I walked through the back door, into the kitchen where my mother appeared to be preparing dinner. This would be odd if my mom wasn’t famous for cooking when she worried. Guess I was later than I thought.
I walked up behind her and said, “Hey.”
I startled her, causing the dicing knife in her hand to slip and slash her palm, deeply.
“God, Mom, I’m sorry. Let me help.”
She stood frozen, looking at the cut then staring at me with an incomprehensible expression on her face. I imagined it was the look I must wear whenever Aidan talked to me. One of shock, relief and denial, all in one. Not the most attractive look. I would have to work on that one.
I grabbed my mom’s wrist to move her toward the sink when the scent of her flowing blood filled my nostrils. My throat constricted in thirst, I felt a flash of pain in my jaw and before I knew what I was doing, I put my mouth to her cut to stop the bleeding.
At least I thought I was going to stop the bleeding. Instead, I kind of sucked the blood. I was so thirsty and it felt like the most refreshing water after running a long race in the hot sun. The cut was deep, so I didn’t have to suck hard, just open my throat and let the blood pour in. In a very short time I licked the cut and it immediately stopped. I pulled away to look at it and was surprised to see the cut was practically healed. It was as though a week had passed since she hurt herself.
I looked up at my mom in horror when the reality of what I’d just done sunk in. She wore a dazed look on her face. Her eyes were unfocused and her lips formed a small O of surprise. She didn’t seem to be in pain. She seemed to be in shock.
“Mom?” I asked uncertainly and then her eyes came into focus, staring at me. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs. I jumped back, putting my hands over my ears as my dad rushed into the room with Great-Aunt Chloe hot on his heels.
Dad caught sight of me first and he let out a very nonmasculine shriek himself. He positioned himself between Mom and me in a protective gesture.
The only one who seemed to keep her cool was Great-Aunt Chloe, which wasn’t surprising since she was deaf as a post without her hearing aid and could barely see five feet in front of her due to cataracts. Actually she was my great-great-aunt but I always shortened it to great-aunt or aunt so she didn’t feel so old.
“What’s all this caterwauling about? Goodness gracious …” She took a moment to recognize me and threw open her arms in welcome.
It is surprising that the one person who would greet me with such unreserved joy was the one relative I rarely saw. But she at least seemed happy to see me so I rushed into her arms and hugged her back. She smelled like rose water and vanilla wafers. I never noticed that before. I used to think she smelled like old person, but not tonight. Tonight she smelled wonderful.
“Oh child! We thought you were done for. Our prayers have been answered,” she crooned, hugging me even tighter. For a frail old woman of eighty something, she had quite a grip to her.
“Exactly how late for curfew am I?” I asked tentatively, surprised by her relieved declarations.
My aunt gave a dry cackle of relief. “Why, dear, you’ve been gone since Friday night—nearly forty-eight hours. We’ve had the police scouring the neighborhood for you. There is a candlelight vigil at your school right now.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. Could I have been unconscious in that ravine for nearly two days?
“Let me look at you.” Aunt Chloe pulled away and held my face in her hands. Since she was barely five foot, I had to bend over quite a bit to give her a good look.
“Hmmm,” she said as she peered into my face. “What color are your eyes, dear?” she asked me.
“Uh, blue,” I responded.
She raised an eyebrow at me.
“Okay, fine. They’re gray. Sometimes I wear colored contacts to make them look bluer.”
Sheesh
.
“When was the last time you saw some sun?”
“What do you mean?” Sure, we lived in the Pacific Northwest and it rained quite a bit, but I was usually a lovely golden shade thanks to the advances in tanning-booth technology. “I tanned just yesterday so I would look good cheering at the game. Why?”
“You’re white as a ghost, my dear. And your eyes are a funny shade.”
“What kind of funny shade?” I pulled away, looking for something shiny. My father was surprisingly helpful as he was holding a heavy copper teakettle in his hand. I tried to ignore the menacing way he yielded it when I took it from him and looked at myself in the surface of the kettle. My eyes did look different, lighter. The copper was skewing the color but they definitely didn’t look gray, or blue for that matter.
“I need a better mirror.” I walked past my aunt into the family room and ducked into the small bathroom there. I took one look at myself and screamed.
They all came running at the sound of my distress. My parents might have been leery of me in the kitchen, but the sound of their only child screaming kicked the primal protection gene in gear.
My hair was a matted, muddy mess. No surprise considering I’d been sleeping with the mushrooms and blackberry brambles for the last two nights, but it was my skin and eye color that held me transfixed. My skin was pale. Not pale as in, “I haven’t been to the Tannery in a while,” but pale as in, “I’ve never seen the light of day before.” It was almost translucent, obvious despite the dirt and scrapes on my face. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn I was very ill … or a Goth.
Then there were my eyes. My very yellow eyes. Gone was the gray of years past. Now they were a glowing yellow. Ugh.
“What—what happened to me?” I stuttered. Could this be a common side effect of getting terrorized, like someone’s hair turning white overnight?
“Where have you been? What happened to you?” My mother finally spoke for the first time, rubbing her palm with her other hand. She didn’t say a word about my drinking her blood, for which I was thankful; but still, add that to the yellow eyes and white skin and I would have been running for the hills if I were her. Amazing woman, my mom.
“Well, after the game I walked home.” No need to get into the humiliating details of how Aidan took out Allison instead of me.
“I took the, uh, back route.” I looked up at them expecting to be chastised about walking through the woods at night with an attacker at large in the neighborhood, but they were silent.
“I was almost to the road when some guy stepped out of the shadows and he, he, threw me down.” My mother gasped and reached out to hug me but my father put his arm out to stop her.
