She was long and beautiful in the archway. Her arms were stretched up across the top. She leaned to one side playfully. “No, it was human blood.” She licked her lips, “nothing like your blood though, but certainly not vampire blood.”
“Then why did it heal?” he asked as he walked naturely closer to her.
She lowered her arms to around his neck, “I told you, Zack, you’re not human.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Coming To Terms With Reality
Zack thought about his situation. Where he was, the events that led to the present. It was too surreal. Vampires were fiction. There was no such thing as regeneration, blood drinking, or immortality.
He voiced his opinions to Kyli.
She nodded enthusiastically, “you’re wrong.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“You’re not completely wrong, but you are wrong,” she got up and went to the kitchen to gather a few things as they talked. “Regeneration is simple. It’s all over the animal and plant kingdoms. Lizards and most plants can grow back a section of their body that is cut off. It happens all the time.”
“But I’m not a lizard or a plant,” he declared promptly.
“No, you aren’t.” She took a knife out of a drawer.
“So what about blood drinking? Is that a hobby of yours?” he asked casually.
“No, it’s a necessity. I need a little to survive. Otherwise something bad will happen.” She grabbed a large roll of paper towels.
“But people don’t normally do that, neither do animals,” he argued his point.
“No, but they do. There are tribes all over the world that drink the blood of cows and other animals for nutrition.” She took out a small bucket from under the sink. “And then there’s the vampire bat. I don’t need to explain that one.”
“What about immortality. Living forever is an insane idea. Nothing lives forever.” He was trying to justify the last legs of his reasoning.
“Wrong again. Turtles live for centuries as well as some whales.” She walked back over to the couch and sat down.
“But not forever,” He tried to make his last stand.
“Then put a number on eternity. What exactly is forever? Twenty, thirty, a hundred lifetimes? If you could live that long, would it really matter if you continued to live forever past that?” She put the roll of paper towels on the large coffee table.
“But even if a turtle can nearly live forever, it’s still not a human. We’re not turtles, whales, lizards, or whatever. We’re human,” he declared proudly.
“No. You’re not. And neither am I.” She put the bucket on the table and grabbed the knife in one hand. “It’s simple to prove as well. Watch.”
She drove the knife into her forearm and pushed until the tip pierced the other side. He watched as the blood ran into the bucket. She didn’t wince. She didn’t even seem to react to the fact that her arm had been sliced through. She only stared back at him.
“The only reason why you don’t believe vampires exist is due to the fact you’ve never come across one. Just as there are hundreds of creatures in the world that haven’t been cataloged yet, it stands to reason that there are other types of life. Some in fact that have the ability to regenerate,” she pulled the knife out of her arm. The blood stopped. She took a sip from the glass of red blood still on the table. The same one that had healed his neck moments ago. Within seconds the wound closed. It wasn’t completely healed, but it was well on its way. “As you can see, blood is a necessity as well.”
“So I take it you’re immortal too?” he wondered as he sat next to her. She was still the same beautiful woman that had come into his life the other night, but now she was something else, something more than human.
“No. I can die. I’ll live a lot longer than the average person. But I can still die.” She dabbed her finger in the red blood and traced it over the wounds on her arms. They closed and nearly disappeared from sight on contact.
“So you can get sick?” He was curious.
“No, thankfully that isn’t a worry of mine. At least of normal pathogens at least.” She gathered the bucket and went back to the kitchen.
“Then you can get hit by a truck and die?” he suggested.
“God no. I’m a little more resilient than that.” She poured the blood into the sink, “granted I’d probably need to set a few broken bones to crawl out of something like that though.” She washed off the rest of the blood in her arm. “No, I’m pretty tough to squish.”
He thought about what she had said earlier, “But you’re not a vampire? How is that possible?”
“How are babies born?” She walked back and sat down again. She began to wipe the blood off of his neck with the towels. “Genetics.”
“You mean XX and XY?” he had paid attention in class last year.
“Exactly. My mother was human and my father is a vampire.” She cleaned him off with a few more wipes.
“Was?” He picked up on the context immediately.
“It happened last year. It’s not like it wasn’t something that wasn’t eventually going to happen,” she sighed.
“Cancer?” he guessed.
“Drugs,” she corrected him. “She was an addict and after she was turned it got worse. The things that would normally kill a person can have the same type of effect as heroin to a vampire. She used all kinds of disturbing things, and often she’d end up in some strange alleyway in a dumpster until after sunset the next night. It was a chore to have to hunt her down.”
He thought about how it must have been to live with a parent like that. He had no idea something like that could even happen. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t be. I’m not. I’m not human, but I’m also not a vampire like my father. I don’t get depressed about the sun like everyone else I know. I can take a stroll in the afternoon sun any day I choose to.” She took the trash and bundled it up into a ball. There was a trashcan on the other side of the room, more than twenty feet away. She threw it. It landed perfectly with a swoosh.
“What are you?” he asked again.
She smiled, “I’m a vampeal. Same as you.”
