Many, many apologies! 1000 tulips, party rings and a bottle of prosecco being sent your way! I'm so sorry I didn't update sooner.

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I do not own being human.

Lots of surprises in this chapter, I hope you enjoy x

Part 6: Family

I looked from Rebecca to Em then back again, completely bewildered.

"Look, Rebecca, I know I said I would help but I really don't think there is anything that I can do to make this better."

"But there is." She said, with a look of complete desperation. "You see, I've been doing some research and - and you can cure him, you can stop him from dying-"

"Rebecca..." I interrupted, hoping she didn't mean what I thought she did.

"- You can make him like you." She finished. My heart sank, she wanted me to recruit him. I looked over at Em who was sitting at her father's side watching our conversation. There was a faint glimmer of hope in her eyes. What I was going to say next would break her heart, but I had to say it.

"I can't do that." I said quietly.

"Yes, you can." Said Rebecca, letting go of her husband's hand and walking towards me. "All you have to do is let him drink fro-"

"I know how to do it but I'm not going to." I said, without meeting her eyes.

"But - but you said you would help." She said, and I could see tears beginning to appear in the corners of her eyes.

"I ment, money for medicine or something not this! It wouldn't be helping him."

"How can you say that? You would be saving his life!"

"No. I would be killing him and when he came back, he might not be him anymore."

"Might? So there is a possibility that-"

"He'd be a vampire Rebecca. You do remember what one of those is, right?" She blinked. She hadn't forgotten, she had been held prisoner by them before.

"But you're alright!" She pleaded. "We helped you, we can do the same for him! I have it planned, we can put him in one of the rooms and shut the door and leave him there until he's safe."

I shook my head. "I can't imagine he would want me to do it."

"You don't know him like I do!" Rebecca was shouting now, there was so much desperation in her voice that made saying 'no' to her one of the most difficult things in the world. Em, who was watching the argument as if it were a tennis match, broke into quiet sobs. I needed them to understand why I couldn't do it.

"You think that immortality is this amazing gift but it's not. It's lonely and cruel and every second is a struggle. You think that you just lock someone up for a year and all of a sudden they just magically don't crave blood anymore? It doesn't work like that. Every servant at my house has to wear a crucifix around their neck to stop me from biting them. And even if, by some miracle, you do manage to keep David clean, what happens fifty years down the line? He will watch you and Em grow old and die and eventually he will give in. I have vowed to never ever drag anyone into this hell that I am living in. Believe me when I say that if I did, he wouldn't thank me." I turned to leave but before I got there Rebecca was before me, on her knees, her eyes pleading.

"Jane, please, I'm begging you, I can't live without him." She sobbed.

"I'm sorry, I really am, but there's nothing I can do for him. I shouldn't have come."

I went back to the inn a few days later, I needed to know if they were alright. I hadn't changed my mind, I knew that I had done the right thing but I was worried, the look on Rebecca's face when I had walked out, taking with me the only chance she had at keeping her husband, I didn't know how she would cope once he died.

When I got to the inn the doors were all locked up. I knocked a few times, even shouted out to them but there was no answer.

I came back once every few days but was always greeted with the same response: silence. I started getting even more worried, I even tried to break in once but only ended up burning myself. It went on for just over a month until one day everything had changed.

I made my usual journey to the inn only to find that there was a new sign above the door, the windows were being cleaned and the walls repainted. I didn't understand. I asked one of the builders what had happened and he said that the inn was under new management, that the previous owners had died.

It was like someone had kicked me in the gut. David, Rebecca and Em, the family that had helped me so much were all dead? I couldn't process it, it couldn't be possible. But the builder said that the bodies were pulled out a week prior, in a terrible state apparently. I couldn't stay there, I couldn't listen to anymore. I felt sick. It was my fault, all my fault. From what I had heard, it sounded like Rebecca had been telling the truth, she really couldn't live without her husband, and she had taken Em with her. Sweet little Em with her big blue eyes and golden ringlets. Em who had made me little bunches of flowers and drawn me pictures and made me smile when I was at my lowest. She was gone and I could have stopped it.

It was too much, I couldn't cope. I needed something to make it stop, to just forget, to loose myself. The millions of heartbeats, all over the city that I had been blocking out for so long all seemed to throb as one. It was overwhelming. I stumbled into a side alley, my legs unable to keep me upright any more. I was immediately set upon by a little gang of street urchins. Beggars and pick pockets with tiny little heartbeats all pounding in my ears, a red haze, clouding my vision. No, I couldn't, not children. I took out my purse and threw it as far away from myself as possible. They all scurried after it like birds flock when you throw breadcrumbs. All except one.

She stared at me for a while with big blue eyes that looked even bigger now that the rest of her face had grown thin with malnourishment, her hair was now dark and lank, filled with grease and grime and you couldn't see her freckles under all that dirt but it was her, it was Em, she was alive.

She held out her hand to help me up and I took it, never taking my eyes away from the miracle in front of me. Somehow the overwhelming blood lust that I had felt earlier had fled to the back of my mind, almost forgotten. There was something different about Em. She had grown up a lot and there was more grief and sadness in her eyes than ever but there was something else, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. There were so many questions that I wanted to ask her about what had happened but it was not the time for talking. She looked lost, like a sheep who had become separated from its flock. She needed a home, so that is what I gave her.

It took her a little while to get used to her new home and to trust me enough to talk but eventually, several hot meals, warm baths and a change of clothes later, I found out what had happened.

Not an hour after I left that night, David had died. Rebecca had cried almost hysterically and then started talking to what appeared to be an invisible person. Em had thought her mother had gone mad. I didn't tell her that it was probably David's ghost that Rebecca was talking to just as he passed over, I thought it would only hurt Em more to think that her father had been there but she couldn't see him. After that apparently Rebecca completely lost control, she started drinking, dangerous amounts, she locked all the doors, they didn't go out, she didn't even call someone to take away David's body. Em had tried to comfort her mother but nothing worked then, one morning she came down the stairs to find Rebecca lying next to David. Dead.

It must have been awful for her. She said that she couldn't stay there anymore, she had to get away and that's when she ended up on the streets.

There was something she wasn't telling me though, something she kept secret until the very last moment that she could. I don't know why she kept it to herself for that long, perhaps she didn't want to admit to it, thought that maybe it wasn't true, was scared that maybe I wouldn't let her stay anymore if I found out. But, inevitably, one evening she just started screaming. It didn't take a genius to work out what was happening, I had seen it happen so many times before, it was a full moon, Em was a werewolf.

I managed to get her down into the cellar before she changed completely, and into the werewolf cell. I stayed outside the room until morning.

Apparently last full moon Rebecca had been to busy drinking and grieving to remember that she was about to turn into something big and hairy. It was left down to Em to maneuver her mother to some place safe and in the process, she was infected.

In the space of a month Em had been scratched, orphaned and made homeless and all of it was mainly my fault. But, and I know this sounds terrible, I'm glad it happened because it had given me something I thought I would never have. It had given me someone who's hair I could plait, who I could read bed time stories to and teach to ride a horse. Someone who I could do needlework with and spoil rotten with expensive dresses and toys. Someone whom I could talk to, be myself with, someone I could get close to without the fear of killing her. I had a daughter. I had a family.

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