A Burning in the Blood
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(this is an uncorrected draft of chapter 1, and a little bit from later in the novel)
Chapter 1
“What do you feel?”
Eleanor Darker lifted one eyelid to peer at Mina Blackthorne, her friend who happened to be a vampire, despite the fact that she was sitting on the deck in the sun and not burning—the perks of being a daywalker. Eleanor had only known Mina for a few weeks, but she already considered her one of her closest friends, even if she was more than a little frustrated with her at the moment. “What I feel is that my ass is falling asleep from sitting here for over an hour and that I’m hungry, tired, and want to cry. This isn’t working.”
Mina gave Eleanor’s hands a squeeze before she let go, got to her feet, and dropped gracefully down off the deck to sit cross-legged on the creeping-thyme lawn. She was immediately accosted by Eleanor’s dog, Jet, who licked her face and then climbed into her lap, intent on proving a one-hundred-pound German shepherd could be a lapdog too. And he knew he could get all the love he wanted from Mina, who adored him and was still new enough in his life to be a novel source of attention—as long as Eleanor was safe, of course, and Jet had already learned that Cedar Grove House meant safe.
Laughing, Mina wrapped her arms around the dog and smothered his head and face with kisses. “At least someone’s in a good mood.”
Eleanor snorted. “I would be in a good mood if I felt like I was gaining any sort of understanding of my… abilities. Or if I’d readjusted to my meds after being kidnapped and forced to miss several days for the first time in three years. I feel unhinged. Like my skin is going to crawl off my body.” Eleanor grunted as she got to her feet and stretched her hands up to the sky. There were a few pops from her back and hips as she bent forward to touch her toes, then the deck with her palms, more flexible than her curves made her appear. “It’s been almost a month now and I’m no further along than I was after the Michael shitshow.”
“It’s because you’re still scared.”
“Oh, scared of the powers meant to kill vampires? Scared of the powers I used to kill a vampire? When the vast majority of the people I spend my time with are vampires? You think?”
“Ellie—”
“Sorry,” Eleanor said, cutting off whatever Mina had been about to say. She shook out her hands then scrubbed them over her face before digging her knuckles into her forehead against a budding headache. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Another nightmare?”
Eleanor nodded, her eyes on her dog lapping up Mina’s attention. As if she could avoid Mina’s telepathic probing by not meeting her gaze.
The truth was she had nightmares every night—her subconscious feeding her exaggerated memories of the manufactured hybrid attacks, her kidnapping, the betrayal by one of her closest friends, her father’s murder, and, especially, of using her abilities to take Michael’s life after he’d had her kidnapped and killed her dad—though she’d told Mina and Marcus and everyone else that her nightmares only happened every few nights. But always once, sometimes multiple times a night, she bolted awake with her heart pounding in her ears and the thrum of her power buzzing along her nerves, her anxiety an icy hand around her lungs, and it would take an hour or more for her to fall back asleep, if she managed it at all. Sometimes she ended up propping herself up against her pillows and staring out the window while petting Jet or whichever of the mansion’s three cats had chosen to sleep in her bed that day. Or she would lie down on the floor next to Jet’s bed, careful to keep her dog between her and the door where he could do his job as her protector and her companion while she dozed next to his warm body.
It hadn’t been so bad when Quin was still spending the nights in her room, watching over her while they waited to see if any of the escaped hybrids would try and attack the mansion. She’d grown used to having them there, had felt safer with him there, but since he’d returned to his usual routines… Eleanor didn’t only feel anxious and scared when the nightmares woke her, but vulnerable and alone.
Not that she’d tell anyone that part.
And she woke up more too, found it harder to get back to sleep when he wasn’t there. She’d actually slept through the night a few times when he was still watching over her.
“You could just tell him you feel safer with him nearby.”
“Mina!”
Mina raised her hands, which Jet took as an invitation to jump to his feet and start sniffing around for whatever had caused the sudden motion; he was trained to alert to threats and would settle down once he realized there wasn’t one. “You were thinking really hard about him, so it might have been staticky, but I couldn’t help but hear his name.”
