"But she told you nothing of my family or where I came from. Correct?"
"I think she said you were from England, but that"s it." I looked to Jack for help, but he just watched Ezra as he spoke. He must"ve heard this story for Ezra at least once before, but he listened intently anyway. There was something very captivating in the way Ezra talked, even to other vampires.
"I was born just outside of London in 1674, and back then, things were different," Ezra went on, his deep voice rolling out over me. "By the time I was fifteen, both my parents and two of my brothers had already died, leaving me in charge of my seven-year-old sister and the family farm.
Somehow we managed to do quite well for ourselves, enough to take care of each other, and I was able to support a family. I married at seventeen and went on to have four children of my own."
"You had kids?" For some reason, it had never occurred to me that he would be married or have kids. Given the time and the fact that he was twenty-six when he turned, it would only be natural, but I hadn"t ever really thought about it.
"Two boys and two girls." His lips touched on a smile that quickly faded. "We lived a quiet happy life, but unfortunately, the skills that made my family thrive the way it did made me... appealing to others. I was strong, hard-working, and diligent. When a man called upon our house one night asking for dinner and board for the evening in exchange for money, I didn"t object or even think anything of it. Because of where we lived, off in the country, it wasn"t uncommon for weary travelers to take respite with us. My wife didn"t mind it, and my sister especially enjoyed it, because she was at the marrying age and had yet to find a suitor.
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"This man introduced himself as Willem, and he appeared to rather wealthy and attractive, so I set my sister about to fetch things for him, in hopes that he would consider her." He lowered his eyes, thinking heavily on the memory, and then shook his head. "He was staying in the back room of the house, the only usually reserved for the boys, and he went back there, saying his was hungry. I sent my sister back with a bowl of soup, and when she didn"t return, I went back to check on her. Willem stood in front of the window, staring at the black night, while my sister laid motionless on the floor. He had drained all the life from her.
"I had meant to attack him in some way, but he was much stronger than me and easily over took me. He commended me on my bravery and strength, and then forced me to drink his blood," Ezra grimaced bitterly. "Before I could really understand what was happening, his blood was ripping painfully through me and he was dragging me off into the night. Once I had completely turned and I had my power back, I fought him, trying to kill him or at least demanding that he let me go. He refused, saying that he had needed a worker and companion, and I fit the bill.
"I continued fighting him, but he grew tired of it. He shackled me in the cellar of his home, which was really more of a castle. He did not feed me for three weeks, and I was a new vampire, so I was mad with hunger. Then, he took me to my home, and released me." His face had become an emotionless mask. There was a pain too deep for him to even express. "In my desperate hunger, I killed my own wife. Somehow my children managed to escape before I got to them, but not before they witnessed me killing their mother.
"When I realized what I had done, I went back to Willem." His expression changed as he shifted in his chair, and he tried to put that memory behind him. "I let him enslave me under the condition that he never let me go. I did not trust the monster I had become, and I didn"t know how to destroy myself. Over time, Willem would bring in other vampires, turned the same way as I had for the same reasons, in hopes of helping me work. He was always expanding on the castle and traveling, and he liked to live a life of complete leisure. I did absolutely everything for him, even things you wouldn"t think a man would dare request." He let that hang in the air for a moment, and I thought I saw him repress a shudder.
"These other vampires he brought in, they were always a mess," Ezra went on. "They were rabid, uncontrollable monsters, and it was only a matter of time before they would have to be destroyed.
Without any guidance or explanation, they would resort to their own primal state of being, relying solely on hunger and strength. They would slaughter indiscriminately and had to be constantly chained to keep them from hurting themselves and other vampires. They were capable of anything except compa.s.sion and empathy.
"Only I seemed to have any humanity. I stayed with Willem for nearly a hundred years, traveling all across Europe and Asia. Most of the other vampires we encountered had some sense of compa.s.sion and control, although most tended to be cold and cruel, like Willem, but not animals, like the slaves Willem tried to make up. In fact, as time went on, the other vampires would comment on how wonderful and amazing it was that Willem had managed to create a slave as civil as me.
