Those of My Kind

by Loring, Jennifer

  “Yeah, so? Wait—No. No fuckin’ way.”

  “Sacred blood.” Tristan’s stomach contracted in a paroxysm of hunger. It had been too long since she’d fed. Dangerously long. Now that she had the scent, it became the world and everything in it. She craved no other source, nor would she accept another. She could have made it easy, cut herself and show Mira how quickly she healed. Convince Mira to feed from her because it might be the magic bullet preventing her from getting sicker. But the iron-rich scent scrambled Tristan’s thoughts, and her head buzzed as if full of bees.

  “You’re starting to scare me.”

  “I need something, Mira. Besides, you wanted proof. Here it is.”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind. I thought you’d just cut me or something. Or get some from a butcher. Maybe I watch too many movies.” Mira’s face had drained of color, and she fluttered her fingertips nervously against her crossed arms. “But I guess it’s better than…whatever you usually do.” She wriggled out of her jeans with little enthusiasm. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  You think she’s going to stick around after this? You think this isn’t going to make things totally weird between you?

  Tristan sat on the edge of the bed. The toilet flushed, and a few seconds later Mira returned without her underwear or the telltale tampon string. She stood in the middle of the room, unshed tears sparkling in her eyes. In a display of uncharacteristic shyness, she cupped her hands over her crotch.

  “Mira…if it’s too much, I won’t. But I haven’t fed in a long time. Weeks. I want to feed from you, in a way that won’t hurt you. I want you to be a part of me.”

  “This has been a lot to take in, you know?” Her voice cracked with unshed tears. “I have to process everything.”

  Tristan understood the subtext of those words perfectly. “I know. And if you want me to leave for a while…” Tristan choked down the fist-sized lump in her throat. “Well, I won’t blame you.”

  “I wish I was strong enough to be there for you, whatever you are, whatever it is you have to do. But I’m not. I suck at this stuff. I’m always too wrapped up in my own shit. If not dancing, then being sick. I’m a terrible girlfriend.”

  Tristan bowed her head. She had tried despite all the distractions to prepare for this moment. It didn’t hurt any less. And it didn’t make Blessing’s assessment of her life any less correct. Blessing had her number from day one, but she wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of an apology.

  “You don’t owe that crazy bitch anything, you know,” Mira said as though reading her mind. “You don’t have to be a martyr for her. But there’s something you need to do before you go.” Mira lifted Tristan’s chin. The scent of her an intoxicant more powerful than anything mankind conjured in a needle or a bottle, so that saliva saturated Tristan’s mouth and her stomach tightened again, painfully this time, with a pitiful and desperate grumble. Her veins, bright blue beneath her skin, shrieked for nourishment.

  “What?” she whispered as tears streamed down her cheeks and she prayed to any gods left that Mira granted her last wish.

  “You need to feed.”

  She wept with relief. Mira stood before her and spread her legs, and when Tristan parted Mira’s lower lips it was to reveal the crimson sliver holding her curse and her life. Her parched stone tongue and her desert mouth blossomed into an oasis, each flower the pigment of burnt umber. She worshipped Mira as the ancients would have and drank in the secrets of the gods. The juice of Mira’s sacred lifeblood coated her tongue as above her Mira wept and shuddered, and tangled her fingers in Tristan’s hair.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Anasztaizia peered through one of the windows. There was little outside to see besides the overgrown grass. “She has invited her to bathe in the bloody flow of her womb and to drink of it; and she, in Holy Communion, drank of the fountain of life.”

  It was all Blessing could do not to tear down the pillars supporting the cathedral’s arched ceiling, watch the building crumble into red dust and squash the ruins beneath her feet. The torment she endured to squeeze just a few drops of her fluid out to no avail. The betrayal proffered in a double blow, for not only had Tristan succumbed to her hunger but to the weakness of her flesh. She was tainted. Corrupted. Imperfect. And she belonged wholly to Mira.

  “She will not join us,” Blessing said.

  “Nor should she. She is not worthy of the next stage. She cannot evolve. She will die like the rest.” Anasztaizia turned from the window. “But that still is not what you want, is it?”

