The Twilight Twenty-Five
thetwilight25[dot]livejournal[dot]com
Prompt: #2 Acquiesce
Pen name: klutz82
Pairing: Jasper/Maria
Rating: PG-13
Photos for prompts 1, 7, 13, 19, & 25 can be found here:
community[dot]livejournal[dot]com/thetwilight25/16325[dot]html
Note: There is some Spanish. It was translated by Google translate, so I'm sure something is wrong.
Sorry to those who can speak the language. I hope it's not too bad.
The translations are at the end.
It was June 1866.
After gathering my wits about me, I took the chance to slip out from the farm we took over for base of operations. I thought I had gone unnoticed, but later I found that wasn't the case. Maria, as I would come to know her, caught everything. Because of my new talents, it only took a matter of minutes instead of hours to figure out where I was.
However, the town isn't important; the distance is. I was on the other side of Texas, the west side, a good couple of day's ride for a human even if that was all he did. I knew it wouldn't take me that long, but I also knew I was fighting against the sun. Even though I was mostly kept in a barn or a small house for as long as I existed as this unsettling creature, sunlight did find a way to kiss my skin. The result was a sparkle brighter than anything I had ever seen before.
There have only been two "things" in my life that have sparkled brighter, and, I must say, that is hard to accomplish with my eyes being as keen as they are.
But I digress...
I couldn't travel in the unavoidable Texan sun. Better yet, I didn't want to travel during the day. It wasn't because of getting caught. I already knew how tough my skin was, how easily my fingers crushed the world around me, but I still had yet to discover how life treated me.
Because Maria and her comrades were anything but life.
So, without wasting the more than the hour I already spent sitting as still as the rock I was on, I ran east.
I ran toward my past.
I was more than halfway there when the sun started to come over the horizon. I slowed down as I came up to a farm. Anyone who was standing in the middle of a pasture a hundred yards away could hear the animals still in the barn. My ears picked up one human walking on straw. Another human was walking on wooden planks and banging a cast iron pot. At that moment, I made the number one mistake of staying off the grid as a vampire: I took a deep breath and tasted the air.
The animal blood got to me first. The overlying scent was the same, metallic and musty, but there was a putrid decay that sat on every one of them, but the lone human in the mix... There was something sweet, something inviting that every human held but never knew about. My eyes were closed, and the sun was now trying to warm the pieces of my chest that shown through the tears in my shirt, but all I could think about was the two humans going about their morning routine.
At that moment, I thought about nothing more than food. I hadn't eaten for a few days. Maria liked to tease us with little morsels of food every so often so we'd fight over it, thus killing the weakest of us. Once again, I learned the reason for this later.
Without a further thought, I bounded toward the barn. The animals reacted before I tore the barn door back ran to the other side of the structure. To my annoyance, the farmer was trampled in the resulting stampede; I wanted to be the first one to draw blood. Nevertheless, I did drain my main meal before my sweet treat called outside about the commotion.
I still remember how a female's blood tastes: sweet as honeysuckle in its peak. The farmer's wife was no exception.
She put up a fight and tried to scratch at a face that was already scarred, none of which did any good. By the time the last bits of sun came out from hiding, I had finished her off and was sitting in comfortable darkness inside their quaint house filled with trinkets that reminded me of home.
Not needing the skills to act human at that time, I sat in their living room as still as their furniture watching nothing but a slight breeze on the trees and shrubs. When twilight hit, I finally stirred, bursting from the house as fast I could. For the first time since I woke up craving blood, I was lonely and longed for a familiar face. At that time, I hadn't taken the time to think about what I was going to do once I finally made it home. All I thought about was my young sister, not even old enough to think about a man's presence, my younger brother, a soldier not unlike myself, my older sister, a mother, and my parents, hard working people who knew hardships long before the war.
It barely took half the night to get there. Immediately after I saw the group of Judas trees along the side of the road, the same ones that, in the spring, flowered a deep pinkish purple, I sped up. Those trees signified the start of the Whitlock property, the property I was supposed to inherit as soon as I married.
The two story simple farmhouse seemed to pop out nowhere, much like the scent of stale blood.
The happiness I was beginning to feel started crashing down around me and despair took its place. No, they couldn't be. Who did it? Why would they...? Even young Mary? And why is...?
I stopped before my feet touched the wooden step of the front porch. I didn't even know a vampire could feel sick until that moment - I thought we were invincible - but so much venom pooled into my mouth that swallowing it burned my throat then swirled in my stomach, not unlike the moonshine I drank only days before I changed.
"Mira que tenemos aquí," a woman with a thick Spanish accent said as the squeak of the door announced her arrival.
This was the moment I realized Maria knew about everything concerning those in her army.
"Why..." I started out lamely.
"Tell me, what were you going to do when you met them, mi amor."
I stood mute, the question I never thought of ringing in my ears. After years of thinking about it, I think I would have watched them sleep and tried to remember some of the memories which had started to fade by then. I wasn't fully satisfied by the meal previously, so my hunger would have gotten the better of me, and I fully believed that until later in my travels when I allowed a little hope to grace my harsh edges.
"Exactamente."
She walked down the two stairs and over to me. Our eyes never left each other. Even when she floated to my left and softly ran her fingers up that arm to rest on my shoulder my eyes continued to move with her. When she pressed her body against my back, I froze. I didn't even flinch when she placed her lips against my jaw and whispered, "Ahora eres todo mío, mi amor."
"No soy tu amor," I said, catching lust that wasn't mine, the first glimpse into the power that would eventually drive me mad.
"No, not yet. But think of all we can do together."
"Why would I want to be tied to you?"
"¡Oh, tú me la herida!" She laughed "Tied to me, you will reap the benefits. You won't have to fight for food or your life, and you'll be second in command and get anything your corazoncito wants."
She placed a small kiss on my neck and walked away, her derisive laugh bouncing through the air. "I'll come back later. Le sugiero que quedarse fuera y recordar que con el color."
There is no official record of my death because I didn't officially have one, but Death did arrive on the doorstep of my home in June 1866 in the form of a beautiful Mexican vampire with an offer I reluctantly accepted trailing behind her deliberate and graceful steps.
Translations from Google Translate
Mira que tenemos aquí. - Look who we have here.
Exactamente. - Exactly.
Ahora eres todo mío, mi amor. - Now you are all mine, my love.
No soy tu amor. - I am not your love.
¡Oh, tú me la herida! - Oh, you wound me!
Corazoncito - Little heart
Le sugiero que quedarse fuera y recordar que con el color. - I suggest you stay inside and remember them with color.