"Jack!" A young woman with emerald hair came flying out of the house. She looked a few years older than Jack, so Elsa guessed that she was probably his older sister.
The hunk of a man that was called 'Bunny' had gotten out of his car seat, so Elsa followed suit and pushed the door open, climbing out to see. The man had gone over to the other side of the car to help the boy writhing in agony undo his seatbelt. Scooping the lad up from his seat, into his muscular arms, he carried him up the porch of the massive mansion that she could only assume to be the Guardian home.
"What happened?" the emerald hair lady was asking the man.
"Garlic," was the short response, and that was all that the woman needed to hear. Elsa surprised at that moment when she saw the thin, delicate young man take Jack from the arms of the man into her own with breaking a sweat.
Her expression was then noted by the woman, who had only just spotted her for. The woman, who with her light brown-skin, delicate hands and bright violet eyes was actually very beautiful, then murmured to her brother - at least, Elsa thought they were related. Maybe the two of them were a couple. She couldn't really tell -, asking, "Who's this?"
"She was with Jack when it happened," he answered, but from his manner, Elsa couldn't help but feel as if he was deliberately leaving out some information – information that could not be revealed to strangers.
"Well, I'll get him inside," the woman said, moving towards the house while adjusting her grip on the suffering boy. Elsa felt a pang of sympathy for him. He was annoying at times, yes, but he really seemed to be in pain.
The fellow labelled 'Bunny' on Jack's phone was about to enter the house too, but paused when his gaze rested on Elsa. Initially, she had intended to walk home on her own. She was an independent young woman, after all. But Jack's brother – at least, she thought he was his brother - had insisted that a young lady shouldn't be walking home alone at night. A tad old-fashioned way thinking, but she relented to his pleas.
He then jerked his head towards the car. "Get in, shiela."
It took her a while to figure out that he was talking to her.
Elsa climbed back into the car, but instead of sitting behind like she had before, she took the shotgun seat. It was, after all, the polite behaviour by which her parents had raised her by.
As the burly young man strapped himself behind the wheel, she asked, "Is your name really Bunny?"
He shot a look at her, but it was not angry or unkind. "What do you think, shiela?"
She wondered if she should tell him that her name wasn't 'shiela', but decided that it didn't really matter. "Well, it sounds more like a nickname."
"It is," he confirmed with a chuckle. In the dim-light, she could make out of a bit of his hair - grey. It was seemed that Jack's family was a colourful bunch. "If you want to know, though, my real name's Ealdun. Ealdun Aster B. Guardian. "
"Ealdun," she repeated, allowing the syllables to run down her tongue. "It's a nice name."
"Thank you, though I prefer Aster over Ealdun. For some reason, the rest of the Guardians thinks both names too boring." He turned the key, starting up the engine. She could see the silhouette of him pressing against the pedals and felt the vehicle move below them. "Ever since Jack joined us and started calling me Bunny, no one has called me Ealdun or Aster." He let out a discontent sniff as he guided the car down back on the open road, away from the mansion. "Alright, where do you stay?"
"Fjord Avenue." The car accelerated after he swung them around a bend, speeding down the greenery covered path that she knew would carry her home. Her sharp ears and ever astute attention caught what he said just as it passed her lips. "I'm sorry if this is rude, but is Jack adopted?"
The driver assessed her with surprise, eyes leaving the road for a good five seconds. Slowly, he answered, "Well, yes. How did you know?"
"Lucky guess." She shrugged, before adding, "That, and you said Jack 'joined you all'. It suggests that he was quite a bit older before he became a Guardian." Elsa glanced at him for confirmation.
Bunny let out an approving whistle, clearly impressed. "You're smart. I see why Jack likes you."
"So what does the 'F' in his name really stand for?" she asked this while watching the shadows sail past her window. That sent a rather unpleasant sensation under her skin, and she turned her attention to the conversation instead.
"Frankenstein." He had an absolutely straight face when he said it. When Elsa glanced at him in alarm, the blocky fellow let out a chortle. "Relax! I'm messin' with you." He spun the wheel, making the car take a left down much wider strip of road. "If you want to know his real name, you'll have to ask him yourself."
"Alright then." Elsa nodded, sinking back in her seat while adding that question to the dozens in her mental notebook. One of those dozens included his family objection to dating and him not wanting her to call an ambulance. Maybe he wanted to avoid paying hospital fees? But from the house, the Guardians were surely loaded – money shouldn't be an issue.
A lull fell between them, with nothing to be heard the rolling wheels of the car and the occasional distant traffic. The houses around Burgess were fairly wide-spread after all, with large stretches of untamed land and unexplored forests between every house and its neighbour. The journey was going to be a while.
It then occured to her that she was getting ride home from a strong, large stranger after nightfall. Sure, he was Jack's adopted brother, but she didn't know him enough to trust him. She whipped out her phone and began texting Anna that she was on her way home. If she didn't turn up back as she had said, safe and sound, then Anna will know that something was wrong at least. Elsa just kept her phone on her lap, too, as a subtle threat against any ill behaviour.
Bunny however did not seem to notice. "So, shiela, mind telling me - what exactly were you doing with our Jacky-boy?" The way he used 'Jacky-boy' sounded more sarcastic than affectionate.
Elsa opened her mouth to grumble about the stupidity of her sister and how she had attempted to matchmake the two of them, but then she stopped short when she remembered what Jack had told her before. His family for some reason didn't approve of him dating. If she told this to his elder brother, and then he told the rest of the family, that would spell bad news for Jack. She wasn't sure how she felt about the white-haired boy, true, or if she even liked him at all, but she was a considerate girl with a conscience.
So Elsa decided to go with her sister's lie. "We were having a discussion with regard to the programme we're organising."
