by LM DeWalt
He thought about it for a moment. “Then why do you wear jackets when you go outside in Lima? I am thinking you probably wear shorts in the summer too, right?”
“We do. We dress according to what we know the season to be. If we wear shorts in the winter, when everyone else is wearing jackets and scarves, we stick out,” I explained.
“Stick out?” he asked, confusion at the idiom obvious on his face.
“She means that we try to dress like everyone else. We try our best not to draw attention to ourselves if we can avoid it,” Christian explained. “The last thing we want is for people to start noticing our differences. We want everyone to think we are human, just like them.”
“Whatever powers or gifts we have, we keep them from the human world. It is best if none of them think we actually exist,” Aloysius added.
“How do you hide that? Some people already know vampires are real,” Jose Luis added, looking around the group.
“Just a few do, but most people are not really sure. They have no actual evidence. They believe what they read or what they see in movies. They believe all the myths associated with us, not the reality,” Aaron explained.
“Do you mean people think we cannot be around garlic or crosses? Like we cannot go into a church?” Jose Luis asked.
“Yes, among other things,” Aloysius sat back in his seat, stretching his long legs out on the sand. “Some believe we are night creatures and they are safe from us during the day. Some even believe we cannot enter a building without first being invited.”
“That is just funny,” Jose Luis laughed. “If we had to wait to be invited, we could never even go into a store.”
The whole group laughed at his comment. I looked around the circle and noticed how relaxed everyone had gotten. Kalia sat on the sand in front of Aaron, leaning back against his chair between his legs, his arms securely around her, his chin resting on the top of her head. Fiore sat close to Aloysius, his hand wrapped around hers on his lap. Mateo was the only one who sat a little apart from the group. I hoped in time he would forgive himself for what he had done to Mariana and found the love he so deserved. Regardless, he was now part of our family and I knew it would only be a matter of time until he truly became one of us.
Jose Luis interrupted my thoughts as his curiosity, and the group’s willingness to share with him, grew. “How did you all meet?” he asked.
“I met Lily at school,” Christian volunteered. “She was a student in my archaeology class. I was human then.”
Jose Luis’s eyes widened with surprise. “You were her teacher? Is that allowed?”
No one could stop the laughter that escaped their mouths. I huffed and they laughed even harder.
“She was an adult,” Christian defended himself. “I thought she was actually older than nineteen because of how mature she is. Of course, in real life, she is ninety so she was totally legal, if you like old women.” I smacked his arm playfully.
Jose Luis thought about it for a moment and nodded, turning to Fiore next. “And how did you meet Lily? You are Italian, right?”
“Yes, I am, but I was living in Ireland at the time,” Fiore started, turning to face Jose Luis. “See, Ian, Lily’s maker, brought her to Ireland. I met her there.” I noticed Aloysius sat up straight.
“When were you in Ireland?” Jose Luis turned to me.
“Not too long before we came here. Ian left me a long time ago and then he decided he wanted me back after I met Christian. He kidnapped me and took me there, telling me he would leave Christian alone if I went with him. Of course, he lied because he had Christian too, only I didn’t know it at the time.”
“To make a long story short,” Fiore interrupted noticing my distress at retelling the story. “Lily found Christian and escaped with him, took him back to America. They were hiding in a cabin in the mountains of Oregon when I found them. Lily and I became friends in Ireland and I wanted to help her.” She shook her head and her eyes glowed with the memory. “Anyway, I got to the cabin and Lily dove across the room and jumped on me. She fought me thinking I was there to take her back to Ian. You had to have been there. It was pretty funny. She looked like a crazy woman with her hair flying all over the place.”
“You really did that?” he asked me.
“Yes, I did.” I turned to Fiore. “She should not have snuck up on me like that. It’s her fault I attacked her.”
“Yeah,” Fiore said with a sigh. “But it ended well anyway.”
“Can I ask another question?” Jose Luis asked, eager to learn all he could about his new family. We all nodded.
