The Donor House: Kerry: Searching for Someone

[k_a_webb]

It was disappointing, but not a surprise. Kerry had sent off her application on a whim, thinking the Donor House would be the best place to find her saviour, and she was right about that. Both Nick and Alice had agreed that if she was looking for a specific vampire then the House was where she was most likely to find him. The problem was she didn’t know him. All she had was a memory of his voice from the night he stopped her from being taken by the gatherers, which meant that no one could help her. Even a name would have been a start, because it wasn’t unusual for wandering vampires to meet hundreds of their kind, but she didn’t even have that.

He hadn’t stopped for long. Just checked to make sure that the gatherers hadn’t done any damage and then he was off. As Kerry had been wandering around at night, like a moron, she hadn’t even really seen his face. Sighing, she sat down next to Georgina, wishing she’d had the presence of mind to ask what his name was, but she was in shock. The hands that had grabbed her had been so strong that she knew she wouldn’t have managed to escape them and it had been terrifying. Before that she hadn’t believed, really, that one of the vampires might try grabbing her, even though, like everyone, she’d heard stories about it happening to other people.
Unfortunately Kerry had been like all the other humans who wandered around at night. She never believed it would happen to her. Then it did and she had no idea what she was going to do, apart from scream. Normally screaming probably wouldn’t have helped at all, but she was lucky. A vampire who was willing to help her happened to be close enough to hear. Sighing again, she looked around the dining room, hoping that maybe he would turn up one day, so she could thank him properly for looking after a human who shouldn’t have been out at night. He didn’t have to. It would have served her right if she found herself at one of the auctions due to her own idiocy.

“There are a lot of vampires,” Georgina said, smiling, “but if he really is the type to save someone from the gatherers then I’m almost certain he’ll turn up at some point. It’s just going to be a case of being in the right place at the right time.”

Kerry nodded. “I know. Even though I told myself it was unlikely I was going to find him on my first night here I couldn’t stop myself from hoping I’d be that lucky. Meeting him is more important than I thought it would be, because I never expected a vampire to save me from other vampires, even though I did have a really bad habit of watching those stupid soaps.” She glanced around the room again, wondering if Nick would ever let cameras into the House. “There were rumours going round, about a month ago, that it was possible the Donor House would be the setting for a reality TV show, and I remember saying that no one would ever let that happen as there are too many people who are hiding her from dangerous vampires. Like you.”

“Yes, the day Nick brought that idea to us we all knew exactly what his thoughts were on the matter. Even though he was brilliant at bringing it to us without showing any of his own thoughts Alice was grinning madly, amused by something, and when Nick started telling us that he had been approached by a TV company who wanted to bring cameras into the House, so everyone could see what daily life was like here, she buried her head into his shoulder because she was laughing uncontrollably. Part of it, I’m sure, was simply down to the fact that someone thought we would agree to something like that, but I could just imagine what Nick’s reaction would have been when he first read it. The only reason he even brought it to us was because they’d said any major decisions would be made by the House, vampires and donors. We unanimously voted against it.”

“The blog’s okay, though.”

“I make sure to never put down any of our real names or too much information about the lives we led outside the House, because I am in hiding from a vampire who wants to make me his companion. Coming here was for my own protection and I was stupid not to tell anyone the real reason I was here. By being honest I could have made certain that he would never have got into the House in the first place. You know what Alice is like. She’ll do anything to protect the humans who have chosen to be here.”

Kerry smiled. “I like Alice. She’s not what I was expecting when I first arrived, but her mother bear instincts towards everyone in the House are obvious to anyone who looks at her. To me it’s not even apparent that she and Nick sometimes don’t get on.”

“Wait until you’ve been here for one of their legendary arguments. Then you’ll see.”

“Do they happen often?”

“At the beginning they did. Dominic said they used to have at least one a week when he arrived and he was the first long term donor to enter the House. Now it’s about once a month, because being at the House has helped to disentangle their lives, and having different people that they like to spend time with help. Before they were always together, so it was hard for them. Nick seems to have come to the realisation now, though, that Alice didn’t stay out of pity. She stayed out of love, even though sometimes she hated him for changing her without stopping to think that maybe she didn’t want to be a vampire.” Georgina shook her head. “The stupid thing is that they both wanted her to become a vampire before it happened, but neither of them could bring themselves to admit it – Alice because she was the daughter of hunters and couldn’t believe a vampire would fall in love with her and Nick because Alice was the daughter of hunters, so he couldn’t believe she’d fall in love with him.”

