Life's Blood (The Cordelia Chronicles) (10 page)

“I know the feeling,” Chaseyn said, releasing Mina and walking to my side. “If anyone ever tried to keep me apart from Cordelia…I don’t know what I would do.”

His eyes glistened with moisture, and I heard the sadness in his voice. I closed my eyes and nodded my agreement. The feeling was totally, utterly mutual.

“Do you think he got very far?” I asked.

“Who?” Mina replied. I ignored her question and turned to give Chaseyn a stern look.

“Go see if you can find Balthazar, and bring him back here,” I said to Chaseyn, giving him a hard shove in the direction of the door. With a certain amount of reluctance, he let go of my hand and dashed outside in a blur of light and color.

“Hurry back,” I shouted after him. I didn’t want anyone to notice he was gone.

“It smells great in here, Mina,” my grandmother asked as she entered the dining room. Then, she turned around and called over her shoulder to the others. “Come and get it while it’s hot.”

***

When they came in through the back door a few minutes later, Balthazar had Chaseyn in a headlock. Chaseyn was laughing in a way that suggested he didn’t find the situation funny, but he couldn’t control himself. Balthazar was ruffling his hair, and no one messed with Chaseyn’s hair without suffering the consequences. He was particularly vain about his luscious raven locks. How I loved to tangle my hair in those waves. I was lost in a daydream when Balthazar’s words jarred my attention back to the here and now.

“Is that a grey?” he joked.

Chaseyn quickly raised his hand to his head as though he was trying cover the offending hair from view. My heart stopped while I waited for his response.

“What? I thought I got them all,” he said, and then he immediately covered his mouth like it had betrayed him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. I knew I was getting strange stares from my mom, Kevin, Addie, and even Eli--who didn’t know the implications despite the fact he knew about Chaseyn’s heritage--but I didn’t care. “Have you been plucking your greys?’

“It’s fine, Cordelia,” Chaseyn insisted, but I wasn’t letting the topic drop that easily. If Chaseyn was going grey, it meant one thing and one thing only: the aging process had started, and we were running out of time.

“Don’t sweat it,” Kevin chirped. “I was grey by thirty. Women think it’s distinguished, right Lia?”

“Don‘t compare yourself to him,” I snapped, furious with Chasyen for keeping this from me and at Kevin for no good reason other than the fact that he didn‘t know better. I hated that he was treating this like some kind of joke instead of for the impending catastrophe that it was. “This isn’t quite the same.” 

“Cordelia Lorelei Jameson, do not take that tone with your stepfather,” my mother chastised. “Let’s just enjoy Christmas dinner as a family, and you two can discuss whatever it is that’s put a bee in your bonnet on your own time.”

After Christmas dinner, Eli went home with Addie, while my grandmother and Hank stayed put at my mom’s place. So it was just Chaseyn and I alone together for the ride home. And he was driving slow. Well, slower than he normally would--at a human speed, in fact.

“Talk to me,” Chaseyn said, trying to take my hand. “I can’t stand it when you’re silent like this.”

I pulled my hand away, turning to face the window. There was no way I was giving in to him this time. Chaseyn had been keeping an incredibly big secret from me, and I wasn’t letting it go without a solid explanation. Not this time. This affected both of us--
our
future--and I deserved to know the truth. We had to put a plan into action if we were going to make it through this.

“We haven’t had enough time together,” I said, my lips quivering. “This can’t happen. Not now. Not until we’ve had time--time to enjoy each other. Time to…live.”

“Don’t cry,” Chaseyn said, brushing his knuckles along my left jaw. He tucked a stray hair behind my ear, and I pressed my head against his hand. I couldn’t look at him, but I needed to feel his touch. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“How many have there been?” I asked in reference to the grey hairs.

“I don’t know--maybe ten.”

“Have there been other signs?”

“Not yet,” he said quietly. I heard the unspoken message in his words--his tone.

