The Iron in Blood, Page 4

CHAPTER 4

  Rebecca

  I dreamed that someone had poured flame over me, and that I was trying to run away from the unseen attacker, but I couldn’t seem to move my legs. I watched in horror as my feet melted into the ground, pulling me down. I struggled to pull free, but I was dog-tired, and my limbs became heavier with each convulsive tug. A shrill sound buzzed in my ears; I recognised the doorbell, but I couldn’t get up, so it went unanswered, and I surrendered again into the clutches of my nightmare.

  Angus

  Fergus phoned at eight in the morning to tell me that the house was ready for occupation, and that he’d even taken the liberty of furnishing it. Fergus loved stuff like that; the more organising something required the better. I told him that I’d met Rebecca Harding, and he wanted to know what she was like. I thought about that for a few seconds.

  “I’m not really sure, Fergus,” I tried to explain. “She seems to be quite rational and fairly normal, except for the fact that she’s definitely one of us. This could go either way, I guess.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet. Is Marcus there?”

  “Hey, Angus,” Marcus’ voice was suddenly audible. Speakerphone, obviously.

  “Marcus, you were right. She’s been raised a vegetarian. Loads of tea and fibre too.” Tea and fibre tended to sequester any available iron before it was even absorbed from the gut. Her whole lifestyle seemed to be conspiring against her. Good for normal people, maybe, but not for a vampire. I noticed that I was becoming more comfortable with that word now that I knew there were others out there.

  “She needs iron, Angus. But not too much, or she could lose control.” I remembered the heady, barely controllable rush that followed a massive dose of iron, and shuddered. I sometimes struggled to control it, and I’d had five decades of practice. What chance would Rebecca have?

  “How much, Marcus?” Marcus had managed to calculate our daily iron requirements. One gram per day for almost normal activity levels, two grams for massively enhanced strength and speed and sensory ability. Three grams was pushing it a bit, rendering us barely conscious in a vortex of power and vibrant intensity, and in my case, barely controllable rage. It was intriguing to see how differently we responded to our drug. Marcus would get this feverish glitter in his eyes, the pupils massively dilated so that his eyes looked black, and he would start scrawling gibberish (to me) over all available surfaces, muttering away to himself. Fergus flitted faster than ever, his hands skittering across his many computer keyboards, reams of code reflecting spookily in his black eyes. Me, I liked to break things and, before I learned to control my urges, people too.

  I’d managed to tweak the dose of iron that I took on a daily basis to give me the level of physical force that I preferred. One point two grams. Equivalent to twelve tablets of ferrous fumarate, or half a human. Modern medicine saved people in ways that it didn’t fully appreciate.

  “I’d start her on about five hundred milligrams per day and work up from there. Hopefully the gradual emergence of her powers will help her to learn control sooner rather than later.” I heard the apprehension in his voice. He wasn’t sure. Great.

  “OK. Thanks for the house, Fergus. I’ll move in today.”

  “No problem, brother.” Click, and they were gone.

  I packed a suitcase full of my clothes, mostly dark jeans, and open necked shirts. An occasional jumper for appearance’s sake only. I didn’t feel the cold, but it didn’t do to walk around in a snowstorm in jeans and a shirt. It attracted attention. I booked out of the hotel and drove to my newest house, stopping along the way to buy some food for myself and for the kitten.

  The house looked much the same on the outside, except the garden was much tidier, and the window frames had been freshly painted. The inside was dramatically different, though. Wooden floors, plush rugs, leather furniture, muted down-lighting. The kitchen was modern, with an enormous aluminium refrigerator, marble top counters, and a top of the range espresso machine. The main bedroom upstairs was dwarfed by a huge wooden sleigh bed neatly made up with white cotton bedding. I was impressed. Even for Fergus, this was a remarkable achievement. I liked it.

  I packed my few groceries away, noticing that Fergus had even remembered to stock the kitchen with crockery and cutlery. Amazing. I dug two small porcelain bowls out of the recesses of a cupboard, and placed them on the floor. I was looking forward to having some company, even if it was only feline.

  I waited until just after three, when I sensed that Mark Harding was walking down the street to his house. I gave him a few minutes to get inside the house before I walked across the road, and rang the doorbell. He answered it after a few seconds, gently cradling the white kitten in his arms. He grinned at me.