“We should send that storyline in to one of the soaps.”

“Every single one of the vampires here has a story to tell, Kerry. That’s part of the reason I started the blog. I couldn’t keep not writing them down and I think it’s a good way of showing that they’re no different to us, just because of what they’ve become. There are vampires who accept the bad habits that are passed down from creator to child, vampires who stop to question what they’re being taught and whether they should accept that they’ve really become a predator, and vampires who simply walk away from the whole mess.”

“Like Nick.”

“Not so much like Nick, really, because he was changed by the vampire who runs the auction. He was expected to become one of the gatherers and that wasn’t what he wanted, so he walked away. I think that might be why Nick’s creator tries so hard to get him back – he was the only one who did make the decision that he wasn’t going to let being a vampire change him and for some reason we can’t understand that made his creator appreciate him more. Even from the beginning he was his own person, rather than someone who could be moulded. Of course that meant the vampire had made another mistake, by choosing the wrong person, but that seems to have bothered him a lot less than it did with some of the others he made.”

“If Grandfather hadn’t been in charge of the auctions there’s a chance Nick would have stayed,” Jean-Luc said, as he sat down. “To be honest I think he wanted to stay, but knew if he did he was going to have to do something he found morally wrong. His options were to walk away or to become someone he never wanted to be, so he walked away, even though he was terrified and didn’t know if he’d made a huge mistake. Being a lone vampire is never easy.”

“Most of them chose to stay with the creators for that reason.” Georgina sighed. “Learning to feed from someone without hurting them is a skill that’s difficult to learn alone.”

“At least without leaving a rather scary amount of bodies behind.” Jean-Luc shrugged. “Nick, for a long time, fed too little and caused himself pain, because he didn’t want to hurt the humans he fed from. It wasn’t until he came across someone who had donated blood to a vampire before that he had someone to teach him how best to feed without killing. Other vampires have been lucky enough to meet lone vampires happy to teach them, because they have walked away, but when Nick was young things were different.”

“That was long before the vampires showed themselves to humans, but that didn’t mean no one knew that something else existed. From the time the first vampires arrived on our shores there were stories of creatures that hunted in the night, feeding only on the blood of humans, and there was a much greater fear of the time when the predators would prowl.” Georgina shook her head. “Now we know that they’re vampires, that they do hunt us for food, but they’re generally very good looking, so it’s scarily easy to forget what they are.”

“Unfortunately most vampires do that on purpose. They know that the best hunters will be the good looking people, the people that others flock to due to how they appear, so they make certain to change those they view as pretty. John was changed for that exact reason, but he never used his looks to hunt. Most of the time I think he managed to put people off just by frowning at them, because it made him look unapproachable.” Jean-Luc smiled, even though it faded quickly as he turned to more serious subjects once more, and Kerry found herself studying him, grateful that the two of them were talking to a newbie about things she hadn’t had a chance to learn about before. “You’re unlikely to meet a vampire who’s fat or ugly, purely because vampires change who they’re attracted to. Even though I wasn’t interested in men my male creator changed me because he was and he had no way of knowing, unless he had approached me beforehand, that I would never view him as anything more than the vampire that forced me to become a vampire.

“He actually wanted me to become a part of polyamorous relationship he had with his sister and one of his sister’s children, but I turned him down. When I did that I was terrified that he was going to kill me for saying no, because he had a nasty temper, and even though he accepted my choice with a disappointed frown I spent three months wondering if I was going to die that day. Eventually he told me to stop being an idiot, he wasn’t going to kill me simply for turning him down, it wasn’t like he was in love with me – he just thought I looked nice and it was time he made another child, because his brother already had eight.”

“Your creator was seriously having a contest with his brother to see how many humans he could change into vampires?” Kerry shook her head. “That’s awful.”

“When people have power they can change. A lot of vampires view themselves as being on the next step of the evolutionary ladder, they feed from humans therefore they are better than humans, and that belief has been passed down from one vampire to another since the first were created. If you believe Issac’s story, and I do, then they were transformed thanks to a doctor who was playing with blood magic to see if he could change a human into something more. Unfortunately he managed it.”

“Kerry, did you read that essay before you came here?”Georgina asked. “I know they have it on the website, but that doesn’t mean you actually looked at it, and some people think it’s a story that Issac made up to explain our existence.”