“Who here has made other vampires, besides you, Lily?” He turned to Aaron. “Did you make your wife?”
“No, she was already a vampire when I met her. But she made Maia, our daughter,” Aaron explained.
Jose Luis, satisfied with that answer, turned to Fiore. “What about you? Did you ever make one?” Aloysius stiffened in his seat, his back straight as a board.
“A long time ago,” Fiore answered. This was a story I’d never heard. “It was maybe a couple years after I was made. My maker also left me and I hated being alone. I met a man, a very wealthy man, and fell in love. He was injured while hunting and was not going to make it so I turned him. I never asked him if it was what he wanted.”
“So what happened? Where is he?” I asked, now as curious as Jose Luis.
“He stayed with me for a while, about ten years or so, but he was miserable. He had lost his wife and daughter about a year before I met him. It turned out he didn’t want to live forever. He wanted to be with them so he killed himself.” She bowed her head to hide the tears starting in her eyes.
“He killed himself? How?” Jose Luis asked. “Is that even possible?”
Fiore wiped her eyes with a tissue she pulled from her pocket and smiled at Aloysius, apologizing for her reaction. Aloysius assured her by squeezing her hand. “He went on a killing spree in the small town where we lived. When he was discovered, he shouted that he was a vampire, right in the middle of the town square, and that he was not done killing. He vowed to kill everyone in town before moving on to the next. The authorities took him and tied him to a pole. His choice was obvious to me when he didn’t fight them. As they lit the fire at his feet, he looked at me and mouthed that he was sorry. As he burned, I could see his lips moving as if he were praying. He got what he wanted.”
“That is really sad,” Jose Luis whispered. “But you have him now and he loves you.” He motioned at Aloysius with his head.
“That is true,” Aloysius answered. Fiore looked at him with shock in her eyes. He had never said it before. “The boy is right. I do love you.”
Fiore jumped out of her seat, her smile widening as she forgot all about the tale she recounted of her Italian love. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, the rest of us trying to look away but unable to ignore the tender moment. “It’s about time,” she said and kissed him again. “I love you too,” she said before going back to her seat, wiping sand off her knees.
She looked at the rest of us as we sat with wide smiles on our faces. “Carry on,” she said.
“Uhh, so, yeah…” Christian said. The rest of us laughed.
“I made Aaron, my great-grandson,” Aloysius volunteered. “He was deathly ill. We were very close and I did not want to live without him.”
“That is so cool!” Jose Luis said. “Is he the only one you made?”
Aloysius dropped Fiore’s hand and folded his hands on his lap. He grasped them tightly as he looked around the circle, from one face to the next before settling his eyes on mine. I stiffened in my seat and a chill ran down my back. Could this be it? Could this be what I had been warned about? Christian reached for my hand but I pulled it away, unable to even look at him. The sound of the waves against the shore grew louder, almost deafening as everyone grew totally quiet. I sucked in a breath and held it.
“No, my dear boy, Aaron was not my only one,” Aloysius said, still hol
ding my eyes with his as he rose from his seat and went to stand behind it. He took a deep breath before he said, “I made one other.”
THIRTY-SIX
“Oh, God, no,” I whispered. Christian reached for my hand again but I denied him. I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t want to be calmed.
Aloysius’s eyes softened as he looked into my eyes. “I made Ian.”
I jumped to my feet and clenched my hands at my sides. Though we had just explained to Jose Luis that we do not feel temperature changes, I suddenly felt cold, freezing, to the point that my teeth started chattering. No one said a word, no one moved, except for their heads looking between Aloysius and me, back and forth in the deafening silence.
“Lily, say something, please,” Aloysius said, keeping his voice low and even.
I looked out onto the water, forcing my eyes from Aloysius’s. “I… I can’t,” I whispered as I turned and walked away from my seat in the direction of the water.
I heard motion behind me but didn’t know what it was until I heard Aloysius’s voice. “No, Christian. Please, let me. This is my doing.”
