Chapter 11

After three months and one week without any calls or messages whatsoever, Dylan called me after what seemed like forever. The only problem was that I had just finished my shower, and was buck-naked underneath my towel…and that I left the phone on the dinner table two floors below. I groaned as Jez told me that she’d answer it. Who knows what she’ll tell him?! Being the evil person she was, I was petrified.

“Here,” she said, appearing before me just as I went out the door. Again, creepy. She handed me the phone and disappeared. Whoa. They were really, really fast, weren’t they?

“H-hello…?” I asked, feeling a bit nervous and giddy at the same time.

“Hey, babe,” a husky voice said from the other line. No. No, no, no! What happened to his voice?! Was it even him?

“What happened to you?” I asked, concerned, as I put it on loudspeaker so I could clothe myself. I’m not going to talk to my boyfriend stark-naked beneath the towel that was wrapped around me, even if he was far away.

“I…uh…ran into a few Hunters,” he said. Oh, I felt so sorry for him. I wanted to hug him right about now. “The mission lasted for….uhm…a few months. I couldn’t call because there was no signal in the area. I’m so sorry,”

“You asshole,” I murmured as I dried myself up and proceeded to put on a random pair of pyjamas and underwear, along with the t-shirt. “Thanks a lot for making me worry,”

“I’m sorry, honey,” he said. Argh, I shouldn’t have had overreacted. I put it on ‘handset’ and pressed the phone to my ear. I should really be worried, not mad at him for making me worry. “I’ll come home to you soon, I promise.”

That sentence, even if his voice sounded rough and strained, sounded so sappy that it made my heart melt.

“Aw, it’s okay babe,” I said. “But what exactly happened to you?”

“Some Hunters sabotaged our outpost. I had to…uhm…save my friend, but we were trapped inside when they bombed our place. My neck is kind-of torn, so----,”

“Your neck is WHAT?!” I shouted, interrupting him. Damn it. Just imagining his condition made me sick. I tried not to focus on that.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, his tone genuine and honest as always. “I miss you, Leah,”

“Miss you, too,” I said. I meant it. I really, really did, even if I knew that I committed a sin against him. “How long ‘til you get back?”

“One month. I begged Uncle Ed so I can get a leave, but I’ll have to work an extra month when I get back.”

“You make it sound so far away.”

“Just don’t think about it too much, okay?”

I murmured an agreement. Thirty-one days sounded so long. He laughed at me.

“That’s the Leah I know and love. So how have they been treating you there?”

I debated on whether I should tell him about Paul attacking me, but I figured that he needed as much rest as he can get, and that maybe he shouldn’t be stressed too much so he can heal faster.

“It’s been…okay, I guess. They’ve all been really nice to me, but Jez seriously wants to kill me on her bike.”

“You’ve been riding with her?”

“She won’t allow Ryan to give me any rides, so I’m forced to, since I always forget to go home on the weekends and get my car from there.”

He laughed. “Just put up with that for a month. When I get home, you’ll get to ride with me.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” I said with a smile on my face. Unwillingly, I let out a huge yawn.

“Are you tired?” he asked, obviously concerned.

“It’s just been a long day, and we did a lot of stuff…but if you still want to talk, then it’s fine.”

“Leah, you should get your rest. You don’t have to stay up to listen to me.”

“But I want to,” I said, but not before letting out another involuntary yawn. It wouldn’t hurt if I rested my eyes for a while…

“You should,” he told me, this time sounding a little more authoritative. “I love you, Leah,”

“Love you, too,” I said. I barely heard the line click before I fell asleep.

I guess I slept through the whole day, because I woke up to the dinner bell.

Yes, the Night family had a dinner bell. In case you didn’t know, it’s a quaint little silver bell that had a silhouette of a kangaroo on it. Even if it was small, it was really, really loud.

No wonder I woke up.

I rubbed my eyes, and turned on my stomach just to drown the sound. I put a pillow over my ears, but the loud ringing sound reverberated in my head. I groaned, and then finally gained the incentive to open my tired eyes.

I wondered for a while if I only slept for an hour or two, since it was still dark. I yawned sleepily as I dragged my feet to the floor. Bad move, Leah.

This made me fall on the floor on my face…again.

I groaned and turned on my back. I wondered why that damned bell rang when I just fell asleep.

Then, it hit me.

I had fallen asleep through the whole day.