  “Damn! I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

  I grinned back. “You’re welcome to come and visit her any time, Mark.”

  “Thanks. I’ll definitely do that. She’s gorgeous.” He tickled the kitten under her chin, and she purred loudly.

  I froze. Something was wrong. I closed my eyes and let my mind roam through the house. Someone was upstairs, but it was impossible to say who it was. I sensed pain and fear, and incredible frailty.

  “Who else is here?” I asked Mark abruptly. He looked startled.

  “Rebecca. She wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home today. Why?”

  “She’s sick,” I told him as I darted past him and up the stairs. It wasn’t strictly true, but I couldn’t tell her brother that she was dying. Not yet.

  I was shocked at what I saw when I opened her bedroom door. Rebecca lay there, still in a t-shirt and sleep shorts, deathly still, with an unhealthy sheen over her white face. She didn’t even look at me as I lifted her from the tangled nest of sheets on her bed. Her chest rose and fell, desperately sucking air into her failing lungs. I carried her hastily down the stairs, past her worried looking brother, and across the road to my house, indicating to Mark to follow me. He trotted behind me, still carrying the kitten.

  I lay Rebecca on my new sofa, wondering what to do next. She was deathly pale, even her lips and tongue were white. I knew she needed iron, preferably in the form of fresh blood. Blood was really the best source of iron for us – it was rapidly absorbed from our stomachs, seeping into our systems within seconds. Images of Marcus’ experiments on us flashed across my vision, and I was grateful for the unending thirst for knowledge that drove my brother. I could help Rebecca, but iron tablets would take too long. I dug a breadknife out of one of the kitchen drawers, and carried it into the sitting room, where Mark stood against one of the walls, gazing in horror at his sister.

  “Mark.”

  “Yes?”

  “Trust me.”

  He nodded slowly, and stroked the kitten’s head. His eyes widened involuntarily when I lifted the breadknife, but he said nothing, and remained leaning against the wall.

  I used the tip of the knife to slice longitudinally through the skin of my left wrist and the artery pulsing beneath it, and swiftly held my wrist to her mouth.

  “Drink, Rebecca!” I barked at her, and her eyes fluttered open as the salty fluid flowed into her mouth, she swallowed once convulsively, and then again. Her eyes closed. “Rebecca!” I was almost shouting now. I felt rather than saw Mark flinch, but Rebecca opened her eyes, and started swallowing again. I watched as a trickle of blood travelled slowly from the corner of her mouth down her chin. Then she started sucking thirstily at my wrist, and I sighed in relief. She was going to be OK.

  I let her drink for a minute, and then I withdrew my wrist. Rebecca sighed, and closed her eyes again, but her skin had lost that chalky pallor, and her breathing had slowed. I stood with my wrist over the sink as I tied a compression bandage around it. It would stop bleeding within another minute or so, and by tomorrow you wouldn’t be able to see a scar. We heal fast.

  I looked over to where Mark stood. His eyes were still wide, but he didn’t look frightened anymore. He look
ed fascinated, and intrigued.

  “Well,” he said levelly, “that was freaky.”

  I chuckled. A bit of an understatement.

  “Want some tea?” I asked him.

  He looked up at me. “Real tea? With boiled water and milk and stuff? No blood?”

  “Yes.” I smiled at his resilience.

  “Yes, please.” He went back to gazing at his sister. She looked almost normal now, and appeared to be waking up.

  Rebecca

  Mark was standing against an unfamiliar wall when I woke up. He was staring at me as if I’d grown an extra eye or something. I was lying on a comfortable leather couch. It smelled new.

  “Where are we?” I asked him.

  “Angus’ house.”

  “Why are we here? What happened?”

  He glanced towards what must have been the kitchen, and said wryly, “I think you’d better let Angus tell you.” He grinned at me. “Well, you look a lot better.”

  I frowned. He wasn’t making sense. I tried to sit up, but the world spun sickeningly, so I lay back down again. Angus came into the room and handed Mark a mug. He looked over at me and then came and stood next to the sofa. I could almost feel the heat of his body near mine. It was oddly comforting and perturbing at the same time.

  “I can see I’ve got some explaining to do,” he said with a smile. “But first you need to drink something.” He turned away before I could say anything and went back into the kitchen, reappearing after a few seconds with a glass of water and five unremarkable brown tablets.

