Eli crouched low on the branch in the darkness, her claws digging into the bark. She watched, detached, as the last few people got off the bus and it pulled away from the curb. Two of them were talking and waving their arms at each other, clearly arguing about something. Their breath rose in a small cloud above them and dissipated slowly. The other one, a bit smaller, watched for a minute, then turned and walked down the darker path towards Eli. Her muscles tensed. She calculated how long it would take him to reach her, as the other two, still talking loudly, went off on the main path. She really wanted them to be out of sight before the other one reached the tree. No sense in attracting any attention. The smaller one stopped, looked at something in the snow next to the path for a moment, knelt down, picked something up, then continued on. There were no lights where Eli was waiting. He would barely be able to see well enough to follow the path at this point. Eli leaned slowly out over the branch, her claws ready. If he screams, I’ll have to work fast, she thought to herself. Her eyes glowed as she completed the Change, and became even larger. The night faded and she could see everything, in minute detail. She could see his dark brown jacket, the fur collar partly covered by the wider collar of the heavy blue sweater she could see through the partly unbuttoned jacket; the blue scarf, the brown wool cap with the red, black and white stripes around it, his blond hair barely visible where it met his collar; dark blue pants – even the tread pattern of his footprints in the snow. She could hear his breathing; even his steady heartbeat; his corduroy pants as his legs moved past one another as he walked. Her vision narrowed until all she could see was the exact spot where he would be in the ¾ of a second it would take her to drop straight down from her perch.
At exactly the right instant, she dropped like a rock, catching him on the right shoulder and sinking her fangs into his neck. He fell on his side as she grabbed him, reached around his neck, put her left hand over his mouth and gathered both his hands in her right, holding them close to his body. He offered no resistance. She felt exhilarated! The blood was pulsing out of his wound as fast as she could swallow. She felt a deep, intense sense of nirvana as his warm blood flowed into her. He struggled feebly for a few moments, then was still. She felt his heartbeat speed up, then slow down until it thumped to a stop. She felt his last breath as she released him and eagerly licked his neck and the side of his face, savoring the last few drops of blood as the steam rose from the wound and dissipated in the cold night air.
She lay there on top of him for a minute, breathing hard, as the intensity of her exhilaration faded. She sat up quickly, and looked around. No one near. Good!. She straddled him, grabbed his head firmly in both hands, and gave it a sharp twist. She could hear the tendons snap and the bones break. She stood up, looked around again, and knelt beside the body. She checked his pants pockets, pocketed a few bills and loose change, then turned him over and went through his jacket pockets. A small hunting knife, and…..
She looked at his face for the first time. His sightless blue eyes, surrounded by strands of blond hair were staring directly at her. He was much younger than she had initially thought. He looked like…..OSKAR!! She leapt to her feet. Oh my god, its Oskar!. How can this be? She felt her stomach heave, as she bent over and vomited gouts of black blood. She screamed in agony and smashed her head against the tree trunk again and again until her eyes were clouded with her own blood and she could feel her skull cracking and splintering.
“Eli! Eli! Wake up! Please wake up!”
Oskar was terrified! Eli had jumped out of bed screaming, scrambled into the corner with her back against the wall, held her hands out as though she was shielding herself from some unimaginable horror, while her feet were trying in vain to push her further into the corner.
Oskar ran over to her, grabbed her and held her tight. Her arms waved aimlessly in the air as she sobbed in despair. Gradually she relaxed, laid her head on his shoulder, and cried softly into his neck, her tears dampening the side of his face.
“You had that dream again!” he said as he held her tightly.
"Yes! I’m sorry. I’m sorry”
===
If only he knew!. She remembered that night in vivid detail, how when she finally picked herself up off the ground and stumbled over to the body, and saw – not Oskar, but a stranger. Young, yes, but not Oskar. Just another no one…like the ones she had been killing for years. Just another nobody, probably with a mother, father – someone who loved him and would miss him and would feel just like she had when she thought it was Oskar. She couldn’t bear the thought. How had she done this for two centuries? She remembered how she had gently closed his eyes, buttoned his jacket, and carried him deep into the woods. She was going to bury him, like she had done to so many thousands before him, to cover her tracks. A missing person, however bad that was, was not as much a danger to her as a bloodless corpse with its neck torn open lying on the sidewalk. But not this time! She couldn’t bear the thought of his poor mother agonizing day after day, year after year, not knowing what had happened to him. She laid him carefully on a large flat rock, crossed his arms over his chest, and brushed his hair away from his eyes. She sat there with him for over an hour, willing herself to heal. Then she got up wearily and walked slowly home. She was over 10 miles from their apartment, so the light was already visible in the east when she arrived, climbed the stairs, walked past Oskar and climbed into their bed. She curled up into a ball against the wall.
