by Neha Yazmin
I can’t say it yet, can’t say all the things I came to say. Forgiveness and goodbye get stuck in my throat. I don’t want to be angry with her again, but I’m still quite young, both in terms of human years and vampire months, and I feel a ball of fury rise in my chest.
How could she give up on me so quickly?
Stop! I tell myself firmly. I came here for closure. Not to return to London with a new monkey on my back.
I concentrate all my energies into listening to her breathing. I succeed. The sound is almost mesmerising.
The next thing I know, almost every house on the street is erupting with the closing soundtrack of the football show. I listen to dad getting up from his seat, clicking a button, and the lounge going quiet. He’s turned the TV off with the remote. Following the sound of his footsteps, the creaking and snapping in the hallway, I know he’s heading up the stairs to his bedroom.
Moments later, I see his shadow on the curtains, to the right of my mother’s crouching form. He approaches the bed and his silhouette merges with hers before mum’s shadow pulls away and swiftly exits the room, still holding that flattish object in her hand.
They didn’t greet each other? Mum was never into sport, but she always asked him about the game afterwards. Did they have a fight? If so, what about? Not over me, surely? But a twinge in the back of my head thinks otherwise.
The black windows of my old room are suddenly bright sunlight-yellow. The lights have been turned on and I can see the room hasn’t changed one bit in the last 6 months.
Mum. I can see her now. She’s putting whatever she’d been staring at before on the bedside cabinet. She straightens and stares down at it. The bed and cabinet are parallel to the window, just a yard from the sill and I wish she’d move out of the way so I can get a glimpse of what she’s looking at!
And then she does and I see it. A framed photograph of me. I don’t know what to think. I just feel… warm inside, and I’m a ice cold vampire!
Before I can assign a label to this feeling, she twists on the spot and comes towards me. Well, towards my window. To close the drapes, I suppose.
She might see me so I make an arcing run around the line of houses behind me, find the property opposite my old home, jump onto the tree in its back garden and then leap onto the house’s roof. I don’t make a sound as I land.
I’m not entering their house - I didn’t even set foot in their garden, so I don’t need permission to lie on the slanting roof and watch what’s happening in my room. No invitation required when climbing peoples’ homes; it’s just getting inside that’s the problem.
My mum’s not even at the window yet. Told you I was fast!
She doesn’t close the curtains as she reaches the glass. Instead, she looks through it for a long moment. Then she takes a long intake of breath, holds it for a few seconds, and when she eventually lets it out, the sound it makes is, “Oh, Ellie.” Her words are like a prayer and a request and a resigned moan at the same time.
I lie motionless and listen to the next few words she says as though she is whispering right in my ear.
“When are you coming home, Ellie? How long will you be angry with me?” She closes her eyes and inhales again, holds it, and lets it out slowly. “This will always be your home sweetheart. You’re always welcome. Always invited.”
My eyes widen at her last two words. I get the two sentences preceding these words, but… always invited? What kind of mother would want to convey to her runaway daughter that she’d always be invited?
Because I’m a vampire, and because I’d only just thought about the catch regarding our kind breaking into a stranger’s home, I can only draw one conclusion.
And it makes no sense.
Crazy! I scold myself.
“Ellie?” my mum asks pointedly, as though she can see me curse my stupidity. “Elisia, dear, please,” she whispers into the glass. It steams up where her breath hits it. “There’s so much you need to know. I need to tell you so many things. Come home, Elle.”
Okay, so she hasn’t given up on me. And the reason she hasn’t been distributing flyers is because she doesn’t think they’ll do much good.
Because no, no one would have seen Ellie, the teenaged mortal girl.
She thinks I’m out there somewhere, not buried 6-feet under, but alive. In some way. Dead perhaps, but not completely. That’s what her words suggest to me. That she knows I might be… might be a vampire. Maybe Christian told her?
Crazy! I scold myself again, shaking my head. Crazy, crazy, crazy. That’s so beyond absurd that I chuckle to myself.
Mum’s head jerks up a little. Her eyes vigilantly roam the rooftops ahead of her. As though she heard me chuckle. She couldn’t have heard me. My chuckle was barely a breath through my nose. So low, only a vampire would be able to hear it from where she is.
And I know for a fact she isn’t a vampire - I can hear the beating of her heart, smell her blood.
But she’s really, determinedly, searching for something in my general direction. Narrowing her eyes, she fixates on the roof I’m lying on. I don’t dare move. It’s like she’s looking right at me.
The next second, with a fiercely penetrating look right at me, she says, “Oh Ellie, you’re home!” Her hands reach for her mouth, relieved.
She’s seen me.
I almost slip off the roof and into the back garden.
What the hell? She can hear and see me from there? No way.
She opens the window and the wind blows her fair hair back. Sticking her head out, she whispers, “Ellie, get down off that roof and get through this window now!” Her tone is no different to when she used to tell me to hang up the phone and lay the dining table.
Her bossiness provokes the usual reaction in me. I clench my jaw and shake my head stubbornly, not wanting to give in. Annoy her, make her repeat herself.
