Disclaimer: I don't own any of the people mentioned in this story.
A/N: Thanks to the reviewers!! Dante: I promise to try to work your original character into the story. Don't be surprised if you don't see him for a while, though. On with the story!!
As soon as I had closed the door and turned around, Amy was standing behind me with a baseball bat in her hands, tears rolling down her face. I had wiped the blood off of my face, but I knew that there was still the faint outline of it. I took a deep breath and stared at her.
"If you're going to hit me, then do it." I said. "I know that I deserve it for not telling you sooner, but now that the cat is out of the bag, I can explain whatever you want me to." I paused and lowered my eyes to the floor. "I didn't want you find out like this…but I couldn't find the right way to put it."
"Well, you should have found a way." She said bitterly.
"Will you at least hear me out?" I asked.
"Fine." She said curtly and kept her eyes level with mine, then backed up to the bed, so she could sit down. I took off the trench coat and leaned against the end table that was in the room.
"So, what are you? A vampire?" she asked softly, still clutching the bat, still in shock over the whole situation.
"Yes, a vampire." I said and waited for her to respond. She sniffed and sighed.
"Does anyone else know about this? Am I the only one who is out of the loop on this?" she asked, turning towards me.
"No one else knows and I'd like to keep it that way, regardless of what happens between us." I said. She nodded.
"I doubt if anyone would believe me even if I did tell them." She said.
"You'd be surprised." I said.
"Is that woman………is she dead?" she asked. I shook my head.
"No. Not yet." I said, and then noticed the look in her eyes and continued. "She has AIDS." I finished.
"How can you tell?" she asked me, genuinely curious. I kind of smirked.
"I've been drinking blood for five thousand years, how could I not tell?" I said. Her eyes really widened when she heard how old I was.
"Five…five thousand?" she asked. I nodded.
"Yeah…"
"So I guess your real name isn't Chris Irvine then, huh?" she asked. I smiled and shook my head. She was taking this much better than I thought that she would.
"No, my birth name is Khalon." I told her. She nodded.
"So all the crap about you having a wife and a daughter is that all fake too, or did that really happen?" she asked. Ah yes, the eternal question. The one question that would be the most painful for me to answer.
"All of the 'crap' as you put it about me having a wife and daughter is true. I stretched the truth on a few things, such as how long we'd been married and so forth." I said. "You might want to get comfortable, you're going to hear the first part of my life story." She kind of smirked and then grabbed a tissue to blow her nose and dry her eyes. The baseball bat was now resting in her lap. I sat down on the edge of the bed, half facing her, thinking on where I wanted to start the story. I took a deep breath and started to tell the story that I had only told one other person in my lifetime.
"I never knew who my real parents were. Apparently, a hunter had been out in the woods near the village where I grew up and found me wandering around out there, in shock and muttering something about a big fire. The hunter took me back to the village and he became my foster father, I guess you could say.
"By the time I was sixteen, I went off to fight in a war for our neighboring village, and I was one of the few people to come back alive when the war ended. People called me a hero, and I became the village's greatest warrior. After returning, I was a little more distant than I had been before because of things that I had seen. Well, I was distant until I met Adina." I paused, slightly smiling at the thought of her.
"Your wife." Amy said. I nodded.
"Yes, my wife. I was seventeen when I met her; she was fifteen. We began to date not long after first meeting. I was suddenly sent off to fight again and I was away for two years this time. I was afraid to go home that time. I was afraid that she might have married someone else, since females in my village were supposed to be married at fifteen. Males were supposed to be married at sixteen, but my father knew how I felt about Adina, so he never pressured me into marrying someone I didn't want to.
"Anyways, I'm getting away from the point, I was afraid that she hadn't really felt the same about me and had married someone else. Turns out, I couldn't have been further from the truth. She was the first one in line at the welcome home ceremony. I would've been about nineteen by this time." I counted in my head to double check. "Yeah, nineteen. Well, later that night, as the sun was setting on the village, she and I snuck away from the ceremony to go and sit on the beach and watch the sun set when I finally proposed to her. She said she thought I'd never ask."
"Well, you date a guy for three years, and you realize that you're older than you're supposed to be when everyone else is getting married, then yeah, I'd say I'd have to wonder if you were ever going to ask too." Amy said. I nodded.
"True. A year later, we were married, had our own house and a beautiful baby girl, Xaria." I said.
"Xaria, that's a pretty name." Amy commented.
"Thank you. It means 'gift of love'." I said, and continued. "Things were great in my life at that time. Xaria was the only daughter…well…the only child I ever had. God knows Adina and I tried, but He seemed hell bent on us only having one child. We finally stopped trying after a miscarriage nearly killed Adina. I was so scared about losing her…I promised I would never put her in jeopardy like that again…" I said, trailing off. I felt a few tears coming to my eyes, but I kept them away. "I promised I would never put her in jeopardy again, but I fell back on my promise." I stopped for a moment.
"Go on." Amy urged gently. I turned to look at the clock and noticed that it was almost three in the morning. I knew we had a lot of traveling to do the next day.
"You sure?" I asked, gesturing to the clock.
"Continue. I want to hear what happened." She said. Her anger seemed to be diminishing, but quite a bit was still there.
I decided to continue.