  “Drink these,” he commanded. I looked up at Mark, and he nodded. I took them from Angus’ warm hand, and swallowed them one at a time. Angus smiled at me, and sat down on a nearby armchair, stretching out his long body as he leaned back.

  “It’s a long story,” he said, sighing. “I’d better start at the beginning.”

  Angus

  I knew that I’d have to explain everything eventually; I just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. I’d thought about how to do it for a couple of days, about how to start. Well, see, you’re a vampire, same as me didn’t quite cut it. And I hadn’t expected to be factoring a normal fourteen year old teenager into the equation. I decided to use Marcus’ terminology for now, and let the historical references drift through the conversation a bit later.

  “Rebecca and I have something in common. We both use iron differently to other people. I have two brothers, Fergus and Marcus, who have the same, er, ability. Marcus has studied the basic physiological mechanics of how we use iron for a few years now, and he says that people like us are able to incorporate it into our tissues in different ways to normal people. The most important difference is a change in metabolic activity when we eat foods containing iron.” Like blood, I thought.

  “When we eat normal food, our bodies function like normal human bodies, using the usual metabolic pathways to extract energy from normal food types, mostly glucose, fats and proteins. But when we eat enough iron, our bodies switch over to a different metabolic pathway that has adapted to utilise molecular iron to increase the efficiency of many body functions.” I looked at Rebecca. She was frowning, concentrating.

  “Muscles work better, nerves conduct their messages faster, our bodies even heal faster, and are better at fighting off infections. And our skins are harder, because iron becomes incorporated into our cells, in the walls, so we don’t exactly deflect bullets, but it’s harder to hurt us.” I paused, wondering how to continue.

  “Our parents were also like us, and Marcus assumed that that would be the only mode of inheritance. But it looks like Rebecca here inherited it differently, recessively. That means that both your parents had to have the genes in their DNA, even though they weren’t able to use iron themselves. Their DNA combined could generate an iron metaboliser. There’s apparently a one in four chance. That’s why you got the genes,” I looked pointedly at Rebecca, “and your brothers didn’t.” I paused, expecting questions. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “So what happened today with Rebecca? It looked like she was going to die.” Mark grimaced at the memory.

  “She was dying. I’m not sure why exactly. I think something must have triggered her body to switch to the iron pathways, and she was using up all her red blood cells to feed those pathways. I had to give her a big dose of iron to stop that process, or it would have killed her.” I wondered what could have precipitated the switch.

  “Blood contains a lot of iron, in its most bioavailable form. That means it’s easily absorbed an utilised by our bodies. And those tablets I just gave you are high dose iron tablets.”

  Rebecca was frowning again. “Blood?” she whispered.

  “Yeah, you drank his blood. And then you stopped looking like a corpse.” Mark looked like he was enjoying himself. He’d slid down the wall, and sat on a thick rug with his legs stretched out and the kitten curled up in his lap.

  “I don’t understand,” Rebecca looked uneasy.

  “You’re a vampire, Sis,” said Mark gleefully, unknowingly hitting the nail on the head.

  Rebecca

  A vampire? What a ridiculous idea. I didn’t even eat meat, let alone drink peoples’ blood! But here Mark, my own brother, was telling me that I’d drank Angus’ blood. The thought of that level of intimacy thrilled me, somehow, even as I knew I should feel repulsed by the concept. I pushed it away impatiently, trying to make sense of what he was telling us. I didn’t want to believe it all, but I looked searchingly at Angus’ face, and read the truth in his eyes, and heard the calm authority in his deep velvety voice.

  I sat for a few minutes, running over everything in my head. Intellectually it made a kind of bizarre sense, but I knew I would need some proof. As if he had read the question in my mind, Angus started unwrapping the bloodstained bandage that encircled his wrist. Mark leaned forward slightly, anticipation written all over his face. The bandages fell away, and Angus held his wrist out to us, palm facing up. There was an angry pink scar running along one side of it. I heard Mark’s sudden intake of breath, and looked up into his shocked face, and watched as it changed slowly to a kind of awed wonder.

  “What?” I asked impatiently. Mark spoke without taking his eyes off that scar.

  “That’s where you drank his blood, Rebecca. He cut his own wrist less than twenty minutes ago, and I watched the blood pouring out of it. And now it’s almost healed.”

