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David sighs. “Please don’t apologize. I understand that was a lot to take in.”
The tension is unbearable, the air so thick you can cut it with a knife. Our chemistry together is insane, a passion I never thought possible to have. A bond I once thought may be unbreakable.
“Fuck this.” I launch myself at him, hoping he’ll catch me before I eat tile and I’m happy when he does. It feels good to be back in his arms. The invisible wall between us is down and I promised myself I would hear him out with an open mind and be there for him however I can.
He carries me to the living room couch and sits beside me. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Maybe after a while, we really need to figure this out.” I don’t think he expected me to jump right in, but it’s best to get this over with.
“Thanks for coming over. I appreciate you giving me another chance. Jess, I never meant to hurt you.” David apologizes and I know it’s true, but what he doesn’t see is that by not getting the help he needes he’s hurting himself, too.
“I want to be completely honest with you but it wasn’t easy or safe for me to tell you I’m a vampire. But I don’t want any secrets between us,” David says, and for a moment I really wonder if this is something I could’ve gone without knowing.
Through all this one question still plagues me. “Why did you leave in the seventh grade?”
“That’s when I started to change. So my parents had to take me out of public school and I was sent to the academy in Bulgaria for training,” he replies, like admitting this is a normal thing we all deal with.
“Training, what kind of training?” My curiosity is piqued.
“Once we begin to change, we must be taught how to live amongst humans and um,” he pauses, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “How to feed without killing. There are many rules, both written and unwritten, and if we don’t adhere to them we won’t be able to blend in the human world.”
Well, whether I accept this or not, he clearly believes it to be true so I need to play along. “Did you know you were a vampire before you started changing?”
“No, my parents wanted me to live as normal a life as I could for as long as was possible. Once the change begins, we can no longer be exposed to sunlight. Tales of it killing vampires are true. We will die if the rays touch our skin. When my parents took me away from you, I thought my life was over. It was so hard to leave you, like my heart had been ripped from my chest. But the training began, I knew it was imperative I complete it. You were my muse, the driving force that pushed me through so we could be together again.”
Time now to ask the unavoidable question, which is kind of a catch twenty-two because not only do I need to know the answer, it’s also one I don’t want to know. “What do you eat?”
“Blood…”
Every hair on my body stands on end and I stupidly shout, “Am I to be your meal ticket?”
He snickers. “If I were going to kill you I wouldn’t have spent all those years training as hard as I did, learning self-control. I would’ve killed you the first chance I got and that’s not my reason for being here. I want us to build a life together.” When I don’t say anything, he continues. “I can survive off any blood—human or animal—but human is the best for us. For the most part, I get blood from blood banks, but on occasion I do have to hunt to maintain my strength.”
Hunt, does he mean he hunts and kills humans?
“Yes,” he replies without saying a word, reading my thoughts.
“How do you keep doing that?” I hate it. “And don’t feed me that line of body language bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit, but yes, I can read minds. Not in their entirety. Mostly glimpses of thoughts,” David says.
“Great,” I grumble.
He ignores my comment and continues on. “We’re trained to seek out humans without souls. Killing an innocent is frowned upon. Soulless humans are easy to detect. If you look deep into their eyes, you can feel the evil radiating within. Fragmented pieces of thoughts, plus many times we catch them in the act. The only way to lose your soul is by killing another. The more you kill the more pieces of your soul die until there’s nothing left. I only kill humans who are so far gone there’s no hope for redemption. Those who kill the innocent are called rogue vampires and they’re excommunicated. At times, they’re hunted and killed by other covens as they place our kind at risk.”
“How often do you hunt?” I ask, though I don’t know why.
“I don’t hunt as often as I used to. Mostly I consume the blood my contact at the blood bank provides me with, but I will tell you that you won’t see the guys who tried to rape you ever again.”
Oh my God, he killed them.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about that. Society can thank me later.”
A subject change is in order. “I didn’t know blood banks sold the blood they collected. I thought it all went to patients?”
“You’d be amazed what people will do for the right price,” David replies. I guess everything has a price and a market somewhere, whether legal or illegal.
“This whole mind reading thing bothers me,” I admit.