"Well, my daughter turned fifteen and still hadn't wed. In this village, your parents allowed you to choose whom you wanted to be with, but they had to approve of him as well. Well, I had rejected the first two boys she had brought home, only because I knew what they had done in the earlier years of their youth. It was about three months before she turned sixteen when I first saw Jaeger.
"Jaeger was a man about my age, in the prime of his life, but he had a bit of a problem. He was a pervert, by today's standards. He liked the girls that were about half his age, or more so. I had noticed him in the new trading post that had opened. He was the owner of the post. He'd heard all of the village people talk about my conquests and such, but he always had a rude comment waiting for you. To make a long story short, I didn't like the man from the first second that I met him.
"My dislike for him greatly increased when I saw him following Xaria around the village. Xaria was excited about having a new 'friend' in town, totally oblivious to what he really wanted. I tried not to notice the snide looks that he would shoot me in the village square. Things went on like this for about a month, with a cold war silently going on between Jaeger and I before he finally approached me.
"I was returning from fishing and still close to the river when I saw Jaeger a ways up washing blood off of his face. He noticed me immediately, and before I could even move, he was standing right next to me. I had heard the ancient legends of vampires, but I never believed any of them until that day.
"According to old legends, there are two types of vampires: day-walkers, and night-crawlers. I have only ever known two day-walkers, besides myself. Jaeger was one, and the other I didn't see until later." I said.
"That answers one of my questions." Amy said. I nodded.
"That's a little known legend. Most of the vampires you'll ever see are night-crawlers, which goes along with Dracula, and most of the movies you see now days." I said.
"Jaeger flat out told me that he was a vampire and what he wanted. What he wanted, I already knew; he wanted my daughter. He wanted her to become like him. I told him she would never join his evil deeds. Jaeger simply nodded. 'That's fine' he said, 'But you'll change your mind sooner or later.'
"The bastard had the thing planned from square one. He'd done some sort of thing to my cattle that made them sick and was quickly killing them off. I was able to ignore it, since all of the other cows in the village had the same thing, but then Adina and Xaria both became sick and bedridden. I didn't need a doctor to tell me that it was the same disease that had killed the cattle. I had been forced into my decision.
"I met him in the same spot that I had exactly a week prior. I made him a deal; he would take me as a substitute for my daughter and leave my family and the village alone. He agreed. Within minutes, he was performing the blood transfusion, and I became very sleepy. I asked to see Adina and Xaria one last time to make sure that they were okay, and feeling better. He held me up and pointed in a direction. They were up and outside, searching for me. I saw this for a second, and then passed out.
"When I woke back up, I was in a cave of some sort with fire-powered lamps all around the place. There was even a moat sort of thing of fire around the place where I was chained. I looked around and quickly stood up when I saw Adina and Xaria there. Jaeger had gone back on his word. They discovered what I was, and Jaeger killed Adina right in front of me while another woman, Desdemona I later found her name to be, held Xaria back. Jaeger killed Adina, simply dropped her on the ground and moved on to Xaria and made her his evil bride as I watched on." I finished.
"Why didn't you use your superhuman strength to break whatever was holding you and kill him?" Amy asked.
"Well, the chains that were holding me were a special kind of metal, designed especially for holding vampires. And, at the time, I didn't know how to kill Jaeger. Believe me, I lunged for his throat a couple of time, but those chains held me back. Jaeger didn't even blink."
"Who was the other day walker you said you knew?" she asked. I looked at her for a moment before lowering my gaze again.
"My daughter." I said.
"Oh," Amy said quietly.
"I apologize for not telling you all of this earlier, but I wanted to wait until I had the right way to say it. I hope you don't feel that I have taken advantage of you here." I said.
"I wish you would have told me this at least before we slept together." She said. "I probably wouldn't have believed you, but I wish you would have told me, then it wouldn't feel like such a mistake."
"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I did try to tell you before we slept together. Do you remember me saying 'I need to tell you something'?" I asked her. She thought about this for a moment before shock hit her again.
"Oh my God, you tried to tell me and all I did was keep brushing it off." She said, with realization. "I'm sorry then. You tried to tell me before you lost your nerve, and I just blew it up in your face."
"Well, that's one way of putting it." I said, and sighed. "So, are we still okay? Me and you?" I asked. She looked down at the bat in her lap again. "We don't have to do anything intimate ever again if you don't want to." I added.
"Answer me one last thing." She said.
"Okay."
"Who do you hunt for blood? Do you always prey on weak people or what?" she asked. I shook my head resolutely.
"No, I usually go after the stereotypical 'bad people'. Murderers, rapists, child molesters, that sort of thing. I don't stop drinking from those people usually, unless I find some redeemable quality, which is rare. See the trench coat?" I asked, pointing to the chair in the room. She nodded. "Stole it from a man who was going to rape a little boy. I drank most of his blood, but then decided to give him a second chance." I said.
"You're not making this up? Any of it?"
"No, I promise you that everything that I have just told you is 100 percent true." I said. She nodded.
"I don't completely trust you yet." She said. "And don't be surprised if I sleep with this bat right next to me for a while." I nodded. "But, I'm willing to give you a second chance to redeem yourself only if you promise to not drink any blood from me." She said, noticed the look on my face and continued. "Again." She finished. I smirked.
"Deal." I said, and we shook hands over it.
Mortal females.
I never will understand them.
Perhaps that is what makes them so interesting to me even now, the mystery behind them.
Or perhaps I am just going crazy in my old age.
Please Review!!