The Purity of Blood: Volume I (60 page)

Reluctantly, I
got up and took the chair back inside the now somewhat clean house and decided
to start a fire.
 
In my afternoon of
exploring I’d discovered a pile of firewood stacked neatly behind the old
outhouse and had brought in enough to last me the night.
 
After crumpling up some ads from the
newspaper I’d bought to read, I stuffed them under the wood in the fireplace
and watched it slowly catch fire from the match I’d lit.
 
Sitting back on the ancient wood floor as it
creaked underneath my shifting weight, I watched the room slowly begin to glow
under the flickering light of the growing fire.
 
In silence, I watched the sparks grow to flames, and listened to the old
wood as it snapped and popped while it met its fate.
 

Two of the
pieces of furniture left behind by the previous owners were an old cushioned
wing back chair upholstered with tattered and faded red fabric and a small well-worn
wooden coffee table.
 
I pulled them
closer to the warmth of the fire and settled down into the comfy chair.
 
I was glad I’d come here, glad that I’d found
this quiet place devoid of memories of my recent past.
 
I was a stranger here and yet it somehow felt
as comforting as home.
 
Maybe it was because
it was my grandfather’s house.
 
He’d once
lived within these walls and raised a family here.
 
I don’t know what it was, but it felt like a
warm blanket around my soul somehow comforting it without words.
 
I wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened,
but somehow I’d managed to escape the glass house on the cliff with all its
jagged edges and dangers for this cozy home nestled on the hill.
 

I wondered if
Daniel and the Professor would find me here, or if in the end it would be the
blood hunter that found his way up the twisty driveway below.
 
I wasn’t sure why, but I had a feeling that either
one or the other would eventually find their way to Hopkinton in search of my
blood.
 

I wasn’t
suicidal, but some part of me wished it would be the hunter.
 
At least then all my other problems would be
meaningless.
 
Other than running as fast
as I could, I had no idea how to mask my trail from a vampire.
 
In retrospect, I wondered if Daniel had
really wanted to keep me safe, why he hadn’t taught me how to evade a
hunter.
 
These were skills I certainly
wished I possessed now.
 
From a practical
stand point alone, he must have known no matter how hard he tried, he could
never guard me twenty four hours a day for the rest of my life.
 
Of course, this was all assuming he cared
enough to really give a damn.
 
Somehow
this thought only seemed to galvanize my new found understanding of the game
he’d been playing with me in my prior innocence.

I’d managed to
keep busy all afternoon, but sitting here with only the quiet silence of the
fire as my companion, my anguish slowly and inevitably ebbed its way forward.
 
Staring at the flames, I could feel the tears
silently make their trails down my hot cheeks.
 
I didn’t try to stop them.
 
I knew
it would be useless to try.
 
How could it
have all been a lie?
 
He must have loved
me at least a little.
 
I couldn’t have
been that wrong, could I?
 
I could only
think I must have loved him so much that I only saw what I wanted to and
willingly allowed myself to be deceived.
 
I’d been no better than Tabitha shaking hands with Daniel.
 
Sitting there in front of the fire, I felt as
if I had only myself to blame.
 
A sob
escaped my heart as I buried my head in the side of the chair and cried,
grieved really, for my Daniel, for my love as it slowly started to die inside
me.

After a while
the tears finally subsided and I just sat there staring vacantly into the
fire.
 
I didn’t have the will to move, to
expend energy in some fruitless endeavor that wouldn’t bring him back to me.
 
How long I sat there, I don’t know, hours
certainly.
 
Compared to the flames and
the silence in my soul, time seemed meaningless.

Eventually and
with great effort, I emptied myself of pity.
 
After all, had I been smarter and kept my guard up, none of this would
ever have happened.
 
Trying to force
myself into a better mood, I got up and went into the kitchen to open up the
bags from the sporting goods store.
 
I’d
purchased a couple of battery operated lanterns with lots of extra batteries
and a sleeping bag among other things.
 
I
spread the sleeping bag out on the floor in front of the fire and took a seat
on top while I turned on my laptop.
 
I
wanted to look up what info I had on my grandfather that had built this
house.
 
I needed to feel a connection to
something and he seemed as good a thing as any.

When my email
in-box automatically popped up, I emailed Ben with my notes from our
project.
 
Not knowing when I’d be back, I
wanted him to be able to continue on just in case I didn’t make it back in time
– or at all.
 

I was surprised
that Ben hadn’t pestered me with questions last night.
 
He seemed oddly understanding of a situation
he couldn’t possibly have a clue about.
 
He really was a good man, and his ability to just be there for me in my
time of need without getting all
Lets
work the problem
was one of my favorite qualities about him.
 
He’d shown me that quality in the woods that
day as we sat atop the cave.
 
Sometimes
he very much really reminded me of my father that way.

I’d thought
about our kiss more than I should have since that night.
 
Knowing it wasn’t fair to Ben, I regretted
it.
 
My heart wasn’t available, but I’d
made it seem that there might be a chance it was.
 
I thought a lot about that and also about his
lips.
 
They were soft, and warm, and most
of all … attached to him.
 
The feel of
his hand on my arm when I’d reached up and kissed him, and the look in his
brown eyes just after lingered on the fringes of my mind.
 
If I could choose who to love, it would be
him.
 
He would never hurt me like Daniel
had.
 