  “I want to break her first. But the only way is through that girl. Mira.”

  Anasztaizia smiled in her cold and detached way, her eyes catching the feeble light like the carapaces of two beetles. “There is nothing I love more,” she said, “than the suffering of those who deserve it.”

  “Good. Then think of something quickly. I want her agony.”

  “I do not serve you, Blessing Adeyayo.” Her eyes, the last two suns in a dead universe, blazed. She seemed to grow larger, to overwhelm the vast, empty space of the basement. Blessing fumbled for a knife that was not there. She had left it at home in the sort of stupid mistake Tristan would make.

  “I serve no one on this earth!”

  Blessing stumbled over a cardboard box whose contents jangled and spilled onto the floor. Trapped beneath the stairs, she cast about for something that might pacify the demon. But words died upon her lips as Anasztaizia’s cloak of dark hair, billowing about her in the tempest stirred up by her rage, bled itself of color. She stretched out her arms as if bound to an invisible cross and threw back her head. The stained, tattered remnants of her dress disintegrated. White down coated a body eternally imprisoned in adolescence; even her face, even her barely-formed breasts, even her feet.

  “I am the light-maiden!” she cried and ascended into the air.

  ~

  Anasztaizia had forgotten her target’s name, not that it mattered. Things of far greater import had happened. No mortal weapon would ever again pierce her flesh. No human laws bound her to the earth.

  When the girl opened the door, Anasztaizia inspected her from the doorway, wondering what about this creature tempted Tristan away from her sacred Calling. She was pretty enough, but men would not have battled for her hand nor artists painted portraits. She came from peasant stock.

  Anasztaizia appraised the living room and frowned at a frame of obnoxious white lights strung around the window. She appreciated the naked walls, however. There was something to be said for austerity in certain circumstances. Especially where paintings were concerned.

  The girl blinked her gray eyes rapidly, her eyelids so pale the delicate capillaries beneath them turned her skin pink, like eye shadow. Anasztaizia imagined plucking them from their sockets and popping them into her mouth like jellied candies. The girl was sweating, and bruises dappled her pale flesh. A fragmented vision of the great dragon that had battered her own body flitted through Anasztaizia’s memory. She flicked it away like a cockroach.

  Perspiration rolled down the girl’s temples and the crease between her breasts, and darkened the fabric of her shirt as if she were bleeding. The girl pulled away just as her eyes began to lose focus. She was stronger than she appeared.

  “Who the fuck are you? Why are you staring at me?” She clenched her jaw. “Did that crazy bitch send you here? Get the fuck out.”

  Anasztaizia brushed her fingertips over the girl’s bare arm. She flinched at her touch, her feverish skin searing Anasztaizia’s palm. Tears mixed with sweat. They left black raccoon circles around her eyes and streaked down her cheeks like crude war paint.

  Mira. That was it. An ugly name. Common stock.

  “What do you want with me?” Mira said, her voice tremulous. Fear intensified the stench of her sickness. “My roommate will be back soon. And…Tristan, too. You better get out. Now.” But she expected no such thing to happen; it was evident in the defeated sag of her shoulders, the acquiescence
blackening her voice.

  “I think you already know.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Tristan isn’t coming back. It was all too much for you, wasn’t it? Who could live with such a thing, a creature that must drink blood to survive? A creature born only to kill?”

  “Stop it,” Mira whispered, pressing her hands to her ears. “Please.”

  “What you don’t know is that I am fated to destroy her. And you are going to help me.”

  “Please don’t hurt her.”

  Anasztaizia pursed her lips. She nearly saw Tristan reflected in the glassy eyes. Love would always be humanity’s greatest weakness, its fatal flaw. Love and its constant companion, sorrow, birthed this atrocity of a world. It had turned her father into a monster. Yet perhaps some distant memory of love kept her bound to this world instead of ascending into the Light. There were people once, people precious to her. People who plagued her dead dreams of an endless forest. Once she ended Tristan’s life, she would stop it once and for all. Cut it out of herself if she must.

