Chapter Three

Jasper

Where too now? I had no goals, no purpose, I was just wandering aimlessly hunting only when I couldn't bear the thirst any longer. I knew many vampires lived this way as nomads, with no base, no home, nothing but the things in their pockets, but I wanted more than this, I needed a place to settle, a home of some kind. I wandered into the mountains, uncaring of the cold and snow and came across an old, half derelict, hunting cabin that had long since been abandoned. It gave me an idea and I set to work rebuilding it using timber already scattered around. It was small, just an open living kitchen and a bedroom with an outhouse toilet, not that it would bother me. There was a huge storage area underneath where I found old rusty tools and equipment long ago discarded including a tin hip bath that would do me. I patched the roof and reinforced the walls, using tools I'd rescued from rust and neglect. I built a new door and when the thaw came found plenty of stones around to mend the crumbling fireplace. All it needed was some furniture but first I needed to make the place legally mine. Finding out who owned it took some time reading through land deeds but eventually I traced the present owner, an elderly man who had been a hunter in his day but now lived with his daughter in a town about a hundred miles away. I rang and made an appointment to visit explaining I was looking for a plot of land and wondered if he wanted to sell. I took some pictures of the work I'd done on the cabin so he knew I was genuine and made my way there.

I had nothing, no papers, no money, no clothes except a spare change in a rucksack that Peter had given me and the name of a lawyer he had found who did shady deals on the side. To get papers I needed money, to get money I needed a job of some kind, to get a job I needed papers, it was a vicious circle. I stopped off for a few days to labor on a farm and made enough to buy a new outfit, smarter than the one I usually wore. I needed a good deal of cash quickly and was left with no alternative but to steal some. A bank would be great but the security was tight and I wouldn't have much time so I watched one of the larger ones in the town where I was working and discovered there was a better way. The security firm who collected the money from the bank drove along the same set of routes and one was very quiet for about two miles so I lay in wait and ambushed the truck, a huge log blocking the road ahead and me blocking it from behind with another. The truck was stuck and while the guys inside radioed for help I ripped the doors off the back and helped myself to three of the steel boxes full of cash, ripping them open and scattering the money on the floor before the dye pack had time to go off. The only thing covered was me and the dye couldn't stick to my cold hard flesh and ran off in a few minutes. The money went into my rucksack and I was gone before anyone turned up. I didn't try to spend it, that would have been dangerous. Instead I looked up Peters lawyer friend and he arranged disposal and fresh money to replace it. I took half, the other he invested for me, for a reasonable fee, too scared to try to rip me off. Peter had put the fear of god in him already which made things less complicated for me.

The old man was more than happy to sell the cabin, pleased with what I'd done to show him I wanted to restore it. I paid what he asked plus a little extra, they weren't well off and it pleased me to help a human just for a change. Within six months I had the cabin as I wanted it, furnished to my taste, a book-case in one corner and a fire burning constantly, not for its heat but the comfort it gave me, it felt warm and secure like a home should be. The smell of the logs burning on the hearth reminding me of my days as a boy, sitting by the fire and reading or playing with my wooden animals as my mother darned clothes or made preserves. It was a life I could never have back, only the memories and those were misty. The best thing about my cabin was the peace, no newborns, no screams, no smell of blood being spilled, it was a haven and I stayed here quietly with just myself and my dreams for company. I imagined I had a wife and sons of my own. People who loved me, people I loved and would protect and provide for. If a man didn't have this to strive for then what did he have? That was the question that tormented me, what did I have to strive for? What goal could I set myself? What could I do to make my life mean something? They were questions I struggled with but never came up with an answer and eventually I found that the horror I had found peace from had followed me, inside my head. I couldn't run from it for long before it came back so I shut up the cabin and went off in search of a new distraction to fill my mind and push the horror out.

I was headed north although I had no idea why, I guess having a direction was good but really it mattered little to me what the next town or city was called, none of them held anything for me, I was an outcast, unable to show myself in the sun for fear of exposure. On the road one day I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see a beautiful female vampire running to catch up with me. She had long blonde hair and full lips, her body wasn't petite like Charlotte but voluptuous and my body reacted like any mans.

"Can i travel with you for a while? I'm tired of my own company"

That's how it started, the first relationship I had in my vampire life that meant anything. Daisy was a Mississippi girl who had been changed when she was seventeen, about fifty years ago, and been left alone when her maker was killed by a nomad who felt Danny, her maker, was muscling in on his temporary territory. She thought this new vampire might take her with him but he had just vanished into the night leaving her alone and she'd been that way ever since. Looking for companionship she didn't ask any questions of me except where I was headed and when I told her I didn't know she looked at me strangely,

"So you're just a wanderer?"

"That's right but you are welcome to wander with me."

She became my companion, we talked and hunted and traveled together but we never had sex. She always seemed distant when the topic came up and I guess I was relieved in a way, much as I wanted her, wanted a woman so badly I could taste it, I wasn't sure that any woman would stick around after seeing my scars. My legacy from Maria, hundreds of bite scars covered my body from newborn fights, every scar like a notch on a belt, each one the last action of a dying man or woman. I knew she'd seen the few that were revealed where my shirt didn't cover, my neck and the back of one hand. For the same reason I never stripped in front of her but went alone to bathe, feeling an outcast even among my own breed. We wandered in company for almost a year before one day she simply walked away and never returned. I waited a few days but there was no sign of her then I found the note she'd hidden in my rucksack.

"Sorry I have to leave but my time is fast coming to an end and it isn't time for you yet. I know you are a lost soul, hurting and confused but don't give up hope. The reason you wander aimlessly as you do is that your mate, yes you will have one, has yet to become. Either she is not born or changed yet but she will come. Don't give up hope Jazz, you are too good a man despite all you have endured. Follow your instincts and they will lead you to her eventually, though through dark and dangerous waters. I see your place beside a very unusual woman, Thank you for offering your companionship. For now go back to your friends and rest a while in company.

Daisy x"

So, was she a seer? Did she see the future? Did she have a way of telling what I would do with my life or was she just a strange young girl trying to give me some comfort as she left? I had no way of knowing but I folded her note and put it in my pocket where it stayed and whenever life became too hard to endure, my way too weary, I would take it out and read her words and they would give me comfort.

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