Sorry about this being somewhat on the late side. I came down with a bad, and somewhat unseasonal, cold. This pretty much equals no energy. Which means no chapter. I'm actually on Nyquil right now, so this may not be my best work...
Enjoy!
"Well, first you must breathe," Everett said.
"No shit, sherlock. Breathing is sort of what you do."
"Technically, you no longer have to breathe. And secondly, you only do it now for scent. Smell the air." He said all of this in a very hoity toity tone that made me want to kill him even more. No exaggeration. I truly did want to kill him for all he'd done.
"Well thank you for clarifying all of this. It would have been so inconvenient to tell me all of this when I first woke up," I snapped.
"There is a great amount of knowledge about our kind. I cannot simply impart it to you within a few moments. Now tell me if you smell anything nearby."
I glared at him, then did as he said and took in a deep breath through my nose. Everything was clear. I could smell the grass, the nearby woods, the feral smell of the animals, and something else, something astoundingly appetizing. Something so amazingly delicious I couldn't contain myself.
I sprinted across the field. Wind whipped through my hair and the distance flew under my fleet footsteps. I immediately came upon two figures. The aroma was coming from them. Both of them. A slightly different one from each.
I leapt into the air while running and landed upon the larger one. I latched onto it and sucked greedily, tearing it when it struggled. Eventually, it stopped struggling and lay still. This made it easier to drain.
I brought my head up. The thirst wasn't quenched. At all. I could smell the other one, though. It wasn't here. Where had it gone? I wanted it. I wanted it badly.
I took off in the direction it must have gone. I vaguely remembered some high-pitched sound coming from it while I drank. In only a few short seconds, I came upon it and tackled it to the ground, snarling. I drained it like I had the first.
Quenched, I looked around. Where was that no good son of a... Then it hit me. What I had done.
I looked down and saw a woman, perhaps in her thirties. An expression of horror was on her drained corpse. The truth slammed into me at ramming speed. I had killed her. And I had also killed what must have been her husband or boyfriend. Perhaps they were out for a walk. Never had they expected to be killed by a monster.
I dropped to my knees and dry sobbed. No tears came out, but a lot of guilt did. I couldn't even think about how to live with myself. I was a horrible excuse for a person. I was a monster. I was a creature of evil. Pure evil.
"It's always hard the first time," Everett commented. "It will get easier."
"Just because you're happy being a cold-blooded killer doesn't mean I am," I protested. He was directly behind me. I spun around and looked him straight in the eye.
"It's the natural order of things. Like a lion will eat an adorable baby deer, or a hawk will carry off a mouse, we feed on them because we outrank them on the food chain, so to speak. You ate hamburger as a human, I'm sure?"
"But cows aren't like people. They don't have thoughts and feelings."
"And compared to us, humans are like cows: stupid, unimaginative things."
I ignored him. I wasn't going to fight him. There was just one thing I had to do.
"When am I going to see Vitality?" I demanded.
"Well perhaps once you stop looking like a horror movie," he said. He eyed my shorts and t-shirt, now splattered with blood from both Amanda and the couple.
"What's it matter? I guarantee she's seen gore before. I was there." I glared like I'd never glared before. I hoped the red eyes made me seem even scarier.
"Walking around in clothing like that is a bad habit to get into. Humans tend to get suspicious. You'll learn how to feed neatly soon, though."
"I have to do this again?" I blurted.
"Of course. I've been saying it all day. It's as necessary as food and water were to you as a human."
"I'll argue later. My patience is wearing thin."
"Then follow me." he took off faster than the blink of an eye into a nearby copse of woods. I followed, not able to go nearly as fast, but keeping him in my line of vision.
He was standing still, holding out a pair of jeans and a white shirt. I hadn't even noticed him fetching them. It made me think that he'd got them while I was out and had stashed them somewhere.
I snatched them out of his hands and got behind a large pine tree. I changed hastily, sticking my old clothes in a shallow hole I dug within seconds. Everything fit, but that was no surprise. My eyesight had improved drastically. He'd probably been able to see what would fit very accurately.
"Now where?" I asked in an exasperated tone.
"You truly feel you can control yourself?"
"Yes!" I practically shrieked.
"That back there wasn't controlling yourself," he pointed out.
"Could you not remind me? I was just trying to get this over with. I do need to see her."
"Do anything to her and I will make sure you die a painful death," he said quietly, taking a step back.
"You've already done that to me," I said. "But she'll be safe."
"Good," he said. Then he ran for a few seconds, with me following behind. We probably had covered about a mile.
