Desire of the Soul (18 page)

‘Grant, my name is Grant.’
 
voice. His voice. It sounded so perfect as his voice whispered to me in my head, Grants voice.

All too soon though, the pleasure ended, as a sharp pain erupted in my chest. I let go of my hold on Grant, snapping my
 
body to face the threat. My body had healed seconds ago, the tingling having come and gone with Grants blood rushing throughout my system, but that was no matter. The Red still had pieces of me in its grip, and it was pissed at its feeding having to stop.

Gracia stood before me with a red-stained knife, blood dripping off it and splattering on the floor. Blood. My blood.

Once again I pounced, ripping into Gracias body with my teeth, the Red taking over my vision completely. My blood, I had to protect my blood.

“Stop!” a voice yelled out, but I ignored it, continuing my ravage on Gracia’s body. “STOP!”

I felt my body flying across the hallway, landing in a crouch feet away from a teal painted wall. That wasn’t possible though, it wasn’t possible for me to see Grant standing over me. Grant who I just
 
fed upon, Grant who should be lying on the floor right now from blood loss.

“What are you?” I whispered, feeling the Red creep away from my vision.
 

I turned at the sound of a groan, watching as Gracia slowly stood from where she’d collapsed after my attack. Standing, as if I didn’t just tear at her insides. Standing, her body stitching itself back together right before my eyes.
 

I backed against the wall, feeling fear start to take over where the Red had left. Fear of these things who weren’t Amatores Sanguinis, but also weren’t human. Who didn’t smell like shifters, Fae, or witches. Who didn’t have the cold perfectness of an Expletus, or the orange boxiness of a Fatum. Whose blood smelled so enticing, calling to me, begging for me to take another bite.

“We’re Hudas,” Grant said calmly, as if I was supposed to know what the hell that was.

“Uh-explain please?”

“Hudas, we were made by Lewison, the brilliant scientist who I believe you met earlier.
 
He’s gone a bit to the crazy side as the years passed, but he’s brilliant nonetheless. We’re a mixture of Amatores, Human, and Fae. Lewison combined the genetic code of the three after years of experimentation, and we came to be.” Grant smiled coolly, his eyes burning their odd blue-green mixture. “We have the healing and heightened sense of Amatores Sanguinis, the intelligence of the smartest Humans, the ability to travel within worlds taken from the Fae, and the magick.”

There it was again, that word. Magick. It sparked something within me, a need, a want...a...something unnamable, at least it was unnamable to me. “What do you mean the magick?” I asked, my voice hesitant as I looked over this odd mixture of a person, this Hudas.
 

“I think I’ve told you enough for now, the Directors will tell you the rest. So if you would please?” Grant pointed down the hallway to a metal door I’d somehow failed to notice, and started walking at a quick pace to it. “We don’t have time to stand here and dawdle, if we make the Directors wait anymore, I can guarantee
 
that they will fail to be happy. Come along please, and don’t even think of trying to escape. You do that, and I can promise the end result will not be good. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if it means you won’t listen.”

I sighed, knowing he was right. Obviously it was stupid to underestimate these Hudas, but it annoyed me how Grant failed to even acknowledge what happened between us. I mean that bite was crazy; I’d never felt anything like it. Even now, I could feel the warmth of his blood coursing through my veins. Even now, I could feel the connection between us two that only appeared after I bit him. After I drew his blood into me.

Walking forward, I approached the door with Grant on one side of me, and Gracia on the other. She looked almost red with fury; probably fantasizing different ways she could kill me if allowed.
 

The doors that led to the Directors creaked open, the sound grating at my frayed nerves. Who the hell were these ‘Directors’ anyway? And what did they want with me?

I stepped into the open room, hearing the doors close behind us, leaving us in pitch black. Darkness that even my enhanced sight had a hard time piercing.
 

I heard a click, then bright lights erupted on above us, lighting up the whole room, blinding me for a second before my vision adjusted.
 

“Tammy?” The voice was soft, but I would recognize it anywhere. My eyes locked on the two figures sitting on the long wooden table that stood in the middle of the room, and I felt the world go black.

---

My eyes opened to what I immediately knew was a dream. I was standing in a field, a beautiful, colorful field. Standing in the middle of the field, was Dracul.

“Tammy, there you are. I’ve been searching for you since you were shot,” Dracul said, his face contorted with worry. “Where do they have you?”

I smiled, feeling light among all the beauty. “I don’t know, I wish I did...the place is so terrible. They have these things called Hudas, have you heard of them? They’re basically mutations...terrible...so terrible...why do they want me?”
 

I swatted at the tears that fell, angry with myself for being so weak. Always so damn weak.
 

“Have you not figured out yourself already? You’re in the home of the Ater Council. I distinctly remember warning you about them coming to find you. This is my fault. It didn’t even cross my mind that they’d team with the Unseelie Fae and kidnap you. I apologize Tammy, I have failed you.”
 

Draculs head bowed down, sadness etched deeply in the planes of his face.
 

“You’ve failed no one Dracul, put your damn head up and explain what the hell is going on,” I demanded, my voice soft as I looked at Dracul.
 

“The Ater, you’re in their home right now, as am I. This is terrible, so terrible...they must know that your Transformation will happen soon. Your eyes have already begun the color changing process, and the pain will soon start. The pain and the need, and wait-Tammy, your aura-who did you last drink from?” Dracul looked at me in terror, still making absolutely no sense.

“Uh-I don’t know, this Hudas named Grant. Why?” I asked him, chewing on my lower lip in worry.

