"But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet." -C.S. Lewis
Three
Laurent was dead. I'm not really sure if Mum said so or not, but I knew it was true. He left for months at a time, yes, but this was different. It was if he had been tied to me with the thinnest of thread, and someone had cut it off. There was no more tugging. There was an absence.
I decided early on that I liked cities. Even the abandoned places had more life than caves and rotting cabins. When Mum was gone I could catch and eat the rats for run, and I could run up and down the rusty staircase until one of the stairs broke and fell to the dusty concrete with a satisfying clang. Light filtered through the nasty, broken windows every hour of the day, and if I sat near I could read. Oh, and there was so much to read! I found an Archie comic, two old newspapers, and a weird magazine where all the girls didn't have clothes on. I left that one where I found it.
Mum would be gone a lot, but I could hear planes and sometimes cars and sirens. Plus, no scary bears. For once I didn't mind being alone for small periods of time, because I never really felt alone.
I was reading by the window light at night when I heard the door creak and I scrambled to hide in the shadows, just like Mum told me to. I clutched the Archie comic against my chest.
"Meredith!" Mum called, dragging something behind her. I dropped the comic and skipped out to meet her. When I got closer I realized she was dragging a boy.
"This is Riley." She said, dropping him. Riley was screaming into the duct tape around him mouth and thrashing against his duct tape restraints.
"Watch over him, okay Meredith? If he tried to leave, stab one of his legs with this." Mum said, and then handed me a rusty knife.
"Okay," I said, taking the knife. Mum headed back towards the door.
"Can I eat him?" I called out. Mum stopped for a second.
"No. I'll bring you something else a bit later."
Mum left, leaving Riley thrashing around on the floor. He had a gash around his neck from where Mum bit him. It smelled good, like peaches…
He wiggled and tried to hit me but I backed up. He collapsed back to the concrete, his screams muffled as his body jerked.
I left him in the middle of the abandoned warehouse and grabbed my book. Whenever he wiggled to far from the middle, I dragged him back to where Mum left him. It was hard work- he was pretty heavy for a six-year-old.
Mum came back only a few hours later, dragging in a girl. In her other hand she had a brown bag with dark splotches.
Mum dropped the girl a few feet from the boy, and then dropped the bag in front of me. Few soggy French fries escaped the bag to be coated with grime on the floor.
"I'm going to hunt. You three be good now," Mum said, giving my head a pat before she left the building for the rest of the night, leaving me with the two screaming strangers.
Mum stayed in the building all day with Riley and Catherine. She told them about the evil yellow-eyed coven, and said some things that I knew weren't true. Riley liked to sit really close to Mum, and he snapped at me when I came near.
Catherine tried to bite me, so Mum ripped off all her limbs to teach her a lesson. After Catherine promised to be good, Mum dumped her torso in a pile with her limbs and let her put herself back together.
Riley came over and patted my head, so I hissed at him.
"Meredith, be nice to Riley."
Riley smirked at me and I stuck out my tongue when Mum had her back turned.
Mum left me with Riley a lot. She took the other newborns in and out, but she brought food to Riley and never killed him, like she did with some of the others. She brought me food too, usually human food, but sometimes if Riley was in a good mood, he'd let me finish off one of his humans.
"Got something there, Merry." He said, wiping the blood from my chin.
"That was good." I said breathlessly, and he laughed. The thirst inside me was quenched, finally, by more than a few unlucky rats.
Riley wasn't so bad, although he could be annoying when Mum was around. She kissed him a lot, and put her hand down his pants when the other vampires weren't in the room.
"When this is over, we'll go wherever you want, love," Mum said to him one night.
"Just our sweet little family," he murmured back, and then I heard them make kissy noises, so I tried to listen to something else.
When Mum wasn't around I had to follow Riley everywhere so that no one would bite me. Riley made the newborns fight each other for 'practice'. Sometimes he let them kill eachother, even allowing them to start fires in the building. The fires made me cough.
Mum always had crazy eyes, even when she looked at Riley. She talked about the yellow-eyed people, the Cullens, and wolves.
One evening I woke up and Mum was getting dressed. All the newborns were waiting, perfectly still.
"We'll be back later, Meredith. Stay here." Mum said, and leaned down to kiss my forehead. It was such a normal moment, I tried to convince myself that she didn't have the crazy eyes.
"Bye Mum." I said, and watched her and the newborns head out.
I felt the tug, like Uncle Laurent's string, but this time it felt like Mum.
I stood up and found the cream sweater Irina gave me.
Just this once, I had to go. I had to investigate.