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Alex s lips. His tongue stretched out and caught the drops like he
was catching snowflakes. She brought her wrist over his mouth,
carefully, because his lips were purple and blistered, and he suckled
at it instinctively, half conscious. It didn t hurt.
He was a vampire. A vampire.
Even with the truth sucking on her wrist it didn t make any
sense at all. She looked at the X-Acto knife on the ground. It didn t
make sense that she d been brave enough to cut herself either. None
of this made sense. How d he get so burned, anyway?
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Called by Blood
Suddenly he grabbed hold of her wrist with both hands and tore
into her flesh like a pit bull. It hurt, but the adrenalin shot through
her too fight or flight like she d never experienced. She fought for
her life, silently, desperately, kicking at his ruined flesh, trying to
pull away from his vice-like jaws. But it made no difference. With
amazing strength he flipped her on her back, threw himself over her
body and began to suck in earnest. The edges of her vision clouded
black as the blood left her body. The room went dark, but her
hearing worked until the end. The last sound she heard was the wet,
slurping sound of him eating her alive.
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Chapter Five
When she woke, she was still on the basement floor, but she
was cozy and warm. A pillow was under her head, the quilt off her
bed around her. The first thing she did was look at her arm. There
wasn t a mark on it. She bolted up out of the blanket. Where was
Alex?
You ll be lightheaded. It was a stranger s voice, deep and
resonant. It may have been a warning, or a command, for the
moment he said it the room began to spin in giddy loops. Helena
dropped back to the pillow and the room stopped moving. Carefully
she rolled toward the voice and found a man with long blond hair
cradling Alex in his lap. For a confused moment she thought he was
an angel because he was too chiseled, too pale, too unearthly
beautiful to be human. His black T-shirt was hiked up, his breast
sliced open, and in a grotesque parody of nursing, the charred thing
that used to be Alex lapped at the cut with a long, pointed tongue.
Am I dead?
The man lifted his head. His cool blue eyes were sad. Not
momentarily sad, but habitually sad. There was a difference. He
appraised her in a single glance, a knowing glance that was not
exactly cruel, but so calculating and distant that she realized he
couldn t be human. It was like having a staring contest with a big
Called by Blood
cat at the zoo. Alex would not kill you to save himself. The angel
man looked back down at Alex. He s the best of all of us.
And you are?
His brother, Mikhail. He pointed his chin at a glass beside
her. Drink your orange juice.
***
I m having a psychotic break. This is what it s like.
No wonder crazy people never thought they were nuts.
Everything was normal. It wasn t like the houseplants were talking
to her. She just happened to have vampires in her basement.
Mikhail had taken over caring for Alex and asked for little
from her. No one asked her to feed Alex again, and she hadn t
volunteered. Mikhail Misha, Alex called him went in and out a
lot. Helena figured he was going out and sucking on other people
and bringing their blood home to Alex like a sinister mama bird.
She tried not to think about it. Don t ask, don t tell.
That first night, Mikhail explained how Alex came to be
burned and assured her he would recover from it in time, but he was
closed mouthed about vampirism in general. He said she should talk
to Alex about these things. Mikhail was a little scary. Not that he
wasn t always perfectly polite, but it was he, not Alex, that made
her believe in vampires. Or rather, vham-peers. Mikhail pronounced
it that way too.
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Evie Byrne
Helena puzzled on the differences between the two brothers.
Mikhail was slick, precise, icy and startlingly beautiful while Alex
was impulsive, warm, impatient and had been handsome in a more
normal way. They did look a little alike same chin and mouth,
same ears, same hands. That was about it. Mikhail carried Alex as
easily as he would a child, and moved with a flowing grace that was
borderline creepy. Helena had to assume that Alex was that strong
and could move like that too if he wanted. But somehow Alex
passed for human while his brother did not.
Whenever Mikhail left, Alex began to howl in pain or hunger.
She didn t know which. Working on a strict need-to-know basis,
that was her. Unable to help him with either problem, she hid. She
ran miles every day, more than she had in a long time. When she
couldn t run anymore she came home and cleaned. She was working
on organizing the garage. It was cold, but it had to be done. If she
worked hard enough, maybe she could sleep.
All she wanted was for them to leave. She wanted her old life
back.
She wouldn t call the police, because if they got Alex, he d die.
And if Mikhail got the police& Well, best not to hypothesize.
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