The Donor House: Advent Story (part 4)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Alice couldn’t help laughing. “I know exactly what you mean.” She looked over at Nick again, smiling. “Life was so much easier when I could look at him and see a vampire, rather than seeing Nick. Then I started seeing him as a person, as much more than the creature my parents wanted me to remember he was, and after that it was impossible for me to not fall in love with him, even though I wished for a long time that I hadn’t. I knew I was letting down my parents and my brother, but in the end that didn’t matter. All that mattered was me being honest with myself that I really had fallen in love with a vampire and working out what the next steps I needed to take were. Every time I went over there I told myself that I needed to tell him, that he had a right to know even though I was scared he’d walk away if I did, and in the end I still didn’t manage to do it, because I ended up being attacked by his creator. When I was younger I really was an idiot.” She ran a hand through her hair. “And that’s a really weird thing to say considering the fact I don’t look any older than I did when I was changed.”

“I’m glad I don’t look my age, because if I did…” When Alice turned to look at Issac he was grinning. “Well, I’m sure you can imagine.”

“No one ever did tell me when you were changed,” Morgan said, and Alice appreciated how careful she was being, because not all vampires liked to talk about their age. By phrasing it that way she wasn’t putting any pressure on Issac to tell her. “I do think you’re the oldest of the four of them, though.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They all look up to you.” Morgan smiled. “They do the same thing with John as well, even Lewis, but I think it’s different with John. You’re looked up to because of your experience as a vampire while with John it’s more to do with who he is.” She shrugged. “I don’t think I explained that very well.”

“Don’t worry, Morgan. I understand exactly what it is you’re attempting to say and I like the way you think.” Issac smiled, his gentle smile, the smile he often gave worried donors. “Even I look up to John, for exactly the reason you’ve given. His point of view, as a Native American, is so utterly alien to me sometimes, and it fascinates me to sit listening to him talk about subjects I thought I understood, because he always makes me feel like I haven’t really understood it entirely until he helped me to see it through his eyes as well. Me, well, I really am just old, even though I haven’t aged since the day he found me.

“Back then we didn’t know that vampires existed. I wasn’t expecting anything unusual to happen, but then I don’t know that anyone ever does, and he did save me from a much worse death. He knew, from the smell in the air, that the volcano was soon to erupt, because he’d been around them before, so he wandered into Herculaneum, along with a few others, to see if there was anyone worth saving. Even now I don’t know if I was lucky or unlucky to have been the one he chose. I didn’t die the same way my family did, so for that I am grateful, although I do wish someone had saved my younger sister. She deserved life so much more than I did.” Issac sighed and Alice put her hand on his arm, lending his her support, because it wasn’t often he talked about his beginning. “Instead it was me and he took me away from everything I knew. To be honest I was know that I had it better than a lot of the others who were taken, including some who ended up in the auctions, because they were already running. They’d been running since the first vampires realised what they were and what they needed to do to survive. I was changed by a vampire who said he was the child of one of the first, who’d been created by a magic that had gone very wrong, but I didn’t believe him. As far as I was concerned it was just an excuse for his treatment of the humans he looked at as nothing more than food. Yet he chose me when I was human to be his child. That was something I never could understand.

“We didn’t stay together long. I couldn’t stand him and once he realised I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps he came to feel the same sort of distaste for me, because I was nothing like his other children. They had all taken his teachings to heart, instead of stopping to think that maybe being a vampire didn’t mean being a predator. As humans we could think, but as vampires we became animals? It was something I never could accept, so I made the decision to go my own way, to be the type of vampire I believed should exist rather than a creature who did nothing but listen to his need for blood. From the beginning I wanted something more and now I finally have it. We have created a community that should have existed centuries ago, but they didn’t stop to think. They just reacted to what had happened to them. Sometimes I want to hate them for it and then I wonder how it would have been if I was one of the first or if I’d been changed by one of them. All I know they had was a hunger for blood that didn’t seem to ever be sated, no matter how much they fed, and I can’t help wondering if there was a reason, if being changed the way they were, being so close to the magic, meant that they were different to the younger vampires somehow.

