The Dark Gifts Birthright (5 page)

Sitting there watching him, she had an
uncontrollable urge to reach out and touch him. Just to feel his
skin next to hers. Then revulsion filled her.
What’s wrong with
me?
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she found herself
staring at his lips and wondered what it would feel like to kiss
him. Her entire body buzzed as if millions of microscopic bees had
somehow entered inside her. The cabin suddenly felt a whole lot
smaller than when she’d entered and she was having trouble
breathing.
I’m going insane
.

Michael read her discomfort and drew his
mouth to one side, trying hard not to laugh. “Drink, Liz, and
listen. I'll try to explain what is happening to you.”

She nodded.

“I’m going to begin with I’m sorry.” He
reached out and touched her hand.

At first she flinched, drawing her hand away.
After meeting his gaze, she placed her hand back on the table. Once
again, Michael reached out to touch her. Her body reacted with an
explosion of goose bumps.

“I really don’t know what else to say.”

“Uh huh,” she replied. Liz was trying to
concentrate on what he was saying, but her body was still reacting
to his gentle touch.

“When vampires decide to take a partner, we
must go before the Council of Elders to obtain permission. There
are many rules and regulations we live by. This helps us to remain
unnoticed and safe.”

“How does it all work?” She whispered. “How
did I become what I am now?”

“I don’t understand it myself,” he sighed.
“We feed mostly off of human blood, taking only what we need to
survive. To become a vampire you must be bitten three times.
Vampires have a kind of venom that isn’t harmful in small
quantities. That’s why we never take blood from the same person
more than twice.”

“So what happened?” She had to figure out
where to go from here. A gentle mental nudge announced that he was
once again entering her mind. Liz narrowed her eyes and glared at
him.

Michael smirked. “That’s what I’m trying to
tell you. I do not know. I’ve never laid eyes on you before last
night. I can be almost certain from your scent that you have never
been taken by another. This is profoundly impossible.”

It was clear that he was being sincere.
“Can I honestly trust the Son of Satan to be honest with
me?”
She thought to herself.

“Would you please call me by my given
name?”

“Will you
please
stay out of my head,”
she answered.

“Look, I didn’t turn you on purpose,” he
snapped. As Liz stared at him, with her lips snarled in anger, he
calmed.

He bowed his head once in what seemed like an
apology, before continuing. “Now, we have bigger things to worry
about. We have to see the Council tonight. There is no other
option. The minute you changed, they knew you existed. If we don’t
go before them tonight, they will hunt you down themselves.”

His eyes meant business. She knew he wasn’t
lying. “But I'm already dead. I mean I am dead, right?”

Michael’s forehead wrinkled in thought. A
fierceness in his eyes scared her. He looked away for a moment,
then his eyes met hers and his face and voice softened as he said,
“There is more than one kind of dead. Your human body is dead. It
no longer works as it used to. But make no mistake, you are alive.
More alive than you've ever really been. This new life can be taken
from you as well, and after they finish with you, they will take
care of me.”

“They’ll kill you?” A sick feeling settled in
her stomach.
Why do I care? This is madness!

“You can’t help it, we are connected now.
That is the one thing about turning someone that is supposed to
make it worthwhile. When you change, you are connected to the vamp
that turned you. It can wear off over time, but that is rarely
heard of. Neither of us have a choice. Already, it would cause me
pain to lose you. I know you feel the pull. I can feel it within
you. The closer we are physically, the stronger the connection
becomes. That is why this is so serious, and no, they won’t kill
me, but there are worse things than death.” His voice shook at the
last with a twinge of fear.

“What could be worse than death?”

He leaned forward. “Look at me.” He placed
his hand under her chin. Another shot of something, akin to
electricity, ran through her body as he touched her. “You know how
you feel about me right now? What I’m feeling is much stronger than
that because I made you. As time passes, these feelings will only
deepen. Imagine losing someone you feel that connected to, and then
being stuck in a cage, walled off from everyone and everything for
a hundred years or so. And in that deep lonely abyss, you are
drowning in the inner darkness and thirst. No physical contact. No
voices. No blood. A complete and total deprivation of everything,
except pain.” His voice was full of emotion. He paused.

