Chapter 8: "Protect Me From What I Want"
I was much later when the door opened again, Gillian guessed that she had spent a whole day in the room.
She heard the key in the lock and Steve walked into the room: "Did you sleep well?" He asked with a grin, and Gillian sat up from the broken couch.
"A blanket would have been nice."
She felt every muscle in her body.
"Tstss, how inattentive of me. I had completely forgotten that half -vampires can feel cold. "
He left the room with the door open behind him.
"Come."
"Where to?", called Gillian after him.
"I'll show you something. Now come on. "
What else could she do?
Gillian followed Steve. Of the other vampaneze was nothing to see.
They left the warehouse and Gillian looked around, she was puzzled that she was apparently alone with Steve.
"Give me your hand. We will flitt." Steve reached his hand out to her.
Gillian's eyes widened. Why was none of the vampaneze around to guard her? Did they believe that she could not escape from Steve? Or was he right now helping her to escape?
Because she did not take his hand, Steve made an annoyed step towards her and grabbed her arm. Then he turned his back to her. "Come. Hop on. We can only flitt together, if I carried you. Otherwise I would have to tell you where we want to go. "
"Then tell me where we want to go."
Steve grinned at her over his shoulder: "Then it would not be a surprise. Now hop on, I'll take you piggyback. "
If you want, thought Gillian and climbed on Steves back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he took her legs firmly under his arms.
She was now very close to his face when he said: "Hold your breath."
Gillian took a deep breath, and Steve flitt off, so that everything around her blurred and the world went slow.
Gillian had already traveled in this way on the back of Larten Crepsley, but never with anyone else. She could not help but admire that Steve apparently carried her effortless.
When he stopped, they had flitt across the whole city.
Steve turned his head to her and said: "We're there."
Gillian loosened her grip on his neck, and could not ignore to notice that he, unlike Murlough, smelled very good.
She looked around the shabby street, and tried to figure out where they were and what they wanted here.
Steve turned in one direction, down the road past the bars and discos and sex shops. He did not even care if she followed him, and Gillian realized that she could escape now easily if she wanted. Apparently she was not his prisoner.
Curiosity won and she followed the boy.
He stopped outside a nightclub and waited until she followed up to him.
He looked at her gravely, and suddenly grabbed his neck and pulled his hoodie over his head.
He offered it to her. "Here. Put this on. "
Gillian glared at him. What was that about? "I'm not cold."
"Come on."
He pressed the sweater in her hands.
Gillian hesitated briefly, but then pulled the hoodie on.
It smelled after him, after some Axe deodorant, that Gillian liked and which she had smelled on him before, and something else more.
Steve, now only in a T-shirt, suddenly seized with both hands behind her. Gillian was frightened, and recoiled. Steve frowned.
"Keep cool." And again he raised both hands to her. This time she allowed it, he grabbed the hood of the black sweater and pulled it over her head. He tenderly brushed a strand of her black hair from her face, and then put the hood down low.
"It is better if nobody recognizes you," he said finally to explain, and entered the club.
Gillian's heart was pounding.
His touch had not been unpleasant.
She followed him into the dim interior.
The shabby interior of the club left no doubt what happened here in the back rooms. A woman in lingerie danced listlessly around a pole to the stomping music, and the flashing strobe lights could not hide that she was no longer the youngest.
Steve went to the bar and nodded to a man with a greasy bald head. "We are expected. Room 7. "
Gillian looked down, and pulled the hood low over her forehead.
The man gestured grunting with his chin into a corridor that led to the back, without worrying about that Steve was obviously underage.
She followed him with pounding heart down the hallway, anxiously wondering why they were here.
Steve knocked on a door to a painted skewed number 7, and entered the room without waiting for an invitation.
The room was small, and was taken entirely from a shabby bed with faux leopard fur. It smelled of cigarettes, cheap perfume and sweat.
A woman's voice welcomed Steve cooing "Come in, my boy", and Steve took a step to the side, allowing Gillian to take a look at the prostitute, which blinked over to Steve out of glassy eyes, blowing bluish smoke in the air from a cigarette.
Gillian was thunderstruck.
The woman there on the bed was her mother.
Horrified, she watched as she got up and made no effort to hold together the already transparent negligee. She stumbled over to Steve, the fingers of her right hand with a cigarette held up and stared at him from top to bottom.
The woman had come down. A wreck, with wrinkled, from a few times too often in the solarium tinted skin, much too bright and destroyed make up and dressed with nothing more than a few bright red lingerie, that lace was partly missing.
But it was clearly her mother.
"You're cute, kid," she said and went with the free hand over Steves cheek. Then she looked staggering over at Gillian in the entrance, who had the hood still pulled low over her face. "And you've brought your little girlfriend? Well, all right with me. "She stumbled to the bed. "But that costs extra."
"Mom," a whimpering moan escaped Gillian.
The woman looked up and tried to look at her, woozy from the alcohol.
Gillian stepped forward and pulled the hood from her head so that her black hair fell like a veil.
" Gill... Gillian?" , stammered the woman.
Gillian grimaced with disgust.
"Gillian, it`s really you." Her mother got up and tried to hug Gillian, but she backed away in horror.
The woman lowered powerless her arms, and flopped back on the bed.
"Don´t you want to hug your old mom?", she said tearfully.
"Hugging you? Look at you! ", Gillian spat out.
