Chapter 14: Blossoms

Her palms were sweaty and her thalamus was on high alert. Kate found herself in her sister's closet again but this time in a completely different type of expedition: she was looking for an outfit. Something that could be categorized as "cute" but not "overdone" somehow. Kate had spent over an hour going through her own clothes, only to realize she only had boring and probably out-of-date clothes for work or comfy loungewear. Rebecca gave Kate her more conservative hand-me-down dresses for events, but otherwise, Kate never found herself shopping for clothes. If anything, the type of shopping sprees she partook in lately were in 3D printers and computer hardware.

The problem at hand here was that Rebecca was much taller and fuller than Kate, which she envied greatly. If anything, Kate always found her body to be a bit childish-looking, with her small boobs, no waist and no butt. So it was really no wonder that none of her sister's clothes fit correctly. But Becca was God knows where tonight, and not available help her in this fashion crisis - which Kate was sure was a rare opportunity her sister would be very disappointed to have missed. Still, she was proud to be tackling this very complicated problem alone.

"This isn't a date," she muttered to herself, trying to calm her elevated pulse. So why did she feel so electric? Her stomach was suspended in zero gravity inside her body cavity, and her thoughts were erratic, second guessing every choice she made.

She glanced at her phone: 9:43 PM. Godric did say 10 PM, and if she was a betting woman, she'd guess vampires are punctual. That left her with exactly 17 minutes to find the perfect not-a-date outfit, tidy her sister's closet, run across the courtyard, and tell Terry she was going for a walk with vampire Godric - as promised.

It was shameful to admit this was one of the hardest and most infuriating puzzles she had ever attempted to solve. Nothing made sense. Everything she tried on made her look and feel so unbelievably inadequate and unattractive. She was even sweating a bit as if this were some sort of masochistic exercise. She took a shiny fabric off a hanger - it was a long ivory satin-looking skirt, with an elastic waist. Kate stepped into it, and it felt comfortably light.

"Stretchy fabric," she took note out loud. Could this be the answer to her conundrum?

Too afraid of damaging her sister's (probably very) expensive clothes, Kate tugged gently on several tops, trying to find something equally forgiving. The answer was this pale yellow short-sleeved loose and see-through knit, with delicate flower buttons. She had seen her sister style this with just a bra, but Kate felt far too exposed, so put on a white spaghetti strap tank top first, and tucked it into the skirt's elastic waistband, as if she knew what the hell she was doing.

Kate looked at herself in the mirror - the tight-knit seemed to complement the flowy-ness of the bottom, and the exposed arms and decolletage were balanced with the covered torso and legs. And for some kind of miracle on Earth, her hair was not only clean but also nice today: straight but with some volume and her bangs laid nicely without splitting weird. Rebecca had, bizarrely, smaller feet than Kate, so her mission here had come to an end. There was no time to tidy up her mess, and she would beg for Rebecca's forgiveness later. Running out, she faced her sister's vanity, filled with makeup, and she considered it for a moment.

Hell no.

That would be a battle she would lose even if she had three hours to do it. She had mascara on from this morning, and she put on some tinted lip balm after brushing her teeth earlier. Kate ran across the courtyard cursing herself for being late. GOD! A girl who grew up wanting for absolutely nothing had no proper going-out clothes of her own? She often questioned her own abilities to properly adult. Deciding to date on a whim was bad enough, but she felt insanely unprepared for every step of the experience so far. And this wasn't even a real date! Could you imagine if it was?!

In her house at the back, Kate grabbed her brand new deck shoes Theresa the house manager had bought her for the summer. She glanced at her phone: 9:57 - shit. Kate didn't know if she was going to pass out or throw up. As if crossing a marathon banner, Kate arrived abruptly in the garage, scaring Terry who was head-deep in the Maybach's engine.

"Jesus- ouch!" He hit his head on the hood with a loud thump. "Heaven's to Betsy, Katie, what is it?"

"I have a date!" She confessed. Kate hoped she didn't look half as terrified as she felt, but she wanted to honour the agreement they made in Switzerland.

