k_a_webb | September Prompted Fiction: Donor House: The Beginning of the House continued (1): 512 words

This is my first idea for the continuation of 'the Beginning of the Donor House' for [livejournal.com profile] ysabetwordsmith.

Nick knew that Alice had heard what they were talking about when she walked into the room, carrying another bottle of whiskey. She glanced at him, not giving him enough chance to read exactly what she was feeling but he knew that she wasn't happy, before setting the bottle gently down on the table. If it hadn't been for Issac taking hold of her hand as she turned to leave the room he knew he would never have known what she was thinking. Even after thirty years she still hadn't forgiven Nick and he didn't blame her.

“Good evening Alice,” Issac said, smiling up at her.

She smiled gently at Issac, something she never did when it was Nick she was talking to, replying, “Good evening Issac. How are you?”

“Better than I have been.” He looked at her and Nick could see the curiosity in his eyes. “You are the youngest of us so you must know humans better than we do. Can you help us with this new idea Nick's come up with?”

Alice glanced at Nick again, just long enough for him to see the worry in her eyes, and then she focused on Issac. “It's a good idea,” she said quietly, “but you're doing it wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Nick asked, knowing his voice sounded harsher than it needed to because of the mix of emotions he was feeling.

“Humans don't hate you because of what you are but because of what you've done. Set up the donor house to make the relationship between vampires and humans better.”

Issac glared at Nick, and it told him in no uncertain terms to get over his jealousy, before looking at Alice again. “What do you suggest?” Issac asked.

“You don't need to loan out money. Lewis won't appreciate you two stepping on his toes. Instead make it so that you work with Lewis to help those people who really can't pay off their debts.” She was silent for a moment, staring at the bottle of whiskey intently, as though it could help her find the words she wanted to say. “Use your money to help the people who are addicted to being bitten and stop the underground auctions.”

Nick looked at Alice, but she was still staring at the bottle, so he turned his attention to Issac. “Do you think that Lewis would help?” he asked, knowing that Lewis and Issac had been friends longer than he had been a vampire.

“It's possible, and Alice is right about him not being pleased with us stepping on his toes. He's been loaning money since before he became a vampire.” Issac squeezed Alice's hand gently. “How do you know the auctions are still in existence?”

She smiled at him distractedly. “If you listen for long enough then you can hear about people going missing and coming back with an addiction to being bitten or not coming back at all. The auctions may be illegal but that's not going to stop the vampires who want to own humans for their own purposes.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

04/09/2011 - edited

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is good development, with interesting tension.

>> carrying another bottle of whiskey.<<

This reminds me that one thing you'll need to do as you go along is establish the parameters for vampirism in your setting. So for instance, can they safely consume anything other than blood, and if so, what and how much? It looks like they can at least drink other fluids in fair quantity, from "another bottle." That kind of delineation is often easier with younger vampires who are closer to their human experience, so Alice has strong potential as a recurring character.

>>She was silent for a moment, staring at the bottle of whiskey for a long moment. <<

Repetition; delete or substitute for one of the uses of "moment."

>>“How do you know the auctions are still in existance?”<<

That should say "existence."

There are so many good threads in this one that could spin off into new stories!

Ok, you've found two typos in this, so you can choose whether you'd like to have two months free character adoption, two stories of your choice written, or get two pieces of bonus material up (or mix and match). Bonus material will probably be a time line, which will be edited as I add more characters and points in time, and I'll answer your question about foods.

For some reason I have this mental block on the spelling of existence. It's really annoying.

September Prompted Fiction: Donor House: The Beginning of the House continued (1): 512 words

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