“Go on,” he said.
“Well, I kneed him and fought but he held me down easily. He pinched my neck and I sort of froze in shock. I kept fighting him and that made him really mad.
“He picked me up and threw me into the ravine. I woke up and came straight home. I had no idea I was unconscious for two days.”
I was really embarrassed about what happened to me. Maybe it was wrong to purposely leave out that the Attacker made me drink something. I didn’t feel like having my stomach pumped and besides, if it was poison I would have been dead by now. It must have been something to make me sleep, since two days had passed.
I pushed my way out of the bathroom past them, where they stood frozen in the doorway, and sat down on the burgundy couch in our family room. I grabbed one of the chenille pillows and hugged it to my chest. This small gesture of normalcy made me feel better. Whenever I was feeling bad, I would cuddle up with a pillow on the couch and try to sort things out.
They followed me slowly.
“Is that all that happened?” Dad asked me softly, almost afraid of my answer.
“Yes, Dad. That is all that happened. Isn’t it enough?” I asked angrily. I was pissed at myself but it seemed easier to yell at him. Dad had broad shoulders; in my state of mind, he could handle this burden better than I could right now.
“Honey, we need to get you to a doctor and get you checked out,” my father said to the group.
“No!” The women shouted at once, surprising him and each other.
It was Aunt Chloe who offered the short-term solution. “I will give her a checkup. I didn’t spend fifty-plus years as a nurse and survive two wars that I can’t manage a common physical.”
Aunt Chloe stood up and gestured for me to follow her to the spare bedroom. Apparently she had heard of my disappearance and had moved in from the local retirement village to help my family through this tough time.
“Marilyn, could you please join me? John, you stay here and for goodness sake, don’t call anyone or do anything until we are done.”
Dad nodded as he sank down in his favorite recliner, dropping his head into his hands.
I obediently followed Aunt Chloe and Mom into the spare bedroom and sat down on the bed. Aunt Chloe searched through her bag and pulled out a few items. Blood pressure wrist band, stethoscope, thermometer, a large Baggie filled to the rim with pill bottles that rattled around when she dropped it on the bed.
“Where did I put it?” she mumbled to herself and Mom and I shared a look. Mom patted my hand reassuringly and I smiled at her.
“Aha, here it is!” Aunt Chloe said triumphantly, brandishing a large magnifying glass in her hand. “Now, dear, let’s get a good look at your neck. Where were you pinched?”
I was relieved she wanted to start there. I had no doubt if Dad was in charge, he would want to know if I had been molested in some way—and getting a pelvic exam by my great-great-aunt was not my idea of a good time.
I pulled my hair to the side and showed her the spot.
“Marilyn, could you get me a warm washcloth so we can clean up her neck a little bit?”
Mom jumped to do her bidding, anxious to be helping in any small way. When my neck was relatively dirt free, my aunt gazed at it through the looking glass and made a lot of
hmmm
and
ahh
sounds.
She pointed out a bruise to my mother where I was pinched and then identified two small incision marks, barely visible in the bruise.
My mother looked down at her hand, the one I’d sucked on, and showed it to my great-aunt, then proceeded to tell her what I did when I entered the kitchen. I squirmed in my seat, wishing I could run away and hide. I hear people do really odd things when they are in shock, but I doubted they nibbled on their mothers’ hands and helped themselves to a blood cocktail.
Then Aunt Chloe wrapped a wide medical gadget on my wrist and turned it on.
“What’s this?” I asked curiously, my wrist getting squeezed uncomfortably.
“It’s my blood-pressure band. It helps me keep track of my high blood pressure—which is why I need those pills.” She gestured to the overflowing Baggie.
I nodded and looked at the large digital face of the wrist band, which stayed suspiciously blank.
“Is it broken?” I asked when the LED registered only one pulse the entire time it was on my wrist.
“Don’t think so. Marilyn, let’s do you.” She took the cuff off of me and put it on my mom.
Mom’s reading showed an unusually high blood pressure, which was understandable considering the situation, and a decent pulse rate.
They both looked at the cuff, then me, pursing their lips in speculation. At that moment, I saw the family resemblance perfectly.
“Let’s take her temperature,” Mom suggested as she picked up an ancient-looking thermometer. She took it into the bathroom to wash. She walked back shaking the mercury down and put it under my tongue.
I sat obediently, the glass stick placed awkwardly under my tongue. After a minute, they read the thermometer and then stared at me strangely.
“Ninety-eight point six?” I asked hopefully.
“Uh, no,” my mom replied, less than helpfully.
Aunt Chloe took her stethoscope out and listened to my heart and lungs. She nodded in satisfaction, putting her tools of the trade back in the bag. She took her time tidily arranging all of her things. Mom sat down next to me again and held my hand. When Aunt Chloe was done straightening things up, she stood up and made her medical pronouncement.
“Well, technically you’re dead,” she announced with flourish.
Three
“
B
ut you’re obviously not dead, or you wouldn’t be walking around and talking. So you must be undead. My guess is a vampire.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I exclaimed incredulously. Surely ol’ Aunt Chloe had lost it.
“Nope. Seen it before. In the war. We’d get those boys in with a toe tag but when we tried to move them they would sit up and grab the nearest person and have themselves a drink.”
Mom and I gaped at her.
“Course, we couldn’t have our dead lads feeding on our orderlies so we would have to, uh, make the toe tag official, so to speak.”
“You mean you had to kill them? Again?”
“Stake through the heart. Wasn’t an easy decision to make but when you have so many men who are alive that need you and one who is beyond your help that could hurt them, well, the decision is obvious.”