Tonight she smiles at this, takes a couple of steps back from the window and waits patiently.
Grudgingly, I get to my feet, standing on the apex of the roof, ensure no one’s crossing the street and jump towards my house. I land just outside the front door. I can enter the house because she’s already invited me. I climb up the exterior wall and throw myself into my old room through the open window.
Of course she hugs me immediately, whispers, really quietly, how relieved she is to see me, overjoyed to have me in her arms again. She barely makes a sound when she asks if I’m alright, if I’ve been hurt. No human could hear it.
I can hear her clearly, of course, and she seems to know.
When she lets me go, she regards my pale face, the dark eyes and the even darker circles around them. She pats down my glossy, wavy brown hair and gives me a despairing smile.
It’s me who flinches when she cups my face in her hands. The warmth of her skin stings me, the way my temperature ought to freak her out. But she seems oblivious to the iciness. Oblivious or accustomed to it.
Something tells me it’s the latter.
“So, it is done,” she says sombrely, appraising my oil black eyes. That’s exactly what Christian said when he first saw me after the conversion.
I take a step back. No matter what, I can’t admit what I think she knows. “What’s done?” I ask flatly.
“Oh Ellie, you don’t have to keep the secret from me,” she says indulgently. “I’m part of the secret. Well, sort of.”
“What secret?” My thoughts are spinning. I can’t focus on a single one; they’re swirling around my head, dizzying me.
“You’re a vampire,” she says simply. I fall to my knees, gasping, choking on air. “But at least you’re alive.”
I snap my head up. She seems thankful. This stills my mind. She knows about vampires, knows I am one, and still thinks I’m alive? That I didn’t die to her the moment I became this monster. That’s nice.
Getting down on her knees, mum puts her hands on my shoulders to calm me. I’m sort of shaking.
“Who changed you?” she asks through her teeth, a mu
rderous glint in her eyes. Murderous intentions for the vampire that ended my human life. This sort of protectiveness, I can get used to.
But I suddenly realise I don’t want Christian hurt. I keep my mouth shut.
“It happened on the night you ran away from home, didn’t it?”
I nod silently.
“Ellie, who was it?”
“Lydia,” I lie.
Mum’s reaction tells me she knows of Lydia and therefore must know of the psychic’s mate. “That doesn’t make sense,” she says to herself, shaking her head. When she studies my eyes again, I can see she is trying to believe me, wondering why I would lie about it. “Lydia, really?”
The burning in my throat increases tenfold as I say, “Christian. Christian made me.” I want to throw up. God, what have I done? I shouldn’t have told her that. My head starts panicking again.
Mum nods. “I thought it might be.”
Damn it, she knows him. I don’t like this one bit.
“He’s the only one powerful enough to get through…” She looks deep in thought as she continues to murmur to herself. “But we would have heard if he’d been killed… No, he’s still at large, I’m sure of it. But how…?” She looks at me inquisitively. She seems to think that Christian turning me into a vampire ought to have been followed by his death…
“My blood,” I just about manage to choke out as my quick mind solves the mystery, “is poison… was poison to vampires?” I’m sort of panting now. Can vampires have panic attacks? I think I’m having one.
“Defence mechanism,” she says matter-of-factly. “Christian knows that and still he bit you…”
“What was he supposed to do?”
“Kill you,” she answers methodically, clinically. I’ve never seen this side of her. “Which makes me think The System decided to go with Plan B. They wanted to make a vampire out of you.”
So The System wanted me dead or un-dead. Just not human.
What the hell is going on here?
Chapter 9: The Slayer
The next morning, I open my eyes and find myself in my bed, in my bedroom. I wasn’t asleep or anything - we don’t sleep, remember? - but I had my eyes closed all night, thinking about everything I have learned about my self.
I’m not who I thought I was.
Mum’s not who I thought she was.
Nothing is the same anymore.
Despite my brilliant memory, intelligence, and advanced senses, I find it difficult to believe it’s only Thursday morning. The day after Wednesday. The day after I discovered that my biological father was a lying, cheating, heartless adulterer.
The morning after I found out the truth about myself.
My other dad, Jake Dalton, has already left for work - I heard him leave after a quick, wordless breakfast with my mum and Heather. My little sister is heading out the door for school right now.
“Ellie,” my mum calls as she knocks on my door a few seconds later. She never used to knock before. It used to annoy me big time. Now her knocking annoys me because I heard her lock the front door, rush up the stairs and approach my room. I even heard her hesitate, the air vibrating around her hand which hovered uncertainly in the air before she finally knocked.
“Come in,” I say because she doesn’t enter until I do. I shake my head at her when she comes and sits on my bed. I sit up.
She’d left me alone in my room last night, saying how I probably wanted some space to get my head around things. I did. But I always needed space and when I really cared about having it, she never gave me any breathing room. Knowing now why that was, I don’t feel bitter about it anymore. I sort of feel loved and protected and precious. Important.
I am all those things.
“Where do I start?” mum had said last night when I demanded to know what the hell was going on.
