The Iron in Blood Read online

CHAPTER 5

  Rebecca

  It was still dark outside when the alarm went off in the morning, ripping me away from the ghostly memories of some strangely gratifying dream. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, struggling to wake up. I knew that if I lay my head down for just one more minute, I would wake up hours later, late for school and in loads of trouble. It had happened before. Often.

  I blinked owlishly as light flooded my room. Mark stood in my doorway, grinning, his finger still on the switch. I lunged at him, and almost caught him, but he slipped away downstairs, laughing triumphantly. I sat back down on the bed as memories of yesterday unexpectedly poured into my head. I looked around at my bedroom, surprised at how normal everything felt. I was still worried about getting to school on time, for goodness sake. The ordinariness was comforting. I can do this, I thought.

  I had a quick shower and dressed in a clean uniform, strapping the ungainly knee brace around my leg almost as an afterthought. It was all about keeping up appearances. I tied my still wet hair back in a rudimentary plait, brushed my teeth, and hobbled downstairs, crutch free. Much better.

  Mum had left for work while I was showering, and Mark had finished his breakfast, and was sitting in the corner of the sitting room at the computer, clearly deeply immersed in what he was reading. Joe had left soon after Mum. He had never been an early riser before, but now he was seeing some girl, and he liked to be at her house early to walk with her to college. Love in action – changing the habits of a lifetime.

  “Time to go, Sis. I’ll walk with you today.” Mark stood near the door suddenly, bag slung over his shoulder.

  “You don’t need to do that, Mark. My knee is fine now. And what about Harry?”

  “I’ll send him a text. I know your knee is fine. I’m more worried about you trying to rip people’s throats out and suchlike. What will the neighbours say?” He burst out laughing again. I glared balefully at him. “No, seriously, Rebecca, I think I’ll keep an eye on you until your iron levels have stabilised. I thought you were going to die yesterday.” He shrugged.

  I was grateful for his uncharacteristic concern. “Thanks Mark. I’ll get my stuff.”

  The walk to school was uneventful. Mark had stopped teasing me about blood and throats and things like that. Maybe he was worried that we would be overheard, and someone would take his ridiculous banter seriously. He was taking this secret keeping business seriously. Good. I wasn’t ready to be outed yet.

  Mark left me at the gate and went to find Harry. I made my way to my first lesson of the day – maths – trying to remember to limp. The knee brace helped.

  “Freakface!”

  Oh crap. Shanice again. I sighed, irritated. I’d been thinking about this afternoon, and seeing Angus again. I’d also been trying to dismiss those intrusive thoughts and not think about him and how he looked and smelled and felt. It took a lot of concentration to think such conflicting things at the same time. Shanice interrupted that concentration, and I was suddenly angry with her. I turned abruptly.

  “What!” I almost barked at her.

  She smirked at me and took a few steps forward so that her face hovered near mine. “Ooh, Freakface here is getting cross with me. Ooh, what am I going to do?” I smelled her fetid breath as she leaned even closer, and heard the tittering of her friends and fellow bullies in the background. I should theoretically have been afraid of her, all two hundred pounds of malice and spite, but I wasn’t. Not anymore. When something really big happens in your life, I guess you forget to sweat the small stuff. I was tired of always trying to avoid this big reeking nemesis of mine.

  “Back off,” I growled at her.

  I saw the change in her eyes, the intention, and her face hardened. I was prepared for the blow, and swayed backwards as her hand shot out, glancing off my chin and shooting past my left ear. She was suddenly off balance, her face even closer, her nose a tempting target. I put my right hand out and hit her in the face with my palm, feeling the crunch of breaking bone as her nose was squashed against her cheeks, feeling the spattering of blood on my arm and face. She squealed and lurched backwards, tripping over her bag, and landing with a thud on her large backside. I stood and watched her, waiting for retaliation, but none came. She held her shattered nose and sobbed.

  The first thing I noticed was the intensely alluring smell of blood. I lifted my right hand and looked at my palm. Shanice’s blood was smeared and splattered across it like some gory Rorschach test. I had an almost irresistible urge to lick that thick crimson liquid from my skin. But Mark was swiftly at my side, grabbing my wrist and turning my face to look at him, mouthing NO, and pulling me away. I looked at him through a red haze, and I realised what I had almost done. The haze faded slowly as I stood staring into my brother’s eyes, trying to anchor myself, to get back to being normal. Then I was back, and I was suddenly very frightened.

