Barb Hendee - Blood Memories

His eyelids grew heavy, and his head lolled back against the seat. His body went limp except for his chest, which continued to rise and fall.

I scooted across the seat and moved up for his throat.

He looked so peaceful, so helpless, that I stopped.

Changing my mind, I lifted his wrist instead. No tearing or ripping this time. Using my eyeteeth, I punctured the large blue vein above the callused curve of his palm. Carefully, keeping the holes as small as possible, I drew down on his wrist, drinking blood and absorbing life force while his heart beat quickly. My mind filled with visions of a farm in Nebraska and a hard-faced mother who never laughed, a soft-eyed sister who dreamed of being a dancer, and a stocky chestnut horse named Buck… his memories, his past treasures.

Once I had taken enough, I pulled out and used my fingernail to connect the little holes on his wrist, making the wound into a jagged cut-messy, but he was not bleeding badly.

My focus turned to his thoughts again, taking him back to the moment he'd rounded the corner and seen me up against the wall. I erased the memory.

No frightened girl had waited for him, only an empty street. But in his haste he'd stumbled and cut his wrist on a broken bottle. The pain didn't bother him at first, but then it grew worse. He got in the truck and felt dizzy. He must have passed out.

Opening the passenger door and pressing the lock button down, I let go of his altered memories and hopped down into the street, leaving him to sleep peacefully a little longer.

Numb shock faded as I ran through the night. Then euphoria began to rise inside of me. This was it. Their secret.

I didn't mourn for all the lives needlessly lost in my ignorant past, but instead, I rejoiced for those saved in my future. I didn't have to kill. I never had to kill.

This was the way of the vampires who existed before my generation. They were not murderers, not slavering hunters who wiped out whole villages, merely survivors who used what gifts they had, like everyone else.

Where had they come from? Where did I come from? Perhaps Philip was right and we came from black spirits who roamed the void before some great god created the earth. Perhaps not. There was no one left to teach me. Perhaps I'd find out one day.

None of that mattered. I didn't have to kill anymore. We were a new breed, Philip and I, like our predecessors. Would Philip care? Would he evolve? I couldn't wait to bring him outside and show him what I'd discovered.

I waved down a taxi. This state of limbo had to end. The undeclared war was over. Nobody really won, but it was over just the same, and it was time to go on. I kept mulling over the same thought all the way home.

We don't have to kill .

After tipping the driver, I jumped out of the cab and was about to run toward Maggie's house when I noticed the small door on the mailbox was half ajar. We hadn't paid any bills since moving in, and even though I was desperate to get inside and talk to Philip about tonight's revelation, I also didn't want the water or power shut off, so I jogged over to get the mail.

But inside, I found an ivory envelope… and to my shock, it was addressed to me, here, at Maggie's. I studied it for a few seconds. The blue script was lovely, nothing like Julian's blocky handwriting. Seeing no return address, I ripped the envelope open and pulled out a small note on matching ivory paper. It read:

You are not alone. There are others like you. Respond to the Elizabeth Bathory Underground. P.O. Box 27750, San Francisco, CA 94973.

I just stood there, frozen, for a long time. What did it mean? The Elizabeth Bathory Underground? Was it some sort of trick? Was Julian trying to lure me off alone somehow?

No, Julian was a blunt instrument. This wasn't his style. I shook my head and closed my eyes briefly.

You are not alone .

After all my questions, all of my burning need to learn more about my own kind, I didn't even want to look at this note. In this moment, it was an unwanted intrusion.

And it was too much, too much to deal with right now.

Deliberately, I put the note back inside the envelope and folded it into thirds. Then I slipped it into the pocket of my dress. I wasn't going to show this to either Philip or Wade tonight-maybe tomorrow.

Tonight, we had other things to discuss.

I went up the steps to Maggie's front door and walked in to find Wade and Philip sitting on the living room floor by the fire facing each other in telepathic connection.

Lost in my own private dilemma these past few nights, I may have been blind to their growing relationship. Originally, simple tolerance would have pleased me. But thinking about it, they had both been starved for companionship, for long talks with friends who actually listened. Attaching themselves to me had probably been easier for them at first. But my distance lately might have driven them closer to each other, both surprised to find a willing ear or mind.

I was well aware that before anything else, the three of us had to make some decisions about the future. We could not put it off any longer.

I walked over and sat on the carpet beside them. Warmth from the fire soaked into my skin. I reached out and touched Wade's hand with the tips of my fingers.

"Wade?"

He instantly dropped mental communication and looked at me. This too was becoming easier for them, to slip in and out of psychic contact without losing themselves in the memories.

"Yes?" he asked.

Philip turned his head and frowned when he saw my white dress. "Have you been hunting without me?"

Wade's narrow expression grew expectant, even impatient, as if he preferred to go on practicing mental interaction with Philip… or maybe he just didn't want to talk yet.

"What is it?" he asked.

They both sat there, looking at me, but now that I had their attention, my courage began to fail. Open confrontation was not one of my strengths.

But I couldn't walk away.

"What… what do you plan to do now?"

He blinked and shook his head in puzzlement, but his brown eyes were anxious, even frightened.

"I mean tomorrow," I rushed on, "and the tomorrow after that? Do you just go on like this… your job lost, your degree wasted, sitting around in this house we haven't actually moved into?"

Philip flinched. He looked away, into the flames.

"Eleisha, don't," he said.

I ignored him, and kept talking to Wade. "You buried your best friend, and you didn't even report him missing. Or have you forgotten?"

"No, I haven't forgotten," he whispered.

"Maybe you want to become one of us? Forget the past and get lost in a safe little world feeding off the living? Is that what you want?" I held out my thin, white arm. "Like this forever?"

He turned away. "No, not that, but-"

"I don't want him to go away," Philip broke in. "Leisha, don't make him go away."

"Should he stay here in some shadowed half-life with us?"

He flattened his hands on the floor, and his eyes narrowed. "If you try to make him leave, I'll turn him."

"That worked well with Maggie, didn't it?" I said harshly.

They both stared at me, and I could feel the tension building.

"There's nothing left for me to go home to!" Wade suddenly shouted. "Can't you see that?"

"I don't want you to go home!" I shouted back. "I just want you to live! Get a job here. Get an apartment. Make some friends. Use your gift… like with that child in Kirkland. You can be a part of us and live with your own kind, too." I paused and lowered my voice, moving closer to him. "That's what you really want anyway. Otherwise you would have bought more clothes… maybe a bed for your room here."

He froze, just sitting there for a moment, and then dropped his head. I'm not certain, but he may have been silently crying. I knew he was torn between our world and his own. He'd be wasted as one of us, and miserable, probably jumping to his own death before the century turned.