  I glanced up at Angus’ face. He nodded once. I felt the blood rush to my face.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Yes. We feel pain, same as everyone else. We just regenerate a lot faster.”

  “I’m sorry that you had to hurt yourself like that for me.”

  “I’m not.” His eyes were smiling at me again. I closed my eyes and imagined touching that beautiful face, running my fingers over his smooth skin. I shuddered as my body reacted to the thought, and opened my eyes again, trying to escape from where my mind was headed. I looked at Mark, but he was playing with the kitten again, wiggling his index finger as it pounced. I risked another glance at Angus. His eyes had darkened until they were almost black, and he was staring at me with such hunger and intensity that I felt momentarily afraid. And then he blinked, and that expression was gone, and he was smiling again.

  “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” said my graceless brother, still sipping his tea. Something occurred to me, a piece of the puzzle that was missing.

  “Yes, but how do we know that I am an iron…metaboliser?” I hoped I’d pronounced the term correctly. I also hoped that they weren’t going to ask me to cut myself to prove it. I wasn’t keen on that idea at all.

  Angus tilted his head to one side, and eyed me speculatively.

  “You can probably remove that cast now. I’ll bet your fracture has healed already.”

  “But it’s only been, what, six days since I broke it! It’s supposed to take at least six weeks to heal.”

  “I know. And I’m sure you haven’t noticed yet, but it does
n’t hurt anymore, does it.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No, it stopped hurting the day after it happened…” My voice trailed off.

  “Let’s take it off!” Mark sounded eager. I pulled a face at him.

  “I don’t see any plaster saws hanging around here, do you?” I was strangely reluctant to have any definitive proof that I was indeed different from other people.

  Angus grinned suddenly and stood up. He walked over to where I still lay on the large sofa, leaned over, grasped the lower edge of my cast with both hands, and simply tore it apart, right down the centre. I lay dead still, mesmerised by the strength of this man, and slightly concerned that he could rip my leg off by accident if I moved. I glanced down at my exposed knee and gasped. It looked completely normal. The abrasions that had been splattered over the outer surface of my knee had disappeared. There was no bruising, and no swelling. I flexed my knee. No pain, either. Angus lifted the mutilated cast off the sofa and I swung my leg over the side, and stood up in one easy movement.

  “Cool!” said Mark.

  “Yeah, cool,” I agreed.

  Angus

  She took it better than I thought she would. They both did. I was really starting to like Mark with his bizarre sense of humour, and his unconventional thinking. And my cat was clearly infatuated with him. I was grateful to him too, for helping Rebecca come to terms with her new life so smoothly. His easy acceptance of the situation had been of enormous benefit to her. I would have to thank him properly someday soon.

  “Rebecca. Mark.” They looked at me expectantly, waiting for the next revelation. They were still only children, and I suddenly felt guilty for involving them in this complicated situation. And then I remembered how Rebecca had looked when she was dying and all my remorse vanished. I hadn’t involved them. Genetics had.

  “You can’t tell anyone about this. Ever. Not your mother or your brother or your best friends. Nobody. Ever.” I paused, letting it sink in.

  “Because if you tell anyone about this, one of two things will happen. The first option is the likeliest – they will laugh at you, and think you are either making it up, or they will dose you up on antipsychotics. The second scenario, where someone actually believes you, will be far worse. You will be tested and experimented on, the media will get involved, and you will be labelled a freak, and held up for public scrutiny and derision. And I will be gone then, and you will be alone.” I saw Rebecca flinch slightly, and I understood how she felt. The existence of my brothers had made it so much easier for me, to accept what I was, because I was not alone. Rebecca would fear being left alone. Good. I wanted her to fear it. It might help protect her.

  Mark was nodding seriously. I reached out and gently touched his mind, felt the determination, and the love for his sister, and I knew he would never reveal our secret. I shied away from touching Rebecca’s mind. There was too much at risk. I didn’t want to lose control with her, and if I detected the slightest hint of that same desire I had felt the night before on the surface of her thoughts, I might surrender to that raw, overpowering craving. Cold showers wouldn’t work for me.

  “But my cast is gone. How can I explain that? I have to go to school tomorrow, and Mum…”

  “That we can fix,” I said.

  “Really?” Mark was eyeing the mangled cast on the floor. “I’d like to see that!”

