Transfusion (Transfusion Saga #1)

Chapter 1

Holding Back the Years

Closing my eyes, I listened to the beautiful and meaningful words of Simply Red, doubting they had any clue when picking out the name of the song they would know [sh1]that there was at least one girl in the world that only thought of blood in the name.

Okay, so I know that sounded weird, but I guess in my world weird was actually considered the norm.

Well, it had been, I should say as I had walked away from it all years ago.

Which was another reason why this song was one I had on nearly every playlist I made.

‘Holding Back the Years’ just seemed to say it all for me and with lyrics like ‘chance for me to escape from all I know’ and ‘holding back the tears, cause, nothing here had grown’, then let’s just say it was like listening to my inner secrets singing back to me and telling me to still hold on, no matter how much I didn’t want to.

Because I felt like I had in fact, wasted so many tears, and so many years holding on to a fantasy that would never come true.

And it all started with one name, one I would never let pass my lips no matter what my dreams of him begged of me to do…

Lucius.

Gods, I hated the name, but not as much as I hated the one who it belonged to!

No! I wasn’t going to go back there, not again, not today of all days.

Seriously though, was there ever going to be a day when I didn’t do this to myself?

“Right, you curly-redhead singer, time for something else,”

I said aloud as I pulled my phone from my pocket and tapped on another playlist, one I’d named ‘Badass’.

Oh, and a playlist that just so happened to be one that didn’t include one single song that would remind me of a certain someone.

No, instead it made me feel as if I could be an empowered bitch that could walk straight into that damn club of his with a sexy swagger…one that didn’t just look like my ass cheeks were chewing on my underwear.

No, I would be wearing kick ass heels I wouldn’t fall over on and some sexy little black dress minus the usual food stains a clumsy person had no choice but to wear like a badge of honour (Thanks for that one, Mum!)

Then, I would watch as his mouth dropped open in shock before I simply slapped that cunning and ridiculously handsome smirk from his face before walking back out again with one of my own.

Okay, so I admit, it was a far-fetched fantasy, especially seeing as I swore to myself that I wouldn’t ever, and I mean EVER, step foot in his Gods’ forsaken nightclub again! That and I usually became a bumbling idiot around him anyway, which trust me, didn’t exactly go hand in hand with the badass picture I had painted in my mind.

I released a sigh as I pushed up my square, black rimmed glasses that I bought as a buy one, get one free at Specsavers.

But like most people who wore glasses on a daily basis, and I am not talking about the ‘part timers’, but instead the type that if they didn’t then they were likely to get run over by some mad cyclist, (as London had many to spare, trust me on that).

Then for those blind enough to rely on the use of touch and blurred colours to locate them, no matter the free pair, we usually got attached to one and felt the connection was like being given an extra limb…or was that just me?

Well, either way, it was the reason I had a pair sat in my desk as a back-up, just waiting for my next disastrous calamity.

Like when I unintentionally dropped them down the loo, then had to fish them out of my own urine before they slipped from my hand and I accidently stepped on them as they were the same colour as the tiles.

I swear I was my own worst nightmare, as Demons had nothing on me!

But now to get back to my task at hand I thought, pushing my replacement glasses back up my nose as I carefully handled the Canopic jars, lifting them from the wooden canopic chest of Gua.

I couldn’t help but marvel at the fact I was handling something from the 12th dynasty, as I always did when touching something from the past.

These were discovered in Deir el-Bersha, which is a Coptic village in Middle Egypt.

A place that was located on the east bank of the Nile in the Minya Governorate and yet another place in the world, no doubt, that I would never get to see, I thought with a bitter taste of my own past.

I shook my head not thinking about it and concentrated on my job.

As the museum’s chief specialist restorer and one of the museum’s curators in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, I was used to dealing with rare artifacts.

Which really was a fancy way of saying I was like an ancient cleaning lady, my friend Wendy had said once, making me nearly choke on my Pina Colada at the time.