“You mostly certainly could have.”
“Maybe, but the rest was easy to work out after hearing his name. And my point stands—you could just tell Quin you need him in your room to sleep.”
Eleanor huffed and levelled an indignant look at Mina’s choice of words, but she wasn’t actually mad. Mina was a powerful telepath, but Eleanor’s hybrid nature turned vampire abilities wonky if it didn’t nullify them completely when they were turned against her. Also, she knew everything about Eleanor anyway. “I could, but I’m not going to. And even if I was going to, I wouldn’t say it like that.” She paused, her gaze following Jet’s new investigation through a patch of clover. “He didn’t even want to be my bodyguard when there was a power-hungry vampire after me. I’m not going to ask him to sit there so I can sleep when it’s just my overactive imagination causing problems.”
“I really don’t think he’d mind.”
Mina was probably right, but Eleanor didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to feel safer with Quin nearby, to feel safe and warm when she remembered sleeping with her back against his chest, the way he’d held her as she sobbed in the infirmary when she’d woken up a battered, bruised, betrayed, and broken whose boyfriend had just abandoned her after she witnessed her father’s murder.
Quin had his own life and he deserved to get back to it after putting it basically on hold when Marcus asked him to guard Eleanor. She wasn’t going to ask him to stand vigil as she dreamed. Grief and healing took time. The nightmares would pass. Her body and brain would adjust to her escitalopram again.
She would be fine eventually.
At least I hope so.
Eager for a distraction, lest her thoughts pull her into an anxiety spiral and she burst into tears on the lawn, Eleanor watched Jet bound away, chasing a butterfly. She smiled at her dog’s exuberance. There was still a slight limp in one of his hind legs and a swirly patch of fur where it wasn’t growing back in smoothly over his scars on that hip, but thankfully, that and the loss of one eye and most of one ear hadn’t slowed him down at all. He was still as attentive as ever to the job he was trained to do, but it brightened Eleanor’s mood to see the puppy-like behaviour after everything Jet had been through.
Glad one of us is bouncing back smoothly.
While I’m still stuck in the house, struggling to hold myself together and being wholly unhelpful.
“Ellie,” Mina said softly as she stepped up onto the deck beside her, “I know you want to get out there and help track down Bragg and the rest of the hybrids who escaped, and that you want to find Blue, but you’re not going to get to a point where you can help if you let your fear stand between you and your powers.”
With a sigh, Eleanor extended her hands to Mina, grateful for the subject change, even if it meant Mina had been trying to read her mind again. “I’ll try once more, but then I’m done for the day.”
Mina took Eleanor’s hands and gave them a small squeeze. “Deal. You will also need sleep,” she added in a slightly sing-song tone.
“Mina.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll really drop it.”
Eleanor narrowed her eyes and then closed them.
“Promise.”
A laugh that was more of a snort broke through Eleanor’s dour mood, and she laughed again for real, squeezing Mina’s hands again in silent thanks. Mina cleared her throat and Eleanor inhaled a deep breath. Exhaled it slowly.
Every time she’d been able to use her powers previously, she had been fuelled by a strong surge of emotion. Eleanor didn’t want to have to rely on emotions she couldn’t always control or predict even when she was properly on track with her medication and sleep, so she and Mina were hoping to find a way for Eleanor to access her abilities at will. While Mina’s telepathy reached beyond her physical form in a way that was somewhat similar to the way Eleanor sensed and accessed the life forces of supernatural beings, it was far from a perfect match and the gap was proving difficult to cross.
Eleanor focused on the ever-present thrum in the centre of her chest and then, using the visualizations Mina had given her, imagined spectral hands stretching out towards her target, fingers tracing her veins and blood vessels to the core of her blood-powered magic, the magic that kept her walking and talking and appearing human most of the time. She pictured the metaphysical space she’d seen in Marcus, Quin, and Michael and briefly glimpsed in Mina once before, the glowing orb that represented a vampire’s life force, willed it to appear before her, to answer her call.
The thrum stirred, the touch of Mina’s natural-born vampire energy became highlighted in Eleanor’s mind, and then—
Nothing happened.