===
Oskar sat with her. He caressed her face, kissed her, and held her close, until she stopped crying.
He gently helped her up, and they walked back over to the bed together. She climbed into bed and he snuggled up against her and held her hands in his.
=======================
Dawson sat at his desk, deep in thought. The ice chest and his old medical bag were next to his chair.
What am I going to do about these kids? I can’t just let them continue to live alone; it’s too dangerous. What happens when they run out of money? She’ll sicken and die if she doesn’t get a steady supply of food and they’ve already shown that they’re not very good at doing it for themselves. And I certainly can’t keep supplying them with blood on my own. It’s too well-regulated for me to be able to get away with it indefinitely without justifying its use. I’ll try to convince them to let me tell others, but I already have a feeling which way THAT will go. They clearly don’t trust anyone. It was an act of desperation that made them seek me out in the first place. And if I force the issue, they’ll run. We might be able to find them, but it’s not worth the risk.
He had already warned Alma, one of his lab assistants to be prepared for some blood, skin, urine and stool samples for a tentative side research project he was exploring. He looked at his watch. “8:35” I hope they are OK, he thought, “Anything could have happened to them.” He heard a light knock.
He quickly walked to the door, opened it, and breathed a sigh of relief. They were both there, seemingly intact. He looked closer at the boy, saw a bandage above his left ear, and was immediately concerned.
“Hi there!”
“Hello, Professor Dawson”
“Come on in! Have a seat. Are you both OK?” As they sat down, he pretended to just notice the bandage and said lightly, “Boy, is that going to hurt when you take it off. You’re going to lose a lot of hair. What happened?”
“I fell on the ice by our apartment.”
“Well, before you leave tonight, I want you to let me take a quick look at it. No sense in risking an infection,” he said.
“Now, first things first. Let’s get you fed. He turned to the girl. “How would you like to do this? I have two liters in four transfer bags.” He opened the ice chest and removed one. “They each have slip lock adapters that you can remove, like this. “He went through the motions, then handed her the bag. He tried his best to act nonchalant, but, he couldn’t shake off the surreal feeling of the entire situation.
Eli took it gingerly, looking at him, then the bag. She seemed very uncomfortable.
“Would you like me to show you again?” he asked.”
“No, but… can I do this alone? I don’t want anyone…”
“To watch you?” he asked. “Of course! You can use the bathroom over there.” He said, pointing to the door in the far corner of his office. She smiled, picked up the ice chest and walked into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her.
Eli sat on the edge of the toilet, undid the clamp, brought the tube to her mouth, and began to drink. “Cold.! So Cold!” As soon as it touched her tongue, the Change began. Her eyes changed, the euphoria surged…”NO! GO AWAY!” she calmed the urgency as best she could; she willed her eyes to be normal, pushed the primitive urges back, and concentrated on the taste, the heavenly taste. There was a slight antiseptic flavor, but otherwise nothing objectionable. She quickly finished the first, then the second. Then she paused, holding the third one in her lap. Her eyes had finally returned entirely to normal. She took a deep breath,” Try this again,” she thought. She carefully raised the third bag to her mouth and sucked on the tube, drawing the blood in slowly. Nothing changed. “If I were doing this in public, I would probably look like a little girl with a juice cup,” she thought humorlessly. “But at least people wouldn’t be running out of the restaurant, screaming, if they saw me.” She emptied the fourth bag, and sat for a minute. Would her stomach complain? Would this all be for nothing? It had tasted so good! Not like Oskar’s candy … or like some of the blood some of the … others had brought her. That’s a good sign isn’t it?
===
Dawson looked at Oskar, “What do you want most for your sister?”
“I want her to be normal. I want her to be safe. I want us to be together!”
“Let’s see what we can do about that,” He said, opening his medical kit on his desk, and laying two syringes and a few blood collection tubes on a white cloth, next to some alcohol swabs.
“You do understand that this could take a while; possibly years. I’ve heard of no disease that begins to compare with your sister’s. Are you sure that it manifested – showed – itself immediately after she was bitten?”
“Yes, I’m sure” He thought back to Eli’s description of her first Changing and the awful things that had happened the night before. “…I’m sure!”
He looked at Oskar intently, “I swear to you I will never compromise yours or your sister’s trust in me for any reason. No matter how long this takes.”
Oskar nodded, solemnly.
They both looked over as Eli came out of the bathroom. “Are you ok?” Oskar asked anxiously.
