The Poison in Your Blood

I wake up feeling weird. It’s cold in the room and dark and I feel like something isn’t right. I sit half way up in bed and look around the room. Moonlight is flooding in through the windows and the big double doors that go out onto the little balcony. I love that little balcony, sometimes Austin and I sit out there and drink coffee or the occasional glass of red wine and enjoy the air.

Blair was moved down here a week ago and she’s making progress but she still isn’t out of her coma. The doctors think she’ll wake up soon though and we should just keep an eye out for any signs. She’s opened her eyes a couple times and once she smiled.

I feel Austin next to me so I wonder why I’m feeling so horribly uncomfortable. He grabs my arm then and I practically scream as he presses his chest against my back. “Lay down,” he whispers.

“Something is wrong,” I say. I yawn but I don’t close my eyes as he pushes me gently back down on the bed.

“It’s okay,” he says gently.

“No, something is wrong.”

“It’s just the wind,” he says.

It’s so cold in here I can hardly stand it and I start to shiver. I can feel him pull the blankets over me and he pulls me tightly against his chest, but I still feel uncomfortable. I close my eyes for a minute and try and focus.

“Lana, go back to sleep,” he says.

“No! Something is wrong,” I insist.

“Lana, nothing is wrong. I would know if something was wrong, and the dog would be barking.”

It takes me a minute to believe him but finally I agree that it must just be the wind and the dark playing games on me. But god it’s so cold in here. “I’m freezing.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I failed to close the window.” There is a moment of shuffling and he gets out of bed and goes to close the window. The room is filling up with his smell and I’m falling asleep fast and faster. I only lightly hear him growl right before I fall asleep.

By morning it’s warmed up in the room and he’s lying next to me holding me tightly against his body, and he’s breathing in my hair. It’s kind of nice really. Not too often that happens it seems. Can’t go wrong with weekends. Annalise spends a lot of time at the hospital with Blair and she spends some time with a group of friends she’s made in the last couple of weeks. The day before yesterday she came home smelling like cigarettes and I told her if she was smoking again I’d be forced to ground her. Like that’s ever going to happen. I have to admit I’m really bad at the whole punishment thing. I think I’m going to be happy to never have children of my own.

Austin tightens his grip on my waist for a second and then he lets up. I turn over to face him and push his hair out of his face. I think for a minute about how we met and how I never imagined that night that three months later I’d be lying in his bed living in his house and knowing all of his secrets. I never thought I’d love him.

It’s weird, in a way, that I’ve found something so wonderful in such an unconventional way. All the love stories are about how you meet, and either it’s love at first sight, or you go through a period of hating each other before you realize that you really love each other and can’t live without each other. Few great love stories start with you get picked up in a bar and have filthy sex for three days and your boyfriend turns out to kill people and eat them.

His eyes open and I’m scared a little when they are black. He doesn’t usually wake up with his eyes black, and I’m suddenly taken back to waking up freezing in the middle of the night and knowing something was wrong. They instantly change over and he gives me a little smile.

“What happened last night?” I ask without hesitating.

His smile drops into a frown. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I could see it in your eyes,” I say in a snotty tone.

“It wasn’t anything important,” he says. There is a pause. I don’t believe him for a single minute.

“Tell me,” I say.

“Lana, it’s nothing you need to know about,” he says and kisses my head.

“Something was wrong last night,” I say. “I could tell by the feeling of the air. I want you to tell me the truth, Austin. I don’t like being lied to.”

“It’s complicated,” he says.

“I get so fucking tired of hearing it’s complicated.”

“There was a weird car outside,” he says. “I don’t know who it belongs too, but it didn’t belong here.”

“See, not complicated at all,” I say. “Somebody weird was sitting outside your house. Did you call the police?”

“No,” he says. “When whoever was saw that I was watching them they drove away. I don’t know who it was, but I figured if they came back I could handle it.”

I squirm a little at the idea of him “handling” it. “You know, you can’t just eat everybody that pisses you off,” I say in a teasing voice. He smiles at me a little and I smile back. I love him. I love his smile.