I groaned again as I leapt lazily to my feet and dragged my seemingly heavy body downstairs. I looked at the other side of the wall, looking past the TV room, and into the kitchen…where deer were stacked as high as the ceiling above them. They were scattered on the floor around the pile and feeding from a deer of their own. It was an odd scene.

I became insecure as they glanced wordlessly at me, and then looked away just the same, continuing on to whatever they were doing, as if I hadn’t come at all.

God, they couldn’t be scarier than how they looked like right now.

Let me start with the least scary person: Lucifer. His crippled white shirt was not smeared with blood unlike the others, nor was his clothes or any other part of his body except for his chin and his lips. He wiped the blood from his chin with his hand, which he started licking. His eyes remained their natural black colour, except that they reflected back the light, which was only slightly creepy. Bella was obviously telling a joke, which looked weird, considering that her clothes were smeared with blood, and her eyes were a glimmering colour of silver and her skin looked close to luminous under the light. She held a stag on one hand, and her fangs could be seen every time she opened her mouth. Well, at least her face wasn’t smeared with blood, unlike Luke and Paul, who had similar crimson eyes and looked so alike that I could have mistaken them as twins.

The twins, though, were the scariest and creepiest of them all.

Ryan was sitting down, his legs splayed in front of him, while his twin’s head was on them, her long, shapely legs lying on top of a dead and drained stag. Ryan looked scary with his gleaming silver eyes, half closed but covered with his black-and-blonde hair. Jez’s hair was on his legs, which couldn’t be properly distinguished, since his trousers were as black as her hair. Actually, both of them wore black: with the shirt, trousers for Ryan and jeans for Jez, and the pure black Doc Martens. Now those were twins. Their skins were pale but luminous, kind-of like glow-in-the-dark, except it was the opposite: their skins glowed when it hit the light. They looked like bloody ghosts.

“Oh, look,” Paul said as he pointedly looked at me. “The main course finally woke up,”

This gave me the shivers. Up to now, Paul continuously referred to me as ‘food’, ‘main course’, or ‘a scrumptious meal’.

“Paul, don’t be so rude to her,” Bella snapped at him. “I’m sorry, Leah. We thought you wouldn’t wake up until the morning,”

“How long was I asleep?”

“You slept through the whole day, lazy ass,” Jez said as she looked me in the eye. There was something creepy about that look. “Unless you’re gunna eat, feed, take a bath or whatever it is humans do, I suggest you go back to sleep and stay that way,”

Bella sighed, and I wanted to do the same; Jez and the other males were all equally rude in their own way. Instead, my stomach growled. I had to laugh nervously as I carefully stepped over their splayed legs and the dead corpses of deer (which would turn off my appetite on any other night---or day----if I wasn’t feeling so hungry) and went over to the fridge. Well, at least there was pasta.

Even if the sauce reminded me of the blood, I tried to suck it up and reheated it on the rarely-used microwave.

“I heard that you’ll be studying about us for a while,” Lucifer said, taking a dead deer and lying on top of it. That just looked so wrong.

“Who did you hear that from?” I asked.

“Megan,” he answered. “She’s a sweet girl. I absolutely love her,”

“Another pun, Lucifer?” Luke asked, sounding amused. Seriously. Every time I meet Lucifer, he says puns that get on my nerves. Unlike vampires, I hated puns.

“Wait, I just remembered something,” Bella piped up. Just on cue, the microwave dinged and stopped heating the cold pasta. That was absurd: vampires never forget…right? “We haven’t celebrated my cousin’s birthday yet!”

“Bells, that’s why we went to the Philippines and that’s why Ryan got to spend time with Leah, remember?” Jez said in her usual bored tone.

“Leah’s boring,” Ryan said, his perfect, bloody red lips turning into a small frown. “I wanted to drink from her,”

“I’m sorry you weren’t satisfied, honey,” Jez said as she wiped a drop of blood from her brother’s lip with a finger. She almost sounded…loving…if that was even possible. But it was deeper than that. It was as if…she was talking to a lover. But that would be so weird, right? She put her finger to her lips and licked it. “We’ll find you a yummy female soon. Can you wait until graduation, babe?”

“I guess…” he said as I turned from them and got my pasta. I grabbed a nearby fork and ate it as fast as I can. I never realised I was so hungry. Still…the way those twins talked to each other was way too intimate for me to handle. Besides, the smell of the corpses was starting to make me sick.

