Blood Secrets

Sorry for the delay, but my muse was attacking something else. Here is chapter 2. I hope you like it. WARNINGS: Angst, implied NC, some language, violence.

Amy curled up into a tight ball as a spasm of hunger filled her, but it was not the wolf she had to feed. Her eyes had a different light to them now and when she opened her mouth, there was a set of petite, sharp fangs waiting. She rocked herself quietly, trying to calm her blood lust and put her vampire half back in the closet.

As she lay there silently rocking and counting her breaths, she heard Mike approach her from behind. She suddenly went very still. She had forgotten he was there with the excitement of the wolves. Damn it! I can’t let him see me like this. It’ll ruin everything.

“Don’t come any closer to me,” she rasped out.

Startled, Mike thought, There is no way she could’ve heard me. However, neither her request nor his surprise stopped his forward movement.
Amy closed her eyes tightly. At least this isn’t as noticeable as turning into a wolf. Maybe I can hide it from him until I’m strong enough to run. “Mike, Please stop where you are. I don’t want you near me right now.”

“Are you okay?” He was close, but at least he had finally stopped.

“I’ll be fine. I’m just tired.” Amy tried to breathe through her mouth so that she wouldn’t smell him. “Go back to your warm bed. The men will return to the monastery in the morning.” He was still standing close to her and she could hear his breathing.

She could almost taste the scent of his blood, so hot and smooth. Then there it was. The sweet coppery scent of his blood filled her nose. Oh how soothing it would be to have just a taste of him. NO! NO! NO! She pounded her fist into the ground. She let out a low moan in her struggle to fight the hunger, and she began to rock again trying to find comfort in the movement.

With her intensified struggle, he started toward her again in an attempt to try to help. “STOP!” she let out in a strangled yell, and he did. Get a hold of yourself, Amy. We need them to trust us, and we can’t get that if we use them as food.

Through force of will alone, she suppressed the blood lust, but she knew it would not last. When she could finally hear beyond the blood rushing through her ears, she noticed that Mike was closer than she wanted him to be. Of course far, far away would have been to close to her at that moment. “Back away from me, slowly.” Her voice held only the slightest quaver, a fact she was very proud of at the moment. She heard his hesitant foot steps retreat. When he was far enough from her body, she attempted to stand up so that she could face him. Since he was human for the most part, it was unlikely that he would be able to see the changes in her appearance from this distance in the dark. Besides he had not seen her eyes before the hunger rode her, so he would not notice the change. She was hoping that he would forget the details of her face by the next time he saw her in the light.

Normally, she would have hidden the change so that he would be none the wiser, but she had used so much energy changing Greg and then the remaining nine that she was too spent to force that kind of magic. Her ability to hide things was a form of glamour. She needed energy for that, which she did not have to spare. She needed to feed to get back to “normal.”

She, Ann, and “the Prophet” Christian were family and had each started life as immortal beings. A genetic gift passed on to them from their father, Mike who had no idea that they still lived. Christian was the oldest of the three of them, and had left home when their mother died. After Christian left, their father could not bear to live alone with his two daughters because they were constant reminders of the woman he lost. He soon abandoned the young girls in the woods to live or die, as nature would have them.

They survived relying on each other for support and strength. The girl’s support of one another developed into a telepathic link that assisted their survival needs quite nicely. After all, how can catch one sister doing something when the other sister distracts them at exactly the right time for the first to do her job? They not only survived life’s little disasters and thrived, but also managed to catch the eyes of two brothers, who were governing their village.

At the ages of 23 and 22 respectively, Amy and Ann were joined to Eric and Louis Evans in marriage, and they were happy. However, on the first night of their honeymoons Eric and Louis were abducted by rival vampire guilds. The vampires knew that Eric and Louis governed the lands, which each guild wanted for its own territory. So in an attempt to expedite the end of the rivalry, each guild turned one of the brothers not knowing that their rival was doing the same to the other.

Ann and Amy were very concerned about their missing husbands. They searched for three days, but could not find a trace of either one. Finally, on the fourth night of their honeymoons, the men returned fully understanding what had befallen them. They realized that they were now, in essence immortal, and believed that their beautiful wives would wither and die before them while they remained forever young. They did not know that their beautiful young brides would stop aging at the age of 25 because of the genetic gift passed on to them by their father. The ladies were not immortal in the truest sense of the word. They could still be killed like any human being, but they could not die of old age.

That night, the men decided to make their wives like themselves. They brought the women to their respective rooms with the excuse of continuing their interrupted honeymoons. The women, being so thrilled to see that their husbands were returned unharmed, willingly went along with any suggestions made to them in the name of love.

Louis took Ann with every form of violence that had been used on him in his change. The fear she showed during the encounter only excited his passions and caused him to be all the more violent. He spent all night with her, taking pleasure from her in every way he could imagine. Finally, just before dawn, he sank his teeth into her bruised and battered flesh and gorged himself on her blood. When she was all but a shell of herself, he forced her to drink a small trickle of blood, which he produced from a pinprick on his finger. Louis’ new blood ties overrode his love for his new wife, so he would not allow her to drink anymore than that for fear that she would be more powerful than he was. After she had enough of his blood to change, he left her there alone in their room.

Meanwhile, Eric showed as much compassion for Amy as he could. He resisted enough of the vampire blood in his system to be able to offer her the choice. When she accepted his offering, he made love to her in the most gentle of fashions. He took her up and over the crest of pleasure all night until the very thought of one more time brought tears to her eyes. Near dawn, while she was still in the afterglow of her last orgasm, he enfolded her in his arms and bit down into her soft skin. He used what mind gifts he had attained to make her as comfortable as possible. Finally, when he had taken enough blood to sustain him through her change, he lifted her into his lap and cradled her head by his neck. He made a cut in the side of his throat with a fingernail and told her to drink. Though the action brought pain to him, he made small cooing sounds to her and encouraged her to drink her fill from him. As long as she was happy and strong, she could not hurt him. When she could take no more from him, he stayed with her and rocked her through the violence of the change. After the transformation was complete, and her tears of pain had ceased, he took her to a safe place in the house, where they could rest for the day away from the sun’s killer rays.

