand?"
Dolan turned slowly to face Mentor. There was no telling how many lifetimes he had lived, but they were many. His face reflected a soul gouged with ruts and roads that made him look a thousand years old. Like Mentor, he had chosen an older male body to inhabit, but it was in his eyes that his true age showed.
He bared his teeth now to show Mentor he was willing to fight. Mentor said, "I will take you down if I have to. But listen to me, I would rather you talk this out."
"Why should I talk to you?" said Dolan. "You're only here to stop me from doing what I want to do. I think I would rather fight you and die in the trying. At least there might be some honor in that."
"And what would you know about honor?" asked Mentor. "Do you think it's honorable to wish to take others with you?"
"They all want to die anyway. I'd be doing them a favor. Why must you always interfere? Who gave you the right to intervene? You're not God Almighty."
"No, I'm not. But I've earned the right to intervene and you know that. Believe me, you're not taking any of the others in this house with you."
"Oh, good Christ! Have you seen them? What about the one by the door, did you see him? Do you really think he wants to live?"
"Maybe he doesn't want to live, but that's up to him, not you."
"Listen to me! Why aren't you listening, Mentor? Have you ever been a Craven? Do you know what it's like to be powerless and to live in the darkness forever? Have you ever begged for death?"
Mentor recalled the times when he'd gone into seclusion, living as a Craven, feeding on hopelessness. "We've all begged for death. But if we give it to ourselves, we pay with our souls."
"That's totally incomprehensible to me. I don't believe it. There is no punishment worse than what I've already suffered."
Mentor shrugged. "You may be right, but you won't find out until you're gone and then it's too late. I can't let you make that decision for others."
Dolan swooped from the floor, enraged and ready to do battle. It was only then that Mentor smelled smoke and saw a cloud of it coming from the corner where the old vampire had been stooping, his back to the room. He'd set a fire. He meant to burn the place down. He meant the fire to consume them all.
One second before Dolan reached his throat, Mentor stepped aside and then rushed forward to the corner. He waved his hand, concentrating mightily on the molecules in the room's air, and created a damp cloak of mist that put out the fire. He then turned swiftly and struck Dolan on the side of his head, knocking him to the floor. "If I have to," he said, "if you force me to it—I will have you put into chains. You'll never be free again. You know I speak the truth."
Dolan bellowed in frustration.
Mentor continued, "If you want to do away with yourself, that's fine with me. That's entirely up to you. But you will not, do you hear me, you will not take anyone else with you."
Dolan fell to his knees, head hanging. In a small voice he said, "You have to help me. Mentor, you have to help me. I can't go on this way."
Mentor checked the fire to be sure it was out before stepping close to his patient. "That's all you had to do," he said. "All you had to do was ask. Now stand up and come with me."
As he escorted Dolan out of the house, he noticed the Craven who had been on the floor was gone now, probably locked in his room, living out his fate with whatever strength he had left. Mentor sensed many more of the Cravens hiding in other rooms, cringing from the disturbance they'd sensed going on in the house. At least he had saved them from an untimely demise.
It was dark outside, so Dolan could be led back to Mentor's house, as the Craven could not bear sunlight. At home, Mentor would place Dolan into a specially built basement room where he could rest and be instructed on how to live out the rest of his life. If he set fire to himself when Mentor was gone, then at least something had been done to try to save him first.
Mentor did not save them all. In fact, he saved relatively few once they had decided to do away with themselves. But he was charged to have mercy. It was his job to deal with the despairing. It had never been promised that he would always triumph.
As he hustled the old vampire along the street, pools of iridescence shining through an early evening fog, the streetlights made the two of them appear to be a couple of old friends going home from work. If only it were so, thought Mentor. If only we were human again, friends out having a drink, and on our way home.
He shook his head sadly. No wonder so many of us want to die. And the wonder lies in the fact that so many of us go on.
"Tell me what brought you to this impasse," Mentor said.
In a chastened voice the old vampire said, "Is confession good for the soul, then?"
Mentor saw an alleycat dart across the sidewalk and behind a garbage can with a bulging lid. He felt its hunger and experienced a sense of kinship with it. "You don't have to confess to anything. You just have to talk about your feelings."
The tale began, haltingly at first, with long pauses. As they walked the silent street, Dolan shying from the beams of headlights from an occasional car, the story unfolded. It was not that different from others Mentor had heard, but nevertheless he paid strict attention. Dew fell from the fog and soaked their shoulders and gathered like silver jewels in their hair.
Dolan talked, he wept softly, and Mentor listened carefully without responding, guiding the old one closer and closer to safety. Near his home, Mentor heard the silent plea reach him from the Cambian family. Dell, the new vampire, had taken blood and was in a state of ecstasy. She was listening to her parents, staying put in her home, but they feared she might break free from them into the night.
Mentor hurried Dolan into the
house, down into the basement, and asked him to hold out his wrists.
Dolan stared at the handcuffs made of solid steel. He laughed. "Do you really think they will hold me if I want to go? I possess more strength than it may appear."
Mentor slapped the cuffs on him anyway, fastening them tight. "Of course they can't hold you. But they might make you think before you fight your way out of them. I have to leave for a while. You'll be on your own for a few hours. It's up to you, Dolan. What happens now is up to your own conscience. But if you do free yourself, and if you return to that house where the others lie helpless, I swear I will be on you in a millisecond."
Dolan slumped to the floor, hanging his cuffed hands over his upright knees. "I'll wait for you to come back."
"Good."
"I won't set fire to your house."
"Even better." Mentor smiled and turned for the stairs.
"Mentor?"
"Yes?" He paused on the bottom step, his hand on the rail.
"I don't know how you do this. I don't know how you keep going year after year when there are so many of us who need you."
Mentor went up the stairs. At the landing before the door he said, "If I didn't do it, I'd be like you are now. I'd turn myself to ash." He heard the old vampire's low growl of a laugh as he shut the door behind him and locked it with dead bolts. He didn't think what he'd admitted to was a laughing matter. But laughter was better than tears, so he forgave his houseguest, moved to the front door, and left him behind in the darkness of solitude.
7
Dr. Alan Star had been working on Charles Upton's case for nearly a year. Upton's porphyria was unrelenting, taking the old man in one of the most horrible ways anyone could meet his end. The disease being quite rare, this was only the second case Alan had attended in his career as a specialist in blood diseases. The first one had been a woman in Birmingham, Alabama, where Alan had finished his residency. Maggie. She had been elderly like Upton, and finally untreatable, dying in the hospital while Alan sat by her side, watching and agonizing. Maggie of the bright eyes, dimming into stillness. Yet there had been no reproach there for him that he hadn't done all that he could.
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