“How about the beginning?” I breathed, crawling to my bed and struggling onto it. She came and set next to me, took my hand in hers and gave it a kiss. “How can you do that?” I blurted out. “My cold skin doesn’t bother you? You hardly seem to notice it…”
“Oh, I notice it alright,” she chuckled under her breath, squeezing my hand. We were still talking very quietly, just moving our lips, yet we heard each other loud and clear. “But you’re right, it doesn’t bother me. I have this built-in buffer against all these abnormalities.” This reminded me of how I barely felt the coldness of Christian’s body when we were together. I had this buffer too.
Most of the time, his skin had felt as hot as mine.
“Who are you?” I asked her, almost rudely.
“I’m nothing, really,” she shrugged. “I used to be the Slayer though, before you were born.”
Slayer of vampires, I surmised immediately.
“I was brought up in London,” mum continued, finally in storytelling mode. “I knew who I was from a young age and spent most of my childhood training for the day when I would be old enough to fight them. Fight vampires.
“Even though I didn’t have my powers yet, even though I hadn’t officially become the Slayer, I was still a great hunter. From the age of 15, I was out with the others, tracking them down, trapping them, and poisoning them to death with my blood. It’s the only way non-vampires can kill them.”
I nodded at this. Only vampires can kill vampires. By tearing their bodies into bits and burning the pieces to ash. And to tear us apart, you need something as sharp and hard as our own teeth.
You wouldn’t find that kind of knife in the utensils section of your favourite department store.
“Well, the only way non-Slayers can kill them,” mum clarified. “The thing is honey, the Slayer is a magical creature herself, and once she gets her powers, she is armed with almost all the super-human abilities of the blood-suckers themselves. Great reflexes, eyesight, hearing… The Slayer matches each of their strengths. She is human, yet as fast and strong as her enemies, and can heal quickly.
“It evens out the playing field a little. It means they can’t easily outrun me, can’t take hold of my wrist and crush it into crumbs between their fingers like they would be able to with any ordinary human. So they had to fight me and beat me if they wanted to get away unscathed. They rarely did. I was pretty damn good at my job.
“If they were lucky enough to corner me, usually because they had some extra supernatural power, like Lydia and Christian, biting me would be suicide.
“They refer to Slayers as Poison Blood. They think that’s the only thing that differentiates Slayers from other humans. That they’d be able to defeat us if we didn’t have this strange gift, a curse for them.
“But we’ve never held this belief. You see, Ellie, just like they don’t really need the venom to incapacitate their victim while they feed, I never needed the poisonous blood as protection. It’s never been my weapon. I see it as a superfluous defence mechanism-”
“How come?” I’d interrupted curiously. If I wasn’t a vampire, I don’t think I would have digested all of this so quickly. Still, it wasn’t easy.
“If my blood wasn’t poison to them, they’d still find it pretty difficult biting me. They’d be too busy fighting me, defending themselves from my attempts at slaughtering them.
“Let me show you,” she suddenly said, rising to her feet. She seemed excited, thrilled even.
The next thing I knew, I was following her down the steps leading to our basement, which, as far as I knew, was blocked off. Unused and neglected since before we’d moved in to the house. Heather and dad were in their respective bedrooms, oblivious as we ghosted down there, hardly making a sound.
“Of course this is where you train,” I said, shaking my head as I entered the space below our home.
Big as the house itself, the room was concrete-grey and damp. One light-bulb hung in the centre of the room but she didn’t turn it on. We could see each other fine. A huge punch-bag was hanging from the ceiling in one corner and a blue foam mat lay on the floor in the opposite end of the room. Something about the way m
y voice travelled back to me told me this room was sound-proof, but I couldn’t figure out how…
“Try to bite me,” she said after I was done appraising the room. She was speaking at a normal volume which cemented my hunch that the room was sound-proofed. “I might be a little rusty though.” She lifted her hand and gestured me forward when I just stared at her, aghast.
“Mum, what on earth?” I said, unable to comprehend that she genuinely seemed to want to fight me. “I’m not going to do this. No way.”
“You’re not chicken, are you?” she smirked.
“Really? You think that sort of sledging is going to work?” I turned and made for the exit.
Half a second later, I growled. I hadn’t growled in my whole life! It was an angry sound I let out because I’d just felt a blow to my back. Hard. Nothing felt hard to me! Hit from behind, I’d also taken a stumbling step forward. What the hell?
I was facing my mum’s self-satisfied grin before I even thought about turning around to investigate whether some giant pendulum had taken a swing at my back.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I sweetheart?” She smiled sweetly.
“That was you?” No way. No bloody way!
“I told you I was a little rusty,” she said. “That was my best kick and it used to do a lot more than temporarily knock a vampire’s balance.” She seemed impressed with me.
“No way,” I kept saying.
She came forward, as though to calm me down, but instead she landed a punch right in my gut. I arced forward, clutching my stomach. It only stung a little; the shock had more of an impact on my brain than her attack on my body. Mum was at the other end of the room in the same second.
Okay, so she was rather fast and strong. No match for me, but there was no way I was going to prove this to her. I wasn’t going to fight her, no matter how strong and fast she thought she still was. She was my mum. I felt an urge to protect her, not hurt her.