The Donor House: Advent Story (part 18)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5
Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10
Part 11; Part 12; Part 13; Part 14; Part 15
Part 16; Part 17

Jean-Luc shrugged. “What I’ve never been able to understand is why humans seem to think that becoming a vampire automatically changes a person. It happened to Alice when she went home, although that isn’t a particularly good example because her parents were hunters, but it’s as though being changed means that they person they once were disappears. I know for a fact that isn’t true and I’m hoping that the House will change things, because it’s stupid. There is no other way of describing it. Some people do change, when they realise what they’ve become, so it’s not as though it never happens, but it’s rare. Normally it takes years for that sort of change to happen, often because they’ve chosen to follow in the footsteps of their creator.

“That’s often the worst choice a young vampire can make, but they have no way of knowing what their best option is. If their creator is happy being a vampire then they won’t give their children any other option – because they won’t have any idea that there are any. Unfortunately that lack of information is passed down from creator to child, right from the first vampires, the majority of whom seemed to accept what they had become without stopping to think what that might mean for the human race. It’s likely that, if Issac’s story is true, they’d been slaves their whole lives, so when they were asked to leave they were so happy to be free that nothing else mattered.”

“Would you have stopped to think?” Georgina asked, wondering what it must have been like for the first vampires, who had no real idea of what they’d become or why it had happened to them, of finding out how best to survive through trial and error, of feeling alone and wanting to have a companion. “I mean, if you were one of the first vampires, would anything other than your own survival have really crossed your mind or would your entire focus have, at least in the beginning, been on yourself, on what had happened to you and how best you were going to deal with it?”

“I don’t know, Georgie, and it is something I’ve thought about. Even though it’s impossible to know what they were going through I remember what it was like to be a young vampire, to not really know what I was supposed to be doing, and I was so grateful that I had someone there to guide me that I don’t think I could ever have walked away like Nick did, because he didn’t want to become a gathered. To be honest I can’t imagine wanting to be a gatherer either, but that wasn’t something I was ever going to be forced to do. My father created children, in part, because that was what his siblings had done, and also, in a small way, for companionship, even though he thought of his sister as the best companion he would ever have. For a while I thought they were lovers, but they never were. As far as they were concerned they really were siblings and each of them had other lovers over the years, all of them other vampires, so the time I spent growing as a vampire was interesting, to say the least.

“Once they even shared a lover, which was something I couldn’t imagine working, but it did. We all lived in the same house together and for the time they were in a relationship it worked out really well. In the end he chose to walk away, because he fell in love with someone else, my father was getting involved with another couple, and his sister was planning on moving away for a while. I’m not sure why. I never asked her, even though I think I should have, as I have a feeling she was beginning to feel uncomfortable with my father’s obsession with the auction and following in their father’s footsteps. From what he said I know he wanted, at some point in the future, to set up his own auction and school.”

“School?” Kisten bit his lip. “I think I’ve heard of the schools, I’m sure my creator mentioned them in passing, but it was never something I felt comfortable asking about.”

“As I grew up a part of the family that ran the auctions I was taught about everything, in case I decided that I wanted to become a part of the system in the future, and the schools were one of the things I hated the most – because that was where my family gathered the children of the blood slaves, hunters they’d killed, or families they’d gathered. Those children knew, from the time they were old enough to understand, that they were going to be sold at one of the auctions, and they were happy about it. None of them knew that the vampires who were likely to buy them would use and discard them, because that wasn’t a part of the picture my family wanted painted for them. Instead they’re told pretty stories about how wonderful helping the vampires who raised them is and the nice things that will happen to them once they’re purchased.” Jean-Luc shook his head. “Unfortunately I was never told where any of them were, so it’s not information I can pass on to Nick, but I think they’re the first thing I would focus on if I wanted to bring an end to the auctions. Very few humans even know the schools exist, thankfully, otherwise I can just imagine what the papers would have said about the creation of the House. The schools really do brainwash everyone in them to think that the auctions aren’t a horrible thing, but the students soon find out when they’re purchased by some bastard who ends up making them an addict or kills them.”

