Blood Vivicanti (9780989878579) (6 page)

I waved her over
again.

She turned away. I was not
the one she wanted anymore. She wanted someone else to notice her.
Someone else to bother her the way she liked.

For a moment I thought she
hated me. I hadn’t had enough experience to realize that she could
not hate the thing she never truly liked.

I went to her now the way I
use to: Feeling insecure. She had only accepted me when I performed
a function for her. I wasn’t performing for her anymore. So she
didn’t want me anymore.

I walked beside her. She
turned up the volume to her music. She glared at me through the
corner of her eye.

Go away
, her body language bellowed.

The eyes of a Blood
Vivicanti see much. And I was beginning to see what Theo saw: My
china doll had a crack.

It was a moment when I
didn’t like being a Blood Vivicanti. Too much power in me exposes
too many faults in others.

My china doll turned from
me and began walking down a solitary road. Village houses
surrounded us. Suffusing the air was the aroma of sappy pine logs
burning in hearths.

I love that
scent.

Theo was nearby. I
couldn’t see him, but I could smell his scent.

No one else was
around.

If I was going to pierce my
china doll, now was the time. I thought about what it might be like
to pierce her neck with the tip of my tongue. The more I thought
about that, the more I fantasized. The fantasy was an urge to
penetrate her deeply. The more I fantasized, the more I obsessed.
The urge to pierce her churned in me. The more I obsessed, the more
I felt the urged to act.

My urges started to simmer.
Then they swelled. Then they exploded. My urges caught me by
surprise too.

I moved fast and I grabbed
my china doll. She was as light as air in my hands. I lifted her
off the ground and I pinned her down to the road.

She struggled. “What are
you doing,” she demanded.

I didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I was pure id in motion. I
knew
that
I
wanted. I knew
what
I wanted. And that was enough for the heat of the moment. I
had become an animal moving by pure instinct.

It was the most human I’d
ever been – and the least humane.

From the tip of my tongue
extended my Probiscus – my little bee stinger.

Slowly, a tingling
sensation flowed back along my tongue, down my throat, deep down
into my stomach. Wave after wave of pleasure followed.

I leaned over my china
doll. She was looking up at me. She had no idea what was going on.
Her expression was wide-eyed and crooked mouthed. That was new. I’d
never seen her look so afraid.

“
Please,” she whimpered,
“don’t hurt me.”

You know, I could have done
anything I wanted to her. But I did what I always did for her: I
did whatever she said. Sometimes it’s not the behavior of a bad
habit that’s hard to break. It’s the association.

I was infinitely stronger
than my china doll. But by the way she talked, by the way she
smelled, by the way she looked, she easily overpowered
me.

I sat back on my haunches.
I couldn’t pierce her. My stinger withdrew back into its
sheath.

Theo was standing by me an
instant later. He bent low and spoke into my ear. “Just touch the
tip of your tongue to her neck. Let nature do the rest.”

Nature. What was natural
about drinking blood and eating memories?

“
She won’t remember a
thing,” Theo said. “You won’t hurt her. It’ll be the best thing
she’ll ever feel.”

He was trying to be
helpful. It wasn’t working.

I got off my china doll.
She scrambled to her feet. I’d never realized people could be so
graceless when they fled. I wondered if I looked that pitiable when
I fled from suffering.

Theo shook his head. “You
can’t let her go. She has to forget.”

In a second he sped after
her, gripped both her arms, and sunk his tongue deep into her
neck.

The look on my china doll’s
face showed no hint of fear. I’d seen something like her expression
before. But now she appeared more pleased than I’d ever seen her –
eyes rolled back, mouth open, chest panting. She looked sincerely
satisfied. I’d never seen her look so happy.

Theo was mending the broken
teacup.

He and I returned to the
mansion in silence.

We sat together on my bed.
We stayed there all night. We didn’t talk much. We didn’t sleep. We
watched the constellations summersault across the nighttime sky. We
watched the moon rise and fall. We planned to watch the sunrise,
too.

Wyn still hadn’t returned
to the mansion. He would stay out until dawn, Theo
explained.

The scent of blood was
strong on Theo. It was a good scent.

How did that happen? When
did I like smelling blood?

I hadn’t pierced anyone. I
hadn’t had any blood. My body wasn’t weak. I was just hungry. The
way I get hungry when I feel lonely and misunderstood.

Theo had planned to pierce
that cook. My first hunt had ruined his plan. I felt
bad.

“
I messed things up,” I
confessed.

Theo waved it away. “I’ll
pierce the cook next week.”

He was kind. My china
doll’s Blood Memories were racing through him. She was a very good
violinist and Theo was itching to try out his new skill. He’d never
even held a violin before, but if he’d had a violin at that moment,
he could have easily pranced through the sleepy streets of
Idyllville while playing the
Danse
Macabre
like some tempting
devil.

