Bloodline by Joel Abernathy

3

I had livedmy many centuries in quiet drudgery, but the knowledge that there was another out there, born of my blood and knit together with the sinew of my spite, made each day feel like eternity.

I learned in the most painful way possible what it was to be a sire separated from his child, even if the only thing that bound us was hatred. Why I had not felt such a keen and painful loss after the death of my own sire, I could not fathom, but each day was torment anew. I felt him missing from me, this man I had never wanted in any other way than to escape from him.

I wondered if he felt it, too, during those lonely nights I spent on the floor of the empty cabin I had purchased out west with the money he had promised. It was more than enough to start over in the lawless land of gold and dust.

As the decades passed, more settlers came, followed by the Indigenous nations the settlers had cast from their own homes. Then there were the laborers from across the sea, treated no better than dogs even if their cruel “employers” took consolation in paying them a pittance so they could lay their heads comfortably on their pillows at night.

With the railroads came more humans still, wide-eyed dreamers in petticoats and high-waisted trousers looking to start their lives anew. The women soon found that the highest opportunities available were being a surly miner’s wife or pleasing them at the saloons. The men brought their petty fortunes and their equally petty aspirations, inevitably losing the one to the bottle and the other to the mines.

There were a few who found their fortune in the Wild West, and I was one of them. With no human needs to tend to, I invested the rest of my money in gold, and over the years, it grew to a tidy sum. As the settlers pressed in from all sides, land itself became a scarce commodity. Wealthy men built their towering homes on stolen fields drenched in innocent blood, and the last frontier became as compact as the land they left in their wake.

Even as the world changed, it always ended up the same. The wealthy and privileged in one sphere, and those they exploited in another. The overcrowded streets of London and Boston and the dusty boomtowns became a tangle of blended streets in my memory.

As my own fortune grew, I found myself disinterested in anything beyond the small farm I kept and gave away what I didn’t need. Having a constant supply of blood made it possible to become entirely isolated from the small town that rose up around me, which was just as well. Once the rapid turnover of occupants coming and leaving after they hit gold—or gave up on trying—slowed down, I had to take care not to be seen. People noticed when the strange hermit who lived in the mountains never aged, but only if they saw him.

I’d lost count of how many winters I had passed in the West. Tending to the animals had become a meditative task. I enjoyed winter, even though it hit the mountains harshly. It was an excuse to pretend like my isolation was merely a product of the surrounding nature rather than my own.

I was out one night because a sheep had broken out of the pen, and while I had little hope of finding the poor creature alive, I was even less expecting to find a horse. The big golden beast was a sight to behold, bathed in a glow of white moonlit snow, and for a moment, I thought it must be a spirit. Then, I saw the saddle and loose reins and ran toward it.

The horse reared back and whinnied fearfully as I caught its reins. Most of the farm animals were too simple to pick up on the danger I presented, or perhaps they were simply accustomed after generation upon generation of being reared and tended to by their natural predators. Horses always knew better. I could scarcely get within ten feet of one that wasn’t bound and saddled without it bolting.

“Easy, boy,” I urged, looking around for any sight of the horse’s human rider. My vision sharpened on a dark shape buried in the snow, almost entirely covered. I rushed over with the horse in tow and found the rider facedown in the white. When I rolled him over, his lips were blue.

He didn’t move. Even with frost clinging to his thick brows and the blond scrape of stubble on his jaw, he was obviously a handsome young man of no more than twenty. He was wearing a thick leather coat he must have traded for with the people who had settled up north after being driven out from their ancestral lands, which meant this man was probably one of those insufferable cowboys who were always herding their cattle onto my plains and killing my wolves.

I dropped to my knees, and as I bent my head to listen through the whistling snow, I could make out the faint sound of his slowing heartbeat. He was alive, but not for much longer.

I hauled his muscle-laden form up and over the saddle, binding him with the length of rope I had brought with me to bring back my lost sheep. What I was supposed to do with a human, I didn’t know, but somehow, my promise on Ian’s deathbed to never take a human life again had morphed into a strange sense of duty to preserve them as well.

Perhaps it was my way of atoning in some small part for all the sins of my immortal youth.