Ben would cherish me for as long as
I’d let him, of this I was certain.
 
But
in the end, we don’t choose who we love.
 
It’s not like respect that can be earned or friendship we can grant.
 
Love is, of its own accord, a living thing
that no man can control, humans and vampires alike its pawns.
 
Or so it seemed.

I pulled up my
genealogy program and read what notes I’d compiled over the years on the
builder of the house and his wife Lois.
 
Like most of my other ancestors of the same era, I had the basics but I
deeply wished I could know who he had been as a man, a husband and a
father.
 
Was he a good man?
 
Would I have been proud to be called his
descendant?
 
Statistics are black and
white but I wanted to know the colors of his life.

I knew he was
born September 30
^th
, 1747.
 
He
was a farmer by trade and served in the Hopkinton militia during the
Revolutionary War.
 
When he died in the
fall of 1821, he was buried in a small family cemetery across Route Three back
in the woods somewhere.
 
I’d heard his
headstone was missing now, but I’d never been able to locate the cemetery
anyway.
 
It was pretty far back in the
woods and my one attempt to find it years ago had failed miserably, leaving me
with nothing but a few ticks to show for my efforts.
 
He married and together he and Lois raised
six children in this house.
 
This was
most of what I knew about him.
 
Not much
to show for a long life such as his.
 
Yet
here I was, camped out in his living room in the house he built with his own
two hands.

I laid down on
my back and stared at the ceiling.
 
Large
wooden beams ran across it, punctuating what looked like white plaster.
 
In fascination I watched as the flickering
light from the fireplace playfully danced around the beams for me like a
demented puppet show with an endless story to tell.
 
I felt myself sigh.
 
I wished I owned this house.
 
I certainly wouldn’t have neglected it as it
had been these past years.
 
Strangely
within its walls, I felt oddly cherished and wished I could repay the favor in
some tangible way.

Getting up, I
walked into the kitchen and forced myself to eat a prepackaged dinner over the
kitchen sink.
 
It was unsatisfying but at
least I wouldn’t go to bed listening to my stomach growl.
 
Besides, I’d eaten very little over the last
few days and needed to keep my strength up.

I went back to the
computer and returned a few emails so my friends wouldn’t suspect anything out
of the ordinary was going on.
 
When I
turned off the computer, I was beginning to feel better.
 
Setting it to the side, I placed another log
on the fire and curled up in the cozy sleeping bag.
 
It really was a good laptop.
 
Dad had given it to me right before I’d left
for school.
 
He said it had all the
newest technology and would get internet pretty much anywhere I’d go.
 
Seems he was right.
 
As I pulled the sleeping bag tighter around
me, I prayed the big brothers of the dozens of spiders I’d killed today
wouldn’t come back in search of revenge during the night.
 
The house was far better than a tent, but
somehow I still felt lost in the wilderness.
 

Tired, yet
reluctant to close my eyes, I watched the fire and thought of my grandfather
Wells and his wife Lois in this house.
 
How many times over the course of my life had I dreamed of meeting my
ancestors like them?
 
What I could learn
if only I had them alone in a room for just five minutes.
 
Even though they were dead and long gone,
part of them seemed to linger in this room with me.
 
I sighed when I realized this was as close to
living my dream as I was ever likely to get on this earth.
 
Something about that both gladdened my heart
and depressed me at the same time.

For being on the
run for my life, I had to admit I was kind of having a good time. That is if a
good time could be had while nursing a broken heart.
  
I tried not to dwell on the fact that I’d
committed two major crimes in the last two days, grand theft auto and breaking
and entering.
 
Not to mention that I was
on the run for my life.
 
Melodramatic as
it sounded, if it hadn’t been for the events of the last few days, I’d never
have found myself reestablishing a family homestead and falling asleep in front
of a fire my great, great, great, great grandfather might have started.
 
Maybe it’s the excitement only a genealogist
can truly understand.
 
It ran along the
same lines as a person who visited cemeteries for the enjoyment of establishing
some strange connection with relatives long lost to time.

The fire cracked
as the logs shifted in the hearth.
 
Turning on my side, I studied the stones that made up the
fireplace.
 
They were neatly stacked,
large rectangular stones that looked too square not to have been chiseled into
their current shapes.
 
Layers of stone
were stacked up for about five feet and then there looked to be a wooden beam
set among the layers of stone which seemed odd to me.
 
Above that there was another three feet or so
of stacked stone up to the ceiling.
 
It
actually continued through the ceiling and was the fireplace in two of the
second floor bedrooms as well as a smoke house up in the attic third
floor.
 
The fireplace opening here in the
living room was rather small for the large area of stone.
 
The opening was only about three feet
square.
  

The large room
was L shaped and wrapped around the back of the house.
 
The side of the stone fireplace that faced
the back wall of the house was much larger with a warming oven built into
it.
 
I assumed that room was the location
of the original kitchen, and was converted to a dining room when the modern
kitchen had been added years later.
 
But
even the modern kitchen was built to resemble the 1700’s design esthetic with
simple solid wood cabinetry and shelving.

Feeling the heat
of the fire on my face, I closed my eyes.
 
But even as I did, its warm glow was still visible through my eye
lids.
 
Behind my eyes I pictured what my
life at NPU would have been like if I’d never seen Daniel in the hallway that
day.
 
I’d have been just another coed on
campus going to classes and hanging out with my new group of friends.