“Then I think of my vampiric sister and I wonder how much of it is nurture. I haven’t see her for years, which is my own doing. I didn’t understand that she really did need to feed from human blood in a way that I never did, even though she’s younger than me, which I think is because she didn’t leave him. She let him teach her how to be the sort of vampire he thought she should be. As a young girl that was what she had been brought up to do, but I never stopped to think that she followed him for that reason, simply thinking that she was an idiot for not using her brains, even though she’d never been brought up to. Being a male, being the one to follow in my father’s footsteps, I had to know how to think. I had to be the one to look after my family when the time came that I had one. That was something I never had a chance to do. By the time I thought I might like children I was already, technically, dead.

“As a woman my vampiric sister was taught to be submissive and that was exactly what she was. She let the man who turned her teach her what he thought a vampire should be, because that was what she was meant to do when she found a husband – let him teach her how to be a good wife. Being a mother was always up to the woman to learn when she first had a child. It was what I would have done if I had a wife, but I would also have taught her how best to help me with the business, the way Father had done with Mother, because it was the right thing to do, even if it wasn’t something the majority of men would have done. Fortunately Father never was like other men and he made me into the person I was the night my creator made me into a vampire, as well as the person I continue being now. The creature that changed me couldn’t change me. I held onto who I was instead of becoming his, the way he assumed I would. All of the others had.”

Issac looked at Alice, emotions filling his eyes as he told Morgan a story he’d told none of the other donors, and Alice had believed that he wouldn’t be ready to do that for a long time. She didn’t know what it was about Morgan, but she seemed to be the person everyone felt they could talk to. Donors would go to her if they weren’t ready for a conversation with one of the vampires they were so scared of, before going with them to the office that Alice used and holding their hand if they needed it. Every time it happened they shared a look, knowing that Morgan had somehow become another Alice, someone who could be asked for help no matter what and they’d always give it.

“When I think of my creator,” Issac continued, his eyes moving onto Morgan, who’d placed her hand over the top of Alice’s, to show that they’d both support him, “I have this urge to go out and kill him. It would make the world a better place, but I know that it’s not something I would do if I hadn’t been turned into a vampire – I would never, under any circumstances, have become a hunter if we’d known about their existence. As far as I’m concerned we have as much right to live as anyone else. We just need to learn how to live with the humans that we have to feed from, rather than viewing them as a lower life form, because we were once exactly the same. Only the first never knew what it was like to be hunted and they changed our world into what it is now, thanks to a selfish pharaoh and some magic that went wrong.

“I don’t regret living as long as I have. I regret some of the choices I’ve made during my long life, especially in regards to my poor vampiric sister, who I keep hoping might come to the House, because if there’s any vampire who needs us it’s her.” Alice had been told about Issac’s sister, in case she came to the door, and all she could do was hope that if it happened she was about – a vampire who could only feed from humans sounded dangerous and she wanted a chance to get to know her before she spend too much time with any of the donors. “Hopefully she’ll come with my other sister, who told me off for what I did, and got me to understand why I’d made the wrong decisions, why I’d let my hatred of my creator colour my judgement of a girl I should have given a chance. If it hadn’t of been for her I might not have been a part of this, I might have simply walked away instead of becoming a part of something that is going to change the world, scared that it might become the sort of place a bastard like my creator would have been happy to walk into.

“The longer I’m here the more grounded I become. Instead of feeling alone most of the time I finally feel, like many of the vampires here, that I’ve finally found a home, and that is thanks to Nick thinking outside the box. I may well have thought it was a stupid idea to begin with, but he was right. This is the sort of place we’ve needed for a long time and I hope that we keep it open as long as there are vampires who need our help to follow the right path.” Issac smiled. “I also hope that we continue attracting wonderful humans like you, Morgan, to be our donors.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.