The shiver of vampire energy was gone so completely, Eleanor was sure she’d imagined it.
Eleanor dropped Mina’s hands and opened her eyes, the thrum settling back to its baseline, curled behind her sternum. “Still nothing.”
Mina gave her a tight-lipped smile, trying and failing to hide her own frustration. “We’ll get there.”
“When? After Bragg has made more hybrids and more people are dead? When regular humans are dead?” Eleanor couldn’t keep her voice from rising. The thrum rose with it, the vibration sharpening in her chest. “I’m sick of feeling useless.” Before Mina could respond, Eleanor took a step back and waved her hands in front of her. She might want control of her powers, but she didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone, and she could feel the potential hovering just beneath her skin. “I’m just… I’m going to go for a walk before everyone gets up.”
“All right,” Mina said in a somewhat defeated tone. “I need to eat anyway. Say hi to Alexander for me.”
Eleanor lifted a hand, turned, and started walking across the lawn towards the cedars on the far side of the property where the ashes of her father and a few other vampires who’d also died a true death had been buried. Without hesitation, Jet followed, running until he caught up and then matching her pace, four paws beside her bare feet.
The sun was starting to set, the late spring sky turning brilliant shades of orange and pink, the clouds deepening to purple and blue as the air began to cool. Eleanor loved evenings, especially the moment before the vampires in the mansion started to wake up. She felt a particular kind of peace before their supernatural energies joined the ever-present warmth of the shapeshifters who also called the mansion home, the same peace she felt on the odd occasion she was awake at dawn when they all died for the day. Though in that case, the peace was overwhelmed by other things as it wasn’t usually anything good that kept her awake so late or woke her up so early.
Once she reached the makeshift graveyard, Eleanor stood and stared out over Lake Huron through the trees, watching the sunlight reflecting on the water, the fingers of one hand resting on Jet’s head as he sat on her side, tongue lolling out of his mouth. The mansion sat on land that ended in a cliff overlooking the lake, a truly beautiful spot that Eleanor made a mental note to take advantage of more, if only to help keep her mental health stable while she grieved what she’d lost and prepared for whatever the next few weeks and beyond would bring.
Eleanor inhaled deeply as she felt Marcus, the leader of the Ridge City clan, wake up back at the mansion. The thrum in her chest changed, though at this distance, it was faint. If she hadn’t already been familiar with what his energy felt like, she might have missed it. Marcus was powerful and could wake before the sun had fully set, though he would stay hidden until the danger from the sunlight had passed. Thaddeus and Lucian, the other two vampires on the council who helped Marcus run the supernatural side of the city, would wake next, and then every other vampire in the mansion in turn. And she would feel every single one of them, like lights flickering on in the dark.
The thrum and all it told her was part of being a hybrid, born of a human mother and a vampire father, but unlike her ability to access the magic that kept vampires alive, it was an ability she understood.
Or understood more anyway.
Other than the fact that she didn’t get sick and healed faster than most humans, which she didn’t have to think about to use, the thrum was the first real hint to her hybrid nature and had been around for as long as she could remember. It had taken her a few years to understand it reacted only to the supernatural, but since then, it had become a comforting presence, nestled in her chest, another sense she subconsciously used to understand and interact with the world around her; since her more hands-on abilities had been revealed, she’d begun to wonder, if she could look inside herself like she could do with vampires, if she would see her own glowing life force located where the thrum was rooted.
Fuck, I wish you were here to help me through this, Dad.
“Come on, Jet,” she said, turning away from the lake and the sun and her thoughts.
Jet gave a little chuff and bounded through the cedars to the newest grave where he flopped down into the scant undergrowth and put his head on his paws, his soulful brown eyes locked on Eleanor as she approached.
She settled down cross-legged beside him and, for a moment, just stared at the small flat headstone that marked her father’s final resting place with nothing but his name. There was nothing familiar about his ashes in a silver-banded box, not like a body buried in a casket, but she was glad to have something that represented him, some place she could come and sit and feel connected to him. Something to talk at.
