Blood Entwines (6 page)

It was almost time
.

But first he needed to steal some food.

Kara walked down the street, focusing on her footfall, one in front of the other. It began to drizzle. Her anger had subsided and she relaxed a little, allowing the knots in her shoulders to loosen up. Lifting her eyes from the footpath, she looked around. Sparse yellow leaves, the remnants of the autumn, peppered the path, collecting in bundles next to walls, at the bases of trees, by the gates to people's houses. Winter was here. She had missed out on a whole season and time hadn't waited for her.

There was a big oak tree, naked of leaves; she recognised where she was.

‘Oh.' The single syllable escaped her lips.

The road in front of her seemed the same as any other road, except for one detail. This particular road held
her
in its very fabric, bits of her, fibres from her clothes, fragments of her skin, her hair, even her blood. She stared and stared, black dots swimming in front of her eyes, a buzzing noise wrapping itself around her consciousness like a squeezing python. She was paralysed by a distant memory – her bare feet sinking into soft sand and her body floating endlessly at peace.

Someone was screaming. She could hear it underneath all the other noises in her head. Goose bumps colonised the skin along her arms. So much to process – layers of emotion peeled one over the other. Was it possible to have one singular thought or was it always going to be like this, a constant barrage of thoughts and counter-thoughts, like a game of chess battling on in her brain?

Her legs buckled; the road seemed to grow blacker, yawning foully before her, trying to swallow her up. In her veins, a fiery pain flared, rushing against her insides. The air around her turned arctic and pressed against her sensitive skin; her clothes rubbed irritatingly; every minor movement of her body tormented her. She stood shaking, staring at the road, feeling her body being engulfed in icy flames.

A flash of light pounded through her skull, blinding her, ripping through her brain, through her eardrums, through her whole body, coursing with insistence till it seemed to fill every particle of her. As she slowly ebbed into the folds of unconsciousness, she realised that the piercing scream, which now magnified itself in her battered eardrums, was her own. It ripped through everything within range, shattering the docile neighbourhood silence.

She failed then, in her attempt to hang on through the pain, she sank into the blackness, her body slumping on the dark, rain-spattered tarmac.

***

He watched her from the other side of the street, his presence shielded by the overhang of the leafless branches. He could smell her. His body began to heat up, the blood writhing within him
.

He pressed his hand against the tree trunk, his nails digging into the bark. What was happening
?

On the breeze the sound of her scream carried easily to his sensitive ears and pierced his skull
.

His blood began to pulsate in his veins, shifting, rolling, tumbling against his insides. He balled his hand into a fist and pounded it against the sturdy trunk. This couldn't be happening. Not this kind of connection, not with her. The blood, it had taken root, in her veins. It called to him, teasing him, goading him. The pain was his blood straining for hers, straining to reunite. His nearness was like a catalyst, accelerating the change
.

Why hadn't he killed her when he'd had the chance
?

He turned and limped slowly down the road. With each step he felt a lessening of the pressure, a relieving of the discomfort. He would need to bleed her soon. If he waited much longer, who knows what would happen
?

He swung his leg over the bike and kicked it into gear. He had to get out of here
.

He needed to prepare. The pain – he would have to figure out how to deal with that
.

He had made a big mistake. Another one. When would he ever learn
?

***

Something irritating tickled Kara under her cheek. She huffed in annoyance. Probably her pillow needed plumping. A gust of wind rippled over her and she realised, in a moment of pure panic, that she was not in bed.

A burning in her throat reminded her of the piercing scream that had shattered the silence –
her
piercing scream. She groaned with new awareness as she tried to get her eyelids to function. She was on the footpath, under a tree. Clammy hands seemed to be all over her, touching her forehead, her arms, her legs. She was not alone.

Ugh
, she thought with revulsion,
get off me
.

She forced her eyes open and recoiled in horror, a face, so close she could see the pores. Every intricate detail flooded her vision: a spot bubbling up underneath the skin at the chin, two enormous hazel eyes shaded with concern, looking at her. She reached out her hand to push the face away. But her hand never made contact.

