Author: Alyson Roze
Title: A Mother's
Story
Rating: PG
Description: A
vampire tells the story of her creation and afterlife…and how she came to have
children. The Sleeping Spirit from
Every Roze was right about Alyson's uniqueness…. Don't worry, you don't have to have read the previous story to
understand this one :)
Feedback: sent to LionGirl2000@aol.com and would be adored
:)
My friends, allow me to greet
you. Please, take a seat. Before we begin, I would just like to tell
you how happy I am that you could come.
I know you all have questions that you want answered, and we shall get
to those in time. Would anyone care for
a drink? Wine? Soda?
Blood? I stock them all. No?
Very well then, I suppose I shall begin.
I brought you here, compelled you
to do so, as a matter of fact. I did
this because you all have a need inside you, a deep questioning about what I am
and why I am here. Some of you do not
even know my name, and I think that is where we should start. I am Joan Roszkowski, that's Rose-cow-ski,
and I am two hundred years old. How is
that? Why, I am a vampire, of course. Ah, I see some of you nodding your heads,
you suspected as much.
I am a vampire. I am also a mother, and I have been many,
many other things in the two hundred years of my life. My daughter's name is Alyson, maybe some of
you know her? She is a witch and a
member of Circle Daybreak. My son,
Gregory, is a shapeshifter. My children
have never met each other, nor have they met me. The reason for that is simple…I am a dangerous person to know.
It wasn't always this way. I wasn't always this way. When I was a teenager, I was quite innocent
and sheltered. Yes, it's true. I had to die to become the evil that I am
today. Die? Of course, foolish ones!
All must leave their former lives to assume the mantle of the vampire. I died when I was twenty-one. The year was 1822 and my husband had just
passed away of what I now know was heart failure. At the time, all I knew was that I had been widowed and left
penniless in a city I knew nothing about.
Wait, no interrupting please. Oh, you want to know about my children? That is all tied in with the rest of my story, which I am getting
to if you all will please have some patience.
Now, where was I?
Ah, yes, a city I knew nothing
about. Paris, actually. Beautiful place, really. I spent my formative years as a vampire
there. I was changed there, only a few
days after my husband passed on. We had
been visiting the city for the summer.
I stayed in the hotel suite that we had rented for as long as I was
able, but then my funds ran out. I was
thrown out of the place quite discourteously and told to stay away unless I
wished to wash their dishes. I was in
quite a state of shock, I assure you. I
was used to living in a certain style.
My family had been upper-middle class, doctors, lawyers, and the
like. My husband himself had been quite
well off also, but when he died without a will, all of his money went to his
whining shrew of a mother, who detested me for reasons I can only guess
at. Therefore, I ended up with nothing.
So there I was, on the streets of
the seedier parts of Paris, with no money and only a few outfits and a pair of
shoes to my name. I don't remember a
lot about the next few days except that I was always tired, hungry and
cold. The next time I was warm, I was
in a fairly dark room in a small inn, with no memory of how I got there. There was nobody else in the room with me,
and no way to tell how long I had been there.
I wanted to move around a bit, stretch my legs and all, but I found
myself far to tired and sore to move.
I don't know how long I lay in that
room in the inn before the stranger entered.
It might have been minutes, or even hours. But when he did enter, I could see him perfectly despite the lack
of light, and I can still remember every exact detail. He was beautiful, perhaps even more so than
I am. I know, little one, how can that
be possible? But it is true. He had dark hair that fell in gentle waves
to his shoulders, and his eyes seemed to glow in the dim lamplight, a strange,
exotic shade of yellow-green. His face
was classical, the very image of male perfection. The kind of face all sculptors and painters wish to have as a model. A calm, serene face, revealing none of the
cruelty that lay beneath the surface.
His step was silent; he moved
without any sound at all. I found that
eerily fascinating, for I had never met a person with such an ability. But then he spoke to me, and I forgot his
physical beauty for a moment and absorbed the rich, resonant sound of his deep,
cultured voice. "I am Melodus
Delacroix," he told me in perfect English, but with a trace of an accent, "and
you are Joan Roszkowski. Beautiful,
innocent, Joan."