  I grinned at him. “Coffee first. Then we call Fergus. I think we could get away with a knee brace, and you can tell everyone that you fell in the bath and the cast got wet and had to be removed.” I looked at Rebecca, and she blushed.

  “She’s a rubbish liar,” said Mark.

  “I am,” Rebecca nodded, embarrassed. “Everyone knows when I am lying, and nobody ever believes me.” She looked forlorn.

  “You’re going to have to try.” I smiled encouragingly at her, and she blushed again.

  “Mark, let me teach you how to work the coffee machine. I need to phone my brother.”

  I showed Mark around the kitchen, and while he enthused about the espresso machine and clattered about, I dialled Fergus on my iphone.

  “Like your new house?” his voice was reassuringly familiar.

  “Very nice, Fergus. I need a knee brace.”

  I heard the exaggerated sigh on the other end. “What size?” Fergus never bothered querying my requests, no matter how strange they might seem. I was grateful.

  “I’m not sure. Big enough to fit a seventeen year old girl, height maybe five-seven.”

  “Is it for Rebecca Harding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you told her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we talk to her?”

  “Sure.” I switched the iphone to speaker mode, and carried it through to the sitting room. “My brothers want to say hi, Rebecca.”

  Her eyes widened slightly, but she nodded, and spoke nervously towards the mobile. “Hello?”

  “Hello Rebecca,” Fergus almost purred.

  I mouthed Fergus’ name and she nodded. “Hello Fergus.”

  “Welcome to the family, Rebecca.” Marcus sounded enthusiastic.

  “Thanks.” Rebecca was starting to look a bit bewildered, so I interrupted. “Knee brace, Fergus. As soon as possible.”

  “An hour, brother. Bye Rebecca!” Click. I looked up at Rebecca and smiled. She smiled back but she looked confused, and apprehensive. It was beginning to dawn on her properly now. I wanted to hold her, and reassure her that it was all going to be OK, but I was afraid of touching her. And then her face started to crumble, and tears welled up in her eyes.

  Rebecca

  It was too much. I’d apparently almost died today, and now I had to adapt to the idea that I was fundamentally and wierdly different from everyone around me. I felt unbelievably isolated and lonely. And those two disembodied voices confirming the madness. I wanted to cry, to curl up somewhere where this was not my reality. I felt those weak pathetic tears forming in my eyes and I tried to turn away so Angus wouldn’t see me crying, but next thing he was there, lifting my chin with his long fingers, and smiling down at me, and enfolding me in his arms, and all my fears evaporated. I felt safe. I buried my face in the fabric of his shirt, snuggling against his shoulder, and wound my arms around his warm fragrant body. I felt his body shudder, and heard the sharp intake of his breath, and heard the rapid thudding of his heart against my ear.

  His fingers found my chin again and tilted my face upwards. I looked up into glittering eyes black as night. And then his mouth was on my mouth, his lips moving urgently against mine. I closed my eyes and surrendered to the sensation that flooded through me. His free arm tightened around my waist, and pulled me against his chest. I felt the strength and tension of his body through the thin fabric of his shirt.

  The sound of Mark clearing his throat brought me back down to earth, and I pulled away, blushing furiously. Angus whirled around towards my brother, and almost snarled at him. His eyes flashed briefly, and then he closed them, clenching his jaw and breathing deeply.

  “Coffee, remember?” Mark sounded nervous.

  “Thanks, Mark.” Angus’ voice was level and controlled, his eyes still closed.

  I sat down and Mark handed me a tiny cup of black, greasy looking liquid. I glanced towards Angus, and saw that he was still standing, his eyes now open, and that he too had a cup in his hand. His eyes were brown again, and he was frowning slightly.

  “Are you planning on staying up the whole night?” he asked my brother.

  “It looks a bit strong, doesn’t it,” Mark agreed. “I followed the instructions.”

  “Fair enough,” Angus grinned at him, and Mark suddenly looked very relieved.

  “Man, I thought you were going to bite my head off there.”

  “It crossed my mind.” Angus admitted.

  “That’s the first time you actually looked like a vampire,” Mark continued. “Cool.”

  “Is that
what I am, what we are?” I interrupted him. “Vampires? I thought you were joking, Mark.” I looked at Angus for confirmation. He hesitated slightly, then nodded.

  “Historically, yes, we would have been called vampires.”

  “But where are the fangs?” Mark wanted to know.

