“What actually happened?”
“Hunters, apparently. Kira went in as she normally would and found them both dead in their beds.” She bit her lip. “This is a question I never thought to ask before, but in all of the stories I’ve read vampires turn into dust when they’re staked.”
I shook my head. “Vampires, when they’re staked, die. If they’d stepped out into the sun they would have burnt to death and then they would have become dust. Death is…” I shrugged, realising once again why I was never the person who tried to explain these things to people. “It’s really no different for vampires to humans. You don’t turn into dust, do you?”
“No, we don’t.” She smiled at me. “I wish we did sometimes. It would make things so much simpler.”
I couldn’t help smiling at that. “I have to admit that’s something I’ve never thought of before.”
“It’s not something you’d need to think about.” She stepped into the kitchen. “I spent today working on those reports you helped me with last night and the studio is really pleased with my change of plans. They’re going to be running one section a night, to show people what it’s really like to be a vampire.”
“Thank you.” I breathed a sigh of relief, because I wasn’t certain that was going to happen and it if didn’t it would have all been a massive waste of time. “I really do appreciate all the work you’ve done to make people see vampires as more than creatures.”
“You’re welcome, even though we still don’t seem to be getting somewhere.”
“We will, eventually. Something’s going to happen. I’m certain of that.”
“I just wish I knew what the something was.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “It’s going to be Liv running out of patience with the government. When that happens she going to make a decision she never would have made otherwise and when she makes it will change the world.”
***
Like most nights Susie was busy reporting on the riots and I saw that a group of vampires was helping in one of the shops. That made me smile. Liv had stepped in. Of course she had. I went over to join in, which was when I saw a couple of vampires I knew worked with Ben. After looking around a little bit I found the man I was looking for. “Hey, Ben.” He smiled at me. “This have something to do with Liv?”
He nodded. “If it doesn’t happen tonight it will be soon.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Liv may be one of the most patient people I’ve ever met, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her limits.”
“I know. Trust me on that.” He shrugged. “We’re working together again now and I’m glad it’s happened, because I miss her when I’m not in London, so I’m thinking now might be the time to move back, especially if things work out the way I think they’re going to.”
“Having you back would be good. Liv needs the support and I know she has a good group of people around her now, but they aren’t you.”
Ben grinned at me. “She’s not the only person who missed me, then?” He laughed. “Paul, I want to introduce you to Jake.” He grabbed the arm of a vampire walking past. “Jake, this is Paul.”
“Ah, you’re Alison’s brother, right?” Jake nodded. “Tree told me all about you yesterday.”
For a moment he studied me. “What happened?”
“Someone attacked her.” I didn’t know how he knew something had happened, but I could guess my look gave it away, because I was still worried about it. “Luckily Susie and I were close enough to step in.”
“How is she?”
“Fine, but grumpy. She could have protected herself, I think, and she wishes we’d all believe her when she says that.”
“I think she could too. I just worry about people who have very few qualms about attacking women because of them being vampire allies.”
“Her attacker yesterday called her a traitor bitch, which just goes to show what people are really like.” I shook my head. “I can understand them being angry with us, hating us even, but I despise people who’ll attack the humans who work with us.”
“Attacking the humans who work with us makes it easier for them to get at us. Without Tree, Lise and Jess would be in a difficult position.” Ben sighed. “Understanding it, however, doesn’t mean I accept the choices they make, because I think anyone who does that should be taught not to do it again.”
I bit my lip. “Hopefully Tree’s attacker has learnt that. If he hasn’t…”
“What did you do to him, Paul?” Ben sounded more amused than anything. “I know how you feel about Tree, so I’m not surprised you reacted like that.”
Jake studied me more closely then and I couldn’t help wondering if he felt the same way about our Tree. She was the sort of person it was incredibly easy to fall in love with, so it wouldn’t be unexpected. “I might have bit him a little. I took him far enough away neither Susie or Tree would have heard him scream and made him understand I would have no qualms about killing him if he hurt any human again. From the whimpering noise he made I think he understood.”
Someone gestured and Ben nodded. “I’m needed over there for a minute. Won’t be long.”
He walked away while Jake and I studied each other. “I’m no competition.” Being the first to speak was unusual for me, but I liked Jake and I wanted to be friends with him. “Tree’s like a sister to me. I could imagine her ever being anything more. If she was I would have to convince her to become a vampire and that’s something I’m not certain she wants.”
“That’s what I thought.” He sighed. “I liked her when she was talking on the phone to Alison. When I had a chance to meet her… she’s beautiful and smart and understands vampires.”
“Helping Nay out means she had a lot of experience with vampires. I think Tree’s always been more open minded than the average person, so I’m not surprised that she made certain choices, and every time she makes another one she find herself with another group of vampires wanting to work with her. She might be living permanently at Lise and Jess’, but she’s working with about a hundred vampires, some of whom are more acquaintances than friends.”
“She said she only knew about twenty vampires.”