"Programme?" Bunny murmured with interest. "What programme?"
"A blood donation drive at our school. Jack's actually not half-bad with all the work I've been piling on him," she added a praise. It never hurt to be positive. "He's really good at working out all the technicalities that I hate, like-" Elsa paused to count of the numerous factors that had been considered "-the timing, the flyer distribution, the publicity - oh, Jack had this great idea to promote the drive to the neighbourhood, not just the school - and how to store the blood, and other stuff. Don't tell him I said this but-" she shrugged "-he's been a huge help."
The one in the driving seat harrumphed, as if he wasn't very interested in the topic. Feeling a little deflated, Elsa sunk back into her chair, crossing her arms.
But then he asked, "A blood donation drive, hey?"
"Yep," she affirmed, popping the 'p' at the end.
"As in human blood?"
"Well,-" the darkness in the car hid the way her face scrunched up in bewilderment. What other kind of blood would they use? This wasn't the 1800s where people took blood from cows "-yes."
"Interesting," Bunny muttered. Then he changed the subject. "So, you guys classmates?"
A bit of small talk flew back and forth between them, before the vehicle finally drove down Fjord Avenue. She thanked him for the ride, which he answered with a grunt. His car did stay by the gate until Kai came to open the door for her though, which she thought was rather chivalrous of him. Perhaps she had misjudged Jack's roughshod older brother.
Her guardian asked of course who was it that drove her back, to which she answered honestly, but left out details of Anna being the mastermind. Kai would discover that eventually when the dinner bill for his credit card came.
As she headed upstair, Elsa stripped off her coat and her bag, dumping the first into the laundry basket and the second on the wall hook. When she arrived at her bedroom, her sister was already lying down on her own bed, curled up with a romance novel. Noting the entrance of her blonde sister, Anna lowered her book, asking coyly, "Soooo, how did it go?"
"Jack had an allergy attack," Elsa informed her with a deadpan.
"Wait - what?" Her braids flew up as she sat upright. "Is he okay?"
"He'll be fine." Elsa waved off her concern. "His elder brother came to pick him and took him home. His family's dealt with this before."
"Okay." Anna nodded sombrely for two seconds, then quickly switched back to her usual hyper-excited state. "So, will there be a second date?"
The elder girl just narrowed eyes down at her unrepentant sister, before pulling out her wallet and removing a five-dollar bill. Holding it out, she told her, "For lunch tomorrow."
Anna took the money with a quizzical expression. "Thanks, but why?"
"Kai's probably going to cut your allowance once he finds out what you've done."
~~~0~~~
Anti-Garlic Cure (by Sandy)
1 Cup of Vinegar
1 Teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1 Bloodroot Herb
1 Teaspoon of carbonated salts
1 Bucket
Steps to Prepare:
1)Mince the Bloodroot Herb lightly, as not to lose the flavour
2)Mix together with vinegar, cayenne pepper and carbonated salts
3)Drink the mixture quickly
4)Use the bucket so that you don't mess up the carpet
~~~0~~~
His head hurt really awfully after all the throwing up that he needed to do. It was a disgusting procedure, but it was the only treatment of garlic consumption. After his mortal body was 'vampire-fied', his internal organs had altered such that his stomach no longer tolerated garlic. According to North, garlic didn't actually kill vampires, but it could put them in a great deal of pain to the point that non-function. Since the garlic couldn't pass through his body like normal food and having it inside made his entire body burn with agony, he had to throw it up.
Though he felt much better now after the treatment, his head was now the problem. Sandy had told him that throwing up that much liquid was making him feel dehydrated, so he had gone off to get him some nice cooling blood tea to drink. Tooth had also left him at the living room so that she could go dispose of his regurgitated stomach contents. There was nothing more gross than blood mixed in acid and garlic.
Unfortunately, while waiting idly for his caretakers to return and nursing his headache, a deafening roar came ringing against his skull, "JACK FLIPPING-PANCAKES-WITH-CREAM-AND-CHERRIES FROST, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!"
He reclined back into the couch, wincing as he covered a hand over his ear. "Really, Bunny, can't you see that I'm in pain?"
"Pain? You deserve much more, ya gumby!" The older man who had just stormed into the living room grabbed him by the collar, lifting him off the ground. Jack hissed as he felt his headache multiply tenfold. "I could throw you out of the window right this second! Or I could rip you into half, or-"
"Bunny! Let go of him!" Tooth came flying to the rescue, protectively her arms around Jack and pulling him out of Bunny's grasp. Sandy himself just calmly strolled into the living room bearing in his arms the promised blood tea and a box of … popcorn, for some reason. "He just had a garlic attack!"
"Which he wouldn't have if he wasn't going to a meeting about a 'Blood Donation Drive'," growled the Australian-born fellow, folding his arms.
"A blood donation drive?" Tooth repeated, surprised. "Well, when I saw the girl, I thought that he'd gone a date. Which is something-" she drew herself back, glaring at the boy who was chuckling uneasily "-I had meant to talk to him extensively about."
"Whoa, whoa." Bunny's anger seemed to taper off a little with his confusion. "Wait, so was it a blood donation drive meeting, or was it a date?"
Tooth tapped her chin as she pondered. "Is one really worse than the other?"
They both looked at each other, then turned to stare at Jack. He stared back.
Sandy, who had been silent so far and stayed silent for the rest of his days, sat himself down on an arm chair, kicked his feet up onto the ottoman and began munching on the popcorn he had taken from kitchen earlier. He held out the glass of blood tea to the teen of their team, who took it too in silence.
"So,-" Tooth placed a hand on her hip, "-which is it, Jack?"
The white-haired lad sighed while rubbing a hand against his neck. In a small voice, he squeaked out, "Both?"