Still, I knew I had to get used to it.

When I finished, it was as if the smell disappeared. It had an after-smell left in my nose, but I noticed the shadow that the deer pile cast had already disappeared. Since I had my back turned to them, I didn’t really see how the deer pile disappeared. Even so, I knew that Bella took the corpses out since she returned from the back door. All the other vampires were still sitting on the corpse-less floor.

“Ah, what a great meal,” Lucifer said as he got up. He calmly walked to the garage. Soon, we heard an engine revving and the gate opening and closing. I’ll say this again: vampires are fast.

“He probably went to Megan,” Bella said as she got the mop and cleaned the place in a flash. If only I could do that. “He loves her more than he says he does,”

“That’s nice,” I said as I walked over to the sink and washed the plate and the fork I used. I felt their eyes on me, but I continued on doing what I was doing. I couldn’t let them intimidate me. They were cool and scary at the same time…and they looked great while doing it. They had eternity ahead of them, while I relied on their souls to at least survive. In short, my existence pretty much sucked before they came along.

I finished, arranged the dishes, and grabbed a can of Schweppes from the fridge (which they seemed to stack up on since I came here). I walked to the TV room, and Jez followed me. I turned on the TV to distract me from her, but she kept on staring. Argh, it was so annoying. Moreover, she wasn’t just staring. She was glaring at me, in fact. For what reason? I don’t know. I didn’t even do anything to her…yet.

“I just don’t understand your kind,” she finally said before she shut the sliding door. I heard the others shuffle in the kitchen before the backdoor closed and the garage opened again. Engines revved and the gate was closed----again. I was hit with the awful reality that Jez was alone with me in the house. What was she going to do now? The best I can hope for is that I can live through today. But that was probably false hope, since she looked at me like I was food. Did she think of me as Paul did----as main course? Where the hell did the others go?! “Don’t worry. I won’t kill you…yet. That is, unless you somehow break up with my brother, leave him tormented, ruin his innocence and make him wallow in deep melancholy. That’s when I’ll finally get to kill you without any regrets.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked. There was a long silence as she sat beside me. I didn’t even see her walk towards me, much less run. One second, she was leaning on the wall. The next, she was sitting beside me with an identical can of Schweppes in her hand. “You won’t kill me. You probably won’t bring me good news. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to waste so much time with me…so what do you want?”

“I’d like to say that I want to drink your blood, but I’m full,” she said with a conniving smile on her face. I tried to focus on the animé show, but it was too lame and too boring to distract me. It was all little subtitles and Japanese and lots of punches and explosions. I didn’t get it. “Instead, I’m going to ask you questions that I’ve wanted to ask ever since you’ve come to live here temporarily and I’ve started to give you rides to school.”

“O…kay…?” I said uncertainly. What was I supposed to say then? ‘Go and ask me, I won’t mind, since you’ll be squeezing every secret out of me soon enough anyway’?! Uh-uh. No way in hell.

“First off, how do you live by drinking people’s blood?”

“Wait----can I ask you questions, too? If you don’t mind,”

“Sure. We can make it into a game!” she said, saying the last sentence sarcastically.

“I’d rather keep it as a question-answer thing,” I replied. I knew that she hated it when people took her sarcastic comments literally. As she reasoned, it was supposed to be ‘sarcastic and not the real thing’.

“Whatever. Just answer the question and let’s get it over with. Ryan and Bells want to know, too, but they had to drag Luke and Paul off to a footie game so as to prevent any fights. You know how they can get, but----back to the topic,”

I sighed. I’d better answer it before she got too impatient. “You really want to know how my whole diet works.”

“Sadly, I have the whole of eternity to listen to you. So spill already, would ya?”

Another sigh. My saliva will probably run out if I explain it all, but if she insists----well, being nice to her might get me more brownie points towards Dylan. “I consume souls through blood. If you really want the whole damn thing, well…here goes:

“The blood comes from the heart, right? The heart is also the central part of the soul----the physical part in which the soul is almost entirely devoted to. The heart, in turn, produces blood. We, Dark Drinkers, drink the blood, which carries part of the person’s soul. So…there.”

“That’s it? I thought that blood was blood. I’m not really into the whole spiritual thing.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, shut up. It’s my turn to ask the question.”

“Shoot,” she said. She heartily drank from her can. I could tell she was secretly enjoying this, judging by the faint smile on her cherry red lips.