“When Tree said knew I think she meant vampires she would have been able to convince to work with her on the whole burn thing. Every human who works with vampires knows a lot of them, but there are different definitions.” I bit my lip, trying to work out how to explain it. “Tree and I are good friends. She knows how I became a vampire, she knows things about me I’ve never told anyone else, and if anyone hurts her I will eat them. Tree and Lise… Lise loves her. If there’s a human Lise would ever choose to change it’s Tree, but that’s not going to happen, not unless Tree asks to become a vampire, which is possible. I don’t think it’s likely though. Tree and Ben know each other. Tree and Liv know each other. I think they’d call each other friends - they just aren’t the type of friends you’d call on in the middle of the night if you had a problem. I don’t think of Liv and Ben like that either, to be totally honest, and I’ve been friends with Ben for… I have no idea. I remember meeting him not long after he became a vampire.”
“We’ve been friends for at least fifty years, Paul. Friends is a strange definition to use with vampires though, because it’s easy enough for someone to be friends with another vampire and not see them for twenty years. Friendship, between vampires, doesn’t work in the same way as friendship between humans. Friendship between humans and vampires is even more different.” Ben brushed a hand through his hair. “Liv and I are friends, so close that we know what the other one is thinking at times, so I’m probably closer to her than I am to Paul, even though Paul and I have been friends for longer.”
“So one of the things I need to understand is that words have different meanings for vampires, for people who work with vampires, and for humans?” Jake smiled. “Well, it’s not as though I had enough to do with coming to terms with being a vampire.”
Ben laughed. “This is all a
part of coming to terms with being a vampire. When all this is over we’ll go out, get a coffee, and spend an evening talking things through. If we can we’ll take a huge gathering of us. Liv, me, you, Alison, Susie, Paul, Lise, Jess, Tree… as many people as we can get together to talk about the different points of view.”
“If we do that it might be an idea of us to begin writing a book about our time together.” I thought it through as I spoke. “Having a book written from the point of view of vampires who are different ages, humans who work with us, humans who don’t but have relatives who have vampires, humans who had no connection the vampires until the riots… we all know this isn’t going to end when the riots do. What we need to do is make things easier for everyone and I think the only way we can do that is by working on teaching the other humans what they need to know about us.”
“That is a very good idea.” Ben smiled. “I’ll talk to Liv, because she has a couple of useful contacts in the government we could add to that book, because one of the ministers she’s working with actually lost both his sisters when they became vampires. She did what she normally does and gave him a chance to say goodbye, which had turned into them beginning to have a relationship again, and apparently it’s all going really well.”
“Before I told Ally what had happened to me I was certain she was going to react in the same way. I didn’t know how anyone could accept what I’d become and she surprised me by being the most supportive person in my family. My parents, being the people they are, told me to leave - so I ended up moving in with her. As she’d earned more the place has become bigger, but she’d always made certain that no sun can get into my space, because I was stupid enough to get myself burnt when I was a young vampire.”
Olivia
Another night of riots. I spent the whole time trying to convince the government that I believed my plan was going to work while they continued to dither. Unfortunately it wasn’t a surprise. They knew they were going to have to put whatever plan it was we came up with in front of parliament and I knew what would happen when they did. Not even the riots would convince the party currently in charge they should be doing something to help the vampires. Sometimes I was certain they thought it would be best if we were all exterminated, but it wasn’t ever going to be that simple. I glanced over my shoulder, watching the reporter I’d seen before working with a group who were putting one of the shops back together, trying to get people to understand why the vampires had made the choices they did. Mostly the riots had just made people more angry with us than they had been before.
“You shouldn’t have gone behind our backs.” Gregory sighed. “I can understand why you did, but it’s going to make it much harder for us to convince our government to take your side in this mess.”
“Right now I’m running out of patience with your government. The riots have been going on for three weeks and still they haven’t done anything to fix this mess.” I forced myself to stay in my seat. “I’m certain you’ve all been going back to them, to tell them what’s been happening in these meetings, and nothing’s changed. They’re burying their heads in the sand, because it’s the only thing they’re really good at. In the end it’s going to come down to us doing the work ourselves.”
Gregory shook his head. “You’ll make things harder for the vampires if you do too much of the work without the involvement of the people in power.”
“Harder?” I stood. Staying still was impossible. “Do you understand how hard it is already?” I walked from one end of the meeting room to the other, doing my best to stay calm, but I was furious. After 21 nights of meetings I really did think we would have got somewhere, but we hadn’t. “There are no shops open at night. We can’t shop during the day. Most vampires rely on the help of the few humans who are willing to do things for us and that number is slowly dwindling, because paying them is becoming a problem. You see when they’re working for us we need to pay them, or at least give them the money they need in order to buy whatever it is we can’t purchase ourselves, but vampires, in general, don’t have any money. Not now. Some were sensible enough to open up saving accounts just in case something like this happened and they can still pay for help. The vampires who really need it can’t.” I looked around the room. “How would you like it if you couldn’t buy new clothes, or shoes, or toiletries, or anything else you needed?”
