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

“Damn! I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

I grinned back. “You’re welcome to come and visit her any time, Mark.”

“Thanks. I’ll definitely do that. She’s gorgeous.” He tickled the kitten under her chin, and she purred loudly.

I froze. Something was wrong. I closed my eyes and let my mind roam through the house. Someone was upstairs, but it was impossible to say who it was. I sensed pain and fear, and incredible frailty.

“Who else is here?” I asked Mark abruptly. He looked startled.

“Rebecca. She wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home today. Why?”

“She’s sick,” I told him as I darted past him and up the stairs. It wasn’t strictly true, but I couldn’t tell her brother that she was dying. Not yet.

I was shocked at what I saw when I opened her bedroom door. Rebecca lay there, still in a t-shirt and sleep shorts, deathly still, with an unhealthy sheen over her white face. She didn’t even look at me as I lifted her from the tangled nest of sheets on her bed. Her chest rose and fell, desperately sucking air into her failing lungs. I carried her hastily down the stairs, past her worried looking brother, and across the road to my house, indicating to Mark to follow me. He trotted behind me, still carrying the kitten.

I lay Rebecca on my new sofa, wondering what to do next. She was deathly pale, even her lips and tongue were white. I knew she needed iron, preferably in the form of fresh blood. Blood was really the best source of iron for us – it was rapidly absorbed from our stomachs, seeping into our systems within seconds. Images of Marcus’ experiments on us flashed across my vision, and I was grateful for the unending thirst for knowledge that drove my brother. I could help Rebecca, but iron tablets would take too long. I dug a breadknife out of one of the kitchen drawers, and carried it into the sitting room, where Mark stood against one of the walls, gazing in horror at his sister.

“Mark.”

“Yes?”

“Trust me.”

He nodded slowly, and stroked the kitten’s head. His eyes widened involuntarily when I lifted the breadknife, but he said nothing, and remained leaning against the wall.

I used the tip of the knife to slice longitudinally through the skin of my left wrist and the artery pulsing beneath it, and swiftly held my wrist to her mouth.

“Drink, Rebecca!” I barked at her, and her eyes fluttered open as the salty fluid flowed into her mouth, she swallowed once convulsively, and then again. Her eyes closed. “Rebecca!” I was almost shouting now. I felt rather than saw Mark flinch, but Rebecca opened her eyes, and started swallowing again. I watched as a trickle of blood travelled slowly from the corner of her mouth down her chin. Then she started sucking thirstily at my wrist, and I sighed in relief. She was going to be OK.

I let her drink for a minute, and then I withdrew my wrist. Rebecca sighed, and closed her eyes again, but her skin had lost that chalky pallor, and her breathing had slowed. I stood with my wrist over the sink as I tied a compression bandage around it. It would stop bleeding within another minute or so, and by tomorrow you wouldn’t be able to see a scar. We heal fast.

I looked over to where Mark stood. His eyes were still wide, but he didn’t look frightened anymore. He looked fascinated, and intrigued.

“Well,” he said levelly, “that was freaky.”

I chuckled. A bit of an understatement.

“Want some tea?” I asked him.

He looked up at me. “Real tea? With boiled water and milk and stuff? No blood?”

“Yes.” I smiled at his resilience.

“Yes, please.” He went back to gazing at his sister. She looked almost normal now, and appeared to be waking up.

Rebecca

Mark was standing against an unfamiliar wall when I woke up. He was staring at me as if I’d grown an extra eye or something. I was lying on a comfortable leather couch. It smelled new.

“Where are we?” I asked him.

“Angus’ house.”

“Why are we here? What happened?”

He glanced towards what must have been the kitchen, and said wryly, “I think you’d better let Angus tell you.” He grinned at me. “Well, you look a lot better.”

I frowned. He wasn’t making sense. I tried to sit up, but the world spun sickeningly, so I lay back down again. Angus came into the room and handed Mark a mug. He looked over at me and then came and stood next to the sofa. I could almost feel the heat of his body near mine. It was oddly comforting and perturbing at the same time.

“I can see I’ve got some explaining to do,” he said with a smile. “But first you need to drink something.” He turned away before I could say anything and went back into the kitchen, reappearing after a few seconds with a glass of water and five unremarkable brown tablets.

“Drink these,” he commanded. I looked up at Mark, and he nodded. I took them from Angus’ warm hand, and swallowed them one at a time. Angus smiled at me, and sat down on a nearby armchair, stretching out his long body as he leaned back.

“It’s a long story,” he said, sighing. “I’d better start at the beginning.”

Angus

I knew that I’d have to explain everything eventually; I just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. I’d thought about how to do it for a couple of days, about how to start. Well, see, you’re a vampire, same as me didn’t quite cut it. And I hadn’t expected to be factoring a normal fourteen year old teenager into the equation. I decided to use Marcus’ terminology for now, and let the historical references drift through the conversation a bit later.

