The Donor House: Leon: Meeting Morgan

[k_a_webb]

On the other side of the road were three girls, all wearing the colour that had become known as the sign of the donor house. Leon shook his head, unable to believe that so many people would seriously put their lives on hold in order to help vampires, and bumped into someone at almost the same time. He looked up, planning on apologising, until he saw the white collar she was wearing around her neck, which turned his apology into a groan. Pushing aside his distaste of what she did he summoned an apologetic smile.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to walk into you.”

“I’m fine,” she replied, looking at Leon in a way that made him feel like he was nothing more than an insect she’d quite like to squash on the bottom of her shoe.

As she went to brush past him his anger got the better of him. “What makes you think you can look at me like that?”

“The way you looked at me. Don’t judge people because of what they do, but because of who they are, and then maybe you won’t have people looking at you in a way you don’t like.”

“You feed vampires.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“They’re nothing more than parasites.”

“Says someone who’s obviously never spoken to a vampire.”

“Why should I talk to something I know wants to eat me?”

“They aren’t cannibals. A vampires needs blood, not human flesh.”

“I’d still end up just as dead.”

“Do I look dead to you?”

Leon shook his head, doing his best not to look too closely at her. She was pretty, more pretty than he thought a donor should be, and if he’d met her when she wasn’t donating blood to creatures that shouldn’t exist then he probably would have chatted her up. Knowing what she was, what she allowed vampires to do to her in order to get money from them, changed that, so that instead he wanted to talk some sense into her.

“No, you don’t.”

“The vampires I know do their best not to kill anyone.” She smiled. “They help addicts, unlike most of the humans I know.”

“Vampires created the addicts, so they should deal with the problem.”

“Maybe some vampires did, but addicts are humans just like the rest of us, and it was easier for us to be disgusted with them for what they’d been turned into than it was to help them.”

“What they’d been turned into?”

“Do you really think that any human would allow that to happen if they had a choice?” She shook her head. “They were purchased by vampires in the auctions, treated like chew toys, and then thrown out onto the street when their owner was bored with them. We should have done something to help them, rather than leaving them to suffer alone with what was done to them.”

“Yet you applied to become a donor?”

“There’s a difference between volunteering and being snatched off the street. When I sent my application I was given time by the vampires to make an informed decision with as much information as they could give me. Not one of those addicts had an option.”

For the first time Leon wondered if he’d judged the vampires too harshly. “Why did you apply?”

“My family needed money, the banks wouldn’t lend us it, and my only option was to go to the vampires. They were happy to loan me the money we needed to secure our home if I became a donor, so that’s exactly what I did.”

“What’s it like?”

She stared at Leon. “Have you realised you might have made a mistake?” she asked, her head tilted to one side as she studied him.

“I think it’s possible.” He shrugged. “It’s easy to allow the prejudice of others to affect you.”

Nodding, she held out her hand. “I’m Morgan.”

It took Leon a few seconds, but he did take her hand. “Leon.”

“Well, Leon, being a donor is nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be when I first stepped into the house. Vampires are exceedingly patient and they know it isn’t easy for anyone to allow someone to drink their blood. However once that first feed is done there’s no going back, because being fed from changes the blood in such a way that any other vampire can tell what’s happened.”

“How?”

Morgan sighed. “There’s a mix of chemical in every vampire’s saliva and it’s one of them that causes the scent change. No one’s quite sure which one it is, but that’s something Lewis is trying to find out.”

“Lewis is the money man, right?”

“You could call him that. When the house first opened he planned on being pretty hands-off because he has other things to do with his time. That was until he realised how wonderful it was to have a community around him that accepted him for who he was and ever since then he’s spent most of his time at the house. He even has an office now, full of his mess of files.”

“I thought there was a week when anyone who had become a donor could leave.”

“There is.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve checked out the website.”

“Yes, I have. My sister thought about applying to pay off her university debts, but she decided against it in the end.”

“During the first week a donor can defer the first feed to give them time to decide what they want to do. It’s one of the things that Nick and Alice brought in not long after the doors first opened, when they realised how much of an effect vampire saliva can have on the blood of donors. The last thing they want is to make a donor more interesting to the auction vampires.” Morgan smiled. “They’ve also found out that being fed from by a number of different vampires over the period of six months can make a human immune to the chemical within vampire blood that’s addictive.”

“So not only are they working with addicts but they’ve also found a way to stop new addicts from being created?”

“In a way. It’s not something I think could ever be duplicated in injection form or anything, but every donor is getting a wonderful gift from the house.”

“At least it gives humans a chance.” Leon bit his lip. “Do you want to get a coffee? I’d love to talk more about the donor house. I think I made a huge mistake when I convinced Jo not to apply as a donor.”

Morgan shook her head. “It isn’t for everyone, Leon, and Nick is very careful about the donors he choses.” She gave him that tilted head look again. “Yeah, I’d like to get a coffee and talk more. I like to teach people about the house, because it means a lot to me. I’ve made some good friends there, both vampires and donors, and I know my life wouldn’t be the same if I’d never become a donor.”

“Anywhere you suggest?” Leon had been avoiding anywhere he knew might be owned by a vampire and, even though he thought they’d still creep him out, he wanted to put his hatred to one side. “I want to try spending time around vampires.”

“Okay, then we need to head to the coffee shop in the arcade. Lewis owns every shop in there, because once Dawn created the pagan shop humans started selling their shops, not wanting to associate with her.”

As they walked Leon glanced around. “There does seem to be a better mix of shops ever since the vampires have taken over.”

“Yeah, they didn’t want to have too many of one type because town centres should be a place where someone can get anything they need.”

“That would work better if more humans wanted to shop in vampire owner shops.”

Leon felt Morgan’s eyes on him as they walked. “You’d be surprised how many humans are happy to shop even when the shop is owned by a vampire. During the day the majority of the shops have humans working in them, because vampires are much happier working at night.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“They don’t burn in sunlight if that’s what you’re after. Vampires just have better senses than humans and the sunlight hurts their eyes. Originally it was also because the auction vampires prefer to hunt at night. That way less people are around, so they can grab whoever they want without anyone stopping them.”

“Lovely.” Leon shook his head. “For everything good you tell me about vampires there’s something that makes me hate them again.”

“What you need to remember is that not all vampires are the same. There are the archetypal vampires, who have created the auctions and embrace their vision of the vampire life. In the donor house there are vampires who never chose to become what they are and for a lot of them it’s been the most difficult thing they’ve ever had to deal with.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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