The Iron in Blood by Jenny Doe (primary phonics .txt) 📕

had known that we would have to leave school before we all changed, and just being around other people became too risky. Mostly for other people, of course, but for us too, in a way. There’s nothing that upsets people more than when somebody gets killed. Declaring emphatically that it had been an accident wouldn’t have cut it - there would have been too much blood. People would have been angry and vengeful and we would have been locked up, if we were lucky.

I turned the car around and headed back to my newly purchased property, hoping that the cleaning staff had arrived. They had, and shortly afterwards a huge white van with the name of a renovating company pulled up. A stocky man in overalls got out, looked at the property, and grunted something to his passenger, a young man with a slack jaw and acne. Next thing the place was swarming with people. I got back in the car and went to find some breakfast.

 

 

Rebecca

I hadn’t even realised that Mark had disappeared until Harry knocked on the door, looking forlorn and embarrassed.

“Mark here?” Chatty Harry.

“He went outside to wait for you.” I tried to look over his shoulder, which was difficult. At fourteen Harry was already way taller than me, and bulky. He had a mop of unruly, suspiciously black hair that was combed forwards and covered half his face, and an stud in his nose.

“He must have left early,” Harry shrugged, and then grinned at me. “Bye, Rebecca.” He enunciated each syllable of my name separately. I smiled back, vowing to chew Mark out about sharing his annoying enunciation of my name with his friends. Harry left, and I reluctantly abandoned my book, slung my bag over my shoulder, and hobbled outside, crutches in hand. I locked the door behind me and set out slowly for school, which was a couple of blocks away, less than a mile. It felt much longer. The bell went about three minutes before I finally swung myself through the big double gated entrance on my trusty crutches. I’d started to appreciate them a few hundred yards into my journey. I was still exhausted by the time I got to school, and my upper arms were burning. I stood for a few minutes, catching my breath before heading off to my first class of the day.

I had forgotten about Mark’s disappearance this morning until I saw him standing next to Harry during break. They were both leaning against the south facing wall of the school hall, eyes closed, absorbing the weak sunlight that played over their faces. I left them to their easy companionship and went to explain my late arrival to the headmaster.

I was halfway there when I almost bumped into Shanice. I had been watching the ground for cracks and crevices that could ensnare one of the rubber tips of my crutches and send me flying to land in an undignified heap in front of all these curious onlookers.

I sensed her malignant presence, stopped, and looked up into her mean piggy eyes. Shanice and I had a history that spanned at least ten years of mutual animosity. We had first encountered each other in primary school, where Shanice had tormented me relentlessly for about six months, until one afternoon I had snapped and punched her in her the face, breaking her nose. I still cherished the memory. Shanice felt differently, obviously, and although she had stopped pestering me, she had developed an intense loathing of me that manifested itself in hateful stares and the occasional sneered remark. I managed to ignore her most of the time, but I had known I would be in trouble today. I was vulnerable, see, and there’s nothing a bully likes more.

“Oi! Freakface!” Original, Shanice. Nice one.

I said nothing, just watched her, anticipating the blow, and wondering if I could do anything about it. I could put weight in my injured leg, but I would be clumsy, and my hands were tangled in the handles of the crutches.

“Not so brave now, are we?” she taunted me.

“Shanice Smith!” the headmasters voice rang out. “To class please. Now!”

The bell must have rung. I hadn’t noticed it. Shanice flushed angrily, her bloated face turning an unhealthy puce colour.

“Whatever!” she said in her whiny voice. “See you later, Freak,” she hissed at me, and then she turned and left.

“Well, Miss Harding, I can see why you were late for school today. Carry on.” Our headmaster was a harsh but fair man, but he still made me nervous, so I nodded and left as soon as I was able to coordinate the crutches. I knew Shanice had detention that afternoon, so I would be able to escape home unharmed. But I also knew I’d see her tomorrow again. I shuddered.

 

 

Angus

I was halfway through my second coffee in what was supposed to be an upmarket breakfast café type thing, when my mobile started vibrating. It was Marcus. He sounded jubilant.

“She’s one of us!”

“I know. You said we had a match.”

“No, no, that was just a blood group match.” Marcus always became impatient with us when we failed to grasp something, even when he had neglected to actually explain it properly. It was like he expected us just to know what he knew. It was flattering in a strange way, but also very frustrating.

“She has an unusual subgroup that I had Fergus flag when it came up. It’s the same subgroup that we have, sure, but I wasn’t certain that she would have any of our peculiar genes. But today I ran the second DNA comparison. She’s got all three genes, Angus.”

“Which means?” Sometimes I could be a little slow.

“She’s a vampire!” Marcus was really getting excited now. I looked around to make sure nobody had heard his yelling.

