The Lie (The Skyy Huntington Series) (8 page)

I said my goodbyes, and hopped into my Mustang. I swung by a fast food joint on the way home to pick up a burger. I had just gone grocery shopping, but I sure didn’t feel like cooking anything tonight. I pulled up to my house, ran inside throwing my coat on the couch while I let Cupcake outside.

I flew upstairs and sat down at my computer. I had left the IM program on while I was at cooking class. I saw that Aiden was still online, and sent him a message.

You say: Hey, you there?

A few moments passed and he replied.

Aiden1437 says: Yes, how was the cooking class?

You say: It was ok, we had a sub tonight so it wasn’t as fun as it usually is. How has your night been?

Aiden1437 says: Boring and dreadful without you to talk to.

I smiled as I took my shoes and socks off.

You say: I’m sure that you can find more exciting things to do with your time than talk to a measly human.

Aiden1437 says: You are far from measly Skyy. How do you feel about switching things up a little tonight?

You say: Umm, what do you mean by switching things up?

I waited for a moment for his response.

Aiden1437 says: I hope I’m not making a mistake by doing this…

I barely had time to read his IM before my phone rang. It was Aiden. I started to shake and I took in a deep breath as I answered.

“Hello?” I said sheepishly.

“Hello, milady,” came his reply, with a light accent. I had heard it briefly the night he had placed me in my car in the cemetery.

“Hi…” was all I could come up with. I was speechless. Talking to him online or in a text message was one thing, but I was on a phone now listening to a voice. This was becoming real.

“Is this alright? Are you comfortable with speaking to me on the phone?”

“Y-yes. Yes, sure I am. Just wasn’t expecting it is all,” I stumbled over my words, sounding like an idiot. I could hear him breathing softly on the other end of the line. Weird. I guess that was another myth debunked. Vampires breathed.

“So, what shall we talk about? What questions are on your mind this evening, Skyy?” I was trying to peg his accent, it sounded very Scottish, definitely from somewhere on the isles.

“Your accent. I can’t place it.” I said while thinking.

“It’s Scottish, Gaelic to be precise. I’ve tried to work hard at losing it but some things die hard I guess,” Aiden replied.

As I listened to his perfect sexy voice on the phone it got me to wondering how he looked. Was he some maimed disgusting bloated corpse? All the other ideas I had in my head had been proved wrong. Maybe he was just as hot as he sounded.

“Well, it’s a beautiful accent.” I slapped myself on the forehead. I sounded like a dreamy eyed teenager. I sounded like an idiot.

This was my big chance. I finally had my vampire on the other end of the phone, the only thing better than this would be physical contact. I could ask him anything I wanted now, and I knew it was real. I heard his voice, coming through loud and clear and I knew I was no longer questioning my sanity. Well…as far as him being real anyway…

We both sat in silence for a few moments before he finally spoke again. “I’m sorry if my calling made you uncomfortable. If you’d like to hang up I’ll understand.”

“No!” I exclaimed, “No, it’s not making me uncomfortable. It’s just…well it’s different. On the IM program, I could think things out and decide what to say.”

“I understand that, remember, this is all new for me too. You are the first human I have had contact with that knows what I am,” Aiden said.

That had to be a really lonely life. I wonder if he had vampire friends or a vampire wife. I decided I may as well ask, what the heck.

“Do you have any fellow vampire friends, or family here?” I hoped that wasn’t being too forward.

“There are other vampires in the area. I don’t know if I would consider any of them friends. As for family, no. It’s a long story…but my mother is back in Scotland still. She comes to visit a few times a year. I do have some other close vampire friends in different parts of the world as well.”

Wow, I wasn’t expecting that. His mother was still alive? “Your mother? As in your real mother?” I asked, surprised.

He chuckled, “Yes, my real, real mother, the one who gave birth to me in 1437.”

“You two are close then? If she comes to visit often?” I asked.

“Yes, we are very close.” He hesitated to say more but I could tell that there was more behind it than what he was letting on. I knew I shouldn’t push the subject, but I did anyway.

