The Power (15 page)

“It is wrong to kill!” Lillian shouted in fierce emotion to the room, causing everyone to become deathly st
ill and silent afterward. Obviously, they were not used to her displays of emotion, and come to think of it she was not used to having the emotions either, not even the anger that consumed her soul now.

“But you do not take from the innocent.” It was Josh who spoke again first.

Lillian’s eyes flashed white as she turned her gaze on Josh. The hunger grew and chewed at her insides like nails scratching the inside of her stomach, the beast clawing to get out.

“I take human life! I am a murderer! Never forget that!” Lillian hissed violently, and she fell almost clumsily back into her chair. Where was this coming from? She had not had these curious feelings since the very beginning when she had transformed from mortal to immortal, and had still possessed the lingering human emotions. It had been over a hundred years since that time. Why was her conscience suddenly plaguing her now? 

“If you won’t hunt then take from me.” Reginald rushed forward as fast as his old, feeble bones would carry him. Lillian could hear his aged heart beating rapidly as she watched him rip off his dark suit jacket, and jerk up the sleeve of his crisp, white, dress shirt. The sagged skin was nearly as translucent as her own, she noticed, when he offered her the use of his arm.

“Never.” she hissed. She was immortal, not inhuman. She had once been human with a human heart and a human mind and even a human soul. Though her human body had died
, had been replaced by this…this whatever it was exactly she had become, she liked to believe that her soul had never truly left her. She was still herself inside. Wasn’t she? Somewhere buried down deep after the cold years of solitude where nothing had mattered but the hunt and her own survival.

“Why not? Gina took from me when in need. It will not turn me. You know that. Drink from my veins, My Lady. You are in need.” Reginald called out desperately, and he shook his arm in her face.

Lillian stared at Reginald’s bone-white arm. Her eyes traveled up the wrinkled, loose skin, up to the junction in his elbow where large, blue veins pulsated. The music in her head began to play in rhythm to the beat Reginald’s heart made, to the flow of the blood through his veins. Without permission, her incisors began to grow, to protrude past her bottom lip. The skin on her nose began to tighten, and peel back, and the hunger inside of her began to moan.

“No!” She slammed to her feet, and took herself to the stone firepl
ace, as far away from Reginald and all that he was offering her as she could get without quitting the room. Josh’s heart was racing. Lillian could feel his fear as if it were a physical being. “If you fear me, Josh, then perhaps you should leave. I have never taken from your grandfather, or of any other innocent for that matter. I never plan to!” Lillian hissed beneath her breath.

Troy
sent a scolding glare at his brother as did Reginald, but Josh could not help, nor could he hide from Lillian how he truly felt.

“I can’t help it. This is all still so new to me.” Josh commented dryly.

“Lillian you need to feed.” Reginald begged.

“Put your arm away, old man.” Lillian growled. “I am perfectly fine. I will not take of the innocent. You know what it does to us, and I will not be like him!”

“My blood freely given will not turn you cold.” Reginald argued.

“Or mine.”
Troy offered generously.

The hunger clawed at Lillian’s ribs. Her eyes were alight with the need to feed. She turned, allowing the others to see her fully transformed. From the doorway, Josh sucked in his breath
, and his blood rushed through his veins quickly. The fear in him was great now, but he was trying to control it. Lillian was doing her best to tame the beast within, to not allow it to prevail against her guardians.

“I don’t understand why you help me, any of you! Why you are so loyal. Look at me! I am a monster!” She addressed the room loudly. Grabbing her gut when the severe pain seized her, she nearly doubled over. It was becoming intense. She had to get out of there.

