"What? No! I- No." I mumbled, my words getting mixed up as I tried to process what Myrnin was asking me. Was I adopted? No, I wasn't. I wasn't. I wasn't! I tried to convince myself that Myrnin was wrong, but somewhere in the back of my mind, a nagging voice asked me if maybe, just maybe, he was right. It made sense that I was adopted. My parents had mousy brown hair and blue/green eyes while I had dark brown hair and brown eyes. I'd never questioned it before but now, I started to doubt every childhood memory I had.

I didn't have many pictures from my first year or two, and there were none at all from my Mom's pregnancy. I didn't have much family, either. No cousins, aunts, brothers or sisters. Was there a reason for that? As a child, I'd had weird memories, too, visions of another life. What if they were real? What if they were flashbacks from my life before my parents? I'd always felt different, somehow... I thought it had been my intelligence, but now I wondered if it was something else.

I sunk to my knees within the boxes, drowning in my thoughts. How could I not have known? How could I have ever lived my life not truly knowing who I was? It all made sense now, though. Every weird feeling I'd ever had, every way I was different to family... I was adopted.

I felt Myrnin's hand on my back, stroking down my spine soothingly. His gentle touch gave me goosebumps and I turned to look at him sadly.

"Claire," he began, "I didn't mean to startle you, it was just a suggestion..."

"No. I think-" I swallowed nervously, "You might be right,"

I expected some kind of smug rejoice from him. A celebration at the fact that he, once again, was right and I was wrong. I expected him to be irritating and through this in my face for (now, endless) years to come. He didn't. Instead he pulled me into his chest and kissed my forehead. He shot me a sympathetic look and sighed.

"There's something you don't know about Amelie. Nobody knows, except for her, Theo and I," Myrnin sighed again, "And now you..."

"What is it?" I asked softly.

"We're not sure how it happened, probably something within the genes, but on 24th April 1996, Amelie had a baby. She was a little girl, called Claire. Amelie tried to raise her, but it was hard in Morganville, especially since she was the founder. One day she came to the lab with this book, asking me to hide it from her father. That was the night that she gave Claire away. The baby was a year and a half old."

I took a deep breath that I didn't need and tried to think about what Myrnin had just told me. The words swirled and danced around my head, I could hardly focus on them. Only a few words stood out: 'Claire', 24th April 1996',

I tried to think of a reasonable answer: I wasn't Amelie's daughter. I wasn't. Obviously, my name was Claire. But it's pretty common, and it's of French origin, so it's understandable that Amelie would chose that name for her daughter. But her having the same birthday as me? That was a little trickier. How many Claire would have been born on the same day? Maybe a few, maybe a lot. There was no way to truly tell if I was Amelie's daughter based on those tiny details.

"So what are you saying?" I asked, watching as Myrnin stood up and started pacing, a sure sign that he was nervous.

"I just think that Amelie has a certain connection to you that no one can explain, and this book probably has something to do with it," He waved the book around in the air, "She didn't want Bishop to read it. There are probably a lot of reasons, more than we know,"

I walked over to him slowly and stared at the book he was holding. From the outside, it was really nothing spectacular. It was black leather with a gold symbol, it look more like a bible than anything, but I knew that it held lots of secrets. It possibly held the key to my vampirism, and my life.

He let go off the book, passing it over to me. I turned it over in my hands and took a deep breath, preparing myself for whatever I was about to read. I pulled over a navy beanbag from the corner of the room and sank into it. Myrnin followed me, peering over my shoulder, then paused.

"Perhaps," he began, hesitantly, "You would prefer to me alone whilst reading?"

I nodded and my voice came out weak and feeble, "Yes. That would be nice,"

I watched as he bowed respectfully and walked slowly out of the room. He hesitated as he left, looking back one more time to double check that I wanted to be alone. I nodded and he smiled at me. It wasn't a genuine smile, though, it was full of pain and regret. He was sad, I concluded. Was he sad that he had to tell me this? Maybe he thought he was the bearer of bad news and that it would strain our new found relationship. Or, maybe he was sad that I had to be in this situation at all...

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned it onto the camera. It came up on front camera and for a few seconds, I couldn't help but stare down at my reflection. I'd changed so much in the last few weeks. Obviously, I had gone from human to vampire, from alive to dead. But there were more subtle changes, also. My eyes seemed wiser, more pained. I seemed more mature, but more dangerous. I looked as though I had lived a thousand vampire years, rather than the 18 that I really had.

I quickly switched the camera around, not allowing myself to think any longer. I slowly raised the camera up so that I could see it and figure out what it would mean for me and my future, if I had one at all.

Ah, I hadn't written Beautiful Monster for so long. I've been very preoccupied with writing my newest story 'Rockabye' which is found on my new account: DangerousDream. Also, I felt like I'd hit a writing block with this and I wasn't sure where to take it. Then I was struck with a thousand ideas at once and I just had to write it :)

Oh, and another note: I know that Bishop's book was written in Latin but since we don't read or speak latin (or maybe you do, I don't know), let's just use our imagination and pretend it was written in English instead, okay? Okay :)