Her mother cringed as if she had been beaten. With one hand she tried to close her negligee in the front, with the other she took a shaky zip on her cigarette. She could not look in Gillian's eyes. "You must not be angry with me, you have to understand ...", she began, but stopped.
"No, Mom, I'll never understand."
Her mother looked up now.
"You look good," she said tenderly. "Let me take a look at you, child. Such a pretty girl you've grown", and she patted the mattress next to her as an invitation to sit down.
But Gillian shook her head.
"You don`t want to sit next to me? You're probably too fine", she took a breath again and blew the smoke out with an evil eye. "You didn`t change. You have always been something better, don`t you, Gillian? You 've always been too fine for this life. And for your mother. "
Gillian glared angryly back.
"What? Why did you come here? Huh?" She ripped off the negligee, so that her shoulders were exposed. "Are you not proud of me?"
She laughed nastily.
"You disgust me," Gillian said cold.
"Shut up!" Her mother screamed. "It`s your fault! If I had not got you, then all this would have never happen! "
Gillian's face twisted with anger: "Be quiet!"
The mother continued: "You think I did choose this? You think I have not imagined my life differently? Do I look like someone who wanted to have a crying baby, a nasty child that constantly wanted something, food and toys and school books and extra clothing ... "
"Be quiet," Gillian hissed.
"... and then these allegations when you became older. But I don`t let one little brat tell me, how I have to lead my life. "
"Be quiet," hissed Gillian again. A red veil crawled in the edges of her eyes and her ears burned.
"Get out of my eyes, you ungrateful brat! You have taken everything away from me! My freedom! I've never wanted you! "
"Shut up!" Gillian growled in a low tone. In one step she passed the whole room, and stretched out her arms to her mother, as if she wanted to hug her. Her mother shrieked: "Don`t touch me!", but Gillian had grabbed her head with both hands, and turned it with a rush wrench to the side.
It gave a loud crack and her screaming stopped.
The body of the mother slumped, her face pressed to Gillian's belly, her hands hanging limply down the sides.
The cigarette slipped from her fingers and rolled burning on the ground.
For a moment mother and daughter stood there in a grotesque embrace.
Then Gillian made a step back, and her mother's body flopped carelessly from bed to the ground.
Gillian stared down at her and felt that Steve was beside her.
He knelt down and without a word put his middle fingers on the artery of the dead woman.
After he had convinced himself that her heart did beat no longer, he straightened up and his violet eyes stared at Gillian. "You're thirsty," he stated. "Do you want to ...?", but before he could finish the sentence, Gillian shook her head.
"Whatever you say. But that is a waste," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"Can we go?", Gillian said flatly.
"Sure", said Steve and stepped over the lifeless body of the woman.
Gillian followed him and closed the door to number 7 behind her without looking back.
Outside on the street they both walked silently side by side.
Eventually, Steve took Gillian's hand.
She awoke as if from a trance. "Why have you brought me here?", she asked.
They stopped.
"I thought there was something, that you'd have to clarify. Murlough has done this with me beforehand, too. I also had to pay back to somebody ... "
Gillian looked at her hand in his, but she didn`t drew back.
She looked up, and into his eyes.
Then she murmured: "Thank you."
Steve smiled, "Then you feel better now?"
"Yes. I feel free. "
The two walked hand in hand down the neon-lit streets, past roaring drunk and adolescents.
"You know, my mother was so similar to yours. I have a feeling like we have something in common. "
"Steve ...?" Gillian hesitated.
He stopped again and pulled her into a doorway, so that they weren`t in the way of the crowd. Gillian had propped her fists in her pockets and stood close beside him in a entrance before a scratched door, taped all over with posters.
"You said the offer Murlough once made, is still valid."
Gillian hardly dared to breathe.
"Yes, it is. Does that mean, you want to take it? "Steve asked, trying to see her face, but Gillian hemmed and hawed and avoided his gaze.
"What is it? You always wanted to be a vampire, why do you hesitate now? "
Steve wrinkled his forehead.
Gillian chewed on her lips, and silently prayed that he might understand it.
"It's because ... Murlough. I ... I can not stand him. "
Tortured she looked up at him.
Understanding crept into Steve's face. "Oh, I see. You know, he's fine. He has also made me into a vampire. Sure, it does hurt a little and stuff, but then ... I mean ... if you do not want ... "
Now Steve was embarrassed.
"So ... if you do not want Murlough to make it, perhaps… I mean, maybe ... I could do it then."
Gillian was amazed: "That`s possible?"
Steve built up in front of her with pride. "Of course. I'm a full-fledged vampire. "
"A vampaneze, you mean"
Steve made a dismissive gesture. "They are not as bad as you think. I mean, look at me. And Murlough ... ok, he seems a bit extreme at first. But it`s just that he is not such a wimp like the other vampires. I mean, Larten Crepsley, what is he? A circus clown! "
He fell silent, apparently in fear that he had gone too far.
But Gillian just looked at him. "Why will you do that for me, Steve?"
The teenager smiled arrogantly and raised a hand to Gillian to stroke her cheek.
"Well, because you're a pretty bride. And I bet you will be a really pretty vampaneze. "
He grinned.
"Will you really make me a vampaneze?"
"Of course" said Steve, leaned forward and tried to kiss her.
But shortly before his lips met hers, she whispered: "What do you want from me for that?"
Steve paused.
He went back from her, leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest.
His compelling purple eyes were on her.
"Well, there is something that you could do for me."