"A date?" He repeated confused.

"I mean, it's not a date."

Terry wiped the grease off his hands with a cloth. "Well, which is it?"

"I don't know," Kate took a breath. "Zelda said it isn't a date, but he makes me feel like it is."

He carefully wiped each individual finger with a corkscrew motion as he looked pensive at her, digesting the information. Her cousin looked as confused as she felt. "Since when do you hang out with Zelda Alderman?"

"That's your takeaway from what I said? Not the earth-shattering news that I might be going on a date?" The last word was a perplexed whisper. Kate was still shocked by it.

"Did yous pledge to be a nun?"

What? "No?"

"Then with all due respect, you're a beautiful girl and I don't know why I'm supposed to be surprised by this," he tossed the dirty cloth over his shoulder.

Her heart slowed down significantly at his calmness. "What's… The protocol here, then?"

He sighed. "What's his name?

Kate hesitated for a moment. Telling someone would make it real. "Godric."

"Godric who?"

She replayed every interaction she had with vampire Godric from the moment they met at the Glass Tower, down to their interview in the basement. He never told her his full name, but he was ancient, so: "...Of Gaul."

"Godric O'Gaul, Irish fella, cool. Where y'all going?"

Kate blushed trying not to laugh. "For a walk."

"Don't leave the neighbourhood, share your location on your phone and go. It's all your sister does."

The simplicity felt lacklustre somehow. "That's it?"

"Sometimes I wait in the car parked outside the suitor's house if Becca texts me the address."

"Is that what happens when the date goes well?" Kate asked, hopeful.

He chuckled. "No, that's what happens when it doesn't."

There was a light knock on the garage door. Godric was here. Kate almost screamed. Fumbling with her phone, she quickly shared her location with Terry. A terrible realization settled in.

"Shit, I forgot my purse!" She whispered panicked. Where would she put her phone? She had no pockets either! Why were feminine clothes so freaking impractical?

Terry walked around the car, stood behind the back of it and lightly touched the bottom of the bumper with his foot. The car's trunk door automatically lifted, revealing a wide selection of shoes, folded clothes, small purses and a box of makeup and hair-styling tools.

"Your sister gets ready in the car quite often."

"Thank God," Kate muttered and reached for a small lavender cross-body bag that would fit her phone - and nothing else. According to colour theory, the contrasting colour in a similar saturation should match the pale yellow of her top. She pulled the strap over her head and slipped her phone inside.

"Don't mention it," Terry chuckled again. "No seriously, don't tell your sister I let you take her purse!"

Kate practically sprinted to the garage door, turning the heavy metal knob and pushing open the pedestrian entry door of the alleyway garage. It was dark outside, but the garage lights flooded the sidewalk where Godric stood waiting.

The edges of his lips curled up instantly.

She was like a beautiful breath of fresh air. In a world of mundane boredom, petty squabbles and underwhelming mediocrity, even the timbre of her voice had a joyful spark to it, one that he hadn't heard in… Well… Ever, to be frank. Katherine Bellefleur spoke about the types of trees that lined the sidewalks of her neighbourhood, and how she watched them grow every season, anticipating its flowers every spring. Apparently, the colours of the blossoms changed each year depending on pollinator patterns. Her pure fascination with the world brought him immense joy.

Godric had been to New Orleans dozens of times in the past three hundred years, and not once he paid any attention to these trees. Or any tree, for that matter.

"Do you have a favourite?" Her blue eyes were full of wonder.

"A favourite tree?"

"Yeah, a favourite tree. Anywhere in the world," she clarified as if it were obvious.

Two thousand years on this earth, and no one had ever asked him that. He felt foolish for not having an answer ready. That's how she made him feel - foolish. Katherine waited patiently for his answer, walking next to him on the tight sidewalks under the neighbouring verandas. She shily studied him think.

"The sequoias in California, I suppose."

"The methuselah pine. How come?"

"Not a lot of living beings older than me left."

