Page 6

I don’t know.

“Then tell me something you do know.”

We were bound by fate to search for the only woman who would be both our cure and our life-partner, staying with us throughout our long-lived lives. Procreation with anyone else was impossible, substantiated by the thousands of failed artificial insemination projects collected in historical records.

I set aside the facts which had plagued me since I came of age to focus on the one which would lead me to my own personal cure.

“Forty beats per minute,” I whispered aloud, pushing so more blood would seep out. “It’s getting faster.”

With a finger, I sealed up the wound, watching the blood clot over and be replaced with fresh skin.

When it was as good as new, I reached for the notebook I had been using to track the reappearance of my pulse, jotting down today’s date and reviewing my previous entries. Six months ago, that even thumping had resurfaced. The first entry marked five beats per minute. It remained constant until a little over a week ago when it began to speed up. First to ten and then to fifteen until it eventually reached its current rate.

I redid the blue ribbon holding my hair in its ponytail. “Could she be among the incoming tributes?”

I leaned back into the soft leather of my chair. It was paramount I base the results on facts, not create beautiful, comforting guesses. It would only serve to make public my improved physical condition.

“But how long has it been?” The words were barely above a whisper.

The last time I had truly heard my heart I had been little more than a boy. The sound had not vanished exactly as I reached adulthood. No, it was gradual. At my coming of age, it beat just a little bit less.

“And what did you lose?”

Useless emotions such as guilt and fear.

“How long before people found out?”

Naturally my gift meant I could hide away my imperfections for a while.

“Explain.”

If I concentrated hard enough on my own blood flow, it was merely a matter of calculating how much flowed in and out of my heart at what others would believe to be a standard rate. You see, humans and Strigaix were similar in this way: as long as everything could be perceived as ordinary, they would fabricate any explanation to support their theory, whether or not the facts lined up.

I picked up my notebook once more, willing the numbers to give me the answers I sought. If I stared long enough, would my centuries of inadequacies suddenly be cured? No, I needed her. That woman whose face and name were presently a mystery, but whose mere presence would begin to right all the wrongs within me.

My fangs ached at the thought. Patience. I ran my tongue over them, imagining the blood in the bones of my teeth receding and relegating the blood cells to other parts of my body.

Without my life-partner, healing came more slowly to me than violence.

“Why?”

Blood was both life and death. Theoretically, I knew this to be true. In my youth, I pretended. I believed as long as my mask was securely on and my will strong enough, this imperfection of mine could be ignored.

“Then what happened?”

As the months, years and eventually centuries dragged on it became a waste of effort to continue the charade of normalcy. Those sensations I had scorned were replaced with ones which made life quite tiring: bloodlust and rage, always the rage. Not my gift nor my bloodline nor even my wealth could save me from the sickness of my own mind. There was no issue with killing when the time suited it. The problem lay more in how those illogical impulses wrestled for control over me rather than vice versa.

I clenched my fist and opened it again, remembering the broken arteries and crushed skulls of the Strigaix who had tried to use my disability against me. Sometimes my creativity impressed even me. When my canvas was blood, all it took to cover it was the movement of a certain red or white blood cell or even one of the proteins or crystalloids which made up a mere ten percent of blood plasma, the results of one elevated mind extracted from their hearts. This was blood made legible at last. Such fragile compositions were its fundamental particles.

“If you’re so strong, why do you need to find your beloved?”

Despite my gift, I was not yet whole. A handicap they had called it when in polite company, but behind closed doors was another nickname they bestowed upon me: The Incomplete.

“And are you fond of that moniker?”

For a long, long time, I despised the name, but as the years stretched on, I reveled in it.

“I don’t understand, explain yourself.”