The Blood That Bonds (6 page)

But worse, worse by far,
and that which had truly caused her to recoil in horror, was the
entirety of the reflection itself. It was not
what
she was seeing that brought Two
to a sudden and full understanding that something was simply not
right. It was
how
she was seeing it – the details her eyes were able to pick out
even in this dim light were somehow finer than anything that human
eyes should be able to process. She could see
everything
about herself, in a way
that she had never seen before, and it was this evidence that
something within her had been changed so substantially, in such a
short time, that broke down the last remaining walls she had
constructed against her rising fear.

Two rolled back her head, let out a wail of
utter horror and despair, and gave in to the panic that had been
gnawing at the edges of her mind.

She called to Rhes and Sarah. Molly. Theroen
and Darren and even to her mother and father. No help came for Two.
No explanation, no escape. She wept, she screamed, she threw
herself against the bars.

It was not until she saw the tears she was
crying, wiped on her hands and tinted with red, that she regained
any sort of composure. The sight was a harsh slap, stopping her in
her tracks. Red tears. Bloody tears.

And with that, Two remembered it all, in
minute detail. The car, the kiss, the sex. She remembered Theroen
bringing her to the delicious moment before that final peak, and
pressing his teeth against her neck. Her mind replayed the event in
slow motion, those teeth hard against her flesh, nanoseconds of
waiting spread out forever, the moment when the body tenses,
begging for release. Waiting. And then her heart had throbbed, body
climaxing, vein pulsing. Theroen’s teeth split her flesh asunder,
and all that was left was the rushing, draining sensation, timed to
the throb of her heart.

Two let out a low, animal moan of terror and
revulsion and lust as these memories flooded into her head,
crowding out any concern for the present. The recollection was
horrifying, the blinding white pain remembered all too well. Yet
below, a dark fire awoke, a need she could not imagine existing in
this time and place.

Two glanced at her hands. The skin had
already healed, cuts and scrapes from the fall just a few moments
ago already turned to new, white flesh. Intricate spider webs of
veins stood out on those hands, more pronounced against the pale
skin. Two understood now what she was, or was becoming. Her mind
attempted to shove the thought aside, fill with rationality, fill
with excuses. But what excuse could there be? What possible
rational explanation existed for this?

When the hunger awoke inside of her, some
time later, she knew instinctively that no ordinary food would cure
it.

* * *

In the summer of her seventeenth year, Two
and Rhes had taken a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two
had never been, and it had been several years since the last time
Rhes had been to the galleries. At his insistence she had gone
along, not expecting to find anything of interest. To her surprise,
Two had found herself absolutely captivated by nearly everything
they had seen.

Here, laid out before her, was a visual
history of the world. Her rapture with this idea came from two
nearly conflicting angles. On the one hand, all of this work lead
up to her own creation. On the other, all of this came from beyond
her, outside of her, cared not whether she ever existed, would go
on existing long after her own life had ceased. She was everything.
She was insignificant.

Two had not been more profoundly impacted by
anything in her life, save perhaps her decision to leave home. Rhes
had finally been forced to drag her from the building, promising to
return with her. She hadn’t read everything on the Egyptians. She’d
missed the entire Roman wing. They took the train home in near
silence, Rhes astounded and deeply pleased with Two’s appreciation
of the museum. He did not ask her to explain, knowing that if she
could, she most certainly would.

Two had struggled with it for some time,
attempting to put her feelings into words, attempting to express to
Rhes how she’d felt, how delicious the merger of those two
viewpoints had been. Two was neither stupid nor unlettered – a love
for books had served her, in truth, far better in this area than a
city school education probably could have – yet there was no word
she knew, and perhaps no word at all, for how she felt.

Two had made many trips to the museum that
year, with Rhes and alone, absorbing all she could see. Trips to
the Museum of Modern Art followed, galleries of new work in
Greenwich Village, street artists in SoHo. Never any desire to
attempt to create the work herself, only to immerse herself in
others’ creations, to learn and experience what she could through
them. To absorb some alternate view, as meaningful and
inconsequential as her own.

Art had brought Two a deep, abiding love for
the complexity and magnificence of human life. Even in utter
disgrace, trapped in horror, she had still found some grim beauty
in the structure of it all.

As the blood tears dried on her cheeks, her
preternatural eyes staring out through darkness no human could have
penetrated, Two felt truly and completely alone for the first time
since Rhes had first brought her to the museum. That precious
connection with the rest of humanity had been torn from her, and
she had become something outside of the scope of those eons of art.
Against her will she had been made an interloper, no longer welcome
in the human world. It seemed as if those ties that she had found
within the art had been severed.

Sitting on the stone floor in the darkness,
listening to the drip of water, Two wondered when she might see
Theroen again. Clearly, she had been put here to ensure that she
would not run away in his absence. There was no reason for him to
continue holding her in a cell once he returned. She had not
protested, had not attempted any type of escape.

This, more than anything else, calmed her.
If Theroen had intended simply to kill her, she would be dead. The
altered physiology, the translucency in the mirror, the blood tears
… these things suggested some further plan, one in which she joined
him among the ranks of the undead. He would not leave her here to
rot. She would see him again.

But not that night.

* * *

Two rose from sleep in a manner entirely
unfamiliar to her. Before, it had always been fuzzy, a gradual
awakening. Now, she went from the deepest blackness to instant,
total comprehension. It was startling. She sat up, looked around
more from habit than from any need to clear her head. She was still
in the cell, of course. Nothing had changed.

Almost nothing.

Before her was a bottle of water, and a
note. Two took it, read it, crumpled it up and threw it out through
the bars.

