Young Forever (7 page)

I stared at him, barely blinking. “I am so weak,” I murmured.

“You will be stronger than most,” he told me. “You will have the blood of two vampires in you. You will come from two. That means the combined strength of
Gerta
and myself. It will be quite nice. I mean, if it works out the way I think it will.”

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

He nodded. “You will be in pain. I won’t lie. It will hurt. You’re dying, so of course it will hurt!”

I started to say something else but felt myself fall into unconsciousness. I shook myself awake a moment later. I tried to say something again but no words would come.
Aloiki
nodded slowly. It was time. It was now or never and, so, it was now.

“Forget it,”
Aloiki
said and grabbed me up in his arms, pushed the hair away from my neck and bit me. Then he began to suck blood out of the wounds his fangs made, suck so fiercely I felt even more pain than I did before. I screamed with it but then it was over and I was floating, floating, floating. I was above my body, lying there in
Aloiki’s
lap. I watched as he bit into his wrist, then held it quite methodically to my lips. I watched as I began to eat at his hand with this intense hunger, an intense hunger I would feel from then on, an undying hunger. I watched as my belly healed and was turned better than new. I watched as I sat up, smiled, then licked the blood from the corner of my mouth. Then I was, quite literally, sucked back into my own body and from there, I felt vibrant. Alive. Needing more blood. Awake. Alert. And quite a few other things I don’t recall.

Then, all of a sudden, I blacked out. When I came to, I was digging my way out of the ground and towards my family,
Aloiki
and
Gerta
, who waited on the other side.

That Was Then

Gerta
never wanted me to have a boyfriend. Never. Of course, I had a few here and there but none of them every really stuck. I loved them, they loved me, blah, blah, blah. When we inevitably parted ways, I wasn’t as sad as I probably should have been. And there were a few that I had to literally force out of my life.

But I never gave up on thinking I’d find my real, true love. Many years ago, we were in our own coach driving across Oklahoma, headed for California. (It was the Gold Rush and totally
Aloiki’s
idea. Don’t ask.)
Gerta
had the coach altered so we could travel during the day, as well. It was winter and the sun was usually low. Usually it was just us but occasionally we’d meet someone interesting here or there and invite them to join us. And, no, it wasn’t for the purpose of eating them, either. We liked the company and it broke the monotony.

We had stopped in a small town somewhere and I met the most handsome young man. I immediately blushed with excitement. I loved being around young men my own age and he, I could tell, liked me. He was so nice, too. So, I invited him to ride with us to the next town. We chatted for hours, almost until daylight. I found myself falling asleep and when I awoke, he was dead across the floor.

“Oh,” I said, glancing over at
Gerta
and feeling sheer disappointment. “I liked him.”

“He tasted nice,” she said and gave me a smile. “I saved a little for you.”

She pulled out a small silver flask. This was her new trick, to save a little for me. It wasn’t as good as taking the blood from someone’s jugular, but it would do. I took the flask and threw it back, sucking the blood down. Unfortunately, it had coagulated a little. I hated that. And I hated the fact that she had eaten my new friend, someone who could have, quite possibly become my beau, as they said in those days.

“You did that on purpose,” I said, almost seething. “You know I was enjoying his company!”

She nodded. “Of course. You do not need to divide your attention at present.”

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged. “We are companions,
Isotta
. We will always be companions.”

For a second, I could feel my blood boiling and I thought about taking her out, but then decided against it. I mean she got on my nerves, but that didn’t change the fact that I liked her. And she doted on me. She kept me on track and made sure I had the prettiest clothes. And while she tried to be warm and nice to me, she rarely pulled it off. She just wasn’t a warm and fuzzy kind of woman. She was a vampire. So, she was less like a mother and more like a… Well, like a manager, if that makes sense.

“Besides,” she said. “How would you explain this to him?” She closed the thick curtains, resulting in the coach going almost black with darkness.

