Blood To Blood Page 3

  “Ewww.”

  “You have to eat something, dear.”

  I started picking at the beans. “Type A?” I inquired, glancing at her glass.

  “Yes, a new donor.” A really long time ago, Mom stopped ravishing mortals for moral reasons and now had donors, willing mortals who offered their blood as food. The pitcher’s label read “SEBASTIAN.” She put the glass under her nose and inhaled deeply. “He is Brazilian. He has a fabulous, nutty taste. With a hint of citrus.”

  Dad moved down the stairs. No doubt Mom had sent him mental images of everything that had happened since she’d pulled me through the door. “Do I hear my little honey bear hiding her thoughts from me?” he called out in a booming voice.

  At six-foot-eight, Dad filled most rooms he stood in, which is why he built the house with uncharacteristically tall ceilings. Bald and dark brown with a wiry build and sculpted beard, Dad had an easy-going nature. Who’d a thunk that, one; he’d been born in ancient Kush circa 250 A.D., or, two; he was a wizard with a craft so epic he could level an entire city with a few incantations.

  “Hey Dad.” I didn’t allow him to bear-hug me into his arms as usual, but remained in my seat, concentrating on keeping my shield intact.

  Dad doesn’t technically read minds. Rather, thoughts are drawn to him as if they’re metal shavings and he’s a magnet. Cici has the same ability. My effort was focused on stopping my thoughts (easy prey because they concerned the family’s well-being) from attaching to Dad and my sister. I could feel my face scrunched up with concentration. He exchanged an “our baby’s growing up” look with Mom before sitting down.

  Cici flitted in and sat down in the most neutral position she could find, making sure she was facing everyone equally. At one hundred sixty-seven years old, she was my closest sibling in age and looked the mortal equivalent of twenty.

  Tall and dark chocolate like Dad, she had the physique of a model. She’d recently dyed and cut her waist-length hair, and it now lay blond and close to her scalp in a face-framing style that emphasized her glittering, reddish-brown eyes and the high cheekbones we both inherited from Mom. Her new haircut was kind of butch, but it was balanced by the girly gear she liked to wear.

  I missed braiding Cici’s hair, missed how she would sit between my knees while my fingers flitted through her locks and experimented with different patterns while we talked about everything under the sun.

  She was my only true confidant.

  There was a time when we had no secrets, even after I, at the age of twelve, had asked her and Dad to not read my thoughts. When they complied, I felt free to share with her every bad thing I wanted to hide from our parents.

  Shortly after that, Cici informed me that she had constructed a special place in her mind for all of my “adventures,” away from Dad’s unintentional prying. That so earned her forever points.

  But now, I avoided her eyes. Ever since I’d decided to be serious about music, I’d kept it secret from her for fear Dad may find out and blame her as an accomplice. No need for her to go down in Mom’s flames with me.

  As still as sighted stones, my family watched me chew anxiously on the tines of my dinner fork. Finally, I took a deep breath. “Mom, Dad. Kat Trio got a record deal. I’m dropping out of school.”

  Stunned silence. Cici glanced nervously at Mom, who, from the look on her reddening face, had begun her bloody thoughts. Right then, I knew I was dead meat.

  7. THE BABY’S GROWING UP

  Despite Mom’s growing rage, I quickly plowed ahead…while I still had a head. “I will pursue a recording career. I will go on tour. I will play the Garden. I want to make records. Move into my own place. And sing on TV, videos, and the radio.”

  Cici grinned. Dad frowned. And Mom literally saw red. The room took on her bad mood by turning a slight shade of burgundy and gaining a few degrees in temperature. Typical Shimshana anger stuff.

  I retained a cool façade. I was prepared for this.

  “What did you say?” Mom said in that certain tone.

  “I want to—” I started to repeat myself word for word.

  “Have you forgotten your Mahá, Angelika?” she interrupted tersely.

  Mahá was the coming-out party for new immortals, which lasted for days. It happened immediately after The Change and was one of the most important events in an immortal’s existence. Other immortals from everywhere came to meet and observe the “New One.” Mahá was as old as the oldest of us and there was no getting out of it.