I was stunned that he knew my name,
and a bit frightened. As I said, and as
he said, I was very innocent and sweet in those days. However, I was bold enough to speak up for myself. "Sir," I said, "I do not know how you came
to learn my name, but I would appreciate it if you would explain yourself. How did I come to be here?"
"Why, petite, so inquisitive! I found you wandering alone through the
streets of Paris and took it upon myself to save you from all those petty
street thieves. They do love pretty
women, if you get my meaning…."
At that I shuddered. For I did know what he meant. It was my mother's worst nightmare, and once
I became a mother a hundred and some odd years later, it was my worst nightmare
for my daughter as well. My daughter. She is beautiful also, and though she has
never known me, I have watched her grow up into a strong young witch. I know that she is well capable of taking
care of herself, and her soulmate, Griffin Weald, will also protect her. She doesn't need me, but I keep silent vigil
over her nonetheless.
My son, on the other hand…he is a
jaguar. His father was a remarkable
man, I almost wish I hadn't killed him.
Drake Drache…he was the youngest son of the Drache line, the rulers of
the shapeshifters. Gregory was able to
choose his form, which showed the Elders that he was the true son of a Drache,
for only they have the power to choose what form they will wear for the rest of
their lives. He was raised by his
family and is now a member of the Alliance Council, the organization created
when the shapeshifters and the witches united against the Night World. I am proud of him as well, though I do not
see him as often as I do my daughter.
Anyway, continuing on with my own
story…. I wanted to hit Melodus with
all my might for even suggesting such a thing.
I also felt reluctant gratitude.
He took me off the streets, even though I hadn't asked for help. Of course, being a woman of the 19th
century, I acted on neither one of those feelings. I merely sat and stared at him.
He stared back, and when his eyes met mine, something terrifying
happened. I felt that I was falling and
falling, into a forever darkness with no daylight in sight. This odd vision scared me, for I had been a
child of the sun. The dark, I remember,
petrified me. Strange how things can
change in only a few moments. One
moment I was afraid of the dark, and the next, I was a creature of it.
Yes, Melodus bit me, and started to
change me into what I am today. His
sharp fangs tore into the delicate skin of my neck, hurting like nothing I'd
ever experienced before, cutting not only flesh, but spirit as well. I could not scream for help, some power of
his compelled me to silence. But I
screamed in my mind, screamed for help that would never, I thought, come. Yet, remarkably, I was saved, in a manner of
speaking. Her name was Maya, and she
was the first vampire the world had even known. The Eldest of us. She
burst through the door to the room and without hesitation, drove a sharpened
piece of wood right through Melodus's chest.
In seconds, all that remained of
the beautiful, serene, cruel vampire was a small pile of ash at my feet.
"Bastard," said my savior. I barely heard her, for the world around me
was going gray and fuzzy as death approached me. The last things I remember seeing before I blacked out were her
eyes. They drew me by some strange
power that I could not explain. It was
not like being lost inside Melodus's gaze, it was completely different. It felt…safe. I felt at home in those prismatic eyes.
Maya, you might as well know, was
the very first of the lamia, the born vampires. The lamia can have children, just as I can. But I am not lamia, I am made. I was human once, not that I would ever wish
to return to that state. I do not know
what Maya did to make me the vampire I am, and I doubt that I will ever
know. It does not really matter
anyway. It is, and that is enough for
me.
After I awoke as a vampire, it took
me nearly a year to adjust to my new unlifestyle. I hated it at first, then I got used to it, and finally I grew to
enjoy it. Blood, I will tell you, is
like magic elixir to a vampire. When
you drink the blood, you also absorb the memories and feelings of the person
you are drawing from. It is addictive,
yet we also need it to survive, to carry oxygen. We utilize the human hemoglobin we lack to transport the oxygen
even vampires need to survive.
Maya stayed with me the whole
time. She was my teacher and my
surrogate mother, showing me how to live and prosper as a vampire. We lived together in Paris for a short time,
perhaps twenty years or so, until we both grew bored and decided to move
on. We visited Italy, Spain, Russia,
Japan, Australia and more countries still.