“Lillian, we-” Reginald began, but she didn’t allow him to finish. It was close now, much too close. Sweeping from the room in a gush of wind, she left the three of them standing there, staring after the blur that they saw slide from the room. Out the back door, she ran, ran until she came to the twelve foot, stone fence, and then she scaled it, and jumped to the ground and into the street. Where she was going, she did not know. She only knew that she had to get away from her would-be friends as quickly as possible. Running dark alleys and the tops of roofs did not calm her. She needed to feed, but the hunt was complicated. She usually had her meals planned days before actually going on the hunt. Tonight, she felt reckless, led by hunger and pain. Sounds filtered up to her from the street below. She could pick out voices, heartbeats, and even thoughts, but none called to her. The conversations and thoughts were concerning fickle things of little matter. Lillian was about to rise and move on when the scent of someone familiar caught her senses.

“Jack.” she voiced aloud. She had not seen him in nearly a week. He had called, asked her to meet him, but she had not returned his call, nor had she met with him. They were getting too close, she and Jack. She could not allow that to happen. Danger always lurked near her. He would not be safe, and besides, he would never accept her for wh
o or rather what she truly was.

Looking down, she could pinpoint Jack’s tall, slender, muscular form in the crowd below. He carried himself well,
just slightly more clumsily than one of her own, she thought. He and his companion, a tall, stocky, dark skinned man with rich brown hair were talking, but Jack’s thoughts had wandered. He was thinking of her. She knew it to be true. Where was she? Why hadn’t she returned his calls, or come to meet him again? Had he frightened her away by moving too fast? What was she hiding?

If you could see me now, Jack, you would know exact
ly what it is that I’m hiding, Lillian thought in self-loathing.

“Jack? Where did you go, man?” Jack’s friend’s baritone voice calle
d Lillian back to the present.

“What?” Jack shook the thoughts of Lillian from his mind.

“You’re thinking of that girl again, aren’t ya? Nine to five, Man, nine to five.” his friend laughed out.

“Yea
h, uh, it’s eleven-thirty p.m.” Jack reminded him.

“Well shit! I should be home in bed.” The friend teased in loud laughter.

“Yeah. Me too.” Jack agreed, and then they were too far away for Lillian to hear or read any longer. For an insane moment, Lillian considered following by rooftop, but she couldn’t. Not tonight. The hunger was too strong. She needed to feed before she went insane.

Standing, she dropped to the pavement below. Perhaps if she was closer to the mortals then she could better sort them out, she reasoned. Keeping her head down, she concentrated on those around her. Thoughts swam to her fast. She tried to pick through them, to locate a sense of someone who was feeling particularly guilty, or perhaps feeling sick pleasure over what he or she had done, or was planning to do. Lillian ducked her head, moving through the crowd, and trying desperately to keep the hunger at bay so that it would not show on her face.

Nothing! Nothing at all to choose from! She walked for thirty minutes or more when she looked up and saw a child sitting on the front stoop of an old, decrepit, apartment building. The beat of the small heart was familiar to her. The little girl’s head was lying on her folded arms beside her. She was halfway asleep, but too frightened to surrender to sleep all the way. Lillian made her way to the child. Kylie blinked, and then blinked again before smiling in relief.

“Lillian!” Kylie grinned. “I was so scared, but you always come when I’m scared! I prayed you would come.” Kylie sat up, placing her tiny hands in her lap as her eyes reflected her joy at finding Lillian there. The child was clearly freezing, Lillian thought angrily, staring at the child‘s bare arms.

“Why are you out here at this time of night, and all alone?” Lillian came closer, but tried to keep her head lowered. She didn’t wish to frighten the child. Though Lillian was not transformed at the moment, her skin was deathly pale, and she was sure that the veins in her face were shining through from beneath.

“Don’t be mad, Lillian. My mommy told me to come outside. She has a friend over, a man.” Kylie whispered as if it was a secret.

Lillian looked up the five stories to where she knew Kylie’s bedroom window to be. She had checked on the child a few times over the last month, just to make sure it was okay. The lights were all on in the apartment, and Lillian could see movement within the mother’s bedroom. Frowning because she didn‘t know what was going on, Lillian looked to the child in concern. She couldn’t just leave her out there alone. Who knew what could happen?