  “It’s OK, it’s OK,” Mark repeated over and over, his eyes on mine, his hands clamped around my wrists. I gazed back at him, wishing that he could be right, and knowing that he wasn’t. I nodded, signalling the return of my control, and he released my wrists, and we turned to face the commotion that had evolved from my clash with Shanice.

  She was on her feet now, still sobbing, while one of her friends patted her gingerly on the back. My maths teacher, Mr Townsend, was standing nearby with his hands on his hips, frowning. I watched him, but I could feel the horrified glances of the bystanders who had witnessed the encounter.

  “What happened here, Shanice?” He asked the instigator first. I was annoyed, but it’s always that way. The person who got hurt is assumed to be the victim, whether they started the whole mess or not.

  “She hid be!” Shanice gestured towards me with her free hand. The other was still wrapped protectively around her squashed nose. Blood was oozing briskly from between her fingers. I held my breath, not wanting to get a whiff of that again.

  “Rebecca?”

  “She tried to hit me first.” I felt I had to defend myself. Mr Townsend frowned again.

  “Right. You two are both suspended for the rest of the day. I’ll be telling Mr Parker about this, and I’m sure he will want to discuss this with both of you tomorrow.” The threat was there, and as threats go, it was a pretty good one. Mr Parker, our headmaster transformed into a terrifying giant of a man with a legendary temper when he was annoyed. If I hadn’t been so worried about my own craziness, I would have been suitably anxious about the idea of having to explain this fracas to him.

  “Now go home and get cleaned up! Show’s over!” He rounded on the spectators and they scattered.

  I turned to Mark. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

  He smiled and nodded. “No worries, Sis. Go home now, have a shower, and go see Angus. The neighbours will just have to think what they want.” He chuckled again. I had to smile.

  “See you later,” I said hopefully.

  “Bet on it. I’ll be there straight after school. Go now.” He waved me off.

  I walked home slowly, wondering how my fourteen year old brother had managed to grow up so quickly. I realised that he must have somehow sensed the danger in me, and he’d decided to protect me from myself. I was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude and love and admiration for my brother. I owed him big.

  Angus

  When Rebecca rang the doorbell at ten that morning, I thought that she had decided to skip school for the day. But when she told me what had happened, and more importantly, what had almost happened, I realised that it was a bit worse than I had thought.

  Rebecca sat curled in her corner on the three seater sofa, her eyes filled with anguish as she described her near catastrophic encounter with the smell of fresh blood, and how much she had wanted to taste it.

  “It could have been a lot worse,” I told her. “You did fairly well, actually. For one, you didn’t actually lick the blood on your hand, no matter how much you wanted to. And secondly, you didn’t go for Shanice’s neck either.”


  “You haven’t met Shanice, have you,” she said dryly. I laughed.

  “Mark saved me. I think he knew something like this would happen.”

  “I am really going to have to get him a big present some time soon.”

  “I think he wants the kitten,” she smiled at me. Speak of the devil. It sauntered in to the sitting room from wherever it had been hiding and mewled at Rebecca. She picked it up and it sat purring on her lap, clearly satisfied with the situation.

  “Rebecca, whether you like her or not, the fact that you didn’t bite Shanice when you smelled her blood is a very good sign. I would never have been able to do that when I was your age. I think that’s why our father kept us out of school. Boys fight, and blood gets spilled. It’s one of those things. My father knew he couldn’t take that risk. I didn’t expect you to be breaking noses quite so soon though.”

  “She had it coming. She’s been trying to bully me for ten years.” She paused, her brow furrowed in thought. “The strange thing was that I really enjoyed breaking her nose. It was so satisfying. And afterwards, when I realised what I had done, I wasn’t really sorry I’d done it. I tried to feel sorry, but it just wasn’t there. I was a lot more upset that I’d almost exposed myself as beyond freaky by licking her blood off my hand. That really scared me.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “Have you ever hurt someone and actually enjoyed it?” she wanted to know, looking at me with a worried expression, and stroking the kitten’s back. It purred even louder.

  How to answer a question like that. Hmmm. I decided to be truthful. Mostly.

  “Yes.” I let that sink in for a few seconds. “I think it’s because when you develop this need and ability to kill people and drink their blood, your brain makes a kind of automatic adjustment, so it doesn’t feel completely wrong to hurt other people.”

  “So, what, am I a psychopath now?” her voice rose in panic.

  “No Rebecca, you are most definitely not. Just because you enjoy hurting someone when it becomes necessary, it doesn’t mean that you are now going to run about murdering and torturing people indiscriminately. Intellectually you know that that would be wrong, so you will try to avoid it. But when you have to hurt someone, you will, and you won’t feel bad about it. It’s kind of a self defence mechanism.”