"That"s when it finally occurred to me that I wasn"t like them. What had happened with my wife had been a direct result of Willem"s manipulation. I could control myself, and I had openly wept for my wife and my children. I was not a monster, although I was capable of being one if I let myself." He exhaled deeply and looked on me for a moment.
"What happened?" I asked timidly when he didn"t speak.
"One night, I simply killed Willem, and I left to start a life of my own," Ezra said matter-of-factly. "I had made some acquaintances through him that I thought were compa.s.sionate people, and with them, I managed to learn things about myself and other vampires. Most of them were impressed that I had been able to do what I had done without instruction. When you first turn, it is so very 104 easy to let emotion and instinct rule your life. It"s a constant battle for years that"s nearly impossible without another vampire coaching you along."
"I know how hard all of that was for you," Jack said carefully, and then shook his head. "Okay, no.
I don"t. I can"t even imagine all the things you went through. But what happened to you isn"t anything like what"s happening here. n.o.body"s going to throw Milo or Alice in the bas.e.m.e.nt and tell them to just figure it out."
"It"s not a risk I am willing to take!" Ezra insisted earnestly. "I have seen vampires gnaw at their own arms because they haven"t fed in a day! I"ve seen them slaughter women and children! And I know that Alice and Milo would probably never be that extreme, but what if they just turn out like Willem? He was in complete control of himself, but he was cold and cruel and absolutely merciless."
"Don"t you think Willem was probably like that before he turned?" Jack countered. "I mean, Mae was all love and maternal instinct before she turned, and she still is. And I was a clumsy idiot, and I still am. Milo and Alice aren"t tyrannical or malicious. They"re harmless."
"Left unchecked, Milo"s jealousy could"ve gotten out of control. He could"ve killed her by now. But because you were able to devote all your time to his cause, look it," Ezra nodded at us. "You"re completely safe to try and kill her yourself."
"Haha," Jack said dryly.
"You will have all the time in the world," Ezra emphasized. "What is a few more years in comparison with eternity? I"m just asking that we err on the side of caution. Wouldn"t you rather wait then have something go terribly awry? Then you have all of forever to hate yourself for the mistakes you"ve made."
"But there"s nothing to be cautious about!" Jack was growing exasperated.
"I"m sorry, but the plane ride has exhausted me, as has this conversation." Ezra stood up, blithely stretching his limbs. "I"m going to turn in for the night, and I suggest you do the same."
When he left, we sat in silence for a minute. I tried to take in everything that he had said, and he definitely had a point. But so did Jack. The odds of me or Milo suddenly turning into crazed fiends seemed pretty unlikely, but waiting wouldn"t really hurt anything either. Eventually, Jack pulled back on his tee shirt, and I reluctantly excused myself, heading to his room for a night of sleeping alone.
Of course, it wouldn"t be an easy sleep, not after everything the night had held. It was full of endless dreams of Ezra and his lovely wife and small, towheaded children that looked like small versions of him. Then I would see their faces, contorting with fear, as they were splashed with their mother"s blood. Ezra, the most contained person I had ever met, had been so out of control that he had nearly murdered his own children. What hope did that leave for any of us?
Chapter 15.
Jack took me home just after midnight the next night, citing that I needed to start getting to bed at a reasonable time for school. With less than a week to fix an incredibly out of whack sleep cycle, it didn"t really seem possible, but I"m not even sure that"s why he really took me home. After the kiss, and then Ezra"s rather unfortunate story, Jack had seemed oddly distant. He still talked to me, but when he put in a movie, he made sure to sit on the far side of the room. Milo had an endless stream of commentary about what happened last night, but Jack said very little about 105 anything. Rather abruptly, he announced that I should get home, and his explanation seemed practical, so everybody just went with it.