She smiled at him, “I’m fine.” She put the ice chest down and turned to Dawson, “Thank you so much. I feel much better.”
“Well, you probably won’t after you see this.” He smiled, and raised a syringe. Eli’s smile vanished and she stepped back. Dawson laughed, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just need to collect preliminary blood and skin samples from you, to help us find out more about your “illness”.
“I – I’ve never done this before. What do I do?” she asked.
Just have a seat here, next to me and I’ll show you. Don’t worry I just need a little, and it’ll just sting a bit.”
She sat next to him and gave him her arm. He applied the tourniquet
Oskar smiled to himself. “I’ll bet he would be quite surprised at how much pain she can take.”
As Dawson went to work, he kept talking to her. If this was her first time, he didn’t want her to be afraid. “We need the blood samples to see what kind of disease we are dealing with: Bacterial, Viral, or Parasitic – or something else altogether. We can also tell some things about your allergy to sunlight, but I will also take a small skin sample to narrow it down a bit more.”
Eli watch intently as, one after another, the three collection tubes filled with her blood. She shuddered a little as she realized that this was the only time someone had taken her blood since –Him. “But this is MY choice.” She thought.
He brought out the second syringe, hesitated, then warned her, “This one will sting a bit more. It’s a shorter, but larger diameter needle, designed to take a small bit of your five epidermal layers.” He watched her face as he took the sample. She looked at her arm intently but didn’t move a muscle. “Her focus is amazing,” he thought to himself. “She’s been watching me like a hawk. She’s so intense, I have the odd feeling that she could repeat the whole procedure herself without batting an eye.”
“Ok. Now there’s only one more thing,” he said handing her a small cup with a lid, and a piece of folded white cardboard,. “I need you to go into the bathroom and give me a urine and stool sample.”
“Eli look at him, puzzled. “What’s a “stool” sample”
Oskar grinned, “He wants some of your poop!”
“But … I can’t.”
“Let me explain how it works.” Dawson said, “If you can’t right now you can take the kit home and…”
“No! You don’t understand.” She said firmly. “I haven’t had to ... use the bathroom since I got sick.”
“But that’s impossible!” Dawson said in astonishment. What could that mean, he thought. “That means her body generates little or no waste when she eats. She has to lose the weight somehow. Maybe she loses it when she perspires; otherwise it would mean that she converts all the blood to energy in some form or another. It’s just not possible! A nuclear reactor can’t convert matter to energy that efficiently. I must be missing something. In fact, it looks like there are a lot of missing pieces.”
“Well!” he said, “You are certainly full of surprises. Amazing surprises! Then I guess this will have to do, for now.”
“How do you feel?” He looked at her carefully.
“I feel -- not hungry.” she smiled.
There was no sign of bloating. Her stomach was still as flat as a board. “Where did all that blood go? This seems to be more than just a disease. Whatever this is, it’s much more sophisticated. It has many of the unique characteristics you would expect to find in a species after eons of evolution along its own distinct branch. It has affected her metabolism, her digestive tract, possibly her skin, and perhaps her mental abilities, in radical ways. The fact that she can spontaneously grow wings and fly, obviously without a long learning curve, indicates a basic change in her inherited instincts. Whatever bit her has caused major rapid changes in her DNA. What’s in store for her? Will she survive this?” He felt suddenly frightened.
“I am extremely worried about you,” he said quietly, not wanting to alarm her too much. “I don’t know whether your condition is even stable. If I had my way, I would put you directly into the hospital.”
Eli stood up quickly, “No! We only trust you!” her voice rose, “They would take Oskar away from me. We’ll leave and never come back!” she looked toward the door.
“No, no! I made you a promise and intend to keep it, but I never said I wouldn’t try to convince you.” So his name is Oskar, he thought to himself, filing it away for future reference.
She relaxed and sat down slowly.
“You say you trust me,.” he said, “Can I ask you to trust me a bit further?”
Oskar and Eli looked at each other. Oskar asked, “What do you want us to do?”
Dawson took a deep breath, “Let me take you home tonight.”
“No, we can’t let you do that.” Eli said.
Dawson proceeded carefully, directing himself at Oskar “I am extremely worried about your sister. I want to make sure you are protecting her from the sun properly. I want to make sure you live in a safe area. I want to make sure you can safely store any future supplies of blood I obtain for her.” he paused as he felt the sadness well up in him, “And I want to be able to sleep at night knowing you are safe and well.” He directed this last at Eli, looking her straight in the eyes.
He had been aware that she had been looking directly at him the whole time. When he finished, her eyes remained fixed on his. “Ok,” she said quietly.
