Blood and Beasts (2 page)

           
“Why yellow?” She asked her sister carefully backpedaling to stand in front of
a red spot on the floor.

           
“Because it
’
s happy and sunny and not like you
at all, Seph,” she responded cheerily.

           
“
Thanks, sis,
” she grumbled.

           
That girl had way too much energy this early in the morning. Half the day was
already gone. Hmmm… when had she become such a morning bird? To be honest
though, she was feeling positively energetic after drinking Nate
’
s blood. Nate
… That was a subject sure to depress
her. Her eyes flit to the bed briefly. Pearl tapped a foot impatiently for her
sister
’
s attention although she knew very
well that Seph could care less what she wore. She pulled on some dark clothes,
as usual.

           
“Seph, you
’
re so pretty. Why do you dress like
you
’
re some Goth wannabe vampire? Why do
you have to wear that black shit all the time?” Pearl complained, and Seph
gasped, whirling on her younger sister.

           
“Pearl Black! Don
’
t let me ever catch you cussing like
that again!” She said sternly, and Pearl flinched. “I
’
m sorry,” Seph said hurriedly. “I
’
m just having a really weird day,” she stated lamely.

She felt
awkward in her skin. It was tingling with energy, crawling with vim (a synonym
for energy, she had recently learned). Seph caught Pearl shaking her head in
the mirror and absentmindedly compared their reflections. The half-sisters
could not have looked more different. Just more evidence that Seph never quite
fit in anywhere…

           
Seph was fair-skinned while Pearl
’
s skin was the color of coffee with
too much cream in it. Seph had rich, red hair that fell straight down her back.
Pearl had frizzy, dark-brown hair usually pulled up into twin pigtails. Seph
was short and slender. Pearl was already nearly taller than her and still
growing. They looked nothing alike. However, upon closer examination, one saw
the same winged brows, the same shaped eyes, the same strong jaw. They were
related.

           
They had the same mother but not the same father. Seph had never known her
father, and she accepted that. Pearl and her twin brother, Pearce
’
s, dad had been the man that Seph
had always considered her father. Her mother had been with him for six years,
and he had treated Seph like she was his own flesh and blood. She could still
remember his smiling eyes…

She could
also still remember his receding back when he left her mother during her third
trimester. The twins had never even known their father, and Seph could not
exactly paint a proper picture of him because it waxed and waned with her
moods. She went from extreme anger at his abandonment to extreme warmth at his
love and care before the twins. Did she secretly resent them for being the
reason her father figure left? No… She would take them over his abandoning ass
any day. Sometimes though, wonder would creep into her mind…

“Why are you
staring at me? It
’
s kinda creepy. And your eyes look
kinda weird,” Pearl
’
s voice piped up and snapped Seph
back to reality.

She
immediately looked away, wondering if her eyes were going to change like other
vampires
’
did. Was she really a vampire? This
was so insane!

           
“
Sorry, just
… thinking,” she sincerely hoped her
sister was not going to get one of her intuitive little thoughts and figure out
that she had been brooding over the past.

           
“Thinking about what?” Pearl propped herself up on the edge of her own unmade
bed, targeting Seph with her perceptive eyes.

           
Seph sighed, sitting at the little stool in front of their mirror. She began
methodically putting on her make-up and trying exceptionally hard to ignore
Pearl
’
s penetrating glare. She also kept
trying not to glance at the bed, hoping against hope that Nate wasn
’
t bleeding out there. She lightly
tousled her vibrant hair as Pearl just stared and stared and stared.

           
“Are you thinking about your last birthday with Mom?” Without warning, Seph was
assailed with visions of her mother swinging at her as she protected the twins.

She felt her
outer shell harden, and her teeth felt sharper in her mouth. Aggression spiked
in her, and bitterness laced her voice as she addressed her sister coolly.

           
“Pearl, Mom beat us nearly every day with just about anything she could get her
hands on. Why would one of the
many
birthdays I had with her, which
always ended the same way, matter to me now?” She snapped back, unable to keep
the rising resentment out of her voice.

           
An awkward silence passed between them as she finally finished with her hair
and make-up and slipped on her shoes. Pearl
’
s honey eyes sparkled with tears, and Seph was taken
aback. She whirled around. Had she been that mean? It was her birthday! Why did
she have to deal with this? Shouldn
’
t
everything just go fine and dandy today? First, she bites her best friend
(after
kissing
him!); now, she was causing her little sister to fall
into tears. She was just… hungry. How could she still be hungry?! Her eyes
briefly fell on Pearl
’
s neck. What she wouldn
’
t do for a chocolate bar with some
raspberry filling or a really rare steak… Or some blood.

           
“Pearl, I
’
m sorry,” she moved forward and
pulled her sister into a hug. “I wasn
’
t
thinking about Mom and the day we finally got taken away from there. I was just
thinking about Dad…” she stated, tucking her head against her sister
’
s neck.

           
She smelled
… good. She smelled like food. Were
they cooking downstairs? She was so hungry. She was surprised her stomach hadn
’
t started eating itself yet. She
just wanted some food! Was she really considering biting her little sister?
This was terrible! She pulled back from her little sister a little forcefully.
Pearl glanced up at her, eyelashes wet with teary diamonds.

           
“I wish I had known him. You always said he was real nice,” Pearl mentioned,
and Seph shook her head firmly.