She pondered quietly for another entire block. He didn't mind it. The silence between them was comfortable. The streets in this residential neighbourhood were quiet, but he could hear the echoes of jazz whispering between the buildings all the way from the heart of the city.

But his attention was focused entirely on her. She had a small frame, below average size for a modern woman. Her hair was a silky chocolate brown hair, with bangs that just hit her above the eyebrows. Her face was round but delicate, with rosy lips and big, round blue eyes. Godric found it curious how young humans looked well into adulthood nowadays. A life without diseases and starvation really did wonders.

"I've been brushing up on history since we last spoke. I wanted to come prepared with thoughtful questions, but I'm afraid two thousand years is too much ground to cover in my downtime, even for me."

"Ah," he smiled. "Well, I can try to summarize it for you."

"Sure, Godric, what were the past two millennia, like?" She smiled, amused by his sarcasm.

"The natural earth was beautiful, but life was pretty miserable. And most historically famous people that history loves to romanticize were disappointingly uninteresting. Now, the natural earth was replaced with one giant strip mall, but living conditions are luxuriously comfortable."

People remained uninteresting. But clearly not all.

"That's… Bleak."

Godric couldn't help but smile. He had the feeling Willa, whom he spent most of his time with, wouldn't be half this polite. "My family keeps it interesting," alright. Here goes nothing. "Does yours?"

The truth was that Godric came home feeling intensely energized last night. After leaving the glass tower, euphoria ran through his veins. Her questions, her line of thinking, the way her mind worked, her curiosity, her cold shoulder warming up to him - it had fueled him somehow, in a way only blood ever had. Her smile, her voice, her scent - delicate sweet apples - filled Godric with a sense of wonder he had never known. Two thousand years on this earth and he thought he had lived, seen and felt the entire spectrum of existence - but he was wrong.

That was when Willa came home and caught him pacing in the dining room. She greeted him with her usual smile, asked if he had gone seen the Bellefleur girl, and then followed up the most horrid and dreadful question:

Do you have her eating out of the palm of your hand yet?

It was a painfully stark reminder of what was at risk here. The prime directive was simple: power. Katherine Bellefleur possessed infinite power in her eyes. The eyedrops, which surely coated her corneas, were the key to everything. If their species had any chance of survival for the next millennia, he had to own it. He had to destroy it. If not destroy was the true intention behind this promenade: power, not wonder. He ought to remember that. Godric had to know what Bellefleur's weakness was. He had to know his enemy.

He could still taste the memory of her blood in his mouth. What an impossible enemy to have.

"Ah, to be quite honest, I don't see my family very much. Just at birthdays and board meetings."

"Don't you live with your sister?"

Katherine gasped quietly under her breath, caught off guard by his comment.

"I can smell her on your clothes, so I assumed," he felt a tightness in his chest as if his explanation was somehow worse.

"Why do vampires develop more olfactory receptors post-mortem?" She changed subjects. "And how is your sense of smell so powerful without any other physiological changes? For the accuracy, one would expect a much large sinus cavity to accommodate."

The answer was tricky if you wanted to avoid the words prey and predator. "Our keen sense of smell helps us navigate the human world. The unchanged appearance helps us blend in but heightened sense keeps us safe from diseased blood-"

"But not Hep V?"

A cold chill shot up his spine, stiffening his body. "No type of hepatitis, no."

"Hm. Interesting," she pondered.

"Your house," he tugged the conversation away from an extremely touchy subject. "It's not quite what I expected. It's much smaller compared to your neighbours."

They lived in cottage-looking house. It was a heritage home, perfectly preserved and pristinely kept, but it was far smaller and less grand than the other historical homes the Garden District.

"Yeah, well, you saw the garage end of it. The front is nicer."

"I meant all of it. I was expecting the crown jewel of the Garden District, a palace with the Bellefleur name on the iron gates. Instead of a... What? High-end cottage?"