Her head dropped as she looked at her hands.
“I feel...well, this darkness. It pools inside me. Sometimes, I
think if I'm not careful, it will consume me and take over. Like
it's killing who I am.”

“It will, if you allow it to. Not all of us
are bad. Those who have a sense of who they are can hold on to the
essence of their being. Those who cannot...” His words gave out as
he watched a kaleidoscope of emotion pass over her face.

She had a beautiful face. Her blue eyes
glowed, setting off the red highlights in her gloriously long hair.
Her natural pallor was more pronounced now that she was fully
vampire. Pink in her human form, her full lips had become crimson.
He wanted to see her smile again. He remembered her smiling and
laughing last night. He had almost talked himself into not taking
blood from her before she finally conceded to go with him. Even
before she'd turned he was strangely drawn to her. As he gazed on
her lovely face, he remembered thinking that he could keep this one
forever.

Liz didn’t even realize that he hadn’t spoken
out loud. “You did it on purpose,” she exclaimed shoving away from
the table. “You changed me on purpose so that you could keep me
like a...a pet!”

“I didn’t. I already told you it must be
three times. There is no other way to change someone.”

Emotional turmoil erupted. Her family. Her
friends. How could she leave them all? “What am I going to do? I
can’t just disappear. I can’t just leave and let my parents and
family wonder what happened to me. I have friends, a job, and a
life! Everyone that was with me last night will blame themselves. I
have nieces and nephews I want to watch grow up. I can’t just be a
vampire!” Hysteria flooded her thoughts. How is a person supposed
to deal with something like this? Her mother would never recover
from her disappearance. It would kill her.

“I’ll figure it out, Liz. I just need time to
think about it,” he answered as he stood and paced the small
kitchen. “I know I got you into this and there is no way out now,
but I’ll figure out what to do to and at least try to make it up to
you. I just need time.”

“What will the Council do tonight?” Liz
asked.

“First they must determine whether or not the
law has been broken. Then they will read your thoughts and heart
and decide if you can be trusted with our secret. They will read
mine as well and evaluate our bond. Once they know if it is strong
enough for me to stay with you and guide you, they will gauge your
self-control to determine if you can be allowed to live. The number
one rule for all vampires is to keep the secret, Liz. No one must
ever know that we truly exist. No one. It is an immediate death
sentence for a vampire to break that rule. There are no questions
asked when it comes to rule breakers.” He paused, but the thoughts
in his head continued.
I have to save her.

“Save me from
them
?” she
whispered.

“You're doing it now, you know?” he
laughed.

“Doing what?”

“You’re in
my
head now, hearing me
think.”

“How am I doing that?”

“We all do it. That’s one small benefit of
being what we are. We can hear each other and most humans.
Telepathic communication is just the beginning. It usually takes
longer for that particular ability to develop though.”

As she watched him, she realized that he
looked much older than she had originally thought. Last night, she
thought he was maybe twenty-five, but right now, he looked older.
His forehead furrowed in thought gave him the appearance of someone
in their late thirty’s.

“So what are these powers? I already know I’m
much stronger, and I can apparently read minds. I’m Superman fast.
What else can I do? Turn to mist? Fly? Will I turn into a bat?”

“No,” he smirked and rolled his eyes, “You
will not turn into a bat. Some can learn to levitate, but it can
take hundreds of years to master. You now have the ability to talk
anyone you come into contact with into doing anything you wish. We
call it glamouring. But I think you might have already been able to
do that,” he said with a wink.

Liz bit the side of her lip and looked away.
His masculinity overwhelmed her. She was afraid if she spoke that
something altogether embarrassing would come out.

