The Purity of Blood: Volume I (65 page)

“A rash.
 
I’ve had it for a while now.”

“You don’t get
rashes” he said flatly, holding my arm up for closer inspection.

“First time for
everything I guess.”
 
I shrugged my
shoulders.

“That’s just not
possible.”
 

Then grabbing my
arm, he pulled me across the lawn and over to his car.
 
Opening the trunk, he grabbed a bag out of
the back, and still gripping my arm tightly pulled me back into the house.
 

When we got into
the kitchen he said “Sit there,” as he pointed to the kitchen table.
 
I did as he asked without question, but
honestly it was just because I didn’t know what else to do.
 
He put the black leather travelling bag down
next to me on the table then pulled out a magnifying glass and a light and
started to examine the rash.

Daniel walked
in.
 

“What’s he
doing?” he asked me as he came to a stop on my other side.
 
I shrugged my shoulders again.
 

When we turned
to glance over at Randall, he looked up from my rash with a frown.

“I’m going to
take a sample.
 
Daniel you may want to go
check the perimeter.”

“Why?
 
What are you doing?”
 
Daniel stared down at the small scalpel
Randall pulled out of the bag with a scowl on his face.
 

“Take my word
for it; you don’t want to be around when I do this.”

Without another
word, Daniel gave my hand a reassuring squeeze then headed out the back door.

“What was that
about?” I asked.

Shaking his
head, Randall gave his attention back to my arm.
 
Then without warning, he cut a small sliver
of skin off the side of the rash.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry,” he said
unapologetically as he put some gauze over the incision to stop the bleeding.

“Oh, I get
it.
 
The blood,” I muttered.

“He can smell it
even now, I promise you that.
 
But he’s
alright.”

“How is it you
can you stand it?” I asked eyeing him suspiciously.

“Well, I’ll let
you in on a little secret,” he said with a grandfatherly smile.
 
“Seems that because you’re of my own blood
line, you don’t smell that good to me.”

I must have
looked a little offended.

“You don’t smell
bad either, just neutral.
 
I think it
must be our genetic similarities, but I’m not sure.”

“What are you
going to do with that?” I asked, looking at the sample he’d taken.

“I’ve got a
microscope in the trunk.”

“Alright, why do
you have all this equipment?
 
What
exactly was it you were expecting to do when you got here?”

“I’ve been
studying you – scientifically since you were born in an attempt to learn more
about us as a family.
 
And you don’t get
rashes, so this is a symptom of something.
 
You don’t get sick period.
 
From
what I’ve seen, you may have the best immune system any human has ever
had.
 
It’s part of what makes you extra
appealing as a pure, much more so that your mother or grandfather.”

He took the
gauze away, replaced it with a band aid then got up and went back out to the
car.
 
Hopping down off the table, I wandered
out the back door and over to the barn.
 

Using all my
might I opened the barn door and pulled the tarp back far enough to open the
door of Daniel’s car.
  
Sliding into the
driver’s seat, I reached over and checked my laptop.
 
I’d plugged it in first thing this morning to
recharge.

“I hope you’re
not planning on making your grand escape again,” I heard Daniel say just before
his head poked around the door.

“No, just
checking to see if my laptop was charged yet.”
 

It was, so I
disconnected it and climbed back out of the car.
 
After Daniel closed the door behind me and
pulled the tarp back in place, he gently patted the roof of his car as if to
reassure it that everything would be okay.

“So any sign of
my hunter?” I asked, suppressing a smile.

“I didn’t go
far, but none that I saw.”
 

He was staring
down at the bandage on my arm.

“Is this
bothering you?” I asked holding it up.

“Not really.” but
his eyes still seemed fixed on it in a way that made me uncomfortable in my own
skin.
 

As he closed the
barn door behind us, I started back towards the house.

“So how long are
we going to stay here?” I asked when he caught up to me.

“We’ve decided
to stay and make our stand here.”

“That sounds
ominous.”

“Well, this is
defensible ground.
 
Ironically enough,
one of the reasons Randall chose this spot to build was for that very same
reason.
 
Of course it was the British he
was trying to defend against back then and not some crazed vampire.
 
Anyway, reinforcements should be arriving
soon.”
      

I decided at
this point I really didn’t want to know any of the details, so I didn’t inquire
further.
 
I stole a glance up just in
time to catch his eyes searching for mine.
 