“Is she…also a…vampire? Or is she something else?” A few weeks ago I had no idea that the supernatural really
did
exist so who knows, maybe Mommy was a werewolf or a zombie?

I heard him take in a breath and hold it for a moment. I was regretting asking the question at this point. “Yes, she is also a vampire. If you want to know the whole story I can tell you,” he offered politely.

“I’ve got all night,” I replied, anxious to hear more about the vampire world.

“Very well. My mother had nine children, I was her last child, the baby of the family. My father was a farmer, and having to keep eleven people fed was a full time job for him. He wasn’t around much, and my mother only had two boys out of the nine children, so as you can guess once I was old enough to learn how to hold a plow I was put to work in the fields.

My mother and father didn’t really have a good relationship, it was an arranged marriage and there was little to no love between them. He would work long days and spend most of his nights drinking either at home or at the tavern. He was never mean to us kids, but I heard he and my mother fight a lot and I had seen him hit her on more than one occasion.

My older brother ran away from home when he was fourteen, which devastated my mother. He would write to her once every few years, but we never saw him again. My father died when I was twelve, and being the only male left in the family all the responsibilities fell on my shoulders. There was no time to be a kid and to enjoy life for me, I was in the fields from sunup to sundown. My sisters started getting married, one by one, and moving out until it was just me, my mother and my sister Aileas left.

Deciding that we didn’t need a huge farm and a huge house anymore, I put the land up for sale, and moved my mother and sister to a nice cottage on a lake. By this time I was in my mid-twenties. My mother was hounding me to find a wife and settle down, but I had no interest in any of the rough country ladies in the area.

By the time I was nearing thirty my mother’s health started to deteriorate. We lived in a very small village, and our ‘doctor’ was no more educated in medicine than I was. I left for Edinburgh when I was thirty-one to try to find some medicine and possibly hire a physician who would travel back with me to tend to my mother.

I met a man in the city, who claimed to be a physician. He was foreign and his accent was very thick. He was quite odd, but well dressed and seemed to be knowledgeable on my mother’s condition…which in today's modern world of medicine we would diagnose as cancer. Looking back on it, I should have known something was off with this man. He was very eager to leave the city, and as fast as possible for no money. He only required passage to my village, which he asked many, many questions about on the journey back. He told us his name was Lucius and never gave a last name, and never offered up anything more than that as personal information.

Once we arrived I found that my mother was very close to dying. Lucius administered many different tonics to her over the next few weeks, none of which seemed to help. He would spend the nights out until almost sunrise, which I thought was strange. He never seemed to sleep.

Then even worse luck hit us…the Black Death was spreading in our tiny village. I became very sick and quarantined myself from the rest of the household. Lucius did not seem to be frightened of catching the plague, and came to me every day to tend to me. I knew I would not make it through, I could feel my life slipping away a little bit more each day.

I was deep in a fever sleep when he came to me and made me the offer. He was a vampire, he told me. I thought I was hallucinating. Everyone knew the folklore of the walking dead, but it was all just superstition. This man told me he could save my life by giving me eternal life. He told me that he could also save my mother, if I desired it.

It all seemed like a dream, and what could possibly be worse at this point anyway? I was about to die, I didn’t care what happened to me. So the man began the process of changing me into a vampire. I remember him biting me, and the taste of his metallic blood in my mouth, then I just slept for what seemed like years. It was only a few hours though, and then I woke up. Totally healed, completely healthy.

Lucius had gone from our house, but left behind a letter for me. Telling me how to transform my mother if I chose to, what to expect, and many other things including how to erase people's memories and “hide in plain sight” from mortals. He also left me several vials of blood. Lucius wasn’t the only person who had left, my sister Aileas had fled the village terrified of catching the Black Death.