  “No,” I answered, deflated. Spent, I released my shield, wanting nothing more than to climb into bed and try to go to sleep.

  “Why, Angel? Why do you feel the need to do this...pop star thing?” she asked.

  “School sucks. I want to sing.”

  “You want to sing for mortals,” Dad said.

  “I want to sing for everybody.”

  He leaned forward, and extended the first two fingers of his left hand. “May I?” he inquired gently.

  I paused for a second, and then nodded. He touched my temple. After a few seconds, he quickly pulled back and, after a brief pause, patted me on the shoulder. “I see it,” he said. “You want to change the world into a better place with the music in your soul. You want to touch the hearts of people.”

  “Yeah, what you said, Dad.”

  Mom softened up and the burgundy disappeared. “Angel,” she said.” You are beginning to mature. Surely you see that now?” I nodded. “You most certainly will be Shimshana; it is in your blood. And those mortals you want to sing for and be with so badly will suddenly be food to you.”

  Dumbfounded, I looked to Dad.

  “It is difficult, honey, when you are newborn Shimshana,” he agreed. “Your natural tendency will be to…hunt.” The word hung in the air like a threat. “You may not be able to… control yourself the way your mother and sister do.”

  “You mean I could…” the words stuck in my throat before rushing out in a blurt, “…want to kill Jules and LaLa?”

  My eyes darted to Cici, who stared at the table. I eyed her with growing horror. “Cici? You didn’t…?”

  She eventually met my eyes. “It’s almost impossible to stop. Mortals smell good, the way a roasted chicken still smells to you. It took me roughly fifty years before I got to the point where I didn’t want, or need, to attack them.” She quickly looked back down at the table.

  “It is nothing to be ashamed of,” Dad said. “It is your nature.”

  “We make the moral choice to find alternatives to hunting,” Mom added, “but at our core we are hunters. Your band mates, your fans, your teachers, are all fleeting. We are immortal. We cannot afford to see life the way they do.”

  Tears dripped over my lower eyelashes as I fought the mental image of killing my best friends for food. But it wasn’t the thought that made me cry. It was the knowledge that, despite the risk, I wasn’t going to stop. “I’m still going to do what I said I’d do,” I said.

  Dad, looking slightly disgusted, shook his head. The room grew red and hot again. “Oooh, this child,” Mom said from between clenched teeth.

  “Let us talk, my love,” Dad said, rising from the table and reaching for her hand.

  She immediately focused on his eyes, took a deep breath, and clasped his hand. “We are not done with you, young lady,” she said, never taking her eyes away from Dad’s. “Wait here.”

  “Um, okay.”

  Clasping hands, Dad and Mom faced each other. She kissed the space between his bushy eyebrows and the two of them disappeared.

  I whipped around to Cici. “D’you see where they’re going this time?”

  “Taj Mahál. She must be wicked mad.”

  I paced the floor as Cici floated near her chair. “They’re going to keep treating me like a child,” I complained.

  “Hate to tell you this, Bighead, but you are a child. You’re still mortal. And you’ve got no idea what you’re in for.”

  Before I could ask her what she meant by t
hat, Mom and Dad appeared in the same spot they vanished from. “One hour and twenty-seven minutes,” Mom announced. Since she was able to teleport by collapsing space and time, she always told us how long it took to come to a decision as a way to communicate the gravity of the situation and the amount of thought that went into its resolution. Anything over an hour was bad news.

  I looked at them expectantly. Cici eyeballed them for a second before pressing her lips together in what looked like disapproval.

  “You have our blessing,” Dad told me.

  Confused, I glanced at Cici and her frown. This was good news, wasn’t it? “Don’t understand...” I said warily.

  “We have one condition,” Dad continued.

  Uh, oh…

  “We need to be locked to you at all times,” said Mom.

  “A mind lock! DAD!” A mind lock was a total abdication of privacy. Dad would be able to virtually go everywhere I went and see everything I saw, and even scarier, hear my thoughts twenty-four-seven. It was like Big Brother in your cranium. But worse.

