LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (7 page)

Dell's father knelt beside the bed and took her lax hand into his own. "Come on, baby. Eddie's right. You have to move, or there will be marks on your skin where the blood has settled. They'll last a long time. You won't be able to go anywhere people can see you for a very long time. You have life. Now you have to animate the body before it's too late."

Dell tried, Lord have mercy, she was trying. She let go of all thoughts except those centered on her feet and legs. She visualized moving up her body, commanding it to respond, just as Eddie had told her to do. She felt her calves clench then relax. She felt her thighs tighten and loosen. She felt her stomach contract then expand, as if she'd taken a breath all the way down to her belly. She felt her chest walls push apart, and then her throat opened by only the will of her thought processes. Next she concentrated on her lips, her tongue, her vocal cords. Finally, her nose, ears, eyes, eyebrows. She could sense every individual hair on her head, from root to hair end.

She blinked. The sensation was so strange that she thought she might cry. She was not dead! She was no more dead than a baby just born kicking and screaming from the womb. She might have been dead, but no more.

She lived!

Her mother grabbed her around the shoulders and hugged her and kissed her cheeks. Her father held tight to her hand. Eddie was all over the room, walking up the wall like a spider, doing flips off the ceiling, whooping like a crane.

Out of reflex, Dell sucked in a breath. She knew she didn't need it, not really, though it would keep her blood fresher longer. That first breath burned like lava pouring into her Arctic lungs. She coughed and hacked, pushing herself up on one elbow to lean over the side of the bed, feeling sick.

If Eddie would stop laughing and clapping long enough, she'd send him one last thought communication. But he was celebrating too hard to pay attention to her. Instead, after a couple of false starts, she said in a hoarse voice she did not recognize, "Thanks, Ed . . . Eddie, could . . . couldn't have done it . . . without you."

6

Dell had now moved her limbs and gained control once again of her body. She thought she felt different since her heart had stopped beating and she was now officially vampire. She felt, for the most part, cold. She could not keep her teeth from chattering.

Dell's father had gone to the kitchen to retrieve a blood bag for his daughter. The taking of the blood was the next step in her change, they had told her. Without it, she would eventually fall back into unconsciousness.

"I'm not sure I can do it," she said. "I don't think I can . . . drink blood, Mom."

"It's not drinking," her mother said. "You'll see, be patient."

Eddie sat in the chair Mentor had occupied earlier. He seemed happy just to see his sister talking and moving. Dell noticed he hadn't any advice about what she faced in the next few minutes.

Dell's father came into the room, carefully transporting the transparent plastic bag of human hemoglobin. Each bag cost the Cambians a dear price. They worked hard to afford the blood and treated it with great respect. For as long as Dell could remember they had never dropped a bag or punctured it accidentally. Blood had never been spilled in their home.

She had always assumed that her parents and Eddie partook of the blood late in the night because she rarely saw one of them taking a bag from the fridge. She had also assumed that they drank it, so it was a mild surprise to her to learn they did not.

"All right," her father said, holding the bag at the height of his chest. "Stand up, Dell. I'll show you how."

She stood, but averted her gaze from the blood bag. The bags had always seemed horrible to her. How could anyone think of touching them? They sat in a covered white cardboard box on the top shelf of the refrigerator. The box was always there and always contained at least a few bags, but more often it was crammed full. She had thought of the blood as insulin for diabetics. Now it was medicine to keep her family healthy.

"Look at me, Dell."

She forced her eyes to his. "I don't think I can do this, Daddy."

"Baby, you have to. The thirst hasn't come on you yet, but after this it will, and it'll be easier for you. But if we don't get this into you soon, you won't be able to move around and talk to us much longer."

Dell sighed. She again glanced away from her father and into the corners of the room as if she could find an alternative there. She had no urge to taste blood, could not bring herself to imagine it in her mouth or on her tongue. The very thought made her want to gag. But her father was waiting, they were all waiting. She looked at her father again and found her resolve. "Okay, what should I do?"

"You see that there's a pocket of air here at the top of the bag? That's the area you're going to pierce. The rest will happen naturally. I'll hold this for you and help you position it so it will drain. Next time you'll be able to do it alone."

"But how do I . . . ?"

"Put your mouth here," he said, indicating a spot at the top of the blood bag. "When you do, close your eyes. Don't think of anything. It'll be all right, trust me."

She approached closer and eyed the bag. He held it out to her carefully, and she moved her lips toward it. Don't think about it, she told herself. They say you must do this, so just screw up your courage and do it.

Her lips came into contact with the cold plastic. She tasted condensed water drops that warmed in her mouth. She had her teeth around the top corner of the bag and dosed her eyes. She'd never be able to do this. She'd never be able to rip through the thick plastic to get at the dark ruby liquid inside.

Suddenly her body spasmed and she felt her father's hand holding onto her shoulder to keep her in place. She heard, as at a distance, her mother's soothing voice, but she didn't know what she was saying. She heard Eddie urging her on, saying what he'd said to get her to concentrate on moving her toes. "You can do it," he was saying again. "C'mon, Dell, you can do it."

There was a sensation of movement behind her top lip, as if hard sticks had been shoved against her incisors and straight into her gums. It didn't hurt very much, but she reacted against it, trying to pull away from contact with the bag. She heard her father's voice command her to. "Be still, stay."

The strange sensation grew, and she moved her tongue away from the side of the bag to feel her top teeth. She felt her incisors, now long and pointed, like miniature daggers. Her tongue flicked away swiftly and fear filled her. Fangs! They had grown of their own accord, without her intervention or thought. How had it happened?

As soon as the sensation of growth in her mouth ceased, the fear fled, and a deep feeling of desire overwhelmed her. Her olfactory senses sharpened, and she could smell the scent of the blood right through the plastic. Now it was like the scent of delicate perfume.

