The Donor House: Saskia: Becoming a Vampire

[k_a_webb]

It was late, much later than I’d normally be walking home, but things had taken longer than I thought they would. After trying on what felt like hundreds of dresses, drinking a couple more glasses of wine than was usual for a Monday afternoon, and having a long chat with my helpers (my mum, my younger sister, and my best friend), time had flown by, and instead of heading home at four in the afternoon, which would have been quite late enough as the days got shorter, it was seven in the evening. While I was walking I was watching the sun set and hoping that I’d be home before too many vampires woke up.

Shivering, from the unexpected cold of the day rather than the fear of vampires, I pulled my coat tighter around myself. I thought about getting my phone out and ringing the man who’d be waiting for me, but it was better for me to focus on what was happening around me. Once I put the phone to my ear I wouldn’t be paying any attention to whether there might be a vampire around and that would be a mistake. Everyone knew that the auction vampires looked for weaknesses that made someone easy to grab. I was not going to be that person – I knew all too well what happened to anyone who was used by one of those bastards.

A noise made me turn to check that someone wasn’t following me, although it probably wasn’t even really a noise. I just thought I heard something because I was letting myself think about things I really shouldn’t have been thinking about. When I turned to face the direction I was walking in I was just in time to stop myself from walking into someone. Someone who I then stared at for much longer than I should, very tempted to touch him to see if he really was standing in front of me, before I found my voice.

“Aidan?”

“Hey, gorgeous.”

“You died.”

Shaking his head, Aidan smiled at me and then I could see the teeth. “I was saved. I wanted to come and see you a long time ago, but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it, and…” He glanced down at my hands. “You’re getting married.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Why?”

“I love him.” The hurt that filled Aidan’s eyes made me feel guilty, until I remembered that I had, up until I nearly walked into him, believed he was dead. “It took me a long time to get over you, but in the end I did. That’s what people do when they think you’re dead.”

“Do you love him more than you loved me?”

“I’m not going to compare you. I refuse to do that, because it’s too easy to look at our relationship with rose tinted spectacles.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Our relationship was something that was right for us at the time, even though we probably shouldn’t have been together, but now… we wouldn’t still be together, because I grew up. I realised that sometimes things aren’t meant to be and we were one of those things.”

“I disagree.” The smile had faded and he was staring at me in a way that I really didn’t like. “I should have walked away from you the way my creator told me to, because he knows how easy it is to cling to human relationships, but I chose not to. I still love you the same way I did before and nothing is going to change that. Not now, not ever.”

“You don’t know that.” I sighed, remembering how I once felt like there was never going to be someone else for me. “Aidan, I did love you, but my life changed. It had to. Clinging onto the memory of what we’d once had would have destroyed my chance at having a life. If you’d have come back six months ago I might have felt differently. Now… my choice is to marry the man I love now, because he accepted that you, that us, will always be a part of me.”

“That’s nice of him.” Aidan took a step closer to me and it took all my willpower not to step back. “I wish I could walk away from you, because he obviously loves you, but I can’t. I realised that when I first heard that you were getting married. I tried to keep away, really I did, and I wanted you to be able to have the life that I always dreamed of for us, but the longer I kept away the harder it got.”

Biting hard on my lip I kept my hand where it was, even though I wanted to reach out and touch him. There were so many things I wanted to say, but I knew nothing I said was going to change the way he felt or what he was planning on doing, so I kept my mouth shut. It was easier than saying the wrong thing, because in that moment the wrong thing could easily have made things harder for both of us, and as he took another step closer to me I knew exactly what he was going to force upon me.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I just… I need you.”

I couldn’t stop myself from wiping the tear that trickled down his cheek off his face. “I understand,” I replied, even though I wanted to run from him. I didn’t want him to change me, I didn’t want him to tear me away from the life I loved, but in the end it was his choice, because I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him. No matter how many times I think back to that moment, to the things I could have done to stop it all from happening, he still ends up changing me. The only problem then is that everything is different between us when I wake up and that is something I didn’t want to happen. My choice was to let things happen as he wanted them to, in order to protect him, and yes, I realise that I’m an idiot.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Comments

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[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Well that's creeptastic.

No typos spotted.