Though I walked as fast as I could without running, Aloysius easily caught up to me. “Lily, please stop. Let me explain,” he said just behind me. I paid no attention to him and kept walking, kicking up sand with every step. His hand grasped my elbow. I pulled my arm away from him and spun to face him.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” I yelled. “You have no right. No right at all.”
“Please let me explain,” he pleaded.
I turned around and started walking again, though I had no idea where I was going. I could no longer hear the rest of our group and knew I had walked quite a distance.
“Lily, please stop. I can explain,” he said again as he followed close behind me. I had never heard him plead for anything and the sound of it made me smile. He pushed ahead of me and turned just as I slammed into him. I jumped away before he could touch me.
“How could you?” I screamed at him not caring if anyone else heard. “How could you keep it from me?”
“I thought it was best,” Aloysius said as he tried to make eye contact with me. I avoided it.
“What makes you, or anyone else for that matter, an authority on what is best for me?” I asked with a tone that sounded as icy as my body felt. “I wish people would stop doing that!”
“You are right,” he said and sat down on the sand, patting the spot next to him in invitation. I remained on my feet. “I should not have kept it from you. I should have told you as soon as I realized it.”
“And when was that?” I asked when suddenly, the memory of our first meeting came rushing to my mind. “When you shook my hand, at Aaron’s…you saw everything, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did, and I am truly sorry. I should have told you,” he said with sincerity in his voice.
I finally dropped to the sand beside him, circling my arms around my bent knees. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because it was done and I didn’t want you to resent me,” he tried to reach for my hand but I moved further to the side. He looked hurt. “I am sorry, Lily, I truly am. I realize I should not have kept it from you all this time because now you probably resent me more than you would have if I had told you sooner. Am I correct?”
Besides the anger still turning my stomach, I had no idea what else I felt. “I don’t know that I can resent you. You have stuck by me, regardless of your own flesh and blood’s feelings,” I said referring to Aaron. “You have been there to help since day one. I just don’t understand why?”
“Why I kept it from you?” he said. “I thought you would walk away from me, and Aaron and Kalia, if you knew. I didn’t want that to happen. They love you. Maybe I also thought you would think I hated you or resented you for killing my offspring. I didn’t want that to happen either.”
“I had no choice but to kill Ian and you know that. He was destroying everyone I loved to get to me.”
“I know, Lily. I know you did what you had to do to protect the ones you love. I would have done the same, had I been in your shoes,” he explained.
“How did you even meet Ian and why did you turn him? That’s what I really don’t understand,” I admitted. My anger for him was diminishing though I wanted to hang onto it.
Aloysius took a deep breath and stayed quiet for a moment, searching deep into his past. “I had been alone for many years, roaming the world as I always did. I met Ian on a ship bound from the United States, where he had been placed in yet another temporary home, to Ireland. He said he was going home, home to a place where no one knew him or loved him, but home nonetheless. He talked to me whenever he saw me, sometimes following me around the ship, vying for my attention. After a while, I stopped trying to hide from him. I allowed him to talk, allowed him to confide in me. He told me about the death of his parents, his childhood in the orphanage in London where he was used and abused. I began feeling sorry for him, pitying him for all he’d had to endure at such a young age. It wasn’t until we were close to reaching port that I realized I had grown to love the boy as if he were my own.”
“So that’s why you did it? Because he suckered you into giving him what he wanted?” I asked.
Instead of getting angry or defending himself, he laughed. “Yes, he certainly did sucker me. What can I say? I guess I have a soft heart after all.”
“But why him? What happened? You obviously hadn’t been a part of his life for very long.”
“After roaming the world alone for so long, I wanted a companion,” he started but I interrupted.
“But you had Aaron. Aaron is your family, literally.”
“Yes, that is true, but Aaron had made his own life with Kalia. Aaron didn’t need me any longer, but Ian did.”
“So what happened with Ian?”
