-Chapter 11-
I was laying across the couch my feet on Pierre, watching Tv. Scott was looking over the weapons, Jason was still asleep, and Garren was on-line looking at stuff. I got up and crawled over to Pierre and sat extremely close to him.
"If we don't find a cure for Vampirisum wanna join the ranks?" I whispered to him then looked at him for his reaction.
He looked at me in a thinking way. "I dunno. What do you mean by cure?"
"Well Garren is finding one right? Well what if he doesn't? Jason, Garren, and I have the immortality problem. You and Scott do not."
"Kali don't scare him!" Garren yelled from his desk.
"Congratulations Garren, your first step to becoming an undead. You'll never need a hearing aid." I yelled back sarcastically. Then turning back to Pierre. "So?"
"I have trust in Garren, so I don't think what you are thinking will be needed." Pierre said, turning back to the tv.
--
I was stuck with Garren to teach him Vampire tricks tonight. Why did I volunteer? I asked myself. The only thing good about this was, he reminded me of the old days when I picked fights with the fresh vampires. He had little fighting skills, so I had to slow down so he did not fall down.
"Go kick the wall." I ordered, remembering I could do things the second night.
He gave me a weird look and kicked the wall in.
I looked at the hole. "Plaster is needed." I said.
"You told me to kick the wall." he replied.
"Well do you see anything else that shows you can kick through walls?" I asked.
"Okay, now I will go and hide a sandwich and you will go find it okay?" I said leaving the training room.
"I'm not a dog!" he yelled after me.
"We use our noses like them." I replied, going off with Scott's lunch.
I came back. "Jason definitly did not make you do this." he crossed his arms in front of him.
"He should have instead of just yelling at me." I replied. "Now go find Scott's lunch. It is a left over sandwich... I think it was cheese." I pointed out the door.
Ten minutes later Garren came back with the sandwich. And I jumped him, only for him to duck and me to fly over him.
"Well you are getting better." I replied rubbing my head.
"We could be figuring out the recipes instead of doing this." Garren said, looking at me.
"Hit me once, then we can go." I challenged. "I don't want Jason to take my head for not making you learn something."
Garren narrowed his eyes at me, and I just smiled. In the end, Garren kicked the back of my legs out and held me up by a foot. I was practically doing a hand stand, my short hair tickling my nose.
"You are unfair when you are on a mission." I said, looking at his shoes. I was put down gently, then he left.
I caught up to him as he sat down.
"Can I have some of your blood?" he asked.
I looked down at my wrist with the white line across it.
He saw me looking at my wrist. "Just a prick. I need to see the difference between human blood and a vampire's."
"Where are you getting the human blood?" I asked.
He clicked his mouse and a website popped up on screen with blood samples.
"Oh." I felt sheepish. "And they don't have a vampire sample?" I asked sarcastically.
He shook his head.
--
I followed Jason around the house trying to get him to talk to me. He quickly turned around and growled at me.
"How come Garren and I do not have fangs?" I finally asked, despite his anger.
"How should I know that!" he asked angrily.
"You are a vampire." I said with obviousness on my voice.
Jason growled and walked away.
"Jeeze, don't be so touchy!" I yelled behind him.
He stopped and turned around and stalked back to me. "I thought you cared." he said through his teeth.
"I do?" I said, now confused.
"No, you don't." He said.
"I am working on a cure, with Garren." I said. "How can you say that I don't care?"
He narrowed his eyes and stomped off. I walked back to where the rest of the guys were sitting, extremely confused.
"Anyone want to explain Jason's awful mood?" I asked, sitting beside Pierre.
Scott pointed to Pierre. "It's Pierre's fault." he said.
"He's just in a touchy mood." Pierre said.
I looked at Pierre, "Did you say to him what I said to you this evening?"
"That would have pissed him off." Garren agreed from his desk.
"No I didn't."
"He was just rambling about you." Scott said.
"Who?" I asked, getting lost already.
"Pierre." Scott said, and Pierre blushed a bit.
"Rambling about me how?" I asked.
"Like in high school about a hot girl." Scott laughed a bit. "Then we found out Jason liked you, so now everyone is in trouble."
"How do I now tell Jason I do not like him that way without getting my head chopped off?" I asked.
"When he is chained up with a muzzle?" Scott offered.
I groaned. "Oh this is all your fault." I pushed Pierre. "You and Jason having crushes, and you being the crushee." I hit my head on my knee.
Pierre looked around in confusion. "She likes you!" Garren clarified from his desk.
"Really?" he smiled.
"Did you not get that--" I stopped, that conversation explaining my friendship with Jason did not happen. Because I made Pierre forget. "I mentioned it once or twice?" I said.
"No..." Pierre said, still happy.
"Isn't that cute!" Scott said.
"This isn't helping with telling Jason." I said.
"He could catch us making out?" Pierre said looking innocently.
"Fun idea, but want to have a long life." I said.
"You could try and just tell him." Garren said. "He'll get it eventually."
I looked at everyone, "Do I have my back covered?"
"If he jumps you then yeah." Scott said.
The next night I volunteered to wake up Jason. I refrained from snuggling with Pierre during the day because I was expecting to be licking my wounds in a few minutes. I opened his coffin, and backed up a few steps to wait for him.