She was about to open her eyes and pull back when something inside her forced her teeth down around the top of the bag, her fangs easily piercing the plastic. She knew her father was lifting the bag now, tipping the contents up so that her fangs could get at it.

She had to do nothing of her own will but obey the strong call spiraling through her to partake. At this point she knew she could not pull back from the thing her body yearned for most in all the world. The blood spilled over her incisors, chilling them, and she could feel the coldness sweep through tiny openings in her fangs. The blood swept through hollows and into small veins in the roof of her mouth, moved rapidly into larger veins at the back of her head, and coursed down through her neck into her blood system. It moved like cold snakes entering her body.

She knew it as life. She sensed how alive the blood was, how new, fresh, and sustaining. She thought she could feel it mingling with her own pooled, coagulating dead blood, reviving it. Her brain exploded with ecstasy, and her body quivered with electric currents of pleasure. She lost herself in the rush of feeling that came on the heels of the commingling going on from her head to her feet.

Without warning, someone placed a hand to her forehead and forced her back. Her mouth released the bag with a sucking noise that sounded as loud as timber falling and her eyelids flew open. She felt droplets of blood slide down from her upper lip and felt her incisors retract of their own volition, pushing back up into the recesses of her gums with a shriek of pain that caused her to bring her hands to her face.

She wanted more! Why were they depriving her?

She wasn't finished, though she could see the bag was emptied. She needed another one, and another.

"There, there," her father said, lowering the empty blood bag to his side. "Sit down, Dell. Let it work the magic."

Her mother led her back to the bed and she sat, stunned and mindless except for the desire for more. It was not blood, but life. She felt no revulsion toward it now. In fact, she wanted it as much as she'd ever wanted food or drink since the day she was born.

It was as if tiny sparks had ignited in her brain and her neurons were firing off cannons. She felt invincible, able to conquer anyone and anything; she felt as if she might fly.

"Stay calm," her mother said, brushing back the hair at her temple. "This will pass soon and you'll feel like yourself again."

Oh, God, why hadn't they told her that becoming one of them would give her this much strength and vitality? Why hadn't they been happier for her when she had called to her mother to show her the sores that indicated she was going to become one of them? How had they kept this gift from her for so long, kept it all to themselves, leaving her weak and prone to death or accident in her frail human form?

"It's pretty cool, huh, Dell?" Eddie asked. He jiggled around on the chair like a younger child unable to keep still.

"Hush, Eddie," her mother said.

"But Mom, it's immortality. It's a great event. She'll have those feelings over and over again forever, and we ought to tell her."

She blinked and gave herself over to the renewal taking place in her body. She'd never felt so alive, so healthy, so fine and wonderful as this ever in her life. And all it took was blood, sweet blood, blood with living cells that brought her to life with such force she knew if she were ever denied the sensation, she would roar like a lion and take down armies with her bare hands.

"Oh, Jesus," she said softly. "I have to move about. Mom, let me go."

She shook off her mother's touch and rose from the bed in one swift motion that a mortal wouldn't have been able to see. She sped to the door of her room, down the hall and into the kitchen. She felt her parents and grandparents gathering at her back. She saw Celia bending over at the sink, washing a cup and saucer, and her scent was strongly human and female. At the kitchen table sat Carolyn, looking up from a sandwich in her hands, startled to see her cousin out of bed.

Dell could sense everything, every movement around her, every thought. There was a fly behind the curtain at the window, buzzing, seeking exit. The tiled floor protested mightily as her feet stepped across it. The compressor on the refrigerator hummed like an aircraft readying for takeoff. Outside the walls she could hear a dog snuffling along the sidewalk, birds taking wing or landing a flutter on tree limbs. In the house next door she sensed their neighbor as she searched for keys to the car, muttering below her breath at how memory always failed her.

The world was open and furious with sound and sensation. Dust motes filled the sunny windows, twirling like universes. Water sang in the pipes below the sink. She could even hear the whine of electricity that whipped down the wire in the walls to the outlets, feeding the appliances. Life! Life everywhere, in every atom, all of it weaker and without a tenth of the power she knew she possessed.

She turned around and stood immobile, eyes wide in surprise at the world she'd been allowed to enter. "It's marvelous," she whispered. "It's heaven. Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me fear it so long?"

"You should come back to bed," Grandma said.

Her mother spoke to her silently, by thought waves. It's not all heavenly, Dell. We have to be careful.

Dell could not believe her, chose not to believe her. She was in love with all things, living and inanimate. She understood instinctively their compositions and the life they had once lived, as in the case of wood and plastic and vinyl, or were living at the moment, such as the blood and the food in the refrigerator, the animals outside, the neighbors in the houses surrounding her own. This intimate knowledge and understanding of the world was like a tremendous power surge and it made her giddy.

She could fly, she knew she could. She could walk up the wall to the ceiling, as Eddie had done. She could crush iron and bend steel and make things move with just the power of her will. She could … she could do more, she knew, but wasn't sure yet exactly what. But something stupendous, something she'd never even imagined yet.

Her parents came to her and each took one of her arms, as if to restrain her. "Come back to your room," her mother said.

"Yes, do as your mother says, dear." Grandma stepped out of the way so Dell could be led across the kitchen.

"Why? I feel fine, I feel great! I don't need to go to bed. I don't ever want to sleep again!"

Dell's two paternal uncles came to the doorway and stared at her. Boyd and Daniel had come all the way from San Antonio at their brother's urging, and now they gave her looks that spoke silently of love and understanding. Behind them she caught glimpses of their wives, her aunts. All of them vampire. All had undergone this same event in their lives and they knew both her agony and her newfound thrill of joy.

It seemed nearly everyone in the family had arrived at the house and now they were all watching her, commanding her to do as they bid.