Chapter Twenty Six
The Facts Of Life
Zack thought about what Kyli had said. That he wasn’t human. That he was a vampeal. He admitted that his neck had healed. But it must have been some kind of a trick. An illusion designed to fool him or freak him out a little. Whatever she was doing, it was working.
“Think about it, Zack. I know you could smell my blood in the car. Your breathing changed. It happened in the hallway too. It wasn’t me that took your breath away. It was the smell of my blood.” Her logic was sound.
“Okay, I’ll admit I noticed your blood in the car. But the hallway was different. You’re gorgeous, I couldn’t look away.” He stared at her eyes and leaned into her.
She wanted to stop him, to continue with the conversation. She wanted a lot of things in that moment. “Wait.” She leaned back and took a few breaths. “This isn’t how this is supposed to go. I’m supposed to tell you about what you are and you’re supposed to freak out a little more than this. Not keep staring at me with the deep passionate eyes of yours.”
“Then what do you want me to do?” the tone of his voice was telling, suggestive to her.
On a more relaxed evening they wouldn’t be talking right now. At least in any intelligent or audible way. She would have taken him and flung him into the bedroom on a whim if he were any other man. But he wasn’t any other man, he was Zack Giver, the present incarnation of a demon vampire. She had to keep in control. She had to steer the conversation again.
“Kyli, do vampires dream?” he asked out of nowhere.
“What? You’re kidding me, right? Where the hell did you come up with that at a time like this?” she was progressively in a losing fight. Every time she would try to make a point, he would get quiet, let her think it ov
er, and he would start staring at her again. It was damning. She thought about his question, “dreams are the cradle of the imagination and the seat of our power. Without rest and blood, there would be no gifts, no vampires. And we would surely all go insane from the inner torment. If we didn’t dream, we’d be awake for twice as long during our endless lifetimes.”
“Then you need blood, what, every couple of days?” he watched her face for a reaction and placed his hand on her previously wounded arm. “Does it still hurt? After?”
“No, it’s diurnal,” she responded automatically. She was used to speaking with her father’s scientists about this type of thing. The vocabulary rolled off her tongue with ease.
“So daily? And you dream every night?” He wondered about his own dreams lately. What they meant if she was telling the truth.
“Yes, and of course. Sometimes a few times a day and night. Cat naps are a sign of low blood sugar and with us, that also means anemia. We have to drink to level out. And if you do sleep, you always dream. Whatever it is, it’s usually vivid. If you didn’t, it would mean you’d feel a hundred by the time you reached fifty.” She sighed and thought about her first dreams. Her strange gift.
“Then do vampires and vampeals have gifts?” he picked back up immediately.
She wasn’t sure she should tell him what was on her mind. It was getting too close for her comfort. The personal details that she had always told herself would remain secret were about to be disclosed. She sighed, “yes, but isn’t there something else you’d rather ask me?” she slid her hand up the side of his arm.
He felt the warmth of her touch against his pale skin. He thought about it and the question came to mind, “why are you this-” he paused and searched for the word at the tip of his tongue, “-hot?
“Vampeals are fundamentally flawed. We can’t support the iron clad immune system that a full vampire has so we use a simpler approach to staving off infection and other illnesses,” she continued to caress his arm as she spoke.
“You’re talking about a fever, aren’t you?” he read into it instantly.
She smiled, “yes. And it’s also the same reaction that the human body has against becoming a vampire.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
The End Of One Life
The following day Del awoke next to the body of the murdered woman. He was not in the alley. He was in front of the local police station soaked in her blood. Everyone believed he had tried to save the girl but didn’t have the strength to carry her all the way to the hospital. They took him in. They cleaned him up. They stitched his chest and stomach, and put him on an all liquid diet in the intensive care unit of the hospital for the night. They saw him for what he was, a hero. The local cops told him he was lucky to be alive. The killer left two others dead that night. The whole town searched for the culprit, though no one was ever found.
To everyone’s surprise, he returned to his classes the following morning. He was exhausted, but perfectly able for some reason. Most of his injuries had healed. He was walking again without any trouble. He was happy everything was falling into place again. That everything was returning to how it was. Everyone treated him fondly. Mr. McHugh approved of the marriage earlier than projected. Demy happily accepted his wishes for the wedding to be set the following month.
The day passed, and he became sick. His body harbored a high fever and his limbs were cold to the touch. Rather than be hospitalized again, Mr. McHugh took him in as already part of the family and had every doctor in the county examine him at their private estate. Each doctor gave him what treatment they could. Nothing eased the fever of one hundred and nine. Everyone told him he should dead. It wasn’t right to live as he was. Not with all the suffering.
The second morning his temperature fell. He had strong chills and an uncontrollable shaking. The five attending doctors covered him in thick blankets and warmed his bed with an old sterling silver bed warmer. His body was ninety-four degrees and dropping. His eyes were sensitive to the light and he shied away from the open windows. Demy was worried in the other room as he spent the entire day shivering. He was incoherent and seemed to call out only to her.