As the sun rose from its resting-place, Amy could hear Ann calling out from her nightmarish ordeal. Ann cried for her sister to help her because Louis had abandoned her in her time of need. Amy had turned her gaze to Eric and saw that for the day, he was as dead as a corpse in the ground, but that something in her blood allowed her to move about in the daytime. She rose from Eric’s hiding place and returned to the upper rooms of the castle.

In Louis’ bedroom, Amy found her sister too weak to move and covered in blood and bruises. Ann was lying on the bed in full view of the bright morning sun. This was when Amy realized that she and Ann did not have to fear harm from the rays of the sun. She rushed to Ann’s side and found a dagger on the bedside table. With the dagger, she cut her wrist and fed her sister until Ann had enough energy to move on her own. The two women hurriedly washed and dressed. Amy wrote a note to Eric letting him know that for everyone’s safety, they were fleeing the castle. Their plan was to search for Christian, who was rumored to be staying with druids in Ireland.

They found him after a three-month search, studying to become a shaman for a pack of werewolves. Apparently the druid thing had not worked out, something about his not dying when he should have; therefore, pretending to be a god. The werewolves had caught him, while he had been fleeing the druid camp, and, in the ensuing scuffle, infected him with lycanthropy.

By the time Ann and Amy found Christian, he had enough control of his beast that he did not always change when angry, just most of the time. While the women were staying with the pack, Amy started getting visions. One such vision was of a war, which Louis started against Eric. He accused Eric of stealing Ann from him. Unfortunately, Christian had been in the same room and when the vision came, a certain amount of vampiric energy escaped from her shields and Christian’s wolf attacked her instinctively. Ann came into the room during the attack and tried to help Amy. When she tried to restrain Christian, he fought like a cornered animal. Thus, he unintentionally infected both of his sisters with lycanthropy.

Unfortunately for the sisters, the lycanthropy virus reacted horribly with the vampire blood, which was already flowing through their veins. The two were taken to the shaman with extremely high fevers. The shaman recognized that the fevers were caused by the conflict of blood, so she brought both women fresh blood and forced them both to drink. The feeding put the vampire hunger at bay effectively stopping the blood feud, which allowed the lycanthropy to run its course.

After that, the sisters decided to make their brother like them, so that they could share their world with someone else. They decided that Amy should be the one to change him, because her vampiric transformation had been beautiful. Ann’s experience was so terrible that she felt that if she were the one to change him, she would hurt him. Amy took Christian to a nearby creek, and changed him there among all the beauty to which he had become accustomed.

With the combination of these three forms, Amy, Ann, and Christian gained the ability to cheat death. They could die, as in their hearts would stop beating and they would cease to breathe; however, this death could not last. Their bodies would stop, but their blood was now a sort of sentient being. It would continue to flow and would heal whatever had caused the temporary death in the first place. When the damage was corrected, they would awaken as if they had merely been deeply asleep.

They could go up to a month without feeding, if they did nothing strenuous. On the other hand, if they did anything that used a great deal of metaphysical strength, they would need to feed at least one of their hungers. With time, Amy and Christian learned to suppress their hungers if it was necessary, while Ann would not see a reason for it. Louis had broken her of most kinds of compassion. She did not feel sorry for her food, there just did not seem to be a reason for such worries.

As for their food of choice, they found that only human or supernatural blood would satisfy the vampire, whereas the hunt and kill of an animal would satisfy the werewolf hunger. Sometimes, it did not matter which hunger was fed, just so long as it was not kept waiting. However, there were times when the hunger chose what food it needed to be satisfied.

Such was the case for Amy now. She knew that she could not suppress this hunger because she had used too much energy. The only food that could return that much energy was vampire food. She was beyond the point of being able to change into the wolf, because if she tried with the blood lust so high, she would start a war with her blood that would incapacitate her until Ann or Christian could get her what she needed. She could not allow that to happen.

She focused on Mike again, realizing that she had not really been seeing him this whole time. She breathed shallowly through her mouth so that she would not smell him as strongly. Unfortunately, her hunger allowed her to taste the scent of his blood. She knew she could not hold out much longer; she must get rid of him quickly. “Mike,” she had to swallow hard before she could continue. “You have to leave now. Go back to the monastery, the monks will return with Ann when they are sated.”

“I do not want to leave you out here alone. It could be dangerous.” He took a step toward her, and she quickly retreated from his advances, which made him pause. “Why do you run from me? I mean you no harm. Let me take you back with me. I will protect you.”

Amy let out a loud harsh laugh. “Now he cares,” she whispered to the night air. It was then that he noticed that her eyes had changed to a deep blue, almost the purple-blue color of the twilight sky. She saw the puzzled look on his face and shook her head in sorrow. “There will come a time, when I will need your assistance, but that time is not now. Leave me to the woods that have become home to me. I will meet you back at the monastery in time to greet the others. Do not fear for me, for there is nothing in these woods that could harm me. Go now.” She did not wait to see if he left, she just turned and walked away.

“Wait!” Mike cried out. “Why do I know you and your sister?”

She half turned to face him with a smile on her face that did not reach her eyes and replied, “We have met before, a lifetime ago. You just don’t remember yet.” And with that cryptic message, Amy left Mike alone, on the sea of green grasses, to find his way back home.