Title : 1913 - Gulfport
Rating : PG
Translator : Cybèle
Characters : Jasper (a bit of Peter/Charlotte)
Summary : Jasper arrives in a new town with his two companions, and his self-control is still VERY limited.
Note : We don't have "editor" for the corrections, so, sorry for the faults
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1913 – Gulfport.
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It was a bad idea. No. A VERY bad idea.
Two days since we settled down in a shabby, 5$-per-night hotel. The tiny room I stayed in had a wallpaper covered in various kinds of dubious spots. I didn't want to know where they came from but, unfortunately, my sense of smell revealed it. Peter and Charlotte rent a room next to mine, with a view on the ocean, just as pitiful but large enough for a couple.
We had landed up in that town by chance, because we needed time to find a new belt for our Ford T, that had decided to break there. In my opinion, it would have been better to buy a new car, but Charlotte was attached to that one - God knows why.
Our last hunt dated back to barely 15 hours earlier. I still had on my tongue the bitter taste of the man. My conscience kept tormenting me painfully after each dead body I left behind. Although that rapist deserved it...definitely, I wasn't worth better than him.
Around 6 pm, the sky started becoming overcast by a thick layer of gray clouds. Peter, Charlotte, and I decided to go to town in the search of a belt. Well...they decided to go, and I decided to accompany them.
What was I thinking, asking to go with them? Wandering in town was madness and agony. Those smells, those humans, all those temptations... I should have turned and gone back to hole up, like a prey running from its predator, in my seedy hotel room. Might as well put a ravenous lion in a circus full of victims. But I hated being alone. And even though Peter and Charlotte were killers like me, I like to spend time with them. The love they felt for each other succeeded in soothing me.
"Jasper?"
Charlotte grabbed one of my wrists and smiled at me with kindness...or pity. I didn't know.
"Listen, Peter and I will enter that shop for the car," she told me with her sweetest voice. "If you want, you can stay outside and wait for us. We know that enclosed places full of human scents are not easy for you to deal with."
She smiled again. Peter put a hand on my shoulder and gave me the same kind of magnanimous smile. How I hated that smile!
"Very well," I said. "I'm waiting outside."
And they left me with my sad situation, disappearing as the do-it-yourself shop's door chime rang.
Alone. I looked up at the sky. The clouds seemed bigger and bigger.
I started walking aimlessly, still not breathing. My feet led me to a small public garden, 200 yards away from the shop. Children and families had gathered there, enjoying the swings, the trees, water basins and sandpits before the weather change. A mother humming while rocking her child in a shiny new blue baby carriage; a little red-haired boy, aged four, in a mariner blouse, playing in the sand with his bucket, watched by his nanny; in back view, a girl about 10 years old, with long, untied dark hair, standing still in the middle of the park; another girl, 8 years old, with never-ending blonde curls, crying for her parents because of she had sand in her eyes... I leaned on a varnished wood barrier and watched the scene from a distance of about a hundred feet.
How many easy preys! I thought, smiling in spite of myself. "First the kids, then the nannies, the parents, the witnesses..."
Two minutes would be enough. Three at most.
The wind rose, lashing my face, bringing my way the scents of the ocean and those, so sweet, of the humans around – fresh blood melted with cotton, detergent, talcum powder, the nanny's cheap perfume...
My nostrils dilated and a shiver ran down my spine. That scent... I had never smelled anything like it in my whole immortal life! A perfect mix of cinnamon and sweet blood. A real candy.
I immediately stopped breathing. In vain. The venom was already flooding to fill my mouth; my eyes were becoming bloodshot, my conscience vanished in that perfume and the mere thought of tasting that thick, red liquid made me quiver with excitement. My fingers grabbed the barrier I was leaning on, sinking in it as if it was made of butter until it broke and crumbled in a pile of dry twigs.
I search with my eyes the source of my torture and quickly found it – the girl with the dark hair... How could a scent like that exist?