The tirade was instantaneous.
"We had a talk about this, Jack! I thought we saw eye-to-eye!-"
"Jack, you know why we don't date mortals. We've been over this a million times!-"
"-Even if you don't steal the blood, you're placing yourself in the immediate proximity of temptation. Have you lost your mind, you half-witted piece of-"
"-Reason 1: You might drink that mortal dry someday. Now, I'm not saying that you can't have friends, or get to close to anyone, but if a person is especially close to you and you feel a great deal for that person, that bundle of emotions can just explode into feelings of extreme hunger any second!-"
"-And from the way she described it, it sounds like you have to actually be there at the blood collection. Are. You. Kidding. Me. You moron!-"
"-Reason Two: You're immortal. The most basic rule of being an immortal is don't date someone might potentially die. You'll be nursing that heartache for eternity, Jack. It's not worth it.-"
"-You're going to be around a bunch of weakened humans with blood pouring out of their bodies like streams. You took an oath, Jack, and I'll keep you to that oath even if I have to bind you in chains-"
"-And reason number three – Jack, you know reason number three." She grabbed the boy's hand suddenly, seeming almost pleading. "You know what it means to me. Please, don't put other people through what I-"
Sandy just continued to crunching on his popcorn.
"Alright, alright, guys!" Jack waved his hand at the two older vampires, making them fall silent at his outcry. His head was hurting more than usual, so he took a long sip of the blood tea. Swallowing, he then gazed at the two of older Guardians. "Look, I get what you guys are saying, okay? But I just need some time alone to think this though." With that, he brushed off Tooth's hand and Bunny's glare, marching out of the living room and heading towards his room.
The room fell in a pool of uneasy quiet, only broken by the daring whisper from Tooth first, "Poor Jack."
"Poor Jack? He brought this on himself." Bunny scoffed, peering at her with disgust. "You spoil that the cheeky bugger too much."
"And you're too harsh on him," she refuted, crossing her arms. "He's not like the rest of us, Bunny. He's got a free spirit."
"Free spirit." A sound of revulsion echoed from the back his throat. "His bloody free spirit would be the end of himself, and the rest of us if he isn't careful."
"He can't help it." Tooth sighed pityingly as she glanced in the direction that Jack had gone down. "There's a part of him that still wants very much to be human."
"Isn't there in all of us, Tooth? Isn't there?"
A soft sob was heard from behind them and they saw Sandy wiping a tear from his eye. If it wasn't for his smile, they would have thought that he was grieving over something. Instead, he wiped his wet hand on his shirt and signed to them, "You would have made great parents."
Bunny rolled his eyes. "Stop trying to match us together, Sandy. It hasn't happened in the last four hundred years and it's not going to happen now."
"Not until you get a dental plan," Tooth put in pertly, still clearly irritated with him.
"Not until you learn to eat chocolate," Bunny shot back.
The girl placed her hand on her hip, wagging her finger at him. "Now, look here, Mr. Bunnymund, don't think because you're a vampire that your teeth won't drop off one day."
"Our teeth can't rot!" Bunny threw his hands up in the air. "We've been through this! We're Vamp-flippin'-pires!"
"I beg to differ! According to the research done by-"
Sandy leaned back into his armchair and chortled noiselessly as the argument got more and more heated. Ah, it was like watching a soap opera that didn't require him to switch on the TV.
~~~0~~~
Korean Blood Sausage "Sundae" (By Bunny)
What you need:
Beef or pork small intestine
2 cup Korean Rice
Fresh yellow ginger
1 teaspoon Salt
0.5 teaspoon Pepper
1 tablespoon Korean sesame oil
1 teaspoon Sesame seeds
3 Scallions
2 cup ground Beef or Pork blood
How to Prepare it:
1)Soak rice for about 30 minutes.
2)Put rice in a pot with three cups of water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat for simmer. Remove from heat once cooked and cool.
3)Clean the intestines by running warm water through one end and squeezing gently through to the other.
4)Soak intestines in a light salt water solution for about one hour.
5) Chop the scallions and ginger finely
6) Toast sesame seeds in pan till golden brown. Be careful, because sesame seeds burn easily.
7) Add sesame seeds to scallion, ginger, ground meat, blood, salt, pepper and sesame oil. Mix them in a mixing bowl.
8) Using a funnel fill the intestine with stuffing. Spread the filling evenly and don't be greedy.
9) Tie off loose ends with string.
10)Place sausage into a pot of water and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45mins.
11) Serve 'sundae' with lettuce leaves or a dipping sauce of your choice.
~~~0~~~
"Hey, how are you?"
He almost choked on the sausage he was eating. Today's lunch box was packed by Bunny, who had an unhealthy love for East Asian food and had prepared for him a chuck load of sundaes (not ice-cream sundaes, but the korean 'sun-dae', which was a boiled sausage consisting glutinous rice, meat and – you guessed – lots of blood.) Of course, with sausage pieces looked fairly ordinary and he was getting better at hiding his fangs, so eating it in publicly wasn't an issue.
No, the real reason why he was sitting near the school carpark, next to the dumpster, was because he just wanted to eat alone, away from social interaction. To just dwell in his thoughts and enjoy his food.
It appeared that the blonde girl must have been part bloodhound, because she didn't seem to have a problem in finding him wherever he was.
He sat there coughing for a while and was surprising to feel her thumping him on the back.
"Better?" Elsa asked with surprising concern when he stopped coughing.
He nodded, finding this whole thing just very bizzarre.
She then drew herself back, repeated herself, "Alright, so, how are you?"
It occurred to him that she wasn't exactly asking about today, but the events that had happened the previous night. "Oh, I'm fine now." He cleared his throat as he tried to subtly cover the lunchbox lid over his food. "Um, what are you doing here?"
