The Blood That Bonds (11 page)

Immortality beckoned.

* * *

Chapter 3

The Priest, the Seamstress, the Student

The Mansion. November.

Her half-vampire nature was affecting the
withdrawal. The symptoms had persisted for several weeks before
finally ceasing. Two had been forced to endure them, as she and
Theroen realized feeding from him delayed her recovery. This was
not made any easier by the hunger. Even if Two had been able to
stand up to the heroin, she could not go for more than a day or two
without feeding.

She found it frustrating. Theroen was more
patient.

“
A few weeks, Two, that is
all. You are fighting it well. The symptoms are lessening. Soon you
will be free of this entirely.”

Two knew this was true. Yes, she was
fighting hard against the withdrawal, spending much of her time in
bed with Theroen at her side. Yes, the symptoms were lessening.
Yes, she would soon be free of it. It didn’t dampen her anger, her
sense that it was profoundly unfair that she should have to go
through this at all.

After a few weeks, Two had grown curious as
to why her transformation was not progressing. She drank from
Theroen routinely. Shouldn’t she be a full vampire by now? She had
asked Theroen one night after drinking, sitting with him in a small
parlor on the western edge of the mansion’s first floor. The room
was dimly lit, the walls lined with leather-bound books, furnished
with couches of crushed red velvet and dark mahogany. Theroen had
explained that he considered the room ‘his’ and had cleared most of
Abraham’s clutter from it long ago.

“
No. Right now, I am only
replacing the blood your body uses to power itself. Think of it
like trying to gain weight. If you burn every calorie you take in,
there is no change. When you take in my blood, your body converts
it to a compatible form with its own. Right now, your blood is not
complete.

“
When I finish you, I will
drain you as far as you can go, nearly to death. Then you will
drink from me. Your body will be so desperate for the blood that it
will absorb it without conversion. You will effectively replace
your blood with mine. Over time, and with repeated feedings, that
blood will work within you, changing you. Some of the effects will
be immediate, but most will only be a shadow of the abilities you
will one day possess.”

Two raised her eyebrows. “Repeated
feedings?”

“
Our strain of vampire is
very powerful. The ruling class, effectively. But the nature of the
blood differs from the other strains. Our fledglings must drink,
periodically, from their masters, or risk reversion.”

“
I can be human
again?”

“
You can.”

Two contemplated this.

“
You’ll need to explain
this all to me some day, Theroen. How vampire bodies
work.”

“
What I know, I will tell
you. Unfortunately, Abraham has limited my access to writings on
the subject, so there may be questions I cannot answer. I will try
my best, though, and there will be many years in which we can
learn, after you are complete.”

If I let you complete
me
, Two thought, but she found that this
carried little weight. The idea that she could return to humanity
was intellectually interesting, but she no longer held the belief
that vampires were monsters. Not all of them, at any rate. She was
no longer terrified by the prospect of becoming one.

If Theroen heard any of these thoughts, he
gave no indication.

Two was not prepared for a lecture on
vampire physiology at the moment. She was still too warm and
content from the blood. It would put her to sleep. She changed the
subject.

“
Where is
Melissa?”

She had seen the perky young vampire here
and there throughout the past few weeks. Melissa would stop by
periodically to say hello, although she seemed to have knack for
catching Two at a bad time, and her visits were usually restricted
to a greeting, a short expression of sympathy, perhaps a few
questions. After “let me know if there’s anything I can do for you”
(which Two believed to be genuine sentiment), Melissa would leave
to hunt. For the past few days, though, she had been simply
gone.

“
Melissa stays in the city
sometimes, if she’s in the mood. She will return
eventually.”

“
Ah.” Two lounged on her
couch, happy to be where she was. Thoughts of drugs and needles,
pimps and hookers were far from her mind. That life was gone. Dead.
The last remnants of it had largely left her this week, with the
end of the withdrawal. Her mind instead looked toward the future: a
life of luxury and power. It seemed miraculous how quickly her life
had changed.

Change: Two was wearing a pink dress and a
diamond necklace that must have cost more than she had earned in
her entire life. She had not put on a pair of jeans since her bath
with Melissa, only a series of gowns and robes. Theroen had not
forced these things on her. Two had chosen them. She enjoyed it,
this expression of femininity, so rare in her previous life. She
knew it wouldn’t last. She liked wearing jeans and a t-shirt, liked
pulling her hair back into a ponytail and forgetting about it. But
for now, she was content with the dresses.

Theroen rarely left her side. When he left,
usually to feed, he was rarely gone for more than an hour, and he
spent most of his time doing his best to make her comfortable. The
withdrawal, it seemed, sometimes pained him more than it did her.
His sorrow at seeing her suffer filled Two with an odd happiness.
It proved that he cared.

“
Is there anything specific
you would like to know, Two?”

Two considered this question. For days now,
she and Theroen had hardly uttered a word to each other. There had
been little need. He could read her mind. His expressions, his
touches, these were enough for Two. They had forever for talking,
and in the time before forever she wished only to enjoy his
presence.

Now, though, she was curious. “There’s a lot
I’d like to know, Theroen. Where should I start?”

“
It doesn’t
matter.”

“
How very Zen.”

Theroen smiled, nodded, continued to look at
Two in his direct manner. From anyone else, this would have set her
slightly on edge. With Theroen it was simply natural.

“
Who are you?” Two asked,
smiling slightly.

Theroen nodded, as if he approved of the
question.

“
I am Theroen Anders. I was
born in Norway, in the late 16
^th
century. My family immigrated
to Great Britain while I was still very young. It was there I met
Abraham, there I felt the temptation of immortal life and succumbed
to it. I haunted London like a bloodthirsty ghoul for more than a
hundred years. The new world called, we answered, and have been
here since.”