“It’s so much more fun that way,” he says. “Besides, it discourages people from coming again.”

“It’s not discouragement if they are dead.”

There are a few minutes of silence and I think about how valid of a point he could have. Police don’t always find the bad guy, the bad guy goes and hurts more people, and sometimes people even get killed. If the bad guy is eliminated then he can’t hurt anybody else. But at the same time it’s bad to kill people. Then again, he’s a vampire and he needs to eat something. We live in L.A. so there isn’t an overwhelming amount of wildlife to go to the Twilight side of vampires and only eat animals. Although if you go out in the surrounding areas and the hills and what not there is an abundance of coyotes. Probably not the best source of nutrition though since coyotes are pretty low on the predator list. Then I have a weird thought.

“Austin,” I say.

“Yea, babe?”

“So…you’ve been…for two years right?”

“Yea, a little over two years,” he says.

“You said in the beginning a lot of innocent people got hurt,” I say. “And, I think hurt isn’t the right word. It probably only hurts them a second. The couple times you’ve bitten me I pass out long before I really think about how much it hurts.”

“They die,” he says. “I think that’s still hurting them.”

“Have you ever turned somebody?” I ask with genuine curiosity. There is a crushing silence, the kind of silence that makes the room feel heavy. I’m not sure how I feel about that. “I won’t say anything bad.”

“It was an accident,” he says. “I made some mistakes, and I picked up this girl. It was after my wife left me. I was…you know…having a hard time with getting it all together. I didn’t want to let myself end up back in rehab. Rehab was miserable with this problem, I could smell it all around me and I was under near constant surveillance. It’s a miracle everybody in the facility lived.” He gets quiet for a minute and he looks at me with dark eyes and I feel a little guilty.

“Yea, another trip to rehab wouldn’t have been good for anybody,” I say.

“Anyways, I was trying to avoid substance abuse. Well there was this girl, she was cute and whatever, dressed like a slut. Long hair, the whole deal. She was hanging out in a bar in one of the really sleazy parts of town. I hung around there a lot during my divorce. It’s a good place to find the really fucked up people of Los Angeles.”

“I find it hard to imagine you hanging around sleazy bars,” I say.

He laughs. “I would go in and have a glass of wine or something and watch the people. I’ll spare you the creepy details,” he laughs again and I think I’m grateful he’s going to do me that favor. “Anyways, she came and sat with me at the bar and I’m still a man you know. She was hot, and half naked, and she was clearly there looking to get lucky. I was lonely and figured some company would be nice before I…well you know,” he says and clears his throat.

“Yea, I know,” I say.

“She started talking and making moves and getting closer and I could smell her blood was pretty clean. No alcohol, which I didn’t know why she was in the bar if she wasn’t drinking. I just figured she was looking for some company too.” He shrugs and thinks about it for a few minutes. “I just went along with her, agreed to everything. She pulled me out of the building and around back. I don’t know how comfortable I was back there, but it was a dark alley and there didn’t seem to be any people around.”

I have to control my cringe at the idea of having sex in an alley with a slut and then killing her. It’s just way too stalker rapist of an image for me to harbor.

“She was all over me, it was sloppy and she didn’t seem like she was completely comfortable in the alley either. I probably should have just backed off then, but instead I insisted we find a place to go just in case the cops showed up or something. She went along with it and we ended up at a motel down the street. I didn’t usually bring any girls home from there, because it’s a pretty far drive for a girl who’s trying to get laid and go home. We got into the room and she was out of her clothes and she was so eager. She looked about 19 or 20, not really old enough to have been in the bar. But the real issue was that her heart started beating really quickly. She was somewhere between excited and nervous and the whole room smelled like her.”

“So…how did you end up turning her instead of killing her?”

“I decided it wasn’t worth it to go through all the sex and everything. When I had her against the wall she was terrified, you could see in her eyes that she was really scared. By that point, I wasn’t worried about her fear or her thoughts; I was only concerned with her blood.”

Oh time to cringe again. Ick.