“Are those vampire things true? You know, the aversion to garlic, light, religious relics, and mirrors and stuff like that? Or is that just another kind of vampire?”

She laughed at this, almost choking on her drink, which made me laugh, too.

“I hope you choke on your drink,” she said, almost too darkly. I laughed on.

“Ha ha…yeah, whatever. Just answer,”

“Those things on books?” she asked, as if trying to verify what exactly I was asking about. I nodded. “Well…some of them are true, some are not. We don’t have shadows----which I’m sure you barely notice due to your lack of focus----only the gifted ones can do things like read your minds, turn into whatever it is the legends say we turn into, or even tame animals, mostly wolves and bats. We don’t have an aversion to garlic, since I personally love it. We don’t have any aversion to light---but that’s just the Royals. Normal vampires can burn or scald under direct contact from sunlight. Really old vampires will turn into a whole lot of ash once they touch sunlight. Some of us are very religious, so that takes out the relics, including holy water, crucifixes and crosses, and even Eucharistic wafers. Vanity is something in all vamps, so mirrors are out, too. Salts and seeds are just plain preposterous. Wood is something most of us use often. All the other legends are all terribly wrong, since they don’t have the real thing yet: another sign of human stupidity and error.”

“So how can you be killed?”

“Do you even want to kill us? And besides, it’s not your turn to ask,”

“Follow-up question,” I said smugly. Ha! Take that, Jez!

“Oh well. Royals like us can be killed by chopping of our heads, taking out our hearts, or burning us alive----all three of which you can’t do without getting killed yourself, unless you’re a very strong vampire with a very strong vendetta and a history of extreme violence.”

“That was too much,”

“Nah. I prefer to call it being informed.”

“Whatever. Just ask your question so we can get it over with.”

“Where do you come from?” she asked the minute I finished my sentence. I gulped a big one and answered:

“We’re just…souls….reincarnated. We all return to our home, which was----and still is----called Shadowfield. If you want the whole name, then----,”

“Nuh. That’s fine with me. So how do you get to Shadowfield?” she asked. I glanced at her to say something, but she beat me to it. “Follow-up question,”

Huh. Well, I’ll let that slide this time. “You can’t get into Shadowfield unless you become a Drinker, which is by means of dying. When you die, there’s the in-between. Shadowfield is kind-of like…between the in-between, sandwiched by heaven and hell, constantly changing, but with Earthly qualities.”

The questions and answers that followed seemed to last only for a few minutes, but in reality, lasted a few hours.

In those fleeting hours, I have learned that Jez doesn’t really like going to school and that Ryan forced her to do it. She doesn’t really like walking and talking humans with blood in them and food practically written on them, she hates people like Lina----who, I found out, was my ‘friend’ who left before me at Dylan’s party----and she doesn’t care about her birthday like other people do. Also, I learned technical stuff about their kind, which would come in useful if I get another Recon assignment.

Vampires are not what legends say they are. They only have two kinds: the Royals----the original vampires----and the normal ones, which are humans made into vampires by Royals by accidentally exchanging blood with them. Normal vampires have rotting souls, which gradually disappear and only get replenished if they drink a Royal’s blood. A normal vampire’s blood is toxin to most Royals, but some have gained the immunity from the toxin and actually love it----like Jez, Ryan and Lucifer. Royals, however, are a different matter.

Jez explained to me that vampires like her were once souls, too. They didn’t actually have physical forms when God cast them down from Olympus----which was approximately the time of Queen Mary of Scotland. They got their physical forms gradually, and they also decided on how they should look like. Once they got their physical forms----or shells, or bodies, or whatever it is you’d like to call it----they were vulnerable to what we Dark Drinkers call ‘the Final Death’. If they die, their souls won’t come back and live again like our kind. They just die and stay that way. It was a pity, really. Anyway, they’ve been drinking from humans when they gained their bodies, but they started going on an animal diet to prevent human extinction. Only a few vampires drink from humans.

While I learned a lot about her, I guess I didn’t keep my side of the bargain, since I revealed only a little.

She knew that I can be killed my driving something through my skull----a thing that causes an instant, painless Final Death. She learned that I only feed once every two months and that I hated posers, feelers, backstabbers and liars. She absolutely knew that I hated anything that was too sweet and that I hated cheese, and the fact that I wanted to be a vampire---a truth that I subconsciously knew but didn’t want to admit until then.

