Angel's Messiah

2. Sickness-2

“I don’t understand why you’re so sick,” Danny said.

“There was one vamp,” I said between heaves, “who attacked me. Something weird happened and it did frighten me.”

“What?”

Heave-ho!

“I don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to tell me. He’s in,” heave-ho, “the cavern.”

“We’ll go when you’ve stopped throwing up.”

I nodded. Danny wiped the blood from my eyes and the perspiration from my brow. I must have looked a treat, passable for some freak at a Halloween party, but not much else. Certainly no red carpets.

I wasn’t sure exactly when the heaving stopped. I’d fallen into a kind of trance-like sleep and Danny let me rest. I eventually woke up when my stomach rumbled like a loud and rude alarm clock.

“You look a bit better, but you sound like you’re starving,” he chuckled.

“I hate being hungry all the time. Ever since you got back all I want to do is eat,” I mumbled.

“You need to eat. I’ve never seen so much stuff spewed forth from one being before. If there was an angelic Book of Records you’d have made it in for sure.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” I said. “I’m going to have a shower. I stink and that’s saying something.”

“When you’re finished we’ll get you something to eat.”

“You’re coming with me?” I asked.

“I’m going to do better than that. You’re going to wait for me at the ranch and I will supply you with a variety of handpicked, succulent vampires to feast on,” Danny said, with an air of superior confidence. “With all my years of experience I should be able to find a few choice morsels.”

He kissed my forehead, even though it must have tasted salty, and gave my butt a playful whack as I headed to the shower.

The bathroom spun momentarily and I closed my eyes and held onto the basin. After a minute I opened them. When everything started spinning again my legs collapsed underneath me. I’d gripped the basin so hard it came away from the wall, crashing down on me. I lay on the floor with my eyes closed, holding the broken basin and willing everything to stop spinning and hurting.

“Helena,” Danny called out. “Are you okay? Do you need my help?”

“I’m fine,” I called back. I was such a liar.

“I don’t hear the water. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I turned my thoughts to the shower and the water came on.

“Just getting in now,” I called out.

I lay on the floor for a few more minutes, then repaired the damage to the basin before crawling, eyes closed, over to the shower. I pulled myself upright and stepped in, my smelly blood-soaked clothes having disappeared.

I’m going to collapse again, I thought to myself.

I summoned a stool for me to sit on, like an invalid, and washed myself with my eyes closed. I didn’t hear the door open and didn’t see Danny leaning against the shower door.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

I jumped and the stool and I toppled over. I felt like a right i***t. Danny was in the shower in the flash, helping me up. As he held me he felt my body, my whole body, trembling, ever so slightly.

“How long have you been shaking?” he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. A day or so.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“You’ve got the shakes, you’ve been vomiting and are so weak you need to sit down to shower, not to mention your subconscious blinking. There is something very wrong, Helena.”

“I just need a decent feed. Something that doesn’t taste off,” I said.

“I hope you’re right,” Danny mumbled.

I felt somewhat better by the time I was dried and dressed. Danny insisted on transporting us to the cavern to look at the body of the young vamp who’d sought to take my life. He knelt over the body and touched the dead vamp’s clothes and skin.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “I’ll need to check with Michael. If he can’t help I’ll consult with the powers, the keepers of history.”

I sat on the ground and hugged my knees to my chest while Danny inspected the body. He looked at me and stood up.

“You need to eat. Wait here. I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”

He walked over to me and kissed the top of my head before continuing on, fading with each step until after the fourth step he was gone.

I rested my head on my knees and dozed.

The blood, Helena, it’s always to do with the blood.

I woke up with a start.

Oh, god, the blood. Satan’s blood! What if it was killing me, only slowly? Danny didn’t know I’d drunk his blood. It was a minor detail I’d forgotten to mention, but he did know I’d stabbed myself with a dagger coated in Satan’s blood — he was there after all.

“What time is it?”

Numbers flared in front of me. Danny had been gone for twenty minutes. I waved the numbers away and tapped my legs restlessly. I picked at a loose thread on the hem of my jeans and somehow managed to split the leg up the side to my knee.

“Oh, fix yourself, you stupid jeans,” I mumbled.

I heard laughter behind me. Danny had returned to the sound of me splitting my jeans and then fixing them. He had with him two bound and gagged vampires. It seemed my dinner was not to put up a struggle or upset me with their foul language.

Where’s the fun in that? I thought.

“Thanks,” I said.

I put my hands on the ground to push myself up. Danny placed a hand firmly on my shoulder preventing me from standing. I gave him a look that said I wasn’t an invalid.

“Sit,” he said. “Your meal will come down to your level.”

I sniffed both vamps and didn’t recognise either scent.

“How did you know I hadn’t met these ones?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” Danny said, crouching down beside me. “Call it a lucky guess. Well, what are you waiting for? You don’t need to say grace.”

Danny pushed the first vamp to my side, so its neck was level with my face. I leaned on him as my lips brushed his neck. This one didn’t taste too bad, not quite the honey I was used to, but not vinegar.

“I told you I could pick them,” Danny said smugly. “You must be going through a phase or something.”

As I drank from the second vamp Danny asked me if I wanted more. I nodded. He ran his fingers through my hair as a parting gesture, then took off to find more food for me.

