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“I will calm down,” I said as my temper moved
from white hot to icy cold, “when someone explains things to me in
a way that makes sense and doesn’t make me feel like I’m being lied
to!”

“Well, if you’d just listen without flying
off the handle,” Dellar began, only to be stopped again by
Maria.

“No, I’ll explain what I can. Jane has a
right to be angry.”

“Damn right I do,” I snarled back and shifted
my arms in one more effort to break Akira’s hold.

“I’m not letting go until you calm down a
little,” Akira growled and tightened his wings around me in
warning.

“Oh, stuff it, you over grown feather
duster,” I growled back. “I’m not going to attack her again, we’re
even and now she owes me the truth. It’s how we’ve always worked.
So let go.”

“No-OW!”

Akira released me and grabbed his foot. He
hopped around and swore thanks to the fact that I had smashed my
heel down onto his toes. I hadn’t wanted to maim him, so I had
avoided his instep. Still, it was sufficient for my needs and I
stepped away, crossed my arms, and glared some more. Dellar stared
at me, then looked down at Maria.

“And you’re friends with her?”

Maria gave a soft smile that was tinged with
sad bitterness as she said, “Pretty much since birth. Which is why
I have to try to explain things, she deserves to know what’s
happening.”

“Damn right,” I repeated, and settled into a
silence that seethed slightly, the majority of my anger having been
spent when I had shoved her. Akira finally stopped hoping and
cursing in Japanese. He limped a bit as he came to stand next to
me, though he kept a healthy distance. He was still close enough to
hear what was being said, and muttered something about how he
wished he ‘had some containment thread’.

Dellar said, “That might have helped with the
Oni
, but I doubt it would contain such a volatile girl.”

“What’s containment thread?” I asked as
curiosity got the best of me. I ignored the volatile comment.

“It’s a special type of rope that was created
to help contain hostile paranormal entities like the
Oni
if
needed. It’s so thin it’s practically invisible, but it’s
reinforced with a certain type of energy that reacts if the caught
individual struggles and can inflict heavy physical damage and pain
to those it’s used on. It’s extremely difficult to make, very rare,
and because of that you don’t really see a lot of it floating
around.”

“Well, that would have been a big help,” I
muttered as I returned my attention to Maria.

“As I said before,” Maria began, a slight
edge to her words, “I don’t remember much of what happened the
night I vanished. I was waiting for you to either call or text and
let me know you had gotten off work and were on your way. Then
someone came up to me and asked if I could help carry some boxes to
their car. I agreed, and then . . . . nothing until I woke up under
the tree. I felt weird, heavy, and almost like I was split into two
different people. There was a me that was under that tree and could
feel blood trickling from somewhere, and then there was a me that
was somewhere else. All I knew for certain was that I was
dying.”

I winced and sank down into the grass as my
legs gave out, again, and my anger slowly drained away. I knew
Maria’s habits when she was lying, she liked to twirl her hair
around her index finger and look off to the side. She stared right
into my eyes as she recounted her story, which meant that she was
either a damn good actress who had been able to fake mannerisms for
her entire life, or she really was telling the truth.

She sighed and settled down across from me
and winced slightly as she touched the swelling on her face from
where the
Oni
had slapped her during the earlier fight. I
crossed my arms slightly in my lap in an effort to not give into
the urge to start ripping on my fingers or touch the identical
swelling that, while it felt a little better thanks to Akira, still
pulsed with warm pain.

“I could sort of feel my attacker lurking in
the shadows, and I think I heard something about having a strong
soul and needing to wait until I was weaker for something to
happen, but I was fading in and out at that point and couldn’t keep
up with what was going on around me. It was during one of those
moments that my attacker’s presence vanished and Dellar
arrived.”

Akira stiffened beside me and I glanced up to
find him staring at Dellar, his head cocked slightly to the side
that reminded me of the raven I had seen earlier that night in the
trees. I decided to put that thought far into the backburner of my
mind, and returned my attention to Maria.