  Cici stared at the table again. I felt waves of panic. “Angel. Look at me. Take a deep breath,” Mom said. “Put your feet back on the floor.”

  My panic had lifted me inches off the hardwood. Cici gasped in shock. “Since when do you levitate?”

  “N-never! I mean since now!” I didn’t even know how to get down. Fresh waves of panic started as I pushed helplessly against the ceiling. Would the bizarro-ness of this day never end? “Mom, help!” I pleaded.

  She focused her gaze on the space beneath my feet, and I touched down.

  “Angel,” Dad said. “You must know we will not invade your privacy. Of course we will filter out...certain personal things. We need to stay connected because you are starting to shift. We need to know when things like this,” he gestured toward my feet, “circumstances you may not be able to control, happen.”

  “Honey, soon you will have your Mahá,” Mom said. “You would have to take some time off anyway, so if you feel you want to leave school a little earlier, we are okay with that. We can hire a tutor, and you can always go back to school.” Her eyes glanced toward the part of the dining room floor above her and Dad’s stash of diplomas. “The most important thing,” she continued, “is safety.”

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll blow our cover? That me being in the spotlight would expose us all?”

  My parents exchanged a glance. Quick unspoken words passed from Dad to Cici, who crossed her arms. I cleared my throat, feeling left out of the silent conversation.

  “We had that concern when you were younger,” Mom said, “but now we can see that you understand how important it is that we remain, at least in the eyes of the mortal world, normal.”

  “We know you will never do anything to intentionally damage our life here,” Dad added before casting another quick glance at Cici and giving an almost imperceptible nod.

  “I’ve been lying to you all,” I confessed and sighed in resignation. “I never stopped performing. I just couldn’t stop singing.” More tears.

  “I know,” Mom said tightly. I was thrown off by the calmness she displayed at my admission of guilt. She gently lifted my chin and wiped my tears away with a dinner napkin. “We want you to be happy,” she continued. “If singing on some stage somewhere is what makes you happy, so be it. You would not be the first immortal to do so.”

  I exhaled in relief.

  “But you cannot fool yourself,” Dad said. “You have to be honest to yourself about who and what you are.”

  “Be honest about the fact I might eat my friends someday. I get it.”

  The looks on their faces, though, told me there was more.

  “Okay, Dad. I accept the mind lock. But we really have to talk about what you are not allowed to see. After all, I’m not a child anymore.” (Take that, Cici!) “And if you acknowledge my maturity, why not tell me everything?”

  Cici stared at Dad with a see-I-told-you-so look and he stared back sternly. But eventually, he slowly nodded in what looked like acquiescence. Cici beamed.

  “Angie,” she said excitedly. “You were probably wondering why I’ve been around for the past few years. Why I moved back home.”

  I had wondered about this in the past because Cici was in a long-term relationship with Satchel, a hunky, electricity-channeling realtor from Los Angeles.

  “I’m here because of you. Aurora helped me during my change and now it’s my turn to help you as much as I can. To initiate you.”

  Three-hundred-forty-eight year-old Aurora was the next-youngest of my five brothers and sisters. She lived in Sweden, and respectfully declined to embrace the mortal pretense our parents touted.

  “Roro was an amazing help to me. The same way Addy was to her.”

  “So, you’re saying we have a tradition in the family? That the next-oldest helps the youngest go through...The Change?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “It’s the way our family’s done it for a long time.”

  The thought of Cici helping me through whatever was coming filled me with a sense of peace. Besides my session at Mr. C.'s, it was the only time that day that I felt relaxed. My mouth formed around a potentially skull-cracking yawn before I stuffed a forkful of cold potatoes into it.

  “Why would I need your help?” I asked while chewing. “I mean, doesn't The Change just happen on its own?” I chomped on a piece of chicken.

  “The shift is not just a physical change, sis, it’s total; emotional, mental, even spiritual. It’s good to have someone who can be with you.”

