Blood Ties (17 page)

“Vampire …
,” I said slowly, articulating each syllable. “Okay, I need to wake up now.”

He pursed his lips. “Liz, you are not dreaming.”

I snorted. “Yes I am. I’m just going to wake up. This is just a nightmare. Granted this one is probably the only second one I’ve had in my life, well, that I remember, and I remember all of the other ones pretty much. God Almighty, why couldn’t I have had a dream about a beach somewhere,” my voice trailed out, “… somewhere …” I was babbling.

Michael creased his forehead. He reached over to touch my hand. “Liz …” His fingertips were like ice. I jerked away, startled at their cold touch.

His face turned somber. “I assure you. You are not dreaming. Although I can certainly understand you thinking this is a nightmare.”

I could feel the warmth of the fire; hear the crackling of wood as the logs burned and the sound of the ocean crashing against the cliffs. I could feel my breaths – my heart beating, if somewhat irregular. I watched
his chest rise and fall, breathing evenly. I’d never had a dream tell me that I wasn’t dreaming. Had I really seen him rip the throat out of a bear, more than twice his size and weight? I cleared my throat and my hands began to shake uncontrollably.

No, this had to be a nightmare.

“Your sister?” I asked with a tremor in my voice. He gave a small nod. He looked at me, his eyes tight, his mouth pursed into a straight line.

I sat there in silence. Vampire. They were just popular myths. They didn’t seem to have anything in common with Michael, or his sister for that matter, except for their pale skin, their cold touch – and what I’d seen in the forest. No, it wasn’t true. It was too u
nbelievable. A vampire? My mind wrestled with thoughts that crossed the lines between incredulous, to horror, to something else, elusive, like vapor.

I shook my head again. “Really, Michael.”

“Truly Liz, this is what I am ... who we are.”

I let out a sharp exhalation. “Yep, it’s really time to wake up.”

I was in bed in my apartment, on a typical heinous Monday morning, my nightmare being the result of stress about some test. In either case, I wasn’t going to stay in a dream where he was a monster and not the handsome professor who everyone drooled over. I poked hard at my leg with my finger several times hoping a little pain would shift my brain out of its REM waves.

His
forehead furrowed in a frown. “Believe me when I tell you that you are not dreaming … you are awake … this is real.”

Not a dream?

This was real? I stifled the wail of terror that wanted to rip out of my chest. I stared at him in horror, my brain having finally crawled out of its quagmire, replaying all of the events in my head – everything that had happened – every word that had been spoken, it had all been real. I was sitting precariously close to something not human? A blood drinker? A vampire? A predator of humans? But Michael? My heart began to pound furiously. I quickly searched for an escape route in my head. I tensed for a sprint towards the front doors.

He looked at me with sad eyes. “Liz, please, don’t be frightened. You won’t be harmed.” It was as if a hand had erased the tension in my body. The trembling slowed and the ice began to leave my hands. I wasn’t afraid. I should be, shouldn’t I? I frowned, contemplating this paradox.

“I wasn’t born this way,” he said. “It happened a very long ago time ago.”

He sat back in his chair, staring into the fire. “The village in France I told you about ... it was all true, but not in this time. It was two hundred years ago. My family, my life, it was all true. I was twenty
-four and engaged to be married. She was the love of my life, and I, hers. A few nights before our wedding, we were attacked by several vicious, loathsome creatures. They killed everyone in the village ... my family, my betrothed.”

A feeling of terrib
le loss cut through my heart, it was overwhelming. My throat tightened as I held back tears.

He stared into the fire, a
muscle in his jaw twitching. He was quiet, lost in thought, struggling with his emotions. After several moments, his shoulders relaxed. He let out a long breath and glanced at me.

“After the creature had
finished with me, I only remember crawling through my own blood, seeing my family, my love torn to pieces, their screams still echoing in my mind as an excruciating pain wracked my body.”