They all stared at me. “Online shopping?” Anna sounded uncertain, as though she thought there was a problem with that, but didn’t know what it was. “You can get anything online.”
“Yeah, you can.” I sighed. “The only problem is answering the door. As I’ve said before our issue isn’t the sunlight itself. It’s the UV rays and opening the door would lead to our deaths.” I walked around the room, wishing people understood what it was like to be a vampire, but they didn’t. “We cannot shop in any way, which is why the night licenses were created in the first place, and I really do wish it was easier to explain that.”
“I think I have an idea.” Gordon, the older man I’d recognised during the first meeting smiled. “How do you feel about being filmed?”
***
Staring at the camera was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I wrote down everything I needed to say, so I technically knew exactly how it was going to work, but I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. All we had was a little handheld camera Anna had, because the government didn’t like the idea of a vampire going on the telly to speak about the problems that we had. That meant whatever we filmed would probably not be seen anyway. “Ready?” Gordon looked at me and I was certain his smile was meant to be encouraging. “We’ll start filming if you are.” I nodded, even though I wasn’t. “Okay, go.”
“My name is Olivia Mead and I’m a vampire. That’s something I’m certain you already know, but you don’t know what it means to be a vampire. Most people look at me and see a monster. They don’t see the person I am. They don’t care about that - all that matters is what I am. All that matters is that I drink human blood in order to survive.” I shrugged. “Obviously that’s different from someone eating beef, because you don’t know what it’s like to be the cow that’s being slaughtered, and yet it isn’t. We don’t kill you when we feed. We don’t even really hurt you. In order to eat beef you kill a cow. In order to eat pork you kill a pig. How many of you care about that?
“When I look at you I don’t just see a human. I don’t just see someone I can feed from. I see a person, who has loves and hates, who has strengths and weaknesses, who has friends and family they care about. Being a vampire doesn’t mean I’m different. I love chocolate, still, and hate seeing people in need. I know that I’m very good at talking to people, but understanding any of the sciences isn’t easy for me. I have friends, who are vampires, and a family I might be beginning to get to know again, who are human. I truly believe that humans and vampires can get along. It’s something that’s going to take time, though, and you’re going to have to understand what it’s like to a vampire to be what they are.” I brushed a hand through my hair. “You have to understand what it’s like to not be able to go out in the day for any reason at all.
“The problem isn’t the sunlight - it’s the UV rays. We have to leave it a little while after sunset before we can leave our homes, which are boarded up for a reason, and we can’t open the door. If we did we would die.” Sighing, I tried not to look down at the sheet of paper in front of me, telling myself I knew what I was going to say. “That is why we need shops to be open at night. Without them we’re unable to buy the things you all take for granted. We can’t buy clothes.” I glanced down at my own jeans. “I know exactly how long I’ve had this pair, how much longer they’re likely to last, and I made certain that I rotate this pair with the other two I own, otherwise I’m going to wear one of them out before the others. My t-shirt is something I got when I was eighteen, the same year I became a vampire, because making my clothes last is something we’ve all become very skilled at. We really don’t have any other c
hoice.
“I have two pairs of shoes. One of them is a pair of boots I can’t wear any longer, which is disappointing, but I hope one day I will be able to have the soles replaced, and the other is a pair of trainers that have so many holes in I shouldn’t wear them any longer. As I can’t replace them I don’t have any other choice. My feet, if it’s raining, will be wet, no matter what I do, and I’ve tried everything.” I laughed. “There was even a time when I tried super-gluing some cardboard into them, in the hope that the super-glue would make the cardboard watertight. I was wrong. Instead of just getting wet my sock also got covered in cardboard, and this, I think, takes me back to how bad I am with science. Someone who isn’t me probably wouldn’t have thought something quite that stupid might work.
“Showering is another issue. Last Christmas one of the humans who works for us bought me a large batch of everything I needed, before telling me she needed to get a real job. I miss her, but I couldn’t pay her the income she needed to be able to rent the smallest studio. In the end it was my choice to tell her that she should focus on her own life. I was scared that she’d get hurt the way other vampire helpers had done and I thought it was for the best she did her own thing far away from us. I hate that I had to do that, when I could really use her help, but I know I did the right thing. Not too long after that one of the men who helped a couple of the vampires I knew was set upon and put in hospital.” Remember that made me sad. We’d done everything we could to help him and in the end it turned out that he would never be able to walk again. “We need to set the record straight. I’m not the sort of person who would hunt a human for food. I remember being one of you. I remember being scared of vampires. Finding out what being a vampire is like from the inside just makes me hate who I used to be. We are not evil.
“Occasionally there is a vampire who might be. You have the same problem. Our serial killers and your serial killers aren’t different. Vampires who kill would have been humans who killed.” I shook my head. “I know I’m not going to get anywhere with this. I know none of you really care about the logic. It’s much easier for you to hate us.” I stood. “That is up to you, but I’m telling you now that we’re not going to disappear. We exist and that is something you’re going to have to learn to deal with.”
A Bloody London Tale (Book 1): Unrest Rising Page 8