  She sat quietly, trying to absorb and process my reasoning, and after a while she nodded.

  “I get it.” But she didn’t look too happy about it. “Do you think I can still go back to school now?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I don’t know. I always expected to finish, but now it all seems so pointless. Problem is, if I drop out now, Mum will suspect the worst.” She laughed suddenly. “Well, no, she couldn’t, could she? She’d think I had human problems, like being pregnant or something like that.” She looked at me and blushed. I tried to think of something else. Being in the same room as Rebecca Harding was difficult enough, but even thinking about her being pregnant, and how she’d get that way, well, that became excruciating. Even without factoring myself into the equation.

  “I need to learn how to do this. Yesterday it didn’t seem so scary. I suppose because it wasn’t quite as real as it is today.”

  “That reminds me. I’ve got some iron tablets for you.”

  “Do I have to take them?” I knew she meant do I have to be this?

  “You are an iron metaboliser, Rebecca. Whether you want to be one or not. You need iron, because if you don’t take it, you could die, or you could tear someone’s throat out in desperation eventually.” She looked shocked by my harsh words. I leaned forwards, and continued. “The best thing you can do is accept it and learn to control it.” Tears were forming in her eyes. I continued, lowering my voice. “You don’t have to do this alone, Rebecca. I will help you as much as I can, and my brothers will be here tomorrow evening. Marcus is good at this sort of thing. Much better than me. He makes it all sound normal. And then you’ve got Mark, and of course,” I paused for effect, “don’t forget the kitten.” She giggled at that.

  “What more could I ask for?” she smiled through her tears.

  “Coffee.”

  “Yes please. But not that thick tarry muck Mark gave us yesterday.” She pulled a face.

  “Yeah, it was pretty grim, wasn’t it?” I stood up and went into the kitchen, leaving her to think it over. She didn’t really have much of a choice, but it would be easier for everyone if she were on board with us, so to speak. Especially for her. I made coffee and dug out some biscuits I’d bought the previous morning. She was sitting in the same position when I walked back carrying a tray.

  “I wonder if the people who hurt this little thing will ever be punished,” she said quietly, tickling the kitten under its chin. It purred ecstatically.

  “Yes.”

  She looked up at me. “You’ve done it already, haven’t you?” She knew. There was no point denying it.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” I handed her the coffee, careful not to let our fingers touch. “Does your television work?”

  I grinned at her. “Probably.”

  “Do you mind if we watch a film or something?”

  “Sure.” I handed her the remote. She glanced at it and pressed a button. The television lit up, and I watched her face as she flicked through the channels. It was hard to read her expression, but I wasn’t about to start reaching into her thoughts again. I was afraid of what I would detect, and a lot more afraid of what my reaction would be to what I found. I sat there, pretending to watch some romantic comedy, while all I could think of was what it would feel like to touch her.

  Rebecca

  I got home from school in a complete mess. I glanced in the mirror. My clothes were splattered with blood, but it was my expression that frightened me most. I looked wild-eyed and feverishly excited. No wonder everyone had stared at me at school. I was scary, man. I shook my head at my reflection and stripped off and climbed into the shower. The hot water washed the beguiling smell of blood from my skin, and the familiar soapy scent seemed to wash away the madness sloshing around in my head. I stepped out of the small shower cubicle feeling a lot more balanced than when I had stepped into it. I dressed quickly in jeans and a t-shirt and a thick jumper, and threw a load of washing in the machine. I didn’t want my mother to find my bloodstained clothes and assume that I was the one who had been hurt. Ten minutes later I was ringing the Angus’ doorbell, eagerly anticipating seeing his strong, beautiful face again, and nervous as all hell at the same time. He answered the doorbell in jeans and a white cotton open necked shirt, tall, powerful and dangerous, but strangely gentle too.

  “Rebecca.” He seemed pleased to see me and a bit puzzled too. I explained what had happened at school, and he nodded. He seemed impressed that I hadn’t actually bitten Shanice’s neck. Someone who admired my restraint! I was stunned and grateful at the same time.

  We watched a film for a few hours. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was about, but I felt I needed some kind of distraction. The cat seemed to enjoy it.

  Mark arrived straight after school, still dressed in school uniform and carrying his bag.

  “Hey, Sis,” he grinned at me. “You look a lot more, er, civilised than you did this morning!”

  I grinned back. “Come say that here!”

  “Nah, it’s alright. You got anything to eat here?” he asked Angus, who stood behind him.

  “Frozen pizza. They’re in the freezer.” He looked at me over Mark’s shoulder, his eyebrows raised. “You ready for those iron tablets now?” I nodded, and felt my face flushing traitorously. “I’ll get them for you. Mark can heat up the pizza.”