The ‘game’ ended when the boys and Bella went in while I was explaining how Drinkers reproduce----something that I would not want to discuss openly anymore. It was like when my father explained all about the ‘birds and the bees’ or whatever it was: the explanation was, to sum it up, kinda like explaining to a kid how intercourse works. I mean, I never really experienced it, but I was close to doing it. I wasn’t even a backdoor virgin anymore thanks to Nathan, but----argh, I don’t even want to think about it anymore. Explaining it all to her----a pretty vampire whom I highly doubt is a virgin----is like explaining it to a kid.

“Oh my God, it’s been forever!” Jez said, interrupting me as well, as soon as her brother opened the sliding door. I shook my head. They were way too intimate. “How was the game?”

Ryan looked pointedly at Bella---who was sleeping in Luke’s arms----and the brothers, who were arguing about which team was better. I couldn’t relate.

“You were bored to death?” she presumed. Actually, the presumption was more of a fact. “Aw, that’s so sad.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ryan agreed as he sat down on the seat beside me. Jez simply sat on his lap. It looked so wrong when Ryan pricked his index finger with his nail and Jez started licking it. Ryan just sat there, bored as always, not minding the fact that his twin was sucking his blood. He looked entirely focused on the show, which was entirely animated. His hand reached out to me, and I didn’t know what to do, since he opened his palm. He looked at me like I was stupid and said one word: “Remote.”

Just like that, I gave it to him. It was too late when I realised that the way he said was too boorish. He started flicking channels. Apparently, their cable TV reached more than 114 channels.

Instead of focusing on the TV, all I could stare at was their awkward scene.

“W-what are you doing?” I asked, unsure if I should ruin the moment.

“It’s what we always do, so mind your own business,” they both responded simultaneously. Still, there was more weirdness to come: “Back off and get a life, will you?”

It was like talking to one person comprised of two different people. It was weird, awkward, odd, curious, abnormal, atypical, peculiar and, most of all, uncommon. She never explained to me how the twin thing worked.

I decided not to pry and focus on the TV show that Ryan picked----which, unfortunately for me, was House, M.D----but I can’t help but hear the small, lapping sounds that Jez made while she drank from that small incision that I presume would be bleeding profusely since she was drinking so much.

Finally, she let out a contented sigh.

Oh God, that was horrible.

It was the weirdest thing I have ever witnessed in my whole existence.

I looked at them, and regretted doing it: now, she actually kissed him briefly on the lips, bid him good night, and went up to her room.

“What was that?” I asked as Ryan smiled. Either it was because of the sarcastic doctor in the show or his amusement; I was baffled by him. He was a total mystery to me.

“What was what?” he retorted with an innocent-sounding question of his own.

“That thing that you and Jez do,” I pointed out not-so-nicely. I was impatient for answers. I needed a good distraction and the twins helped with that, what with all their weirdness.

“Oh, that,” he said, as if he just realised. Duh. “Well, since you asked it twice on the same hour of the same day, I’m presuming that you won’t let it go,”

“Not a chance,” I said, my stubborn-ness finally paying off.

“Oh, what the heck,” he said. “I’m sure Jez wouldn’t mind. You see, the ‘thing’ we do is what vampire twins usually do. Since we’re one of the largely endangered twin pairs, we try to keep tradition alive by doing an intimate act,”

“Intimate?” I said, choking on the word. “You’re brother and sister. You’re not supposed to be intimate,”

“It’s tradition,” he repeated. “It was believed that twins are halves of each other, so vampire tradition makes us complete our halves by sharing blood.”

“Are you really that intimate?” I asked again. I knew it was a rhetorical question, but screw that. I’d never get over it. Again, the scene replayed itself in my mind. I’d never get that image out of my mind in a hundred years. “What about the kiss then? That’s so…off,”

“He he….it’s uh…what we do before we go to sleep,” he said, scratching the back of his head and slightly blushing at the confession. I never thought I’d live up to this day. Oh God, kill me now. “We’ve been doing it since we were born,”

“But you’re really intimate,”

“You already said that three times in the same hour of the same day.”

“But still…!”

“Why don’t we move on to a different subject?”

“Why?”

“Because you are starting to annoy me,” he said pointedly, looking at me with those half bored, half amused eyes.

“I found that I very much like to annoy you.”

“Oh really?”

I felt like I was falling deeper and deeper into those eyes that bored into me, that presented mystery every time it made contact. I was scared.