The Donor House: Advent Story (part 10)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

“I don’t think it’s just you and John,” Nick said, as other people had said the same thing to him before, even before the House. Saving Alice seemed to have inexplicably linked their lives together for the rest of time and he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, although he did still love her more with each day that passed. “Jean-Luc’s told me that more than once, but that was when we were talking about the best way to keep her away from my creator, and he didn’t understand why I couldn’t just accept that she wasn’t going to go anywhere. When I told her why she’d ended up close to death she did yell at me for a long time, because she though I should have told her about my creator long before. It didn’t matter that I didn’t think he knew where I was – I should have warned her and given her a chance to protect herself, but I was so certain that I was finally safe, at least until I found her there and realised he was trying to get me to return to him once more by taking away the person that I love. Unfortunately it’s not something that’s unusual when it comes to vampires and wanting their children to follow their rules.” He looked over at Sullivan, a vampire Nick never believed he could feel sorry for, but Sullivan had been through so much because he was stupid enough to fall in love with a human. “Vampires are very against the idea of one of their own falling for any human. As soon as they realise it’s happened they do everything they can to put an end to it, no matter what, because they know that falling in love with something that should be viewed as prey is going to change the vampire, exactly the way it did Sullivan.”

“You didn’t react well to Sullivan being here.” Dominic laughed. “I can still remember the look on your face when Alice brought him downstairs and said he was staying with us until he’d healed.”

“No, I didn’t.” Nick smiled. “Alice and I knew Sullivan before and until she told me what had happened to him I had real difficulty believing that he could have changed. He wasn’t one of my vampiric siblings, but a cousin, so we’d seen each other around a few times, and when I last saw him he was feeding from a human at one of the nightclubs they’ve started setting up… because they need yet another place to hunt. We were only there because I was meeting with a sibling I hadn’t seen for a long time, another who’d walked away from our creator, and wanted a safe place for us to meet. As far as he was concerned being somewhere that was full of vampires who had accepted what they were would mean they weren’t looking at us too closely, because he didn’t want to be found.”

“Do you think he’ll ever come to the House?”

“He will, eventually. When he’s certain that things are working out the way I want them to he’ll come and see me, because we’d become good friends even though we only saw each other maybe once a century, especially as this was something we’d talked about before. The more the world changes due to us coming out of the shadows the more important it gets that we do something to combat the problems that they’re causing. At that nightclub we were both really uncomfortable, in part because it was full of really young vampires who were relishing being surrounded by humans that they could use and abuse, because no one will say anything to stop them and it was all free.”

“I’ve never been to one of the nightclubs, but I have heard about them, and they seem to be become more prevalent.”

Nick nodded. “It’s something I could see happening. Younger vampires don’t have the income of someone who’s been alive even ten years, because it soon becomes obvious that one of the things we need the most, and they all know that the best place to get a human from is one of the auctions. However, until that happens, they still need to feed and, even though there are plenty of humans who will go out walking at night, it’s so much easier when they gather in one place. The advantage of them for the auction vampires is that they have more to gather, as once a human’s been fed from once they become more interesting to other vampires.” He bit his lip. “Some of the younger vampires do occasionally take a human for themselves without going through one of the auctions and no one can stop that either. Vampires have taken over this world and made it their own, because people are scared of them, and I don’t want everyone to be scared of us. We aren’t all like that. Even some of the young vampires weren’t comfortable in the night club, so I’m hoping we might see more of them at the House.”

“From what Caleb said the auction vampires are mocking the creation of the Donor House. They think it will fall apart within five years and everyone who offered to share their blood will be easy pickings.”

