Bloodline by Joel Abernathy

14

Contentment wassomething I hadn’t known in so long, yet I could remember the very last time I’d felt it. It was the day Jonas left me and our little haven on the plains, and I woke in his arms as I had every other day for those few, blissful months. Sometimes, when I dreamed, I would find myself back there.

Daniel and I always started the night on opposite ends of the bed, but by morning, I’d find myself at his side. He never pushed me away, and there was a small, selfish part of me that was happy to accept him as a substitute. It was so easy to close my eyes and listen to the steady rhythm of his breath and tell myself that when I awoke, it would be to those blue eyes I loved so well.

It felt like a shameful indulgence, even though I could not quite put my finger on why. I just knew it was the kind of thing I’d rather spend another century in a coffin than admit.

That morning, Daniel had stayed later than most. When I opened my eyes, he was still there on his side, just watching me.

I sat up, immediately flustered, and ran a hand through my tangled locks. “I’m sorry… Was I talking in my sleep again?”

He finally rose, and judging from the dark circles beneath his eyes, his rest had been as unhelpful as it seemed. “Not much.”

“What did I say?” I asked warily.

“You were just talking about Jonas.” His voice was hoarse and groggy. It lacked the usual bite.

My face turned hot, so I looked away. “Nothing too salacious, I hope.”

He made a sound close to a laugh. “No. You were begging him not to go somewhere.”

It took a moment for me to process that revelation. I couldn’t remember what I’d been dreaming exactly, but it seemed about right. The pleasant dreams were few and far between in comparison to the others.

It was always the same scene. My mind liked to replay those vital moments before his death. To torture me with all the ways I might have done things differently to persuade him. All the ways he might have listened, if only I had done better.

In the end, the result was always the same.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

Daniel frowned. “You didn’t.” He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling a clean shirt over his head. I looked away, even though that was probably a far more suspicious thing to do.

I was gathering my own clothes when he said, “You really loved him.”

The question took me by surprise, but not so much as the answer seemed to surprise him. “Yes,” I said carefully. “I did. Is that something else a vampire shouldn’t be capable of?”

He snorted, rising from the bed to button his slacks and tie the laces on his black leather boots. “Depends on who you ask.”

I hesitated, trying to decide whether the curiosity was worth bringing up the question that had been on my mind long before the opportunity to ask presented itself.

“What is it?” he asked, as if he’d heard my thoughts.

For all I knew, that, too, was a normal vampire trait. I was too afraid to ask. “What about you? Have you ever loved anyone? Since becoming a vampire, I mean.”

His silence made me regret the question immediately. I couldn’t read his expression any more than usual, but I assumed I’d made him angry. And yet, when he finally spoke, his voice was tense but not sharp. “I had a family. A wife and a son.”

“Oh,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyes met mine, and the confusion in them turned to understanding. “They’re not dead,” he said with what I supposed counted as a laugh as he pulled on an empty holster beneath his shoulder. “Hazel and I divorced years ago.”

“I’m sorry all the same.”

He shrugged, straightening the cuffs of his sleeves. “Nothing to be sorry about, really. Most people are divorced or separated these days.”

Even if that were true, I failed to see how that made it any easier. “May I ask what happened?”

He glanced at me once again, an unreadable expression in place. He was different today. Almost human.

“Happened the way it usually does. I hadn’t been turned yet. We were living in a little shoebox apartment with our kid in the slums, giving a bag of blood each week to keep the lights on. Better life than most, but not what either of us wanted for our son.” His voice softened when he spoke of the boy, even if it was only slightly. “I found out VOICE was looking for recruits, and I used to be a cop, back when we still policed our own. Hazel was pissed, of course.” He laughed, shaking his head as if the memories were still right there, just waiting to be accessed. “We argued over it for months, and then Robby got sick.”

All the humor faded from his voice. “It’s funny. You’d think by now, with human life having some tangible value to the assholes up top, we would’ve found a way to keep kids from dying because their parents can’t afford treatment, but some shit never changes.”

My throat grew tight as I listened. I thought of Ian, and all those months he had spent suffering when there might have still been a chance, if he’d been willing to leave the factory.

“What happened?” I asked hoarsely.

“I went behind Hazel’s back and joined,” he answered, touching the spot on his arm where I knew his tattoo to be. “I was turned within the week, and Robby miraculously got bumped up to the top of the clinic’s list.”

“So you became a vampire to save your child’s life,” I murmured. It didn’t surprise me he’d had a noble cause. As much as he got under my skin, Daniel had the markings of a good man. Strong character, restraint. Vulgar, but so was Ian. Some of his more colorful idioms still brought a smile to my face.

“No,” he answered. “I became a vampire for the same reason every other prick on a power trip does. Robby’s illness was just the excuse I used to justify doing what I wanted.”

There was bitterness to his words, but the edges of it had long since been worn away. I could tell the man before me saw no part of himself in the past. It belonged to someone else. Someone who no longer existed. Perhaps that was why he spoke of it so seldom.

On the other hand, the past was all I had. The memories and the ghosts. They haunted my bones like an ancient house, and when I finally ceased to exist, I knew those echoes would be the only part of me to remain.

“Did it work?” I finally asked.

“Yeah. It did.” He gave a faint smile, and it was the first one I’d ever seen on him that looked genuine.

“Do you see him at least?” I could understand why any woman would have trepidations about her husband becoming a vampire, especially when we were the scourge that had made the earth an unfit place to raise a family in the first place. The bond between parent and child, however, was not so easy to break.

“Not for the last thirty years.”