"It's generally polite to check on your friends, especially after one seems to be terrifyingly ill," Elsa said as she sat on the ledge next to him. "Also, its generally unwise to be eating in a place as unhygienic as this." She wrinkled her nose at the sight of the giant bins standing not too far away.
"Wait, we're friends?" Jack raised a questioning brow, rather amused by the prospect.
"I'm using Anna's definition of 'friends'," the blonde girl muttered dryly. She had reached for her own backpack and was unzipping it. "That would mean any person that she exchanges more than two sentences without punching them."
Despite himself, a grin grew itself on his countenance. "So you don't feel like punching me?"
"'Feel' and 'Do' are two very different things," was her snarky answer, yet she made no move to distant them. She cast a displeased look at the bins once again. "Do you really have to eat here?"
"Well, I'm not stopping you from leaving." He ended up stabbing his fork into a piece of sausage and eating. Eh, if she saw his food and commented on it, he could just.
"Well, you haven't got back to me on the emails. I need to know how many stations we'll be setting up before picking a room in the school." It was then that she produced a lunchbox of her own. It was a very neat little box, if Jack could say so himself, with the cutlery cleverly locked into the lid and the rest of the box divided into little compartments, much like a bento set.
"You bring packed lunch too?"
"Saves money," Elsa said, sliding the lid under the box before placing the whole thing on her lap, the way that he did for his. "That, and I'm a picky eater."
"Same." Jack nodded before biting into a bit of his sundae.
She cocked her head curiously at him, and he realised that she was looking at the blood sausage. "What's that?"
"Oh, um, some Korean thing that Bunny made," he answered vaguely, playing it cool – or as cool as he knew, at least. "He's used to travel a lot, and he's into a lot of East Asia stuff."
"It looks … interesting." He supposed that that was a just polite way of saying that it looked disgusting. But then – "Could I try a bit of it?"
"Um,-" his moral compass popped up, spinning in his mind a dozen possible responses. Well, this kind of blood food was invented by human mortal Koreans who actually enjoyed this, right? And it wasn't as if it was made of human blood "-do you have any diet restrictions?"
Elsa thought for a moment, then shook her head. "I do hate raw fish, but other than that, I'm fine with most things."
"Well, if you really want-" he sliced off a small piece, sticking it with his fork "-but you have to keep an open mind."
A mystified expression appeared on her face, almost amused. "Very well. Try me."
Jack transferred the small piece to her lunch box, where she, still donning her arm-length gloves, picked it up with her polished silverware, scrutinising it first before nibbling off a corner, chewing thoughtfully. He felt his body tensing up, and he didn't know why he cared so much that about her reaction.
Finally, he could see her swallow and then Elsa spoke, "Taste rather – iron-ish. Liver?"
He thought over all the ingredients, before answering slowly, "No."
"Must blood then." His eyes widened slightly as she took a bigger bite into the piece on her spoon, chewing thoughtfully again on it. As always, she was well-mannered enough to swallow before commenting again, "It's kind of odd, I suppose, but not really bad. Not bad at all."
"Yeah, well,-" there was prickly sensation over his skin, rattling the very depths of his core – oh, wait, that was self-consciousness "-I've got a weird diet."
"Weird, perhaps, but blood's a good source iron. In appropriate amounts, it's actually healthy," Elsa answered, calmly finishing the last bit of the sausage on her spoon, before beginning to attack the salad in her lunchbox. "Besides, don't flatter yourself on your unique diet. There was a time in middle school were I'd eat chocolate, and only chocolate, all day."
"All day?" He gazed at her in critically. "How are you even alive?"
There seemed to be an almost mischievous glint in her eye. "I've got a killer metabolism."
~~~0~~~
Squeee! "Ooooooooh, Elsa!"
"Anna, please!" The blonde girl sitting behind the recruitment booth cringed as her sister enveloped her in a horrifying tight bear hug. "What did I say about physical contact?"
"That it's bad and you're not comfortable with it. Sorry," Anna said, still grinning as she half-abashed pulled herself away. "But I'm just so, oh,-" she was almost jumping up and down "-oh, this is so exciting! You guys had a date! A successful date! AHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"Anna, it was just lunch next to a garbage disposal." A student had then handed her his form. Elsa checked the details before dismissing him. She then turned her attention back to her younger sister. "Besides, his family doesn't want him to date. They're very … controlling."
"Oh, my goodness." The younger girl was fanning herself, looking almost delirious. "A forbidden romance. This gets better and better!"
Elsa rolled her eyes before settling back to keying in number on her laptop. Sometimes she wished Anna would find romance of her own so that she would stop trying to live through hers – not that anything between Jack and her was remotely close to such. Forbidden romance? Seriously?
"Oh, hi," she heard a smooth, deep voice speak from the other side of the booth. It was a tinted with a slight European accent, just strong enough to charming, but not too strong so that it could be understood. "Are you the blood donation people?"
She didn't move from her spot, because she expected Anna to handle this fellow, but her sister seemed to be fumbling quite a bit. "Oh, you want to sign up? Sure, here's a form! Oh, wait, I haven't answered your question. Haha. Yes! Yes, we're the blood donation people. I meant, we might not actually be donating blood ourselves – I'm not even old enough too – but sure, you can sign up. Oh wait, are you at least seventeen? I mean, that's just to check. You look like you're older than seventeen, so I'm sure you could sign up. Oh, I don't mean that you look old at all. You're definitely the prime example of youthful health, you know. Because, c'mon, you're tall and muscular and those sideburns – some say it's too Victorian, but I say 'wow', because hey, you got to be gorgeous enough to pull off-" the girl suddenly broke off "-wait, what?"