  “For those times when I forget my shoes, find myself levitating uncontrollably, or becoming one with doors,” I said in a wry tone.

  We all laughed then, loudly and with abandon. Our voices tinkled like the crystal chandelier hanging overhead. But underneath the laughter, there was a sad feeling; we knew we’d never laugh this way again. The “baby” was a baby no more. The family would yet again change. Forever.

  The last thing I remember of that night was the way the light glistened on Mom and Cici’s teeth, and how it danced in Dad’s eyes.

  I never made it to my room. In a couple of seconds, I was sleeping like the dead with my head on the dining room table.

  8. FIRST SESSION

  True to their word, Jules and LaLa came in the morning to pick me up on the way to Sawyer’s. When they found out both Mom and Dad were onboard with my career choice, we traded hugs and high fives.

  “Are they really letting you drop out before graduation?” Jules asked in an awed tone.

  Oops. Had to back-pedal on that one. The answer was yes, but of course I couldn’t tell them why. “Nope. Can’t have everything, I guess.” We climbed into LaLa’s old 1995 Saturn.

  “Speaking of dropping out of school, “ Jules said, “last year, when he was a freshman, Sawyer Creed dropped out of Berklee College of Music to produce full-time.”

  “Seems to have worked out for him,” LaLa whispered later as the three of us looked around his home studio.

  As if it were the sole lived-in part of his home, the studio was the only area that was furnished. It took up most of the first floor of his two-level brownstone apartment and featured two large black leather couches, several beanbag chairs, armchairs, fold-up chairs, stools, and various functional tables. A sound booth big enough to hold ten people stood adjacent to a smaller sound booth containing a huge console with a soundboard, Macintosh computers, monitors, and some other cool stuff. Stacks of Billboard, Music Business Journal, and other music industry mags were sprawled on a low table made from a sheet of Plexiglass balanced on two large concrete blocks.

  Sawyer moved around the space like some type of blond tiger, frustrated with not being able to pull the perfect track for us. He was no friendlier than he was the day before, aside from an abrupt hello when we arrived. And, yep, he still frowned. I figured it must be the music that always occupied his head that gave him that perpetual scowl. Did he ever smile? Or even laugh?

  He s
wore under his breath.

  “Why don’t we just listen to the tracks and pick what we like?” I said to his back.

  He aimed his glare in my direction. “That's a lot of tracks.”

  His bad temper wasn’t going to ruin my day. I smiled at him. “Then we should probably get started.”

  I felt better today than I had in a long time, for a lot of reasons. One: I’d slept for twelve straight hours the night before. Two: telling my family the truth filled me with relief. And three: I was finally going to learn exactly what The Change was. Cici had a presentation called “Bighead’s Transformation” planned for the evening. I chuckled at the memory of her enthusiasm when she’d told me about it.

  Sawyer raised his head from the sound deck to throw me a nasty look. “Something funny?”

  Well, excuse me for breathing. What was his problem? The edges of my vision turned a pre-Shimshana pink. “Private thought,” I said turning my attention to the music videos on the flat screen.

  Ironically, none of my thoughts were private anymore now that I was in the mind lock. When I woke up that morning, Cici was floating in the corner of my room, legs folded in lotus position. Her eyes were shut and she looked like she'd been that way for a while. I spotted a glass of juice and some grapes on the nightstand and downed the contents of the glass.

  She opened her eyes. “How're you feeling, Bighead?”

  “Thirsty.” I glanced at the empty glass in my hands. “Guess I'm not Shimshana yet.”

  “Nope. The Change will take a little time. Could be days or weeks. Definitely on your way, though.” She floated to the bed and settled down on the pink comforter. “First order of business. Mind lock.”

  I sighed, remembering my promise to Dad.

  “Don’t worry about Dad seeing all your secrets. You won’t be locked to him. You’ll be locked to me.” She smiled broadly.

  “Huh?”

  “Dad said it was okay when I pointed out it would be the same result whether you were locked to me or him. And in the end, he really didn't want to know exactly how grown up you are.”