The Purity of Blood: Volume I (63 page)

I had no idea
how to respond to this, so I looked straight ahead and watched two squirrels
dance around at the base of a big oak tree on the far side of the yard.
 
Part of me wanted to punish him for what he’d
put me through.
 
I wanted him to suffer
as I had.
 
I wasn’t proud of it, but
there it was.
 
I was only human after
all.

Suddenly Daniel
reached over, grabbed my hand and roughly dragged me to my feet.

“What is it?”

“Get inside the
house,” he ordered in almost a growl.
 
It
was the look on his face that made me obey without question.
 
It was deadly serious.
 

I jumped on top
of the porch and went in the back door.
 
He quickly followed behind me and crossed the house to look out the
front windows as if searching for something.

“Go upstairs.”
 

When he turned
and pointed in the direction of the stairwell in the back, I hesitantly started
that way.
  

“Is it the
hunter?” I asked in a whisper as I paused at the corner of the fireplace.

His head whirled
around to stare me down.

“Up stairs.
 
Now!” he whispered as if he was angry with
me.
 
This time he watched as I retreated
out of sight, then turned back to the window.

I had just
started to slowly climb the stairs when I felt his hand on my back propelling
me forward faster.

“What is
it?
 
Is he coming?”
 
I was starting to freak out at the look in
his eyes.

“I don’t
know.
 
Someone is and I’m not sure it’s
Randall.”
 

Once on the
second floor, he hurried down the hallway to the second door and hastily pushed
me inside, pulling the door closed behind us.
 
He looked around the empty room then pointed to a door in the corner.

“Get in there,”
he ordered as he went to the window and looked out again.

I opened the
door, but it was the tiny closet I’d stored my camping gear in.
 
I was stepping over my sleeping bag to
straddle it when he pulled the bag out and opened it up.
 
Holding it out like a sack, he said “Get in.”

“Why?”

“There’s no
time.
 
Just do as I say.”
 

His insistent
tone demanded my obedience and once I stepped in, he pulled it up to my
neck.
 
Then he picked me up and put me
back in the closet and closed the door behind us.

We’d stood there
in the near dark for over a minute when I asked “It’s getting hot in here.
 
Can you tell me why –”
 

“
Shh
!”
 
He looked like
he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. “It’s a pitiful attempt to mask
your scent and the sound of your heart.”

“What can you
hear?” I whispered.

“I’m not sure,
but someone’s out there and he’s getting closer.
 
Randall would have warned of his
approach.
 
If he were here, we’d have a
fighting chance, but with only me to protect you, we’d be better off trying to
avoid a confrontation until Randall can return to help.”
 
For the first time since I’d known him, I
heard a hint of fear in his voice.
 

In the tight
quarters of the dark closet I could feel Daniel’s strong arms around me,
holding me tightly through the flimsy sleeping bag.
   

Why had I been
so insensitive to him before?
 
It wasn’t
my job to punish him for any misdeeds he’d committed, if indeed he’d committed
any at all.
 
If I were to die in the next
few minutes, I didn’t want this to be how it ended between us.
 
I looked up at his face.
 
The dim glow from a crack at the edge of the
door allowed me to faintly see his worried expression as he intently listened for
sounds of the intruder.

“Daniel?”

He didn’t rouse
from his concentration.

I could feel my
heartbeat rise as I forced my stubborn pride deep down inside.
 
My sense of emotional control was beginning
to slip away.
 
Inside I could feel the
tide of emotion I’d kept tightly bound for so long starting to rise within
me.
 

“I just wanted
to tell you that … nothing happened.”
 
I
heard my voice crack inside my choked out whisper.

He looked down
at me, confused.

“Nothing
happened between me and Ben.
 
I mean we
did kiss.
 
Well, I kissed him, but it was
only because I was so mad at Lucy … and you.
 
After that he took me back to my room and … he put me to bed and left.”

His eyes
flickered with emotions I couldn’t read in the dark.

“I’m sorry … so
sorry that I allowed you to believe something else happened.”

I wanted to put
my arms around him but the sleeping bag prevented it, so instead I leaned
forward and placed my head on his chest.
 
As he pulled me close and began to gently stroke my hair, I heard a
noise come from the other side of the door.
 
Wishing I still had my gun for whatever good it might have done, I felt
the tears start to make their hot trails down my cheeks.
 
If this was how I was to go, I was happy I
was at least with Daniel.

Then the door
flung open.

“What the hell
is going on in here?” Randall demanded.

We both breathed
a sigh of relief.

“You didn’t give
me your usual signal.
 
I didn’t know if
it was you,” Daniel answered, annoyed at the question.

“Why is she in a
sleeping bag?”

“I thought it
might mask her heart beat a little longer.”

Randall
laughed.
 
“Well, all you had to do is ask
her, if that’s what you wanted.
 
You
didn’t need the old sleeping bag in the closet excuse if you wanted to get her
alone in the dark.
 
I think she’s about
forgiven you.”

I blushed as
Daniel scrunched up his face in a question mark.
 
“What do you mean she could have if I’d asked
her too?”

“I made sure my girl was prepared for life,” Randall said
confidently. “Let’s go downstairs and she can show you herself.”