“As I said, I wanted a companion, someone to spend my endless days with, but I realized soon after his transformation that I made a mistake. Ian was wild as a human, a savage as a newborn, and completely untamable as a vampire.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at his description of the vampire I had known and loved. If I had realized how he was when I was still human, my life would have been much different. “So what ended it between you?”
“Believe me, I tried to tame him. I tried to teach him how to behave in society, how to respect humans, but he would have none of it. He did try, for a little while, for my sake. He started killing only those who deserved punishment, but his attempt didn’t last long. It wasn’t long before he killed for the sake of killing with total disregard for anyone he hurt in the process. His ways became the source of constant arguments and tension between us. It wore on both of us and, after only a few years, we parted ways.”
“Just like that?” I asked, surprised that Ian would do anything so simply.
Aloysius nodded and stood, brushing the sand off the back of his jeans. He held a hand out to help me up. I took it without hesitation. How could I hold anything against him when Ian had done much the same with me?
“Just like that. He left and I never saw or heard from him again, until I met you that is.” He stood in front of me and, placing his fingers on the bottom of my chin, raised my head up to him. “Can you forgive me for not telling you?”
I smiled. “Of course I can. No one knows better than I do how manipulative Ian could be when he wanted his way. I fell for everything he told me, all the lies, all the stories. It wouldn’t exactly be fair of me to hold a grudge, now would it?”
“It amazes me how much you have grown and matured since I first met you.” He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me to him, kissing the top of my head.
“Thank you,” I said as I hugged him back. “For telling me the truth and for sticking by me.”
“Tell me something, Lily,” he pushed back enough to look at my face. “Did you somehow know already, about Ian?”
“I had a feeling something didn’t add up. Melinda and Mariana both warned me about you not being who I
thought you were. I knew something was up, I just didn’t know what.” We started walking back toward our family who no doubt were speculating as to what might have happened between Aloysius and me.
“I can just imagine what they are thinking,” Aloysius laughed, catching my thought. “With your temper, they probably think I’m lying on the beach somewhere.”
“Am I really that bad?” I teased.
“Let me put it this way, I’m surprised I’m not lying on the beach somewhere.” He laughed as we approached the rest, led by the flickering fire in the darkness.
Jose Luis ran toward us before we reached them. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
I threw my arm around his shoulders. “It’s ok. We are fine,” I assured him.
“Aloysius, it’s good to see you back in one piece,” Aaron said as we reached our seats. Everyone nodded.
“Am I really that bad?” I huffed as I slumped into my seat.
“Let me put it this way, Lily,” Fiore said. “If you were the enemy we were fighting instead of Melinda, I would have been on the next plane to anywhere already.”
“That is so funny,” I mocked. “You heard me laugh, right? Or did I only laugh in my head?”
“I love you more than life itself but…” Christian took my hand in his but kept his body distant. “You are pretty damn scary when you’re pissed off. No doubt about it.” Everyone laughed at his comment, including Jose Luis.
I threw my arms up in defeat. “Fine. Go ahead and gang up on me. Just wait.” I stood and started toward our cabana. “Christian, are you coming?”
He jumped up in an exaggerated manner. “Yes, of course, whatever you say.” Loud laughter followed us all the way into the dark cabana.
The next few days were spent in much the same way as the first. We sat on the beach and watched the sun rise, combed the shore for seashells, and even went fishing with some rods we found on the boat. In the afternoons, we hiked around the island, collecting bananas and mangos to take home for Lucia and the children. In the late afternoons, we swam and relaxed on the beach. It was obvious the trip Aloysius planned was exactly what we all needed. Everyone was in good spirits, teasing each other and laughing. Jose Luis was adapting well to his new life and was trying to figure out what he was capable of doing as a vampire. One afternoon, he wore us all out when he insisted he could run faster than any of us and challenged us to race after race until finally, after about the sixth race, he beat us all. I found out I could become airborne with a good running start and a jump, but he accused me of cheating and challenged me to a rematch.