Essence (Nectar 3)

Tristan heard noise and saw lights from the corner of his eye so he looked to Sasha, who was turning on monitors connected to Kyla, just the same as Kyle. She explained that she was watching Kyla’s levels, providing her with IV fluids.

Before carrying Kyla down to the basement Tristan had dressed her in a bra, tee, and cotton panties with track pants that came just to her calf, and Sasha had braided Kyla’s hair down one side to keep it contained. She’d been staring at Kyla with motherly concern as she did it. Tristan felt her maternal nature coming off her in waves, which was odd, since Sasha only looked ten or fifteen years older. But she was much older than that. Old enough to be Kyla’s grandmother.

“Nice getting younger again after being turned?”

“Oh yeah,” Sasha smiled brightly, “My crows’ feet and saggy jowls vanished overnight. Better than any trip to the spa. An ache I was waking up with the last couple years? Gone. Believe me, I’ve struggled with the pros and cons of vampirism. Kyle’s blood makes things even out. I look a little older than I would if I’d turned at 25 but I’ll take looking forty and feeling twenty rather than like a senior citizen any day!”

He watched her extract blood from Kyle. He smelled it in the air and it didn’t smell exactly like Kyla’s blood. It smelled male, but it also smelled appetizing. He’d had to consume bagged blood occasionally and it never mattered the gender but he’d never taken blood from a male at the source. He knew he was lucky for that; average vampires didn’t have the luxury of being gender biased. Hungry turned vamps and true vamps of lower station couldn’t be all that discerning at all so they took what they could get.

He’d had it easy, because of who he was related to and because of the strength he’d displayed, he got given his preferred meals on a silver platter --- as much green eyed brunette blood and as much pussy as he wanted like a king already crowned and on his throne.

And then he gets handed the sweetest fucking gift of his life and offered all the power he wants while he gets to keep his enchanted pet, a woman who was carved out of sunshine and fucking ambrosia completely for him. They’d lost her and went on a twenty odd year quest to get her back for him. Then a team of people strive to make sure she can give him perfect and powerful children.

But because the timing had gone wrong Adrian took their child from them. And Tristan didn’t know if it was a blessing or not because that child might’ve killed Kyla but it sure didn’t feel like any sort of blessing or relief when that loss happened.

Here was a different group striving to find a way to live differently. He didn’t really understand it. There was more to them, more to their way of life. What had made a few vamps get together and decide to let their conscience guide them? How did they even get a conscience to begin with? Tristan was too worried about Kyla and too dog-tired to go there right now.

Sasha had gone down the hall to her lab. He kissed Kyla’s forehead and went and stretched out on the couch, throwing his forearm over his eyes. He couldn’t stop the pain in his heart and the nagging thoughts about how for so many years, ten of them, he wasn’t even conscious of having a heart except on the anniversary of his turning, his birthday. The day everything changed. And the same day he’d, later on, get given the most beautiful gift he’d ever received. That gift that he was now at risk of losing.~~~He woke with a start, feeling disoriented.

The lights were off in the room but there was a glow coming from the machines beside Kyla’s bed and beside her brother’s bed.

He got up and stretched while making his way toward her bed and what he saw floored him, froze him in mid-stretch. Kyla was on her side on the edge of the hospital bed, right against the rails closest to Kyle. Her hand was curled around Kyle’s bicep.

He heard footsteps and knew it was Sasha and Sam approaching from behind.

“Wow,” he heard Sasha whisper. She’d noticed it too.

“I told you how they were as babies. There was one time, I watched Dr. Constantin with them both when they were about three. We traveled to Swansea together to examine them. He put them facing one another on the carpet and gave them each those toys that have the grid full of holes where you put bulbs in to make designs. What was that called?”

“Uhhh, Light something. Lite Brite?” Sam put in.