Young Forever (6 page)

She shook her head, almost looking worried. “No, you are not.”

* * * * *

And I wasn’t ready because I wasn’t a full-fledged vampire. But, more importantly, I hadn’t even known that
Gerta
had planned on turning me into a vampire. She didn’t let me in on her plans. She just decided to do it her own way, rogue style.

Gerta
didn’t turn me the way most vampires usually turn humans. She did it in increments, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t even know she was doing it until one morning I went outside to greet the day because I noticed the sun was making a rare appearance. I stepped outside and smiled but not for long because I started to get hot.
Really
hot. When my skin started burning, I ran inside and locked myself into a dark room until she rose from her slumber.

“I’m burning!” I wailed and held out my arm, which was slightly charred and really gnarly looking.

“I see,” she said and smiled. “It is finally beginning to take hold.”

“What?”

“You’re turning into vampire,” she said.

“What do you mean by this?” I asked, startled then examined my arm. I stopped and stared at her. She was turning me into a vampire? What? I was suddenly stunned, shocked. She’d never mentioned this before.

“That is what you want, is it not?” she asked.

I thought about that. Did I even want to become a vampire? Hmmm… Decisions, decisions, decisions. While I liked
Gerta
and
Aloiki
, well, I loved them, really, I was still young. I was physically a grown woman but young at heart. And I did have fantasies about finding a handsome young rich man with a nice manor and a good staff and marrying him. I did think about children. How many would I like to have? Three? Four? But then I thought about childbirth and I’d heard things about that, as well. It frightened me. But so did death. Did I really have a choice in the matter?

She took my arm and touched it softly. “It will heal, little one. In time. When you become a full-fledged vampire, it will heal almost immediately. Well, as soon as you get out of the sun. If you stay in the sun, it won’t heal at all. You will burst into flames and die.”

I didn’t blink at her blunt words. I was used to her speaking like this because that’s how she spoke. It certainly took the guess work out of what she was saying, to say the least. “Wait,” I said. “Are you…? What are you doing? You said you would never allow me to turn into a vampire.”

She smiled and touched my face. “I know. But after much consideration, I changed my mind and thought it best to turn you. This is because I have grown very fond of you. More so than I ever thought. I want to spare you the pain of being a human. If I do not turn you, you will grow old and feeble. And then you will die. And then I will be alone again. So, I thought it best to turn you into a vampire, like me, so we might be together as a family forever.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, still not quite understanding what was going on. “You haven’t bitten me.”

“No, but I have been slowly feeding you my blood, putting drops into your food every day,” she said and smiled at me. “This is why we haven’t moved yet. I wanted to transition you slowly. I did this instead of just biting you because well… Biting is very painful and then I’d have to bury you and that is very messy and consumes too much time. Also, the transition is very painful and can be quite traumatic, especially when one finds themselves buried alive. I wanted to spare you this. And, besides that, I can’t really be out in the forest every night waiting on you to dig your way out of the dirt.” She stopped talking and shuddered.

I guess that made sense.

“Also, you are still very young and if I just turned you into a vampire, you wouldn’t have time to properly mature. You would stay as you are now, very immature.”

I just stared at her. “I am not immature.”

“No, not much,” she said and touched my face, smiling at me. “But it is better to wait and do it slowly. That way, you are as you should be.”

“
Ummm
,” I said, thinking about what she’d just told me.

“But soon, we will be as mother and daughter. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

I didn’t really know what to say, to be quite honest.

Aloiki
was totally against this. He said it was foolish and that
Gerta
was playing with something that might result in some sort of catastrophe. “This has not been done before!” he bellowed. “At least, I don’t think it has!
Gerta
, this might backfire! Just turn her the right way. Bite her neck and be done with it.”

Gerta
, of course, ignored him, as she does anyone who disagrees with her. She told me that over time, I would be a vampire. “This way is better,” she said. “Less pain and less mess.”

Aloiki
turned to me. “You do want this, do you not,
Isotta
? You do want to be a vampire, yes?”

I thought about it. I didn’t know. I knew I wanted to be with them but I also fantasized about having a life of my own. I was torn.

“Of course, she does,”
Gerta
said. “Don’t you,
Isotta
?”

I stared into her eyes and thought about it. I suppose I did. Part of me knew I’d probably always end up a vampire and this was just the first stage of becoming one. “Yes,” I said. “I do. I want to be a vampire.”

She smiled more deeply at me, then shot a glance at
Aloiki
. “See? I told you so!” She turned back to me. “It is a slow process. This will take years. Well, at least another one to two years. I want to make sure it works well. That’s why I’m taking it so slowly, so you have time to mature and be a woman. So, let’s give it time and when you are a full vampire, we will make our move to the colonies!”

But it didn’t work exactly like that. I was still human, mostly, but I did slowly find myself gaining this insatiable desire for blood. I would have vivid dreams about it, too, some that were quite unsettling, such as the one where I found myself taking a bath in a tub filled with blood.
Quite scary
. I could even smell it all around me whenever I was around some warm-blooded being. In the forest I could smell it in the animals and in the stables the horse’s blood smell was so strong I ran from it. But it was unbearable when the person who brought my food came. After a while, I pinned a note on the door, telling them to just leave it so I wouldn’t be confronted with the smell.

As I said, I was still mostly human and things like this did disturb me. However, I found myself slowly getting used to it as my senses became heightened and the thirst for blood began to take over.

But
Gerta’s
methods didn’t work out the way she planned. It all came to a head one night. And it came down to the fact that either I would become a full-fledged vampire or I would die.