Standing with her back to me, motionless among the other children who fluttered around her, she remained still and straight as a poker in her little black cloak. The read-haired boy unintentionally threw sand on her perfectly polished shoes. Yet, unperturbed, she stayed in her own world, her short breath and her wild heartbeat reaching my ear.
It would be...so easy...to drink her blood, I thought while licking the corners of my lips.
Again, the wind blew. Again, that scent...
Eyes fixed on her back, I saw her whole body shaking, her limbs moving eventually.
"My shoes!" she cried, turning to the red-haired.
I could see her face at last. She looks like a porcelain doll. So easy to break...
That scent was...unimaginable. My inner bloodsucker was waiting for that only – an orgy of hemoglobin.
It'll be so quick she won't...
Then her eyes met mine and stared. The normal reflex should have been to look away and hide my blood red orbs, as every time a human eye fell on me. But...nothing. I didn't move. Two big black eyes were pinned to my scarlet irises.
I concentrated on that girl, searching for the tiniest feeling of fear coming from her, but the only thing I perceived was...cheerfulness?
Her pupils still emerged in mine, she slowly moved her hands up, reaching for the back of her neck to put her cloak's hood on her long, black hair. Why couldn't I get my eyes off that girl? Her scent, of course, but...there was something else that perturbed and disturbed me, while fascinating me. No! Her scent. It could only be her scent.
On the top of my head, I felt a small, cold drop. Then another. One more. And again. A downpour was slowly starting. A little summer shower. I didn't pay any attention to it, as I ignored the agitation of the mothers getting into a flap about the rain and the nannies asking the children to put their hoods on. With my ruby-colored eyes emerged on an ocean of ebony, I had become a statue of salt.
She was smiling. She didn't stop smiling, still as joyous as before. She had a beautiful smile.
No human can make a vampire so weak... It's...impossible! I tried to convinced myself.
I had forgotten about Charlotte and Peter, about the rapist I had killed in the morning, about the rain that glued my clothes to my chest. I didn't see anything but that pair of black pupils in which I wanted to drown.
She was sent by the Volturi, I thought. Or maybe by the devil? It almost came down to the same thing.
The garden was now empty. All that was left were that smiling girl protected by her hood, me and the rain. The idea of turning her into a vampire crossed my mind, but creating immortal children was forbidden. It would lead to my death...and hers.
Hers!?
I caught myself caring for the well-being of a human. She was...subjugating me, literally. I wanted to...possess her, not to drink her blood or to make her be my toy or a vampire but for...something more important. It was a need. An instinct. Had she asked me to get on my knees before her, I would have done it.
How was it possible? It didn't make sense!
Who was she?
I had to know. I let go of the totally dismantled barrier and took a step in her direction. She didn't move. Another step. She still didn't move. Another step...
A hand grabbed my sleeve and dragged me out of that sweet ebony sea.
"Jasper! What are you doing?" Peter growled.
He looked furious – I say "looked" because all the attention I had was still focused on the human girl.
"I knew he wouldn't make it," Charlotte went on.
Peter replied some uninteresting thing and I watched above his shoulder the little creature who reduced me to the state of dislocated puppet. I saw someone coming closer to the young doll – a girl with the same dark hair, the same skin and the same cloak, but a few years older. Probably her sister... The tallest one grabbed the smallest by the arm and shook her. I pricked up my ears.
"Come on, Mary Al!"
Mary Al...
"If you stay in the rain, you'll catch a bad cold and ruin our holidays. It's not what you want, is it?" she said angrily. "My word! Mom's right – you're crazy..."
My jaw clenched. I don't know why, but that last sentence annoyed me.
The small and the big black cloaks started to walk away and eventually disappeared behind a large oak. I was free again – my limbs obeyed me, just like my pupils who finally met those of my two companions of fortune.
"Come on, Jasper," Peter told me. "We go back to the hotel then we leave this place."
"Yes, we leave Mississippi," Charlotte concluded.
Leaving that town, that state – the best idea I'd heard in a long time.
Yet...that cheerfulness that I had just felt... I missed it already.