“She saw my teeth before I bit her, and just when I got to her neck she said something like… ‘Please don’t. I won’t tell anybody anything if you let me go, I’m only 15.’ Shit if my heart still beat it probably would have stopped right then. I dropped her and backed up immediately. But it was too late, I’d already bitten her. It would have been better in a way if I’d just killed her, rather than curse her with this.”

“Christ what was a 15 year old doing in a bar picking up strange men anyways?”

“She was standing against the wall looking confused when I asked her the same question. She said she was trying to show her parents something. Show them she was gonna do what she wanted no matter what. I wonder sometimes how long her parents lived once she was fully turned. A girl that goes out and has sex with strange men to piss of her parents probably doesn’t have a lot of control on her temper.”

“I never did stuff like that when I was a kid,” I say. “The most rebellious thing I did before my parents died was get my belly button pierced. They never knew about it.”

“Why’d you take the piercing out?” he asks with a sleazy grin.

“Because I’m a grown up now,” I say and stick my tongue out.

“Grownups can have belly button rings,” he says.

“My first boyfriend didn’t like it. It closed up,” I say. “I should put it back in just so you can have filthy thoughts.”

“Filthy thoughts are only good when they are followed by filthy actions.”

We have an uneventful day after that. Mostly we spend it in the house with the exception of a trip to a Chinese takeout place for dinner. Annalise is feeling like Blair will be awake soon and she is starting to hint that it’s her birthday on the 15th, the day after Valentine’s day and she wants to get her nose pierced. Since Valentine’s is on Saturday we have to plan her birthday pretty quickly.

When we get back from dinner she goes to her room to finish a paper she’s working on for school. Austin opens a bottle of wine and we sit on the sofa together and watch the news for a few minutes. He puts his arm around my shoulder and I lay against his chest.

“I think we have to get rid of that dog,” he says in a cautious voice.

“Oh my god, you want to get rid of Zoe?” I ask with wide eyes.

“I don’t want to,” he says. “I know Anna is going to be really upset after she’s been through so much. But the dog isn’t happy here,” he adds.

I bite my lip for a second. The problem with arguing is he’s right. The dog is under a lot of stress here between the cat and her hatred of Austin. She never can come inside the house because once she’s inside she just gets upset and Piggy is upset and it’s all just a disaster. Piggy is lying next to us on the sofa right now fast asleep, but I can hear Zoe in the back yard whining with distress. It’s been a constant thing with her since we brought her here.

“What are we going to do with her? If we take her to a shelter they will put her down. Nobody is going to take in a 200 pound dog.”

“Maybe we can find somebody willing to adopt her.”

“Annalise is going to be heartbroken,” I say and look towards the TV. There is a story on about somebody being shot in their car. I don’t care much about what’s happening on the TV though, my mind is racing a million miles a minute on what I’m going to do about the dog and how I’m going to tell Anna we can’t keep her anymore. Anna already has been through so much to lose her dog is going to kill her. Then suddenly my I get to the finish line and in a burst I know what to do with the dog.

I dig my cell phone out of my pocket while Austin stares at me with his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. I dial a number and listen to the ringing. It rings three times and then four times and then I’m ready to give up when I get an answer.

“Hello, darling,” she says in a drawn out voice and I laugh lightly to myself.

“Hey, babe,” I say. “I need a favor.”

“What kind of favor?” she asks. “What’s going on? Do I need to kick some ass?”

I burst out laughing at that. “Jeez, Madison, always ready to fight,” I say.

She laughs.

“No, it’s not that kind of favor. You know Annalise’s dog?”

“Yes! Such a sweet puppy!”

“Sweet puppy?” I question. “She’s taller than you on her hind legs.”

“Height has little to do with how sweet of a puppy she is,” Madison says very logically.

“Well, I suppose,” I say. There is a second of pause where I think of what to say. “The thing is, she hates Austin and she hates my cat. She’s in a lot of distress all the time and I don’t think it’s very good for her to be under that kind of stress. But I hate to adopt her out to somebody we don’t know because poor Anna will be so heartbroken. The dog is the only thing she’s really got left you know,” I explain.

“I’d be glad to take her!” she says without hesitation.