He smiled, or at least tried to smile.
 
I could tell he had a lot weighing heavily on his mind.
 
Was it just about the hunter, or was it
something else as well?

As we approached
the house, he walked ahead and opened the back door for me as I came up the
steps onto the porch.
 
In the kitchen, I
silently walked past Randall who was working away at his microscope on the
rustic wooden kitchen table.
 
Too
engrossed in what he was doing, he didn’t look up as I passed.
 

Why were they
really here?
 
Even with all their
revelations, I still couldn’t fathom why all the fuss over me.

Sitting down on
the floor in the living room, I opened my laptop on the coffee table and waited
for it to come to life.
 
I could hear
them talking in the kitchen, but their voices were too low for me to make out
the details of their conversation.
 
I had
to admit that at the moment Daniel popped his head around the car door, the
thought of driving away was exactly what I’d been thinking.
 
I wasn’t going to.
 
I knew I couldn’t get down that crazy
driveway fast enough.
 
But really, what
was the use?
 
It seemed they’d just find
me wherever I went.
 
It was a fantasy
really.
 
I just liked to picture the look
on Daniel’s face as I left him standing in the dust, staring at the tail lights
of his car one more time.

In the closet
upstairs, Randall had said I’d just about forgiven Daniel.
 
Was that true?
 
No matter how hard I’d tried, I still
couldn’t get the image of him kissing Lucy out of my head.
 
As it stood, I’m not sure he’d explained that
away to my satisfaction.
 
What had he
said except he’d rebuffed her in the past?
 
He’d inferred that it was Lucy who’d kissed him.
 
Perhaps that was true, but he didn’t exactly
push her away, of that I was sure.

When my in-box
popped up, I scanned my emails.
 
I didn’t
respond to any except one from my mother.
 
She was counting on me coming home for Thanksgiving as my brother had
finally confirmed he was coming home this year.
 
There was also an email from Ben.
 
He said he was worried about me, and to please reply so he knew I was
alright.
 
I did but didn’t type anything
in the email.
 
Thinking about him was too
confusing.
 
Truly when I thought about
it, I think the smartest thing I could have done all semester was just to ask
Ryan out the day I’d first met him.
 
Simple, sweet, uncomplicated, funny Ryan.

Needing to clear
my mind, I opened up a game of solitaire and started to play.
 
It was effortless for me to loose myself in
intense concentration when I played.
 
Seeking an escape, I gladly turned myself over to a completely logical
chain of thoughts, forcefully shoving everything else to the side.
 
It was a pleasant break from the perpetual
state of emotional confusion I’d endured over the long stretch of the last few
days.

RANDALL

For
the twentieth time, I examined her blood sample through the
eyepiece, and for the twentieth time it made no sense.
 
Her body was fighting something but the
question was – what?

“It’s only a
rash, Randall, why are you so worked up about it?
 
Humans get rashes all the time.”
 

Daniel was
standing behind me on the other side of the kitchen.
 
Though he‘d never admit it, he was too afraid
to actually see her red stain under the light of the microscope.
 
I could tell by the tenseness of his stance
he could smell it, and that just the thought of what his reaction to seeing her
blood might be scared him.
 
It was only
natural.
 
It pained me to see, but it was
a healthy fear, one that I also hoped might keep them apart.

Getting up, I
leaned back against the table and faced him.

“Do you remember
when we were living in Atlanta and I was working in the virology lab?”

“Of course.”

“Well, for a
while there I was assigned to the level four lab and worked with some pretty
nasty stuff.”

“Yes, I remember
laughing when I came by one day and I saw you in your biohazard suit.
 
If only your colleagues had known you
couldn’t catch the common cold if you’d wanted too.”

I couldn’t help
but smile, recalling feeling the same way myself at the time.
 
Sometimes our lives would be so much easier
if humans were capable of accepting us.
 
But that would never happen.
 
They
weren’t all like Sara, and even she had dubious feelings about us as a race at
best.

“While I was
there, I did some – unauthorized experiments.
 
I took tissue and blood samples I’d extracted from Sara and tested how
far her immune system could be pushed before it would be compromised.”

“Stop beating
around the bush, Randall, and get to the point.”
 

I’d say he was
irritated with me, but it was more like exasperated, perhaps to mentally
exhausted for anything else.