“Do you know how many schools there are?” Georgina asked, trying not to shudder at the thought of them. It was bad enough knowing that the auction vampires gathered whoever they could off the streets to sell at the auctions, but the idea of them actually raising children to be sold… she could understand why Jean-Luc was grateful that very few people had heard of them. “Or how many children are in each of them?”

“There are about ten schools and the vampires attempt to have a hundred of each year group in them, as well as the young children and babies. There are some blood slaves who work at the school, to feed the vampire administration team and the babies, because the vampires aren’t particularly comfortable dealing with the very young. When the whole year group reaches the age of sixteen they’ll be taken to the auction and I know there are some vampires who wait for that day every year, so they can buy a couple of trained slaves. It means they don’t need breaking in the same way that someone taken off the street would need to be.” He shook his head. “Like with all the auctions they also accept special orders and as vampires live forever having to wait a decade or more for their trained slave isn’t a problem. They see a lot of them when it comes to hunter’s children.”

“You were asked to do some of the admin.” Georgina smiled at Jean-Luc. “They wanted to get you involved in some way and the best way they could think of doing that was to get you to do the paperwork.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Luc, you know more about the schools that someone who was just being taught about them could, especially the special orders, which is something I think you’d only know about if you’d been involved in some way, and as I know you I can’t imagine it being anything more than admit. You wouldn’t be comfortable with anything more. Especially when it came to the school.”

Jean-Luc smiled back. “My father thought it was the best way to get me interested in becoming a part of the auctions. I’d been with him just over a decade then, his sister had just left to go exploring the country, and I think he wanted something more for me that I was willing to give. As I was his son, the son he’d raised lovingly, he thought I was just like him, but I wasn’t. Sometimes I wished I was, because occasionally I felt like I was letting him down by not totally accepting what I’d become.” He looked at Kisten. “During that time I made mistakes too. Like all the family he bought people from the auction and I fed from them, as there were times when it was my only option, but, like you, I tried to be careful. I never wanted to kill someone, but, unfortunately that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. A couple of times I wasn’t careful enough and accidentally killing a slave wasn’t something that would ever bother my family. They all saw humans as nothing more than tissue that was to be used and discarded.

“I hated that the most. Even though my father tried to make me see things he same way I never could. Unlike him I could never let go of who I was before he changed me, which I managed to keep hidden from him. If he knew I was visiting my family at least once a month he would have killed them to make me a better vampire. Fortunately that was one of the secrets his sister always kept for me, which is what makes me think she was less true to the family than they thought she was. Occasionally I can’t help wondering if she might visit the House, because I think it would be a good place for her, but I have no idea where she is or what choices she made after she left us all behind.”

“Would you like her to come here?”

“Yes and no. Seeing her again, being able to ask her all the questions I didn’t get round to asking her before, would be lovely, but I know that it’s something that would make Nick unhappy. It would make him think of the past and the creator he hates.” Jean-Luc sighed. “My father said that my grandfather actually changed Nick’s son in an attempt to get him to return to the family and, even though I don’t know if it’s true or not, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that had actually happened. I never met him myself, but then I didn’t meet Nick for decades and that was when he decided to come to me.” He shrugged. “It was something I never expected to happen and I’m not entirely sure Nick planned on it ever happening either, but we met in a coffee shop not long before he first met Alice. Compared to him I’m very young, because I’m only about thirty years older than Alice, and he was changed during the time of Mary Tudor.”

“Okay, what, in the end, made the vampires chose to admit their existence to the world? You said it was during the civil war.”

“It was. To be honest it was my grandfather choosing a side that changed everything, because he went to Cromwell, told him what he was, and said he would bring an end to the bloodshed if that was what Parliament wanted. As it was what Parliament wanted my grandfather did exactly what he said he would, by killing the entire royal family – which meant that Cromwell was left in charge of the country. Cromwell decided it would be a good thing to be able to hire a vampire at times, which was something Grandfather was amenable to, but that wasn’t the only thing he did. He found he could talk to Cromwell about changes that could be made to make the life of a vampire easier, so that slowly Britain came to learn of the existence of the creatures of the night that had been nothing more than rumours for centuries. Of course Cromwell had no idea there were other vampires, or that the auctions existed, or that the night he agreed to my grandfather bringing an end to the war he’d made a deal with a very nasty man.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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