Somehow I fell asleep. I can’t say when, but it was after I insisted that Sebastian leave me alone. When I rose only to eat, I decided to search his room. I had been there before and found nothing. Maybe this time I could do a more thorough search with more time on my hands.
Where had he gone now? I wondered.
Stumbling into his room tired of eating canned food and no meat, no carbohydrates, I felt light headed and a little weak. I needed some real food. Fresh food anything for digestion. I glanced at my stomach and it appeared bloated.
After this search I had planned to call Ann. I glanced around, nothing. I pulled open the double wood doors and my eyes fell to the last drawer of the handmade chest. Stooping down, I made myself comfortable and sat on the floor and eased the drawers open.
Staring down at nothing but old photographs, I smiled. Some of a bygone era. Men in top hats, bowler hats, and women wearing hoop skirts. I smiled at the idea of long skirts and then the skirts got shorter and the suits turned into jeans and tee shirts as I thumbed through the pictures.
“Is that Sebastian in all those pictures?” I murmured. I took a better look and tried to get some light, but the light was too dim. It sure as hell looked like him. He had all those women. What happen to them I wondered, and then it occurred to me, either they died of a natural death, or was killed by Samantha.
The drawer filled with pictures as I pulled them out and placed them in front of me. I needed to see them. Pictures tell everything. But the eyes are the mirror to the soul.
These were pictures of a time when women had a place and men were kings. Now all the pictures are on phones. All the pictures on his phone were of me, but these were of women I didn’t know. And I’m glad because I would have been so jealous. I could have been like Samantha wanting to kill them if they were with him. My Sebastian, but where is he?
Now looking at these pictures I can accept that he once had a life before me, so I was able to gaze at them and smile knowing these women were dead.
What stories would the women in these pictures tell me?
Reaching for a handful, I lay them before me on the floor and skimmed through them looking for something more telling than a bunch of black and white photos, and a few colored prints.
And then I stopped at one. It was a picture of him in a bowler hat in his hand and holding on to a pretty girl of twenty-two. This photo looked over a hundred years old, but it was as if it was in good shape. I became jealous of the photo and I threw it back in the drawer.
Then there were more pictures of young women and each girl looked as if they were one in the same, but they weren’t, because although they resembled each other, they were indeed different. However, on a closer look it was as if I was seeing myself in those pictures.
Sebastian had never changed. He said he was frozen in time and he was. He stood tall, proud, a beautiful specimen of a young man full of life but pale. He had become a vampire then like he is now with me, but he was happy then. In all his pictures you see a fresh ready smile.
Not like he is now each time I see him. Have I done this to him? I questioned.
Then I came across a photo of a child about five and he and the child were at a carnival, and the child held cotton candy in her hand, and a large stuffed Panda bear and she was holding on to Sebastian’s hand and looking up at him.
They were both smiling and then it dawned on me. It was me. I was the child he held by the hand, carried in his arms, against the backdrop of a large Ferris wheel filled with children and mothers and fathers.
“He took me to a carnival.” At first I was upset and then it was a lovely picture. He looked like a father taking his young daughter for an outing. They looked so happy together and he looked like he truly loved her.
It wasn’t me anymore. I had grown up and I didn’t remember any of it. And I’m glad I didn’t because I wouldn’t be able to handle it now. I looked to him as a father figure or big brother, and now he was my lover.
It was enough. I threw the remaining pictures into the cabinet and closed it. I pulled my phone out to call Ann. I hadn’t seen Sebastian for two days and I’m tired of eating pizza, I called Ann.
“What are you doing today?”
“Why, what do you want this time?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“I should hope so because the sheriff is beginning to ask questions about David,” Ann said to me.
“Did you see Sebastian?”
“We haven’t seen him for a few days. He came in and said that he was resigning, and he would stay for a week until we got someone to replace him, and he would recommend a doctor. Well yesterday we got another doctor and he brought his nurse with him and a replacement staff. They gave me two weeks off with pay. I haven’t had a day off in six years.”
“That’s great, but has anyone else seen Sebastian?”
“One of the hunter’s came in after a routine gunshot wound. He got it from a fellow hunter,” Ann said. I waited until she finally got around to telling me about Sebastian. “He’s hanging out at this bar. It appears he has troubles and he’s drinking.”
“I didn’t know vampires had troubles and can drink like people,” I said.