“But there will be,” I said out loud what he wouldn’t admit.

“Maybe.”

“How long do we have?” I asked, turning to face him. I could no longer hide the tambor in my voice. I was terrified of what this revelation meant for us.

“I’m not sure--months…maybe weeks.’

I broke into a sob then, and Chaseyn pulled the car over. He leaned across the console and enveloped me in an awkward embrace. I appreciated his effort at comforting me, but nothing he could do in this moment was going to change what was happening to him. Other half-human half-vampire cases were rare, but they weren’t nonexistent, and I’d done enough research to know that once the aging process began, it was a rapid decline.

“We have to go,” I stammered, and Chaseyn released his hold on me.

“Okay. If you insist,” he said, turning the key in the ignition.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, as he looked over his left shoulder for oncoming traffic before pulling back onto the highway. “We have to go…to Romania.”

***

The next day, Mina arrived at our house at the crack of dawn. We needed to make a plan, and she was the best person to help us map out our trip--well, the best person next to Balthazar, but she knew better than to bring him to our home without first discussing it with us.

“I know you have issues with Balty, but I’d like for you to put them aside so he can help us,’ Mina reasoned. “I wouldn’t bring him here if I thought it would put either of you in jeopardy.”

“I know, mom,” Chaseyn said. “It’s just hard to forgive him for what he did. I always looked up to him, so it stung even more to have him betray me like that.”

I gave Chaseyn’s arm a squeeze and planted a kiss on his cheek. I didn’t have to say the words for him to know my silent message. If there was any way Balthazar could help us achieve our goal--of giving us more time together--I was willing to let him in. Chaseyn’s shoulders heaved as he inhaled a deep breath, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. I pretended not to notice, that it was no big deal. But inside, I was doing a happy dance.

I left the room to give Chaseyn and Mina a moment alone together. The cabin was small, so the only place I could go was the loft. And, since I knew we would be leaving sooner rather than later, I started to pack. Not that I knew what to pack for exactly, but I figured I could start gathering the basics. While I was at it, I started pulling a few things together for Chaseyn as well--just a couple of t-shirts and jeans since they were his standard uniform.

I knew Mina and Chaseyn were done their private conversation when I heard a light knock on the door followed by the sound of it opening and a man’s deep voice echo through the hall. The sound gave me chills, and not in a good way. I believed Balthazar was working hard to repent what he’d done to Chaseyn and me back in Romania, but it didn’t erase the memory of being held captive by him.

“Is it okay if I come in?” Balthazar called through the open door. He was physically unable to come deeper into the house. I bounded down the stairs to greet him where he waited humbly for me or Chaseyn to extend him an invitation inside. His porcelain skin was creased with worry lines as he waited anxiously to hear what I would say.

“Come on in,” I said with moderate trepidation. Balthazar was now free to enter our abode any time he wanted, which unsettled me a bit. I made a mental note to work through my fears. Mina wouldn’t put us in danger, I told myself.

“Thank you, Lia. It means a lot that you’re willing to give me the benefit of the doubt,” he said, and he seemed to relax a little.

The man was truly striking--from his massive, muscular build to his shaggy dark hair and rugged beard. I could see why Mina was attracted to him--physically anyway. He looked a lot like what I imagined Chaseyn would look like in 20 years. Now, we just needed to get him the cure so we could find out if I was right.

“How could I turn you away?” I asked. “You’re our best chance at finding a way to save Chasyen.”

“I want to help,” Balthazar said, rubbing his temples like it was hurting him to think I didn‘t believe he was being truthful. “I really do. I was wrong before, and I’m truly sorry for hurting the two of you. Chaseyn’s like a son to me--I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I didn’t know what to say so I simply nodded. The fact that Chaseyn had felt the same way about him was what had made his deception so much worse. I started walking toward the kitchen, and while I hoped Balthazar would know he should follow, I didn’t turn back to see if he was. I had nothing left to say to him for now. Actions would speak louder than words in the long run, so if what he said was true--that he wanted to help us--he’d have to show us.

