five

AMELIA

I came back from class tired and worn out, wanting nothing more than to crash on my bed. I could take a short nap. Sleeping in the afternoon didn’t mean I was getting old.

It was a standard joke at home that started when I was six and Helen had been reading a bedtime story to me. I had taken a fancy to an old woman who according to the book needed lots of sleep in the afternoon. Having never seen an old person before, I marveled at her gray scanty hair, her wrinkles and how bent she was over her walking stick. My family who were over a hundred years old were still strong and looked young and yet here was this woman who was only eighty looking so feeble. The next day when my father had said he needed to take a nap, I had gotten so scared and shouted ‘are you turning into an old woman Daddy.’ It took a lot of explaining for me to get out of punishment that day, and then after that, it became a family joke – sleeping in the afternoon was for old women.

I smiled. Only thinking about my family made me feel warm and a little less afraid. I snugglled deeper under my comforter and closed my eyes hoping to dream of home but I had not slept all I had wanted to when I jerked awake again, first wondering why, then it hit me. I had a date with the frat party guy by ten – well not a date but I wondered if he would decide to kill me if I didn’t show up – then I wondered if he could really kill me like he had threatened to.

My eyes went to my wrist watch and I almost screamed. It was three minutes to ten and even though the cafeteria was only a short walk away from my dorm, I knew I couldn’t make it on time.

I yanked off the top I had been wearing that I had sweated on and put on a white tank top. I ran a brush through my hair and pinned it up and then slipped some diamonds on my ear. I put on a simple black sandal and headed out, hoping to heaven that he wouldn’t be very mad.

As I walked over to the cafeteria, I kept replaying scenarios in my head. He didn’t consider me human…… and by human, I meant someone who had feelings… Someone who mattered. And so, since I was not human, he could do anything to me without his conscience troubling him – and I had no doubt he had a conscience.

I had heard tales of vampire slayers while growing up and dismissed them, not as fantasy but as something that could hardly ever happen to any member of my family or me, but now, as I walked over to the not-date, I knew instinctively that he was a Slayer. People who swore to themselves to exteminate the vampire race, growing stronger with each kill.

I wondered how he had felt with his body pressed up against mine. Did he feel so disgusted, I wanted to believe he didn’t but what I saw in his eyes each time he looked at me filled me with shame.

It was a new feeling, the shame. I had never felt ashamed of who I was before. I was Daddy’s little girl, vampire royalty. It seemed like what I had been born to be, who I was. I had sometimes wondered about my relatives from my mother’s side of the family, those feeble humans who were doomed to grow old and die, it didn’t actually occur to me that people might despise us, might consider us so—so disgusting. I remember asking once or twice whose blood it was when Helen and Juliet came back from a hunt, tossing a parcel over to me but they usually looked at me oddly, like I had asked a forbidden question and told me food was food.

I imagined them sinking their fangs into the frat party guy, sapping his blood through a straw into a sealable poly bag and then tossing it to me simply as ‘food.’ The thought of that alone made me sick and for the first time, I wanted non of the parceled blood my cousins gave me, I didn’t want them anywhere near the frat guy – and yet I had accepted the parcel that had been sent to me that morning, salivated over it, downing it in a stretch when Clarrisa had gone to the bathroom. I hated myself.

I ran into the café, too scared to look at my watch as my eyes darted immediately to table five, then I saw him. I thought I had been prepared, I had mentally been preparing myself to see him again but when he raised his head, piercing me with those blue eyes even from so far away, my heart stopped beating and I couldn’t take in enough air. I put each foot in front of the other, hopping I didn’t trip on my own feet until I got to him.

Percy

I had been having a shitty day, somehow, word had gotten around that I fucked some of the girls in my tutorial classes and today, half the girls that had signed up for my classes hadn’t need any tutoring or rather they hadn’t wanted any. The kept passing suggestive notes to me and asking dumb questions that had little or nothing to do with what I had been trying to teach them, all to get my attention. I loved bitches but when they came on too strong, it got on my nerves.

But there had been Clarrisa. She hadn’t been wearing any of the slutty things the other girls wore and she had seemed genuinely interested in what I had to teach. She had told me later as we exchanged numbers while I asked her out that she had needed to switch some of her courses and that was why she had been behind on lectures. I believed her, she seemed intelligent, smart and I knew she would catch up in no time.

