Tainted Blood: A Generation V Novel (23 page)

She left. As I hurried through my breakfast, eating as fast as my stomach indicated it was comfortable with, I reflected that it was typical of Prudence to tell me that we had an appointment, but not
when
that appointment was.

We drove to Prudence’s tidy town house in South Portsmouth, the next town over from Newport. I was feeling well enough to drive, so I followed my sister’s Lexus, and took a small amount of pleasure in tucking the Fiesta next to that gleaming red automotive masterpiece on my sister’s pristine asphalt driveway. The Fiesta had been leaking oil lately (okay, for a while), and I had a feeling that my sister would be remembering my visit for some time after the Fiesta marked its territory.

I followed my sister into her house. It was a three-story house, the first floor devoted to her garage and storage, so I followed her up the stairs to her main living area. We passed through her living room, decorated in modern lines in creams and whites, which was probably meant to look clean but went too far and just looked sterile and forbidding. Or maybe that was the look she was actually going for. We ended up in her kitchen,
which was more white, broken up this time by the occasional stainless steel appliance. Unfortunately this just increased my impression of being in an alien examination chamber. Prudence didn’t even stop to offer me a drink, instead crossing straight over to a tall white-doored pantry.

“Mother has babied you far too long, Fort,” she said, picking through extra bowls, an electric mixer, and similar accoutrements of food preparation. “I first saw this done when I was barely six.”

“What are we doing?” I had the feeling that she was not about to show me how to bake a cake.

“I’m going to show you how I feed.” She emerged from her pantry with a beautiful wooden box. It was rosewood, carefully oiled, with no metal hinges, just wooden joints. She set it on the kitchen island between us and opened it, revealing an interior that had been lined with black velvet, with specially made sections to hold each of the items inside. I stared at those items, which in a kitchen setting really should’ve looked innocuous, but instead looked, thanks to the presentation and my knowledge of my sister, extremely creepy. There was a large silver bowl, marked on the inside with concentric circles, each numbered, about the size of the Pyrex bowl that I used to hold chips during a party. Beside it, each in its own nestled spot, were a number of wickedly sharp knives—the blades short but slightly curved, their handles silver to match the bowl and decorated with carved flowers. Tossed inside the bowl, casually and in a small plastic Baggie, were a bunch of rubber ties, the kind that doctors used during blood drives.

It was a lot to take in.

“I know we’re vampires and all, Prudence, but . . . isn’t this going just a little too far?” I pointed at the bowl, wondering if focusing on the aesthetics of the situation would help give me a few minutes to figure out exactly how I was feeling at the moment. On the one hand, my
family had been extremely closed-mouthed about giving me any information about my transition, and that ignorance had nearly gotten someone killed last night. So a big part of me felt extremely relieved that some answers were apparently going to be forthcoming at last. However, there was a part of me, the part that had spent so many years pretending to be human, that acutely wished that I were anywhere but here in this moment.

Prudence gave an irritated sigh, looking offended on behalf of her box of horror. “Fort, this is a set of bleeding instruments. I know it’s hard to understand now, but for hundreds of years bleeding was as common as telling someone to take an aspirin. This set is very similar to the one that George Washington owned.” Her mouth gave a small, ironic twist, and she looked amused at some internal thought. “We’ll just try not to follow his example with its use.”

I stared at her blankly, not following the reference.

Now Prudence rolled her eyes broadly and looked extremely put upon by my inability to follow her cutting-edge references to one of the founding fathers. “He was drained of eighty ounces of blood in a thirteen-hour period. Not surprisingly, he died. Typical doctors—you were practically safer not calling them in those days.” Her voice turned sharply irritated. “Didn’t you learn any history at all?”

This was an older, familiar argument. Both Prudence and Chivalry were often decrying my lack of knowledge of tiny minutiae that had been dropped off school curriculums a century ago in favor of fitting in more relevant information. “In fairness, Prudence, they had a pair of world wars to cover, to say nothing of Korea and Vietnam.” These were events that my siblings, of course, had lived through. Playing Trivial Pursuit with my family was extremely frustrating.

