The Vampire Pirate's Daughter (14 page)

She is trying to convince herself why she
should help them and sleepily I reply, “Okay.”

*

I open my eyes groggily, something woke
me, and I gasp softly as I notice the dark figure sitting on the
couch by me feet. The fire, still burning in the fireplace, is
behind his back. My eyes adjust to the dark and then I recognize
Callum. I open my mouth to ask him what he wants, but softly he
puts his fingers over my lips and I hear his silent hush. He smiles
slowly and then he stands up. I look up at his tall figure and then
I see him bend down toward me. Softly I feel his lips on my
forehead and then he is gone.

*

I wake up with sunlight streaming through the
large windows and immediately I remember seeing Callum sitting next
to me on the couch, staring at me while I was sleeping. My fingers
come up to my forehead and tentatively I touch the place where I
felt his lips. Surely, I convince myself it was only a dream.

Looking across to the other couch, I see that
Amanda has already left. I get up and I walk toward the kitchen,
but everything is quiet.

We need water, so I decide to go for a walk
along the river and to bring some water back with me. I carry the
empty buckets with me and they clang noisily against each
other.

I consider that there must be a blockage
somewhere in the piping, because the house does have plumbing, but
the water is not coming out of the taps.

When I get to the river, I have an urge to
jump in and swim. It would be nice not to have to wash my body from
a pitcher. I am used to bathing in a lot of water and now the small
action of only washing with a cloth seems insignificant. Although,
not so long ago bathing from a jug was the preferred way of washing
yourself.

I look around me, even though I know that
there is nobody around and then I pull my shirt over my head and my
pants down my legs. I take off my underwear and then leave it on
the bundle of clothes under the weeping willow. I jump into the
water and it feels refreshing and uplifting. I swim to the middle
of the river and I feel the pull of the river against my legs. The
sun is hot on my shoulders and it reminds me of the day I went to
the dam, the first day Andrew singled me out and started talking to
me. I sigh despondently and consider that it might be time to let
him go. If he were supposed to be my soul mate, my albatross, he
would not have been a mere mortal.

I climb onto the riverbank and then I sit
naked in the sun. I pull my fingers through my long hair and the
sun dries me quickly. The sun feels delicious on my skin and later
I reluctantly decide to go back home. I put my clothes on and fill
the two buckets with water. I walk back toward the house with a
bucket in each hand, carrying it easily.

Walking through the back door, I walk
straight into the kitchen, and once again, I hear the music coming
from the cellar.

I put the buckets on the kitchen table and
then I walk toward the door leading to the cellar. Taking the first
step down, I wait for Amanda to stop me, but she is still in the
village.

Softly I turn the doorknob and I open the
door silently. Walking into the cool darkness of the cellar,
memories flood back from when I was little and I remember when I
used to play down here, running through the long tunnels lined with
barrels. Francois used to run a very profitable wine farm and he
used to produce a very good wine. I wonder if Amanda and I could do
that as well. It would be fun.

I follow the music through the arched tunnels
and slowly my eyes adjust to the complete darkness. It always
saddened me in earlier years, when we only lived at night, how
darkness sucked all the colors from your eyes, sucked the colors
out of everything. Living at night, was like living in a black and
white world.

I see him before he notices me. Callum is
sitting in front of the piano. His head is bowed forward and I see
his slender fingers move across the keys flawlessly. I stand where
I am, looking at him in awe. It sounds like raindrops falling on a
tin roof, then softly in a meadow, on the surface of a river,
falling between leaves. It is the most beautiful sound I have ever
heard.

He finishes the melody and then he looks up.
He is startled when he sees me and then slowly he smiles. “How long
have you been standing there?”

“A while.” I grin.

He stands up and again I notice the dignity
in his posture.

I walk toward him and he takes a few steps
toward me. I say softly, “That was beautiful.”

“Thank you. Sometimes I feel as if I belong
in a time far away from here and in those moments I like to lose
myself in the music of long ago.”

I look up at him surprised, because often
I also feel as if I did not belong here in modern times. I grew up
in a time of extreme good manners, decorum, grandeur and etiquette
and sometimes I find it sad that the world has changed so much, and
most of the times it has been for the worst.

He takes my hand softly into his, but he does
not move and for a long moment, he just stands there looking down
at me. I start to feel self-conscious, so I move away from him.

He asks, “Would you like to stay with me for
a while. We could talk.”

I ask, “Here?”

He grins. “We carried down the chairs, piano
and some books. We tried to make things as comfortable as
possible.”

“Where are the others?”

His smile reaches his eyes. “We intended on
making this home for a while. We have our own bedrooms down the
different passages.”

I laugh softly. “So once I dared go upstairs
to the bedrooms I will find most of the furniture missing.”

“Not really missing, but right here.” He
smiles impishly.

We sit down on the chairs and we talk about
our lives past. His live spend at night, and mine during the day in
recent years. He is curious and wants to know everything. It feels
as if I am in a magical, two tone world down here in the cellar
with him. He touches my hand briefly and I feel a flutter where my
heart should be.

The voice of Amanda calls me from a distance.
I stand up quickly, and explain, “I better go. Amanda is scared you
lead me astray.”

He stands up and taking my hand in his, he
pulls me toward him. I stop myself from bumping into him by
bringing up my hands. I feel him under the palms of my hands and I
close my eyes for a moment.

He brings his head down toward me, and he
whispers, “Come back whenever you want to, I will be here reading
old books and playing the piano.”

He stands deadly still, staring at me, while
I turn away from him and walk toward the panic-filled voice echoing
through the tunnels.

When Amanda sees me, she exclaims, “Susanna!
Where have you been? I have been calling forever.”