Even now I allowed a small giggle to escape my lips when replaying the comment.

But, glancing down at the soft brush in my hand and then a quick look up at all the crates of artifacts still to be prepared, then my argument of ‘it’s a bit more than that’ was looking weaker by the minute.

Which meant here I was on cleaning duty for the new exhibition that was coming up and with weeks of work staring me in the face.

So, I cranked up the music and the sound of Brain Adams singing about the summer of 69, making me wonder if I shouldn’t have learnt how to play guitar instead of always having my head stuck in a book?

But then I smiled to myself as I carefully picked each of the four jars from their divided compartments in the old box, knowing that this was my life.

And no matter how my mad imagination was suddenly conjuring up images of me on stage rocking it out in leather and leopard print, in this little workshop at the lowest levels of the British Museum in London was exactly where I was meant to be in life.

I momentarily studied the exterior of the box, noting that it had faded blue paint along its edges as well as its lid.

Then I started to decipher the carved hieroglyphic inscriptions that were on each side that also ran in a T shape, with two lines of text crossing at the top.

The four calcite canopic jars had painted wooden stoppers, and each was in the form of a human headed deity.

Pale beige faces with black details and blue-painted wigs decorated each of the jars that varied in shape from narrow to wide shouldered.

Canopic jars were used when a person was mummified, as their internal organs were placed in these jars and were said to be guarded by four different gods.

These were the Jackal headed god, Duamutef, who guarded the stomach of the deceased in his jar and who represented the East.

Then there was the Human jar that the liver was placed into and was guarded by the god Imsetys, who had a human head and represented the South.

There was also one the lungs were stored in, guarded by the Baboon headed god named Hapi, representing the North.

But out of the four it was the Falcon jar that was my personal favorite, with the falcon headed god Qebehsenuef, who was protector of the intestines.

He was one of the four sons of Horus, like the others in Egyptian mythology, but he was known as the god of protection and represented the West.

I don’t know why he was my favorite, but maybe it was due to my love of birds, which was also another passion of mine.

I just loved nothing more on my days off than exploring the British countryside and finding myself at some grand manor house owned by the National Trust.

I would then sit in the immaculately pruned and trimmed gardens with a good book or more often than not, bird watching and trying to take pictures of them with my phone.

Now I know that these weren’t exactly the exciting pastimes of someone in their twenties.

Even more surprisingly, I will have you know, that even with these old fashioned, solitary hobbies of mine, it didn’t mean that I didn’t have friends.

Because if you hadn’t already gathered by now, I wasn’t just a mega geek, I was also a mega nerd right alongside it.

However, even though my nature tended to side with a good book or admittedly, a weekend filled with constant reruns of The Next Generation (As I was a closet Trekkie and proud of it…well, in private that was), it didn’t mean that I also didn’t enjoy the occasional night out or the Gods’ forbid, even going out on a date.

Which was how I sort of ended up with a boyfriend in the first place and therefore having no choice but to give up my ‘swearing off all men’ vow.

Of course, I blamed Wendy for that as she was determined to play matchmaker yet again.

And speaking of the demons she had no clue really existed…

“Yo Smock, whatcha cleaning this time?!”

The second I heard her voice being shouted so close to my ear, one loud enough to penetrate through the sound of Fall Out Boys’ ‘Centuries’, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

I screamed and in doing so dropped the Canopic jar I had been working on.

It was as if the world had suddenly been put on slow motion as I watched the jar filled with four-thousand-year-old intestines falling from my hand, first yelling in fright and then in horror the second it started to make its final destination to the floor.

I ended up sucking in a sharp, shocked breath the second I saw her hand snatch out and catch it just before it could hit the floor, saving about four thousand slices of my bacon!

“Holy shit!”

I shouted in shock after yanking the headphones from my ears and staring at the jar in her hand.

Then she started making a ‘Thank God for that chuckle’ before saying,

“Phew, well that was lucky because no offence, Emmie, but you would have never caught that!”