  “No fangs.”

  “So how did you puncture peoples’ jugulars?”

  “Bite through them. And it’s not the jugular we went for, but the carotid. The jugular is a vein, and carries slow blood to the heart, but the carotid is the large artery that you can feel pulsating in your neck, here,” he pointed to his own throat, “and that’s much faster, and the blood tastes better too.” I didn’t want to know how he knew something like that.

  “I don’t need to drink blood now, do I?” I heard the edge of panic in my own voice.

  “No. That’s what the iron tablets are for. But we need to be careful how much we give you. Marcus reckons we should start at five a day, and work up slowly from there. Too little, and you could start to feel weak again, but too much can make you a bit mad. Too much power, too much sensory input, it can all become very overwhelming very quickly. Reality becomes a distant memory.”

  “Oh goody,” I muttered. This was getting better and better. Not only was I some sort of metabolic oddity, but there was a good chance I could become insane too.

  Angus smiled at me again. “It’s OK, we’ll help you through it all. I’ll protect you,” he added in a softer voice. There was that dizziness again. I closed my eyes and nodded, remembering the feel of his body against mine.

  “Are you immortal too?” Mark was on a roll now, his eyes wide with excitement.

  “No, we just live a bit longer than normal humans.”

  “How long?”

  “Two hundred and fifty years, give or take a few.”

  “How old are you?”

  Angus hesitated and glanced sideways at me. “I was born in 1951.”

  “But you look so young!”

  “We all do. It’s got something to do with our ability to regenerate cells. I will look like this until I die.”

  “What about garlic and crosses and wooden stakes?”

  “All myth.” Angus was laughing now. “The only way to kill us - and this is not something we’ve ever tried to prove, obviously - is probably to decapitate us. And maybe if our hearts stop beating, that could do it too. Other than that we’re pretty tough.”

  I sat quietly, trying to drink my coffee and take it all in. The coffee was strong; the caffeine rush hit, and I felt better suddenly. This potential change in my life was really not all that frightening. Nobody except Angus and Mark would know about it, and I could carry on as normal, living a normal life. I glanced over at Angus again, and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I didn’t want to live a normal life. I had a choice, now, one that I would never even have contemplated 24 hours ago. I wondered idly which life I would end up choosing. What I didn’t know was that the choice had already been made, and not by me either.

  Angus

  The knee brace arrived within fifty minutes of my call to Fergus. Mark was sitting against the wall again, and the kitten was once again draped over his lap. I had pointed out to him that he was welcome to sit on the furniture, and that I wouldn’t bite him, but he said he preferred the floor, and so did the cat. Rebecca sat curled in the far corner of the big three seater. I gave the brace to her, and suggested she try it on. It was a bit big, but it would do.

  “What should I say to Mum tonight?” she asked, fastening Velcro straps. “She’ll never believe me if I tell her I fell in the bath. And how did I get the cast off? What if she asks me?”

  “I think you should let me do the talking,” Mark interjected.

  “I agree with your brother,” I said. “Whenever you need to withhold information, or even give false information, like in this case, you should always say as little as possible. Keep things simple. That way it doesn’t feel so much like a lie as just keeping quiet.”

  “We’d better go now,” Mark reluctantly put the kitten on the floor. It stumbled a few steps, but gained its balance, and limped across to Rebecca, who leaned down to stroke it. “Mum will be home in about thirty minutes, and it’s my turn to make supper.”

  Rebecca looked up suddenly, grinning widely. “Something to look forward to,” she teased.

  “Just because you’ve now got a taste for the red stuff, doesn’t mean you should mock my broccoli cheese bake.” Mark pretended to be indignant. Rebecca chuckled, and stood up. I stayed where I was, watching their easy interaction.

  “What about tomorrow?” Mark asked. “Should we come here after school?”

  I nodded. “Both of you, please. We don’t want to give the neighbours cause for concern.”

  Mark seemed to think that was hilarious and launched into a long loud baying laugh, clutching his abdomen, and tears streaming down his face. I wondered if all the excitement of the afternoon was catching up with him, and he was becoming hysterical. Then he spluttered, “If only they knew!” He was still giggling as he crossed the road with his sister. I smiled. Nice kids. Brave. But very vulnerable too. That worried me.

  Rebecca

  I knew Mark was going to make trouble for me as soon as we got in the house and he started making loud smacking noises with his lips.