Without Milo constantly straightening up combined with me spending more time at home, the apartment was rather messy. Not enough where Mom would start screaming at me about it, but enough where I noticed it and decided to do something about it. I put Fallout Boy on the stereo and went about picking things up. After that, I took a long shower, and then crawled into bed. It was still much early to sleep, at least for me, so I pulled out A Brief History of Vampyres, the biography supposedly written by Peter.
After heavily detailing his own experiences with turning, including graphic descriptions of watching other vampires turn, the next chapter was ent.i.tled "Vampyres and the Earth." I was glad to be done with talk of turning. There was one particularly disturbing pa.s.sage where he recalled seeing a young man"s stomach bubble and move as he screamed. According to the author, that scene lasted for three hours.
The following chapter opened with a beautiful description of a sunrise and a poem called "Sunrise on the Hills" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In his youth, Peter was apparently obsessed with sun. It appeared to be a vampire"s one true weakness, and he struggled to understand it. He would spend hours out in the bright afternoon light, trying to discover what exactly it did to him.
"I would bask in the sun, like an afternoon cat, leaving as much of my flesh uncovered as modesty would allow. The rays of light would burn heavy on my skin and I would feel my muscles start to drain. My energy would weaken, my thoughts would muddle, but in complete contrast with that, my heart beat would grow stronger and faster. However, when I returned to the darkness and proceeded to slumber, once I awoke, all of the effects would be erased. My skin never even changed its hue.
"What precisely did the sun do to me, then? When I asked my fellow vampyres, they speculated very little on subject. The most informed answer came from my mentor, who said, "It does a man well to stay in the light, and a vampyre to stay out of it." The anatomy of a vampyre remains such a mystery that the best we can come up with is merely stating the fact that the light weakens us.
"But what if I were to stay in the sun always? If I were to exist as a normal man would, sleeping during the night and awaking during the day, what would the outcome be? The sun only seems to dull all our sense, lessening them to the point of mere humans. Would that surmise that living a life in the sun could reduce us to mortality? Would we then begin to age and grow old and eventually perish?
"Which leads me to an entirely different thought. Does our immortality, our exotic power, then come from the moon? Are the tales of lycanthrope embellished stories of vampyre? Are we at the whim of the sun and the moon like every other creature on this earth?"
For being a doc.u.ment that"s meant to answer questions, it faired better at raising them. Peter could find little in the way of scientific reasons sun"s effect on vampires. He did, however, conduct his own study on whether the sun could return him to a mortal, or at least to aging some. He spent a month living during the day and sleeping at night, but all he found was that he was very tired, weak, and inordinately hungry. As a result, he had to eat at least once a day, and it led to him very nearly killing three people. At the end of a month, he decided that was enough and finished his study without any real change to himself.
Lying in my bed, I rolled over and peeked out my curtains at the bluing sky. The sun hadn"t risen yet, but it was well on its way, meaning I had failed at following through with Jack"s suggested bedtime. I set the book aside and decided that I had better try and get some sleep. After the horrible night"s sleep I had last night, I was rather tired anyway.
106.
I managed to sleep all day, even through the baking heat of the afternoon. When I finally got up and turned on the TV, the weatherman announced it was had peaked over ninety degrees today.
I was tempted to lay around in my underwear all day long, but Mom was still around, complaining about the heat and her job and life in general.
After she left, I stared at my phone, hoping that someone would hurry and call me and rescue me from the insane heat. There would be no such luck. As the day moved onto night, I had resigned myself to spending the evening parked in front of a fan, sprawled out on the couch watching a.r.s.enic and Old Lace on AMC until I died of heatstroke.
"This building needs central air!" Milo crowed suddenly, throwing open the apartment door. I sat up with a start and looked over the back of the couch at him. His arms were overflowing with bags of groceries and his face looked flushed, but I"m a.s.suming that was from the heat.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, surprised by his random appearance.