And yeah, she was right because being as clumsy as I was, then I needed to come with my own proximity warning.

Because if you got too close then chances were, I was gonna fall into you…once again, thanks for that one, mum, I thought with a wry smirk.

“Amen to that,”

I commented dryly, making her wink one strawberry blonde eyebrow at me, one that matched the colour of her short pixie cut.

She was a pretty girl, with cute round features that lifted when she smiled and a pair of green eyes that always seemed to sparkle with mischief.

She was also shorter than my 5 feet and 5 inches, but you wouldn’t have guessed it unless you were looking at her feet, as she still seemed to tower over me with the ridiculous heels she always wore.

And today was no different in a pair of Irregular Choice shoes named Trixy.

I only knew this because I had been with her at the time she had bought them.

I had actually laughed thinking she was joking when she had asked me if I liked them.

But then I saw she was actually serious about the blue and gold damask covered shoe that had a shiny gold unicorn’s head as its heel.

My reply had been the most natural in the world,

“Oh yeah, they’re great…in fact I know someone back home who would openly drool over them,”

I told her with a smile, as I couldn’t help but grin whenever I thought of my green haired aunty, who wasn’t related by blood but definitely by the heart.

I remembered Wendy’s shock when I had said this as it was rare for me to talk about anyone from where I grew up, let alone my family.

Oh, she had asked me about them plenty of times, but I always remained vague.

Which, thinking back, must have killed her curious nature, but one look at my sombre face and she knew not to ask.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my family dearly and missed them on a daily basis, speaking to them as often as I could, but they lived in a different world to me…

A world, heartbreakingly, I just didn’t fit in to.

Those had been the words he had used that night and to say that they had cut deep would be an understatement.

Because they hadn’t just cut me, they had destroyed me.

They had destroyed every hope and dream I’d had first as a child and naive teenager, then finally as the young girl turning twenty.

Well, that was seven years ago and yet the pain he’d inflicted felt like only yesterday.

“Hey, earth to space cadet, you gonna make me hold this creepy thing all day or what?”

Wendy asked before she popped her pink gum she was addicted to chewing.

She said it made for the perfect accessory to her Rockabilly style… me, I just think that she was addicted to sugar and bubble gum flavored things.

“It’s not creepy, its beautiful,”

I told her, rolling my eyes at her lack of appreciation for anything she classed as ‘old as dirt’.

“Yeah, then what’s inside it, huh?”

she asked with another pop of her gum and a hand on her hip as she wrapped her fingers against her cherry covered blue swing skirt.

One she had matched with a red buttoned cardigan that also had a cherry pin.

Personally, I didn’t think it matched the shoes but when did it ever, I thought with a smirk.

“Intestines, that look like four-thousand-year-old beef jerky,”

I told her with a hidden smile as I turned back to the desk and placed it gently back in the box for safe keeping.

After all, it had been safe in there for this long and seemed a better choice than in my hands, that was for sure.

In fact, thinking about it, I was surprised considering how clumsy I was that I hadn’t yet broken anything in the last two years I had been doing this job, well other than a few cups and a muffin basket once from the cafeteria.

But in my defense, they had hidden the biggest chocolate muffins in the bottom and it needed a good tug to get one out.

The cups, however, there was no excuse for as my number was currently up to five casualties. But hey, just one more and that would make it a full set I thought with an inward groan at myself.

“Right, in that case remind me to email Tim Burton and ask him for ideas on what to get you for your birthday this year,”

she replied sarcastically to my ‘beautiful not creepy’ comment, making me giggle.

“No need, I have an Amazon wish list I can send you,”

I told her with a wink, this time making her chuckle.

“Bird books and brush sets are not my idea of presents, so unless it’s got a pair of shoes and at least two handbags on it, then don’t bother, as I will just guess.”

I rolled my eyes again, this time for her to see and said,

“You do get the concept of giving gifts is not to buy the person something you want, just so you can ‘permanently borrow’ the item…right?”