The cowboy groaned in his sleep as the horse jostled him on the way back to the cabin, which was a good sign. Inside, I laid him out to thaw on the bearskin rug in front of the fireplace. His clothes were stiff from the frozen sweat of hypothermia, and as I removed them, I noticed his body was covered in scars. The one that stood out to me sat between his second and third ribs on the left side, and my fingers brushed over the jagged red flesh. It was unique in the fact that it was the only one that looked intentional, like an uppercase letter “H.” A brand? It must have been placed within the last couple of years.

Even half-frozen, he was warm to the touch. As his chest rose and fell more steadily, I found myself mesmerized by every sculpted line of his torso. Once I realized what the strange fluttering in my chest was, I glanced away and pulled the blanket back up over his shoulders.

I had known I was “crooked,” as Ian’s friends had put it, from an early age, but after becoming a vampire, the bloodlust had left no room for anything other than thirst. I had loved Ian, but I felt none of the passionate hunger that filled his eyes whenever I lay beneath him. Before he had gotten sick, we’d made love because that was what he needed, but all I’d needed was to make him happy. These instincts, stirred by solid flesh and blood, were so foreign to me they may as well have been new, and I had no place for them.

My survival and my tolerance for it depended on remaining frozen, and the sooner the snow melted, the sooner I could be rid of this man whose heat threatened to thaw me out.

He remained unconscious for a full day, and I had all but forgotten what it felt like to tend to a fragile human. The few moments his eyes fluttered open in his restless sleep, they reminded me of Ian’s. No matter how I tried to steel myself against his probable death, that familiarity carved out a space in my heart that I had been so certain I’d sealed off long ago.

Centuries of separation from my undead progeny, not knowing if Enoch was alive or dead, had rendered me numb to emotion, but it seemed this man was an anomaly in that regard as well.

When he finally began to stir, I held a cup of broth to his lips and made him drink. He swallowed eagerly, draining the cup. I couldn’t help but smile. How stalwart these fragile beings were in their stubborn insistence on survival.

His head dropped as soon as the broth was gone, and the sound of snoring filled the room. Reasonably certain that my strange rescue was going to pull through, I resumed my normal tasks.

It wasn’t until the second day he was there that I came in from chopping firewood and heard him groan, “Where am I?”

I walked over from the hearth once I had placed another log to feed the fire, but stopped short when I realized what must come next. I had taken to wearing a large patch that at least somewhat obscured the right side of my face on the rare occasion I ventured close to town, but I’d lost it on my last trip out.

“You’re in my home, not far out of Hellsford,” I answered, sinking down on my knees next to the hay mattress I’d dragged down from the loft. My long hair was covering most of my face, so he didn’t react at first.

“And who’re you?” The cowboy’s slurred words made his heavy drawl even more pronounced. “An angel?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Do angels often hole up in small cabins on the outskirts of one-horse towns?”

“Depends, I guess,” he answered with a lopsided grin.

My heart fluttered again. The sooner I got him well and out that door, the better.

“What’s your name?” he asked, wincing as he tried to sit up.

“You had frostbite on every limb. I would recommend taking it slowly.”

He propped himself up halfway with one hand and rubbed his face with the other. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“My name is Marcellus.”

“That’s a strange name. Guess it goes with the accent. Mine’s Jonas Hart,” he said, offering his hand.

I didn’t take it, if only because I didn’t trust myself. If he was capable of making me swoon like a fool, he was probably capable of awakening my thirst as well.

He gave up on the handshake and cocked his head. “Where ya from, Marcellus?” he asked, sitting up all the way. I knew the moment he saw the rest of my face, because his drained of color. “Holy shit.”

I cracked a smile. There it was. “Greece, originally. I’ve been here for quite some time,” I replied, pretending not to notice the look of shock on his face.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I didn’t—”

“It’s fine. There is a reason I keep to myself out here, and you’ve just discovered it.” Half the reason, at any rate.

He draped his forearms over his knees and frowned. I could tell from the way he was craning his head that he was trying to get a better look at what my hair kept covered, but I wasn’t going to make it easier. “It’s not that bad. Just took me by surprise, that’s all. You’re kinda pretty, and then…”

“Pretty?” I lift my eyebrows.

“Well, yeah. You look like one of them boys that’s always hanging out at the saloon,” he said with a husky chuckle.

“Ah. You frequent the sporting gentlemen often, do you?”

His expression went blank, and I smothered a laugh. “N—no, of course not. I just see ‘em when I’m at the bar.”

“Hm. If you’re alright, I should really go tend to your horse.”

