Black Blood

After Adrian had spoken with his household, and made arrangements about the corpse upstairs, we had gotten into the car Claude had waiting outside. Claude seemed to beam about the car. I raised a brow, but I didn't ask.

The car ride was mostly awkward silence, until Adrian turned to me. We were sat in the back together. I turned to face him as well; eyebrows raised.

He looked at me a moment before he said, "Your eyes are incredible." I almost snorted at that, rolling my eyes and facing the front once more. "No, they really are. I've never seen eyes like them."

"I have," Claude chimed in, glancing at the both of us in the rear view mirror. He caught my gaze briefly before concentrating on the road again. "One of the other dogs, bred like me. His abilities are different to mine."

"Good for you," Adrian grumbled. I caught Claude's smirk in the mirror. "How do you- drain the life spirit? It just seems... like a strange thing for a human to be able to do."

I looked over to Adrian again and worried my lip. I had already felt enough like a freak, even if the powers were nice to have. But I was still human. And I was still figuring out how these powers even worked.

"I'm not sure, really," I said. "The first time it happened was more of a self preservation type of thing. It was weird. I had been severely wounded, and then this deep hunger rolled through me.

"The hunger seemed to- to take over, basically," I continued. "And I found myself drawing closer to that vampire's corpse. I put my lips near his, parted them, and then his lips parted too. And then this green mist came out of his mouth, and flew into mine. Suddenly I was all healed. My senses grew stronger. It's an incredible feeling- a head rush."

There was silence after that. I looked back and forth between Adrian and Claude, hoping they would have some kind of explanation for me. Neither of them did; they were just as new to it was I was.

I felt the need to add, "This was, of course, after my blood had poisoned the both of them. They basically went into seizures and then died shortly after."

More silence. I sighed and looked at my feet. After a while, Claude spoke.

"It was a fluke, that you were born human," Claude said. I looked up at him through the mirror. "And a mistake that you were never turned before age ten. Something must have happened. Someone had to have hidden you away. That's how you've remained human. And alive."

"But why before ten?" I asked. "Can't I just be turned now, fix all this mess, get people to stop hunting after me? Not that I want to become a vampire..."

Claude licked his lips and sighed. He glanced at Adrian through the mirror then.

"Parlez-vous Français?" he said.

"Oui," Adrian said. He had an incredulous look on his face, as if asking the question had offended him.

They held a short conversation in French after that, of course leaving me out on purpose. I sighed again and rested my elbows on my knees, then resting my chin in my hands. Eventually they wrapped up the conversation.

"So," Claude said, also sighing. "In all honesty... it was thought to have been a myth, just a scary bedtime story to tell vampire children to get them to behave. The reason why you can't be turned now, is because your blood is too toxic. It's right around the age ten that it supposedly starts turning toxic.

"There was one incident, years and years ago," Claude continued. "The child wasn't like you. They were corrupted by Edward Blackblood. His heavy influence turned the child into a weapon, manipulating them into killing a mass amount of vampires. While that was happening, Edward used the distraction to feast off the human population."

"Killed quite a lot of humans," Adrian cut in. "How we managed to cover that one up, I'll never know. The vampires came together to elect a new king, and a council, and they destroyed the child. Edward Blackblood disappeared. But since then, there had never been anymore humans born into the Blackblood clan. You are quite an intriguing specimen."

I stared at the back of Claude's seat. My ancestor was some blood-crazed, psychopath ancient vampire. That brought back an earlier question.

"How exactly do you plan to use me to defeat him, again?" I asked. "When he's already used a human like me to kill. I do believe he'll know what he'll be up against."

The two exchanged a glance in the rear view mirror, but gave no response. I waited.