“I do not suppose I could,” I muttered, putting a tap on my anger. It did no good to be angry with her. She really wouldn’t allow it. And I knew I couldn’t really have a beau. Not with her always around, anyway.

“It is fine,” she said. “There will be others.”

I was beginning to lose hope. I longed for love, longed to be in love, to see what that felt like. But I let it go as I always did and asked, “When will we be in California?”

“Not soon enough,” she said, then started as the coach came to an abrupt stop then, out of nowhere,
Aloiki
burst inside. She shrieked, “What are you doing?”

“I had to eat something,” he said, then stared at the young man on the floor. “Who’s that?”

“You’ve been gone almost a week,” I told him.

“I must have missed the best part,” he said, then picked the young man up and tossed him out of the coach, then shut the door. “There,” he said, sitting down. “How have my beautiful ladies been?” He stopped and listened, then knocked on the wall of the coach. “Move!” he roared. The coach resumed moving.

Gerta
glared at him. “I thought we were rid of you.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I am here. And, lucky for you that I am.”

We watched as he pulled something out of his pocket. It was a map. He shook it and smiled.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A map to a big gold deposit,” he said, grinning. “I can’t wait to be rich.”

Gerta
narrowed her eyes at him. “We have plenty of money. To most, we are rich.”

“Yes, but not this kind,” he said. “We can build the most fabulous mansions. We can hire people to be our servants and then we can eat them and then pay off their families to keep quiet and then hire more servants
.
It will be marvelous.”

I stared at him, then at her and felt tired
.
This is how it’s always going to be
,
I thought.
Aloiki’s
schemes and
Gerta’s
nitpicking. It was going to be their constant fighting. It was going to be the thirst for blood, the hunger that swelled up inside and was never completely sated. Always the undying hunger. It was going to be long nights of hunting and long days of sleeping. I suddenly felt jealous for humans, for the fact that they got to live their lives, have their children and then die. It was the circle of life but, being a vampire, that circle was broken. You were immortal and that meant you had a lot of time on your hands. You had days and nights and weeks and months and lots and lots of hours to fill with something. But what? What to fill it with? In my case, it was usually nothing.

Something inside of me longed for more. I think it was because I was turned into a vampire so young. I wasn’t as mature as I should have been. I wanted more out of life and didn’t just accept things. I was never able to outgrow my teenage ways and had a certain starry-eyed viewpoint that made me delve off into the world of fantasy all too often. I think I was in love with love, or, at the very least, the idea of love. Sometimes I would dream about a good-looking young man to turn into my companion. We couldn’t have children but we could have a life together. We could do things. We could swim the ocean at night or climb tall trees and share the beauty of the stars. He could give me love, real love, and I could return it. We could hold hands and share kisses. We could steal a child and raise it as our own, kind of like the way
Gerta
had raised me.

“What do you think of that?”
Aloiki
said out of nowhere. “
Isotta
?”

I shrugged, not knowing what he was speaking of. “I am sure it will be fine.”

“Fine?”
Gerta
snapped. “We cannot risk it! We have to use common sense when it comes to these things.”

I nodded. “I suppose we do,” I said and closed my eyes and fell asleep and the next century or so became a blur. We did this and we did that. We moved here and then we went there. We crossed rivers and oceans and we ate very well. We tried this and we tried that. We lived through earthquakes and the birth of cinema. We lived through state fairs and the Olympics. We witnessed the rise and fall of evil dictators. We saw the birth of industries and the death of some horrendous diseases.

And all of it bored me. Well, most of it. It was fun, some of the stuff we did, for a while. But I always carried that longing with me, that need and want of more, of love, of real, true love that would bring me some sort of indefinable happiness.

After all of our traveling and doing, we somehow ended up in a city on the coast of South Carolina, the place we now call home. Even though we lived in modern times, the city was very old looking and
Gerta
loved the cobblestone streets, saying they reminded her of her homeland, of the old days because she was, well, from the old days. It was a time she longed for and romanticized a bit. I didn’t get it as I apparently remembered the old days differently from her. But soon enough, the old days started to look like fun compared to what we suddenly found ourselves up against. With all the new science and technology, it became harder and harder to get a kill. It became harder and harder to feed. Therefore, it became harder and harder for us to survive.