He raised his eyebrows, as if questioning
whether this would suffice. Two smiled, shook her head.

“
No, Theroen. Who
are
you?”

He grinned, expecting this.

“
You’d have me condense
four hundred years into an evening?”

“
Four hundred years are
four hundred years. A story’s a story, Theroen. It will take as
long as it has to.”

Theroen looked into her eyes, and Two felt
herself swimming suddenly. She gasped.

“
Don’t fight.” Theroen’s
voice, next to her yet distant. “Don’t fight, Two.”

Two breathed deeply. Stopped fighting.
Floated. Descended.

* * *

His belief in God was unshakeable,
impossible to destroy. It was the glowing light that directed his
every action, his every thought.

Theroen had been a priest for less than half
a decade, and he still loved God in the pure, glorious, righteous
way reserved even in the clergy only for the very young. His black
robes were only clothes; his faith was his armor, and Theroen cut
through the sea of unbelievers around him without a fear in the
world.

Two resisted this vision, incredulous.
Theroen, a priest? It was impossible, this being who seemed so
utterly comfortable with his vampire nature. Theroen reminded her
again not to fight the trance. Sit, watch, understand.

His parents. Mother, hair blonde, eyes blue,
tall and broad through the shoulders. Lithe but full at the bust
and hips, she was a picture of beauty standing at the window in
Theroen’s tiny room, singing lullabies, whispering softly to her
young child where they might someday go, what they might someday
see.

Father, dark in hair, dark in eyes, like
Theroen himself. Grecian in ancestry, but without the wiry curls,
which had been ironed from his head by the passing of
generations.

Theroen, child of no more than a year, black
hair, brown eyes, his mother’s pale skin, the face a combination of
features that would someday serve to make him a handsome young man.
His face would make women shake their heads behind his back. A
priest? Looking like that? A waste.

Theroen did not know if his memories of this
time were accurate, or fabricated from stories and assumptions. He
believed them to be honest recollection, but would never truly
know. In these memories, mother and father fight sometimes. Living
is difficult. The house is small, drafty, uncomfortable. The
theatre has not called in weeks. They have no roles.

In London, though, there is work. Father
makes trips there, auditions repeatedly, desperate, despairing. The
alcohol is beginning to take hold of him even now.

He is granted reprieve when the notice
finally arrives. An actor is needed. He has been called. At three
years of age, Theroen said goodbye to the land of his birth, a land
he would never see again.

Never?
Two asked, pulling back from the vision momentarily,
never in so many years?

Never has there been time,
nor any great desire,
Theroen
answered.

It was a happy childhood. London before the
industrial revolution, a thriving metropolis, dirty to be certain
but still possessed of a remarkable charm Two could find no words
to describe. Theroen, age nine, running through the streets ahead
of his mother and father. Running to see the players in the square,
the Italian entertainers with their puppets and music and dancing.
Laughing and running, never seeing the horse bearing down on him,
its rider as distracted by the sights and sounds as Theroen
himself.

The horse tried to clear him, but failed.
Theroen remembered the sharp crack of its hoof against his
forehead, the blooming brightness in front of his vision. He
remembered the second hit, coming as the back of his head connected
with the cobblestones. The force of the impact was tremendous. He
imagined that everyone in the world must have heard the sound of
it.

All of this was clear in
his mind, but Theroen remembered no pain. Only the flat, hard
cracking sound and then rolling, horrified faces rushing toward
him, the world graying, fading. His mother, tears pouring from her
eyes, pulling at her own hair as if somehow in injuring herself she
might heal her son.
It’s all right,
mamma,
he wanted to say.
It doesn’t hurt.

Darkness, then. The clip-clop noise of horse
hooves, but this time he moved along with them. There were rushed,
babbling voices, more weeping, a rough hand holding his.

Even Theroen could not entirely piece
together the events that followed. Vast blank spaces lay in his
memory, interrupted by photo-flashes of consciousness. A bed
somewhere, his father sitting in a chair, looking out into cold
London rain and weeping without realizing it. Rough shadow of a
beard, unkempt hair. Staring and weeping. It was the most
frightening vision Theroen could recall, worse even than when the
bottle finally took hold of the man for good. Theroen had never
seen the man looking so forlorn, would never see him so again.

Another period of blankness, and then his
mother, leaning over him, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth.
She was singing to him, those old lullabies. He’d asked for the
songs to stop some years ago, a young man in a child’s body, no
longer needing the comfort they brought. But now? Oh, now they were
comfort eternal. He was so frightened. These periods of blankness
terrified him. There was nothing, except the knowledge of nothing,
and he thought for the first time in his mortal life that he might
be coming to understand what death was.

Ah, if he could have cried out, he would
have wailed. Little heart racing at the thought that there was
nothing more, that there was no heaven, no God waiting for him at
the gates, ready to embrace him and comfort him and help him to
understand what it all meant, this mortal life.

More grey. Then the vision.

A doctor, a nurse, and his mother. She was
arguing, fighting, weeping again. The doctor looked sympathetic,
but firm.

“
There is nothing we can
do. We have bled him, tried every potent tonic known to raise one
from unconsciousness. There is nothing we can do. He will drink
broth, if we pour it down his throat, but he does not awaken. There
is nothing we can do.” Over and over. A litany, a chant, a
curse.

Behind them, like the coming of the dawn, a
light was growing, so bright it burned his eyes. How could they not
notice this? How could the go on squabbling with each other when
faced with such a thing?

Through their arguing, he heard the sound,
building and building. A rushing, driving sound that seemed to
swell until it was near unbearable, as if all of the voices in the
world whispered at once. The light throbbed and pulsed. Theroen
wept. Fear, awe, confusion. Was this death, then? Perhaps his
acceptance into heaven after his stay in grey purgatory?