"It's an artist's cottage. It was renovated by an interior designer couple from New York. My mom bought it as a place to crash if she stayed at the lab too late. Our family home is about 45 minutes out of the city, just outside of Baton Rouge. She hated sleeping in hotels."

"As do I."

"You know," she sighed, her mind clearly elsewhere. "It is a real shame that hepatitis V research is so underfunded. Vampire research in general. I bet if I could mutate the gene so vampires could smell infected hosts, it would help curbing the spread."

Godric had to grit his teeth. Hepatitis V had taken too much from him. That man-made monstrosity came at a cost the world would never be able to comprehend. Memories of that God-forsaken lab came rushing in. For two whole years scientists and doctors tore vampires apart and put them back together - often incorrectly, just to see what happened. They forced them to hurt one another, perform perverse sexual acts, feed on each other, feed on the dead. So many of his fellow prisoners went insane. They were treated worse than lab rats in that forsaken facility for two years before they managed to successfully mutiny and destroy it.

Godric and small group of very competent vampires spent weeks glamouring just the right journalists to overtake a week's worth of news cycles. They were everywhere, globally, 24-7, showing enough raw camera footage to make politicians sick and officials scared of vampiric revenge. In the end, having society pity the plight of monsters and take their side was far more risky than running those camps, and they were all shutdown. And that's the time it took for the virus to spread. The pandemic that followed in the six months post its release, before New Blood hit the market was enough to make people hate them again.

"There are only 98 papers published on the matter of vampires," she continued. "My mom wrote five of them, mostly on the initial metamorphosis."

He remembered being forced to dig holes in the dirt inside a heavily guarded warehouse. A graveyard of them, with his bare hands. He never understood what they were for.

Echoes of Eric's cries rung in his head. What they did to him had nothing to do with science, and if it did, he would never forgive God for it. His agonizing screams, for nights and days on end. And the heavy silence that followed when he stopped. But they wrote everything down, didn't they?

They observed. Took notes. Did it again. Broke his childe. Wrote about it. Got it published. Won awards.

"It may seem insane, but I'm working on a paper right now. Trying to continue my mom's work, even if no one else will."

Godric stopped in his tracks. Kate stopped too after two more steps. The spark of wonder was still there, in her eyes. She did not know the truth.

"These studies… Who funds them?"

Kate frowned momentarily. "Well, Bellefleur Tech, I suppose. I do them in my lab, in my downtime. One of the perks of having my own laboratory, I suppose."

He shook his head, feeling his fangs ache, and not out of hunger. "Not yours. Your mother's."

"Ah," she still looked confused. "I'm not sure. They were bigger studies, I'm not sure if Bellefleur Tech sponsored it alone. Godric, are you alright? You look pale."

When she took a step forward, he backed away. "How many subjects?"

"I'm sorry?"

"How many subjects are in your mother's studies? In all of the 98 studies?"

He momentarily closed his eyes, trying to listen to the breeze, to the chorus of trumpets playing jazz in the distance. Anything to stop Eric's screams in his head.

"I'm… Not sure?"

"Enough to fill a camp, you think?" He reopened his eyes, and her lips trembled.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Where do you think your mother acquired test subjects?"

"They were terminal cancer patients between ages 18 and 35-"

"No, the other ones. The vampires?"

"What do you mean?"

"All the vampire subjects in all the 98 studies, where do you think they came from, Katherine?" He asked impatiently.

The girl held the strap of her sparkly purse tightly with both hands, and her eyes welled up with tears. She said nothing, but her heartbeat did all the speaking for her: it beat rapidly and afraid.

"You are smart. Think."

Nora. His beautiful girl. Her veins rotting with poison.

"You're wrong!" She shouted, and paused briefly, as if afraid of her own voice. "My mother would never do anything unethical or cruel, and the insinuation alone is offensive to her memory!"

He was losing her. "I was there ten years ago, in a facility in Houma. I wonder which data set I belonged to."

"She's never worked in Houma!"

"How do you know? You were a child!"