“Kylie?” she called, and the little girl looked up with big, deer brown eyes. “Stay right here. I’ll be back shortly. If you need me, scream. I’ll hear you.” Lillian promised. T
hat said, she went up the steps and straight through the front door of the apartment building. Inside the sadly furnished foyer, she walked to the elevator, and punched the button. Boarding the elevator, she rode to fifth floor and walked straight to apartment 5D, which was at the end of the hall.

She didn’t bother to knock. She grabbed the doorknob, and shoved the door open so that the lock snapped in her hand. The door swung open, and Lillian walked in, shutting off the lights as she went from room to room, so that she might move through the shadows. Grunting noises were coming from the back bedroom, down a narrow hall. Lillian took a brass candle holder from the scarred coffee table, and breezed down the hall. When she reached the doorway t
o the room, she expertly threw the candle holder and shattered the light hanging from the ceiling in the bedroom. Glass shattered, and rained down upon the room’s three occupants as the darkness assaulted the room. Lillian’s vampire eyes took in everything as if it were as light as day. A skinny man with no shirt, and protruding ribs, stood at an old dresser to her left. He was going through a jewelry box on top of it when the lights went out. On the bed, another man had paused in laboring over a woman. He had something pressed to the woman’s throat. A knife? The woman was hurt, and terrified, but also high and disoriented, as were her two friends. Moving in, Lillian grabbed the man from atop of the woman by his shoulder, and slung him backward with a flick of her wrist, sending him slamming into the closet door and knocking him unconscious. The woman, now free, began to scream bloody murder. Lillian knew that the woman could not see what was going on, but Lillian could feel her fear, her pain, and her confusion. The man at the dresser turned at the noise, but he was too high to put two and two together.

“What? What’s going on?” he asked of the room in a disoriented, trembling voice. Lillian tuned into his thoughts, and was not surprised by what she read there. He had already had his turn with the woman. A drug addict, he had robbed many people before. This was also not his first ill dealings with a woman. No. He had done this before, he and the other. They had broken into a well to do home in
Manhattan. They had known that the husband would be out of town on business at the time. They had raped and killed a young mother, slitting her throat, and leaving an infant babe squalling in its crib as they had taken everything of value from the home.

“Who are you?” The man’s pupils did not focus or dilate, Lillian noticed as she moved through the shadows, coming just close enough for the man to glimpse her glowing, white eyes. His heart was racing more from the heroine he had shot up than from fear.

What if this young mother had not sent her child away, Lillian couldn’t help to wonder, and rage swept through her? Disgusted at the possibilities, she transformed in the blinking of an eye and pressed her face directly into the man’s.

“I am what you deserve.” she replied as the woman on the bed began to scream in horror all over again.

The prey was easy to catch this night, and his blood satisfied the hunger inside of her like nothing else could. As the body dropped to the floor, the other man came to, and began to shout and curse madly. Grabbing him by the collar, Lillian slid his body up the wall at his back and sank her teeth into his giving neck. His fists pounded into her back, but his strength slipped from him quickly. Lillian tossed his body aside as well. Kylie’s mother was too terrified to scream now when the silence dominated the darkness. She sat paralyzed in fear, wondering if she was next and thinking that she deserved to die. All of her sins came racing to her mind, and Lillian took them all in.

“Please.” The woman begged on a whimper as Lillian slipped in and out of the shadows just enough to get the woman’s attention. “Please, don’t hurt
me.” the trembling, pleading voice came.

The fury Lillian felt toward the foolish woman was difficult to keep under control. The woman had been given a wonderful gift in her daughter, and the foolish woman had put that daughter in jeopardy on a daily basis so that she might satisfy a reckless hobby! She was no mother! She cared only for herself, not the child!

“You do realize that what happened to you here tonight could have very well happened to your daughter as well?” Lillian bit out on a growl.

“My daughter…
Kylie? What have you done with my daughter?” The woman shrieked, almost sounding as if she cared for the child. Lillian had to laugh.