Inhuman Heritage by Sonnet O'Dell Read Free Book Online Page B

might have a lot more days to come, I might not ever look older than I was now. The horror of being stuck like this forever. I’d always pitied the vampires, they were eternal and most were beautiful, true, but they could never change, so if you were turned before you could grow out of that fat face or to do something about that boil. You were frozen in time. I didn’t even know if a vampire could get a haircut without it all growing back to the way it was over night, I certainly didn’t notice if their hair grew at all. I really couldn’t imagine always being this way. Immortality would thrill most humans but for some reason it really frightened me. All that time. What the hell was I supposed to do with it?
    I started to remember my dreams. The giant red bird that had been chasing me, searching for me. It had glittered red and gold and now I wondered if that was some subconscious image of my awakening power. I had a friend who had told me that my aura was changing color. She told me at first it had been sort of grey but now seeing me again she could see it flaking away and a new color shining through. A gold color. It was like I had been bound by something, like it was keeping the power tamped down. That would explain why I had grown up normal. Grown up believing I was human. My mother had never told me I was special, she always said that I was just like everyone else, equal to them. Why did she tell me that when she knew it wasn’t true? When she knew that I would be so different?
    I abruptly crashed to my butt on the floor and buried my face against my knees. I kicked the piles of boxes in a futile effort to make myself feel better but it was a very small satisfaction. I started to cry all over again. I wanted my mother more than anything. I wanted her to sit next to me, put her arm around me and tell me not to cry. I’d rest my head on her shoulder and she would explain everything, then it would be alright, because she would be here with me. I didn’t want to face this alone. I picked up the phone that was lying on the coffee table from where I’d called the doctor last night. When I had left her office she was making noise about more tests, measuring my increased strength, she even wanted to cut me to see how quickly my body healed it. I had been mad at her for turning my pain into some opportunity for herself, making me feel like some kind of freak show. I stared at the phone and wondered who I could call.
    I couldn’t call Incarra. Although she was my best friend and I wanted to talk to her about this I couldn’t. It was too big to edit for someone who wasn’t in the know about the other world. How would I explain to my friend that I wasn’t human? She wouldn’t believe me. She’d call someone to lock me up because I needed help or she might run screaming. It would scare her if I started talking about all this with her. Anton was the same. He was even less involved in my life since I had quit college.
    I thought about calling Aram, except he wasn’t awake and he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore. He’d dumped me because I was a boring old human. Hah! If only he knew what I knew now. I might be able to survive a stake through the heart and he couldn’t. It didn’t make me feel any better, I just missed him. I missed the safety of his arms and the way he would kiss me before we’d climb into his bed. I shook my head; there was no use in torturing myself with what I was going to miss about Aram. I started to dial Virginia’s number but stopped. She had lied to me. She had known all about me and not told me. I had wondered for ages how much she really knew, she had always seemed to shut up or change the topic quickly when I started asking questions about what it was I could do. What I could do seemed to be the least of my problems. What was I, was more important? I didn’t know if I would have felt better if the doctor had been able to identify my species and I seethed as I thought the word. Who else did I