Theo understood my hunger.
He pitied my shyness. Then he took off his shirt. He had the
confidence of my broken china doll. Yet he was flawless.

My heart beat
faster.

His sinewy body looked
milky white in the moonlight. He slid closer to me on the
bed.

I stopped
breathing.

“
You’re hungry. You need to
feed. You want blood.”

I tried swallowing. My
throat felt tight. “Tight,” came the echolalia of my
nervousness.

“
Pierce me,” he
said.

I didn’t know what to do.
My sense of safety felt threatened. The desire for old habits began
in me.

Theo leaned closer. “Pierce
me,” he said again, his voice softer, more in control than I’d ever
heard him.

The scent of blood rose
from him like steam.

My breathing
quickened.

He leaned into me. His skin
touched mine.

That was all I needed: I
transformed into the monster that I am.

From the tip of my tongue
extended my stinger. Slowly it came out. Slowly it sent wave after
wave of tingling sensations down my tongue, down my throat. Warmth
bloomed in my stomach. Chills sizzled on my skin. Little hairs all
over my body stood up.

I leaned closer to
Theo.

He leaned closer to me.
Heat radiated from him.

His hand touched the back
of my head. He gentled me closer to his neck.

My lips touched his flesh.
His skin, so white, so warm.

His voice was a whisper.
“Pierce me.”

I opened my mouth. My
tongue came out. Quivering.

My whole body was shaking,
not for cold, just for fear. For the thrill of doing what I was
about to do. It was as if I had been waiting my whole life for this
one moment.

My stinger touched his
flesh.

Theo exhaled.

I pressed into
him.

He moaned
softly.

My tongue made an opening
in the side of his throat. My tongue slipped inside.

The opening widened. His
muscles expanded around mine.

All I tasted in that first
rush was warmth and wet and salt.

Venom now came from my
tongue, seeping through my stinger, filling the opening in his
throat, and soaking into his flesh and bone and mingling with his
blood.

Now it was happening. Now
came the peak of my pierce.

Theo’s eyes rolled back.
His lips parted. He groaned. “Deeper,” was the only word he could
mouth.

I did as he said. I was
good at doing what he said. So I drove.

“
Deeper.”

I drove and I drove and I
drove.

His blood gushed into my
mouth.

His memories filled
me.

To be continued…

Coming next in

The Blood
Vivicanti

Part 3

One night I snuck from the
mansion to pounce upon my beloved family. Joe, Mary, Leah, Eve. I
lived with the selfish attitude that they were my possessions, my
dolls. Their blood, their memories. All mine.

But before I got to their
house I saw Nell, the Pale Girl I’d seen with the Dark Man,
Lowen.

I noticed her because she
was watching me. No one saw me unless I let them see me. But she
saw me.

Lowen was nowhere in sight.
Couldn’t smell him or hear him either.

Nell seemed to know me. She
knew the monster I was. She had no fear of me at all.

She smiled at me. She waved
at me to follow her. She turned from me. She went skipping
away.

I followed her.

She didn’t have Blood
Vivicanti speed or strength. But she was elusive. She could hide
herself from me.

If I lost her, she would
appear from behind a house or tree, far ahead, waving for me to
follow her farther.

She led me through
Idyllville. She led me through the forest, around tree and
rock.

She led me to the cliff
where it all began. The place where Wyn had saved me from the two
men. The place where I’d fallen and broken. Wyn had pierced me
there. He’d saved me. This was the place where I started to become
what I became.

Nell was on the edge of the
cliff, balancing, walking back and forth on it like a
tightrope.

She turned and faced me.
Her toes on the edge. Her heels poised over the fall.

Her voice was high and soft
and gentle. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

No one had ever been
waiting for me.

She tilted her head to one
side. She pulled her collar away from her neck, exposing the sweet
spot on her throat.

“
Pierce me,” she said.
“Drink me, Blood Vivicanti.”

I was amazed. How could she
know me?

“
You’re a monster,” she
said.

I was under the assumption
that only Theo, Wyn, and Ms. Crystobal knew about the Blood
Vivicanti.

Nell smiled at me, trying
to be coquettish, but she seemed too pitiable. “A ghost told me
about you.”

She speaks with
ghosts?

“
Only one
ghost.”

Who would want a monster
like me to drink their blood?

“
I don’t want you
to.”

Then why was she offering
herself to me?

“
I need to.”

Did she want my venom to
make her feel better?

“
I need to feel
something.”

I understood how she felt,
the poor thing.

She nodded sadly. “I am a
thing.”

Nell put her face in her
hands. She began weeping. “I’m not your friend,” she
said.

“
That hurt,” I
said.

“
Feeling hurt is feeling
something.”

“
I’d like to be your
friend,” I said.

Nell looked at me through
the divide of her fingers. A horrible sound came from her throat. I
couldn’t tell if it was laughing or wheezing.

“
You covet me,” she
said.

I covet much.

“
You shouldn’t pity what
you covet. You should have it.”