  Anasztaizia inhaled a great draft of air and with it the sour scent of abnormal blood cells multiplying out of control. “You haven’t told her, have you?”

  “Told her what, you fuckin’ psycho? She knows I’ve been sick.”

  “You haven’t told her you need a transplant. My, but you two are made for each other, with your unending deceits.”

  “What the hell are you?” Mira whispered. Tears dribbled down her face and shattered against her breastbone like glass beads. Anasztaizia pressed her fingers into the girl’s cheeks, forcing her head up. Even her breath stank of illness. She was rotting from the inside.

  “What do you see when you look at me?”

  “A girl. Just…a girl.” Mira blinked hard. “But you’re not, are you?”

  “I can make your illness go away. I can make it all go away. ‘Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’” Anasztaizia clasped Mira’s wrist, her pulse the drum of a hummingbird’s wings against Anasztaizia’s fingertips. With her free hand, she ran her fingers through Mira’s hair. Mira cringed again and shrank from her. But the question had implanted itself in her, a splinter buried deep enough to infect her every thought:

  “What do I have to do to not be sick anymore?” She lowered her gaze as more tears fell. “The tests came back, and I didn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her. I’m dying.”

  “You have a choice now. You have an important role to play. Come with me and live forever.”

  Anasztaizia stared into her eyes. She could almost see the idea squirming about in her brain, a maggot feeding on the parts of her that might have put up resistance. The survival instinct was too strong. She did not want to feel her body perishing around her, refused to accept the injustice of death. Anasztaizia understood her all too well.

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” Mira said at last. “But please don’t hurt her.”

  Anasztaizia jerked Mira’s head up again. Her eyes were like platters, and Anasztaizia forced herself not to run the tip of her tongue over them. She did so enjoy the taste of tears. “Oh, don’t you worry about that. I won’t need to.”

  Gripping Mira’s wrist as if she were a rag doll, Anasztaizia ran down the stairs and into the chilly evening. She increased her speed until it ripped the girl’s incipient scream away and they were airborne. Mira fainted quickly enough when their pace prevented her from catching her breath. Time flowed and twisted around them, blurring the world into colorful streaks and concealing them from human sight. Anasztaizia moved outside of it, parallel to it; time had not mattered to her for many centuries. It held no sway over the dead.

  And now, she truly could be anywhere she wished. Uninhibited by physical laws that kept human beings stranded upon the earth, she visualized herself soaring upon a current that would carry her halfway across the world. Only one sanctuary suited the battle that lay before her, one constructed for such a thing, and she could reach it before the sun rose. Tristan might locate them quickly enough, but she still had to cross the ocean the way any human did. She had to traverse the countryside like a peasant, confront her own past in those tiny villages, perhaps the very village in which her family once lived.

  It was just as well. Anasztaizia had much to teach her new toy.

  ~

  Tristan mustered the willpower to return to the apartment near dusk the next day. She couldn’t leave so much pent-up emotion between her and Mira. Not with Mira’s taste still lingering in her mouth.

  For a time she had hidden in an abandoned factory, watching the homeless shamble back and forth sad-eyed and defeated. These were Anasztaizia’s ideal prey—the drug addicts, the runaways from bad homes, the mentally ill. She could not flee forever, nor evade her duty. Who would be their defender, if not the girl born to kill the demon stalking them?

  Wow, she was starting to believe her own hype.

  Tristan unlocked the door and opened her mouth to both greet and apologize, but the words shriveled up in her throat. Sarah and another girl—had to be Lauren—sat on the couch, crying into fistfuls of tissues. It had to be bad to lure Sarah back from New York.

  “Hi Sarah. Hi, um…Lauren? We haven’t met. I’m Tristan. Is…Mira home? I’m sorry if I’m intruding on something—”

  “Get out!” Sarah screamed. Lauren put an arm around her.

  “Calm down,” Lauren said softly. “Don’t take it out on her. She doesn’t even know.”

  “Know what? Sarah…what’s going on?”