I settled into a comfortable
position sitting Indian style in front of the hearth on the living room
floor.
 
Randall and Daniel sitting a few
feet away, both were watching me closely.
 
Daniel especially so.
 
Ignoring
them, I closed my eyes and started to breathe deeply.
 

In, out.
 
In, out.

“What’s she
doing?” Daniel asked.

“Like I said,
ever since the day she was born I’ve known she was going to be in danger.
 
I took – certain precautions to make sure
she’d have the necessary skills that would serve her well in life.”

“I think that
means that while my friends were lucky enough to be shipped off to spend
summers with their cousins down on Virginia Beach, he was responsible for the
summer my parents shipped me off to a monastery in Tibet to learn about
meditation.”
 
I didn’t bother to keep the
sarcasm out of my voice as I shot Randall an especially dirty look.
 
“So exactly how much of my life
are
you responsible for anyway?”

“We’ll get to
that later.
 
Show him what Shau Lang
taught you.”

I closed my eyes
again and began breathing in and out, each time deeper and deeper.
 
I controlled my thoughts and centered myself
as Shau Lang had taught me all those years ago.
 
I felt my heart beat
Thub
Thub
inside my chest, and listened to it as its sound
reverberated throughout me.
 
I let go of
every part of my body except that sound and let it fill me.
 
Then I wrapped my mind around it and started
to push it down.

Thub
Thub
– Thub
Thub
.
 

Without willing
it, without the conscious thought of it, I pushed it downward.

Thub
Thub
–
 
–Thub
Thub
–
 
–Thub
Thub
.
 

I felt the blood
course through my veins, felt its surge slacken ever so slightly as my heart
started to pump slower and slower.
 

Thub
Thub
–
 
–
 
– Thub
Thub

And then it
really started to drop.
 
I had to
remember to control it.
 
I could stop it
if I wanted to, but I had to let it pump enough blood to keep the oxygen
flowing to my brain.
 
But even a few
beats a minute would keep me alive – barely.
 
The problem was, the deeper you went; the harder it was to come back.

I felt as if I
was floating.
 
It was soft here inside my
mind, like flying.
 
I saw faces and
places I’d been too.
 
Some were familiar
and some so old I had to think who they were.
 
I saw Randall’s face, he was smiling at me.
 
But the room, – the room he was in was darkened.
 
Where was it?
 
Then I could see it was full of toys, only to realize it was my room at
home, but when I was a very young child.
  
I was laying on the bed while he sat on a chair across the room watching
me.
 
He smiled as he rolled up my
sleeve.
 
I felt a prick on my arm.
 
Then I was in my bed at NPU.
 
He was here too.
 
My eyes were closed, but I could feel his
mind.
 
I recognized it.
 
I could feel it as he sifted through my
memories like pages of a photo album.
 
He
paused on some and skipped over others.
 
I felt his mind, its darkness and its light.
 
Flashes of things I didn’t understand raced
across my mind, things that I assumed were from the past.
 
His past?
 
I tried to look at them in more detail, but it was a second hand memory.
 
Somehow my memory of an event not from my
past, but his.
 
Then I saw Daniel sitting
in Darcy’s chair.
 
Saw his lips move, saw
shock on his face in the dark shadows.
 

“Tell her to
stop, Randall!”

Was that
Daniel’s voice?
 
It was faint, as if from
a great distance away.
 

Thub
.
 

“Sara?” It was
Randall’s voice now.

Silence.

Where was I
anyway?
 
I was running away from
something – or was it towards something?
 

I
remembered.
 
I left my room and circled
back to the absence of the sound my heart should be making.

Thub –
 
–
 
– Thub.
 

Time to go
back.
 
I had gone so far.
 
Is that why I’d seen these things?
 
Were they real?

Thub –
 
– Thub
.

I could feel
warmth on my face now.
 
The sun through
the window I guessed.
 
I felt pressure on
my hand as it laid on my knee.
 

Thub
Thub
– Thub
Thub
.
 

I opened my
eyes.

Daniel reached
out, forcibly pulling me into his arms as we sat on the floor.
 

“Never do that
again!
 
You scared me half to death!”

“I thought you
already
were
dead,” I sleepily
replied, buried in his arms.

Stifling a laugh,
Randall got up and walked out of the room.

“Don’t be
cute.
 
That wasn’t funny.
 
You stopped your heart.
 
I was looking right at you and it
stopped.
 
I never want to hear that again.
 
Do you understand me?”
 
His voice was anger mingled with a little bit
of fear I think.

“Okay,” I
mumbled, still half asleep from not quite enough oxygen to my brain.

As I took a deep breath, I felt the reassuring pressure of
his arms around me, and conforming my shape to his, I melted into them.
 
Holding fast to me, he silently rocked me
gently back and forth for a while.
 
I
think he was listening to the comforting sound of my heart as it steadily beat
away inside my chest once more.

When Daniel finally let me go, I
needed some fresh air and walked out the front door following after
Randall.
 
I found him perched on the old
rock wall looking out over the wreck of a field on the other side.
 
As I hopped up and took a seat beside him, he
looked over and smiled my way.

“I always
wondered what this would be like,” he said, staring straight ahead.

“What would be
like?”