“You will never age. You will never suffer
from human illnesses, and you are nearly indestructible. You will
always be able to tell if there are other vampires around you,
within fifty miles or so. The scent of a human will alert you to
any infirmity they might carry as well as notification of any
previous vampire claim to the intended prey. The strength you have
now will grow as the years go by. The older you get, the stronger
you’ll become.”

Michael leaned in closer gazing into her
eyes. “This part is extremely important. There are some among us
that can read our thoughts right now from across the planet, should
they choose. In time, you will learn to close your mind to others,
making it much harder for them to locate you and know your
thoughts. It is imperative you learn this. Your survival depends on
it.”

Liz returned his gaze. “W-What do you mean by
that?”

He leaned back in his chair breaking the
mental hold he had put on her. “Do you remember in the woods? How
you tried to hide your mind from me?”

She nodded.

“You must learn to do that all the time. You
will feel the nudge of something not quite right in your head. Just
like you did a little while ago. You must pay attention at all
times and when the feeling comes over you, close your mind exactly
like you did with me.”

“I don’t understand. I’m one of you now.”

Michael ran his hand through his thick dark
hair as he paused. “There’ll be time for all of that later. Just
remember what I’ve said.”

It had not taken her long to figure out what
she was, but having it all laid out for her was almost too much to
comprehend. Her mind raced through the possibilities this new found
existence could offer. Strength, success, fortune; it was
limitless. A vast knowledge gained over an undetermined amount of
time could allow her to be or take anything she wanted. As the
darkness inside her once again reared, Liz shut it down.
I will
be me. Just me and no one else.

Michael could see that Liz had come to a
breaking point. He did not need to read her mind to understand the
look on her face. “Look, let’s just focus on what is ahead this
evening. We have a long night before us and we need to get going.
The Council will meet at midnight and we have several hundred miles
to go.”

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

Michael reached out and took her hand. He
held it with an almost reverent gentleness, but the sensation of
muted raw power radiated from his touch. Once again, her body
jumped into overdrive.

“I know you are, but if you’ll allow me, I
can explain things easier and faster in your mind than I can
vocally. We have to get going if we are to get there in time.”

The old shed behind the cabin doubled as a
garage for Michael’s car. It didn’t really look like much, just an
old beat up Nova. At one time it might have been orange with black
racing stripes up the hood, but the paint was so weathered it was
hard to be sure. It was fast, too fast.

In her current stressed state, she found it
hard to concentrate. The images appeared fuzzy and unclear.
Inhaling deeply, she closed her eyes, leaned back against the
leather seat, and relaxed. The fuzz smoothed into vivid pictures
that flashed through her mind. The sounds and smells that
accompanied them eerily made it seem like she was there.

There were too many young ones running wild
and wreaking havoc on the rest of the world, and several old ones
who refused to be bothered with secrecy, or the sanctity of human
lives. The Great Plague had nothing to do with rats, but an
overabundance of hungry young vampires. The many ships that lost
entire crews to scurvy were another vamp problem. The Salem Witch
Hunts began because of vampires. Liz quickly discovered that
vampires were most assuredly the monsters legends claimed them to
be.

“Wait. Stop. You're going too fast.” Liz said
as she rubbed her temples.

“There's a lot to tell and not much
time.”

She shook her head. “You'll have to make
time. Witch hunts? Scurvy? How am I supposed to process this junk?
I mean seriously, we're talking the dark ages here.”

Eyes focused on the road, Michael answered,
“Yes, we are talking dark ages and beyond. You need to focus. Empty
your mind. Allow the visions to flow into you.”

“But this can't be real. I mean...it just
can't. How did your people manage to keep this a secret for so
long?” Liz moved her hands across her denim clad legs, nervously
picking lint and debris from the fibers.

He thought a moment before answering,
“Mortals, back then, did not believe vampires were myth. Stories
handed down over the centuries, eventually became published. In
some places, they were considered a matter of public record. Then
the extermination began. Tired of constantly being hunted by humans
and moving from their nests, the oldest and strongest of the
remaining vampires came together to form the Council.