  Lauren dabbed at her eyes, smearing her makeup into blue bruise-like splotches. “Mira never showed up for her dance history class this afternoon. No one has seen her or heard from her, and she left all of her stuff here. Even her phone. I wouldn’t have thought too much of it if not for that. We knew the cancer came back, and she could’ve gone to the doctor or something. Maybe even the emergency room. But we’ve called all the hospitals, and…”

  What was left of Tristan’s heart dropped into her shoes as guilt wrapped a cold, crushing tentacle around her insides. She could have waited just one more day. If she hadn’t asked to feed in such a creepy way, if she had been here to protect her…

  We’ve already seen how good you are at protecting people. You pretty much suck on that account.

  “But…she was fine when I left last night…”

  “Fine until she met you, you freak!”

  “Sarah, come on,” Lauren said, but Sarah shrugged off her arm. The words hurt no less coming from a near stranger than they did in junior high when spewed by Jinny who, at the time, cared more about her popularity than her odd little sister. Always clad in skinny jeans clinging to her Rom curves, a tank top, and platform wedges. The most practical outfit she owned, completed by a veil of her favorite perfume, “Irresistible Apple.” She couldn’t leave the house without at least a little skin showing, and Canadian winters sent her into paroxysms of despair.

  Damn, Tristan thought, I really miss her right now.

  “It’s true! You’ve been nothing but trouble since she met you! She’s upset all the time, she’s sick all the time—”

  Tristan hardly needed a reminder of the chaos she had brought to Mira’s life, not to mention her own. “I don’t have time to sit here and listen to this. I’m going to find her.”

  “I’ve already called the cops. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet, so they won’t do anything. But I hope they’ll tie you to it somehow.”

  “Sarah! Jesus!” Lauren hissed, but Tristan had already grabbed Sarah’s arm and dragged her off the couch. Lauren shrank back as if hoping the cushions would absorb her.

  “Maybe I haven’t known her as long as you have, but she’s my friend, too. I would never hurt her. So go ahead and say that again, because this time I will put you through the wall.”

  Tristan half-expected her to start laughing. Were she in Sarah’s position, she’d have done exactly that. Sarah gaped at her, her face wet, but she did not utter a word.

 
“In twenty-four hours, Mira might be long dead. I don’t know about you, but I’m not waiting around for the cops.” Tristan dug her fingers into the pale, soft flesh of Sarah’s upper arm. She smelled of vanilla and shampoo, like the long–ago girls at the Victoria Ballet Academy.

  Tristan wanted to make her bleed. She wanted to taste—

  No.

  Sarah winced. “You’re hurting me!”

  “You want to call the cops again? Go for it. I’m going to find Mira, and if you have a problem with that, I will kick your ass all the way to New York.”

  “Don’t threaten me.”

  “And don’t question my friendship with Mira.”

  ““Friendship,” is that what you call it? Fucking dyke.”

  The word, hanging in the air like an indictment, cut to her marrow. It sounded so ugly coming from Sarah, so disgraceful. Tristan’s cheeks burned with indignity, and tears stung her eyes. She let go of Sarah and took half a step back toward the door.

  “Sarah, seriously? This has nothing to do with Mira being gone.”

  “Screw both of you.” Sarah snatched her jacket from a set of wall-mounted hooks and slammed the door behind her.

  Lauren exhaled loudly and flopped back against the couch. “I’m sorry we had to meet like this. I don’t know where that came from.”

  Tristan stared at her shoes. Dirty, scuffed, and the things weren’t even a year old. They used to last her at least five years, but Chucks had gone to shit ever since they started making them in Indonesia. The more she thought about her shoes, the less she had to think about what had happened. She wasn’t ready. Not for losing Mira.

  “They’ve been roommates since freshman year. Mira and I actually hang out more because we’re both ballet majors, but Sarah got really protective after she found out about the cancer.” Lauren sighed again. She flipped her side-swept bangs out of her face. “Anyway, I’m sorry. We’re all more than a little upset right now. But thank you for wanting to find her. When you were talking about her, I saw in your eyes how much…” She smiled weakly and wrung her hands.