“Because they’ve never met a vampire who knew one of the first.” Jean-Luc shrugged. “Issac and I have.”
“I did actually.” Kerry bit her lip. “I’m afraid I was one of the people who thought it was nothing more than a story.”

“There was no way you could have known it wasn’t.” Jean-Luc reached over and squeezed her hand. “We aim to teach people here about vampires and that’s what we’re doing now, because we like you. You’re one of the few donors who’s walked in here totally unafraid, thanks to a vampire who went out of his way to help you, yet you’re still wary, as you know that there are also vampires out there who would have used you for your blood before tossing you out.”

“Luc…” Georgina sighed. “One thing you’ll have to understand about the lovely Luc is that he doesn’t have any idea what tact is.”

“Of course I do. It’s simply lying to someone nicely.” Jean-Luc raised an eyebrow. “I chose to be honest at all times and if that means I’m tactless then I’m very happy about it, thank you very much.”

Georgina shook her head, looking as though she’d had the same argument with Jean-Luc more than once and decided that she wasn’t going to have it again. “He is right. Most vampires don’t care about the humans that they’re feeding from, which has led to addicts being a major problem. The sad thing is that most addicts don’t want to change, even though they have a place to come now where they can get help, like Caleb did.”

“I had heard about Caleb, but I haven’t met him yet. From what was said I take it he isn’t have a very good day.” Kerry had no idea what it must be like for him, but she did sympathise as that could easily have been here in the same position if it hadn’t been for her good Samaritan. “Does that happen often?”

“Thankfully, no, but the rehabilitation process isn’t easy, especially for someone as addicted as Caleb was.” Jean-Luc shook his head. “He was purchased by a vampire who had stronger chemicals within her saliva than the majority and that meant, even though he wasn’t shared around in the way some addicts are, he needed to be fed from about once every two hours to begin with. I remember Nick sending out a plea to a number of vampires he knew to see if we could get some more regulars, because we needed the help, and thankfully it did work. Three days after he did that we had six new vampire arrivals on the same day, all of whom were willing to feed from Caleb. Fortunately we knew they were trustworthy, Nick wouldn’t have contacted them if he was worried, and they all continue to visit the House now, because they’ve become a part of the community.”

“Nick always wanted the House to become a community.” Georgina smiled. “He wanted it to be a place where vampires and humans could spend time together, learning from each other, because he believes that it’s just as important for vampires to be reminded of what it’s like to be mortal as it is for them to teach us about what it’s like to live for centuries.”

“Unfortunately this has had some unexpected problems.” Jean-Luc ran a hand through his hair. “By bringing the two species together like this people have done silly things like fall in love. It was always possible, but it seemed unlikely to begin with. Nick didn’t really believe that his idea was going to work. He still seems to think that the House might be closed down tomorrow and there’s nothing we can do to convince him otherwise, sadly. Even though he seems quite smitten with a donor who goes by the name of Morgan.”

“We don’t know that there’s anything going on between them.”

Kerry shook her head. “I thought that Nick was in love with Alice.”

“Being in love with one person doesn’t stop you from falling in love with someone else, Kerry.” Jean-Luc laughed. “You’ll find that there are quite a lot of polyamourous relationships within the vampire community. Nick and Alice are madly in love with each other – Nick is also falling in love with Morgie, even though he doesn’t want to admit it, and I’d put money on Ally being in love with Sam.”

“Alice can’t be in love with Sam?”

“Why? Because he’s a hunter? Because he’s a moron?” Jean-Luc shrugged. “Both of those things put me off him, even though if you squint he’s pretty cute, but Alice was the daughter of hunters and she’s already in a relationship with an idiot, so one more isn’t going to change things. It’ll take them longer than I’d like to realise that they can be with each other as well as Morgan and Sam, but I think they’ll be in a committed relationship before Morgan’s contract is up.”

As Georgina shook her head Kerry asked, “Isn’t it against the rules for a vampire to date a donor?”

“No, it’s against the rules for a vampire to date a donor they’re feeding from. I don’t think Nick has ever fed from Morgan, even though he spends more time in her room than he does in his own.” Jean-Luc shrugged again. “He’s a strange boy, is our Nick, but I wouldn’t ever want him to change.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> From what was said I take it he isn’t have a very good day.” <<

That should say "having" above.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

• there are too many people who are hiding her from dangerous vampires
? -> hiding here