My day would have been a lot better if I hadn’t received a bad news from my surveillance team off campus about the vampire we had been trailing, they had lost track of him and all data they had collected had magically disappeared. I tried to console myself with my plan to get Christopher Rhinehart through his daughter but the vampire chick had gone ahead to annoy me a bit more by being thirty minutes late.

I had been reading a text a brunette with big tits had sent me when I raised my head and saw her coming.

She was wearing a white tank top that hugged her in the right places and not for the first time, I noticed that her skin wasn’t so pale, not as pale as the Vampires I had killed before. She packed her hair up, revealing high cheek bones and her skin contrasted well with the white top. Her jeans hugged her like a compliment, showing off mad curves that I hadn’t fully appreciated before. She was almost one of the hottest chicks I had met – that fact annoyed me.

Now, she was walking up to me, looking afraid like I was the monster and not her. I hated it when she acted like some innocent nineteen year old instead of the thousand-year – old blood sucker she was.

‘’Hi.’’ She said, standing in front of me. ‘’ I’m very sorry I’m late and I promise I got carried away… I was sleeping and I didn’t know what time it was. I promise I haven’t called my Dad or spoken to anyone about… Oh, of cause I took the blood parcel that was sent – sorry, I know I shouldn’t mention that –‘’

‘’Sit down Vampire!’’ I snapped and she sat down immediately. I wondered what she would say when I told her I planned to kill her father.

‘’You’re a vampire Slayer aren’t you.’’ She asked softly.

I smiled sarcastically. ‘’What an intelligent guess! Now let me guess – you must be a vampire!’’

She shot her gaze to the table. ‘’I know – it was a stupid question. I’m just wondering why I … why I’m still alive.’’ She raised her head then watching me and this time, there was no fear in her eyes. She simply wanted to know.

‘’ I’d prefer to kill your father instead.’’

‘’My my what!’’ This time, there was fury in her violet eyes, darkening them. She got up slowly, regally, every bit the princess she was. ‘’Well frat party guy, you just can’t. You may consider yourself some stupid vampire Slayer but you can’t kill the king even if you wanted to. For starters, you’re not nearly as good as you think you are or you’ll have known I’m the only one you could have been able to kill and secondly, my father is strong – the oldest vampire alive. Do you know vampires get stronger with age? We’re not like you feeble humans that die at the age of ninety or there abouts. We actually get more powers with each new year.’’

I did not stand up like she had although I was equally angry. My voice dropped a few degrees lower. ‘’Okay so humans don’t live that long and yet you keep cutting their lives short. Listen to me Vampire, you will answer all my questions carefully and you will take yourself back to your dorm or where ever, before I change my mind and decide I don’t need you to get to your father after all." I didn't mention that I was a werewolf, not a human, an Alpha -- that was where my special abilities came from. But there were somethings she didn't need to know.

She squared her shoulders. ‘’And if I don’t ?’’

Instead of answering, I simply pressed a button on my wrist watch. I had not told her that the device I pinned into her hair could also be used to kill her – if I wanted it to, or to just do a little damage, like I wanted it to now.

At first she wondered what I was up to then I saw the moment the pain entered her eyes, clouding them. I forced myself not to look away, I couldn’t let her know I felt sorry for her.

‘’Is that you?’’ She asked, sitting down weakly. ‘’Are you the one that’s making my heart beat in mismatched patterns and… and.. I feel weak… like my life is being drained through my veins.’’

I nodded then turned it off. ‘’I don’t think you’ll call my bluff again will you Amy?’’

She shook her head. ‘’No.’’ The hopeless fear was back in her eyes again when she asked. ‘’Would you use that to kill my father?"

‘’That’s how all the humans you’ve drank from all felt.’’ I said instead of answering the question – but then, she probably knew already.

‘’Where does you father keep his council?’’

She looked confused. ‘’Council?’’

‘’Yes council, Vampire. Where does he hold his kingly meetings?’’

‘’At our house in Los Angeles.’’ She answered weakly. ‘’ But sometimes….’’ She let herself trail off, unwilling to continue.

‘’Sometimes what?’’ I pressed.

‘’Sometimes he travels with my uncles to other places – we have property everywhere.’’

‘’Yes.’’ I nodded. ‘’You’ve had a long time to gather them, time bought on human blood.’’ I watched her picking at her finger nails, with her head dropped. ‘’Why do you keep doing it?’’ I finally asked.

Surprised, she short her eyes to me, briefly. ‘’Doing what?’’

‘’Keeping up the pretence. You cannot teach yourself to lie even if you wanted to.’’