Blood To Blood (8 page)

I felt a sense of urgency,
like if I waited too long I’d lose the ability to make a choice and the
darkness would swallow me up. This was more than a vision. It was a decision.
No!
I shouted to the barren landscape and the presences I felt in it.
There
is nothing for me here!

I began to sing. I don't know
what song it was, but as I did, the first vision’s light continued to grow
stronger until it was brilliant and white. And then there were lights as bright
as suns... No wait those weren't suns they were...people? An incredible
roar...a choir… so many voices singing in a key I’d never heard before. A
musical outburst so lovely my soul trembled. Sounds exploded into cascading
stars, and all I could do was continue to sing and become one with the
beautiful choir. And then the cacophony of glory was in my head, louder, and
brighter until I felt like I was being consumed by it.

Underneath it all, a diminutive
voice shouted. I stopped singing to listen.

“Can’t control it,” the voice
cried. “It's too strong!” It sounded like Dad.

“Call her back,” another
voice said. Mom? Were they talking about me? They sounded so far away.

“Angel, come home!” Dad
shouted. He was speaking Aramaic, and his voice grew louder by degrees until it
was a roar within a roar. “Libero!” he commanded, compelling me to return.

Fighting the pull of the
choir, I pushed myself toward his voice.
Dad!

“Angel! I'm here. We're
here.”

I followed the sound of his
voice until I fell back into my body, back into the pain. I opened my eyes,
unsure of what I would see. Mom, Dad, and Cici were all there, all looking at
me as if they were looking
for
me. “I’m here,” I moaned.

Mom hugged me fiercely, despite
my cries of pain. There were tears in her eyes.

“Mom, she's okay,” Cici said.

But I didn't feel okay. My
eyes were still open, but my family, along with everything else in room, faded
into darkness. And then there was no more pain.

“She's dying,” I heard Cici
say. And then there was nothing at all.

I
woke up again, feeling fully conscious
for the very first time in my life. Every memory I had flashed before my eyes
as if I were some breathing camcorder on sixteen-year rewind. I saw everything
I'd previously forgotten. The light hitting my eyes when I came out of Mom's
body and the immenseness of Dad's face as he looked down on me. I felt Mom’s
hot hands as she held me close and heard the sound of their laughter. I
remembered being held by Cici for the first time and falling asleep in her
arms.

I remembered every lame day
at school, every conversation I'd had, every gig, and every face in any
audience I performed for. But despite the detail, all the memories seemed hazy
because up until this moment, I’d been no more than a walking, talking, eating
fetus, and my growing body had been a chrysalis. Now, I was really alive and
the difference was amazing. Every nerve ending tingled with its own awareness.
The pain had been worth it.

My senses were magnified by a
million. With just the tiniest effort, I heard every human heartbeat on our
block. I wasn't sure how far out the range went, but it sounded like a little
more than two hundred hearts. Then there were the heartbeats and movements of
the animal life teeming around me. The insects crawling around in the walls
were especially loud and annoying. I wanted to dig my fingers into the plaster
and remove them one by one to bring the continual slithering sounds to an end.
Instead, I tuned out the noise and focused on my new, sharper eyesight. 
“She's alive!” Cici’s excited tones traveled up the stairs. Wow, was her voice
always so utterly perfect? Its rays danced before my eyes until I couldn’t
distinguish between sound and sight. They were now one and the same, for as
surely as notes had formed before my mortal eyes, now every sound did, too.

I breathed deeply and it was
like sight, taste, sound, and texture were all rolled into one mega-sense.
Everything I ever needed to know about anything was contained in all the scents
within my range, and the impact of this sensory overload knocked me back on the
mattress. I inhaled again.

Oh.

My.

God.

Hunger rocketed me off the
bed. Before I even knew I was standing up, I was downstairs in the kitchen,
foraging through Mom and Cici's blood supply.

I was ravenous.