“I don’t remember much more, just Dellar
crouching down and touching my neck. My mind is pretty much blank
after that, I kind of remember waking up, and Dellar being there,
but nothing really concrete until the day I returned home. It was
like I had woken up from a long dream that I couldn’t remember,
only Dellar was still there. That’s when he introduced himself,
because I had plastered myself to the far wall of the room we were
in. If it weren’t for the fact that I was able to vaguely remember
him I probably would have climbed out of the nearest window. Good
thing I remembered, because it turned out that he rents out the
attic of a three-story house and I wouldn’t have had a good ending
if I’d followed through on my first impulse. It was Dellar who told
me to return home, but I still didn’t have any idea of how much
time had passed until I walked into the front door and saw the cops
in my parent’s living room.”

“Dellar didn’t tell you how much time had
passed?” I asked and gave the man in question a suspicious
look.

“No, but I didn’t think to ask. To me, it
felt like I had fallen asleep under that oak tree, had a long and
very disjointed dream that I couldn’t remember, and then woke up
the next morning.”

“What were you doing in the park?” Akira
asked the other silent member of our group.

“I prefer to wander around after dark for
obvious reasons,” Dellar said quietly. “I will go out if I have to
during the day, but it’s very hard to hide ones . . . deformities
in the light of day.”

“You are not deformed!” Maria said heatedly
as she turned and glared up at him. I could tell this was an old
argument between them, and my irritation rose again at the thought
that she had kept this from me.

“So how’d you two become so close? And you
never mentioned him to me,” I said, unable to keep the hurt from my
voice.

“I didn’t know how to,” Maria said. She
looked down at her hands and then back up at me. “He’s, well,
different.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” I muttered and
gave him a dark look that he returned.

“Don’t be prejudiced,” Maria snapped, and I
blinked at her. “You’re always the first to say don’t judge a book
by its cover.”

“When that book is putting the moves on my
best friend and she hasn’t told me that she’s been reading it, then
I’ll judge it as much as I want to until said book proves that he’s
worth my friend’s obvious high regard,” I shot back.

Both Dellar and Akira made muffled noises
that sounded like snorts of amusement, but I ignored them.

“So what’s up with the mood swings?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, not that again,” I started, only to be
cut off as Maria cried, “I really don’t!”

“I don’t know how to explain what’s going
on,” she continued after she took a steadying breath. “We have
theories, but can’t confirm them. All I know is that when I ‘go
weird’, to quote you, it’s like I’m splitting in half again. Part
of me is in my body watching what’s going on, hearing what I’m
saying, but unable to control myself, and the other half is
elsewhere.”

“May I try something?” Akira asked, drawing
everyone’s attention.

“It won’t hurt like last time, will it?”
Maria asked suspiciously.

“I don’t know,” Akira said honestly. “But if
you were attacked by the person I’ve been hunting, I have an idea
of what I’m looking for and I might be able to confirm one of your
theories if you’ll tell me which one you think is the closest to
being correct.”

“I think that my soul has been split
somehow,” Maria whispered, and her hands tightened in her lap. I
could only stare at her, my words having dried up at her
statement.

“I can test that,” Akira said and moved
forward to kneel down in front of her. He stretched out with two
fingers, and she flinched away when he lightly touched her
forehead. “Relax, this won’t be like last time. I was searching for
an individual that time, this time I’m just taking a quick peek at
your soul.”

Maria stared at him for a second and closed
her eyes. Dellar watched closely as Akira touched his first two
fingers to her forehead in the same spot that he had touched last
time. Akira’s eyes closed, and for a brief moment I thought I saw a
light glow start to shine where his fingers met her forehead, but I
blinked and the glow was gone. The area was quiet for a few
moments, and then Akira opened his eyes and sat back with a weary
sigh. He glanced at Dellar.

“You fed from her?” he asked.

“What does that mean?” I asked, but Akira
looked at me and this time I was the one to snap my mouth shut. I
was confused, but in that one look Akira conveyed that things would
be explained, but only after he got his answers.