  “Smooching a vampire! Woohoo!” he ducked away from my attempted swipe, grinning.

  “Mark! Someone might hear you!”

  “There’s nobody home yet, Bex.” More kissing noises. Brothers!

  “Seriously, Sis, it might be a good idea for you to go on the pill or something. Angus didn’t look like he was going to stop, and I seriously thought he was going to kill me when I interrupted you two.”

  “I’m considering killing you myself, you irritating lttle…” My voice tapered off. Someone was turning a key in the front door. “If you’re not careful, I will bite you,” I hissed at him, showing my teeth. He giggled again, and ran up the stairs.

  “Hello, baby! How are you feeling” Mum sounded slightly breathless.

  “Much better, thanks.” She looked at me carefully and nodded.

  “You look a lot better. You’ve got some colour in your cheeks now. Amazing what a morning in bed can do.” And half a pint of blood to drink, I thought, smiling inwardly. What a bizarre day. All I wanted to do was go upstairs and curl up in bed so I could think, but Mum wanted to talk about her day. She went into the kitchen, chattering away about some man that she’d met at work. I made encouraging noises, and asked questions at the right points in the conversation. She didn’t even notice that my cast had been replaced by a knee brace. Mark appeared in the doorway after a few minutes.

  “Hey Mum,” he said. “Broccoli cheese tonight?” He grinned sideways at me. I pulled a face.

  “Sounds lovely!” Mum wasn’t fussy.

  Joe arrived shortly afterwards, and we ate our supper and drank tea and watched some crime drama on television. I excused myself just after nine, pleading exhaustion, and crawled into bed. I had anticipated this moment all evening, and was looking forward to thinking it all through, but I fell asleep within minutes of putting my head down, and the last thing on my mind as I drifted off was the feel of Angus’ body against mine.

  Angus

  Fergus phoned me at about nine. I was grateful for the interruption. My house was beginning to feel eerily empty without the Hardings. Even the kitten had disappeared.

  “How did she take it?” That was Fergus. No preliminaries. Hello was a word that happened to other people. I grinned. I missed my brothers.

  “Surprisingly well actually. Her brother was here, and I had to tell him too.” I explained how I had found Rebecca dying, and what I had had to do to bring her back. I described Mark’s levelheadedness, and his easy acceptance of a peculiar situation.

  “Hmmm,” said Fergus.

  “No.” I said it flatly, with finality. I knew what they would think – that Mark knew too much and would need t
o be eliminated. I liked and admired that boy, and I’d felt his determination to keep our secret. I wasn’t about to kill him, or allow him to be killed. “My cat likes him.”

  “As long as you’re sure you know what you’re doing.” I smiled. I had been expecting them to put up more of a fight.

  “So what is she like?” Marcus interrupted impatiently.

  I hesitated for a few seconds, wondering how honest my reply should be. I decided to throw caution to the winds. My brothers would know eventually anyway.

  I groaned slightly, wondering how to describe in words the fixation that was beginning to grip me. They understood anyway.

  “Hah!” barked Fergus. “That bad, is it. She would be hard to resist, though, wouldn’t she. It’s like we’re a bunch of tigers running with wolves. We like their company to a degree…”

  “And occasionally we’ll eat one…” Marcus and his tasteless jokes.

  “But they’re just not the same as we are. And now Angus has met a female tiger. Yummy!”

  “The hormones must be whipping through your system like a tornado. And maybe through hers too. I wonder if that’s what triggered her switch to iron metabolism? Hmmm…” Marcus sounded intrigued again. “I’m going to need a blood sample from you, brother. And one from your tigress, if you can manage it.” I had long ago become used to being a guinea pig for Marcus. He would get his blood, of course. I owed him that much, and more.

  “I wonder if we should pay you guys a visit.” Fergus sounded thoughtful.

  A twinge of jealousy shot through me, but I suppressed it. “I think you should. Marcus can do his blood tests, and Rebecca can meet the family, poor girl.”

  Fergus sounded pleased. “I’ll start organising. We’ll stay in a hotel, obviously. Your house is too small for all of us.”

  “I’ve got things I need to finish up here,” Marcus said gruffly. He didn’t like to be rushed.

  Fergus sighed exaggeratedly. “Forty-eight hours, then, brother.” Click, and they were gone.