The night it happened, I was out with
Gerta
and
Aloiki
for what they called “a hunt.” They wanted to school me in how to… Well, how to obtain blood. The first thing to do would be to find some hapless victims who they could attack and then eat. It was really quite simple. These victims came would usually come in the form of a small group of thieves or bandits who were moving around together, staying hidden. Sometimes they were in the forest or living in abandoned houses or wherever such people dwelled. Since
Gerta
had been turning me into a vampire, she wanted me to see firsthand how I would someday attack and then devour my prey. (If she’d shown me this when I was younger, before I had vampire blood rushing through my veins, then I would have probably fled.) Even so, it was gruesome what they did. And quite scary. But, because I was part vampire by then, it only bothered me slightly. I was like a student observing, watching, listening, trying to figure out the perfect technique when it was time for me to step up and show everyone what I’d learned.

Well, the attack didn’t quite go as planned. We came upon a clan of bandits in the forest who were about as vicious as
Gerta
and
Aloiki
when they are in vampire mode. When they attacked, one large male came at
Gerta
with a large sword and slashed it at her. She ducked and, if she hadn’t, her head would have come off with one clean cut. The sword was that sharp. But, because she ducked and because I was standing close by observing, the machete cut across my stomach, slicing it open, almost to the point that my insides fell out. Everyone knows the saying “no guts, no glory.” I think this is what they meant. Because soon enough, I would have no guts and certainly not much glory.

I fell to the ground.
Aloiki
roared with vengeance and finished the team of bandits off himself, all seven of them, before grabbing me up and literally running with me in his arms all the way back to our mansion. There, he and
Gerta
wrapped me up in a blanket and placed me in front of the fire. But before they could finish helping me, they had to retreat to sleep so I lay there all day shaking and shivering and thinking I was probably going to die. The blood from my wound soaked through several thick wool blankets. Yes, I was going to die. I knew it.

But I didn’t. Maybe it was because I had enough vampire blood in me to keep me alive. I don’t know, but that night, just before they awoke, there was a loud knock on the door. I was able to drag myself to the window to look out. To my astonishment, there was a crowd of men with torches who were apparently there to kill us. They were carrying all sorts of weapons and things they intended to use as weapons. I saw mattocks, scythes, sickles, swords, even a few shearing scissors. This crowd was mad with blood lust and they meant business.

At once, I knew why they were there. I assumed we had missed one of the bandits who, after his escape, had incited a fury by telling everyone he could about us. He’d probably tracked us back to our house and then found a team of men to come do us in.

You had to really watch those bandits. They were quite sneaky. Now here we were, about to be torn to shreds.

As the crowd began to bang on the door, demanding that we open up so that they could kill us, I crawled on my belly down to the cellar where I woke
Gerta
and
Aloiki
.
Gerta
, being a vampire, was prepared for this and had some supplies and quite a lot of gold and coins she’d collected over the years packed and ready to go.

We made it out of the cellar and crept quietly to the stables while the crowd was at the front of the house. They were battering on the old, four-inch-thick oak door with their tools and fists and soon it would give.
Aloiki
took me and put me in front of him on the horse.
Gerta
piled all of the things we would need onto another horse and then, together, we fled out the back, through the forest with the crowd none the wiser.

I was able to ride for about three hours until I fell off the horse.
Aloiki
stared at
Gerta
, who nodded, then he left, came back a couple of hours later with a horse-drawn carriage and a driver who’d obviously been mesmerized by him. We got in and rode out.

Over time, my wound got worse and worse. We traveled by night in that carriage and I’d moan with pain. The ride was bouncy and rough, every jolt made me hurt.
Gerta
and
Aloiki
were worried. They whispered amongst themselves that I might not make it, though
Gerta
insisted that I would, that her plan would work. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t healing better, faster.
Aoiki
feared I’d take a turn for the worse.

“She will die,
Gerta
,” he told her. “If we do not turn her completely.”

“She will not die!” she roared and glared at him. “She is almost a vampire! This will work. I have been feeding her drops of blood for three years now.”

“You are being quite stupid about this,” he said. “The blood will only make her have the thirst for blood. It won’t give her what she needs in order to heal like a normal vampire. Why are you doing this?”

“I hated turning into a vampire. I hated being in the ground,” she hissed. “I do not want to put her in the ground. It’s horrible.”

“It is no less horrible than the real death she will experience if you do nothing,” he told her, his eyes flashing with anger.

Gerta
huffed, crossed her arms and turned away from him. “The ground will take too much time. I will give her more blood soon.”

He shook his head and said, “That is not enough. It has to be done properly!”

She shook her head and I faded out as they went into yet another heated argument.

After about a week of this, of traveling in that horrible carriage with those two, I did take a turn for the worse. I could feel the life seeping out of me.
Gerta’s
blood was no longer enough to keep me alive. One night, it was just
Aloiki
and me.
Gerta
had gone ahead of us on the pack horse we’d had tied to the back of the carriage to secure lodging. I fell to the floor of the carriage and stared up at him. He grabbed me up, looked into my eyes and said, “It’s your choice.”

“What do you mean?” I managed to ask, thinking I’d never felt this weak, not even when I was starving in the woods.

“You are dying, beautiful one,” he said. “
Gerta
will not believe this. She means well but she is stubborn. But you will die as she tries to prove her point. Tell me, do you want me to turn you into a vampire?”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“It means you will be forever young,” he said and touched my face.
“Young forever. No wrinkles, no aging,” he murmured, then moved the hair from my eyes. “No children. No sunshine.”

No children… No sunshine… No wrinkles… Just us… Us three.
I stared into his eyes and asked, “If I do, then will I be with you and
Gerta
forever?”

“More than likely,” he said. “At least until you become tired of us.” He chuckled to himself as if he thought that would never happen.