No longer were there quick kills, then just tossing the body. No, we couldn’t risk it. There were more people. They noticed when someone went missing. They knew more. There was now electric light. There were telephones. It was just so much more difficult. We just weren’t made for this new world.

Because of this, we were all hungry most of the time.
Gerta
had resorted to walking on skid row to find homeless people who reeked of cheap liquor and wouldn’t be missed. They were usually so inebriated, she would return, quite literally, drunk.

“There has to be a better way,” she said one day, then burped. “Excuse me.” She covered her mouth quickly and looked slightly embarrassed.

“We could pretend to be doctors,”
Aloiki
said. “And go to the sick ward. We could take out a few at a time and no one would notice.”

“Of course they would notice,” I said, rolling my eyes. “This isn’t the 1800s. They know what kills people now.”

Gerta
nodded in agreement but didn’t say anything. I looked out the window of our hotel suite and wondered what we could do. Over the last few decades, things had changed dramatically. It wasn’t like it used to be when killing off a whole family meant nothing but instilling fear and inspiring some folklore. We were the creatures of the night that entered homes and took lives. We were the boogeyman—or woman—who frightened young children. We were the damned.

But what good did that do us now? Those stories people made up about us were all but forgotten. Times had changed. That was then. Now we were in a pinch. We needed blood and lots of it.

I sighed and took in the city view, wondering how we had ended up here of all places. It was a nice place to be, that was true. The city was clean and full of beauty. It had a beach nearby. The houses were old and beautiful. I loved the fountains and the Spanish moss. I loved being here. It was a nice place. But we couldn’t stay, not if something didn’t change.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I said suddenly.

“What?”
Gerta
said. “At this hour? We have to be asleep soon.”

“Let’s go,” I said and went to the door and opened it. “Come on.”

Aloiki
and
Gerta
glanced sideways at each other and then followed me without a word. We walked around the sleepy downtown area for a while, going by the water.

“Perhaps we should go back to Bavaria,”
Aloiki
said. “Remember how well we ate even though everyone was starving?”

“It has changed, too,” she said.

I didn’t participate in their conversation and let what they were saying go in one ear and out the other. I was looking for something. I didn’t know what. But something had told me to get out of that hotel room and into the streets and search for a clue, for some hope. And that’s all we had now—hope. We could not continue as we did before. If we did, we would be dead. It was that simple.

“
Isotta
,”
Gerta
called. “We need to get back.”

I shook my head and turned to her. “
Gerta
, if we don’t find a solution to our problem, we might as well stay out and let the sun burn us. We can’t continue on this path.”

“But we have money,” she said.

“Money is not the issue,” I said. “Blood is. We
need
blood.”

“We could find another doctor,”
Gerta
said.

I thought about that but shook my head. We had, in the past, gone to doctors and bought blood. It was always a tense situation, though. They usually became so greedy that they would threaten to expose us if we didn’t divvy up more money. That meant we had to move again. It was too risky and never worked out for very long. We needed another way. We needed lots and lots of blood, all that we wanted.

“Perhaps this is the end,”
Gerta
said sounding, for the first time since I’d known her, defeated.

“We will find a way,
Gerta
,” I said. “We always have found another way…” I stopped talking and trailed off because as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw, of all things, a blood bank. Right there in front of me was the solution to our problems. And, the odd thing was, the lights were turned on even though it was early morning, just before dawn broke. Of course, we’d flirted with this idea before but it seemed too risky and the blood wasn’t as fresh, it wasn’t as tasty. And, really, when you’re subsisting on only one thing, you want it to be enjoyable. But now, we didn’t have a choice. We had to do something. Right then, a blood bank looked prefect.