“How did you . . . yes, yes I did,” was the
reply.

Akira sighed again, and, unable to deal with
the suspense, I demanded, “What does that mean?”

“Maria’s friend here is like me, one of the
‘paranormals’, so to speak,” Akira explained as he stood up and
moved to stand behind me. Confused by his position, I craned my
neck in an effort to see him.

“Paranormals? Is he another
Tengu
?” I
questioned, feeling very slow.

“No. He’s a vampire,” Akira replied. I
whipped around and stared first at Dellar, then Maria, who gave me
a slight nod in response, which confirmed what Akira said.

“You bit my friend?” was the only thing I
could think of to ask.

Before Dellar could answer my question Akira
went on, drawing my attention back to him. “He’s not just any
vampire, he’s a member of a very rare clan that we all thought was
extinct years ago. In fact, no one has heard anything about this
particular group for over three hundred years.”

“That’s because the majority of the clan has
passed on,” Dellar said quietly. “There’s only about a dozen of us
left on the earth.”

“I thought you were one of them, but it
wasn’t until I looked inside Maria that I knew I was right.”

“Special clan?” I asked. “I don’t
understand.”

Akira sighed again and I got the impression
that he really wasn’t looking forward to what he had to say next.
Dellar finally settled himself back on the ground across from me
and put his arm around Maria, who leaned into him. She looked
nervous, which only increased my confusion.

“Dellar’s clan is a type of vampire that
doesn’t drink the blood of the living. They drink the blood of the
dead.”

“But I thought I read somewhere that dead
blood was poisonous to vampires,” I said, now thoroughly lost.

“It is for normal vampires,” Dellar said,
“but my clan evolved in a way that we were able to survive feeding
off of the dead. This is convenient because we don’t have to feed
as often as other vampires. Once every other week will work for us,
but other vampires have to feed about every other day. And unlike
our ‘living blood’ brethren, we are rather grotesque to look upon
and become more so as time passes. This isn’t usually a problem,
since we do not have to rely on glamour or illusions with which to
lure our prey, but because of modern burial practices in most first
world countries, being able to find fresh human dead to feed upon
is rather difficult. This is why the majority of what’s left of my
clan lives in third world countries. Less chance of downing
embalming fluid instead of what we need for nourishment.”

“I still don’t understand,” I said, my brain
failing to connect dots in a way that made any sense. “What does
that have to do with him biting . . . Maria . . .”

Realization was a rolled up newspaper to the
back of the head, and I whipped around to stare at Maria as horror
bloomed in my heart.

“I’m so sorry, Jane,” Maria said as her lower
lip trembled and tears pooled in her eyes. “I didn’t know how to
tell you.”

“You . . . you’re . . .,” I stuttered.

“I’m dead,” she said and her tears broke and
spilled down her cheeks. “I think I’m now what would be called a
zombie.”

Needless to say, I didn’t take the news very
well.

Chapter Twelve

I surged to my feet and turned to run. I
didn’t get further than two steps before Akira grabbed me and
wrapped his arms and wings around me yet again. I flailed. I
kicked. I punched. I struggled with everything I had. I landed
blows here and there and the entire time I screamed and screamed
and
screamed
.

Eventually I tired out around the same time
my voice dissolved into a high-pitched whisper. I became aware that
someone murmured in my ear, words in a language I couldn’t
understand, but the voice was familiar and penetrated the fog of
grief and impotent rage that had engulfed my being.

I came back to myself. First I recognized the
voice as Akira’s, and then I noticed that he had sunk down onto the
ground and had pulled me into his lap, arms and wings wrapped
around me as he rocked me back and forth. One hand rested on the
back of my head and pressed my face into his shoulder. His cheek
was warm against mine, and was sticky from the tears that had
soaked both of our skin. His breath blew across my ear as he
continued to murmur in what I figured was Japanese, and my sobs
slowed into sniffles and hiccups that were interspersed every now
and then with a broken moan.