“Why on earth not?” I asked, unable to hide my horror. Daniel was far from the uncontrolled beast I was in those first few centuries, and I had a hard time imagining he ever had been.

Daniel shrugged. “Hazel didn’t want me around him, and by the time he was old enough to make his own decisions, he didn’t want to be around me either. Last I heard, he’s got kids of his own now.”

“Daniel, I’m so sorry.” The words felt woefully inadequate, knowing I had crafted the world that had taken so much from him, but I meant them all the same.

“I’m not. In this world, we make choices, and we get to live with the consequences. Mine were lighter than most. At least my kid’s still alive.”

“Still. You must miss him terribly.”

He studied me for a moment, unreadable as ever, and I was certain I’d crossed some sort of line until I finally realized that look in his eyes was confusion, not anger. “I’m sure you’ve lost people you loved.”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “Quite a few.”

“Then you know what it’s like. How distant those memories and emotions become,” he remarked. “How little remains, other than the thirst. How dull that kind of pain becomes compared to it. Even the memories lose their meaning, good and bad.”

I frowned as I listened to him speak, but his words were as foreign to me as the rest of his world. I shook my head. “No. I must confess, I do not. I remember so little of my human life, but the pain is what lingers. I no longer know the names or faces of those I left behind, but I feel them missing from me all the same. And those I loved after my death, those memories are the only things that distinguish one century from the next. Time and events, they all cease to matter, but those bonds are all that remains. Jonas, and my first lover, Ian. Even Enoch… I only know the shape of myself in the holes they left behind, and the pain never lessens.”

He seemed to consider my words, and that look came back into his eyes, as if he was studying something quite perplexing to him. It seemed we felt the same about each other. “If that’s true, then you really are the most unfortunate creature God’s ever forsaken.”

There was neither malice in his tone, nor pity. He said it in the same matter-of-fact way he said everything else, free of judgment or attachment.

It seemed I would have to feel pity for us both.

* * *

It wasa day like any other. Daniel was gone by the time I was awake, so I went into the kitchen to make coffee while he did whatever it was he did all day. Whenever I asked him about it, desperate for some excuse to make conversation, he shut down, clearly suspicious, as if I had the plans or the means to use such mundane information against him.

Halfway through the morning, I was through with my latest book, a tome borrowed from Rye on the abridged history of the vampire war since what VOICE had termed the Disclosure.

It was fascinating in a morbid sort of way. To see all the changes that had come over this boring little world the moment the truth was unleashed. As vampires emerged from the shadows, humans retreated into them.

At first, there were attempts to regain control. Treaties were signed. Deals were made. As with all such things, it only took one chaotic force to rise up and render them all meaningless bits of paper. The faint scratches left behind by the desperate clawing of a dying animal.

The doctor had warned me not to tell Daniel he’d let me borrow that particular book, though he had lent me many others without any such prohibition. Now that I had read it cover to cover, I had no more clue as to the controversy than before I’d begun. If anything, it painted Daniel’s organization in a remarkably sympathetic light, and it did more to convince me I was doing the right thing by agreeing to go through with his plan, however personally distasteful I found it.

The elevator doors opened and Daniel stepped through alongside Bobby and another soldier I recognized, although I hadn’t caught his name. It was a few hours too early for him to be off work, and the somber expression on his face told me that whatever he wanted with me, it was not a social call.

I rose instinctively as they entered the room, and Daniel cast a stern glance at the book in my hands before I had the mind to put it away. If he’d noticed the title, he said nothing of it, instead choosing to study my face in the same intent manner he always did when he suspected me of holding something back. Some days, I was sure I’d begun to earn his trust, and then the next, something would happen to make me realize we were no farther along than where we’d started.

I wasn’t even sure why I wanted him to trust me. Even more puzzling was the fact that I was beginning to trust him, despite my best intentions.

“What’s wrong?” I asked when I could take his silence no longer. In reality, it was unlikely it had gone on for more than a few seconds and only seemed like longer to my fretting mind.

“Your blood,” he answered, his tone as empty as his expression. “It isn’t working.”

It took me a moment to make sense of the declaration. It could only be related to the samples I had been giving Rye each day for weeks now.

“I don’t understand,” I said carefully. “He said the vaccination would work. The combination of my venom, and the blood—”

“Well, it isn’t,” he said coldly. He hadn’t raised his voice, but something in it made me flinch all the same.

I shook my head as the implication of his words set in. “I’ve done nothing to sabotage your efforts. The doctor should be able to attest to that. How could I?”

“I know,” he answered. “If I thought that, we’d be having a very different conversation right now.”

I swallowed hard. “And exactly where is thisconversation leading?”

“We don’t know why the vaccination isn’t working the way it always has with other donors, but Rye has a theory,” Bobby chimed in, her arms folded as she studied me with her usual apathy. “You’re old as shit, so maybe we need to do things the old-fashioned way.”

It took me even less time to decode the meaning of her words, and my heart fell. “You want me to exchange the blood in person.”

“It’s less than ideal in terms of efficiency, and I know you’re not thrilled about it either, but it’s the only option we have at the moment,” Daniel said, studying my reaction closely, as if waiting for resistance.

As horrified as I was by the process of siring more children being made even more intimate and disgraceful, it was the siring itself that stained my soul. The method was merely distasteful.

“I understand,” I said quietly. “When?”

“It will take some time to get the first round of candidates together,” said Daniel. “No more than a week.”

I nodded, lingering where I stood long after the three of them had left. It occurred to me only once I was alone that they’d come as a group because Daniel expected trouble. The thought might have made me laugh, if it didn’t sting so badly.