I find this unusual. If it was me, I’d take the dog, but I’d think about it for a minute first. “You aren’t going to think about it for a second?”

“Well,” she says, “there really isn’t much reason I can’t take her in. I’ve got the space.”

“She’s a 200 pound dog,” I say.

“I had a Great Dane growing up, I can handle big dogs,” she says.

“Well, we’ll have to discuss it with Annalise. But I’m sure she’ll be able to accept this solution. That way she can still see Zoe when she needs to.”

“Of course,” Madison says. “Let me know when you are ready for me to pick her up. How is everything else?” she asks.

I told her about what happened with Jonathan and about what happened with Austin after all that. She’s been supportive of my desire to move on from Jon now and rarely mentions him, but I know in a way she still worries about me. I can’t say I blame her; I was a total wreck for a long time after Jon.

“Things are fine,” I say.

“You’re doing good living with him? You never really seemed like the live in girlfriend type.”

“We get along,” I say. “I’ve become very domestic.”

“I would say so, since you not only moved in with a man but got yourself a kid,” she teases.

I laugh. “This is true,” I say. “Speaking of that! Anna’s birthday is on Sunday. She wants to get her nose pierced, but we are thinking we’ll go out and have dinner first.”

“You’re going to let her have her nose pierced? Isn’t her mom going to have a problem with the when she wakes up?”

“I guess Blair might have a problem,” I say and think for a second. “But the doctors don’t seem to think Blair is going to make a full recovery. We are probably going to have full parental rights on Anna until she’s 18, and I see no reason she can’t get her nose pierced.”

There was a lot of paperwork to fill out and a lot of notes to have signed by doctors but the judge approved custody for Annalise to me and Austin a couple days ago. It went surprisingly quickly and it’s currently only temporary custody but once Blair wakes up and the doctors can appropriately diagnose her we’ll find out if we are approved to keep Anna until she’s an adult. It’s only two years from Sunday.

“You’re an interesting mother,” Madison teases.

“I’m the coolest mother ever,” I say. I hear Austin laugh and I swat him. “Anyways, we’ll let you know when you can pick up Zoe. I think Austin and I are heading to bed.”

“It’s early,” she says.

“I didn’t say we are going to sleep,” I say.

“Gross,” she teases. I laugh.

“Okay, goodnight babe. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she says.

We hang up and I look up at Austin. I am tired and rather ready to go upstairs. It’s getting close to 11 o’clock and Annalise is probably going to be heading to bed soon. I finish my wine. “Let’s go lay down.”

“You done with the news?” he asks.

I look at the TV again and see that the story is now about a high speed chase on the freeway. I don’t want to watch this kind of crap. “I’m done with the news,” I say. “I’m going to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. I’ll see you in a few minutes when you get up there.”

“Sure, I’m just going to lock up,” he says.

I nod and get up and stretch my body out before I go up the stairs. I do the whole evening routine, brush my teeth, wash my make up off, change in my shorts and tank top. I don’t think we’ll be having sex tonight; I’m not in the mood. Every so often he talks me into the mood, but in that case the shorts and shirt are easily gotten rid of. I’m not counting on it tonight though.

I walk out of the bathroom and crawl into bed and I’m a little disappointed that he isn’t here yet. It only takes a second to lock the door, he should be here already getting ready to cuddle with me. I’ve grown accustomed to cuddling with him before falling asleep. I know I’m lame.

I turn off the light and try and get myself comfortable. I’m finding it’s a lot harder to get comfortable without him, which is weird because there was a time when it was difficult to get comfortable sleeping next to a man. I lay in the dark for a minute and listen to him to come up. Some time passes and I hear Annalise turn off her stereo and I figure she’s going to bed. She has her own bathroom so I’m sure she’s doing her nightly routine. Her routine is a lot more trouble than mine is.

It’s almost an hour since I came up here when I get annoyed. I pull the blankets off my body and slide my feet into a pair of slippers I have next to the bed and I’m suddenly really cold. “Fuck my life,” I mumble and stumble around the room in search of a bathrobe or something. When I find one and leave the room I’m suddenly hit with that feeling that something isn’t right. The house is dark and eerie still.