“Jesus,” I whispered.

He nodded, the look on his face reflecting the horror of it.

“I didn’t realize until later, that these creatures were truly monsters, foul non-living things that consumed the blood of others in order to survive.

“I crawled into the woods to hide from these monstrous things, fearing they would come after me, to finish what they had started. I lay there dying, my blood draining into the ground. I was in terrible agony. I became feverish, as if I were in midst of a nightmare with horrific dreams. I suffered for several days, not being able to move, to help myself, and I prayed for death to take me.

“When I awoke, it was
as if it were a dream. At first, I thought my soul had passed on. In horror, I realized that this was not so. The creature, by leaving me alive, had passed on his curse. I had changed. I had become like those hideous, ravenous monsters.”

He stood and walked to the fireplace, his back to me, and put several more logs onto the fire.

My throat was tight and tears brimmed in my eyes. “What did you do then?”

He
turned to me, moving to my side. With a gentle movement, he brought his fingertips to my chin and lifted my face. “Liz, please don’t cry. It was a very long time ago.” He brushed at my tears. I should have recoiled from his touch but couldn’t. Oddly, I leaned slightly towards him, a current of electricity spread from his touch to move through my body.

“Perhaps I have said too much. I didn’t intend to distress you.”

I suddenly became unbalanced, as if my world struggled to shift around him.

He pulled away and went to stand before the fireplace. He braced one hand against the mantel and stared into the fire.

I swayed in my seat, almost as if an invisible rope connected us. “Please, tell me more.” I didn’t want his story to end. I believed every word he had said, as unbelievable as it was.

He turned to look at me and searched my face as if he
were questioning whether he should continue. He turned back to the fire. “I wandered through the forest in shock for days. I was racked with an incredible hunger, a thirst that craved for living blood. I tried to forage for food, trying to deny the thing I had become. Each time I became violently ill, vomiting what I had tried to consume. The pain was horrific, my hunger uncontrollable. I felt as if I were going mad. I tried ... tried to resist, to restrain the monster I had become. Wild with thirst I came upon my first ... human.” He closed his eyes as if in pain, his head bowed.

I swallowed nervously. “How can you do it?
Be with me, all of your students?”

He was suddenly standing next to me. I blinked in confusion. I hadn’t seen him move. He gently brushed back a strand of my hair that had fallen across my cheek. I trembled at his touch. His scent was all around me. I knew I should be afraid, but then, if he had wanted to hurt me he could have easily done it by now.

“Liz, it’s getting late. I should take you back to campus.”

I struggled for a moment, weighing the balance between my intense curiosity and the
fear I knew I should feel. I wrestled with what I wanted, and what I knew I should say.

“I’d like
to stay. I mean, if that’s alright? I have so many questions.” I winced. Questions? I wanted to stay for questions? What the hell was I thinking? I should be on the way out the door, thank you, but no thank you.

“Won’t your friends be looking for you?”

Fear welled up in me again. No one would know I had gone missing; no one would know I was here, with someone – with something that could easily end my life. I looked into the flames in the hearth. I took a shallow breath, trying to rein in the horrific thoughts that threatened to send me screaming out the door.

“No, Jennifer left this morning for Halifax to stay with her uncle and won’t be back until tomorrow night, and …” I stopped, catching the words before they flew out of my mouth. Logan was visiting his parents in Toronto for the weekend. No need to mention Logan. I frowned. Why was I confessing no one knew where I was?

“Logan?” He asked quietly.

I inhaled sharply. How could he have known?

Michael smiled grimly at the look on my face. “Let's just say I’m pretty observant.”

I looked down at my hands. “No, Logan won’t be looking for me either. He’s in Toronto visiting his family.”

I was so screwed.

Michael thought for a moment and then said, “You’re welcome to stay if you’d like. You’ll be safe here. If it gets too much for you, I can take you home.” He smiled gently. “But for now, you need to sleep. You’ve had a very trying day.”

