Attempt

Of Innocence

Prologue

An eight year old Ava stood in her expensive bedroom, glaring at herself in the mirror. She hated it when her mummy and daddy would do stupid stuff like what they did today. It was her birthday, all she wanted was a new outfit for her doll but instead she had got a TV, computer, dolly's and anything else any little girl dreamed of having. Life was so unfair. She tugged the fairy dress, which she was wearing, causing a rip to appear around her middle and the bottom of the dress to hang off!

The spoilt girl wanted to make a statement to her mummy to express her disappointment, but the sad thing was she knew she wouldn't get told off. The worst thing to come of ripping her new designer dress would be a new one, sent by first class the next day. If she was lucky then she would also get the famous few words of sympathy from her mother about how disappointed she must be to accidentally spoil her new dress on her birthday. Ava's mum never understood that she was a different person and wanted different stuff then her mother had when she was her age.

Ava didn't hear the stranger downstairs. Nor did she hear her mother's cries or her father's stern voice, signifying a business proposal was being made with the visitor. What Ava didn't realise was an agreement had been signed, when she was older she would be passed on to this stranger, to marry him and become like him…

Ava soon gave up on practising her evil looks and dived on her king-sized bed, retrieving the dolly from under her pillow. As she lay there, bathed in perfect silence she heard the back door open. Immediately the little girl jumped up and pressed her nose to the glass door in her room which led out to the balcony.

She had always been intrigued by her father's business partners. They looked pretty, like her dolly which she squeezed tightly in her left hand.

The stranger had yet to turn around to face Ava but he heard the blood coursing through her veins and the short breaths she was taking. He knew that Ava would be stood next to the door with her nose squished up against the glass and clutching that stupid old dolly, but he still didn't turn around to face his future wife.

Ava didn't understand why so much apprehension was pulsing through her body. It was only one of her father's business partners, right? She trusted her father's judgement on people.

At that point the stranger turned around to face Ava, forcing her to let out a gasp of breath she hadn't realised she had been holding. He was beautiful. This person could outshine her dolly any day.

Absentmindedly Ava threw her poor dolly away from her. Internally the dolly was screaming at Ava, this stranger was dangerous it was wrong for Ava to prefer him, to choose him after years of attachment to her dolly. But the dolly's pleas went unanswered as her porcelain face smashed against the wall and she fell abandoned behind Ava's bed.

Ava didn't even flinch at the sound of the desperate doll shattering. She still stood entranced, gazing at the strange man stood in her mother's rose beds. As she watched, he elegantly stooped down and snapped up a rose from among the bed, before letting it go and watching it flow in the wind.

Her first crush. It would have been sweet if the stranger hadn't been a vampire. Who had decided his purpose would be to change Ava so she could become his eternal partner.

"AVA!"

Her name reverberated from all the walls as it left her mother's mouth. Ruining the peaceful silence and breaking the spell the vampire seemed to have over her.

"Coming!"

The second she took to glance at her door and yell this word, was the second it took for the vampire to flee.

Ava's mother would think the vampire had changed his mind and wouldn't be coming for her only child, while her father would spend the next eight years living in uncertainty, waiting for his daughter to disappear.

You would have thought Ava would have forgotten about the mysterious man and would grow up believing it was just a weirdo who stood in the rose bed. But she couldn't forget and she wouldn't believe as every night when she went to bed she would dream of this stranger who once stood in her mother's rose beds. Waiting for him to return for her.