I asked knowing her too well by now that I was a Christmas present away from asking for the receipts with all my gifts.

“Now, where’s the fun in that?”

she asked grinning like a Cheshire Cat that was one step away from cute and becoming evil.

“And anyway, what are you doing here this time…and seriously, how do you even keep getting down here without a security card?”

I asked in astonishment.

Her guilty face said it all and I held out my hand and said,

“Come on, hand it over,”

now knowing she had nicked my security card yet again.

I swear if she ever got bored of being a journalist then international jewel thief would be right up her alley, because she could pickpocket, crack locks and do the most basic James Bond stuff I have ever seen! Half the time when she wrote her articles I had to wonder if she hadn’t broken into some big wig’s house just get the scope on what dodgy deal he was doing with foreign nationals.

“Hey, you would be thanking my ass if I had just popped by and saved you from being kidnapped from the guy who had this shit stolen from him.”

Oh, and did I happened to mention that her imagination was almost as crazy as mine was.

“It’s the British museum, Kirky, and I’m working on some dead guy’s dried up organs in a jar, not the crown jewels,”

I told her making good use of the nickname I had christened her.

“Yeah, and just how much is a collection of around 8 million objects worth on the black market these days, huh…? Just one of these bad boys would fetch a pretty price to some bored billionaire Godfather wannabe, who suddenly feels like he needs something that screams cultural class to match his hungry traitor eating sharks in his basement.”

I laughed and said,

“You seriously need to stop watching old Bond movies and drinking coffee at three in the morning…but I guess point made,”

I told her, snatching my missing card that I had lost over a week ago from her palm.

“Your damn right, point made, Smock,”

she replied using my own nickname, the result of a drunken night watching Star Trek movies and trying to merge our names with our favorite characters after consuming a bottle of wine and eight shots of caramel flavored vodka each.

The result had been a hangover that had lasted three days and two nicknames that had lasted four years.

“So, come on fess up, what was so important you couldn’t have waited until tonight to tell me…oh wait, oh hell no, you can’t do this to me, Kirky!”

I shouted the second I saw her face grimace as if she had just been busted.

She held her hands up and said,

“Sorry honey, but it can’t be helped.”

“But you promised to be my date at tonight’s gala,”

I said knowing my tone was whiney and needy.

“Yeah, but look it’s time to be honest with you, I am kind of bored of acting like your lesbian lover and pretending to be interested in old shit.”

I groaned out loud and let my head fall into my hands, knowing I had no choice but to attend alone, something I hated doing.

Tonight was a gala to try to raise money for a new archaeological dig to be funded and the best way to do that was to show off to all the rich people, what had already been found during these efforts.

To be honest, it was the part of the job I hated the most as I much preferred doing my job down here, surrounded by eternally quiet mummies, than explaining to rich snobby bankers and investors what exactly my job entailed.

And doing so all the while ignoring the way they were talking to my breasts or giving me cheesy lines like, ‘So how did such a pretty girl like you end up digging up bones for a living?’

Hence, why I came up with the cunning plan of inventing a ‘girlfriend’ which funnily enough tended to make men feel quite uncomfortable when introducing Wendy to them.

Stranger still, it also seemed to make them feel more charitable, as they always ended up writing bigger cheques for me after this.

It was as if it was a way of making sure their awkward actions weren’t being shown enough to offend and cause reason for a discriminating lawsuit.

I smiled at the thought, which quickly died when I realized this time I had no choice but to go ‘mission solo’.

“Now what am I gonna do?” I whined.

“Um, call a sicky?”

she suggested, making me give her my best ‘are you serious’ glare before banging my head on the table and groaning.

“Oh, I know, why not just take your actual boyfriend…what’s his name again, Patrick something or…”

“Peter, jeez Kirky, you’re the one who set me up with the guy!”

I scolded.

“Yeah, but I only met him the once and that was at a coffee shop after he picked up my mocha instead of his latte.”

I swear, on hearing this I felt my eyes start to bulge!