"I know my mother better than anyone else on this earth, Godric!" There was a fire in her, and she wasn't afraid of it anymore. "I was with her the night she died, and I can guarantee you it was nowhere near Houma!"

The fire was alive, but the spark in her voice was gone. Suddenly his anger soured into guilt. One evening alone with her, away from prying eyes, he had already broken her spirit without even touching her.

"I am sorry. I am afraid I am not as enthusiastic about vampire research as you are."

Kate shook her head. "My mother founded Bonne Nuit to better the lives of vampires in hopes of peaceful coexistence. Science was the one thing she loved the most, and she would never have misused it, or hurt a soul in the process, I promise you!"

Kate's heartbeat was strong and steady.

"And you?"

"And I what?"

"Hold the same promise?"

Her eyes pierced through his very soul. "Yes."

There wasn't an ounce of doubt in her voice, or a hint of malice in her eyes. Whatever science happened inside the glass tower walls, it wasn't the horror show his family lived through. Her hands had not spilled blood. Despite all odds, all pain and all logic, Godric believed her. Katherine Bellefleur possessed infinite power in her eyes indeed.

Rebecca looked down at her phone. Zero notifications. And there had been none for a while. No news was good news.

She came home far too late, the sun was already rising. Her eyelids were heavy, her throat was parched. Flying always dehydrated the hell out of her.

"I gotta put a humidifier in the jet," she sighed to herself, turning on the kitchen lights.

Although, there was no need. The sun had coloured the sky outside early morning orange.

Becca may or may not have done something bad. It was a covert operation - she had flown out to LA for "shopping". She dined at Nobu with friends as an "alibily". She visited a man in his hotel room "for sex". But the man was a journalist for the New York Times who had a long-standing beef with vampires and was absolutely interested in what the undead were up to in corporate America. The he heard Eric Northman, president and CEO of New Blood was interested in buying a subsection of Bellefleur Tech, the journalist started salivating. It was off, off, off the record, of course, her name would be nowhere near it, but her father's would be. As far as the world knows, Rebecca Bellefleur is only two things: a nepo baby and a whore.

And by God, those labels were useful when playing fucking dumb, because if her father found out that it was her, she'd be exiled faster than you can say daddy.

She grabbed a glass and helped herself to some tap water because she was too lazy to open the fridge (it was all filtered anyway). However, her knee hit the half-open lower cabinet door, the one that contained the garbage bin. With her leg, she tried to close it, but it was jammed with something inside.

Putting the glass down Becca opened the cabinet, only to find a collection of several binders shoved haphazardly in the small bin, overflowing the entire compartment. Those looked like Kate's binders. She pulled one out and opened to front page.

Skeletal Muscle-Driven Circulation and Cardiac Atrophy in Vampiric Physiology (2009) by Bellefleur, A..

"What the hell?" That was her mother's research.

She flipped through the binders, skimming through pages and pages of scientific papers on vampires.

Dental Morphogenesis and Feeding Mechanisms in Vampiric Physiology (2010) by Overlark, J. Neuroelectrical Overload and Seizure Response to Mechanical and Electrical Stimuli in Vampires (2010) by Odenback, A. Metabolic and Neural Reprogramming in V-Virus Infected Hosts (2009) by Bellefleur, A. and Odenback, A.. Nutrient Assimilation and Population Control Mechanisms in Vampiric Species (2010) by Overlark, J., Simmons, F. and Odenback, A..

Rebecca put down the binders. She had heard her sister babble about these studies for years. A few of these were their mother's. If anything, these were her prized collection. Why were they in the garbage?

She let out a long sigh. Rebecca was far too tired to attempt piecing together the puzzle that was her sister. And frankly, she had bigger fish to fry. Her phone pinged inside her purse on the other side of the counter.

Then it pinged again.

So it begins.

A.N:

Sorry this is so late! See, this is what happens when I try to manage 2 WIPs at once jfc.

Anyways, this story is different from anything I've ever written, and the devil is TRULY in the details. Hope y'all liked it, see you next month (if Wicked Games doesn't kill me first) xoxo