I downed an entire pitcher
labeled
“MIRANDA”
and I saw her in my mind; short, spiked, dyed-red hair
and green eyes with a slight tilt at the corners, like a cat. The scent of her
drew me to the foyer and pulled my feet toward the door. The sweet smell of her
blood and her taste was so maddening, I laughed wildly and vowed to track her
down if it was the last thing I ever did.

“Stop!” Cici barred me from
going out the door.

“Whatever!” I started moving
forward again.

No
, her mind commanded.
Stay where you
are. You will not go further.

“Watch me,” I snarled.

Cici floated up and over to
the mirror, and her movement forced my eyes to catch a glimpse of myself. What
I saw stopped me in my tracks. My hair, fanning around me, was twice as long
and reached past my waist. My eyes were darting from side to side, and the
pupils were surrounded by a large amount of white. But most frightening was the
color of my skin. I was no longer brown. I was bright red.

But none of that even
mattered. I still wanted Miranda. I lurched for the door again. My hand and arm
passed through Cici's body as she tried to block me. And then I couldn't move.
I tried, but the effort was overwhelming. I couldn't even turn my head back or
forth, or open my mouth to scream.

“I am sorry darling,” Dad
said as he walked into my line of vision. “We cannot allow you to go outside in
the neighborhood in this condition.” He moved his fingers in a
one-hundred-eighty degree arch, and as he did I felt my body follow my feet in
the same arch, turning around and away from the door.

“She needs to hunt, Dad.”

“Then she will hunt,” Mom
said from the hallway entrance.

Despite my hunger craze, I
could see how beautiful my family was. My mortal eyes had been unable to see
the golden aura surrounding and emanating from each one. When I looked back in
the mirror, I saw that I had a pretty aura, too. My mouth hung open in awe.
Then Mom touched Dad, who clamped his hand down on my right shoulder, and
grasped Cici’s hand, and suddenly we were surrounded by super-speedy golden
light. Lasting a few seconds, it felt like standing on the edge of a freeway
and feeling the rush of air from cars zipping by. Then everything was back to
normal and we were standing in the woods.

“Congratulations, dear,” Mom
said. “That was your first space/time collapse.” I looked around. The sun shone
brightly somewhere, but not here. We were deep in a forest. “We're in Maine,”
she informed me from where she stood next to a humongous tree. “What do you
hear, Angel?”

I could hear the thin keening
of the sunlight hitting the massive dome of treetops. The ever-present sounds
of millions of insects, which I quickly tuned out. Small, slow heartbeats of
tiny animals, and the soft rustling of countless bird wings. A mellow wind
fluttered the leaves. Gentle sounds in lavender tones rippled softly like pond
waves before my eyes.

“Now, what don't you hear,
Angel?”

Human heartbeats. Besides my
family’s, there were no more for what could have been miles. We were all alone
out here.

That’s right, sis. We
don’t hunt people.

“Take a deep breath,” Mom
urged. “Hold it in.”

 A delicious aroma
assaulted me, and my body instantly tensed like a sprinter at the start line. I
turned slightly to see Cici by my side. She was crouched, and her eyes glowed
red. Suddenly, her body went rigid. “Listen,” she whispered. I heard it, too.
Three massive heartbeats, slow and plodding. And they were miles away.

“Go!” Mom said softly, and I
took off through the woods. Trees flashed past me in a blur so fast, my feet
felt like a part of the ground. Heat rose from the plants, the ground, the very
air. It entered through my skin and energized me. The sun hit my face through a
clearing in the trees and I stared directly into it. With that, a burst of
energy jetted me forward even faster. I felt incredible hunger, wind in my
hair, dirt between my toes, and sun energy flowing in waves beneath my skin.

I yelled to Cici, who raced
through the treetops above me. “Do we feed off of the sun, too?”

“It makes us strong. But it’s
the blood that feeds us.”