“Please tell me you’re kidding?!”

“Relax, I am joking…it was a cappuccino…anyway my point is, he is technically your boyfriend and therefore the shmuck that convention states you drag along to these types of things, so go ask him.”

I rolled my eyes again (something I seemed to do a lot around my friend, which was a term I used in the loosest sense right now due to my utter disappointment).

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

she asked popping her gum again and leaning on my desk, making the two jars I was yet to put back inside the box, wobble.

I reached out and grabbed them both to steady them and shot her a sideways, reprimanding glare, one she deliberately ignored.

“Because that would give him the wrong impression,”

I argued making her snort a laugh.

“Like what, that you like him, because newsflash honey, dating someone kind of already says that.”

“No, I know that!”

I snapped before carrying on.

“I mean it would make him think this was more serious that it is and it’s not.”

“It’s not?”

she repeated.

“No, it’s not…look, I like the guy.”

“Patrick?”

“No, Peter! Bloody Hell, Wendy, can you focus here, I mean you can remember my pin number from watching me at an ATM three years ago, but you can’t remember the name of the guy you set me up with only six weeks ago?!”

I complained.

“It’s a cash machine.”

“What?!”

“It’s a cash machine not an ATM, that’s American talk, and your little britches are in the UK and land of the midnight Kebab, Friday night Indian curry takeaways and pavements, high streets and our wonderful use of the letter U in words you guys choose to ignore,”

she said looking at her manicured nails as if they held the key to her next British Journalism Award.

“Well, excuse me little Miss ‘I got a problem with calling my knickers, panties’! Anyway, I am half English, so I resent that,”

I argued making her laugh.

“Yes, well your English panties aren’t going to do shit for you tonight considering you don’t have a date.”

“Yes, and whose fault is that, um?”

I threw back at her.

“Gods?”

I laughed at her reply and said,

“Doubtful Kirky, very doubtful.”

“Well, he and the powers that be, made me this way so whatever…but getting back to real life problems, as in yours not mine, what’re you going to do?”

she asked after her dramatic explanation, or should I say excuse to ‘her being made this way’.

“Well, I think praying for a handsome stranger is off the cards, don’t you?”

I said throwing my hands up dramatically before banging my elbows back to the desk so that I could use my hands once more to cover my face.

But then I let the unusual silence wash over me before looking back up at Kirky to see why it was she was so quiet.

I frowned the second I saw her gaping mouth hanging open in shock before she slammed it shut and whispered,

“Uh Emmie, I think it’s time to thank God, because it seems he just answered your prayers.”

I snapped my head around to see what she was staring at and sucked in a startled breath when I did.

Then, as I took in the last sight I ever expected to see, I released it back again on a whoosh of emotions.

The dark and handsome features were ones I had grown up seeing daily, but for an outsider, I tried to put myself in Wendy’s shoes when seeing him for the first time.

A tall and wide build of someone that one would only assume was achieved by dedicating long hours to the gym.

Midnight black hair that matched my own in colour, was cut just shy of his massive shoulders and pushed back.

This done, no doubt, through endless times of frustration when he gave in to his habit of running a large hand through it.

Tanned, olive skin and dark eyes framed by equally dark long lashes were features I had also inherited, something my friend had not yet realized, due to the effect he had on most of the female population.

I grimaced at the thought.

“I hear you’re in need of a date,”

he said in that velvet way of his, a tone that he reserved for getting what he wanted.

“Hell, I know I am,”

Wendy said making me hold the bridge of my nose in frustration and add a groan for good measure as this was the last thing I wanted to witness.

Besides, her comment about Hell was more apt in ways than she could ever even imagine.

Well, before she could make this even weirder with another sexual comment, I decided to get this over with and drop my family sized bombshell by asking,

“What are you doing here…”

then I paused, releasing a sigh before continuing with letting my friend know just who this handsome stranger was before she started to drool, and shit could get even weirder…

“…Dad?”