I hear laughter behind me in the darkness of
the tunnels and then Amanda yanks me by the arm out of the
cellar.

When we are in the kitchen, she whispers,
“Susie, what do you think you are doing?”

Softly I say, “We were only talking.”

“There is something I have never told you. If
either one of them bites you…” She stops talking and I can see her
mind working overtime.

“What?” I ask.

“If they bite you, you will die.”

“
Please Amanda. Nobody is going to bite me.
We were just talking. Callum fascinates me with his eagerness to
learn everything about living in the light.”

I see she wants to say more, I get the
distinct impression there is more to be said and I want to ask her,
but I hear their voices coming from the tunnels in the cellar.

I turn toward the door and I am genuinely
pleased to see Callum walking through the door. Callum walks
straight toward me, ignoring the look on Amanda’s face. He takes my
hand and silently he leads me out of the back door.

We walk away from the château and into the
night. The heavy full moon hangs low in the sky and it feels as if
we are walking through the long knee-high grass into the moon. We
spend the first half of the night together. We sit on a little
hill, facing the huge moon next to us and we talk.

He tells me, “A woman, Veronica, turned me
when I was twenty-four. I was leaving from a ball in Munich, when
we came across a woman walking along the side of the road. She
looked up at the carriage and I remember as if it was yesterday.
Her face was so beautiful and her eyes so sad.” He smiles softly.
“Almost as sad as yours.”

I look down shyly and pull at the grass
around my legs. He continues, “I told my driver to stop and ask her
if she needed help. I could not leave a woman alone in the middle
of the road late at night. She did not look poor or destitute and I
was intrigued to find her there in the middle of nowhere. As soon
as she entered the carriage, she said thank you politely and when
my driver turned his back to go back to his seat, she attacked me.
I remember waking up days later with a terrible thirst. She helped
me though. Justin and Herman were already with her and Claude
joined us later. Not so long ago, she turned another and one dark
moonless night four cloaked men killed her. She and the girl were
brutally murdered and butchered in front of Herman, Claude, Justin
and me. We wanted to avenge Veronica, but as mysteriously as the
murderers appeared, just so strangely they disappeared.”

I explain, “In our community, the vampire
community, we have a high court and those cloaked men were
them.”

He asks, “High court?”

“
Yes, everyone needs law and order. They
declared a law against turning humans, because should it have
carried on, it would have spread like a virus and today there would
have been no humans to feed on. Also, vampires aren’t allowed to…”
I hesitate embarrassed and then I say softly, barely audible, “Make
babies with human woman anymore, because there have been too many
half-breeds. Now, when the illness inflicts a human, the Four
Judges or their appointees come and kill them shortly after they
turn.” He frowns and I say, “I cannot believe you do not know any
of this.”

He smiles forlornly. “I think the world left
us behind. This is the first time I have ever heard any of this -
civilization, order, law, vampire community.”

I reach toward him sympathetically. “I will
teach you everything. I promise.”

He continues to ask questions and I continue
to answer them patiently.

At midnight, he walks me back to the door of
the room where Amanda and I are sleeping and softly he says, “So
long have I been dreaming of something more and now here you are
with a promise of day.” He leans toward me and he kisses me
fleetingly on my cheek. I hear him murmur softly, “My red-haired
girl.”

A few days later Amanda and I leave early,
before sunrise. Callum stands close to me and I lean toward him to
hug him goodbye. He folds me into his strong arms and I sink into
him. He holds onto me tightly and when Amanda walks past us with a
low growl in her throat, he lets me go slowly.

Before Amanda gets into the car, she looks at
Callum across the width of the roof of the car and she reminds him
sternly, “When I get back, I do not want to hear of any villagers
disappearing. Do you understand me, Callum?”

He nods his head affirmatively. Besides
Peter, who was turned in his late thirties, Amanda is the eldest in
this group of eight in human years. She was human until the age of
twenty-six when a man in Romania turned her, violently. Shayne
always used to tease her, to her chagrin, that she might have been
made into a vampire by the infamous, Count Dracula himself. Amanda
does not enjoy talking about it and only Shayne knew the full,
dramatic details of that night. Amanda has the natural ability to
assume the mothering role though and I always thought she would
have made a great mother.

We drive away with Callum standing in front
of the stairs leading up to the old mansion. Amanda has given all
six of them a long list of things she wants fixed, scraped, cleaned
and restored by the time we get back.

The sun rises behind us, while we drive along
the road that would take us to Paris and we reach Paris before
lunch.

In Paris, we drive along the roads of an
affluent neighborhood looking for the address of Jean-Michel. He is
the vampire selected to distribute the ‘sunshine’ pill in France.
In each country, there is one vampire appointed as a kind of
minister of affairs. It is not as if we could walk into a pharmacy
and buy it over the counter. I know we will not meet personally
with Jean-Michel himself, because he will deem himself too
important for selling and distribution. He will however have
several employees, all vampires, who manages the various
administrative duties that entails making sure the community of
vampires in each country is regulated and governed within
prescribed laws and regulations as set down by the High Court.

The High Court, I know, liked to deal out the
death penalty personally. They have lived longer than anybody cared
to remember. They have always been there and nobody ever knew of a
time when they were not in charge in some or other way. This is
also not a democracy, we could not vote whom we wanted in the High
Court, and nobody dared go against their decisions, because death
will come swiftly and extremely painfully. The four members, or as
they refer to themselves, the Four Judges, enjoyed killing. They
lived and ruled from Mont-Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of
Normandy; where an imposing abbey was build in the thirteenth
century.

Amanda parks the car when she sees the
address. The street is lined with trees which forms a canopy across
the road and the houses lining both sides of the road are colonial.
It is an old and wealthy neighborhood.