I got up off the couch and went over to him, preparing to help with him with the groceries, until I realized how silly that sounded. Normally, when Milo carried things in, I"d be stuck with the brunt of the load since I was stronger than him, and it was a hard to shake the image of him as being my little brother, even though he was clearly so much stronger and better than I was.
"What? You"re not happy to see me?" He set the bags on the table and smirked at me.
"No, it"s not that. I just..." I stopped and looked over the bags on the table. "What is all this? And what are you doing here?"
"I figured you hadn"t eaten a good meal since I moved out, and I thought you"d be bored and dying of heat stroke." Milo dug through the bags and started pulling out frozen things, like ice cream and Popsicles, and put them in the freezer. "Besides, I know you and Mom don"t do any grocery shopping, so you"d probably waste away without me."
"That"s maybe true," I admitted, eyeing him skeptically. He continued going through the bags to put things away, while I went over to the freezer and pulled an orange Popsicle out. He was actually dead-on about the lack of food and heat stroke. "But what brings you to my neck of the woods? Aren"t you afraid Mom"ll catch you?"
"She"s at work," Milo shrugged. "And so is Jack. So it"s very quiet at the house and I needed to get out."
"Jack"s at work?" I hopped on the counter to watch Milo as he put the groceries away. "I thought Ezra just came back."
"He did, and he"s still at home," Milo explained. With ease, he reached over me to put away cereal on the very top shelf, something that used to require the aide of a chair for him to reach.
"Jack went on his own. He"s really getting the hang of the business."
"What do you mean? Jack"s in charge of stuff all by himself?" I slurped at my Popsicle, trying to keep orange drips of juice from spilling on my legs, but it wasn"t working. It was so hot in here that it melted almost immediately.
"Yeah. Why is that so shocking?" Milo laughed at my apparent surprise.
"It"s not." Wiping at the spot of orange on my thigh, I shrugged. "I just didn"t realize he was like doing that good or whatever. I don"t know. I mean, I don"t even know what he does really."
107.
"Neither do I. They"re purposely keeping me out of the loop for now, but Jack says that once I get more settled in, I"ll definitely be able to do it. He says it"s actually kind of fun when you get into it, but a lot of the work is already done anyway. Like Ezra has tons and tons of patents on things, and he just has to do a lot of legal shuffling around so people don"t catch onto the fact that he"s the same guy that"s been collecting money for the past hundred years or so." Milo said it all matter-of-factly like I would completely follow what that meant.
"So what? Pretty soon you"re gonna be a millionaire?" I bit off the last chunk of Popsicle and chomped down on it, even though my gums didn"t necessarily appreciate the cold.
"Alice, I hate to break it to you, but I already kind of am." Milo looked rather sheepish as he put away the last of the groceries in the fridge, and then turned to face me.
"Well, they"re super rich or whatever, but you just live with them," I gulped down the juice and chomped on the stick.
"Yeah, but..." He shifted uneasily, probably fearing the worst from my reaction. "I"m like part of the family now. So, Mae and Ezra set up credit cards and an expense account for me the other day, and Ezra"s working on doc.u.ments to legally change my name to Milo Townsend. Once that"s through, I"m going to get a driver"s license, but it"s going to say that I"m 18, since I can pa.s.s for it now and it"ll be easier to get things done that way."
"Nah ah," I gaped at him. "You have an expense account?"
"Yeah, I mean, it"s just easier that way. So I can buy my own things." He shrugged, then added.
"And groceries for you too! I"m spreading it around!"
"But..." My face crinkled in distress. "But that"s their money. Don"t you feel bad about taking it?"
"Not really," Milo admitted timidly. "I mean, I didn"t really feel bad about taking Mom"s money. As soon as I"m able to, and as soon as they"ll let me, I"m gonna start working. So... I"ll pull my own share. But I"m kind of a kid right now, and they just adopted me. I guess I"d feel worse about taking their money if they were poor or something."