Elsa raised her head just in time to see the fellow standing in front of the booth chuckle "Thank you, for I'm not actually here to sign up for donations."
Her sister was a melting mess of teen hormones, but she had to admit, the redheaded guy was quite a looker and he rather well-built, though a bit on the lean side. "Oh, um, then why are you here?"
"I'm from the hospital, actually," the handsome charmer beamed at her sister in a way that Elsa felt distinctly disapproving of. How old was this guy? He was in no way the right age to be flirting with a sophomore. "We want to take a look at the set-up of this place before we bring the equipment over during the drive."
"The person you'll need to talk to would be me," Elsa cut in, rising from her seat and almost forcefully pushing Anna aside. The younger girl wasn't pleased, of course, but Elsa didn't care. She would have a word with her sister later in private about flirting with strangers and calling them gorgeous. She stuck a gloved hand out at the redhead. "Elsa Arendelle. I'm the head of the Social Awareness Student Society."
"Hans Westergaard." He shook her hand, and she noted that he had quite a firm grip. When his long sleeves rode up, she could see the tattoo that he had imprinted on the inside of his wrist. Elsa frowned. She wasn't going to let tattooed scoundrel manipulate her sweet, but incredibly naïve, sister. "I'm a volunteer at the Burgess National Hospital. They told me to come down to-"
"Yes, yes, I heard what you said to my sister." Immediately after shaking hands, Elsa folded her arms in front of her, looking at him frostily in the eye. "I have a few locations in mind, but nothing's confirmed yet. I can only decide once you guys tell me how many stations you guys want to set up."
"Well, Miss Arendelle,-" his manner, polite as it seemed, had an underlying curtness. So he noticed her hostility. Good. There was more where that came from, "-we can't decide on how many stations to set up until we see the room."
"But I need to know how many stations to set up before I can pick a room."
"And I need to see the room before I can decided on how many stations to set up."
Elsa let out an exasperated huff. They were just arguing in circles. "Oh, very well." She climbed out of the booth, directing her sister to her laptop, "Anna, help me key the records, won't you?"
"But," Anna protested, staring desperately at her newly obtained eye-candy "I could-"
"Thanks, Anna," she cut her off, while waving a sharp hand to the redheaded volunteer. "Alright, follow me. The first place I thought of was the school gym. I also hope that you're taking notes, by the way."
~~~0~~~
"And despite all my best efforts, she still got his number. I managed to delete it off her phone, but by then it's too late. He saved her number, and now she's now his liason, so I can't stop them from talking to each other." She stabbed her knife into her pie slice with more force than necessary, glaring at it viciously. "I can guarantee that he's at least six years older than her. What a creep."
"Wow." Jack slurped down his soup, wondering if he should mention that he's around three hundred years older than her. He didn't, because he wasn't stupid. "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"Get this donation drive over with, then tell that creep stay at least a state away from my sister." A bit of sauce splattered on her gloves when she sawed through the pastry, prompting her to lay down the cutlery and use a tissue to dab it clean.
They were at some small Norwegian restaurant that Elsa's worked at. The food wasn't that great, but she did have employee's discount on dinner sets. For some reason, she had invited him to share with her this benefit. Now, he learned that that reason was because she needed someone to hear to her rant.
Seeing an opportunity to change the subject, he asked, pointing his fork in her direction, "So, are you ever going to tell me why you wear gloves?"
The blonde lifted her brow at him.
"What? I thought we'd be pass this now, given the level of our friendship."
"We're not friends, Jack," she said primly.
He pulled a face. "But you said that we were last time."
"That's according to Anna's definition of friends," Elsa retorted, scooping up the piece of pie with her spoon. "Besides, the gloves' a personal thing. I don't even tell Anna."
"You don't?" He broke the already cold flatbread that came with the soup. The soup itself was actually Czarnina, a Polish dish that shouldn't belong to a self-proclaimed Norwegian restaurant, but hey, it had blood in it, so he wasn't complaining. That said, he had tasted North's version of it, which was so, so much better. "You know, you guys seem close, but there seems to be a lot of stuff you don't share with each other."
"No," Elsa protested at first, but then a thoughtful second later, she admitted, "Oh, well, I guess I don't tell her some things, but it's because I want to protect her." She noticed the sceptical expression on his face and huffed. "Oh, I wouldn't expect you to understand. You don't have any younger siblings."
"No, I don't," Jack murmured, as he sullenly dipped the bread into the soup. "Not anymore anyway."
He wasn't sure how his thoughts started drifting, but the memories of warm fires and cold winters played in his mind, at a time when he was more able of discern the two sensations. His world had then smelled of musty wood, damp boots and dried dirt. It had sounded like laughter and hard work. It had been a lot, lot simpler, with no secrets, lies, or cover-stories. There was no moving from town to town when they'd stayed too long, watching their backs and watching their stomachs. There was no constant weight of guilt over his head, a guilt that needed to be suppressed by an unhealthy multitude of pranks, jokes and self-help books.
"What was she like?"
"Hmm?" His head jerked up.
"You said you mentioned that you had a little sister," Elsa said. She must have caught what he had muttered, and with her super-smart super-senses, managed to decipher exactly what the past tense had implied. "Was she a bag of mischief like you?"
"Well," he hesitated. He never really talked to anyone about his pre-turned life. The Guardians didn't encourage reminiscing on the old times, mostly because it was depressing. They would bring up snippets of it, every time, but he had never heard Bunny or Sandy share much about their human lives. Most of Tooth's backstory was just sad and North's was bits and pieces. He supposed that if he didn't go into specifics, she wouldn't know that he had was actually talking about his life on a colonial settlement back in the 1700s. "She's a nicer version of me, I would say. Smaller too."
