Mine, Bitten

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lily

            Lily didn't know how to feel in that moment-in fact, she felt painfully numb. She had never felt differently than others, aside from the abnormal dreams, the voices-well-voice-in her head.

            She turned teary eyes to Ward, "You're lying."

            His face grew stern, "I would never lie about something like this."

            He had to be. She didn't have an insatiable yearning for blood. The sun didn't burn her skin. "You have to be." She said rather abruptly, "It's not possible. I-I feel-" perfectly human.

            "It works differently with you, Lilith." He said as if reading her thoughts.

            "No-" she snapped, "determined to not believe a word of it. "You're speaking untruthfully."

            "What reason do I have to conjure such a lie?" he bristled.

            She clenched her teeth at the insanity of his words. "What are you saying?" as she peered at him intensely, "If it killed my mother-why didn't it kill me? How did I become-this-" she couldn't even voice the word hybrid, it sounded bizarre and absolutely crazy.

            He regained his pacing, "Your mother's body rejected the blood, killing her-but somehow your body absorbed it. I have spent half your life attempting to better understand how this came to be-it could be due to various reasons-" he paused, taking a breath. "-I injected the blood into your mother's peripheral vein, which flowed directly into her bloodstream, passing with ease to each organ, but eventually your mother's body rejected it."

            "And me?" she pressed, feeling the room beginning to spin.

            "You were nestled quite comfortably in your mother's womb; I believe once I administered the blood, you were most susceptible to it, accepting it far more quickly than your mother's system. It could have been a number of reasons-lessened clearances in kidney function, the lack of stomach acid-whichever the reason; it somehow altered your genetics, transforming you into what we call the hybrid."

            She felt a panic erupt in her chest, "I haven't felt any differently-what if what you're saying isn't true?"

            He sighed, "I hadn't noticed any signs early on, and at first, I thought all my efforts had failed, but than I noticed subtle diversities. You aged differently than other children, not quite at their rate but slightly behind. Whenever you scraped your knee, bumped your head, opened a small gash-it healed a little more quickly than the average child."

            "I don't remember this." Lily interjected.

            "How could you?" he said, "You weren't looking for them."

            "And the vampire?" she demanded-she refused to say Varian's name to Ward-it seemed a bit too personal.

            His broad shoulders stiffened, "I began to notice that there was another who knew of you. I should have known that with the blood came other certainties. You did a lot of talking as a child, mostly to yourself, I pegged it for silly childish nonsense, but than you spoke of a voice, constantly in your head-"

            She shook her head, "I don't remember-" she had only just recently heard Varian's voice in her head but truly had no recollection of such as a child.

            "You were at an impressionable age; it was easy to manipulate you. I simply told you it was all in your head, figuratively of course, and eventually the voice went away."