The Donor House: Advent Story (part 6)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3Part 4
Part 5

When Nick saw that Morgan was with Alice he stopped worrying about her quite as much as he was before. He wanted to go over to her himself, but they were still growing into their new relationship and it was a slow process, and he didn’t want to do anything that would cause any new problems between them. Nothing that had happened had stopped Alice from loving him, even though he wasn’t quite sure how, so he wanted to keep things going in the right direction, because for the first time they actually seemed to be together in a way he never thought they could be. The House had changed everything. It had given them both a freedom that they’d never had before, given Alice a way of telling him when she was having a bad day, and given him something else to focus on when she didn’t want to be around him.

Breathing deeply, Nick turned his attention to the group that was gathering around the tree. They didn’t seem ready to start decorating, instead talking amongst themselves about numerous subjects, from past Christmases to who they thought might be the next vampire through the door. It seemed, to him, like everyone was sending out letters to vampires acquaintances to tell them about the House and what it was like, wanting them to visit, even if they found that it wasn’t for them. Growing the community was something that everyone wanted to help with, both donors and vampires, because instead of just being the Donor House it was their home.

Even though that had been what they were all hoping for, Nick from the time he first suggested the idea to his closest friend, he hadn’t been certain that it could happen. Vampires and humans may not have been able to live together happily. As it was something that had never been tried before no one had any way of knowing for certain. When he was feeding from Alice, and the other two girls they’d asked to help, they hadn’t been living together, although she had stayed over a few times, lying to her parents that she was out with friends. Technically it wasn’t really a lie, because she had been out with a friend – he just wasn’t someone they’d accept could be a friend. He was a vampire and that automatically made him evil, the same way all the auction vampires were.

At the House every vampire was given a chance. That was something that rarely happened outside. Unfortunately, to the humans, every vampire was the same, a creature that should be viewed with suspicion because it might well attempt to feed from you. Nick sighed. It was something almost every vampire had dealt with at some time and something he wanted to put an end to. He wanted everyone to understand that being turned into a vampire didn’t automatically change someone into a dangerous creature – that only happened when a newly changed vampire stayed with someone who viewed all humans as nothing more than prey. Vampires had to be taught to be predators.

Thinking about it that was the same with any young predator. Baby lions had to be taught to hunt deer, but they didn’t have another option. Vampires did. No vampire needed to go out hunting humans, especially not when they had been one at some point, and it wasn’t the easiest way to feed. Having a willing donor was. By creating the House they’d gathered together a number of willing donors who would happily feed the many vampires who gathered there, because they were learning to understand vampires in the same way that the vampires were beginning to understand the humans. It was a system Nick was glad he’d finally had the courage to set up.

He knew they were hated, by the auction vampires, by humans who viewed them as being worse than the auction vampires for taking advantage of the unfortunate, by hunters for trying to create a community where the two could live together. That all faded into nothingness when he looked around the reception of the House to see almost everyone gathered together because they’d finally got a Christmas tree. Nick watched as Issac took the elevator upstairs, needing a few moments to himself before he ventured into the throng once more, because out of all of them he was having the most difficulty getting used to being part of such a huge community. It wasn’t something he talked about much, the same way there were things that all of them didn’t talk about, but Nick was the person he talked to about his problems with dealing with large groups of people.

In the dining room it was different. They all split off into smaller groups and for some reason Nick couldn’t quite understand that didn’t bother Issac as much. He could spend hours there, going between the different groups, talking with everyone. It was just when it was all of them together. Nick had a feeling it was because it reminded Issac of something that had happened when he was still human, but that wasn’t something he talked about much, not to anyone, which wasn’t exactly unusual for a vampire. So few of them were comfortable talking about the time before they were a vampire.

Nick could understand why, because he was the same way. It hurt too much to remember everything he had been forced to leave behind, even though he’d gained more than he ever believed he could, because, when he was first changed, all he could think about was finding a way to end it all. He glanced over at Alice again, his lover and best friend, before turning his attention to the rest of the inhabitants of the House. They’d all become members of his extended family, a family he never believed he could have when he was changed – dying had taken away his chance of having any more children and he didn’t think he could ever change a human, not when he’d never wanted to be changed.