“Rebecca and I have something in common. We both use iron differently to other people. I have two brothers, Fergus and Marcus, who have the same, er, ability. Marcus has studied the basic physiological mechanics of how we use iron for a few years now, and he says that people like us are able to incorporate it into our tissues in different ways to normal people. The most important difference is a change in metabolic activity when we eat foods containing iron.” Like blood, I thought.

“When we eat normal food, our bodies function like normal human bodies, using the usual metabolic pathways to extract energy from normal food types, mostly glucose, fats and proteins. But when we eat enough iron, our bodies switch over to a different metabolic pathway that has adapted to utilise molecular iron to increase the efficiency of many body functions.” I looked at Rebecca. She was frowning, concentrating.

“Muscles work better, nerves conduct their messages faster, our bodies even heal faster, and are better at fighting off infections. And our skins are harder, because iron becomes incorporated into our cells, in the walls, so we don’t exactly deflect bullets, but it’s harder to hurt us.” I paused, wondering how to continue.

“Our parents were also like us, and Marcus assumed that that would be the only mode of inheritance. But it looks like Rebecca here inherited it differently, recessively. That means that both your parents had to have the genes in their DNA, even though they weren’t able to use iron themselves. Their DNA combined could generate an iron metaboliser. There’s apparently a one in four chance. That’s why you got the genes,” I looked pointedly at Rebecca, “and your brothers didn’t.” I paused, expecting questions. I didn’t have to wait long.

“So what happened today with Rebecca? It looked like she was going to die.” Mark grimaced at the memory.

“She was dying. I’m not sure why exactly. I think something must have triggered her body to switch to the iron pathways, and she was using up all her red blood cells to feed those pathways. I had to give her a big dose of iron to stop that process, or it would have killed her.” I wondered what could have precipitated the switch.

“Blood contains a lot of iron, in its most bioavailable form. That means it’s easily absorbed an utilised by our bodies. And those tablets I just gave you are high dose iron tablets.”

Rebecca was frowning again. “Blood?” she whispered.

“Yeah, you drank his blood. And then you stopped looking like a corpse.” Mark looked like he was enjoying himself. He’d slid down the wall, and sat on a thick rug with his legs stretched out and the kitten curled up in his lap.

“I don’t understand,” Rebecca looked uneasy.

“You’re a vampire, Sis,” said Mark gleefully, unknowingly hitting the nail on the head.

Rebecca

A vampire? What a ridiculous idea. I didn’t even eat meat, let alone drink peoples’ blood! But here Mark, my own brother, was telling me that I’d drank Angus’ blood. The thought of that level of intimacy thrilled me, somehow, even as I knew I should feel repulsed by the concept. I pushed it away impatiently, trying to make sense of what he was telling us. I didn’t want to believe it all, but I looked searchingly at Angus’ face, and read the truth in his eyes, and heard the calm authority in his deep velvety voice.

I sat for a few minutes, running over everything in my head. Intellectually it made a kind of bizarre sense, but I knew I would need some proof. As if he had read the question in my mind, Angus started unwrapping the bloodstained bandage that encircled his wrist. Mark leaned forward slightly, anticipation written all over his face. The bandages fell away, and Angus held his wrist out to us, palm facing up. There was an angry pink scar running along one side of it. I heard Mark’s sudden intake of breath, and looked up into his shocked face, and watched as it changed slowly to a kind of awed wonder.

“What?” I asked impatiently. Mark spoke without taking his eyes off that scar.

“That’s where you drank his blood, Rebecca. He cut his own wrist less than twenty minutes ago, and I watched the blood pouring out of it. And now it’s almost healed.”

I glanced up at Angus’ face. He nodded once. I felt the blood rush to my face.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes. We feel pain, same as everyone else. We just regenerate a lot faster.”

“I’m sorry that you had to hurt yourself like that for me.”

“I’m not.” His eyes were smiling at me again. I closed my eyes and imagined touching that beautiful face, running my fingers over his smooth skin. I shuddered as my body reacted to the thought, and opened my eyes again, trying to escape from where my mind was headed. I looked at Mark, but he was playing with the kitten again, wiggling his index finger as it pounced. I risked another glance at Angus. His eyes had darkened until they were almost black, and he was staring at me with such hunger and intensity that I felt momentarily afraid. And then he blinked, and that expression was gone, and he was smiling again.

“Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” said my graceless brother, still sipping his tea. Something occurred to me, a piece of the puzzle that was missing.

“Yes, but how do we know that I am an iron…metaboliser?” I hoped I’d pronounced the term correctly. I also hoped that they weren’t going to ask me to cut myself to prove it. I wasn’t keen on that idea at all.

Angus tilted his head to one side, and eyed me speculatively.

“You can probably remove that cast now. I’ll bet your fracture has healed already.”

“But it’s only been, what, six days since I broke it! It’s supposed to take at least six weeks to heal.”

“I know. And I’m sure you haven’t noticed yet, but it doesn’t hurt anymore, does it.” It wasn’t a question.

“No, it stopped hurting the day after it happened…” My voice trailed