The Fifth Clan (18 page)

23

March 05, 2005: Scotland

"Where is she Grim?"

Grim coughed on some of the smoke and ducked down in search of cleaner air. Smoke was pouring up the stairs and the air was getting hazy with it. I guess smoking for years really did make a difference, I didn't much notice the smoke.

"Next door," he choked out. I ran out the door and into the next room. The smoke hadn't infiltrated here as much but as soon as I entered the room I knew something was terribly wrong. I could hear her breathing, harsh and labored. The stink of sweat and fear filled the room just below the over powering stench of blood.

The room was smaller than the one I had booked for Rachel and I. It was dark, lit only by the flames outside and the street lamps. The bed was in the center against the far wall next to a window. Sprawled across the light cream colored bed spread was a small, dark form, with a spreading dark stain beneath her.

When I leaned over her I realized that I had no memory of crossing the room to her. No memory of whatever thoughts might have gone through my head at that time all I could think as I stood there is what had I been thinking, getting her involved in this? I was no better than the beasts that attacked her in the first place.

I shook that off as best I could and focused on her. She was lying on her left side, curled almost into the fetal position. There were no obvious signs of injury that I could see at first but the moment I rolled her onto her back the signs became glaringly clear. The two inch wide gash in her abdomen, probably caused by the bloody sword lying next to her on the bed, was a pretty clear indication of what had caused the injury.

On the plus side that meant she hadn't been bitten by a wolf. I hadn't seen any wolves in the other room but that made sense since Grim could have ordered them not to attack or to help us and they would have been required to do so. She was already getting pale and based on the amount of blood spread across the bed I could tell she didn't have long if I was going to save her.

"What's the plan Gabe?" I looked up at Ghost looking far more human, and Grim as they entered the room

"I have to save her. She never asked to be dragged into this and I can't just let her die now."

Grim glanced at the wound and grunted.

"That seems a bit extensive for your blood to heal. Are you sure it will work?"

I sighed, vaguely aware of Ghost wandering the room, for what reason I couldn't say, I wasn't particularly interested or paying attention. "No Grim, I can't use a few drops of my blood to heal this. I need something a little more extreme." I turned my head finally to look at the Old Wolf and he took a step back at the look in my eyes. I can only imagine the murderous rage written across my face at that moment. Unlike the burning anger that I'd exploded with when I destroyed Claus's bar at his hotel room, or when I was attacked in the smoke shop in Oregon. This was an ice cold rage that had me very calm despite the livid epic levels of anger that I felt coursing through my veins.

In the Old Wolfs defense he barely flinched past the initial back step and immediately came forward again. "What do you need from us?"

"We need to get her out of here and we need someplace that she and I won't be bothered for at least twenty four hours. And we have to do it quickly, she doesn't have much time."

Ghost and Grim moved quickly after that. Thankfully the fact that we worked together for so long meant we didn't get in each others way much as we worked. I wrapped Rachel in the comforter from the bed, covering her completely and lifted her into my arms. To my enhanced strength she always felt light but at that moment she seemed even lighter than usual to me.

We said nothing else. Ghost and Grim preceded me from the room and led the way down the stairs. The lower floor was still a mass of flames but we reached the second floor and found a window facing away from the street. There was minimal foot traffic on that side and we leaped to the ground below, landing heavily. Rachel groaned inside her cocoon but quieted as I shifted her gently in my arms and we ran around to the front of the building.

An ambulance stood nearby with the doors gaping open and the driver talking into his radio next to it. Ghost knocked the man out and tossed Grim the keys. I jumped into the back with Rachel and Ghost tossed the unconscious driver in with me before they closed the doors and jumped into the front.

"It'll be ok, Rache," I whispered to her as I unwrapped her from the comforter. I was not exactly looking forward to what would happen next. I had never experienced it myself, but I knew what was coming from my lessons as a fledgling.

Rachel was going to get what she wanted, but probably not in the way she had hoped.

The Brotherhood Council would also likely be less than amused.

The Fifth Clan was about to be born.

24

March 06, 2005: Scotland

In popular literature, movies, games, and even most ancient lore the way a human is turned into a vampire is by a mixture of different methods. Biting someone was always one way that was widely accepted to make someone a vampire. Or a mindless ghoul if the victim was not a virgin before the vampire bit them. Drinking the blood of a Vampire was also considered to work.

In a strange way these methods were correct and missed the mark at the same time.

What needed to happen was for a humans system to be overwhelmed by vampiric blood, carrying the virus that made us Vampires. To do so the victim needed to be largely drained of their blood, nearing the point of death so their body would be weak and more easily overcome by the virus. Feeding from the victim was the simplest way to arrange this.

The vampire would also be severely weakened by having a large amount of their own blood drained in the process of creating their Child, so feeding immediately before hand helped prevent a feral state once the Child was created.