“Hi,” Mina said airily when Balthazar entered the kitchen where she and Chaseyn were seated looking over the pages of a well-worn book.

“Hi,” he said shyly in response. His gaze lingered a little longer than it should as his eyes roamed over Mina from head to toe. I could tell he wanted to greet her with a kiss, but even a modest show of emotion would have been too much right now. This was not the time or place, and while we might trust him enough to welcome him into the family one day, today was not that day. Chaseyn and Balthazar had taken an major stride in the right direction at Christmas dinner, but Balthazar was right not to test his luck. Chaseyn wasn’t ready yet. Neither was I.

“What have you got there?” Balthazar asked, motioning to the book. I was glad he broke the tension by taking us all back to the matter at hand.

“It’s one of the books Lia found that seems to most accurately describe the concoction we’ll need to produce to mix with the blood of Alexei’s maker,” Mina explained. “The only problem is that none of the books she’s researched accurately detail all of the ingredients.”

“We can make assumptions about some of them based of their descriptions, but some of the others are pretty obscure,” Chaseyn added. “We’ll need to use multiple sources to piece together the descriptions and figure out with some confidence what it is we’re looking for.”

“Hopefully, I can help you narrow it down a bit more,” Balthazar said. “Let me take a look.’

Chaseyn slid the book across the island to where Balthazar was leaning with his elbows on the granite countertop. I waited anxiously to hear what he’d have to say.

“I see what you mean,” he said after a quick glance--so quick, in fact, that I realized vampires must also have super speedy reading capabilities. “It looks like a lot of the ingredients are unique to Romania. Not a problem, since we’ll be there anyway to obtain the blood of one of your direct ancestors, but we’ll have to find the right markets to obtain the herbs. And we may need to head into the mountains to gather the flowers or hunt the animals. Mina and I can take care of that.”

Balthazar walked across the room with the book in hand and flopped down on the couch. He kicked his feet up on the steamer trunk and made himself comfortable. He seemed to be deep in thought as he absorbed each word, and I appreciated how seriously he was taking the situation. He seemed genuinely interest in helping us.

“Pass me some of the other books,” he said. “I’ll see if I can cross-reference the ingredients and figure out some of the specifics. We don’t want to make any mistakes.”

I quickly started rooting through the box of books and photocopied pages I’d made over the past few months and handed him the ones I felt did the best job of describing the different “recipes.” I had uncovered various theories--everything from vampirism being a form of porphyria that could be cured with a diet high in carbohydrates and glucose to the notion that vampires infect those they turn with a blood-thirsty parasite that must be removed from the body to restore the victim to a mortal state. None of these theories were relevant to Chaseyn’s situation, but there was one theory I had stumbled upon that seemed to correlate with what I knew about vampires. I had decided to follow that lead over all the others, despite the fact that information about it was much more scarce. I hoped I hadn’t made a mistake.

From what I read in Romanian folklore, there was a prominent nomadic group that lived off the land of the Transylvanian countryside that became known as the “people of the night.” They were so called because they slept away their days and only awakened when the sun set. All of them, as if on cue, would return to slumber the instant the sun rose in the morning, regardless of what they were doing at the moment, as though they had no control over their need for sleep.

Over time, people from the villages that lived nearby the places where the group settled for short periods of time began to notice other distinctive characteristics shared by these people of the night. They seemed to have enhanced sight and hearing, they did not require food or water to sustain themselves, and no one knew where they went or what they did once darkness fell.

In addition to these strange physical traits, there was a disconcerting connection between the appearance of the people of the night and the sudden disappearance of numerous cows, sheep, and other animals. It didn’t take long for some of the villagers to go missing as well. Typically, the very sick or old. The carcasses were later found completely intact but drained of every drop of blood.