Chapter 4: "Without you I am nothing"
Once she was alone, she tore off her earrings and threw them into one corner of the room.
Even the dress she tore off and dropped it unceremoniously to the ground.
In the bathroom she scrubbed the makeup from her face until her skin was glowing red.
Gavner Purl had lied to her.
Oh, not in what he was saying, he had made sure that his words in one way or the other were open for interpretations. He would never allow to get caught at a word break.
But he had lied with the meaning.
He knew very well that she meant to be transformed as soon as possible.
Not in ten or twenty or thirty years.
She wanted it in the next few DAYS.
Ok, she had said nothing about time limits when she had burst into Mr Talls trailer without knocking, and begged Gavner Purl to accept her as his student.
Not with exact words.
But, damn, he had known very well.
This treacherous vampire!
She pulled out the bag pack from under the bed and took out some wide pants and a hooded sweater. Then she crawled into the bed.
Fifty years? Could she bear to spend another fifty years with this fob? She hated his fake tan face and his silly beard already. What could he teach her?
She would become like a trained monkey if she stayed with him.
Disgusted, she looked around the room with the four poster bed.
Had this all impressed her?
All this pomp and the beautiful dresses and elegant poses.
She laughed dryly.
Come on, Gillian, this is not you.
She remembered the Cirque du Freak with longing. Had she not there always been able to be herself?
She and Larten, it had gone fine for them.
Ok, sometimes the money had been really tight, they couldn't perform, had been chased away or persecuted by the authorities and harassed by the police. And even if Gillian did get along with most of the people, who traveled with the Cirque, she had somehow never really been a full part of it.
She and Larten, they were in the end not really freaks.
They were vampires, or at least Gillian would be one soon too, and that permanent life on the run had been depressing.
Gavner Purl took another way. He has this house and servants, against whom he does not have to hide.
Oh, Larten. Gillian suddenly missed her master vampire almost physically. She pulled the hood over her head and slipped deeper under the blanket.
How might Larten get along without her?
Would Darren take good care of him?
Of course not, the silly boy had no idea.
He has only been a few weeks with them.
Suddenly it occurred to her, that the boy has not even been there when the circus went on and packed everything up.
Would Darren know how to pack the tent, stow everything and ensure that Lartens coffin was guarded during the daylight?
Did he know how his vampire master sheltered from the sun by day, and what he should do if they ran into a police check?
Damn, Gillian, you left Larten alone with this teenager, and it is your fault, that he is trained so poorly.
Larten ... forgive me, I've done something stupid.
Gillian sobbed, and hid her face in the wide hood of her sweater.
A faint smell after patchouli wafted from the fabric.
Lartens odor.
Gillian moaned in agony.
Here was no place for her.
She should return to Larten.
She remembered Larten's face, his piercing eyes under orange-red hair, the scar across his cheek.
How would he react when she comes back?
"Can you forgive an old vampire his weak heart?"
This had Larten said to her when she went away.
But what exactly had he meant?
She had thought, that he meant, he was too weak to transform her.
But was that true?
She saw his stinging eyes in her memory again.
What he had meant when he said, he could not turn her?
Did he really not bring himself to do it?
Why not? What exactly happened at a transformation between the vampire and the student?
Gillian remembered vividly how the vampire had exchanged his blood for the first time with her. It was short and painful, but she had felt long afterwards in a strange way connected with him.
And then the other day, when she had crawled to him in the coffin and drank a tiny drop of him ... A warm feeling rushed through her when she remembered it.
If the transformation will be like that, then Gillian longed for it very much.
But Larten did not.
Well, at least not with her, he will probably turn Darren some day, she thought sarcastically, and her stomach clenched.
And she had thought she could do this with the Gavner.
A brief moment, a brief pain, and she would finally be a vampire. It would not be Lartens blood, but no matter, she would be like him.
Now she was no longer sure whether she wanted this type of connection to Gavner Purl. Vampire or not.
But she could not go back to Larten as well.
She could not go anywhere.
It has always been like that.
Gillian had no home and no one to trust or who did hold to her.
Gillian was a halfvampiress without a master, and thus no hope of ever becoming a full vampire.
And she did something she had never ever wanted to do again.
She cried herself to sleep.