Blood Winter

by S. J. Coles

  “And you made it all the way here?”

  “I’m not sure how…”

  “It didn’t hurt you?”

  I blinked at the frozen lock. “No.”

  “Why did it take you with it if it didn’t want to… If you weren’t—”

  “I was just for leverage, in case anyone followed. It didn’t want to hurt me.” A pause whilst the wind picked up, prohibiting conversation, during which I realized what I’d said and that I believed it. “What’s happening at the lodge?”

  Her voice, when it came, was thin. “It’s bad. Jon Ogdell won’t go to the police.”

  “What?”

  “He’s said no one’s to say anything—about Brody, about anything. He knows he’d go down for the donor. He says if anyone talks, he’ll take us all down with him.”

  I clenched my teeth, anger flickering in the pit of my stomach. “Listen, Meg,” I said firmly. “Get away, okay? Take that snowmobile and get the hell away.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “It’s still raging out here. I wouldn’t get more than a few miles. Besides, if I run, they’ll think I’ve gone to the police. They know where I live. And that Hans Karlsson? He’s dangerous, Alec. They’re all dangerous.”

  “Okay, plan B…” I said, rubbing my temples and thinking furiously. “Go back to the lodge and stay calm. Tell them I’m here, that I’m okay and that the haemophile took off but I don’t know to where.”

  “What will you do?”

  I slid a glance back at the cellar, feeling a numb hollow where I thought my terror should be. “As soon as the weather clears, I’ll come find you and we’ll figure this out.”

  A pause. “It’s supposed to turn by the end of the week, I think. We got that much from the TV before the power went.”

  “Get back and play along. But leave the minute you can. Okay?”

  “All right. Just promise me that you’re okay.”

  I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “I promise.”

  Chapter Four

  I stood by the front door for a long time after the roar of Meg’s snowmobile engine had died away. The cellar door stayed shut. It was several moments before I could make myself move. I retrieved the wood and built up the kitchen fire and went through the cupboards. I tried to focus on anything other than what might be going on at the lodge or in the cellar.

  The image of the long fingers curled around the edge of the door and the empty, black eye watching me made my stomach plunge. But then I remembered those same eyes looking down the gun barrel at me, unfathomable but calm. Patient. Even a little sad.

  It was only when I caught myself watching the clock that I realized I was waiting for nightfall. I tried to make my throbbing head get in line. I didn’t even know if the daylight thing was something I’d read about haemophiles or in Dracula. I scrabbled through the old magazines and newspapers that were scattered across the kitchen and piled in the kindling basket. The only article I found was a report on protests in London the day the courts decided to grant haemophiles human rights.

  Human rights.

  I frowned at the angry expressions in the photos and their placards plastered with the face of Shelly Morris, the nine-year-old girl found dead in Hyde Park over a year ago, covered in bite marks and drained of blood. I scoured the article, but it only reported on the protest, the court decision and details about the girl.

  I screwed up the newspaper and threw it into the fire.

  It was a shock to be woken hours later, in near-darkness, never having intended to fall asleep. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my head pillowed on my arms. The smell of frying bacon was rich in the air. I jerked up, knocking the chair back against the counter in my attempt to scramble away.

  The haemophile was at the stove with a frying pan on its flat top. He was just pouring a mix of beaten egg over fried bacon pieces and mushrooms. The egg mix sizzled as it hit the hot oil. The smell filled the room and made my knotted stomach clench.

  “What are you doing?” I said, edging away.

  “You need to eat.” He shook the pan, bent and threw another piece of wood onto the fire. Incredulous, I watched him cook the omelet, plate it up and set it on the table. He finally met my eyes, unabashed and almost curious. He stood statue-still, motionless in a way no human ever could be. He didn’t appear to blink. His face was a shifting mass of soft shadows and amber highlights in the fire’s glow. It lit gold threads in his ice-white hair and sent electricity through my skin in a way that both excited and terrified me.

  “I scared you today.”

  “What?”

  “In the hall. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?”

  “I am.”

  My fear flagged. Anger rose in its place. “Stop pretending.”

  His eyes flickered. “Pretending?”

  “That you’re normal.”

  Now, he blinked. “What’s ‘normal’?”

  “Not ripping someone’s throat out with your teeth.”

  I expected anger or indignity. Anything. But all he did was meet my eyes without expression. “What about tying someone to a table, starving them, drugging them, bleeding them and drinking it?”

  I clenched and unclenched my fists. “You killed my friend.”

  His gaze slid away from mine. “That wasn’t me. It was the Blood. It…protects itself.”

  “Don’t bullshit me.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand,” he said, dropping the frying pan into the sink.

  “I want you out of my house.”

  “I can’t leave any more than you can.”

  “Move that damn armoire and go.”

  He nodded to the food. “It’s going cold.” I glared at him. He raised one pale eyebrow a fraction. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t need to poison you.”

  “Then what’s this in aid of? Do we taste better when we’re well-fed?”

