The Donor House: Sarah: Entering the House

[k_a_webb]

Nick stood beside Sarah as she took the time to stare at the building that was going to become her home. Even though she knew Elise was right, the house was where she’d be safest, she wished there had been another option. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the vampire who’d offered to accompany her during the journey, to keep her safe from the insane vampire who’d decided she was going to be his companion, and, although she was grateful for his help, she couldn’t stop herself from feeling uncomfortable around him. Both Elise and Nick had told her there were different types of vampires, but Sarah had only met Nick a couple of times before and she couldn’t help thinking that maybe Elise had been brainwashed at the house.

Biting hard on her lip Sarah did the only thing she could. She made her way up to the front door, pulling her suitcase behind her, and went to open the door. Nick gently patted her hand away before pushing the door open for her. The smile she gave him was more amused than anything as she stepped into the reception of the house. It was almost reassuring that it hadn’t changed since the day she first visited Elise. Unsurprisingly her baby sister was standing next to the desk, waiting, talking to the female vampire behind the desk.

“What’s Alice doing?” Sarah asked, because it wasn’t normal for Alice to be on reception duty.

“Being careful,” Nick replied. “Alice has a habit of taking over reception if she thinks something might happen that will put her donors in danger.”

Nodding, Sarah glanced at Nick. “I’m sorry.”

“This is what we do, Sarah. Anyone who needs our help is welcome at the house, no matter what or who they are, and the vampire who’s stalking you won’t get anywhere near you.”

Slowly Sarah made her way over to the desk. Alice smiled at her as she picked up the pen and signed herself into the house for the first time as a donor, instead of a visitor. The tear that trickled down her cheek was wiped away quickly, in the hope that no one would notice, because it felt like she was signing away her freedom. For the next ten years, at least, she belonged to the vampires of the donor house, and all she could do was hope that they would be better than the vampire who wanted to make her his.

“Sarah…” Alice said, her voice gentle as she wrapped an arm around Sarah’s shoulders. Only Alice could do something like that because Sarah liked and respected the female vampire for her approach to looking after the donors. “I know that this probably isn’t what you wanted. Becoming a donor at the house isn’t what a lot of people want to begin with, they feel it’s the only way they can help their families, but eventually you will begin to understand why things are slowly changing. The donor house is giving the human race a chance to get to know some of the ‘predators’ they’ve been scared of for centuries and see that we aren’t all like the archetypal vampire. We don’t all go out hunting at night, searching for our prey, who we sometimes turn into vampires for some reason no one really understands, because we’ve held onto our humanity.”

“I know all this,” Sarah muttered.

“You know all this in here.” Alice tapped Sarah’s head. “You don’t know it in your heart yet, which is why you’re scared even though you’ve visited the house before. I understand your fear, sweetie, but I promise you that none of the vampires here will hurt you.”

“What if he comes?”

“He’s not going to be able to get any further than reception. You’ve given us his description, and the best description you could of the other two vampires who were there on the night your mum died, so we’ll keep them out.”

“I doubt he’ll even know where you’ve gone, Sarah,” Elise said. “Very few of the vampires who don’t need the house understand why anyone comes here and if he does it’s something the vampires here can deal with. There are plenty of strong male vampires who can keep you safe.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure there are plenty of strong female vampires too,” she replied. “Don’t I have forms to fill in?”

Gently Alice squeezed Sarah’s shoulders and made her way back around the desk to the filing cabinet. “You do.” Alice smiled at her. “I take it you’re more interested in women than you are in men.”

Alice passed Sarah the forms and, using the pen she’d signed in with, she began filling them in, while trying to work out how to reply to what Alice had said. “Yeah, I am,” Sarah said finally, trying not to let her embarrassment show too much. “It’s not something I talk about much.”

“Why not?”

“Sometimes I think Mum and Dad would be disappointed with me for being different.” Sarah sighed. “I guess I always saw them as people who hated things that were different to them, which was why they hunted vampires, but I didn’t know them all that well before the vampires killed them.”

“I’m sure our parents wouldn’t have a problem with your sexual orientation, Sarah,” Elise said, and when Sarah glanced over at her sister she was shaking her head. “They hunted vampires, not gay people, and there’s a big difference between a predator who wants to drink your blood and a girl who happens to like other girls.”

“Yeah, I know that, but it’s so hard to know what they would have thought. Mum kept hunting vampires even after Dad was dead and left us to be orphans. She wasn’t what I would call a logical person, so the way you look at things may not have been the way Mum looked at things.” Sarah shook her head. “Our aunt was never comfortable with my sexual orientation.”

“Auntie never wanted to have to take in her sister’s daughters because of her ‘stupidity’. She never actually wanted to have children, but she ended up with us when Mum died and I don’t think she was ever quite sure how to be a mother instead of an aunt. I’m almost certain that if you’d told her as an aunt rather than a surrogate mum she would have taken it a lot better than she did.” Elise reached out and squeezed Sarah’s hand. “We were all forced into a strange relationship we all knew might happen, but hoped it wouldn’t.”

“My parents were hunters,” Alice said conversationally. “Mum gave up after my brother and I were born, but Dad went out every night searching for vampires he could kill. It was stupid, really, and I know that now because I know that there are different types of vampire, but until the house opened there was no way for anyone to know that. I think everyone assumes that changing someone into a vampire has some sort of affect on who they are, when really a lot of vampires were simply nasty people who are now at the top of the food chain.”

“I take it they disowned you when you became a vampire,” Sarah replied as she finished off the first form, which was a copy of the information she’d already given them, and signed the waiver.

“They did.” Alice laughed. “I don’t know what they thought when I stepped into the room the sunset after I first became a vampire, but they blamed Nick for it all, even though if it hadn’t been for Nick I would have found myself in the auctions and then I would have become an addict instead.”

“Was it Nick who changed you?”

“Yes, it was, but not through choice. There was a vampire who wanted to use my death to punish Nick, but I was lucky that Nick had heard a strange noise outside that he decided to investigate.”

“I almost didn’t,” Nick said, sounding sad, “which would probably have ended with my death the next day when Alice’s family found her. They all looked at me and saw a creature that shouldn’t exist. Alice looked at me and saw someone who’d been forced it become something he never wanted to be.”

“It took me a long time to get to that point.” Alice took Sarah’s form and put them into a different drawer in the filing cabinet. “The only reason I insisted we take him in was because he saved my life and I owed him for what he did. I offered to be a donor, which was how we knew that we could make the donor house work.”

“Even though she told me, when she first heard my wonderful idea, that I was an idiot.”

“I said I was sorry.”

Sarah looked between the two vampires and couldn’t help smiling. The way they treated each other made her think of her grandparents, before they lost their eldest daughter, which was nice. It made her think, for the first time, that she might fit in at the donor house, even though she knew that getting used to living with vampires was going to be a steep learning curve.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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