"They are adopting you, aren"t they?" It was starting to hit me in a weird way that Milo wasn"t really my brother anymore. He was, and he always would be, but at the same time, he wasn"t.
"Milo Townsend?"
"Yeah, it sounds weird, right?" He wrinkled his nose, and I felt a little better knowing it was strange for him too.
"Whose last name is that anyway?" I went back to chewing on the wooden Popsicle stick and trying to seem casual about Milo"s news.
"I think its Ezra"s. I think Jack"s is really Hobbs, and Mae"s is Everly, but I don"t really know what Peter"s was." He leaned back against the refrigerator, watching me swing my feet and chew on the stick. "They don"t really talk much about Peter."
"That"s not surprising." The wood had started to splinter so I tossed the stick in the garbage can and looked over at him. "What do they say about him?"
"Mae told me about you guys being bonded and about how Peter nearly killed you before." A shudder ran over him at that. "Why didn"t you tell me about that?"
108.
"How could I?" I countered. "You weren"t supposed to know they were vampires. It"d be pretty weird to just say, oh yeah, Peter tried to drink all my blood, without a preface about them being immortal."
"How could you not tell me all this stuff?" Milo insisted, looking hurt and offended. "This stuff that was going on with you, it was huge! Jack told me how you were going to turn last spring, but you changed your mind because of me. And I appreciate that, I really do, but you almost did it! And you wouldn"t have told me about it? You were trying to make the biggest decision of your life, and you didn"t mention anything to me!"
"I couldn"t tell you anything!" I cracked my neck loudly and got frustrated with his accusations. "No matter what you say, the answer is going to be that I couldn"t tell you anything! They told me not to! They said it would be better for you if you never knew, and I raised the same argument! How would it be better for me to just disappear instead of telling you something. And they said it would be too hard for you to live a normal life while knowing that they exist."
"But you could"ve made up something," Milo shook his head. "You could"ve just told me about the whole triangle thing with Peter and Jack, and said you were thinking about running away with one of them. That was close to the truth."
"I don"t know. I didn"t think of it, I guess," I sighed. "Look, I"m sorry I didn"t tell you anything. But at least I can talk to you about it now, right?"
"On the subject of which," Milo grinned mischievously at me and t.i.tled his head. "What"s this I hear about you kissing Jack last night?"
"Word travels fast," I grumbled, avoiding his eyes and what they insinuated.
"Come on. There"s like four people in that house. You"re the only word there," Milo laughed, shaking his head. "What else would we really talk about?"
"Things," I replied vaguely.
Looking down at my feet made me realize how badly the dark purple nail polish was chipping on my toes. In order to reach it better, I pulled my knee to my chest and started chipping at the nail polish with my fingers.
"That"s really hygienic." Milo nodded to my foot being on the counter, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
"What do you care? You don"t eat here anymore." Then I smiled, almost sadly. "h.e.l.l, you don"t even eat anymore. Or get sick. I don"t think this is really an issue for you."
"You"re avoiding the major issue," he looked at me sternly. Swiftly, he pulled out a kitchen chair and sat in it, then tapped the empty spot next to him loudly. "Come on. Have a seat, and tell me all the juicy details."
"There isn"t anything juicy to tell!" I groaned, and stayed where I was, flicking off toe nail polish.
"You kissed Jack! There"s got to be something to tell!" Milo insisted with wide eyes.
"Are you even cool with talking about this?" I looked up at him, trying to study his face for any jealous aggression that might be brewing underneath.
109.
"Yeah, I"m so over that." He leaned back and rolled his eyes, but then shook his head. "Okay, I"m not like completely over him per se, but I"m not crazy jealous anymore. Remember at the club?
And I didn"t freak out then, and he was all over you most of the night."
"He was not all over me." This felt like the truth, but my cheeks were burning crimson anyway.