We traveled all around the globe, seeing the sights of the old and new
worlds. Along the way, Maya recounted
stories of her past, and told me of how things used to be. For example, when we saw the great Coliseum
in Rome, she told me what it was like to see a pitiful human battle for his
very life, and what it was like to see his ruby red blood adorn the hot white
sands.
I grew to know Maya as no other
person ever had, except perhaps her sister Hellewise, a witch now long
dead. I watched her as she stalked a
young girl named Hana again and again over the years, and pined for Theron, her
first childe. I never understood why
she would so desire someone who had no interest in her, but I never questioned
Maya, I respected her far too much.
Where is she now, you ask? She is dead, I believe. She was killed by the same girl she spent so
many years stalking. Hannah Snow, as
she is called in this lifetime, and Thierry Descoudres, as Theron is now
called, now live happily together in Las Vegas as acting heads of Circle
Daybreak. Do I miss her? No, I don't. We went our separate ways fifty years after I was changed, by
mutual decision. I grew up and decided
that I didn't need her guidance anymore, and she agreed. I had to go my own way.
So Maya and I lost touch. I didn't hear from her again. How then, did I spend the next hundred and
twenty eight years? I kept busy. The undead commonly suffer from depression
brought on by boredom, and I absolutely refused to fall victim to a melancholy
so severe I would want to kill myself.
I kept traveling around the world, until I finally returned to America
in the spring of 1902. I was fascinated
by the changes that had taken place in my home country since I was gone. I visited my family, from a distance, of
course. I saw all my nieces and nephews
and my grandchildren; they had all grown into fine people. Content in that knowledge, I moved on. There was no place for me there anymore.
I searched for adventure anywhere I
could find it: robbing banks, playing the stock market, seducing helpless human
men. All of these activities have made
me a very wealthy woman. In the past, I
reveled in my extreme affluence, throwing large parties for my vampire friends. I, of course, supplied the dinner, blood
meals from young men and women I plucked off the street. Ah, now those were the days! We drained them dry and reveled at their
fear as they died in our arms.
But most of my time from the early nineteen hundreds to the early
eighties was spent with a vampire named Kaelas Redfern. He was a descendent of my mentor, Maya, and
a vampire Elder in his own right. His
mother had been a witch, and his father a respected lamia businessman. He was a dreamer, that was how he had
survived the millennia. He had all
these plans for everything, and he never cared how implausible an idea
was. He was certain that with enough
time, he could change the world.
Needless to say, I fell in love with him. He was very different from any other vampires I knew, and his
handsome features didn't hamper him in any way. Unfortunately, I grew tired of him and his unfailing
optimism. We went our separate ways in
1981. He never found out that I was
pregnant.
Nine months later, Alyson was
born. I decided that I had to give her
up. The Night World is not a fitting
place for a dreamer's daughter to grow up in.
I entrusted her to a young witch, distantly related to Kaelas, and asked
her to raise Alyson as her own. Eddie
Roze agreed, and Alyson grew up as a witch, never knowing that both of her
parents were vampires. To this day, I
do not know why she doesn't need to drink blood. I'm sure that the capability lies within her, but it is not
necessary. It is another mystery of
what I am. Or perhaps God has blessed
me, even after my mortal death. I doubt
that though, for I have no concern for human life. And there is also the small matter of my atheism. It is so difficult to believe in God after
you've lived three lifetimes and seen and done more than enough to convince you
that, even if God did exist, He certainly doesn't care about any of us.
But I digress. Since the birth of my children, I have
settled down a little. I no longer
throw the extravagant balls that I adored in my youth. I no longer kill vermin—humans, to you—when
I don't feel it's necessary. I hope
that someday I will introduce myself to my children, but it simply isn't the
time for that kind of revelation. I
doubt that it would be useful knowledge for them to have. One day, I keep telling myself. I trust that you will keep my secret? If you don't I shall be forced to take rather…unpleasant
measures. You see, you have learned a
secret that, should any others of my kind find that you know, will get you
killed very, very dead. My suggestion? Live your lives. Be content with the fact that you have one less mystery in the
universe.
Remember…the Night World doesn't
exist. And neither do I.