Blake, the second person he’d changed, stood, as usual, with Caleb. It had been Blake’s choice, the way that becoming an addict wasn’t, but there were times when Nick still felt bad for doing it. He knew that Blake had accepted the choice he’d made, even though it had been difficult to do, because at the time it had been the only option. The decision to create the House had come partly from knowing that Blake would have had another option if it had already existed. Instead of becoming a vampire so he no longer needed the chemicals of a vampire’s saliva in his body he would have had a chance at having a human life, the way Caleb had.

Even though none of them knew if what they were attempting would work it was worth trying. If they could really rehabilitate an addict, especially on like Caleb, it would show the humans that they were doing some good and that there really was a reason for the existence of the House. They could all hate it if they wanted, but Nick knew that so few humans out there tried to help the addicts, looking down on them as though it was their fault that they’d become what the were, instead of remembering that they’d once been missing people, and everyone knew it was likely they’d ended up at one of the auctions. From the auction they’d go to a vampire who would use and abuse them, one who often ended up killing their humans because they didn’t care, and if they didn’t end up killing them they’d discard them when the human ended up becoming addicted to their bite.

Like so many addicts Blake had been discarded. Unlike the majority of them he’d gone to someone who cared enough to try and help him. Alice had never understood why there were so many addicts who didn’t get help, but by talking to an actual addict she’d come to understand that a lot of them didn’t want any help, although it had been hard to explain. Nick had sat there listening while Blake had tried to find the right way to tell her that addicts became, if not happy, used to what they had become and to them it was much easier to stay an addict. It didn’t seem to matter that they had another option, that the vampires of the House would do their best to rehabilitate the addict, when once they knew that the only way to stop being an addict was to become one of the creatures that they hated.

It was an understandable hatred. If Nick had been unlucky enough to have ended up in one of the auctions, rather than being asked to help gather humans for the auctions, he would have hated all vampires too. As it was he just hated the vampire who had made him what he was, the vampire who wanted him so badly to become the vampire he ‘should be’, the vampire who had taken his life without stopping to think that he might be happy being a human, and the vampire who had tried to take his Alice away from him. Fortunately he still had Alice, even though she didn’t always like him, and that was enough to keep him thinking about ways to change the world for the better, instead of hiding away from it the way he had before he’d met her.

Since Caleb had made the choice to enter the House Blake had tried to help other addicts. Most of them stayed for a couple of days, but after that they left, generally because they had no interest in what the vampires were offering. They were still at that point where they viewed all vampires as they enemy and nothing anyone said, not even Caleb, could change that. Nick hoped that once they had a chance to think things over and realised they were still an addict a year or a three later they might return, to give them a chance, which meant they were going to have to wait a while longer. If they didn’t, well, at least they’d tried, the same way they tried with the communities of addicts in the local area. Alice, with Garion’s help, had made hundreds of flyers, that mostly ended up flying around the town in the way almost all unwanted offerings did, but, again, at least they’d tried. Trying was better than simply acting as though they didn’t need to do anything, because it wasn’t their fault.

“You think too much,” Dominic said, making Nick jump.

“Alice says exactly the same thing, but if I didn’t think too much the House wouldn’t exist.” Nick smiled at Dominic. “Of course if I didn’t think too much I would have acted very differently when I first realised how I felt about her. I kept telling myself that a human, especially a human raised by hunters, couldn’t possibly fall in love with a creature like me, while she told herself that a vampire couldn’t possibly fall in love with the daughter of hunters.”

Dominic laughed. “You both think too much. That’s why you make such a good couple, even though I know you aren’t calling yourselves one.”

“It’s the best option. I love her, she loves me, we both still hate what happened in the past and there are days when that still affects the choices that we make.” Nick shrugged. “She has days when she believes that I should have let her die, even though she loves her life now, and I have days when I hate myself for being selfish enough to make her into something I never wanted to be because I couldn’t let her go, even though I’m so glad she’s still a part of my life. We don’t need to be a couple when we’re still dealing with all that and it gives us both the freedom to let ourselves accept we might still fall in love with someone else.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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It's true that addicts of any kind often have a hard time getting out of that, even with help.