‘Kara?'

The voice familiar.

‘Kara,' the voice continued. ‘Are you all right?'

She lifted her head slightly from the cold ground. She pushed her hand in front of her to get him to move out of her personal space, so she could breathe a bit easier. Her hand didn't touch him.

‘Here. Here,' he urged. ‘Let me help you.'

His voice was loud, booming. She cringed as it assaulted her sensitive eardrums. A hand reached out to her shoulder and helped her into a vertical position. She rested her back against the tree trunk for support. She could feel damp from the grass seeping through her skirt. She tried to focus her wayward attention on her helper. Her vision swam, but there were no black dots, just intimidating detail.

She forced her eyes to focus on her surroundings. Bewildered, she noted that a small but intent group of spectators had gathered around her. Mrs Corey from down the street was there, her little poodle sniffing around Kara's feet, its impatient huffs of breath loud to her ears. Two students from the year below were staring with wide eyes, memorising the scene, no doubt to be retold in exaggerated detail as soon as they got home.

Kara shuddered under everyone's inspection, under all the watchful eyes. She turned her attention to the person in sharp relief in front of her before flinching. Ben Shephard leaned towards her, his eyes searching her face for some clue as to her distress.

Her first thought was that Ben Shephard was not perfect: he gets spots like the rest of us.

A second thought jumbled its way into her head: Why is it like looking at him through a magnifying glass?

The group of spectators had formed a half circle of expectation round her, yet all she could think of was their detail, so crisp – from the hue of their skin to the creases in their clothes. One of the kids, she observed, had a small hole in his shirtsleeve, it peeked out from under the cuff of his jumper.

It was all so precise. Kara could see everything, hear everything – the birds in the canopy of branches overhead, the cars driving a few streets away, the sound of someone emptying their bins. The scent of freshly cut grass overpowered her, someone's body odour equally so.

A soft whine escaped from the dog, he looked at her expectantly, his head titled to the side waiting, watching.

Kara shifted her weight and moved gingerly away from the support of the tree, while Ben gripped her arm. She smiled sheepishly at him. She was mortified – of all the people who had to be nearby – and silently cursed her ill luck.

‘Wow, Kara, you gave us a really big fright. You were screaming your head off. I could hear you down the end of the street. I thought you were being attacked.'

‘Ya,' interjected one of the students. ‘Then you fell down and started twitching like crazy, having some kind of fit.'

Ben shot him a look to shut him up. Kara cringed as she tried to shake his hand loose of her elbow.

‘Sorry,' she mumbled. ‘I think I fainted or something.'

‘Some fainting spell that was, young lady,' Mrs Corey said from the edge of the group. ‘I could hear you from my back garden, six houses away.' She nodded in the opposite direction. ‘I thought someone was being murdered.'

‘Thanks for that,' said Ben dismissively as he led Kara away from the gathered spectators, gently maintaining his hold on her elbow. The older lady tutted to herself, muttering something about ‘young people nowadays' as she moved away. Obviously satisfied that nothing untoward was happening, she summoned her dog with a sharp whistle. The whistle pinched Kara's eardrums mercilessly.

The little group disbanded as Kara hobbled stiffly down the street. Ben watched her expectantly.

‘What?' she asked, a little sharper than she intended.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You just look . . .'

She glared at him.

‘. . . a bit pink.'

He laughed quietly to himself as she squirmed in irritation.

‘Come on.' He inclined his head once in the direction of her house. ‘I'll see you home.'

How does he know where I live?
This had been one of her fantasies before, being escorted home by Ben Shephard, but now the reality of the situation seemed decidedly inferior. She realised she had a wet patch on the back of her skirt from sitting under the tree.