“I exposed her
samples to the nastiest bugs they had.
 
Hemorrhagic fever, Ebola and a few others, and each time, her tissue
just – rejected them.
 
Her body is just
naturally immune to everything I’ve ever exposed her to.
 
Not just viruses, but also venoms.
 
One time I injected her with the deadliest
snake venom I could get my hands, on and she just slept like a baby all
night.
 
The next day I tested her blood
and there wasn’t a trace of it left in her system.”

Purposefully
keeping his voice down so she couldn’t hear, he quietly screamed “I can’t
believe you’d do that to her!
 
She’s your
granddaughter!”

“And I can’t
adequately protect her unless I know everything there is to know about her. –
There’s only one experiment I haven’t done.
 
In my opinion, it’s the most important one, but I’ve been too afraid to
try it.
 
Knowing the results would
certainly change things.”

I watched
Daniels face fall as it dawned on him what I meant.

“You mean
our
venom.”

“Yes.
 
Unfortunately, the only way to find out for
sure is not an experiment I’d want to have on my conscience.
 
If I had to guess though, I’d say it was
possible she could survive – alive.”

“If she did, if
she could survive being bitten and not go through the transformation, her blood
would be permanently tainted.
 
No hunter
would touch her.”

“In theory, but
only if she survived.
 
She could also go
through the transformation and cease to have that heart beat you’ve become so
attached to.”

He shot me a
look.

“Don’t give me
that look.
 
I’m pretty attached to it
myself.”
 
After a pause, I added “If this
was something to consider, you’d have to be the one,” I explained.
 
“I won’t do that to anyone ever again.
 
But you, you can’t even look at her under a
microscope.
 
I don’t know that you’d be
able to bite and release no matter how much you loved her.
 
You don’t know what human blood is like,
which is a good thing, but you can’t understand how much power it can have over
us if we allow it too.
 

“And Sara, well,
she wouldn’t be like taking a swig of just any old human’s blood.
 
Once you get her inside you – it would be
more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

I think needing
time to consider my words, he walked over to look out the back window.
 
In the meantime, I went back to making notes
on her sample.
 

It still
bothered me that something was wrong with her.
 
If I didn’t figure out what it was, there was no way to even consider
this last thought we’d had together.
 
If
her immune system was compromised enough to cause a rash, she would never
survive a vampire bite unscathed.
 

Daniel stared out
the window for a few minutes, then turned and leaned against the wall watching
me.

“So you’ve been
keeping close tabs on Sara and her mother.
 
You never mentioned her brother.”

“Roger?
 
Yes, Roger is a pure as well.
 
I mean, he is one of my descendants so he was
always going to be, but he’s not half as pure as Sara, and even less pure than
Vivy.
 
From what I’ve been able to
observe over the years, it seems women tend to have a higher percentage of
genetic purity than men, at least in my family.
 
It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s true more often than not.
 
Roger would certainly attract a blood hunter,
but he wouldn’t put them into a frenzy like Sara or even Vivy would.
 
Because of that I haven’t devoted half as
much time to studying him as I have her. – Now, his daughter, that’s another
story.”

I rubbed my eyes
trying to clear away the gloomy thoughts about my little Sara when I heard the
familiar tone of her mind coming from the living room.
 
As I turned back to my microscope, I
chuckled.

“What are you
laughing at?” Daniel asked, shooting me another dirty look.

“Her,” I pointed
over my shoulder towards the living room.
 
“I love it when she does this.”

He followed my
indication to see her working on her computer, her face tightened with intense concentration.

“What’s she
doing?”

“Solitaire.”
 

“A computer
game?” he asked, his tone incredulous.

“I wish you
could hear her like I can just for a minute.
 
She is so single minded sometimes, it’s amazing to hear.
 
She’s pretty relaxed about most things, but
she
hates
to lose at solitaire.
 
She’s very good at it and rarely does.
 
She’s able to think of multitudes of
permutations all at once and quickly problem solve to her next best move.
 
For an overly emotional female, she has an
amazing capacity for logical thinking – when she wants to.
 
Anyway, I enjoy listening to her like this.”

“That’s a little
weird, Randall, and more than a little creepy,” he said as he walked into the
living room.
 
He came to a stop behind
her and peered over her shoulder as he began to watch her play.

I could feel him
break her concentration as she fought the urge to acknowledge his
presence.
 