  “Excellent. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. Anyone want pizza?”

  “Yes, please.” I was suddenly very hungry. Angus tilted his head slightly as if considering something.

  “Yes,” he said, and took a small container from a nearby cabinet drawer, and tossed it my way. I caught it one handed, sur
prised. “Five daily, Rebecca.” I shook the container briskly. There were a lot more than five in there. I nodded, grateful for his confidence in my reliability. Or maybe he was relying on me not wanting to take too many tablets and go berserk. Fair enough.

  “Coming up!” Mark disappeared into the kitchen, returning twenty minutes later with three steaming pizzas and a huge smile.

  “I have questions,” he announced as he took up his usual position on the floor against the wall, biting hungrily into a massive slice of pizza.

  “Let’s have them,” Angus smiled, and bit into his own slice.

  “Well, let’s see.” Mark pulled a small notebook out of his bag, and flipped the pages until he found what he was looking for. “I have a list.”

  Angus groaned slightly. “Not a list!” he said, his voice tinged with false dismay.

  “Number one. Is it true that you react to sunshine?” Mark took another huge bite. I glanced at Angus.

  “No. But we always look like we can’t go in the sun because we’re so pale. We don’t tan. Normal humans tan to defend their skin from the sun. We don’t need to do that.”

  That explained my continuing colourlessness in the face of weeks of tanning. So there was a reason for it! I was strangely pleased.

  “Number two.” Mark grinned at Angus. “Vampires on TV and in legends and books are usually kinda hideous. You both look normal. Good looking, even.” He pulled a face as he said the last three words, as if it cost him to do that. I was flattered.

  Angus grinned widely. “Thanks, Mark.” Mark looked sour.

  “My brother Marcus has done a lot of research on vampire legends, and he’s come up with a theory that, knowing him, is probably pretty accurate.” He took another bite, and chewed for a few seconds, and swallowed. “Marcus reckons that we look normal because we eat like normal people too, besides taking iron supplements. He compares it to people who are addicted to heroin. Some will give themselves over entirely to the drug. Their lives revolve around the drug, obtaining it, and then using it. They don’t eat normally, or look after themselves in other ways, like bathing for instance. They soon start to look pretty grim, but they don’t seem to care. Marcus thinks that older vampires used to be a bit like that. Their addiction hit them like a bus, and they were never able to recover. He also thinks that we manage to live relatively normal lives because we take iron tablets instead of blood. Iron is released fairly slowly into our systems, so we don’t have that massive rush that you get from sucking blood.” He grinned again.

  Mark was nodding slowly, like it all made sense. “Cool.”

  Angus said nothing.

  “Number three. Are there any others out there?”

  “Hmmm. Good question. I don’t know. The likelihood is, yes, there probably are more of us out there somewhere. We haven’t found them yet, but they could be camouflaging themselves as normal people, same as us. There are a few possibilities, really. Firstly, there could be a family or two of fairly civilised vampires, like us, who know what they are and how to control it. They would also know how to avoid detection, so it’s unlikely we’d ever find them. The second possibility is that there is a group of old style vampires, but that’s a long shot. They would have to be pretty organised, and live somewhere that was very isolated, because they’d look wrong. They’d also need some human go-betweens. That kind of group would have had to have existed for a long time. We haven’t bothered to look for groups like that. Marcus doesn’t think that they could exist, and there would be no point in finding them anyway. They’d be too freaky, even for us.” He grinned.

  “The third possibility is that there are more like Rebecca out there, with two human parents. Both your parents carried different parts of the genes you needed to metabolise iron, and the combination of the two was like fitting two pieces of a puzzle together.”

  “How did you find me?” It was my turn for a question.

  “You had a blood test when you were hit by that car. Marcus isolated a specific blood subtype in the three of us that wasn’t present in the rest of the population. Fergus hacked into most of the blood banks in the world, including those in the NHS. Your name was flagged by one of Fergus’ systems. I was in the vicinity, so I was sent to check you out.”

  He smiled at me. I felt that now familiar fluttering rush in my abdomen again.

  “Marcus somehow got them to send him a sample of your blood. He confirmed the presence of those three genes in your DNA.”

  “Have you found any others like me?”

  “Not yet, no. We weren’t even expecting to find you. It was quite a surprise.” He was smiling with his eyes again. Flutter, flutter. It was becoming almost painful to be in the same room as him, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I was starting to dread having to go home tonight. I tried diversionary tactics.

  “So where do Marcus and Fergus live?”