"Did she have white-hair too?" An amused smirk curled by the side of her face.
"Well, no," he answered. Her sister's hair had been clearly brown, just as his had been before. "I'm the only one who got white hair."
Elsa 'hmm-hmmed' at that, before asking in a quieter voice, "Do you miss her?"
Jack gulped. "I think I do. I-" his spoon sloushes around in the soup, shifting uneasily in his seat "-I try, at least. It's not the easiest memory." Not when most of it was blotched in red, anyway.
She didn't probe him any further, as if she had somehow read his mind and decided that his history was perhaps too icky to care about. They sat in the noisy silence of the half-baked, so-called restaurant, eating the half-baked, so-called food.
Her voice was the one that sliced through the lull. "If you really want to know-" his head jerked up towards her, noting immediately the conflict in her eyes "-I can tell you how my parents died. I suppose it won't really matter that you know, but all the same, I'd rather if you don't tell anyone – especially Anna."
He didn't nod, but he didn't shake his head either. He adjusted himself on the uncomfortable chair, drawing it nearer to show that he was listening. She too mirrored his actions. For all of the cool that she displayed, the trembling of her fork betrayed her nervousness.
Finally, she began, "We were driving home from out of town at night. Anna wasn't there. Can't remember why, but she wasn't." Her knifes twisted her grip as she slowly began cutting through the thick crust and the dry fillings of her pie. "The road was dark. My father was speeding a little – it was the highway after all, and no one was going to stop him – and my mother was talking to him. I was gazing out of the window at the time, which is why I saw them. Grinning shadows." There was a wry turn of her lip, one that spelt disbelief in her own story. "Even though we were rushing past them, I kept seeing faces and figures, chasing after us. I didn't know what to tell my parents, so I couldn't warn them. Even with what I did see, it wouldn't have been much help anyway."
Down came the knife onto the plate, making a clean cut. She lifted the pierced piece and popped in her mouth, chewing fiercely and swallowing. "I remembered a dark figure appearing in front of the car while it spead down the highway, and it was grinning while my mother screamed and my father grabbed frantically at the wheel. When the hood of the car smashed against the figure, it crushed inwards-" she demonstrated sombrely by crushing a gloved fist into her palm, twisting it as she did "-sending cracks through the windscreen as our car flipped back and over. I was unconscious for about-" Elsa paused to think "-ten seconds, maybe."
"When I came to, the car was overturned, with all our bodies stuck trapped inside. Maybe it was the impact of the blood rushing to my head, maybe it was a concussion, but it took me a while to realise that I heard a horrible, terrible sound from the seats in front of me, where my parents were. When I looked up,"- she clenched her fist suddenly, her pupils dilated and body tensed up, as if she was prepared to flee the table "-I saw, hovering around my mother's dead body, the grinning face with dripping fangs."
"I screamed, of course, and tugged against my seatbelt, but before I knew it, I was ripped out of the car. The car door was flung across the street, like it weighed nothing at all, and I was held in the air, by the neck. The black figure was laughing up at me while I wriggled about its claws. Then, I blacked out." She grimly resumed her chore of slicing up the pie. "When I woke up, I was lying on the road, with paramedics hovering over me and people dragging my parents' dead bodies out of the car. They took me to the hospital, and told me that I had been in an accident. Except that I knew it wasn't an accident."
Elsa let out a heavy exhale, lifting her eyes towards him, and in them held bitterness, anger and horror that he never expected a girl her age to know. "No one believe me when I told them about the dark figure, of course. They thought that I was traumatised from the experience, and they sent me to several psychairtrists to get my memories 'straightened'. They kept Anna away from me, because I went a bit nuts and scared her." Elsa rubbed her wrist uncomfortably when she mentioned that, eyes downcast at that moment. "They never told her the details of what they found – she was just eleven at the time. I have no intention of her ever knowing that our parents were murdered. She doesn't need these nightmares." She clutched herself by the arms, as if protecting herself from an unseen force. "That's my burden to bear."
"Hey." His hand reached out to her almost the same time his heart did. The table was really rather small, and it let him touch her gloved hand softly. She widened her eyes at him and he almost jerked himself back, but she did allow him to slip his hand inoto her gloved one. A little surprised that that had worked out, Jack then continued, "You don't need to bear this alone anymore.-" thinking he might sound a little to forward "-Look, if you ever need anyone to talk about ... this, you can tell me. I know a bit about loss myself. Trust me." He squeezed her hand encouragingly. "I believe you. About the dark figure – about the way the car crashed in and flipped. Everything.
For a good minute, Elsa didn't react to his impulsive declaration, merely staring at him. But she didn't let go of his hand even as she said with a small smile, "You're strange, you know that, Jack?"
"Coming from a girl who still hasn't told me why she wears gloves," he answered cheekily, glad that the mood had turned to something more cheery. That, and they were still holding hands. Across the tiny table, his and her locked together like an uncomfortable braid.
"Don't press your luck, Jack," Elsa chided as she stabbed her fork into the her pie, then removed her other hand from Jack's so that she could pick up the knife. "You've got stories about yourself you've yet to tell me."
"Another time, perhaps," he grinned. He was a tad disappointed that she let go, but hey, you couldn't get everything on the first try.
The first of many tries, he hoped.
~~~0~~~
Russian Cabbage Rolls/Golubtsi (by North)
What you need:
2 Head of Cabbage
0.5 Cups of White Rice
2 Tablespoons of Olive oil.
1 Large Red Onion, chopped
400g of Ground beef
1 Bunch of chopped Parsley
2 teaspoons of Salt
0.5 teaspoon of Pepper
1.5 cups of Chicken stock
1 cup of Sour cream
1 cup of Fresh Blood
How to Prepare:
1)Boil the cabbage for twenty minutes. Then peel the leaves from the stalk. Try not to damage the leaves.