“I suppose,” Prudence grumbled, then returned to instructor mode. She pointed to the big silver bowl. “Now,
this is the bleeding bowl. These little darlings are called lancets.” Her finger hovered over one of those wickedly sharp implements, and she glanced at me. “I have the rest of the set somewhere, but I really don’t think it’s necessary to break out the scarificators, the fleams, or the cupping syringe.”

“I agree with that assessment.” Just the names sounded horrifying enough.

Prudence reached under the kitchen island, where there was a small built-in wine rack, completely filled. She removed a bottle and popped the cork expertly.

“What’s
that
for?” I asked suspiciously. Had wine been another required item in bleeding kits? I wondered for a moment if my sister knew about modern-day methods of sterilization, like neatly packaged alcohol swabs.

She gave me a withering look, and I wondered just how much of my thought process had been showing on my face. “
This
is a 2005 Bodegas Roda Cirsion, and it needs to breathe before being served.”

“Really, Prudence? It’s like nine in the morning. We’re in alcoholic territory right now.” And unlike Lilah, Prudence definitely didn’t have unemployment as an excuse.

The sound of the doorbell interrupted what I’m sure would’ve been an exceptionally cutting conversational riposte. Instead she gave a little huffy sigh. “Early. Eager little thing.”

Following her down the stairs, I watched as she ushered in a man who, I was quickly informed, was Jon Einarsson, one of the young stars of her company’s legal department who had come over to discuss a few financial issues with her. Dressed in an immaculate gray suit, Jon was tanned, blond, and almost disgustingly fit and healthy. He had the slightly squarish, blunt good looks of a former frat guy who had done well and was on his way to doing even better. Prudence ushered us all back up to her living room, where we all settled on her white, expensive, and shockingly uncomfortable matching love
seats. Jon wasted no time in flipping open his briefcase, removing a set of file folders, and proceeding to explain to my sister a series of financial options that I found completely incomprehensible—though I was able to pick up enough references to off-shore companies and other things that really seemed like they
shouldn’t
be legal. Had I not recently slept for almost twenty straight hours, I would’ve passed out from boredom. This was worse than watching one of those foreign films where all people did was sit at a table, smoke cigarettes, and have a conversation in French, without subtitles. I wondered if Dan was going to start sounding like this in another two years. It was a frightening thought.

After twenty minutes, which I knew because Jon Einarsson was sitting conveniently under Prudence’s large art deco wall clock, my sister thankfully interrupted him. “How rude of me not to offer you a drink, Jon,” she said. “My brother and I will fetch some refreshments.” Jon opened his mouth, but it had clearly been an order rather than a request, and all he could do was snap his jaw closed again and shuffle his papers around a little as my sister and I left the room.

Prudence set three wineglasses on the kitchen island. They were hand-blown, with just a single thread of color curving from the base up the stem. Each glass had a different color—blue, green, and red. Prudence selected the red glass, and placed it in front of her. Then, very matter-of-factly, she selected one of the lancets from her box and made a quick, deep slice across her left palm. She positioned the glass under her hand, and allowed her blood to drip into it, slowly filling up the bottom of the glass.

“I really don’t like where this is going,” I said, feeling like it was somehow important that I at least make some token protest.

“Hush. And grab me one of those paper towels.”

Her blood continued to flow. It wasn’t as dark as my
mother’s, I noticed, but it was definitely a bit more of a dark raspberryish hue than a human’s would’ve been, and I realized to my horror that I was actually echoing the language used on the back of the wine bottle label. Prudence continued to let her blood flow until the glass was nearly half full, then pressed the paper towel that I’d handed her against the cut, blotting the wound.

“Pour the wine, Fort.”

I wasn’t happy, but at this point I was pretty much committed to seeing exactly what the hell went on during a vampire feeding. After all, it was somewhere in my not-too-distant future. As I poured, however, I wondered why this couldn’t be as comparatively less traumatic than watching that horrific video of childbirth in sophomore year of high school. Prudence rinsed her hand off in the sink as I attended to my assigned task. The wine was a very dark red, almost black, and once each glass was filled, I couldn’t visually tell the difference between the regular and the blood-spiked. “Not sure this is a good way to improve a vintage.”

