Without a Sound

Once Mikey finished explaining to me about a lot of the strange, futuristic things in the city, I started to see the difference in the buildings. They were beginning to look more and more run down. I knew we were nearing our destination when he glanced over at me uneasily once again.

“Mikey, what are you so nervous about?” I had had enough. I could feel the anxiousness emanation from him. That was how strong it was, and I needed to know why he was feeling that way.

“Charlotte,” he said condescendingly. “Have you honestly looked at yourself in the mirror? You’re skinny, small, beautiful, young, and weak: the perfect target. There are really bad people around here, and I’m taking you right to them.”

“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror?” I retorted, trying not to feel too flattered by his “beautiful” compliment slipped in between the slightly offensive “small” and “weak.” It didn’t really mean anything. “You’re strong, determined, caring, proficient, and overprotective: the perfect bodyguard. I’ll stay with you, and we’ll be fine.”

He pursed his lips, and we drove on slightly. I suppose that meant he was going to follow through with this against his better judgment. I knew he’d soon find out this was going to be alright.

Anyone who saw us as we made our way from his car to the bench on the side of the street would’ve looked twice. We had to have stuck out like a soar thumb. First of all, they would’ve seen the car we got out of. Compared to the other ones around here, it looked like a diamond in a box of rocks. Not to mention his clothing, but he didn’t seem to be worried about either of those things.

We ourselves were also extremely prone to attracting attention. Mikey, with his bags under his eyes and strange expression might’ve been enough. However, I definitely had to have looked stranger. No one else was nearly as pale, skinny, or frail as I was. Some of the people that walked by looked extremely big and scary.

“Now we ‘look’ with our sixth sense for something that indicates criminal activity,” he said softly to me.

I nodded. Mikey’s eyes still scanned the street around us, skillfully looking for trouble, but I saw that his mind’s eye was somewhere else. I closed my eyes and reached out with my blood sense. I was so overwhelmed by all the people around me that I almost gasped. When I’d been in the graveyard, there had been a maximum of twenty people in my range.

Now, here in the city, there were hundreds. Hundreds of beating hearts, gallons of blood. I found it impossible to focus on one person. It was all I could do to keep myself from going for the nearest person. Even if I could’ve concentrated on one person, I wouldn’t have known where to start, let alone how to figure out what each person was doing. This was harder than I thought it would be.

I opened my eyes when Mikey protectively pulled me closer to him I followed his gaze and saw a big man half consumed by shadows across the dirty street. The look he was giving me made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I felt like he was sizing me up, examining how fine and tender a piece of meat at the butcher’s shop was. It made me truly scared.

The man shifted his gaze to Mikey. He looked him up and down, sizing him up, too. Mikey clenched his teeth, glared at him, and put his arm around me. He adjusted his shirt casually, but the man across the street and I got a glimpse of a gun that Mikey had. The other mad frowned and turned around.

“See what I mean?” Mikey hissed. “That guy was seriously considering you.”

“I saw,” I said weakly. “Why don’t we go after him?”

Mikey sighed, replying, “He hasn’t done anything wrong yet; that I know of.”

“And why do you have a gun?” I demanded, quickly changing the subject. That gun had looked much more lethal than any I remembered from whatever time period I was from.

“To keep us safe,” he answered simply, and then his back stiffened. With a disgusted look on his face, he announced, “I’ve found our prey.”

I was surprised that even through our conversation, he had been searching. How could he think about two things at once? I didn’t ask questions while he got up and started walking. He didn’t remove his arm from around my shoulders while we followed the dangerous sidewalk. He was still worried about me.

I reached out with all my senses and eventually figured out what we were headed to. I didn’t know where it was, but I could tell the position of the bodies by where the veins were, and my body went cold.

The first body was a man. He held something in one hand that was covered in blood, and blood was splattered all over him. The second body was a woman’s. Although her blood was still slightly warm, I could tell she was as dead as the bodies in the cemetery.

When we were so close I could taste them, I knew they were right around the corner. There was nobody else around us. Mikey finally let go of me, putting a finger to his mouth to signal me to stay still and quiet.

I obeyed and watched in horror as he stepped around the corner. A panther couldn’t have been quieter than he was when he crept up on the woman’s killer. Within a few seconds, Mikey had slit the man’s throat.

“Come on over, Charlotte,” he called to me. “He’s dead. Come drink when I’m done.”

I turned the corner, and the scene just looked wrong. It was hard to see Mikey – sweet and caring Mikey – biting into the man’s neck, no matter how bad the guy had been.

I think he saw the short flash of horror in my eyes, because he looked downcast. “You can have the rest,” he said, beckoning me to come closer.

“The rest” turned out to be most of the man’s blood. I felt so dirty drinking his blood, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as drinking Mikey’s. When I was finished, I turned to look at him.

He was sitting against the brick wall, rubbing his temples. “Are you alright?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied, not looking at me. “Well, go ahead. Don’t let her blood go to waste.”

“But I thought you said –”

“She’s already dead,” he interrupted grimly. “Just drink it. After drinking all that, you should be set for a few days. Maybe even a week.”

I only hesitated for a second before sucking out all of the woman’s blood. It was too tempting to resist. The blood tasted slightly sweeter than any I had drunk before – probably because I’d never drunk a woman’s blood.

When I looked up again, Mikey’s face was streaked with tears.