By the third morning, his shaking had subsided. He was feeling much better, though still weak. His pupils had closed to a point and the brown color of his iris had disappeared. The doctors were dumbfounded. The greater change was that the whites of his eyes and the iris itself had turned to a transparent crimson. His skin had lightened. His fingers had thinned as his body had lost weight. He looked sickly again, but he didn’t feel any worse. If anything he felt stronger in his newly frail form.
Mr. McHugh’s maids served him hand and foot, giving him warm liquids and hot food. They tried to avoid looking him in the eyes as much as possible. His appearance disturbed even the doctors. Mr. McHugh refused to let Demy see him. His temperature remained low, though he was recovering steadily. He slept more during the day and was up during the late hours of the night. He still had an aversion towards light. He was barely able to look at the sunlight through the windows at dawn. Though his body was cold, his legs had severe burns on them near where the silver bed chamber warmer was. The doctors weren’t sure why he hadn’t died yet. His core body had stabilized at fifty one and a half degrees, though his limbs were far colder. He now brought a chill to even the warmest rooms in the house simply by walking into them.
Demy no longer sat in the other room next to him. She found him terrifying. She spent her time away, thinking about the baby to come. Her feelings for him were waning.
By the morning of the fifth day, he had to have the windows completely covered. Even the reflection of the sunlight in the room burned his skin. The doctors concluded that he would have to remain indoors to avoid further injury, a prognosis he did not enjoy. He had been a day laborer his entire life. His future didn’t look good. He felt strange all the time. His normally sturdy constitution had changed. All of the doctors left, believing he no longer had a condition that was treatable. He was slowly being abandoned by everyone.
He knocked on Demy’s room on the fifth night after the incident. He could hear her through the thick wooden door. She got up rather quickly. When he received no answer he spoke to her instead, “Demy, I will always love you and respect your choices. I am glad to have had you in my life,” his voice was raspy, darker than his normal self.
Demy finally opened the door. He could feel the sadness in her eyes when she met his view. He was a monster to her now, a freak with a simple mentality. He was in no way the strong vibrant man she once knew. He had grown paler by the day. His tan was gone. The years of sun spots and calluses he had built up were gone. His hands were smooth, his skin porcelain. He had changed into something inhuman. She couldn’t reply. She could only weep and run back into her room. He could feel her heart ache, he could hear it, feel it with an intensity that wasn’t familiar to him.
That night he put on the black tuxedo Mr. McHugh had bought him for the impending wedding. He took his time placing every article of clothing. He ensured each piece was perfect. He had the red tie that Demy had given him as a present. He thought it reminded him of the blood that ran down his chest the night of the murder. At first he didn’t like it, but then he thought of it as a memento. A way of remembering the young woman that had died. He found it comforting somehow. It was a symbol for both the event and his love for Demy. He was happy to wear it. He stepped out onto the porch to look at the partially full moon in the sky. He wanted a moment to clear his mind.
Mr. McHugh stood to the left of the front door. He had something on his mind. It was something he wanted to say that was weighing heavily on his heart, “Del, you know what I asked of you. I gave you the time to make my daughter happy.” He coughed and lowered his head. “Son, you had all the heart in you to save that girl that died. I’ll give you that much.” He raised his head, “but that night changed you, made you into something my daughter is having trouble dealing with.” He place
d his left hand on Del’s right shoulder. “Something the likes of what happened to you sticks in the head. It doesn’t go away, especially for the people that got to watch it up close. Del, do you understand what I’m telling you?”
His chest was tight. He anticipated the moment to come.
Mr. McHugh gestured to the steps, “you know what I’m asking. Don’t make this hard on me. Don’t make this hard on her. Please, just let her go. She can’t even look at you anymore.” He kept his own eyes lowered, making sure not to look at him directly.
His blood red eyes seemed to glow in the pale moonlight. His skin was almost white under the porch. He did not appear as a normal man should. He knew that Mr. McHugh was right. But there was still a small hint of anger that welled up in his eyes. He felt a deep sadness that he had never known. There was a chasm inside him that had developed from the love he had grown for Demy. He had become a part of her entire family. For the last six months he had become accustomed to their way of life. It felt wrong to him that it should end after everything he experienced with them.
The moment of anger subsided. He relaxed. He found a calm that embraced him. He hung his head low while stepping off the estate and out of their lives forever. He never said anything else to Demy or her father that night. His heart sank as he set foot on the main road, the same road he traveled when he asked for her hand in marriage. This time no one was there to greet him. No one waved or followed him past the corner stores. He was alone as he treaded silently. He walked and reflected on what had transpired, the events that ended his life.
Chapter Twenty Eight
An Intimate Moment
Zack found it instantly hard to concentrate. Kyli was too warm. Her body was incredible, inviting to a fault. He struggled to speak, “What am I looking-” his eyes widened at the sight of her face. It became brighter. It nearly glowed with a healthy blush. The torn skin, the deep tears in her flesh were gone. He pulled her even closer to him. He brushed the dried blood away from her neck and stared in amazement. He held her tight. He examined her while his breath ran across her skin. Her flesh, her scent filled his being.