k_a_webb | The Donor House: Advent Story (part 3)

Part 1
Part 2

Alice had tried, since that horrible night, not to think about it at all. It hadn’t exactly been a surprise that Sam had managed to insult everyone in the House just by being himself, but that didn’t stop her from wishing he hadn’t. Especially as he’d chosen to ring her the very next day to ask her out for coffee and a chat. She remember the doubts she’d had about going, because he was a hunter and there was every chance he might try to do something to her, which had meant she’d taken a longer time to answer him than she normally would, and he’d known exactly why. The sadness is his voice as he’d said, “It’s okay, Alice, I know I screwed up. You’ve done what Cate asked of you – if you want to walk away now I wouldn’t blame you, because teaching a hunter, especially a hunter like me, is never easy.”

If it hadn’t been for that she never would have gone. She hadn’t actually thought that Sam might still want to spend time with her after everything that had happened, but he did, and he had changed. Even though she didn’t think it would visiting the Donor House had changed him. He started wanting to learn, rather than spending time with her because Cate had asked him too. Alice hadn’t talked to anyone before going, so they couldn’t talk her out of it, the way she knew Blake and Nick would have wanted to. They both wanted to look after her, whether she wanted looking after or not.

When she left the House that night John’s eyes had been on her and there was no doubt in her mind that he’d always known what she was doing. John may not have been happy with her choice, she never asked him, but he knew it was her choice to make, not the whole House’s. Nothing she was doing was putting the House in any real danger. They all already knew that Sam was a hunter and they’d all agreed, donor and vampires alike, to give him a chance, because that was what they all thought was the right thing to do. The House was about teaching people that vampires and humans could live together, even if that human was a hunter who had killed vampires.

Everyone knew that the majority of vampires the hunters killed were those who didn’t want to live any longer. It was the easiest way to make it happen and, compared to starving yourself to death, it wasn’t really painful. The only problem was when the hunters failed to make sure that the vampire they’d killed was actually dead. Alice had to stop herself from shuddering, as she and Nick had come across several vampires, some he’d actually known, who’d been left for dead, even though they’d still been alive. Having to help them was one of the most difficult things either of them had ever had to do, but they couldn’t just leave them laying there.

“All vampires seem to do that,” Morgan commented, her voice soft, as though she was trying not to make Alice jump. “You’ll be in the middle of a conversation and then you’ll just be lost in thought.”

“Sorry.” Alice sighed. “I didn’t even realise I was doing it, not really.”

“Don’t apologise. It’s fine. I just can’t help wondering what you were thinking about, but I’m not sure I want to ask.”

“It wasn’t all bad, Morgan, although I have to admit that some of it was. Being a vampire is just really hard, sometimes. There are some days when I think thirty years is too long, but then I look at Nick, John, Issac, even Jean-Luc, and I realise it’s nothing. Not in comparison to what they’ve lived through. Plus they were alone for a lot of the time. I’ve never been a lone vampire. I have no idea what their lives have been like and I want to give up after thirty years spent with a man who loves me.”

“Maybe it’s just because I’m a human, but I think it makes sense that you have bad days. Yeah, things may not have been as bad for you as they were for Nick or John, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have the right to feel that you don’t want to be a vampire any more. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to deal with the hatred of humans all of the time, knowing that you were one once and being turned into a vampire doesn’t change who you are.”

Once again Alice was grateful that the donors at the House were such wonderful people and she smiled at Morgan. “It can be difficult, more because I know that becoming a vampire doesn’t change someone, but being around vampires who see themselves as better than the humans they feed from, as higher on the food chain, can. Sullivan probably didn’t start out thinking he could be anything like the vampire he became when he was first changed. Unfortunately he had a creator he wanted to make proud of him, so he did things he wouldn’t have done if he’d simply walked away, like Nick did, but when you’re a young vampire it’s hard. To go it alone, when you know that you’ve got to teach yourself how to feed from a human without killing them, is something I never would have tried, but Nick did and from the stories he’s told me about that time it was really difficult. He didn’t give up because he knew his only other option would be to go back to his creator.” Alice shook her head. “It’s very rare that a vampire will be taught by someone who isn’t their creator. There are unwritten rules about these things.”

