Chapter 12- Lectures from Max
"David, I'm concerned about you and this girl. The human girl," said Max to David in the back of the video store.
David looked up at Max and leaned back onto the boxes in the storage room.
"She's living with you now so you have given yourself two options. Option one is the most obvious: kill her. That shouldn't be a problem. You do it every night, for God's sake! Option two would be to turn her, to bring her into the family as your mate," said Max. Max was very old. He used words like 'mate' for vampire lovers instead of 'girlfriend', as David would have used. David was not so old. He was born in the 1833, turned in 1853.
"But—" said David.
"But she doesn't even know the truth yet. You've really backed yourself into a corner on that one, my boy. You've said it outright. 'We are not vampires.' She's going to call you a liar, you know. She'll be right to do so."
"She'll what?" asked David.
"She'll be right. I'm not objecting to you keeping a woman, David, or taking a bride or any of that, but really, David… she's been living with you for a month now. She does your laundry," he laughed here, "scarce as it may be—I know you like to wear your clothes for weeks. I see her hauling it past here on the way to the Laundromat. Regardless, it seems like serious relationship, and not telling your serious girlfriend that you are a vampire is just not good manners," said Max.
David laughed. Manners. Max was not only old, he acted like an old guy too.
"And I'm worried about her mental state, too. You keep changing things around in her brain, eventually things are going to get messed up in there. You just can't keep making her think and do what you want her to. She could become schizophrenic or develop multiple personalities. David," Max admonished, looking him in the eye. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, David. You've got to tell her and turn her, or simply kill her. Listen, time is what we have the most of so I'll give you a month. Bring her to me on the twenty-first of June as a vampire or a corpse or I will have to assume that you want her dead and couldn't do it yourself… so I will find her and I will kill her in your stead."
David didn't know what he was going to do. He wanted to turn her, but this is how it went with Isabel… once she was turned she left. "Can't I just set her free?" he asked.
"Oh, David, you make her sound like she's your prisoner or pet. In a way maybe she is your pet, but no, you can't. If she figures it out afterwards… Santa Carla could be crawling with Hunters by the next sundown. Hell hat no fury like a woman scorned, eh?" said Max.
He was so fatherly to David sometimes. It almost annoyed him because he never saw him otherwise, but Max was the head vampire and David was bound to him. Max let them live and hunt in Santa Carla in return for loyalty. It was a simple relationship, but at times like these it got complicated.
"The twenty-first, remember?" said Max and David was leaving out the back door.
David nodded and smiled.