Blood Rites Read Online Free Page B

kissed her, biting her tongue, their blood mingling as their bodies twined.
    She whispered it as, near dawn, they walked into the shelter of their house.

    Sunrise was striking the bedroom windows coloring the raised bed crimson and violet, when Helen stretched and ran one delicate hand down Stephen’s pale, long-limbed body. ‘ ’I love you,“ she said.
    Stephen didn’t reply. Helen had expressed a human emotion. What he felt was different, less detached. She had become family. He loved her now as he did himself. He conveyed this not with words but with an opening of his mind, a sharing of what he felt.
    “I understand,” she said, then repeated, “I love you,” and kissed him one final time before the warmth of the sun, colored and softened by the ruby window, touched her body. With it came the dawn lethargy, the call to sleep that could be resisted only with effort. She took Stephen’s hand. They slept.

    Helen woke late in the day, long after Stephen had left for AustraGlass to resume his duties as director of the ancient family firm. Helen’s clothes hadn’t been delivered yet so she put on one of Stephen’s robes and walked through her house.
    The sunlight struck the tall colored glass windows, filling the rooms with soothing prisms of light. Helen, aware of the touch of each tiny rainbow on her bare arms and feet and irritated by the brush of the soft fabric on her skin, dropped the robe over a chair. Clothing wasn’t necessary here. This was her home. She could do exactly as she liked.
    She went into the unused kitchen for a glass of Tarda water, the special mineral blend bottled in their homeland to diminish the Austra need for blood, then wandered into Stephen’s workroom on the north side of the house.
    The huge room was the only one in the house with clear glass in the windows. These stretched the entire length of the space. In the windows closest to the door, squares of glass were hung from wires, over a thousand tiny samples of color, the range of her lover’s creative art. These, the glass-doored case containing unlabeled jars of powder and sand, and a small gas-fired furnace were the only objects apparently in use. The potter’s wheel, the loom and the tapestry on it, a few box cameras on a shelf, and an oven whose purpose Helen did not understand were all abandoned and dusty. Stephen hadn’t used the room in years, Helen knew, but the time would come when he’d return to these crafts again. Such was the cycle of Austra life.
    In the far corner of the room, where a pair of tall windows shed a strong northern light, she found a number of newly stretched canvases of different sizes and boxes of brushes, paints, charcoal, and chalk. A vase of flowers sat on the table beside the easel, a smock was draped across the back of the chair facing it. Helen put on the smock. Its soft cotton felt right on her, perhaps because the clothing had a function beyond modesty. She closed her eyes and drew Stephen into her mind, sending her thanks, receiving his quick response, his pleasure at how easily her mind reached him.
    Staring at the canvas, Helen wondered what she should paint. One scene, one emotion eclipsed all the others. Now that she saw it there was no way she could avoid creating it.
    She didn’t reach for charcoal, only for prints and palette. She saw no need to sketch her work. The entire painting was fixed in her mind as surely as if the lines were already on the canvas.
    She began.
    A self-portrait—nothing anyone would recognize. She didn’t need to be warned to avoid that. Instead her features were distorted, a cubist puzzle of old and new pieces and parts in-between. Confused. Reluctant. Anticipating. Her face through the flames of last night’s ceremony. Her feelings from her changing a few days before.
    Hours passed. The light began to dim but her new sight did not notice. She finished after dark. Without looking at her painting, she cleaned her brushes and her hands and left the