2)Cook the rice in a pot, adding the salt in. This should take around 5-15 minutes. Drain and set aside.
3)In a frying pan heat olive oil and cook onions over low heat for 7-10 minutes until tender. Add beef and stir-fry.
4)Combine beef, onions, rice, salt and pepper on the pan. Mix well. This is the filling.
5)In a bowl, whisk together stock, fresh blood and sour cream. Set aside. This is the gravy.
6) Preheat your oven.
7) Add filling onto a cabbage leaf and roll it up, tucking sides in. Repeat for all the leaves. Put these into a bake-proof casserole.
8) Pour the gravy over the cabbage rolls in the casserole. Add parsley for garnish.
9)Cover the casserole with lid and bake for an hour.
10) Serve with additional blood if required.
~~~0~~~
"You're home late." The thick accent had given away the identity of the speaker.
Jack groaned as he climbed over the window ledge. There was no point trying to be stealthy anymore, so he landed on the polished floorboards with a loud 'thud', before turning to close the window. The large, usually jolly, man stood there watching him as he did this, his folded arms displaying clearly 'Naughty' and 'Nice'. The boy knew which category he currently fell under.
"So," North spoke once again, "this little scheme of sneaking out – that is the correct term, no? – this is not according to the rules of 'being grounded'. Do you know this?"
The boy scowled as he tugged the hood off his head. "Bunny and Tooth don't even know what 'grounded' means, okay? Bunny had started digging a hole in the ground for yesterday because he thought that I was supposed to be buried alive."
"Yes, yes, well, we all know that Bunny's...not so clever," the big man admitted scratched his bearded chin. He appraised the shoddily-dressed lad who had flown three floors up to the window. North then gestured at the door. "Jack, walk with me?"
"Can I say no?" the boy grumbled.
"Well, you can." North shrugged. "Then I will just drag your body across the floor along while I talk."
If the Guardians' house looked big on the outside, it felt even bigger on the outside. North had built the place with his own to hands, and being a fellow with imaginaton without borders and strength without limits, he had built a mansion large that was more than enough for the needs of their small family. There were plenty of rooms to store old memories, saved paintings, new recreations, and of course, the next seasons' supply of blood. The corridors were also pretty large, allowing themselves to decorated with priceless artifacts and precious objects while still providing enough space for a round-bellied man and a skinny, sullen boy to take a walk.
"Let us get down to tacks of brass, yes?" The older-looking fellow was not one to waste words. "You went out to see the girl. Is that correct?"
Jack sighed and nodded.
"Was it on a date?"
The boy cringed, before nodding reluctantly. There was no point lying about. North was one of those people with an unnatural gift for telling if people were lying. He claimed that he had had this ability long before his cursed transformation.
"Well-" the big man clasped his hands together "-how was it?"
Jack sent a peculiar look his way, not sure how to reply. "It was ... okay? I mean, she doesn't hate me or anything."
"I sense a little more than just 'okay', my dear boy." Old as he looked, North was astute in his observation skills. "Have you both kissed?"
"What? NO!" The white-haired lad was horrified, though he did recover shortly. "Well, I mean, not that I'm against the idea, but I wouldn't tell you if we did. Anyway,-" shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket and narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the elder guy "-aren't you suppose to be discouraging me? Giving me a lecture?"
"Lecture?" North snorted. "What do I look like? A college professor?"
"North." Jack paused their stroll to give him a deadpan. "You are a college professor."
"Ah. Yes." He stroked his beard, nodding. "Sometimes I forget that I actually work. Funny, isn't it?"
"Anyway, back to topic,-" Jack waved away the distractions "-Bunny and Tooth have been cracking down on me ever since the whole garlic incident. Aren't you supposed to be on their side?"
North let out a low chuckle, shaking his head. "Jack, Jack, Jack-," there was a mix of affection and amusement in his eyes "-you do not quite understand me, do you?"
Yeah, this was just getting more and more confusing. "In what way?"
"Jack," North started them walking once again, so the boy matched his pace to his to follow, "out of all us Guardians, who has ever married?"
He took a moment for recollection. "Well, Tooth had been once, but it wasn't her choice, so she hated it. Bunny definitely never has and Sandy doesn't talk much about his old life-" He frowned "-or anything, really."
"And me?" The white bushy brows rose expectantly.
"Well, you were, but that before you got turned." Jack dug his hands down deeper into his pockets, not feeling comfortable with bringing up a topic that he felt must be painful to the older companion. He never really liked talking about his own pre-vampire days to the others for that reason.
"I got married long before I was turned, that is true," North confirmed. "But after I was turned, I was still married for ten years, until she passed away."
The boy felt a chill running up his spine when he heard that. "Did you...?"
"Eh?" It took a while for the big man to understand. "Oh, nyet! Slava bogu! I was spared that – what's the word? Misfortune? Tragedy?"
"Both words are fine," Jack assured him.
"Spasibo. I was spared that misfortune and tragedy. She passed from natural causes. We were quite advanced in our years at the time, but only she-" North sighed with a note of sadness "-suffered the effects of it."
Their pace had slowed as the older vampire's recollections came pouring out. That, and they were running out of corridor to walk, so they had to turn around and go back down the whole length.