“You found Skybird?” he asked eagerly.

“Skybird?”

“It’s a name my kid brother came up with,” he said with a snort. “She looks like she’s flyin’ when she gets into a gallop.”

“Well, Skybird is perfectly content in my stable. She’ll be ready to go when you are.”

“Just a minute now,” he said, catching my wrist as I tried to stand. “You saved my life and I barely know a damn thing about you.”

“You know my name and where I’m from. That’s far more than you need,” I informed him, pulling my hand away. It seemed to surprise him how easily I broke his grasp. I pulled on my coat and scarf and went out to the barn, taking my time since I was much better adapted to the company of animals than humans.

“It’s a brute of a man you’ve got for an owner, isn’t it, girl?” I asked, running my hand down Skybird’s smooth snout. The barn was warm, but she still had a bit of frost around her nostrils from the quick jaunt I had taken her on to stretch her legs. I hadn’t owned a horse in years, but I’d always had a fondness for them. They were the one farm animal I didn’t have the heart to bleed.

Skybird whinnied in response and butted her nose into my palm. Once the animals were fed and bedded down for the evening, I finally returned to the cabin to find Jonas standing in front of my fireplace, eyeing the trinkets on the mantel. He had wrapped a towel around his waist, but the shadows cast by the glow of the fireplace highlighted every contour of muscle on his mountainous back.

I watched as he puzzled over the odd fetishes I had accumulated over the years, most of them remnants of campsites I’d stumbled upon in the woods, and the prominent blade of his right shoulder tensed beneath sunkissed skin as he rubbed the back of his head. His hair was a light brown now that it was dry, and it teased the back of his shoulders.

“You know, there are clothes you may borrow if you like,” I said, letting the door fall shut.

He turned to face me with a widening grin. “I’m toasty for the moment.”

I made it a point to keep my eyes above his shoulders. As his waist twisted, the carved lines of his torso stretched enticingly. He was a young god, and he knew it. What he sought to gain from parading about like a show rooster, I did not know.

I draped my coat over the hook on the wall. “If you’re hungry, I can make something for dinner.”

“Don’t want you to go to any special trouble on my account.”

“I’m not. Everyone has to eat, don’t they?” I asked, pulling out some potatoes I had stored for the winter to feed the animals. My repertoire of recipes had dwindled since I’d had a human to cook for on the regular, but I remembered a few.

“Anything I can do to help?”

“It isn’t really a two-person job,” I said, not willing to take the risk that he’d cut himself peeling anything. The more distance I kept between us, physical and otherwise, the better. It helped that my social skills were as rusty as the barn latch.

“So you really take care of this place all by yourself? This cabin’s gotta be on what, ten, twenty acres?”

“A hundred and fourteen,” I replied. The look of shock on his face made me smirk. “I don’t look like a wealthy landowner to you?”

“Not really,” he snorted.

“I’ll award you points for honesty,” I said, carrying the pot over to the stove. He took it from my hands and put the handle on the hook over the fire. I folded my arms. “I appreciate your chivalry, but it might be better spent on the women in town.”

“What makes you think I’m interested in the women in town?” he shot back.

In all my years of existence, I had yet to meet a man capable of flustering me the way Jonas did. It made me want to be rid of him all the sooner. “You shouldn’t say things like that. People will talk.”

“People already talk about you. Some say it’s a ghost that lives up here. Never really believed there was anyone past those woods until I saw you myself.”

“If you wish to repay me for my hospitality, you can let the townsfolk continue thinking I’m a ghost,” I said, setting the table. When I moved back to survey the place setting, I felt myself up against a wall of warm flesh and solid muscle.

“I can think of other ways to repay you,” he said in a husky drawl, resting his hands on my shoulders.

I shirked away from him and returned to the stove. My heart was racing in a way I hadn’t thought it capable of. “No, thank you.”

“No, thank you?” he echoed, his eyes bright with amusement when I made the mistake of meeting them. He was evidently not a man who was used to hearing the word “no,” and I could certainly understand why.

“That is what I said.”

A few minutes of uncomfortable silence passed between us. When the stew looked ready, I ladled a portion into his bowl and chose a book from the shelf to take with me back up to my loft.

“You’re not going to eat?”

I glanced back over my shoulder. “I don’t have much of an appetite at the moment.”

It was a lie, of course.