The
memories brought her out of her blood reveries. 

           
“Pearl, he left us. He left us, and don
’
t
ever forget that. You
’
ll get silly notions in your head to
try and find a man that never wanted to be with you, with any of us, in the
first place,” Seph said emphatically.

           
Pearl stared at Seph before nodding and slowly extricating herself from her.
Walking off towards the door, she opened it, allowing warm light to flood the
dim room. Seph felt herself flinch from it, squinting.

           
“I can
’
t think like that, Seph. I can
’
t think like…
you. I don’
t ever wanna be that bitter,” and
then she fluttered out of the room just as easily as she had fluttered in,
leaving Seph with a slightly hungry feeling in her stomach.

           
She felt a little bit bad about what she had said to Pearl, but then again, she
had to know and accept the reality of it. She needed to become embittered like
her if she was going to survive. She had only been seven when they had been
taken away from their mother. Seph had been twelve. She remembered every little
detail about the abuse whereas the twins hardly remembered a thing and had
never even known their father. She knew what it felt like to be prey, and she
never wanted to feel like that again. Prey? Since when had she become so
Darwinian?

           
She gripped her hair frantically. What was she going to do? Nate was
unconscious, and she was going to have to face the masses at some point. They
would notice Nate was missing! Well, wait… Last night, she and Nate had been
out pretty late. They had snuck back in without their foster parents, Bill and
Janette, realizing it. Sometimes he slept in. He could stay up here for a
little while. Enough for her to get through the birthday song, come back up
here, and hide him. Bill would cut Nate some slack for sleeping in. Nate was
Bill
’
s favorite. Bill, who was always
drinking and working in his garage (he owned his own mechanic
’
s shop), liked how Nate was a quiet
but hard worker. So had Seph, until she had bitten him and probably scarred him
for life!

           
She sighed. And Janette would cut her some slack for sleeping in late because
she and Pearl were Janette
’
s favorites for one simple reason.
They were both really pretty girls, and Janette was obsessed with looks. Every
day, before going to work as a cashier at the local supermarket, she would put
on loads of make-up, taking nearly an hour to do her ‘masterpiece
’
. Her hair was also always
extravagant, lending a whole new meaning to the term ‘
big hair’
.

In fact, Seph and Pearl were the
only two girls in their foster home of boys, seven others, in fact. There was
Pearce, Pearl
’
s twin, Nate, Seph
’
s best friend, Manny, the
five-year-old, pot-bellied, little boy, Bobby, the insanely energetic and angry
little seven-year-old, Dean, a twelve-year-old who loved being in foster care
because he never wanted to see his two jailbird parents ever again, Lawrence,
the depressed, fourteen-year-old who could draw anything, and lastly, Terrence,
the eight-year-old nerd who did not seem to quite fit in just yet.

           
What about Nate?! She calmed herself, ignoring the thick, heavy scent of blood
in the air. She knew what she needed to do. She needed to go downstairs and be
wished a happy birthday by absolutely everyone. She knew it was time. She would
hurry it up, scurry back up here, and hide the body. Heaving another great
sigh, she walked out the still open door and descended the stairs.

           
One hour later, and she wanted to die. Everybody was talking too loud,
breathing too loud, moving too loud… And the light! It was fading, but it still
felt like daggers were slowly being inserted into her eyes, twisting…
twisting... A storm was picking up, but sadly, it had yet to cover the sun. She
had withstood their grins and cheers long enough, right? Would they miss her if
she just happened to disappear into her and Pearl
’
s dim little room on her special day? She needed to
hide Nate, and she needed more blood. She was so hungry. Now that she had
gotten her first taste of the blood of the damned, she wanted more and more.
Everyone was looking tastier and tastier by the minute.

           
She had accepted Janette and Bill
’
s gift of a nice oaken hairbrush
inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She had accepted Pearl and Pearce
’
s gift of a framed photograph of the
three of them, smiling and laughing in some wildflowers behind their house. The
rest of the boys had all pitched in to buy her a nice copy of Pride &
Prejudice, one of her favorite books. She had a raggedy, used copy of it, but
she had read it so many times (it was actually duct-taped together). And that
was on top of the bracelet, which they noticed. She had quickly explained that
Nate had given her his present and theirs before going back to bed, not feeling
too well. They were all very thoughtful gifts. No one needed to give her
anything else. Nobody would miss her… hopefully.

           
She did manage to slip away, finally. Creeping up to her bedroom, she basked in
the darkness of it all. Only allowing herself a few moments, she immediately
went to Nate. She checked his vitals. He was fine. He was fine…
His blood had clotted
amazingly well. His blood
…
Pulling him out from behind the bed, she started lapping at his neck again, and
the clot disappeared. His blood flowed freely again like a fountain of youth.

“Seph?” Pearl barged into their
room, grabbing what she had left on their vanity, and gawked at what she
saw.           

There was a moment of dead silence.
Dead. Then Pearl was screaming. She was screaming and screaming and screaming,
and Seph didn
’
t know what to do! Pearl dropped her
other gift for Seph, a crystal ball, and the glass shattered everywhere. A
piece sliced the young girl
’
s leg, and rubies beaded up on her
coffee-colored skin. Seph
’
s eyes locked onto the bloody
pearls. She hardly even noticed when Pearce appeared behind his twin sister,
and his mouth twisted opened in shock at the sight before him too.