The cavern started spinning within minutes of my finishing the second vamp. Maybe I had some sort of inner ear problem. I’d heard that sort of thing could make you really dizzy and affect your balance. At least my stomach was calm. That had to be a good sign.

Danny returned with another two vampires. When they were dry I decided I’d had enough for one day. Why tempt fate by gorging?

“Take my hand,” I said.

I held out my hand to Danny and as he took it my world spun and everything went blank.

“Helena,” a voice called through the fog.

“Danny?”

“Helena, I’m going to take you to Michael. You need help.”

“No,” I mumbled. “I don’t want to go.”

“Helena, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

“Bucket,” I whispered.

Danny held the bucket under my face with one hand and held back my hair with the other. The roiling and heaving started again.

Why? I moaned inwardly. Those vampires didn’t taste too bad. Why am I so sick?

Hours later — it felt like hours — when the heaving had stopped, I’d showered and was back in bed. Resting in Danny’s arms, I cried.

“I think I’m dying, Danny,” I sobbed.

He rubbed my arms. “What makes you think that?”

I sighed. “I didn’t tell you everything.”

He kissed the top of my head. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t tell you exactly how I got Satan’s blood.”

“And you think that may have some bearing on what’s happening to you now?”

“Yes.”

He clasped my hands in his. “Out with it then.”

I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm my heart.

“I had to drink it.”

Danny’s arm tightened around me. “You did what?”

“I drank it. I only tasted a small amount,” I added quickly. “The rest I transported to the La’miere hotel, to coat the daggers I used to kill the archangels.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked.

“Well, you said that Satan’s blood was no poison to me, so I didn’t think it was important, but what if it’s just taken longer to have an effect on me?”

“What you’re experiencing isn’t the symptoms of poisoning,” Danny assured me.

My vision blurred and I blinked my eyes, trying to refocus. Everything changed.

“Danny,” I whispered, clinging to him in desperation, “why is it dark?”

“What do you mean, Helena, it’s still light outside.”

“I … I can’t see anything.”

Danny straightened me up and turned me around to look at me. My eyes rolled back in my head and my body started convulsing. I could feel everything that was happening to me, yet had no control over it. Danny held onto me tightly and placed something in my mouth, presumably to stop me from biting down on my tongue.

When my body went limp he took the wood — I could taste the woody flavour — from my mouth and lowered me onto the pillow.

I opened my eyes and Danny gasped. My vision had returned, though it was very blurry and I was frightened my sight would disappear again.

“Your eyes,” he whispered. “Maybe you were right. Maybe the blood was a poison to you and you’ve been trying to assimilate it. Your eyes have changed colour, they’re hazel.”

“Hazel? That’s new. Dark brown, to red, to hazel.”

My body started trembling again, though only for a short while.

“It doesn’t seem as bad now, the trembling,” Danny said. “Perhaps when you feed you’ll be able to keep your food down. We’ll give it a couple of days and try again. For now you rest, and I mean rest.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think I can work up an appetite for what you’re telling me to abstain from anyway,” I pouted.

After having rested for a couple of days and not throwing up again, we finally returned to the ranch — above ground rather than underground. I was still having dizzy spells, though I disguised them by closing my eyes and saying I needed to rest for a few minutes. Luckily the dizziness abated when I employed that tactic.

I sat on the ground and waited for Danny to return, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun on my face. My stomach rumbled. These days if it wasn’t rumbling it was heaving. I knew which I preferred.

For some strange reason I felt the urge to hunt a werewolf. It came over me all of a sudden, from nowhere. Yes, I’d wanted to hunt werewolf before. I’d just never gotten around to it. Why I felt the urge to hunt them now, when I wasn't exactly at my best, I didn't know.

Danny brought the vamps in pairs again, including a couple of females, on the off-chance they might be more agreeable — to my stomach, not to dying — and they tasted fine, the best yet.

“Your colour looks better,” Danny said.

“I feel a bit better. I do have the strangest urge though,” I said.

“What for?” Danny asked.

“To hunt werewolf.”

Danny laughed. “If you keep your food down, maybe tomorrow.”

I nodded my head. Danny headed off to find me one more meal. Six would be more than enough to restore my strength, if I could keep them down.

Before I finished the last one, my stomach complained and my legs began to shake uncontrollably. Maybe I’d overdone it. I put my hands on the ground and pushed down with my feet, trying to stop the quaking.

“s**t!” Danny said.

I couldn’t remember ever hearing Danny swear before. He must be worried if he’d resort to the sort of language that came out of my mouth at least once in every dozen sentences. But then again, he wasn’t the only one who was worried. I was sure I was dying.

The treetops began to spin and I closed my eyes.

“I’m not going to make it home,” I said.

It was the first night we didn’t spend back at the cottage since Danny had returned to me. We were lucky we just happened to be in the very place vampires didn’t like to frequent, due to the smell. I knew that Drake wouldn’t kill me, if he happened to come across us. I couldn’t say the same for the other vampires, even if we had worked together once as a team, years before. There’d be so many new vamps that wouldn’t know me, yet would have heard the tales. They’d all be thinking how glorious it would be to kill me, if I was still alive, and become a legend among immortals.