Since Rachel had already lost so much blood feeding from her wasn't an option that I was willing to entertain. But I still needed to feed myself. Therefore the poor ambulance driver became an unfortunate victim. In his unconscious state he was easy prey. I sank my teeth into his wrist, tearing a jagged wound and sucked greedily at the injury, draining much more of his blood than I would in a normal feeding. Not enough to kill the man, but enough that he would likely spend a few days in the hospital.

Ghost pulled the ambulance over when I yelled to him and I bit my tongue, letting several drops of my blood fall into the wound which closed up within seconds before my eyes and I rolled him out onto the street. Closing the doors Ghost started driving again and I turned my attention back to Rachel.

This was the part that I was least looking forward to. To overwhelm her system she couldn't drink my blood. Drinking it wouldn't help the fact that she had lost a great deal of her own blood. When a patient needs blood in the hospital they don't have them drink it, they put it into their veins directly through a transfusion

The traditional method for creating a vampire was drain the
victims’ blood nearly entirely of the blood needed for the victim to remain alive, then slash open both the human and vampires arms, press the wounds together and let their blood mingle for the next twenty four hours.

At the end of that time both would wake changed. The human would be a vampire, young and strong. The vampire would be a Sire, linked indelibly to his progeny and for a brief number of hours he would be weaker than his Child, weary from the arduous task of creating a new vampire.

For humans this was not a way to mix two beings blood together. It just wouldn't work. With a Vampire involved, however, the usual rules don't exactly apply.

In less than a minute I had both our left forearms sliced open and the wounds, with a severed vein for each of us, pressed together. The next reaction wasn't unexpected but it was still an odd feeling. The severed ends of my vein melded
to the ends of her vein. The torn flesh in my arm melded to the torn flesh of hers, binding our bodies into one biological unit.

My blood, carrying the vampire virus traveled through her blood stream until it reached her heart. There it was pumped out into her arteries where it would be carried to the rest of her body. Through the roughly sixty-thousand miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries that ran through the average human body.

We would be here for twenty four hours while my blood slowly filtered into her body. Two hearts beating together as one. I felt my eyes growing heavier and eventually drifted off to sleep as the transformation slowly changed us both.

* * * * * *

"You know, I have really got to stop waking up like this around you Gabriel. A girl might start to get the wrong idea." I opened my eyes slowly, immediately aware that I was no longer attached to Rachel.

"What time is it?" My voice was a hoarse rasp and I swallowed hard, tongue feeling thick in my dry mouth. On the seat next to me was a plastic grocery bag. It hadn't been there before so I assumed that either Ghost or Grim had left it for when we woke.

"Just past four o'clock," Rachel said, answering my question. I grunted and handed her a bottle of water and a package of beef jerky. Not much, but better than nothing right at the moment. If I had my time right Rachel and I had been under for anywhere between six to thirty hours. If it was the latter, which I was guessing to be more likely, than it was the morning of March 7th, and we had missed the entire first day of the Council meeting.

We would need to get inside today and ironically, despite my reticence to do so, it would be easier now that Rachel was no longer human.

"We need to get into the Council meeting today," I told her as we drank and ate. I explained what Vera had told me while they were being attacked at the hotel and outlined my new plan to get us inside. It was such a simple idea that I had completely overlooked it before. The downside to hiding for so long without constantly training my powers was I had tendency to forget about the more specialized skills that I possessed when they could have made a lot of situations much easier for me if I had just remembered to utilize them properly.

Rachel was fairly quiet as she ate. I could feel hunger pangs tugging at me. I needed blood to replenish what I had lost in creating her but I knew she would be feeling on top of the world right now. Strong, healthy and bursting with energy. So her sitting so quietly was making me nervous.

"I can't read your emotions so easily anymore," I admitted finally. "You've got to tell me how you're feeling now or I won't know."

"How's that?"

"I'm only part Vasith. Vampiric and Lychen minds don't operate the same way that human minds do. Yours no longer operates as it did so unless I focus very hard I can't read your thoughts or emotions very easily. Humans are simple, they broadcast their thoughts and feelings all the time whether they want to or not. I can't help but pick up some things."

"So you won't be intuitively picking up on what I'm thinking anymore?"

"Not unless you broadcast it."

She grinned at me.

"Pleased to keep me out of your head?"

"A little."

"Can you tell me how you're feeling?" I hate not knowing things. I really, really hated it with the fiery burning heat of a thousand suns. More than I could possibly explain, I didn't like that feeling.

She sat silently save for the sound of us chewing on beef jerky, watching me intently with a smug grin on her face. I started to fidget slightly as the silence stretched into its
third minute. By the fourth I was ready to explode and just when I went to open my mouth to cut into the silence she started laughing.

"It's driving you up the wall isn't it? Not being able to tell what's in my head is driving you completely and utterly insane."

"Just a touch."

"Good." I arched an eyebrow at her and she shrugged. "Hey, it was driving me crazy how you kept peeking into my head, only fair that keeping you out drives you just as much around the bend."

"You're not driving me around the bend."

"I think you were already around the bend Gabriel."