  “Russia. We were born in Aberdeenshire, but we moved to Russia shortly before the cold war ended. I haven’t lived there for years, though. Marcus and Fergus stayed behind when I left.”

  “Why did you leave?” Mark asked through a mouthful of pizza.

  “I’m not sure. There was nothing to keep me there, I suppose. Our family lands are pretty extensive, and we have a huge house out there. Marcus was able to set up a state of the art lab in a purpose built addition to the house, and Fergus snuck his computers in there one day and never left. They had all they needed. Marcus did loads of degrees, Fergus made loads of money.”

  “Do they look like you?” Mark again. His curiosity knew no bounds.

  “No. They have light greyish eyes and blonde hair. So when they get excited their pupils dilate and it looks like their eyes have changed colour from grey to black. Our eyes are different to yours. When our ‘fight or flight’ response kicks in, our pupils dilate completely, so you can’t see any of the coloured part of the eye at all. I blend in better because my eyes are dark anyway. The change is not so noticeable.”

  “I’ve noticed it,” muttered Mark. Angus grinned wickedly at him.

  “And yet, here you sit, still alive, and eating my pizza.”

  Mark grinned back. “It’s ‘cause your cat likes me, isn’t it?”

  “Why else?”

  “She needs a name, you know.” I decided to interrupt. The kitten was still cuddled up on my lap. She was asleep now, and her paws twitched wildly as she stalked her prey in the throes of feline dreams.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon debating about what to name the kitten. Mark and I did anyway, while Angus stretched out in his armchair and watched us with amused eyes. The debate got a bit heated when Mark suggested calling the cat Quark, because she was so tiny, and it rhymed with ‘Mark’. Angus eventually interrupted us to point out that our mother would be arriving home in about ten minutes. The idea of going home was unwelcome, but we both stood up reluctantly. The kitten had wandered off to find something to eat earlier, and hadn’t returned yet.

  “I should be OK to go to school tomorrow?” It was a question, not a statement. I was worried about the whole prospect of attacking somebody and drinking their blood. It was not something I’d ever wanted to do before, but things were clearly changing. And people out there were unlikely to be as understanding as Mark and Angus.

  “That depends. Now that you know how you react to the smell of blood, you will probably do your best to avoid spilling any again.” He grinned at me, teasing.

  “Very funny. So you think it will be OK.”

  “You should be fine,” he said as he walked us to the front door.

  I shouldn’t have listened to him.

  Angus

  It was easier for me when Mark was around. The two of them arguing with each other reminded me of how young they both really were; they seemed older. And Mark’s presence distracted me from the enticing female smell that Rebecca exuded. I didn’t have to hold my breath so much when he was there. It should have been getting easier, but it wasn’t. And then when they were leaving
, and she looked so unhappy and withdrawn, I suddenly needed to check that she was OK. I hadn’t tried to feel her thoughts the whole afternoon, but as she was leaving I caved in to intense curiosity. She looked so sad.

  Big mistake. As I reached out I was immersed in a violent swirl of confusion and desire. I withdrew as soon as I could, but it was too late. I felt my eyes changing and my body stiffening, and I fought to control the hunger that blazed through me. I suddenly wanted her so much more than anything I have ever wanted before. Ever.

  Instead, I somehow managed to suppress that crushing desire, and I let her leave with her brother. I couldn’t know then how much I would come to regret that decision.

  Rebecca

  I put off telling Mum about Shanice until after supper. Mark and Joe were sitting watching some allegedly riveting football match, and I was washing dishes while she tidied everything away. She looked tired after a long day at work and I felt guilty about having to lay this on her too, but I knew it had to be done. She would find out eventually, and then she’d be doubly upset that I hadn’t told her about it. As with most things nowadays, she took it unexpectedly well.

  “Isn’t Shanice the one that used to bully you in primary school?”

  I was surprised and touched that she remembered after so long. “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “Well, I’m sure she deserved what she got. Did you get into trouble?”

  “I have to go see Mr Parker tomorrow and explain.”

  She winced. “Poor baby. It’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

  I smiled at her thankfully. She was a mother in a million. She hardly ever criticised us, she never lost her temper, and she worked like a maniac to keep the family going. I felt fleetingly guilty for excluding her from my new secret life, but I dismissed that thought quickly. Just the thought of trying to explain to her that I was now a vampire made me break out in a sweat. Her life was difficult enough already without that kind of information.

  I stayed up for a while with my family, trying to absorb the normal tone of my surroundings, but it was no use. I went to bed just before ten, remembering just as I was changing into my pyjamas to take my five iron tablets.