“They can do almost anything a human can do. And some have feelings. I got that from being around Sebastian. I had never had the experience of knowing a vampire only werewolves. We heard all kinds of stories about them, but he appeared different. Like he had a soul. And one thing I do know, and that is he loves you.” Ann’s voice warm and genuine.
“Can you take me to that bar?”
“I’m not sure. I have to ask Robbie. It’s where shifters hang out.”
“What’s a shifter?”
“It’s like a werewolf, but it could be anything. A cat or a lion any kind of animal that changes from one form to another.”
“Robbie just came in from his hunt. I’ll call you back.” She didn’t say anything else so I carried the phone and waited. Then she called back.
“Zoey, Robbie said it was ok, the only thing, he wants to go with us. To protect us. You know how that is.”
“Yes. That’s great,” I said and I rushed to microwave the last of the frozen pizza. I swallowed down a coke a cola, and when I had finished two slices and two cans of coke, the bell rang. This time I looked around and it was Ann, and Robbie was driving her beat up jeep.
I opened the door, “Does it always rain around here? I thought I would see some snow.”
“When we get an occasional blizzard but not now. That’s a once in a lifetime thing. But it would be nice to have some snow.”
We ran to the car and I hopped into the back. “Zoey, you know Robbie, Robbie, Zoey.”
Robbie grunted and turned his head in the direction away from me. He took off and headed for town.
“What’s wrong with the doctor?” Robbie finally asked after watching at me in the rearview mirror. “We hate to see him go?” he said.
“Where is he going?” I asked.
“Don’t you know? He told Ann and she said that he was thinking of leaving town. You would think he would have said something to his wife. You are his wife?”
I didn’t answer his question even as his dark brown eyes met mine. Finally Robbie took his eyes off me and watched the road.
“We need him here. He’s the only doctor that came here and didn’t look down on us because we were shifters. Did Ann tell you the whole town is made up of male shifters with female human mates, and one vampire and that’s Sebastian? It’s nice to have a vampire in town,” he said as if that gave him comfort and prestige. “Keep some of the bad shifters under control, and the witches away.”
Vampires can control shifters? All this is new to me. Why would Sebastian find it necessary to go to a bar to solve his problems? Since when does that ever solve anyone’s problems? Not unless he was looking to break something, or kill something. Like a hunter who gets angry and goes out and shoot something.
It didn’t take Robbie long to drive up to the bar. Looking around I spotted Sebastian’s black Land Rover sticking out among a sea of motorcycles parked outside along with a few old pickup trucks.
We stepped out of the Jeep. In my rush to see Sebastian, I took off ahead of Robbie and Ann. “Hold on. Don’t open that door.” His large hand resting over my hand reaching for the handle. I dropped my hand. There were too many things I didn’t know and by the sound of Robbie’s voice, it was something I shouldn’t do.
Walking up close behind me, Robbie moved past me, I stepped aside, and he grabbed the handle and opened the door and stepped in. “What was that about?” I questioned Ann.
“If a woman opens that door without a shifter or in that case our own vampire, then they would assume that she’s a witch. And they would have attacked without thinking. Witches are forbidden in this town, and if she kills anyone from this town like Samantha did David, even though David was a human, then she will be hunted down and killed. They already have a bounty on her head. Robbie is looking to make some extra money, and he’s looking for her, too.”
I felt somewhat relieved but not much. Samantha had proven to be a man killer because of her powers of seduction.
As we stepped behind Robbie, and he made a gesture that I wasn’t a witch, and therefore ok, he searched around the bar and spotted Sebastian sitting at a table in the back alone. His head down a drink in his hand and pain on his face.
Robbie and Ann stood aside as I walked up to Sebastian. “Why are you here and not at home?” Slowly he raised his head and he looked pale. His eyes sunken. “When was the last time you ate?” He glanced up at me.
“Why does that matter to you? I know you’re going to leave me so what does it matter?” And he took a drink.
I reached for the drink and took it from his hand. He watched at me as if he was a spoiled child who had never been told no by his parents.
“I’m not going anywhere. I have no one but you.” I sat near him put my warm hand over his cold hands. “You brought me out here in the middle of nowhere, and now you want to starve yourself to death.”
“I wish it were that easy. It would take too long to kill myself like that.” He looked up at me and his eyes had dark circles underneath. His magnificent eyes were now dim and dark.
“So you come to a place like this in hopes that Aare finds you and does the job for you?”