Prudence gave another eye roll at my comment. She was patting her hands dry with a soft white cloth, and when I looked, I could see that although the cut on her hand had stopped bleeding, it was still red and open. She folded the cloth and held it in her left hand, like a normal fabric napkin, but positioned so that her cut was concealed, and picked up the red wineglass with her free hand. At her indication, I picked up the blue and green glasses, with their contents of regular wine, and followed her back into the living room, grimly aware of just who that spiked glass was for.

Prudence handed the red glass to Jon along with a wide, perfect-hostess smile. “Here you go.”

He looked decidedly taken aback. Clearly the poor guy had pictured something more along the lines of a glass of water. “Oh gosh, it’s just a little early for me—”

My sister began talking blithely over him. “Now, some
Rioja traditionalists will say that they’re skeptical, but I’ve found that this is quite a lovely Spanish red. A bit decadent at three hundred per bottle, I suppose, but I thought you’d enjoy it. Such a concentrated, yet ethereal balance, such elegant structure.”

Jon had visibly paled when Prudence rattled off the price, and he clearly knew he was beaten. “So thoughtful of you,” he managed, accepting the red wineglass that Prudence offered him and taking a polite sip. I barely repressed a shudder at the sight, a reaction that I tried to cover by taking a quick mouthful from my own glass—a disappointing one, since I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between what I’d just taken a sip of and the ten-dollar grocery store bottles that I used to periodically spring for back when I dated Beth. And I frankly couldn’t imagine that Prudence’s blood was helping out that ethereal balance that she’d been harping about. I knew it was kind of hypocritical of me, given that I drank my mother’s blood on a regular basis and had a future trajectory that included drinking other people’s blood, but I couldn’t help it—it was kind of gross to know that poor Jon Einarsson had just gotten a mouthful of Prudence’s red stuff.

He gave a polite compliment, and Prudence talked a bit about fragrance and texture and notes of flavor—those almost stereotypical natterings of wine enthusiasts that I’d always secretly suspected to be a complete sham. Jon nodded as she spoke, the look in his eyes suggesting that he agreed with me, but he continued taking small sips. The conversation then shifted back to financial black alchemy, and Jon took the reins. But I noticed that as the minutes passed, his descriptions of various legalistic loopholes became slower, and more lethargic, while every time he took a drink of his wine, it was deeper than the last. Prudence watched him, taking little tastes from her own glass, a tiny smile playing at her lips as she looked at him with horrible patience. Jon began blinking more, looking hazy and just
a little owlish, and his pale blue eyes began to dilate. His hands shuffled through his papers awkwardly, but he began openly staring at my sister, apparently unable to help himself. By the time another twenty minutes had passed, his glass was completely empty, and he was just sitting, gazing at my sister like he was Moses and she a burning bush, his lips slightly parted like a Hollywood starlet waiting for a kiss.

Prudence had that small smile fixed on her mouth, and she leaned forward, setting her glass down carefully on a coaster. “Jon, would you be willing to do me a small favor?”

“Of course, Ms. Scott,” Jon said, perking up and sounding like this was just the opportunity he’d waited a lifetime for. “Whatever you need.”

“I’d like just a pint or so of your blood.” Prudence’s voice was very calm and friendly. “Would you mind terribly?”

Jon blinked very slowly, and mulled over the request for a second, then said, with a terrifying placidity, “That doesn’t sound like a problem.” The bright, sharp lawyer who had appeared on Prudence’s doorstep not even an hour ago now seemed entirely gone, replaced by Forrest Gump.

“I’m
so
happy to hear that,” my sister said. “Fort, let’s all relocate to the kitchen.”

“Um, why?” I asked.

She shook her head at me. “This sofa is
linen
, Fort. Stains will
never
come out of it.”

With Jon following at our heels like a contented little puppy, we returned to the kitchen. My sister’s box of historical horror remained displayed in all its glory on the island counter, but Jon seemed completely unfazed, simply looking around and saying, “You’re very into modern design, aren’t you, Ms. Scott. I feel like I’ve seen this kitchen in magazines.” He continued chattering happily like that, my sister just nodding agreeably to everything
he said while she busily settled him on a tall stool, then assisted him out of his suit jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He responded like a helpful toddler with his mother, watching all of her actions with benign sanguinity.