Oskar turned to Eli. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. We have to trust him. I know we can trust him”
“Good! That’s settled! Now, let me look at that bandage”
====================
The old Volvo pulled up to the curb in front of their apartment. As Oskar and the girl got out, Dawson wrote their address in his notebook, then followed them through the door and up the stairs. The neighborhood was quite old, but definitely not in one of the bad parts of town. He felt a bit better.
As soon as he entered the living room, he noticed the heavy drapes and the cardboard taped over the windows. They watched as he examined all the windows carefully, making a few adjustments. “I’ll bring you some heavier cardboard later, but this looks pretty good for now. At least until our tests tell us how sensitive you are to light – and to what wavelengths.” He smiled at them. He went into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. There was some milk, a bit of bread some sliced meat and assorted condiments. He saw a couple of cereal boxes on the shelf. “You’re going to have to let me help you stock up with a bit better-balanced supply of food.” He said as he playfully poked Oskar. “Your sister isn’t the only one who needs to eat properly.”
He stepped into the bathroom, checked the window. There were two toothbrushes in a glass by the sink. He opened the cabinet, saw the toothpaste, first aid kit, a few towels and … brown hair dye? He smiled to himself. It looks like they really thought this out. Oskar is probably a blond.
He went into the only bedroom, saw the small bed in the corner and the chest of drawers on the opposite wall. On top of the dresser were several model cars, a troll doll, a white rabbit, and a few Smurfs standing around idly. He smiled as he remembered how much his son had liked Smurfs…his son. He hadn’t though about him much since the funeral The funeral 10 years before when he had buried his wife and their miracle son, who had been born just before his only daughter had left for college. He remembered how he had smothered the aching loneliness by doubling his time at work. And when he had finally looked up, his daughter and son-in-law had moved what was left of his family to Karlstad. He shook it off and walked back into the living room. Oskar and the girl were sitting at a table against one wall, there was a couch under the front window, and a small television on the opposite wall. He walked over and sat down at the table on the remaining chair.
“You’ve done a good job here. If I may, I’ll pick you up a few things over the weekend that I think you could use, but I’m impressed. How did you rent the place, and how do you pay the rent?”
“A friend of our father’s signed the lease, and we paid six months rent when we moved in.” Eli lied, “We pay the rent with this.” She reached under the table and pulled out a cardboard box, half full of various denominations of bills and assorted coins.
“We’ll have to set up some sort of savings account for you. It’s not safe to leave this much money in your apartment,” he said as he went through the box.
He looked at the puzzles littering the table. A Rubik’s cube, some string and wire puzzles and…what on earth? He picked up the egg, saw the intricate patterns, the gold strands of wire, the extraordinary detail. “Why this looks like a Faberge Egg,” he exclaimed. “Where on earth did you get it.? I’m not an art expert, but it could be worth literally millions!”
They looked at each other, “Our … dad had it. We didn’t think it was worth anything.” Oskar said.
He shook his head and put it back on the table. More surprises, he thought to himself. He would look into this when he got back to the office. There’s something very odd about all this... “Well, perhaps it’s just a copy; but a good one”
He sat back down, and thought for a minute “I want to put in a phone for you, so you can call in an emergency or for any reason whatsoever, day or night. Promise me you’ll do that.”
“We promise.”
Then, I think that’s about it for now. Will you come back to see me tomorrow at 8:30?”
“We’ll be there,” Oskar said.
Ok, then,” he said as he got up and put his jacket on.
“Professor Dawson”
“Yes, what is it?”
“My name is Eli, and this is Oskar”
He smiled, “Glad to meet you both – finally.” He winked, “Are those your real names?”
Eli and Oskar smiled at each other “Yes, sir” Oskar said.
They walked him downstairs, and watched as he waved and drove away. They carefully locked the door and went back upstairs. Neither of them felt like talking. They turned on the television and snuggled up on the couch together until programming ended, and snow filled the screen.
They went into the bedroom together, took off their clothes and climbed into bed.
Oskar lay there on his back for a while, then turned to face Eli, “Eli, when did you get the apartment?”
“I rented it the night I left you. When I thought I would never see you again.”
“But… after you…saved me at the pool and we took the train to Karlstad, and we went to the apartment, this bed was already here. If you didn’t think you would see me again why did you have a bed?”
She smiled, “Because it reminded me of you and all our nights together. I slept in it that first day, alone. It was so awful! I missed you so much! Don’t you see? THAT’S why I went back. I had to see you again, because I was so lonely without you.”
Oskar and Eli hugged each other tightly. And that’s the way they woke up together the next day, just as the sun was going down.