“I’ve been too long on this earth without love. And now that I found you, you don’t want to return my love. I don’t blame you. I just want to be finish with my cold empty existence.” Leaning close to him, his body heated, and there was a light in his bluish green eyes. He glanced up at me and he felt it too.
We balanced each other. Me with my overheated body and him with this cold hard body which didn’t seem to have a light or a soul beneath his amazing heated eyes. But there was a soul and I felt it.
“You made me angry, Sebastian. Whenever I wanted to talk to you about me and what you knew, you would never tell me anything.”
“Since you’re choosing to kill yourself, then I should at least know the truth about my life so I can continue without you.” He raised an eyebrow. There was no way I meant that. It seems I had no life until Sebastian came into it and saved me from imminent death.
“If you’re planning on ending my life, I can understand because if you leave me now, Samantha promised me that she would come for me in the future when I was happy in my life, and I had forgotten about her. Then she would end my life because of you, and because you love me, and I love you.” Sebastian eyes lit up and he gave me one of his warm closed smiles.
He wrapped his hand around mine. “I never wanted to tell you about your life as a child. I never wanted to interfere in your life again, but I made one mistake and that was to reject Samantha because I couldn’t bear to live my life without you.”
Sitting and gazing into his eyes, I felt his pain, but I wanted to know. I wanted to know what was causing his hurt, and what it had to do with me.
“It was my father who kidnapped you from school.” I waited. My breath came in waves and I stared at him. I had to breathe but I didn’t want to. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear anymore. But that was why I asked.
Somehow I knew it was someone in his family who had taken me, but it was difficult putting together the face and what had happened. I thought my memory was faulty because I was too young or because everything had been too traumatic.
“My father had been your father for ten years of your life and hundreds of years of mine. My mother could never have children because my father fell in love with my mother and turned her too soon. I think she was seventeen or eighteen when he fell in love with her, and turned her into a vampire because he couldn’t bear for another man to marry her. She wanted children and so my father would kidnap them, and when they reached the age of a teenager as in your case, I would, or my siblings would turn them into vampires. And like that we would have a large family.”
But in your case, I couldn’t bear to do the unspeakable to you. I took care of you. I protected you like a big brother.” He put his head down. I placed my hand to his chin and pulled his head up and looked at him.
“It’s not like we were brother and sister.”
“But I looked at you as a sister, but when you grew into this beautiful warm creature, I couldn’t stand to be away from you. Neither could Aare. And it was him I had to get you away from. He just wanted you to serve him. He wanted your blood as well as making you his concubine for his pleasure. I wanted you because I loved you. But there was no way a vampire and a human could be together. I would have to change you to keep you from Aare and to please my mother and father.”
When you were fifteen, I disappeared with you, and we lived in England. When the temptation of your blood became too strong, I knew I had to send you home.”
“You didn’t tell me how Samantha fit into this.”
“Before I had become a vampire, I was to marry Samantha. That was before I knew she was a witch. I discovered that when I was courting a beautiful innocent girl. I had just returned from a voyage as a ship’s mate from South America and the ship was filled with treasure.
With my portion of the treasure I was able to buy a castle in Liverpool. I was rich and had my choice of young women. But I would have married Samantha. I had been in love with her before I set sail. When I discovered she had used black magic and turned the girl into a hideous old woman, I wanted no part of her.
Every time I found someone to love, she would destroy them with her magic. Year after year. Finally I cared about nothing and I would walk the streets. My father turned me into who I am now. A soulless creature of the night. Someone who frightens little girls and will eventually cause their deaths.
Samantha has followed me century after century to make sure she kills and destroys my happiness with any woman that dare see me differently.
“I see you differently. You aren’t a soulless creature. You happen to be the gentlest person I know.”
“That’s because you don’t know me,” he said watching up at me. His eyes turning dark. If I find I can’t control myself around you, you could discover how cold I can become. I would drank your blood and because it is sweet I wouldn’t be able to control myself. When I’ve loved you is the time when you are vulnerable and I’m at my weakest.
“That’s not true. You could never harm me or lose control with me. I remember somethings about you even if you think you have erased my memory. I remember how you took care of me when I cried for my mother and father. I remember how you would play the piano to calm me when there were terrible lightning storms. I remember how you held me in your arms and rocked me and sung to me and told me how much you loved me and to not be afraid.”
My eyes locked with his and I saw a tear fall from his face. This cold creature had a heart and soul.
He stood. “Let’s go home and tomorrow we will figure this out.”