Two, please accept my apologies for my
absence, and for the appalling conditions of this cell. It is the
only place in which I can be assured you will neither flee, nor
come to any harm while I am away. I will see you later this
evening. If you are thirsty, it should still be within your
capacity to drink water for now.

- Theroen

No apologies for the bite, though. No
apologies for the lack of warning. No apologies for whatever he had
done that had begun this process without her permission. No
apologies for taking away her connection with humanity, for making
her some sort of monster.

Two felt a crawling, tightening sensation in
her spine, followed by sharp cramp in her abdomen and the muscles
behind her shoulder blades. Her mouth felt dry, her skin hot, and a
wave of panic flooded through her. She knew this feeling, and a
small part of her brain was surprised that it had taken so long to
come around. Her body had been without her drug for at least 24
hours now, and these pains she was feeling now were only a minor
precursor to those on the horizon.

“
Oh, God …” Two fought
against the panic, knowing it would only worsen the symptoms, and
was able to push it back for the time being. The gnawing desire
still sat in the back of her brain, and her muscles ached like she
had the flu, but she was not yet in the horrible pain that she knew
was the next stage.

She uncapped the water, drank, felt it run
down the length of her chest. It seemed as if her senses were
amplified at times, and yet this occurred without warning or
pattern. If she could control it, she had not yet learned how.

Steps above her, the opening of some heavy
door, and then Theroen was there. He looked paler still than he had
the night before, and there were heavy bags under his eyes, but
otherwise he was the same: the short dark hair and light brown
eyes, the lanky body, the unnatural sense of stillness. She thought
she could see the ghost of a smile at his lips.

“
Hello Two.” He stared in
through the bars at her.

Two, with a strength
belying the shakiness inside her, replied, “Nice place you’ve got
here, Theroen.
Love
the decor.”

Theroen grinned, reached out with a key,
unlocked the door to her cell. Iron grating on iron. Squeal of
rusty hinges. He stepped backward, gestured with his hand.

“
You’d probably like a
shower. Some new clothes?”

Two looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“
You turned me into some
kind of monster, Theroen.”

“
Did I?”

“
I can see in the dark. I
was crying earlier, and my tears were pink. I scraped my hands, and
they healed in a couple of minutes. What the fuck did you do to
me?” Two could feel anger replacing fear, and welcomed
it.

“
Something for which you
will one day thank me. Two, you have to trust me.”

“
I don’t have to do
anything! You bought my time for a night, Theroen, not my
life.”

“
I’ve given you a
gift.”

“
Take it back!” Two
shouted. “I didn’t ask for your gift.”

“
You wanted to be with me,
yes?”

Two was quiet. Theroen continued.

“
You did, and not because I
made you, either. No drugs, no magic. I gave you a taste of
freedom, that’s all. A look at what it might be like to be with me.
And now you can be. Forever.”

A shiver ran down Two’s spine. She continued
her silence, holding on to her anger.

“
I’ve given you
immortality, Two … or at least the path to it. I’ve given you a way
to be free of your addictions, free of your life on the streets,
free of that pimp selling you every night.”

“
If you were offering that,
I wouldn’t feel like there are shards of glass in my spine. I need
to go, Theroen. Now. I need that pimp. I need my fix. I never asked
for any of this.”

“
You asked with your eyes.
You asked with your body.”

“
I asked for your love. Not
your … your …”

“
Blood?”

“
Blood! I don’t want this,
Theroen. I don’t.”

“
You don’t know what this
is.” Theroen gestured at her, then at himself. “At least let me
show you.”

Two considered, shivering. Was this a fair
request? Was this man, so little the monster she’d seen portrayed
in movies, read about in books, honestly giving her the chance to
make her own decisions? She had perhaps another 12 hours before the
withdrawal became unbearable.

“
If you trust me, Two, I
will show you a way to break from the world in which you are
trapped. I will give you escape.”

Two shook her head. She couldn’t see it.

Theroen sighed, lifted his finger to his
lips and without hesitation bit down. Blood immediately welled, and
Two felt a sudden surge of adrenaline and terrible hunger. She took
an involuntary step forward, before catching herself.

Theroen held his finger out. Two took
another step, stopped herself.

“
I don’t want
it!”

“
Yes you do, and not only
because of your new nature. Two, I’m sorry for this …”

Theroen moved suddenly, so fast that Two
could not even react to it. Before she could even take in a breath
to scream, he had grasped her, pressed his finger against her lips,
and released her. Two licked them instinctively, and the blood was
like fiery liquor on her tongue, hot and sweet. Ambrosia. It left
her breathless. She sat down on the small bed, dazed.

“
Jesus,” she
said.

Theroen smiled. “No, Two. Jesus has nothing
to do with this.”

Two looked up at him. The aches in her
joints, the chills, the craving for the drug; all had faded far
into the background. Two or three drops of Theroen’s blood had
pushed the symptoms of withdrawal away almost completely.

“
Let me show you what can
be. Will you trust me?”

Two stood, stretched, marveling at the
sudden strength in her limbs. She looked again at Theroen, and saw
in his eyes the same man for whom she had felt such strong feelings
the previous night. Two made her decision.

“
No, Theroen, I don’t trust
you. Not yet …”

Theroen looked crestfallen. He opened his
mouth to protest, and Two held up her hand, smiling slightly.

“
But I’ll let you show
me.”

* * *

The dungeon was in the basement of what must
have been a mansion. Two had never seen rooms of this size, rooms
that seemed to stretch out forever and ever. The decor was stunning
in its complexity, if not necessarily its artistry. Gorgeous,
sixteenth-century paintings hung over gaudy, lacquer-glass statues
of naked, sexless elves. It appeared as if anything that had – ever
– grabbed the owner’s fancy had been purchased and pushed into a
corner. The mansion was over-decorated, over-filled,
over-furnished.