The Progeny: Chapter 12

“Evie!” Caius called from the kitchen.

Evie blinked hard, pulling her eyes off the telly. After her cereal, she had managed to make herself a bacon sandwich with beans. For the rest of the day she had sat on the sofa watching reruns until the sun disappeared and Caius could wake. “Yeah?” she called back.

He appeared at the door in his boxer shorts and open dressing gown that draped over his lean frame. His jaw set when his eyes hit hers. “What’s all that in there?” He stabbed his finger towards the kitchen.

Evie smiled. “I went shopping. Had to buy food seeing as I can’t live off blood anymore. By the way, you only have one bag left. I didn’t know. If I did, I would have bought you some. But then I got a little side-tracked and completely forgot.” Her eyebrows pinched. “Sorry.”

In truth, Evie had sank on the sofa and had immersed herself in daytime telly dribble to drown out her out scuttling thoughts.

Caius’ eyes seemed to fog over with rage. “You went shopping? Outside?”

Evie laughed, confused by the anger in his tone. “Well yeah. That’s where the shops are.” She gave him a quizzical look.

He swiped his hand down his face before he balled it into a fist and slammed it against the door frame. “What were you thinking? Going outside? Are you insane? You could have been noticed and…” His breath caught. “Taken back.”

Evie stood up, holding her palms up to him. “Calm down. I was careful. I wore a hat, kept my head down, stayed in crowds. I’m fine.”

“Oh, you wore a hat? Oh, that’s fine then.”

She scowled. “What the hell is your problem?”

“My problem?” He scoffed. “Do you not remember where we have just escaped from?”

A lump swelled in her throat and she fell silent. Red began to brim his eyes. He flitted his gaze to the side as if unable to look at her.

“Evie…when I was taken…” he started, his voice soft and wavering. “…The moment I regained consciousness in that cell, my first thought was of you.” His eyes shot back to her and she swallowed hard. “And how devastated I was that I’d never see you again. Knowing that I’d die in that cell, that was the only thing I truly feared.” Her vision blurred as tears welled in her eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand and watched as his thin lips started to tremble. “And then I woke and you were there looking over me.” He gasped a laugh, a sound of tremendous wonder. “I thought I really was dying and that the last thing I was seeing before I was sucked into the never ending blackness was the one thing I loved. But you were real. You were there. I was actually seeing you again.” His eyes clenched shut, freeing red tears that streaked his pale cheeks. “It was a fluke that we managed to get out of there. But now, with you being human, when you go out there in the day, I can’t protect you.” His eyes locked onto hers. “I am completely powerless. And now we don’t have that psychic link, I can’t know when you are in danger. If something happens, if they find you and take you back…I can’t save you.”

It took a moment for Evie to find her voice again. The raw helplessness in his voice had dried up her throat. “But we can’t just lock ourselves in here, Caius.”

His sharp jaw set with determination. “Then let me Turn you back.”

The statement hit her harder than she’d expected, and in a way that confused her. She found herself stepping back, distancing herself from him. She shook her head. “No.” The fear in her own voice shocked her and from the look on Caius’ face, it had the same effect on him.

“No?”

She covered her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling exposed and vulnerable and completely detached from herself. The emotions welling inside her didn’t seem to fit. It was as if they belonged to someone else. She felt itchy and wrong and sick.

“Not now,” she offered.

“Then when?”

“I don’t know…” Her voice trailed off and she shifted her eyes to the night sky out of the window. She didn’t like the night anymore, not after experiencing the day.

“Ever?” Caius asked, as if sensing her train of thought.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t know.”

“Evie, what’s going on?”

She heard a floorboard creak and her eyes flew open. Caius had taken a step towards her but then froze when their eyes met.

Her lips began to quiver and she hugged herself tighter. “I like being human, Caius.”

The admittance washed over him, slackening his features and making him look half his body’s age.

She gasped after forgetting to breathe, and thought to herself numbly that that wasn’t happening as often anymore. She was starting to get the hang of breathing. Of living. “I’m cured, Caius.”

His hands balled into fists. “You sound just like him,” he spat.

She shook her head, tears flowing down her cheeks. “Vampirism is a curse, Caius. You said so yourself when you Turned me. You said you didn’t want to pass this curse down to another. But I’m not cursed anymore, Caius. You should be happy for me.” The last sentence came out as a hopeful whisper.

He looked so depleted as he watched her for a moment. “But…what about us?”

She shrugged numbly. “We can make it work.”

He chewed the inside of his lip to try and stop it from quaking. “How?”

“I don’t know. But we can and we will. Because I love you.”

Her nerves prickled when he swooped across the room and enveloped her in his arms. She shifted her arms and slipped them under his dressing gown so she could wrap them around his narrow waist. He pressed his lips hard against her forehead. Something hot dripped onto her and ran down the bridge of her nose. It was red. Blood. Blood tears. Caius’ vampire tears. She choked down a sob and pressed her face into his chest.