“God, Marcus, don’t use that term. You know Father hated it.”

“This is brilliant, I can’t believe it, it’s just fantastic.” Marcus sounded a bit hysterical.

“Explain, Marcus,” I said. “Don’t you have to be a, er, like us to have children like us?” Our father and mother had both been iron metabolisers, people who can use iron in a different way to normal people. Traditionally, I suppose we would have been called vampires, but we no longer had to drink blood to fulfil our iron needs. Iron tablets sufficed, and we had become slightly more civilised as a result. Well, Marcus and Fergus, certainly. But the underlying physiology was there, and we still really liked blood; we just didn’t need it.

Marcus had coined the new term for what we are. And even though I didn’t like hearing the word vampire out loud - force of habit, I suppose - I found the political correctness of Marcus’ term a bit offensive. Call a spade a spade, dammit. Just not where anyone can hear you do it.

“Apparently not. This is so exciting! A recessive set of genes! I can’t believe it!” Exclamation marks all over the place.

“So why doesn’t she behave like one?” I wasn’t convinced. “She’s past puberty now, surely.” When our hormone levels started changing, especially with the surge in steroid hormones, like testosterone and oestrogen, our bodies switched to a kind of a dual metabolism. So we could metabolise normal food like normal people – fats, carbohydrates, proteins. But when we had enough iron in our systems, our bodies could use it ways we couldn’t yet fully understand. Marcus was still working on figuring that one out.

Marcus was silent for a few seconds, considering the question. “Well, she’s female, and they store less iron than males, and she’s probably a vegetarian. She most likely hasn’t had her first hit yet.” Marcus’ use of drug terminology was strangely appropriate. It was how I had come to think of being a vampire – I subconsciously flinched at that word again. We had a set of unique receptors which responded in an unusual way to iron, that everyday substance, like an alcoholic responds differently to a shot of whiskey than a normal person would. Except maybe an alcoholic was not the best analogy. The craving was there, certainly, but our drug did not incapacitate us. Instead it made us invincible and powerful, strong enough to break boulders, and fast enough to run alongside speeding cars. I closed my eyes and recalled the heady rush, the clarity of vision, the enhanced senses, the sensation of muscles ripping through the sluggish air, the crystallisation of all pleasure and wonder into this perfect rush of being.

Our father had explained the situation to us one day when we were twelve. The signs were all there that we were going to hit puberty soon, and he wanted the transition from slightly strange but mostly normal boy to utter freak to go as smoothly as possible, I suppose. He was a good man, my father, strong, obviously, but compassionate too, and intelligent enough to have figured out the basic metabolic reason for our unusual abilities. He had met my mother towards the end of her life, still youthful looking, another benefit of being able to use iron as we do. We heal fast, restoring aging and damaged cells rapidly, so we look as if we are just out of school, or in our early twenties, for most of our long lives. Adult, but never old.

We were the inevitable result of their union, and our birth sapped whatever life our mother had left in her, and she died a few days later. My father, to his credit, never blamed us for her death, but set about educating his three small, precocious boys, and loving us as best he could. And when we hit puberty, and our lives changed forever, he was there to guide us through the changes, and reassure us that we always had a choice. We could harness the power, or we could let it harness us and become monsters. I like to think that we did the former, but sometimes I’m not so sure.

And now Marcus was telling me that there was someone else like us out there, someone who would need guidance through the changes that she would inevitably go through, one way or another. My father had always worried that if we did not expose ourselves to the effects that huge doses of iron had on our systems, and learn to control them, that we would eventually succumb to some profound and overpowering instinct and actually kill someone and drink their blood. It made sense. There’s a lot of iron in blood.

I imagined Rebecca biting someone’s carotid artery, responding to some deep, unacknowledged desire, and drinking their warm blood as it was pumped directly from the heart to her open mouth. I thought of how her family would react, and flinched again. It was bad enough knowing that you are a freak without everyone else knowing it too. I would have to do something to help the girl. I wondered, not for the first time if I was the right person to do it. I considered asking Marcus or Fergus to take over the task, but a stab of what could have been jealousy made me dismiss that thought. I would do this myself, and let the dice fall where they may.

 

 

Rebecca

Mark came bounding through the door as soon as he got home. I’d arrived a few minutes earlier, and had scrambled out of my uniform, and was munching on a slice of toast in the kitchen and reading my book. It was nearing the end, and I already knew what was going to happen, but it was well written, and by one of my favourite authors, so it didn’t matter.

“Met our new neighbour this morning,” he announced out of the blue, saying just enough to pique my curiosity, as usual. At first I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but then I remembered the commotion across the street yesterday.

“Already?”

“Yep. He found an injured kitten, so I showed him where the vet was. Seems OK.”