She was in so much pain and
trying so hard to hide it for the both of us.
 
I didn’t have to be able to read Daniel’s mind to see that he had the
same problem.
 
I had been trying to
protect them both, but in the end I wasn’t sure I hadn’t done more harm than
good.

I sighed.
  
Some habits are hard to break I guess.
 

I still didn’t
want them to be together, but wasn’t sure what choice I had in the matter
now.
 
Looking at them together, I
realized it was only a matter of time before pride fell.
   
As far as I could tell, it was the only
thing keeping them apart now.
 
But, there
was always plan B.

I put away my
notes and organized the table.
 
There
were so many things I wanted to tell her, but I still felt it was in her best
interests to keep her in the dark.
 
She
was already in so much pain and what I had to share would only increase her
unhappiness.
 
Of all the things that
raced through my mind, the one that nagged at me the most was if I should tell
her where I’d been these past few weeks.
 
Should I tell her that when I went to check on her mother, that the
blood hunter had been there as well?
 
That I’d chased him away a couple of times until he’d finally moved out
of the area.
 
It was only a matter of
time until he came after Vivy, but what good would it do in warning her about
it, there was nothing she or Sara could do if he did.
 

Too distracted now to play at her best, Sara closed up her
computer and stored it away while Daniel pretended not to watch her.

After I finished organizing the
table, I went into the living room.
 
I
think perhaps it was time to break the two of them up for a while.

“Daniel, keep an
eye on things around here.
 
There’s
something I want to show Sara.”

She turned
towards me.
 
“What is it?”

I opened the
front door for her.
 
“You’ll like
it.
 
You’re probably the only one who
would appreciate it anyway.”
 

Without
questioning me further, she went outside allowing me to follow after her.

We walked down
the long driveway in silence.
 
Although
her lips remained silent, I could still hear the musings of her mind all too
clearly.
 
She was torn between logic and
her feelings for Daniel.
 
It was a much
greater struggle than I ever would have anticipated.
 
I suppose I’d foolishly hoped she was a bit
more like the woman I married than the human man I’d once been.
 
Her feelings ran so deep.
 
It was surprising considering how quickly
they’d formed.
 
It pained me to feel, but
this wasn’t the first time I’d caused her pain in the name of my love for her,
and sadly I doubted it would be the last.

For my part, my
attention was equally divided between watching her and listening for any
warning of the hunters approach.
 
As
unlikely as it was, I was worried he may have slipped back into the area.
 
Yet part of me was brimming with something like
joy when I knew it was wrong.
 
After all
those years of patient and detached observation, here she was, my little one,
talking to me, interacting with me.
 
Somewhere deep inside, even though I knew it was the worst thing in the
world for her, I think I’d wished this would happen all along.
 
It was a selfish impulse; something I
unfortunately didn’t suffer from a lack of.
 

She looked
lovely today, but then again I always thought she did.
 
Maybe it was the hair.
 
I’d always been something of an old softy for
a red head.
 
No, she was just special to
me.
 
I loved her like my own, and in my
heart she was.
 
Yet for all her soft
external loveliness, I knew inside her chest beat the heart of a warrior, who
was much better equipped to deal with the darkness than any human I’d ever
encountered.
 
Something Daniel had yet to
discover about her.
 
Even though she
loved him, she was hiding this from him.
 
Not that I could blame her.
 

She was deep in
thought about him even now, questioning everything she ever thought she’d known
about him.
 
It broke my heart.
 
I wanted her happy, but I wanted her with
someone else.
 
As the shadowy guide I’d
always been to her, it was up to me to show her where her true happiness lay.

When we reached
the bottom of the driveway, I helped her over the gate.
 
Crossing the street, we started back into the
dense woods, making our way through the thick underbrush in silence.
 
I hadn’t been back here for a long time.
 
Things had changed so much, but thankfully
the stream was still here to follow.
 
The
gentle sound of its trickling waters replacing any conversation between us as
we walked along.
 

The sun had
disappeared behind the clouds and it looked as if we were in for some rain this
afternoon.
  
I frowned.
 
Heavy rain would make the hunter harder to
track.

Shaking off the
ominous feeling that had been with me for days, I glanced over my shoulder to
see her carefully following behind me. She was still quiet – too quiet.
 
The only sounds around us issued from the
stream and the crispness of the leaves as they crunched beneath our feet.