Her Keeper – a Different Love Story
Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I just like to play with the characters. My thanks to Jaspersdoll for coming up with the title, and to my wonderful beta EdwardsMate4Ever.
This is a Jasper-Bella fiction. It takes place in current time. Vampires are in hiding but have a more structured society. They take human "pets" for food, and some humans are held in captivity to be bled for vampires. They bottle blood much like humans bottle beer, and this product is sold in the underground vampire clubs and bars. There are a number of "designer" blood labels. Bella's blood has been featured in a blend called "LaGuerra" and is the most popular designer bottled blood of this vampire black market.
I FOUND I WASN'T QUITE DONE WITH THIS COUPLE YET. After writing Jasper's line, "The truth is, even if Matthew Blake hadn't been bottling and settling your blood back in Montana, eventually I would have picked up your scent on one of my visits to his camp. It was only a matter of time before I found you." So…I thought what if he had found her while she was still at the camp? What would have happened then?
This story will be considerably shorter, and Crazy won't be in it.
Chapter 2-1 – Not Knowing
"Did you see her?" I asked the women returning to the barracks from their jobs in the main house.
They gave their usual response, shuffling uncomfortably and dropping their eyes before answering me. "No, we didn't," Betty finally said.
"Do you think she's still alive?" I asked, trying to read their expressions, knowing what I would find there.
"There's always a chance," came Millicent's firm voice from behind me. "Right, ladies?" I felt her hands on my shoulders as she spoke.
"Yes, of course," Betty replied softly but without conviction.
"They could have taken her to a regular hospital, right? If she was that sick?" I asked, trying to reassure myself.
Betty nodded tiredly, not meeting my eyes, and went to a corner to get something to eat.
It had been two years since I had seen my mother. She had been coughing and hadn't worked in several months, as she just hadn't had the strength. I watched her wasting away in front of me. I knew she thought she had lung cancer, but nobody knew what kind of treatment they would give her in a place like this. The guards made us roll up our sleeping mats every morning, so we would create a make shift pallet for her out of towels against the wall under the window.
They didn't like the fact we made her a bed, but finally they quit forcing us to give them the towels back. It didn't mean they ever let her keep a bed to lie on during the day, though.
The guards were always present. Watching us with their red eyes, and holding their electric cattle prods which they were quick to use if we did anything we weren't supposed to. We were never told the rules, but we soon figured out what would cause the guards to shock us. This included asking them questions or talking to them at all. They were always there, the vampires, just on the other side of the barred wall that formed one side of the room the twenty of us lived in. The other three walls of the walls were painted off-white, and the floor was concrete, with a drain in the center.
Twice a day we were allowed into the common bathrooms, which included shower rooms. During that time the floor was hosed down. It was always damp and cold when we made our way back into the room that we spent our lives in.
There was no furniture in this barrack-style place. I was told that there was furniture in the main house, which was visible from the barred windows, but I had never been there. I hadn't left this room since my mother brought me here after my birth, nearly 17 years ago.
As I drifted off to sleep that night, I could hear Betty and the other maids talking to Millicent. "You shouldn't encourage her," Betty told her. "It's not kind. It's been two years, and nobody's seen her in over thirteen months."
"Hope like hers takes courage and strength," Millicent replied.
Betty and the others didn't seem to have an answer for that, so they were silent.
And so were my tears, as they rolled down my face to dampen my flat pillow, just as they had done every night in the two years since my mother was taken away.
The next morning, after turning in my sleeping mat through the front bars, I returned to my place under the window. Millicent came over, bringing one of the books that were regularly brought over about once a month. She held it up, the colorful cover of a man and partially dressed woman on the front catching the light from the window.
"Did you finish this one?" she asked.
"No, I didn't really like it," I answered.
She laughed, turning over the cover, which featured a woman with her blouse artistically unbuttoned to show her cleavage, leaning back against a bare-chested man. "A bodice ripper. Yes, those were the days…"
I knew that talking about her former life perked her up, and I could get energy from her. I dropped my voice, as there was always danger if the guards knew we were talking about life outside. "Tell me again, how was it that they found you?"
She scrubbed her hands, reddened from scrubbing, over her face, looking down for a minute. "I used to be one of the attorneys for a small firm. Idealists, all of us. We met in law school." Here she paused, and her eyes drifted, a small smile flitting across her face. "We had some money, and we pooled it to start a firm that would 'help the little people,' as we thought. All ideals, all noble.
But one case put us against a client who was a cover for vampires. We had worked on it under great pressure for months. We initially thought the client had mafia connections. Maybe that would have been better, because I would have just been killed. Had my car blown up or something. Instead, I got a phone call, telling me if I wanted to know more, come to a location in Montana. It was shortly after I came across two names, Volturi and Cullen.
I had been researching the names, but only found links to money. A lot of money, and sometimes disappearances. When I got the call, the mysterious call from someone claiming to be one of the police officers who had worked on the case, I knew there was something wrong, but I went anyway.
I left my office in Chicago, caught a flight to Helene, Montana, and went to pick up a rental car at the airport. They intercepted me in the parking garage, brought me here, and I've been here ever since."
I remembered vaguely when she arrived. I had only been seven years old, but I still remembered, because she yelled, which we never do, and kept going to the bars. She was shocked repeatedly by the guards until she learned not to challenge them.
"But you, honey, you need to stay strong." Now she stopped vocalizing her words, talking silently to me, so that I had to read her lips. We could all lip-read, as we needed to in order to talk about anything without the guards knowing. "You remember what I told you about how to drive a car?"
I nodded. It was one of her constant lectures. If you get your hands on one of the cars that were always outside our cinderblock enclosure, you would have a chance at escape. We were sure that we could never outrun the vampires on foot, as they were fast, strong and silent. None of us knew much else about them, though. "You get in on the left side of the car," I told her, repeating her instructions, "the side where you see a large, spoked wheel above the seat. The gas is the pedal is on the floor on the right, and the brake is on the left. Start the car by pushing a button or turning a key, and push that gas pedal to the floor. Go straight to the end of the driveway and turn right."
This was what we practiced, what she rehearsed with all of us: what to do if we found a car. She had drilled the directions into us. To turn right at the end of the driveway, as the nearest town was to the north. The phone numbers and names of her attorney friends. They would help us, she kept telling us. We just had to get out.
The other women thought this talk was dangerous. It would get one of us killed.
"Hope is strong," Millicent kept telling me. "It takes real courage to hope. Have a plan if you can, but don't be afraid to act. You may only ever get one chance. Take it."
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