I heard him hiss, before he used his voice. "If you do not get out, I will bite you." he said, sitting up in his box.
"And I will have to dust you." I said, remembering my pledge, 'if he screws up once, his ass is dusted.'
I could feel him looking at me from his coffin.
"I want to explain myself." I said, quietly.
"What is there to explain?"
"That I do really care about you because you are my friend. But I cannot see you as anything else. I'm sorry if you thought otherwise."
"But you gave so many signals."
I looked into the blackness of the room. "That was probably me having fun. I don't have fun with people one on one as often as I would like, and I must have come on strong. I'm sorry."
"So I'm a play thing to you?" he asked.
"No, not at all. You have impacted my life significantly, like a brother. Angelica, was the only person I trusted besides my mother and father. Then what happened happened, and I lost that trust. Again, you were the first person I trusted since then, not any of the others. You taught me many things that built up that trust. But trust does not equal love. I will follow you into battle and protect you, but I will not follow you into bed. I do not love you like that, because you mean more to me than a sleeping buddy or a lover. Because I consider you family." I stood there in the dark, listening to his steady breathing.
It began to feel awkward a few moments later so I began to leave his room.
"Wait." He said, and jumped out of his coffin. He came up to me put both hands on my shoulders. "I do love you more than a sister or friend, and I would go to the ends of the earth for you. That is why I think I understand why you don't want to ruin that family feeling."
"Thanks." I smiled in the dark. I hugged him around the middle and we walked out into the living area.
They looked at us expectantly. I just grabbed my weapons and waited for instruction beside Pierre. "Words speak louder than actions." I whispered to him.
Jason ran in to the warehouse, this hunt was longer than any other. Dawn was approaching, and Jason was already burning. On top of being a long battle, we all came in with blood on ourselves. For some reason the vampiric night staff of this city, liked weapons, unlike the gangs. They were all gone thanks to me, but man I hurt. It was like the villagers attacking Frankenstein's Monster, we were the monster while the vampires were the villagers with the pitch forks.
"Do you think we should move now?" I asked Garren, Scott and Pierre the question I always ask myself after the last vampire is dusted.
"Why?" Scott asked picking at a bandage.
"It's just something I did. I thought it would be appropriate to move if we are going to continue hunting." I said, Pierre looked down at me from his lap.
"How many times have you moved?" Garren asked, from his computer, still working on the cure.
I looked up at the ceiling and squinted trying to count in my head. "Seven times in the past two years."
"That is a lot." Pierre commented.
"A lot of jobs too." I added.
"And you want us to be like you?" Scott asked looking at me.
"Oh and I didn't mention about my constant traveling." I said, "And no you don't have to be like me. The moving and traveling was what I did to keep the vampire population down."
"Hey, if we find a cure... do you think we'll still be hunters?" Garren asked from his desk.
"Maybe why?" Pierre asked, looking over the back of the couch.
"I may have found something, but I'm not sure." Garren said, jotting notes down.
I jumped up first and ran, Scott and Pierre stampeding behind me.
"Really!" I stared at him.
"Okay so I looked at the difference between Human and Vampire blood. The Vampire's blood is mutating the human cells, like a disease."
"Does that mean we are changing more into Vampires?" I asked.
Garren looked at me. "I don't know. My hypothesis is that because we were not killed our human cells may be reproducing too fast for the vampire disease to change us, completely."
"So we are not going to change?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"Then what are you trying to say?"
"That I may be able to isolate the vampire disease, therefore creating some sort of cure."
"What were you doing with the concoction then?"
"Stave off his hunger?"
"Why didn't you just gave him cow blood?" I asked.
"Well I was trying to cut out his blood lust." Garren said, sounding defensive.
"Isn't that like trying not to make him eat?"
"It's like a supplement." Pierre clarified.
I gave Garren a dirty look. "That's what I thought."
Garren gave me one back. "Back to what I was trying to say, because we are halfs we may be able to save ourselves once I learn how to isolate the disease."
"Really?" Scott asked.
"I think so." Garren said.
I looked at him. "What happens to the parts of our bodies that have been changed by said disease? Are you destroying this disease, therefore killing half of us or what?"
"I was going to try and neutralize the disease... hoping that any further growth would stop and we'd heal ourselves?"
"That is the smartest hypothesis I have ever heard." I rolled my eyes and walked away.
"You try and do better." Garren growled.
"Your idea was fine, until you said neutralize." I said.
"Then what do you propose?"
"Anti-bodies?" I guessed.
"We already have them in our bodies!" he yelled.
"Stop getting so upset!" I yelled back.
"Well you started it!" he yelled.
"I disagreed and now you are yelling!" I shouted.
Scott and Pierre backed off and watched.
"So!" he said loudly.
"Shut up!" I growled.
"Make me!" He said.
I jumped him, escalating the argument. I was ignoring Pierre and Scott's attempts to calm us down. Garren flipped me off of him, before tackling me. After rolling around he actually punched me. I screamed at him, hitting him and pinning him to to ground. I tried to choke him but I was dragged off. I was kicking and screaming more than Garren so I got loose only to be caught by my throat.
"That is enough!" Jason yelled at both of us.
We started to justify ourselves in a jumble of yelling.
"I don't want to hear it, now shut up!" Jason yelled, then he let my throat go.
I sat down in a chair seething about the fight.