Dracul’s eyes widened, and he put both hands up to his head. “Oh no, this isn’t good, this isn’t good at all. How I didn’t see this coming, I don’t know. What am I to do, what do I do?” Dracul stammered, something I have never seen him do.
 

“What the hell are you going on about?”

“You drank from a Hudas! Do you understand what that means? No, obviously not since you did it. You will become bonded to the Hudas, bonded! If an Amatores drinks from a Hudas, they bond to them. Do you know what that means? It means that the Hudas will be present in your thoughts, and you in his. You will grow sexually attached to this Hudas, and you will start to crave his blood. Crave it to the point of madness. And he will begin to crave yours, until both of you end up together, drinking one another’s blood.

Do you remember what happens when someone attempts to drink from you? It ends in a bloodbath, that’s what happens. And do you know what happens when an Amatores kills a Hudas they have bonded to? They become a vampire. Their soul follows that of whom they’ve bonded to.”

I fell to the floor, my hands covering my face. Basically what he was telling me, was that if Grant didn’t drink from me...we’d go mad, and if he did drink from me…we’d both die. Either way, neither of us were winning.
 

And that wasn’t even the worse part. “Dracul, uh...I need to tell you something...” I whispered, seeing their faces in my head again. The faces I was so familiar with, I mean how could I not be? “I saw the Directors...and well...they’re my parents.”

Family Ties

Dracul turned to me, a look of disbelief on his face. “Your parents? Your parents are the Directors? The measly humans?”
 

I nodded once, hearing the voice of my mother again as she called out to me, her figure just as imposing as my fathers who sat next to her. Neither looked measly, neither looked human.

“Yeah. I don’t know how...it makes absolutely no sense. And before I could figure anything out, I kind of...fainted,” I said, looking down in embarrassment. I mean I’m supposed to be some big shot ‘Queen’, but I fainted when I saw my parents seated at that table.
 

Dracul opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again and looked at something beyond me. “They’re calling you back. Get information, I’ll try to dream-call you as soon as I can,” he said, and then disappeared.

---

“Tammy, finally. You’re awake!” It seems I’ve been hearing those words a lot lately, ‘You’re awake’. Probably because of the fainting habit I seemed to have inherited when I turned.
 

I looked towards the voice, and my mom’s head came into view. She looked like a Goddess, her black hair falling straight down her back, and her brown eyes sparkling. Nothing like the mom I knew, with her hair that was always frizzy, her eyes always dull.

“Mom?” I whimpered, and felt tears fall down my face.
 

“Oh Hun, don’t cry Tammy. Don’t cry baby, everything is just fine. I’ll explain it all to you alright?” my mom murmured, stroking my hair in the maternal way that showed me it really was her.

“Your father and I are the Directors of the Ater Council. We’re the ones who took over after the other Directors died. Neither your father or I are fully human, we were made to be the Directors before our birth, made to be together. I am half-Plefesa, your father half-Expletus. A Plefesa is a Goddess or God who mixed with a Shifter. My mother was a Plefesa, my father a Human. Your father’s mother was Human, his father an Expletus.
 

When we had you, all the tests showed that you were human, completely human.
 

It made no sense, as a child could not have two parents who had genetic codes of the Paranormal, and not have any Paranormal at all in him or her.

At first, your father thought that I had an affair with a human man. What a time that was, the screaming and yelling could probably be heard from miles away.

Finally I agreed to a paternity test, and it showed what I already knew, you were my and your father’s child. He still didn’t believe it at first, but the tests did not lie, and so we did with it what we could.
 

We raised you like any other human child, with love and care, trying our hardest not to show that we were anything but human.
 

We both began to notice something though, something different about you. You were meticulous when it came to anything that could possibly harm you. It was like you were determined not to do anything that could possibly hurt you enough for blood to spill.

Your father and I then realized, that you were protecting your blood. Protecting it from what? We did not know. We just knew that where other kids were always spilling blood, you were not.

At age three, we took you to a doctor for those of the Paranormal.
 
He was an expert in his field, and the perfect one to go to for help.
 

We explained what was wrong with you, and he took the initiative. While we held you down, he poked you in the leg with a needle and drew your blood.

You were out of our hands in seconds, your eyes burning a brilliant shade of crimson. A scream erupted out of your mouth, and you attacked the doctor.
 

You were only three, so young, but so strong. Within seconds the doctor was out cold, and the vile of your blood shattered on the floor. You drank it up, every last drop, and then sat down on the floor as if nothing had just happened.

After that, we kept you from all doctors, anyone who would try and take your blood.
 

It was obvious you were not human. But that was about all we could figure out. No one had any records of a Paranormal like you; one who protected their blood like it was worth millions. Like it was a diamond among piles of trash, as if it was a needle within thousands of haystacks.

After many years, you were probably only eleven, we met Duke. A charming man he is, so handsome. I see why you fell for him; although I would have much rather you follow the path we had laid out for you. We’d rather you have become the Queen of the Ater Council, a Director like your father and I, instead of becoming Queen on the Lucis Council.
 

Anyway, we met Duke. He’d been following you, something we realized he must have been doing for a while for him to know your exact whereabouts.

When we figured out who he was, the Second Amatores, we dug in on why he would want to follow you. Follow our precious, beautiful little girl.
 

That’s when we saw the prophecy.

We tried to sway you toward choosing the Ater Council first; even pairing you up with the half-Witch Luke, but it was a lost cause. You were set on Duke, set on following his path-”