She touched the headstone and said, “Hi, Dad.”
Then she was silent for a long while as the world darkened, her emotions churning within her as they always did when she visited. Alexander Darker had been truly dead for just about a month and sometimes, even when Eleanor was sitting in front of his grave, it didn’t feel real. Never mind that her father had been a vampire, so nearly immortal that she’d never once thought about living a life without him in it, but could anyone ever really be prepared to live in a world without those who raised them? Maybe if they hadn’t been loving caretakers, but Eleanor’s dad had done everything he could to make her life safe and happy—and human, as he’d thought that the best course of action when left to take care of her alone after her mother’s death and Michael’s not-so-subtle threats.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t want to go through all this without you here,” she whispered. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it.”
Jet shuffled closer and put his head in her lap, whining softly.
Eleanor once more buried her fingers in Jet’s fur, taking strength from his weight and warmth as her sobs began to shake, her words began to waver. “You kept so much from me you shouldn’t have, but you should be here to help me figure out how to use my powers, to help me figure out how to be part of the world you belonged to. That you took us out of.” She meant to say more, but her sobs took over.
It wasn’t fair that she had to face her entire world being turned upside down without her dad, without the one person who had been there her whole life and done literally everything he could think to make her life better, easier. It wasn’t enough that her understanding of her very nature had changed, that her boyfriend had left her, that one of her best friends had betrayed her to the vampire who wanted her dead and was currently locked in some safe house while Marcus and Mina worked with him to try and reconstruct memories of Michael’s operation that might be helpful, that she’d lost the home she’d grown up in, nearly lost her dog, nearly lost her own life—
She had to do all of it without her dad.
She wasn’t alone. She knew that.
But her anxiety didn’t obey rational thoughts or truths and sometimes she couldn’t help feeling like she was alone, like no one else could really understand what she was feeling, like no one else would look out for her, care for her, the same way her father would.
Like she was living without direction, even less sure of what shape her life post-university should take than she had been before graduating, just floating through the days, waiting, hoping, while those around did the hard work, the dangerous work, to protect her.
Just two months ago, she’d considered her life normal outside her vampire father and the thrumming she felt in her chest.
Just two months.
And now… Well.
Swept up in a wave of emotion, Eleanor shifted so she was kneeling and could more easily press her forehead to Alexander’s headstone. Part of her wanted to lie down with her cheek pressed to the cool stone as she cried, but the mansion would be fully awake soon and while she knew she wasn’t in danger, there were still a few residents she didn’t want to catch her in such a vulnerable state. If only to help them stop thinking of her as a weak human.
And she needed to talk to Marcus. But she kept her forehead to the stone until her skin was cooler and the stone was warmer and then she said, “I miss you so much,” before rising to her feet and heading inside with Jet at her heels.
*** (from later in the novel)
It was Blue.
It was Blue.
Tears blurred Eleanor’s vision as she tore through the mansion and the yard beyond, the thrumming in her chest growing stronger with every step. It spread across her chest and down her arms, her body buzzing with her power. Not for the first time, she wished her vampire side afforded her extra speed and strength in addition to healing quicker and being more resistant to illness than the average human.
Because Blue was hurt.
And not just on a physical level—on a level she could feel in whatever magic rested at her core.
A twinge in her chest spurred Eleanor faster, her breath growing ragged as she reached the edge of the lawn and darted into the trees. As the darkness closed around her completely, she forced herself to stop, both because she realized the potential danger she was putting herself in and because she couldn’t tell where Blue was; the thrum was beginning to overwhelm her with his nearness, his pain, his manufactured hybrid nature. She put her back to a tree, closed her eyes, and tried to slow her breathing, her rapid heartbeat. Tried to focus.
But the fuzz wouldn’t clear.
She couldn’t determine a direction.
Don’t tell me I’m forgetting how to do this too.
“What are you doing?”
Eleanor jumped as Quin’s voice rumbled through the silent evening. “What the fuck!”
