Authors: Dean Murray
"I'm
not human. I need to feed on your blood, but I promise not to take so
much that you'll die."
Geoffrey
didn't have any tendrils out probing her mind, but her emotions were
so powerful that they seemed to pour into his mind of their own
accord. She was relieved that he wasn't going to demand what she'd
feared he wanted, but she was also terrified. There was no doubt
inside of her but that he'd just told her the truth.
For
the briefest of seconds she resisted the gentle pull of his hand, but
it only took one look at Keith, who was already resting more
peacefully than he'd been when they'd brought him into the room, for
her to remember her promise.
"You
really did everything you could for him?"
Geoffrey's
nod seemed to reassure her, but she still needed something else.
"Is
there anything else you can do to help? Not now, but later?"
"It's
possible, but I can't stay here and it will take a few days for me to
recover enough to do that again."
Aly
thrust her wrist at him, suddenly eager for him to proceed.
"Take
it, however much you need. I'll give you my cellphone number. You can
call me whenever you're ready and we'll meet you anywhere in the
country."
Geoffrey
nodded hesitantly, not sure why he was agreeing to tangle his life up
further with theirs, but unable to deny her obvious need, not when it
was paired with such a willingness to pay whatever price was
required.
Positioning
his mouth carefully to avoid damaging any tendons or nerves, Geoffrey
bit down on the pale skin of her arm and had to fight off a tremor of
relief at the first taste of her blood. Geoffrey had fed dozens of
times that he remembered and hundreds, maybe even thousands of times
in the section of his life that had been stolen from him by his
amnesia, but he couldn't remember any other feeding like this.
Her
blood wasn't just sweet, it tingled with power and energy.
Geoffrey could practically feel his reserves of energy filling back
up in time with the slow pulse of her heart.
Ever
since he'd left New York, Geoffrey had refused to give into the
darker aspects of his nature. He hadn't killed anyone, but more
importantly, he hadn't taken from anyone without giving something
back in return.
Back
in New York he'd traded money for blood, albeit with unwitting
victims who had no idea what they were agreeing to. He no longer had
any method of replenishing his funds, not with the way he was forced
to constantly move from place to place, but he'd still found ways to
provide value in return for what he took from his victims.
Many
of the homeless people he'd encountered had been suffering from
different kinds of psychosis and he'd cured them, or at least
lessened their symptoms, before drinking from them. This however was
different. Geoffrey always felt an odd sense of connection to those
he was feeding from when doing so wasn't just a kind of predation,
but this was something more than that.
Aly
seemed to hum with energy and he established a link to her mind
without even meaning to. Geoffrey had never experienced both sides of
a feeding before, but that was what he was feeling in that moment.
He
could feel her warm blood trickling down his throat, feel the
strength pouring into his limbs and mind, feel the hallucinations and
the blood hunger being chased back to a distant corner of his being,
but at the same time he could feel the warmth of his mouth on her
wrist. He could feel a tingle that masked the pain of his bite, feel
the heat spreading up her arm and a sense of euphoria that was only
partially dulled by the weakness slowly stealing through her body.
Always
before, even with Melody, it had been hard to tear himself away from
a blood donor. He'd loved Melody. He'd tried to tell himself at the
time that it was some kind of obsession, that she would be better off
without him, but even if that had all been true it hadn't changed the
fact that he'd loved her. Even when he'd fed from her he hadn't been
able to release her this easily.
Geoffrey
pulled his mouth away from Aly's arm and then pulled a square of
gauze from his pocket and taped it to her arm to stop the bleeding.
"Are
you okay?"
She
nodded wordlessly, almost seeming as though she were in shock. After
nearly a minute she managed to speak again.
"Is
it always like that?"
"No,
that was a first for me."
"I
could feel you inside of my mind. I could see some of what you did to
try and help Keith. I wanted to believe so badly, but I couldn't
quite bring myself to. Now I know though, I know that you are
everything you said you were, that you did everything you said you'd
do."
"If
you didn't really believe me, then why did you agree to let me feed
on you?"
Geoffrey
already knew the answer, at least most of it, but the question
tumbled out of his mouth regardless, not seeming to care that it was
unasked for.
"I
did it because there isn't anything I wouldn't give for Keith. I know
that's probably not healthy, I know that I'm giving too much of
myself to him, for him, but I can't help myself. It's just how I am."
"Do
you wish things were different?"
"Are
you asking me if I want you to fix me?"
"I'm
not sure. I guess maybe that is what I'm asking. Do you wish things
were different?"
Aly
shook her head as she ripped a sheet of paper off of the tablet on
the desk next to the bed and wrote a number on it.
"I
don't want to be different. Maybe if you told me that there wasn't
anything that could be done to save Keith then I'd want to change,
but things were so incredibly perfect for the two of us back when we
first met. Back before he started using."
Geoffrey
accepted the folded sheet of paper. "It's possible that he won't
need any more help than what I've already given him. If you can get
him to talk to you about who he lost then he might be able to
recover. No matter what happens he won't be using for at least a
little while, but with a little luck he'll recover enough that he
won't stumble into some other kind of self-destructive behavior."
"I
know; I really did see part of what you did to him. I…well, I
guess I'm volunteering. If he needs more help then I want you to come
help him, but even if he doesn't, I want to do my part."
"Your
part for what?"
"My
part to keep you alive so you can help other people. Most vampires
aren't like you, are they?"
Something
very much like terror started to grow inside of Geoffrey. It had
happened once before with Melody. She'd been able to see inside of
his mind at the same time that he'd been inside of hers. Having
someone else inside of his mind didn't have to be a terrifying evil,
but the fear operated as a reflexive thing that engaged and
disengaged at a level of consciousness far below anything he had
control over.