A few beats of silence went by as they held each other, letting the reality sink in. Caius was a vampire. Evie was human. They were in love and they were desperate to stay in love. One simply couldn’t live without the other. Surely a heartbeat wouldn’t change all that…right?

Evie sniffed and pushed herself out of Caius’ chest but kept her eyes trained on his collarbone, too afraid to see the hurt in his eyes. “Do you want to watch Friends with me? It’s the one when Joey gets the turkey stuck on his head.”

Caius laughed and dropped his arms from around her back. “They’re still playing that show?”

Evie laughed. “It’s timeless. Fancy it?”

“Sure.”

Evie dropped back onto the sofa and Caius spun to head towards the door.

“Where are you going?”

He glanced back at her just before he disappeared into the kitchen. “Cleaning my face and getting my drink.”

“Oh, well…you only have that one, remember.”

She heard the clinking of glass in the background as she watched the telly and moments later, Caius settled down beside her with a scotch glass half filled with blood.

By the end of the episode, Evie had her knees tucked up on the sofa and was using Caius’ head as a pillow after he stopped going back and forth from the kitchen to refill his glass. He picked it up off the coffee table and swirled the last drop, inspecting it with a frown. “Damn.”

“What?” asked Evie with her eyes on the adverts.

“That was the whole bag.”

She pushed herself off him and looked to the glass. “You drank the whole bag?”

His frown slanted and his eyebrows furrowed apologetically. “I guess I’m still recuperating from being starved.”

“Well then, you’re going to have to go to the hospital and get some more.”

His eyes flittered to the front door and Evie was sure she noticed a shudder pass through him. “No…it’s okay. I’m fine.”

She gave him a doubtful look when he placed the glass back down and stared down at the blood staining the bottom. The tip of his tongue ran over his bottom lip and his veins started to cord under his eyes before he snapped them shut and coughed as if to clear his throat. Evie sighed. “No you’re not. You’re clearly hungry.”

He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

Evie swung her leg around and Caius lifted his palms up to her as she settled on top of him, straddling his lap. “Whoa, what-”

She flipped her red waves over one shoulder and exposed her throat to him. “You’re hungry for blood and I’m full of it. Drink.”

His eyebrows pinched in protest but then his eyes flitted to the pulse point of her long, pale neck. When she tensed at the hunger in his gaze, he shook his head. “I can’t.”

She leaned closer to him and watched as the beautiful blue colouring his irises was engulfed by his expanding pupils. His pupils continued to grow until his eyeballs looked like two shining black orbs. The corded veins under them swelled and turned thick and purple. Evie sucked in a breath and closed her eyes, pressing her temple against his when he turned his head slightly and pressed his lips tentatively against the hollow of her neck.

She placed her hands against the sofa behind Caius’ head, ready to curl her fingers into it at the pain of her skin breaking. The sound of his fangs unsheathing made her swallow a whimper. He parted his lips and dragged the tips along her throat and she braced herself over him, shuddering with a mixture of delight and trepidation. But then he squeezed her hips and pressed a soft kiss against the base of her neck. Exhaling softly, he said, “You are my love. Not my food. I told you I wasn’t going to make a habit of biting you.”

She leaned back and he smoothed his hands up and down her sides. He smiled softly and retracted his fangs, his eyes now blue yet solemn. “But…you’re hungry.”

He shrugged. “I’ll live.”

Feeling a little awkward still straddling him, Evie slipped back into her space beside him and turned back to the telly.

“I saw your pyjamas in the wash basket. There was blood on the sleeve. Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It was just a cut.”

“Is it still there?”

She nodded.

“Want me to heal you?”

She laughed but her heart sank. “No. Like I said, it’s just a cut. I’ll live.”

He shrugged and leaned back into the sofa. “Okay.”

When the minute hand on the clock on the mantelpiece started ticking past ten, Evie found her eyelids growing heavy. She yawned and stretched out her arms. “Right, I’m going to bed.” She turned to Caius who looked as spritely as a vampire could, and she sighed.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded and stood up. “I think my body clock is starting to shift.”

“Getting used to you being human,” he replied. She knew the comment wasn’t supposed to be snarky but she couldn’t help notice the underlying bitterness to his tone. It stung.

“I guess,” she replied, trying to ignore it. She leaned over him and pressed her lips to his forehead. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” he mumbled softly, closing his eyes to the feeling of the kiss.

“Are you going to go to the hospital for more bags?”

He looked to the telly when she stood back up straight. “Nah. Might do some channel hopping.”

She watched him for a moment. The muscles in his cheeks rippled but he kept his eyes averted. “Caius, are you scared about going outside?”

He scoffed a laugh but then set his jaw, saying nothing.

Her heart swelled for him. Six men were needed to hold him down. The encounter still clearly haunted him. “I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow,” she said.

His eyes stayed stuck to the screen, wide and vacant. “Thank you,” he rasped.