"I can neither confirm nor deny such an accusation," I said as haughtily as I could manage. She giggled quietly for a moment before settling back down on the gurney again.

"How am I supposed to feel right now?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know. I mean... I'm a vampire now, aren't I?"

I nodded.

"Shouldn't I feel different? Shouldn't the world look different or sound or smell different?"

"It will. You're still within the first hour of waking so things haven't entirely kicked in yet. Your brain is starting to operate on a level beyond what it ever has before, like I mentioned. After the first hour you'll slowly start to get some of the enhanced senses. My best guess, cause there's no way to prove this theory, is that the virus does this to prevent a fledgling from becoming overwhelmed."

"Fledgling?"

"A newborn Vampire."

"And why would it matter if the fledgling is overwhelmed or not?"

"Because right after creating a new Child, the Sire, me in this case, is considerably weakened by the act. Right now you are stronger and faster than I am and the reasoning is biological, as far as I can tell. Survival is a powerful force. The fledgling wakes without the disorienting enhanced sight, smell, and hearing that you will experience later because until I regain my strength it is the Childs job to protect their Sire in the event of an attack.

"Give it about eight hours and you'll absolutely notice the enhanced senses." I picked up an empty metal canister and tossed it to her. Her hand shot out and snatched it out of the air, crushing the thin metal like a piece of tissue paper in
her grip. She stared wide eyed at her own hand several moments and I chuckled quietly at the loudly broadcasted sensation of shock that I could feel coming from her. It was so strong that I didn't even have to strain my Vasith talents.

"What the fuck?"

"Told you. Your strength should be rather amazing to see right about now. It takes roughly six hours for the blood to equalize and your strength to start coming back down to a more even keel."

"How long until I can start using the other talents from the four clans? What about the fifth power? Do we even know if I have the same power as you? If I don't what does that mean? Would I start a Sixth Clan? What abou-." She stopped talking when my hand covered her mouth and she glared at me angrily.

"Rachel, I understand that you are extremely excited and worked up at the moment but if I'm going to answer any of those questions you need to stop talking and take a breath long enough for me to get a word in edgewise." I stood, hating the weak feeling in my legs but knowing it was just a temporary situation, and took my hand from her mouth, holding it out to her instead. "Come on. Let's head outside and test what you can do."

The look on her face then nearly wiped away all of my worries at creating another like myself. The joy and excitement
she so obviously felt burst through in the form of a broad smile and glittering eyes as she took my hand and leaped to her feet. She leaped a little too high, actually, and cracked her head on the roof of the van. I laughed when she landed in a heap next to me and she glared at me, ruefully rubbing the crown of her head and looked up at the sizable dent she had left in the ceiling.

"That's going to take a lot of getting used to isn't it?"

"Just a little bit, yeah," I said, still laughing and grabbed her hand again. "Come on, lemme show you how I got used to things." I threw open the rear doors and stepped out into the crisp pre-dawn air. My watch told me 5 o'clock was approaching and that was perfect. We had enough time for me to teach her some of the basics before approaching the council.

Last thing we want to do was talk to the old fools with a completely out of control Fledgling in attendance. It would not go far toward smoothing things over with the brotherhood. We were at the edge of a wood. Which one I couldn't tell you. It's had so many names over the centuries and the Vampires and Wolves call it something different than what is listed on any human map so suffice it to say it was out in the butt-crack of nowhere, Scotland, and leave it at that.

The wood was to our right as we exited the ambulance and off to our left was nothing but the long rolling grass and hills that is so indicative of the Scottish moors and in the distance, roughly twelve miles away, a small speck, which would resolve itself into the great Brotherhood Hall. I led her about forty feet out onto the moor and turned her to face me.

"Alright, do exactly as I say until you've got a better understanding of your strength levels, ok?"

She threw me a salute and a saucy grin. "Hai, Sensei."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll get you for that later you realize."

"You realize it won't be quite as easy as it was before."

"Shut up," I said though I was smiling. "I'm instructing right now." She fell silent but the smile never left her face as she waited for me to tell her what to do. "Stand straight." She did. "Arms out a bit for balance." Arms came out. "Now jump."

Her knees bent before she hesitated and looked at me quizzically. "Huh?"

"No questions, just jump, straight up. Small jump, don't try to go too high yet."

She hesitated for a second longer, knees still bent slightly before she shrugged and jumped lightly. She shrieked in surprise when instead of a small hop, as she had been expecting, she shot up ten feet into the air. Her arms and legs flailed wildly and I could tell she would never stick the landing but the ground was relatively soft out here and hey, ten feet was nothing to a vampire of her strength.

She landed hard and rolled a dozen feet in the damp grass before she slid to a stop on her back, staring up at the slowly lightening sky and gasping for breath as if she'd just run the mother of all marathons.

"Holy fucking crap nuggets on a stick."

I arched an eyebrow at her again. I know I do that a lot, deal with it. "Crap nuggets?"