Page 79 of Cursed Lifeline

“Wait a minute,” Felix exclaims, turning towards the fae responsible for Caelum and my immortality. “Evangeline, the WhisperWind Covenant is famous for its healers, right?”

The woman in question takes a step back from Caelum, who’s still twitching, squirming, and close to twisting off the table. Annoyed, Felix reaches out and his firm grip deathly anchors him in place. Caelum cries out in pain.

Evangeline panics. “That doesn’t mean I…”

Taking her hands in mine, I turn her to look at me. All thoughts of the carnage to my right aside, I place my finger under her chin and raise her troubled stare to my pleading eyes, “We can’t let him die.”

“He won’t die, he’ll just...”

“Become one of them,” Caelum shouts angrily, nodding in Felix’s direction. “I may thirst for beautiful women, but I take it back. I’d rather die before I ever...”

“Watch it,” Felix warns.

“Please,” I beg. “I need him. We need him. If we are ever going to figure a way out of this now that Esme is alive and find a way to break the curse...”

“Curse?” Esme asks, alarmed. “Do you all make a habit of not telling the whole story? Or am I just the lucky one that gets to not fall privy to important information?”

Felix makes a colorful remark, and I glance his way in time to see him roll his eyes. “I hadn’t exactly told her about that yet,” he sighs angrily.

“It would be nice if someone would fill me in,” Esme grunts, “seeing as you’ve all been waiting for me to make my return for some time now.”

She spins around to me.

“Immortal?” she shouts.

Facing Felix, she yells, “Curse?”

“Be patient,” Felix says calmly, holding down Caelum, who seems to be writhing harder than before. “In time...”

“Screw your time, Felix,” she argues. “From the sounds of it, you’ve all had plenty. I haven’t. Regardless, I don’t need more time. I need answers.”

“And you’ll get them,” he grits out, holding her fiery stare with heated rage. “After you sit down and shut....”

“In and of itself, normally a vampire bite is not fatal,” Evangeline insists, cutting off the building fight in front of us.

Esme eyes Felix viciously, to which he growls a warning, and she slowly lowers herself back in her seat next to Caelum. Evangeline hurries away to a nearby table full of potions, tools, and tricks of the fae. She picks up a vial, raises it in the dim light of a nearby sconce, and measures out a small portion. Hurrying back to my side, she takes the rag at Caelum’s throat, soaks it with half the mixture and a little more of the garlic tonic, and reapplies pressure to the bite. Caelum hisses out in agony.

“A single bite has the ability to heal in a day or two, if it’s not infected with venom. Some vampires get off on that kind of blood play,” Esme eyes Felix angrily, to which he rolls his eyes and continues to hold Caelum’s twisting form firmly in place.

“Sanguination,” Evangeline says, quickly taking my hand, holding it against the wound, and grabbing a clean rag. My eyes widen. She soaks the new cloth with some more of the mixture she’s made and says, “A vampire can feed off of one host for years until the person eventually dies of blood loss.”

“How do we know if there is any venom in the bite,” I ask. My hand shakes as Caelum’s blood soaks the rag and quickly coats my fingers. I start to feel lightheaded but try to shake it off as best I can.

“It’s hard to tell,” Felix grits out. “But I’ve been told by some who have gone through the change that if the vampire infected its victim, the bite would elicit a slow and painful burning sensation as it mixes with the blood. Almost as if they feel like they’re being burned alive.”

“Oh, it burns,” Caelum hisses, as his eyes roll back in his skull and his skin flushes. “Question is, how do I fucking stop it?”

Evangeline shakes her head as she removes my hand from the wound and replaces the dirty rag with a clean one. Stunned, I look down at the bloody cloth in my shaky palm and the room lightly begins to spin.

“There is a rumor,” she cautiously says.

Caelum grips Esme’s hand harshly. My cousin’s eyes fill with panic as she leans into his side and whispers he’ll be ok, evoking another growl from Felix. Usually I’d pay more attention to them. But my head… it feels so groggy. Woozy. Rocking back on my heels, my knees buckle, but I catch myself on a nearby chair before I go down. Luckily, no one notices.

Discarding the soiled rag on the table, Evangeline continues, “There was a fae of the WhisperWind Covenant long before my time that was infected with venom. In her rage, before the change could take place, she killed her assailant. The venom never took. When the vampire who inflicted the bite took his last breath, the venom evaporated from her system. The bite miraculously healed. It was as if she was never bitten at all.”

“How long does the change normally take,” Esme asks.

“Two, maybe three days,” Evangeline looks up at Felix, who nods his head in agreement. “It depends on how long the venom takes to saturate all the cells in its new host.”

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