He'd spread a small blanket on the ground. On it was a baby. She was stretched out, sleeping. She was dressed in a small little pink dress. But this was not the baby from my memory.
Her hair was still perfectly on the line between blond and brown, but it was already past her chin. Her skin was about as pale as you ever see ordinary humans' go. A very light peachy shade, as opposed to chalky. She was bigger, easily twice her original size. She appeared to be around two or three months old.
"What the hell," I whispered in a voice unlikely to be heard by anything with less than perfect hearing. Hopefully that included Vitality.
"Did you expect her to stop growing at her previous rate because she was born?" he hissed back. Touche.
I could smell her. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as overpowering as the humans I had... Well, I could resist her. Nothing would ever make me hurt her like that. Amanda didn't die so that I could kill her child.
I tentatively knelt down and smoothed the hair out of her face. Still exquisitely beautiful, but I was sure I could see Amanda in her. Especially once she opened her eyes.
She opened her eyes a few moments after my touch had woken her and yawned. It was perhaps the most adorable thing I had ever seen.
Her gaze met mine. It was pensive, and then a recognition stirred in those bright eyes. It wasn't slow, like a child's. It was adult. She looked so wise.
She stretched her arms up to me and gave a brilliant smile. There was nothing else to do but bend down and cradle her softly, as only a vampire could. She felt very warm, against my cold, hard skin. She didn't seem to care though, as she snuggled into me.
I looked down at her sweet face, matched by her knowing eyes. I knew exactly what I had to do. What Amanda would want me to do. I looked up at Everett and hugged her closer.
"We're leaving," I said loudly and clearly. Then I turned around and took a few steps away.
A feral snarl made me stop dead in my tracks. He was right in front of me, his red eyes blazing, his stance light, as though he was about to leap at me.
"I'm not going to have her around here," I said. "This isn't what she'd want."
"What she would want doesn't matter. She's gone. That baby isn't her. My daughter won't bring your friend back."
"Regardless, she can't grow up here," I insisted. Vitality had sat up, and was looking back and forth between us anxiously.
"You think you'd be the better option? You're a seventeen year old girl and a vampire only a few hours old."
"Better than you!"
"You think you're better than me, don't you?" He straightened up and looked at me haughtily. "I saw how eagerly you killed those humans. You enjoyed it. You can call me a murderer, but you are one too."
"I killed because I couldn't help it! It's your fault for turning me into this!"
"And my killing is the fault of the vampire who turned me. I'm no worse than you."
"You raped and killed a girl! That wasn't instinct! That was you. You and your murderous schemes!"
"That was necessary," he said quietly.
"Necessary? For what? This innocent little girl? She has to live with the fact that she killed her mother for every day of her life. This wasn't some stupid circle of life thing. You did it consciously. Amanda had to pay for it, and now Vitality will."
"You could never possibly understand. Vitality, as you call her, is essential. You have no idea what I have been through!" His voice rose dangerously. Vitality hid her face in my shoulder.
"In the movie, this is where you explain your plot to rule the world," I said sarcastically. "Essential? Are you kidding me?"
"No, I don't have any master plots. Maya, this is something that can only be understood by one who has loved and lost." He looked incredibly pained. Like someone was physically torturing him, which I knew to be untrue.
"Is better than never to have loved at all?" I questioned. That was Tennyson, wasn't it?
"Exactly my point. One who knows loss knows that it would have been better to never have felt love."
"Explain," I demanded flatly. He wasn't making sense.
He sighed deeply. "I had a family once. A wife and daughter."
"But you're so young!" I exclaimed.
"I'm twenty years old, physically, and was married at nineteen. I was rather young, but nothing unusual."
"Nothing unusual? That's crazily young to get married!"
"Not in 1886. Would you like the full story or not?" he asked.
I nodded.
"I was born in 1867 on a farm outside a small town in New Hampshire. You definitely haven't heard of it, so I'm not going to bother you with names.
"I had your everyday education. I finished high school and met what would become my future bride. She was pretty, nothing like yourself, of course. But she was sweet and quiet, and when I asked her to marry me, she agreed. I loved her," he trailed off. He said all of this without much emotion, as if it had happened to another person, long ago. It was in stark contrast with his face
"Soon after, we found out we were expecting a child. She was born in 1887. When a coven of vampires came into our home shortly after, looking for their next meal, I tried to fight them off, but I failed. Both of them were killed, and I was changed." He fell silent.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask, so many details he had left out, so much pain underneath his emotionless recitation. But I think I finally understood, at least a little. Enough to say what I was about to tell him.
"Everett, we'll stay."