“Dominic, none of us knows what the future may hold, but we are going to do everything we can to keep the House open for the rest of our lives, however long that ends up being. We want to change the world from one where humans are scared of vampires to one where we can work together, where the vampires who view humans as nothing more than prey are the minority, where we’ve all learnt to understand each other – rather than humans viewing us all with suspicion because there are a group of vampires who look at humans as little more than tissue paper that is easily discarded once it’s been used.” Nick smiled. “To us a human is someone we can get to know as well as feed from, we can teach them the lessons that we’ve learnt over the years and learn from them what it’s like to be mortal. When I was first changed I could remember what it was like to know that someday I was going to die, that urge to do things with the little time that I had, but the longer I’m a vampire the harder it is to hold on to that, even though I really want to. Even though I am going to live for as long as this world does a lot of the people I’ve got to know recently won’t. Neither you or Morgan will, Caleb will hopefully be able to live a proper life, and every time I look around this room I see who I’m going to end up losing in the future. It hurts and I want to remind myself that once I was in the same position.”

For a moment Dominic was silent and Nick could see from the way he was biting his lip he was thinking of something he didn’t know how to bring up. “Have you ever thought what will happen if one of us asks you to change us into a vampire?”

“At the beginning, when this was all still just an idea, we always said we wouldn’t change any of the donors, even if they asked us. That was before we realised how close we were going to get to you and how much you were going to change our lives, so now I don’t know. It’s one of those things we’re really going to have to talk about.” Nick shook his head. “There are lots of things we’re going to have to talk about now, because everything has changed. It was easy to make choices before we started getting attached to people. Now we are attached and those decisions are going to be so much harder to make, because I know that there are donors I can’t imagine not having in my life, although I know that I don’t know how they’d feel about becoming a vampire when they know how much difficulty the majority of us have had transitioning.”

“It was different for you. You didn’t have any support mechanisms in place, but you’ve created a place now where young vampires can learn how to be the right kind of vampire, for want of a better phrase, and if I was going to become a vampire I would definitely want it to be one of you who did it.”

Sighing, Nick looked around the room, wondering how many of the donors might be thinking the same thing, how many were contemplating the idea of asking one of them to change them, and couldn’t help wondering it creating the Donor House had been a bad idea if it was going to make more humans want to be vampires, even though they would be, as Dominic had said, the right kind of vampire. “How many people have mentioned it?”

“More than you’d like.” Dominic shrugged. “It’s not so much I think that we want to be vampires, but more that we don’t want to leave you. Before we came here it was easy to view you all as nothing more than the creatures who were going to be feeding from us, the way we were taught when we were at school, and the longer we spend here, the better we get to know you, the harder it is to see you as anything other than friends and…” He sighed. “It’s too easy to fall in love with the wrong person here.”

“That’s what I found with Alice. As we were spending almost every night together, getting to know each other in a way I’d never had a chance to before, even when I was married, I realised it was too easy to fall in love with her, because she was my friend to begin with.” Nick glanced over at Alice. “Okay, once Christmas is over I think we’re going to need to talk about the rules we made and how well they’re working now. I know one of the things Issac is wondering about it the wearing of white, as it is a rather clumsy way of doing things.”

“What other ideas have you had?” Dominic asked, glancing down at his own white shirt. “Personally I like it, even if it is clumsy, because it’s obvious, and there are the calendars that you have on every floor of the House. The only way someone might end up being fed from when they aren’t meant to is if the vampire is really hungry or stupid. As far as I can tell there’s pretty much always a vampire everywhere as well, so if a new arrival does try to feed from someone who is wearing white then they’ll be stopped.”

“So you think we don’t need to change it?”

“I’m saying it works. If you can think of something that would work better and is as cheap then go for it, but I honestly can’t see why it’s so much of a problem. No vampire’s ever tried to feed from me when I’m wearing white, they’ve never tried to feed from any of the donors I know, and the only time I can think of it happening is outside of the House, and that Lewis put an end to in about thirty seconds. We were lucky he was there and I think he’s got into the habit of always making sure there are vampires he trusts in places he knows we go to on our days off.”

“Yeah, he told me about that. I’m glad he was there, because that could have been bad.”

“We know why it happened, Nick, so it’s not that much of a problem. Everyone here knows that the auction vampires are going to do everything they can to get this place shut down and there is a chance they will end up killing one of us.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.