  “Your blood sugar is still low. You’ve been exposed to extreme temperature and shock. Your body needs food.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can smell it.”

  I gritted my teeth against the uneasiness that surged up my spine. “Why do you care?”

  He held my gaze a moment longer then looked away. “If I make you uncomfortable, I’ll leave. I only came through to get warm.”

  He moved to the door. I shifted the other way, keeping the table between us. I could smell the omelet. My stomach clenched but I didn’t sit until he’d left the kitchen and shut the door behind him. I stared at the food then grabbed a fork and tasted it carefully. It was fluffy, stuffed with the last of my fresh bacon and just the right amount of salt. I examined it a moment longer, my mouth watering. I took another bite. Then another. Before I knew it, the plate was wiped clean. My stomach eased and my muscles relaxed. I felt more awake.

  The wind still howled somewhere above the cocoon of snow. The fire crackled. I searched for my anger. Before I realized I was moving, I’d grabbed the lantern and left the kitchen.

  I found him in the drawing room. He was staring at the landscape painting over the marble fireplace. The only light in the room was the one I’d brought, but he stood examining the painting, quietly rapt, like it was on display in an expertly lit gallery.

  “This is a Jacob More, isn’t it?” I didn’t answer, but he nodded to himself anyway. “He always painted Scottish landscapes the best.”

  “Knew him, did you?”

  He seemed almost on the point of smiling before saying, “You’ve read too much Anne Rice.”

  “Not immortal, then?” I asked, keeping my words clipped.

  “Of course not.”

  “So how old are you?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I…” I struggled for words. “Just tell me.”

  He contemplated me again with that faintly curious air, giving his unfathomable eyes a human warmth. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he said, leaning his hip aga
inst a covered sofa with the ease of someone so used to their body that they were graceful without trying. “We’re supposed to answer questions to help people understand us better. But people rarely listen to the answers—or don’t believe them if they do.”

  “I am the very definition of a captive audience.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.” His silver eyes flickered to the empty gun rack then back to me. “I don’t…” I swallowed. My throat was dry, my palms a little damp. I rubbed my wrist, which was still aching dully. “We both know I can’t hurt you.”

  “That’s true. But I need you to understand I’m not going to hurt you, either.”

  I blinked at him. His accent and level voice made him sound like someone out of a film or a radio play. He didn’t sound real. He didn’t look real. “You hurt Brody.”

  He pressed his lips together. “I did. But I didn’t want to.” I found myself wanting to believe him. The realization shocked me and I scowled to cover my reaction. “I won’t hurt you,” he repeated, firmly, “as long as you don’t try to hurt me. I have no control over what might happen if you do.” I searched his face but couldn’t figure out what I was seeing. Eventually, I nodded. He gestured into the shadows. “Shall we go back to the kitchen?”

  “You feel the cold?”

  “I feel the cold.”

  I let him lead the way, still not quite able to turn my back on him. He walked sedately, with that same ease of movement, but I had to hurry to keep up. His breath didn’t fog in the cold air like mine. I shut the kitchen door and put the lantern on the table, then fed the fire. I could feel him watching me. I dragged a chair closer to the stove. He took another bottle from the wine rack and two tumblers from the draining board.

  “You have questions.” He sat and uncorked the bottle. The electric lantern made his pale skin glow. It shone off his high cheekbones and the lines of his neck. His mouth was soft, his lips slightly curved, even at rest. I remembered it open, redder than blood, the teeth shockingly white and sharp. I remembered his hands, strong enough to crack the wood of the basement door, strong enough to break Brody’s bones. But now he sat easily in my kitchen chair, regarding me steadily with calm, entrancing eyes. He was terrifying, but he was beautiful, like a freezing winter morning in the very heart of the mountains. I bridled at the thought and dropped my gaze to the tabletop.

  “How old are you?” I heard myself ask.

  “Not old enough to have known Jacob More,” he said, with something like amusement in his voice.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  He still didn’t smile but something like humor flickered in the dark depths of his eyes. “I don’t know exactly. Over eighty, less than a hundred.”

  “How do you not know how old you are?”

  He lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “You stop counting after a while.” I narrowed my eyes and his mouth twitched. “And, well…at the time, it wasn’t considered important where I’m from.” His brow creased slightly, his eyes far away. “I remember the Second World War but not the first. Do I get to ask a question now?”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek, regarding him closely and trying not to think about the fluttering in my belly. “What question?”

  “Is this really your home?”

  “Why?”

  He tilted his chin slightly. “I knew you must live here when we arrived. I could smell it. But the place looks like it belongs to someone else.”

  Something prickled over the skin of my back. “Again, why do you care?”

  “Just curious, like you.”

  “I’m not curious about you,” I said in tight voice. “That’s not what this is.”

  He inclined his head. “Very well. You don’t have to answer. Next question?”

  I picked at a splinter on the table, not looking at him. “Daylight…”

  “What about it?”

  “Does it kill you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why—?”

  “The cellar?” He sipped his wine. His mouth was stained slightly pink. I hurriedly lifted my gaze. “We have to sleep, just like you do.”