We stopped at the opening of
a cave where she touched down and drew in a deep breath. “Bears,” she said.
“Hibernating. That's why the heartbeats are so slow.” She started to enter, but
instead of following, I froze. What was I doing? I didn't know how to kill a
bear. What technique should I use? Anxiety took hold and my feet left the
ground. Obviously, immortality couldn’t guarantee peace of mind.

Relax. Observe.
She led me, floating through the air,
into the cave.

It was easy to see in the
inky darkness that before would have blinded my mortal eyes. Like a deadly
Goldilocks, I watched three fully-grown bears sleeping soundly.

Take a deep breath, sis.
I took several, and touched down.

Cici shook one of them awake.
As she crooned softly, crooked a forefinger, and walked to the other side of
the cave, the bear followed like a giant, crazy-looking dog and I could feel
the power of her mind pressing on the animal’s.
Be silent. Follow me.
She patted the bear gently, almost apologetically, before sinking her teeth
into its neck.
Do not resist.
It didn't even put up a fight.

Well, that was pretty
impressive, but I couldn't do that.

You’ll develop your own
style. Follow your instincts.

I found myself at the second
bear's side. It woke up and glared at me. I didn't know what else to do, so I
punched it in the snout. “Oh! Sorry!” I bumbled, stunned by my actions. I felt
out of control, driven by the basest of instincts. My stomach growled loudly.
Suddenly, my teeth were in the bear’s neck, my hair mingling with its fur in a
big hairy mass. He put up a fight, but I easily pinned him to the ground with
my body. While squeezing a fold of the bear’s flesh into a mound between my
teeth, I felt my shimshana extend for the very first time.

Shimshana is what we are, but
it’s also the proboscis we all have that allows us to feed. It stretched out
from the center of my stomach, and I groaned in ecstasy as it unraveled its way
upward, caressing the walls of my throat before inserting itself into the mound
of bear flesh in my mouth. The muscles in my stomach area contracted as the
thick warmth made its way down before hitting my stomach with a sharp wave of
pain, as if I was eating for the first time in my life.

I felt something weird then,
something inside of me, like a light. It began in the pit of my gut and spread
through my entire being.

You’re feeling the bear’s
life essence. This happens whenever we feed. You learn things about, and
experience an intimate connection to, the source.

I knew all kinds of stuff
about that bear. He'd eaten a lot of acorns before entering this cave a few
months ago. He'd mated with a couple of female bears around that time, too. He
had affection for the other bears in the cave, although they weren't siblings.
I felt such epic love for the bear I wanted to cry. But soon, he lay limp on
the cave floor as my shimshana retracted quickly back into my stomach.
Amazingly, I felt no guilt, even though as a mortal, I’d freak out if I
accidentally stepped on an ant.

While considering this, I was
knocked face-first to the ground and claws raked deep into the back of my neck.
It was the third bear; awake and mad at what was happening to its buddies. I
turned as it swiped again, and this time its paw went right through me as if I
weren’t there. I opened my mouth and roared at the bear with all the rage I felt
from being attacked from behind. The inky red black shades in the cave glowed a
brilliant red.

Suddenly, the third bear was
lying drained at my feet, too, but I had no memory of how he’d gotten there.
Cici was gone. Full enough to float away on a cloud of contentment; I walked
out of the cave and into the fresh air. My new body processed the bear blood,
which thrummed with a hypnotic rhythm in my veins. My legs gave out as a wave
of relaxation swept over me, and with a sigh, I sank onto a comfy blanket of
snow. Eventually, my parents found me there.

“Well, you look more awake,”
Mom said. “You’ve got your normal coloring back.”

Cici flashed through the air
toward us, then pulled up to chuck a bag of clothes at me. I caught it in a
flash. “Closest store was a few miles away,” she explained. “Walmart. Took
forever at the check out line. Not your favorite Juicy Couture, but you'll
live.” Dad and Mom laughed.