Imastious
had scarred him too badly for things to be any other way. Maybe he'd
get past that at some point, but it wasn't going to happen anytime
soon.
"Did
you see that too?"
Aly
gave him a sad smile and the expression implied that his fears
weren't unfounded. "No, not really. It was more along the lines
of vague impressions. I could tell that you came from somewhere
terrible though. Even if I hadn't seen that I'd still know that most
vampires weren't like you. The world is too bad a place for things to
be any other way. If there were hundreds of people like you running
around helping people like Keith and me then the world wouldn't be as
bad as it is."
Not
trusting himself to speak, Geoffrey simply nodded and then left the
room. He was almost back to his room before they struck. Exhaustion
had made him grow careless or he would have had enough probes out to
feel them coming.
Geoffrey
rounded a corner in the dingy hallway leading to his room and was
suddenly confronted by a slender, almost skeletal redheaded woman.
Even before Geoffrey's reflexive probes skittered off of the blank
wall of someone who was actively trying to make sure that their
thoughts couldn't be read, he was backing away. It was an unplanned
movement, triggered by something that knew she was wrong on levels
that he couldn't consciously identify.
It
would have been foolish to turn his back on her, but Geoffrey didn't
need to turn around in order to make sure that he'd be able to
retreat. He burned up some of the strength Aly had lent him as he
sent out a network of fine thought-tendrils behind and to either side
of him.
He
brushed up against two more shielded minds, and then something struck
him from behind with enough force to knock him to the ground.
Geoffrey
didn't realize that the blow had been to his head until he noticed
that he was surrounded by an inexplicable blackness. The voices he
was hearing seemed to be coming from a long ways away.
"You're
sure that's him?"
"Yeah,
he's a little worn around the edges, but he matches the picture that
Imastious sent over."
"Good,
let's get out of here then."
A
third voice chimed in with what sounded like a hint of mocking
laughter dancing between the spaces in his words.
"Still
scared that some big monster is going to tear your throat out?"
"Laugh
all you want, ever since we arrived here I've felt like someone is
watching us. Chicago is the only major city where Imastious doesn't
have at least some kind of contact with the local power structure."
The
woman sounded like she'd heard the same argument a dozen times
already and was bored with it.
"It's
fine. Either Imastious is telling us the truth and there isn't any
kind of significant concentration of vampires here, or he's lying and
we could run into some kind of hunter-killer squad at any moment.
We're going to be careful either way, so it's not like it matters."
The
scared guy muttered something under his breath before responding loud
enough for the other two to hear. "Right, but the real question
is what could cause this entire city to be vampire-free like that. We
now know that there is such a thing as werewolves; who knows what
else is out there hunting us."
As
the darkness reached up to fully claim Geoffrey, the despair that had
been threatening to consume him for days finally enveloped him. He
was Imastious' prisoner once again.
Jasmin Bianchi
McCleary Gas and Grub
Great Bend, Kansas
I
ended up in Kansas less out of some kind of grand plan and more
because it was hard to get much more centrally located. That and
because I needed to keep moving. I'd sent Alec a text once I made it
back to the car and got myself bandaged up. There hadn't been a
response, not that I'd particularly expected one. If I'd been further
north he probably would have tried to get me to go up and help out
one of the other groups that were being tailed, but I wasn't so he
didn't.
At
the time I'd been relieved that he wasn't trying to sidetrack me into
doing him a favor, but now I wasn't so sure. I was out here driving
around with no backup, just Ben and I, on nothing more than faith in
Rachel and an unhealthy measure of rapidly-diminishing hope.
Right
before she'd disappeared she'd found me and told me that I needed to
find someone named Geoffrey. Rachel had been acting weird lately, and
she'd been at her weirdest that night, but it had been a convincing
performance, convincing enough at least to get me out here.
I
looked over at Ben and frowned at what I saw. His health had been
steadily declining for weeks, ever since I'd rescued him from the
vampires who had been holding him captive. Alec had paid for some of
the best doctors in the state to take a look at him, but nobody had
been able to explain his coma.
That
was why Rachel had only needed to provide me with the barest glimmer
of hope to convince me this idiocy was actually a good idea. When
there aren't any other options, it's amazing what a person will do to
try and save someone they love.
Ben
had actually been doing pretty well right before we'd left. It had
gone against everything I knew about his condition, but it had been
an undeniable fact. He'd spent nearly two hours disconnected from the
machinery responsible for monitoring his condition, two hours without
an IV drip, two hours of smoke and terror where none of us had been
sure we'd survive. That should have caused his condition to
deteriorate sharply, but instead he'd seemed almost to the point of
waking back up on his own.
He'd
started swallowing on his own. I'd actually been able to feed him
some broth in the RV right before I'd said goodbye to Alec and the
others. I'd kept him on an IV drip since then, initially more just to
be on the safe side than for any other reason, but over the last
couple of days he'd started getting worse again.
Now
I kept him on an IV because there wasn't any other way to ensure that
he got enough calories in to keep him from starving to death.
Despite
dozens of hours spent poring over every scrap of medical information
I'd been able to find on anything that might be related to Ben's
condition, I still didn't know enough to save him. I could run an IV,
but I couldn't do anything to fix his breathing, which was steadily
getting worse.
He
was still on the course of antibiotics that he'd been prescribed just
before everything had fallen apart back at the estate, so I knew the
cause wasn't bacterial. Honestly it probably didn't matter what the
cause was. Every time we got one symptom under control something else
flared up.
It
was like his whole system was shutting down and there didn't seem to
be anything that anyone could do to save him. Unless you believed
Rachel, in which case somebody named Geoffrey had the key to a
complete recovery.