  “During the day?”

  “We’re sensitive to sunlight,” he said slowly, factually. “We don’t produce melanin in the same way, so we burn easily. And it’s hard to see.”

  “So you just…sleep?”

  He frowned at his glass. “Not the way you sleep. The Blood requires us to…offline. Recharge.”

  “Could you stay awake if you wanted? During the day?”

  “Yes, though it’s hard. But the Blood wakes us if there’s a threat. Is it my turn now?”

  I hesitated and reached for the other glass. “I thought you said you were supposed to answer my questions.”

  “Polite conversation normally goes both ways.”

  I fought a scowl. “We’re not exactly meeting at a dinner party here.”

  “No,” he said softly, looking into the fire. “But that’s not my fault, is it?”

  I took a long drink. It was one of the last bottles of good wine I had bought after a couple of lucrative summer jobs. The taste warmed me all the way down and I found myself relaxing a fraction, despite everything. “What’s your question?”

  “Do you know who kidnapped me?”

  “You call it kidnapped?”

  “What else do you call it when someone takes you away and holds you against your will?”

  I took a swallow to buy time. “I think so.”

  “I’d like to know.” His voice was different. Cold.

  I hesitated less than I probably should have. “The dealer was someone called Hans Karlsson. The buyer was Jon Ogdell, a property developer.”

  “Friends of yours?”

  I watched him carefully but he was looking into his drink and not at me. “No.”

  “But you were at his house?”

  I scowled. “I went with a friend. We thought it was just going to be dinner.”

  “That’s all you know?”

  “It was only the second time I’d met them.”

  He took a drink. I watched the muscles in his throat move as he swallowed. It sent a different sort of shiver over my skin that had me clenching my glass tight. “Your turn.”

  The alcohol ghosted through my brain. When I spoke, my voice shook. “Why did you kill him?” He held my gaze steadily but didn’t speak. “If this is you,” I managed, gesturing at him. “If haemophiles are happy to sit and chat over omelets and insist they don’t want to hurt anyone…why’d you do it?”

  I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly had changed in his face, but he looked older, his eyes blacker. “I told you. The Blood protects itself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The tendons stood out on the back of his hand as his fingers curled into a fist. “Our Blood heals us, protects us from disease, from ageing. But its first priority is its own longevity. If it detects a threat, it will react. If it is starved of nutrition, deprived of its rest or its host is endangered, it responds.”

  “You’re talking about it like it’s a living thing.”

  “It is a living thing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He swirled his wine for such a long time that I didn’t think he was going to answer. When he did, his voice was so soft that it was like he was talking to himself. “Neither do we. We’ve only submitted ourselves to research recently. No one has answers yet. I don’t know if they ever will. All we have are stories passed down from our own kind.”

  “So…you’re saying it wasn’t really you that killed Brody? You didn’t mean to…?”

  He took a deep breath in and let it out through slightly parted lips. The fine lines of his face were strained. “I haven’t hurt anyone like that in a very long time.”

  The words were weighted. I heard pain. I didn’t like the confusion it stirred in me. I chased after the anger, but it was retreating like water swilling down a plughole. “Are you trying to cla
im that haemophiles don’t kill people?”

  “Some do,” he said, without intonation. “But my commune is registered. Legal. It lives off donations. Has for years.”

  I drank. I watched him, trying to make out if he was waiting for me to say something more. “It’s your turn for a question,” I murmured.

  I wondered if I read surprise in his eyes. “What’s your name?”

  I stilled, something quivering behind my ribs. “Alec. What’s yours?”

  “Terje.” The word sounded soft and hard at the same time, rolling off his tongue like sweet sherry pouring into a fine goblet.

  “Scandinavian?”

  He inclined his head. “Norwegian.”

  I finished my wine, welcoming the way it singed off the edges of my nerves. “The dealer is Scandinavian, too.”

  “Yes. A lot of them are.”

  “Why?”

  He gazed into the fire. “Many of my kind are from that part of the world, originally, where it’s dark a lot of the year. The biggest dealers usually have connections there.”

  I nodded whilst my mind wrestled with taking it all in. “So what happens when your people find you?”

  He topped up my glass then his own. “I leave.”

  “That’s it?”

  He raised his silver-fringed eyes. “I just want to go home.”

  The image of his skeletal form strapped to the trolley rose in my mind. We sat in silence for some time, the only sounds the snapping of the fire and the low moan of the storm.

  “Do you eat?” I asked softly.

  He shook his head.

  “But you drink wine?”

  He stared into his glass. “It helps…a little.”

  “Helps with what?”

  “The hunger,” he said. I fought a sudden chill. “How long have you lived here?”

  “I was a boy here, before boarding school. But I only moved back recently.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m the very definition of a captive audience.”

  I could almost swear that dark humor was back in his eyes. I sighed, swallowed more wine and felt something inside me loosen. “This is my father’s house.”

  “Where is your father?”

  “Dead.”

  “And your mother?”