The massive vampire she’d passed in the hall all but loomed over her, his pale blue eyes glowing faintly in the shadows. Had she’d not been so lost in her thoughts, she would have felt him coming; under normal circumstances, she could feel Quin anywhere and from farther away than she could sense anyone else. She’d been able to since she’d accidentally used her powers on him.
“You can’t just run out here on your own—”
“It’s Blue,” Eleanor stressed, shaking off her startlement enough to be annoyed that Quin had interrupted her attempt to find the hybrid.
“I know,” Quin said, already moving further into the trees. “I can smell him.”
Still trying to fully catch her breath, Eleanor fell in behind him. “He’s hurt. I can… I can feel it.” She couldn’t keep the panic out of her voice.
Quin didn’t say anything, just forged a path through the increasingly thick underbrush that Eleanor hurried to follow. Of all those who came to rescue her from the warehouse where Michael had kept her, Quin and Adrian would know best what Blue meant to Eleanor. How distressed she’d been by his disappearance after the fight. They’d seen him guarding her, saw his reluctance to leave her side. Heard her tell him to leave, to get safe. Abruptly, Quin crouched, nearly vanishing into the brush. She stopped just behind him, and it was only a fraction of a second before the stench of rotting meat, fresh blood, and the particular gamey, wild scent of a werewolf—and underneath that all, the familiar scent of Blue—reached Eleanor’s nose and a small cry escaped her lips.
She’d witnessed his forced transformation from gorgeous blue-grey wolf to half-werewolf, half-vampire monster, a combination that would be impossible if not for Eleanor’s blood. His body had warped and broken and twisted less than five feet from her. She knew what he’d smelled like before his change and after—and even though the other manufactured hybrids smelled like they were rotting, Blue never had.
But now…
Now, Blue lay on his side, curled around five deep gashes in his stomach, the ground around him soaked with black-tinged blood. The edges of the wounds were black too, like the flesh was already necrotic, and even though the smell stuck to the insides of Eleanor’s nose, coated her throat, and made her stomach turn, took her legs out from under her, she moved closer, half-crawling across the ground until she could cradle Blue’s head in her lap. It wasn’t until she began to comb his greasy hair back from his face that she realized she was crying.
“Blue,” she whispered. “Blue…”
He made a pained noise and reached up with the hand not trying to hold his flesh together to grab hold of Eleanor. For a moment his hand flailed, but then found purchase on her bicep, his claws nearly piercing her flesh through her t-shirt. Blue’s eyes, black and bleeding, rolled until they found hers. She tightened her grip on him, tried to wipe some of the grime from his face.
It hurt something in her to look away, but Eleanor made herself look to Quin. “We have to get him back to the mansion.”
“I told Isobel to find Theo and get a bed ready in the infirmary. This is going to hurt,” he added, looking at Blue, who nodded. He looked back to Eleanor. “He’s going to bleed a lot. Maybe scream.”
Eleanor nodded, even as her eyes fell back to Blue. “We’re gonna get you inside, okay? We’ll fix you up and then you can tell us what happened.” She sniffed back tears, fruitlessly trying to stem the flow. “It’s going to be okay.” I hope, she silently added as she moved out of the way so Quin could move into position.
“I’m going to lift you now,” Quin said to Blue.
The manufactured hybrid nodded and lowered both his hands to his stomach, once more trying to hold his wounds closed even as he trembled. Eleanor got to her feet and stepped back, trying her best to move the brush out of the way as Quin slipped his arms under Blue and lifted him off the ground. The muscles in Blue’s jaw bunched as he clenched his jaw against a scream. A high-pitched whine still escaped. Eleanor fought to keep herself from reacting.
“I’m going to run,” Quin said as they started walking. Quin was six-foot-eight and muscular, but Blue was only a few inches shorter than him and much bulkier, and Quin looked oddly small with the hybrid in his arms. “Hurry back.”
Before Eleanor could respond, Quin was gone, the impression of his power pressing against her, the thrum in her chest kicking up in response. The pleasant warmth that had accompanied Quin’s presence left her and she picked up her pace, running back towards the mansion, fear and worry pushing her along.
vampires, spaceships, and fantastical worlds—the tales of L.E. Teetzel 