Angel's Messiah (3 page)

“I don’t live like the other vamps. I don’t prey on mortals. I only prey on immortals.”

I saw the Adams apple in his throat move as he swallowed nervously.

“Please don’t kill me,” he whispered.

I really felt sorry for this kid. Eighteen wasn’t very old at all. I’d find someone else to pick on.

“It’s okay. I’ll hunt other prey today.”

I turned to walk away. As I did so I felt something sharp on my left shoulder. I looked back and saw that he’d seen fit to try and make a meal out of me. He may not have tasted mortal blood, but he wasn’t averse to a bit of immortal blood.

So much for the little-boy-lost look. They must be training them in the art of deception now … another thing they learned from me.

I reached around with my hand to touch his face and heard a muffled scream. His body twitched erratically and I could feel energy flooding into me, though not through my hand.

My fingers haven’t even fused to his flesh yet,
I thought.
What’s going on?

When he stopped I twisted out from underneath him, which resulted in his teeth tearing through my skin.

Ouch!

Why was he standing so still? I turned around and nearly fled when I saw what stood in his place — a dehydrated husk that resembled a mummified body, grey in colour. His paper-dry skin clung to his bones, and his teeth, when I touched them, felt like rock rather than bone. I couldn’t grasp what had happened to him, and it scared me. Was he some sort of experiment gone wrong? I touched his cold, hard hand and sent him to the cavern. Perhaps I’d take Danny there later. He might be able to shed some light on it.

I shivered and returned to treetops, this time above the temple, to listen in on anything that might be going on. I was hoping for some clue as to what had happened, but the temple was silent and empty.

I detected movement a few hundred metres west of the temple and sniffed the air — a sole female, running swiftly.

I was
so
hungry. I didn’t recognise the scent, just as I hadn’t with the young vamp whose life had ended at the age of eighteen. If he hadn’t attacked me he probably would have lived a few more years at least. The world was a difficult place for new vampires, with many challenges to face — only the quickest, smartest or strongest survived the training ground.

This time I wouldn’t make small talk. A straight out kill, that’s all it would be.

Don’t get close to them, on an emotional level. It doesn’t make it any easier.

I dropped to the forest floor, blinked and ran. The leaves in the trees and the grass on the ground stirred as I ran past. It could have easily been attributed to the breeze, if there had been one.

I caught up with her easily and leapt through the air, knocking her to the ground. I drank greedily —
why am I so hungry all the time?
— but pulled away when my brain registered her taste as being slightly vinegary. I’d drained half her blood before I realised she didn’t taste right, just like her African cousins. I used my hands to finish the job before turning her to ash and blowing her remains into the air.

I felt sick. My stomach was both cramping and roiling at the same time. My legs began to shake. Perspiration began to form on my forehead and I thought I was going to pass out.

Take me home.

I must have fainted, because I woke to find myself in bed. The world started to spin and my stomach protested.

“I’m going to be sick,” I mumbled.

A bucket was thrust in my face. “Try and get it in the bucket this time.”

Had I thrown up already? My mouth was dry, my head was spinning, and waves of nausea assailed me.

Hearing someone heave up the contents of their stomach is not something I enjoy listening to. It’s even worse when it’s yourself — you have front row tickets to the disgusting. Tasting it on the way back up, then hearing it slosh around in a bucket, or splash over the side —
damn, got some on Danny’s shoes
— is none too pleasant either.

“What have you been eating?” Danny asked between heaves.

My eyes were tearing from all the heaving and blood ran down my cheeks, courtesy of my red eyes.
Will my eyes ever go back to their normal colour?
I asked myself.

It took a good couple of minutes before I could reply.

“Nothing but vampire — a few Africans and a local. They all tasted horrible though, like vinegar.”

“Did you check if they were poisoned or drugged before you fed?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes and instantly felt sick again. “Of course I did. I’m not an idiot.”

“I’m not saying you are, Helena. I’m just saying you’ve been so hungry lately that you could easily have forgotten in your eagerness to feed.”

Danny patted the bed in a number of places and I wondered what he was doing. I was sure he’d hit me gently a few times, but I couldn’t feel it.

“Helena, are you still there?”

“Of course I am,” I snorted, “are you blind?”

“You’ve blinked,” Danny said. “I can’t even see your outline under the cover. How are you doing that?”

Danny had taken to calling our ability to become invisible
blinking.
It was a term I’d coined some years before, when he was dead and I thought all hope was gone.

“Have I? I’m not doing it deliberately. I don’t know why you can’t see the outline of my shape in the bed, but then I’ve never blinked in bed before.”

I concentrated on making myself visible again and Danny smiled, indicating I’d been successful. My head hurt and my stomach churned again.

“
Bucket,
” I yelled, waving my hands in the air.

As I continued to empty the contents of my stomach —
how much fluid can the stomach hold?
— Danny held my hair out of the way. With tears of blood running down my cheeks, and the splashback from the bucket, I didn’t need my hair to be sullied as well. I’d need a good shower after this.

“I don’t understand why you’re so sick,” Danny said.

“There was one vamp,” I said between heaves, “who attacked me. Something weird happened and it did frighten me.”

“What?”

Heave-ho!

“I don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to tell me. He’s in,”
heave-ho,
“the cavern.”

“We’ll go when you’ve stopped throwing up.”