“There are stories you heard about vampires who took on young they didn’t create?”

“We always pass on stories. The vampires have an oral history spanning back centuries and Issac even thinks he met one of the first vampires, but there’s no way of knowing for certain. One of the problems with it is that it’s really easy to tell lies, so no story is taken at face value, unless there were several people who’ve all passed on pretty much the same story. It’s something that we could change now, especially with how easy it is to self-publish now, and something Cate wants us to do, as she really thinks it will help the general populace to begin to understand vampires.”

Morgan nodded.”Cate was talking to me about writing about my time in the House, which I’m seriously thinking about doing. It seems like a good way to help those who want to understand how it works better than a website ever could, no matter how informative it is, and as each of us will have a different experience it’s not as though Dominic couldn’t do exactly the same thing and end up with something nothing like mine at all, apart from featuring some of the same vampires.”

“If it’s what you really want to do I can’t see anyone being against it.” Alice glanced over at the tree again, where Nick was begin to direct the group who’d gathered to help decorate it. “Nick keeps telling me I should be keeping a blog, because he thinks of me as the true face of the House, and I told him I don’t have the time to deal with all the comments I’d end up getting, telling me I shouldn’t exist, that I’m taking advantage of humans, and that they hope a hunter will soon rid the world of my presence.” She shook her head. “That’s exactly what my brother would do if he was still alive, but I know they came after Nick and I a long time ago, which ended badly for them. Strangely I was never angry with him for doing that, because I think, even though I hoped they wouldn’t do something so stupid, I knew that they’d prefer it if I was dead and he’d never let that happen. Even when I was snarling at him and telling him I’d have been better off if he’d never saved me from that auction vampire he never stopped loving me, because he could remember what it was like to be changed against his will. He would do anything to keep me safe.”

“Have either of you ever been in love with someone else?”

“Not that I know of for Nick. He told me he wasn’t in love with his wife and after he was turned he spent the majority of his time travelling the country, trying to find somewhere he could call home. My village was the first place he found, I, apparently, was the first and only person he’d ever been in love with, and I was young when I met him. I hope that both of us will fall in love again, even if we never stop loving each other.”

“What will you do if that happens?”

“Nick and I have never been in a committed relationship with each other. It might have happened, if he hadn’t changed me or I’d had the courage to tell him how I felt about him soon, but that’s the truth. There have been times when we’ve slept together and they have been happening more frequently since we started living her, because we aren’t trapped together any more.” Alice sighed. “I hate putting it that way, but sometimes that really was how it felt, even though I did, technically, chose to stay with him. He could have found somewhere safe for me if I hadn’t decided that he needed me more than I needed to be away from him. If the time comes when one or other of us finds someone else I hope we could talk about it like adults and decide what it means to our relationship, whether they’d be comfortable with the fact that we are still in love, and how best we can make things work.”

“What if either of you falls in love with a donor?”

“That’s more difficult. At the beginning, when we were planning the House and really had no idea how things were going to work, one of the rules we put in place was that they could be no committed relationships between vampires and donors. It was the safest thing to do, because vampires can get very jealous if they fall in love. We didn’t want it to cause problems. The longer the House is open the more I think it’s not going to be as much of a problem as we though it might be, but I don’t know if it makes sense for us to remove it entirely. It’s something we all need to talk about when we have some free time and there’s a chance that might not happen for months.”

“Flexibility is the key,” a male voice said, making Alice jump, and she turned to see Issac making his way down the stairs. “We always knew it would be, but we need to work out what our options are before we even think of changing a rule, because, no matter how well things have worked out, that’s no guarantee that it will continue. Jealousy is an emotion anyone can feel and there’s every chance that it will be a donor who ends up being unhappy that their vampire is feeding from someone else that causes the real problems.”

Alice nodded. “I remember us talking about that before.” She looked at Morgan. “Are you asking about that because there might be a vampire that you have a crush on?”

“No, but I’m not ruling it out as a possibility.” Morgan smiled. “There are some wonderful people here and I do think it would be stupidly easy to fall for a vampire when you see them as who they are, instead of only seeing what they are.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

The Donor House: Advent Story (part 3)

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