The room around me faded. I felt strong arms lift me from the chair. My arms and legs felt heavy, immovable. I fought to hold on to consciousness. There was the soft caress of his fingertips against my cheek as darkness folded in around me.

Chapter 12

I stretched, luxuriating in cotton as smooth as silk, inhaling a scent of lavender. It was deliciously quiet.

Cotton as smooth as silk, lavender – and silence.

The pillow was white. Mine was pink.

I fought the sheets tangled around me an
d shoved myself up against a headboard to find myself in a huge four-poster bed. Around the four posts were carved mermaids and mermen, curled around wood the color of golden oak, long hair spiraling up and down from the base to the very top. Behind me, carved into the headboard were dolphins, whales, otters and other sea creatures, some of which I’d never seen before, all entwined together in fluid relief.

Sunlight streamed in through rounded top windows draped with white transparent curtains. On the left side of the bed was a sitting area with an entertainment center and green leather furniture. To my right, a mammoth mirrored dresser. Every piece of furniture was in the same carved relief as the bed. One wall
, between two windows, held a large painting of a rocky shore with sprays of exploding dark water forever frozen in oil. Another wall held a life-size painting of mer-people on rocks, in various poses, interacting with each other as if a moment had been captured. A giant glass jar, filled with seashells and fronds of long grass, took up a corner.

It was unbelievable, beautiful, unworldly.

I was in a house belonging to a couple of vampires – blood-sucking vampires. In one day, everything I believed, everything I knew of the world around me had been altered into some skewed reality. I wasn’t screaming, maybe I would later. I’d lay odds on that. Morning-afters were either bright and shiny or they were full of nastiness like a bad hangover. Of course, there were those days in-between. I was a hundred percent sure this would not be one of them. In the meantime, I’d play along until my psyche caught up, or I’d wake up from this bizarre landscape.

There was
an open area to my left. I slid out of bed. It was part dressing room and a bathroom that ran behind the length of the wall behind the bed. Women’s clothing, probably Selene’s, filled the room with enough closet space for a family of six. Shoes took up half a wall. In a separate area was a bathroom with windows that looked out onto the south coastline. A large glassed shower and a Jacuzzi, big enough for four took up a third of the room.

Laid out on the counter were towels, a toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner, and a hair dryer. Next to it were a pair of my panties and a bra, all neatly folded on top of a pair of jeans and a sweater that I’d thrown on the floor of my apartment a couple of days ago. They’d been in my bedroom, picking through my laundry on the floor that served as my hamper aka closet. Nice.

I took care of business then undressed, turned on the shower and stepped into the spray, enjoying the feel of it running through my hair, on my face, and down my back. The warmth worked its magic. The world was always a better place in a hot shower.

Vampire. It was strange thinking of the word, standing in a shower. The humor of it suddenly hit me and I giggled. Standing in a vampire’s shower. Where on this planet would I have imagined vampires were real, would have showers, or for that matter, live in huge beach houses? The humor quickly left me. No, this was not humorous, definitely not something to laugh at.

Michael. A vampire?

I continued through the motions of a morning ritual; toweled off, dried my hair, dressed
, then hunted for my tennis shoes. I found them next to the door leading to the hallway. I shoved my feet into them, took a deep breath and stepped out of the bedroom. Light from the tall arched windows illuminated the hall.

I went down the same stairs as last night. The living room, it could only be called a Great Room, stretched the length of the house with a vaulted ceiling. Bright light streamed in through the two-story-high glass wall
, bathing the room in a warm glow. Various shades of white, earth tones, with occasional splashes of muted turquoise, green, yellow, and coral decorated the room. Behind me, there was an open kitchen with stainless steel appliances and white glassed-in cupboards. Separating the kitchen from the Great Room was a large beige granite island with leather Parson’s chairs. Everything was bright, cheery, and expensively furnished. Not the usual setting for horror.