I nodded. Danny wiped the blood from my eyes and the perspiration from my brow. I must have looked a treat, passable for some freak at a Halloween party, but not much else. Certainly no red carpets.

I wasn’t sure exactly when the heaving stopped. I’d fallen into a kind of trance-like sleep and Danny let me rest. I eventually woke up when my stomach rumbled like a loud and rude alarm clock.

“You look a bit better, but you sound like you’re starving,” he chuckled.

“I
hate
being hungry all the time. Ever since you got back all I want to do is eat,” I mumbled.

“You need to eat. I’ve never seen so much stuff spewed forth from one being before. If there was an angelic Book of Records you’d have made it in for sure.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” I said. “I’m going to have a shower. I
stink
and that’s saying something.”

“When you’re finished we’ll get you something to eat.”

“You’re coming with me?” I asked.

“I’m going to do better than that. You’re going to wait for me at the ranch and I will supply you with a variety of handpicked, succulent vampires to feast on,” Danny said, with an air of superior confidence. “With all my years of experience I should be able to find a few choice morsels.”

He kissed my forehead, even though it must have tasted salty, and gave my butt a playful whack as I headed to the shower.

The bathroom spun momentarily and I closed my eyes and held onto the basin. After a minute I opened them. When everything started spinning again my legs collapsed underneath me. I’d gripped the basin so hard it came away from the wall, crashing down on me. I lay on the floor with my eyes closed, holding the broken basin and willing everything to stop spinning and hurting.

“Helena,” Danny called out. “Are you okay? Do you need my help?”

“I’m fine,” I called back. I was such a liar.

“I don’t hear the water. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I turned my thoughts to the shower and the water came on.

“Just getting in now,” I called out.

I lay on the floor for a few more minutes, then repaired the damage to the basin before crawling, eyes closed, over to the shower. I pulled myself upright and stepped in, my smelly blood-soaked clothes having disappeared.

I’m going to collapse again,
I thought to myself.

I summoned a stool for me to sit on, like an invalid, and washed myself with my eyes closed. I didn’t hear the door open and didn’t see Danny leaning against the shower door.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

I jumped and the stool and I toppled over. I felt like a right idiot. Danny was in the shower in the flash, helping me up. As he held me he felt my body, my whole body, trembling, ever so slightly.

“How long have you been shaking?” he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. A day or so.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“You’ve got the shakes, you’ve been vomiting and are so weak you need to sit down to shower, not to mention your subconscious blinking. There is something
very
wrong, Helena.”

“I just need a decent feed. Something that doesn’t taste off,” I said.

“I hope you’re right,” Danny mumbled.

I felt somewhat better by the time I was dried and dressed. Danny insisted on transporting us to the cavern to look at the body of the young vamp who’d sought to take my life. He knelt over the body and touched the dead vamp’s clothes and skin.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “I’ll need to check with Michael. If he can’t help I’ll consult with the powers, the keepers of history.”

I sat on the ground and hugged my knees to my chest while Danny inspected the body. He looked at me and stood up.

“You need to eat. Wait here. I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”

He walked over to me and kissed the top of my head before continuing on, fading with each step until after the fourth step he was gone.

I rested my head on my knees and dozed.

The blood, Helena, it’s always to do with the blood.

I woke up with a start.

Oh, god, the blood. Satan’s blood! What if it was killing me, only slowly? Danny didn’t know I’d drunk his blood. It was a minor detail I’d forgotten to mention, but he did know I’d stabbed myself with a dagger coated in Satan’s blood — he was there after all.

“What time is it?”

Numbers flared in front of me. Danny had been gone for twenty minutes. I waved the numbers away and tapped my legs restlessly. I picked at a loose thread on the hem of my jeans and somehow managed to split the leg up the side to my knee.

“Oh, fix yourself, you stupid jeans,” I mumbled.

I heard laughter behind me. Danny had returned to the sound of me splitting my jeans and then fixing them. He had with him two bound and gagged vampires. It seemed my dinner was not to put up a struggle or upset me with their foul language.

Where’s the fun in that?
I thought.

“Thanks,” I said.

I put my hands on the ground to push myself up. Danny placed a hand firmly on my shoulder preventing me from standing. I gave him a look that said I wasn’t an invalid.

“Sit,” he said. “Your meal will come down to your level.”

I sniffed both vamps and didn’t recognise either scent.

“How did you know I hadn’t met these ones?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” Danny said, crouching down beside me. “Call it a lucky guess. Well, what are you waiting for? You don’t need to say grace.”

Danny pushed the first vamp to my side, so its neck was level with my face. I leaned on him as my lips brushed his neck. This one didn’t taste too bad, not quite the honey I was used to, but not vinegar.

“I told you I could pick them,” Danny said smugly. “You must be going through a phase or something.”

As I drank from the second vamp Danny asked me if I wanted more. I nodded. He ran his fingers through my hair as a parting gesture, then took off to find more food for me.

The cavern started spinning within minutes of my finishing the second vamp. Maybe I had some sort of inner ear problem. I’d heard that sort of thing could make you really dizzy and affect your balance. At least my stomach was calm. That had to be a good sign.

Danny returned with another two vampires. When they were dry I decided I’d had enough for one day. Why tempt fate by gorging?

“Take my hand,” I said.