Kara wanted to get home as quickly as possible to deter anything else embarrassing happening to her. She was almost certain she had road dirt stuck to her cheek and haphazard leaves from the tree matted into her uneven hair. Ben probably felt sorry for her after the scene in the canteen. Kara folded her arms across her chest, conscious of the proximity of the boy next to her.

She sniffed the air. A great many smells filled her nostrils, the strongest of which was Ben's deodorant, strong and spicy, but underneath that was another smell, slightly unpleasant, something sickly sweet. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it irritated her. She wondered what it was.

He looked down at her, smiled a lopsided grin. She averted her gaze and stared at the cracks in the footpath.

‘Kara, I wanted to . . . Well, I wanted . . .'

Oh God, he's going to tell me about him and Ashleigh
.

Ben stopped walking, turning to look at her. ‘It's OK, you know.'

She squinted at him. ‘What's OK?' She had no idea what he was talking about.

‘That you didn't want to see anyone. Your mum . . .' He ran his fingers through his hair, making it dishevelled. ‘I mean, stepmum, came to see the principal. Said you didn't want to see anyone. That you were concentrating on getting better.'

‘What?' Kara's face scrunched in disbelief.

‘There was a big announcement at assembly. Respecting your wishes and all that.'

‘I don't . . .' She was struggling for words, her mind processing the information. All that time in the hospital, alone, no visitors calling to see her, no contact with her friends.

Ben nodded his head in the direction of her house.

‘Nearly there.'

The smell of home baking teased Kara's nostrils as they rounded the corner to her street. It smelt like chocolate orange muffins. Rosemary was baking. She hadn't baked since the funeral. Kara, in her distracted state, let herself be led right to the front door. Instantly, she knew she'd made a mistake. Ben rang the doorbell.

Damn
.

She scowled up at him. She should have rooted out her key from her satchel when they were at the street corner.

The door opened and Rosemary stood there, her apron flecked with white flour, a string of congealed cake mix stuck to her hair. She took one look at Kara and the blood drained quickly from her face leaving it porcelain pale.

‘What happened? Are you OK? I knew I should have come to collect you . . .' Rosemary's voice escalated an octave or two.

Kara needed to get rid of Ben. She and her stepmum were overdue a conversation. Kara opened her mouth to lie, but before she could get a word out Ben had launched into a rendition of events. She thought of stomping on his foot or barging in the door, closing it firmly on his face, anything to get him to shut up. Rosemary seemed to be getting paler by the minute. When he got to the part about her screaming, she shifted nervously from one foot to the other.

Why had she been screaming? The question ricocheted through her brain. She searched her memory of the journey home and couldn't remember. She had been thinking about the accident, her heartbeat on that day and about the fact that it had stopped for a moment or two.

In effect she should be dead.

She looked at Ben and tried to establish a concrete emotion towards him. Did she like him? Did she lust after him? Did she even really know him? She shouldn't be thinking of these things. He was with Ashleigh . . . not even interested in her.

What was that irritating noise?
Thump, thump, thump
. She switched her attention away from her thoughts and listened. It was the kid from two doors up, bouncing a ball against a wall.

She grimaced again, completely disregarding the conversation going on around her. There was nothing unusual about being capable of hearing that far . . . if she were an elephant.

She wouldn't let go of the belief that she was normal, not just yet. She didn't want to face the rising questions and the feeling of impending doom they brought with them, not just yet. Not just yet.

It looked as if Ben had finished his retelling of the evening's events; he and Rosemary were looking at her anxiously.

‘What?' she snapped. ‘I fainted. That's all.'

She moved in a straight line through the front door and down the hall, not looking back. She didn't even say thanks to Ben for walking her home. She was too annoyed. Why had Rosemary gone to school to tell everyone to stay away? Was she embarrassed?

Kara heard the click of the front door behind her and the soft footfalls of Rosemary as she moved along the hallway into the kitchen.

The countertop was covered in flour, the sink overflowing with dirty dishes. The smell of chocolate orange muffins enveloped her, so delicious. But Kara wasn't interested.