"Most people would kill a vampire in their family," North had continued on. "If they do not know how to kill, they would trap, or curse, or at least run from them. My dear Izolda did none of these, however. She was the one who helped me to get the curse under control, even though there were times that my burst of strength and my thirst for blood would have scared her. Her courage – that was thing to behold. There was time-" North let out a chuckle "-I was biting into the neck of this gentleman at our door, and you know what the woman did? She grabbed the axe – we had one to chop the logs, ah, firewood – and smacked it straight through my skull. Small woman, Izolda was, with shaky hands – oh, but she did it! She did it and yelled at me,"You let go of the baker, Nikolas, or you'll be baking for the rest of your miserable life! I don't care if you'll never eat a morsel of it. I still need my breakfast!" Another heart guffaw escaped his throat and even Jack couldn't help smiling even a little at the story.
"Oh,-" North wiped a tear from his eye, laughter still playing on his lips, but it was unmistakable - the longing that lay behind it "-to have someone like that in one's life, Jack -that is the true gift. No treasure, no power, no wealth, could ever compare to the love of a faithful companion." He grabbed the boy by the shoulder, stopping them before they took another round down the corridor again. "My dear boy, I do not wish to deprive you of finding that companion."
This was a surprising conclusion to the detour of their conversation, and a pleasant surprise, honestly, but Jack still had his reservations. The oath that he took when he became a Guardian still rang in his mind. "But, North, what about that whole thing about, you know, why we can't take mortals as our mates was because of that thing about vampires -" he made a vague gesture towards his neck.
North, however, didn't understand the reference and stared blankly at him.
"You know-" he waved more fervently at his neck, then gave up when he saw that the older fellow was still clueless. Jack rubbed the back of his neck as he said it as quickly as he could, "about vampires turning humans into vampires." There, he said it. "That's against the Guardians' code."
"Yes, for good reasons." North harrumped, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Tooth has told you her story, hasn't she?"
"Many times," Jack said, shaking his head. "She brings it up almost everytime I mention the word 'date' – even when I mean the ones on the calendar."
North snickered at that, but turned sombre almost instantly. "It's a very real problem, Jack." His tone was grim, reminding the boy of the time when Tooth had told him that North, for all his gentleness, had in his time been a fierce warrior. "Many have been unfairly turned due to the lustful appetite of that which is not living, and thus bear the curse of a murderous eternity."
"So, aren't you afraid then that-" Jack shrugged, trying to playing off how tensed the topic really was "-I might just damn some sweet girl to a 'murderous eternity'?"
"Deep down in you, I know that you're an upright yúnosha. You complain about the rules, but you do respect them – well, most of the important ones, at least. We forget that despite your youthful face, you have been through many trials and temptations of your own." He clapped the boy on the back with a bit more strength than necessary, making the lad lurch forward and wince. "I trust you, Jack. Just promise me that if ever the temptation - how do you say – arises, you will run. Like Tooth says, run as far as you can. The most important thing is that you never hurt anyone, and you never-" he tapped him firmly on the chest "-never hurt yourself. Can you do that?"
The boy sucked in a breath, then nodded.
"Ho'roshij 'maljchik!" North beamed at him approvingly. "Now, it's getting late. You best be off to bed."
"North." Jack bore a pained expression. "I'm 306 years old, and a vampire. I don't need sleep."
"Don't be silly." North clapped him on the shoulder this time and the boy let out a hiss of pain – not that big man noticed. "It's a school day tomorrow! You'll need rest."
~~~0~~~
About twenty feet away from the Guardian home, a dark figure hid himself in the shadows.
He had been watching the mansion for a full hour, deciding how best to make his move. He had watched as the white-haired boy had climbed up the sheer falls with an agility that could not be achieved by humans. Through his binoculars, he watched as the white-haired monster spoke to another big-sized vampire. They were peculiar pack of vampires, this bunch was. He had never seen blood-suckers that were so … aesthetically neutral.
He lowered his binoculars as he keyed in his observations into his daily log, chewing on the mountain ash stick his mouth. He then raised his head towards the massive mansion once again. It was huge, undoubtedly covered with safeguards and alarm systems. If he attacked them in their home, they would have the familiarity of the environment on their side – not to mention unnatural strength and speed. From what he counted, there were at least four of them here. If he couldn't find an efficient way to incapacitate them, then any attempt would be suicide.
No, he would find another battleground. He would find a way to draw them to him, and at the right moment – blam! The stake straight through the heart.
He locked his gadgets back on his belt, hopping down from the tree branch that he had been balancing on. He then removed the wooden stick from his mouth and the switchblade from his wrist pocket. He flicked the blade open and began to shave the tip of the stick. Once the tip of the stick was nice and pointy, he added it to the quiver of that was attached to his knee.
He walked into the darkness, as if the darkness itself was his friend and not his foe.
~~~0~~~
I'm not actually a cook, so all the recipes here are modified version of what I read online. Please don't actually try follow the cooking instructions…or you could, and tell me how it works out. Some of the recipes here will also feature normal food with blood added into it, because, well, haemovores. Blood-eaters. Duh.
I don't know why I enjoy writing this story. Plot Bunny power. That must be it.
It more or less implied in this story that vampires stay the age at they were when they were turned, which is why North stays looking old and Jack stays looking young. As for North being the one married, well, I just like the thought that somewhere in his past, there was a 'Mrs. Claus' somewhere.
If you enjoyed this, leave a review. If you don't, well, you could leave a review too.
I'm not actually a cook, so all the recipes here are modified version of what I read online. Please don't actually try follow the cooking instructions…or you could, and tell me how it works out. Some of the recipes here will also feature normal food with blood added into it, because, well, haemovores. Blood-eaters. Duh.
I don't know why I enjoy writing this story. Plot Bunny power. That must be it.
It more or less implied in this story that vampires stay the age at they were when they were turned, which is why North stays looking old and Jack stays looking young. As for North being the one married, well, I just like the thought that somewhere in his past, there was a 'Mrs. Claus' somewhere.
If you enjoyed this, leave a review. If you don't, well, you could leave a review too.