So now it was just my mother and I, she was slipping fast. The man had left some of his tonic with us, but I knew she was going to die. I could smell the illness in her as a vampire. My senses were being flooded, I could see and smell everything now, it seemed one hundred times better than my former self. And more importantly I could smell her blood and hear her heartbeat, which I found out was a downside of my new existence. I drank the vials of blood as instructed by the letter the man left, but found myself craving more.

Whether I was going to choose to transform my mother or not made no difference. My instincts took over, and I went into a blood lust. I attacked my mother, sinking my fangs into her flesh and drinking the warm blood that contained her life force. I could feel her heartbeat and pulse fading as I drank more and more. Finally I stopped when I heard her moan softly and begin to cry. Enraged with myself, I quickly grabbed the letter Lucius left with instructions on how to transform her.

I sat up all night waiting nervously for her to wake up. Whatever this new life was that I had been given seemed to be a curse, but there was no way I could live with murdering my mother on top of it. I was the only child who stood by her side, even in the end my sister abandoned her.

And she did wake up, several hours later. She was a vampire as well now…so beautiful and healthy. She had no memory of me attacking her or of the last few days of her illness before I transformed her, and I kept it that way. The man had also left us some money and some deeds to property in different locations in Europe. He told us never to linger too long in one location. So we packed up and left the tiny village behind and headed towards London, England.

And that is how my mother and I became vampires. Have I put you to sleep?”

I realized I had been sitting there with my mouth hanging open almost the whole time he was talking in awe. I know it was a tragic story but it was so interesting and amazing to hear.

“No way, I’m still wide awake. I don’t even know what to say. That was amazing, thank you for sharing that part of your life with me,” I said.

“You know, you are the first person, living or otherwise, that I have shared that story with. It still feels like it was yesterday when I think back to it,” he said as he sighed.

“Are you sorry it happened? Do you like your life now?” I hesitatingly asked.

“I’m not sorry it happened. I have been able to see and do many things with my life, and I have had the company of my mother, my family. There have been some times when I have been sad, but everyone goes through that, living or dead.”

I began wondering about his life even more now. And mostly wondered if he had ever killed anyone. I assume he had, according to books, vampires love to kill people and are evil and devious. But what I had learned from Aiden was totally contradictory. And he sure had plenty of opportunities to kill me, but hadn’t. He was nice, and seemed very…normal.

“You’ve gone quiet on me. Have I scared you off?” he asked.

I decided to choose my wording carefully. “No, I was just wondering how much was true and how much was false about what I know about vampires.”

I heard him chuckle softly on the other end of the line. “Well, we are just like humans are, we still retain our human personalities when we are turned. Our feeding habits just change a little. And you cannot categorize all vampires together. We are as different as humans are from each other. Some are good, some are bad. Kind of like the media today, people love to spin tales about tragedies and horror. Sure some vampires think they are better than humans and go out killing them thinking it is their right. Those are the stories that made it into the books. Never the ones about good vampires who help people.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way I guess. I still wondered if he had ever killed anyone though.

Almost as if he had read my mind he added in, “And for the record, I have never personally killed anyone. I have been around other vampires who have killed, but I have never killed anyone.”

I began to stutter out some words, “I…uh…I…well, I was wondering I guess.” I felt glad to know he had never killed anyone, but stupid to think he might have guessed that was what I was thinking.

“My maker left very clear instructions to me about how to feed without killing. And the almost near-death of my mother on my first feeding was enough to scare me into following those directions completely.”

Another thought crossed my mind. I have watched plenty of movies and TV shows, and read plenty of books, yet it all seemed to elaborate on the evil side of vampires but there was always the human who was caught in the middle, and in danger. “Can I ask you something, and I hope it doesn’t offend you?” I asked lightly.

“Sure, you can ask me anything,” he replied kindly.

“Am I in any danger by talking to you or knowing you?” There…I said it.

“Not that I would be aware of. I wouldn’t knowingly put you in danger. Vampires generally don’t socialize with humans, other than for feedings if that is what they prefer, and they are quickly made to forget those encounters. But the vampires I have known that do choose humans as partners or friends, have never had any problems,” he replied.