Elizabeth and the Vampire's Cabin (13 page)

Aaron
did not respond to Arthur's plea. Instead, he turned to Elizabeth.

"Elizabeth,"
he said. "I'm going to offer you a deal. I trust you to keep your word,
because you always tell the truth. Tonight, I promise to let Arthur go. Joe
will push this boat, with Arthur in it, within sight of the nearest populated
island. Arthur can get back home from there. In fact, I've brought money with
me." He pulled out a stack of cash from his inside jacket pocket.
"This is 5,000 dollars. It is Arthur's free and clear, so he can travel
home and do whatever else he wants with it. Within a week, I will give you
proof that Arthur made it home safely. But you have to make me a promise. From
now on, you will be totally obedient to me. For as long as our time together
lasts, you will be a willing and ready participant in our relationship."

"No,
way! I do not agree to this," Arthur vehemently asserted

"When
will you send me home?" Elizabeth asked.

"You're
due back home at the end of next month, right? Then that's when you will be
released. I'll have you on a boat off my island by the end of next month if you
agree to my terms."

"Okay,"
Elizabeth immediately agreed. She didn't even have to hesitate.

"I
do not agree--!

Arthur
was cut off abruptly when they experienced a giant blue light quickly engulfing
them. They were momentarily blinded, but once their eyes adjusted they shielded
their eyes and looked up. They saw a giant spaceship, shaped like the head of
an elephant, hovering about a hundred feet overhead. Suddenly, the beam
narrowed and it focused on Arthur. Arthur shielded his eyes to protect them
from the intensity of the lighting, which to him was like a burning sun right
in his face. And then, right before the eyes of Elizabeth and Aaron, Arthur was
beamed up into the spaceship.

"Jump
off this boat, Elizabeth," Aaron ordered.

"What?"

"Breaking
your promise to be obedient to me so soon? Jump off this boat and I will free
you in close to two months. Stay and you can ask the space aliens when they
plan on releasing you."

Fearlessly,
Elizabeth got up and dove off the boat. She had no clue what that giant
spaceship wanted with Arthur or the boat she had been sitting in, but she
wasn't going to stick around to find out. And then she saw a large dolphin-like
creature swimming at her from under the water. She swam up to the surface and
breathed in deeply.

"Elizabeth,"
Aaron called. "The sea creature you see is a vampire named Kyla. Grab onto
her dorsal fin, and she will take you back to the island. I'll fly
nearby."

Elizabeth
gulped. This was no fluke. Her dream of the giant sea dragon that looked just
like Joe was no coincidence. And now that name, Kyla, was being uttered. She
hoped that when this creature morphed back into human form she would not be the
Kyla of her dreams. Because if the first two dreams were accurate, then she
didn't even want to think about what they would most likely mean about the
third one.

The
dolphin creature swam up beside Elizabeth with a smile on its face. It looked
like a mutated version of Flipper. In fact there wasn't too much that separated
it from regular dolphins. Its tail fin was vertical rather than horizontal, and
made the animal look part shark. The beady, black snake eyes combined with the
dirty green scales and brown stripes, gave a reptilian appearance to the animal
that made it seem prehistoric. She grabbed hold of its fin, pulled herself up
onto its back, and rode it back to the island. She looked back and saw the
little motorboat stranded in the ocean. Joe lifted his head from the water,
made eye contact with her, and then he was swimming off into the distance.

As
she was being taken back to the island, Elizabeth looked up and saw Aaron
flying overhead. As she watched him flying, she had a sudden realization that
shocked her. She didn't want to leave him. That was why she agreed to his deal
so quickly. It wasn't just to save Arthur, though he was more than deserving of
being saved. Never had she been in a relationship with so much feeling and
intimacy in it than the one she had with Aaron. She hadn't wanted to admit it
to herself, but now she recognized her feelings for what they were. There is a
fine line between love and hate, and she was in love with Aaron. He was her
first true love. And now she was worried. Now that she knew she didn't really
want to leave him, how could she find a way to stay with him? Their deal was
that she would leave at the end of next month. She needed to get that plan
nixed.

Once
she was close enough to the island that she could walk back, Kyla stopped and
Elizabeth took this as her cue to get off. Kyla morphed into her normal self,
and Elizabeth saw that this was indeed the Kyla from her dream.
 
She was tan, bow legged, and had a deep brow
ridge. Kyla looked at her, with her shaggy mane of red Neanderthal hair,
 
and said, "I don't know what you've done
to Ayro, but I'm loving it!" she said with a laugh. "He--"

"That's
enough, Kyla,” Aaron cut her off. He was up ahead on the beach and had morphed
back into his usual self. Kyla laughed, dove back into the ocean, swam for a
little bit, and then morphed back into the prehistoric sea creature from
before.

Elizabeth
walked up to Aaron and they walked back to the cabin together. Aaron opened the
door for her but did not enter.

"I
could have lost you tonight, Elizabeth. You have no idea how dangerous it was
for you to do what you did tonight. If vampires besides Joe or Kyla had found
you...."Aaron looked more upset that Elizabeth had ever seen him.
"Your plan put Arthur in very serious danger! I know he didn't think this
up. He only went with you because he loves you. That's why I chose him to take
care of you. Because he would follow you to the ends of the earth. But then, I
guess you knew he would put you first when you asked him to set sail."
There was a pause of tense silence before Aaron said curtly, "I'll see you
tomorrow." And then he shut the door and left.

For
once, Elizabeth wished
he
would have stayed.

Part 3: All Grown Up

Chapter
15: First Date

They
were now nearing the end of her final month on the island. It had been over a
month since she had attempted to escape with Arthur, and she was due to leave
in a week. Aaron claimed that he had used all of his resources to find Arthur,
but he had no clue where he was. His assumption had been that the aliens would
eventually
 
drop Arthur off in some deserted
area, as he had heard tends to happen in abduction cases, and Arthur would then
head back to his parents' home. But so far as he knew, Arthur had not returned
to his parents or to Temecula. Perhaps, he reasoned, Arthur had been dropped
off, was unhappy with his parents, and decided to be a "run away"
adult. Elizabeth, who knew Arthur had been unhappy with his parents, kept
flashing back to Arthur's explanation for why there probably hadn't been any
police investigations or search parties once he disappeared with Aaron: everyone
would just assume that he had wanted to escape his parents. She hoped fervently
that Arthur had been left in some deserted field and he willingly dropped off
the map from there. He's strong now, she assured herself. He can take care of
himself just fine. This was all she could do. She would hope Arthur was fine
and try to move on with life as usual.

She
was basically nocturnal now. The only person she interacted with was Aaron, so
it seemed pointless, as well as boring, to try to be awake during the day.
Typically, Aaron liked to go back to his cave before the sun got too high in
the sky, so he would often leave the cabin around sunrise. Then she would stay
awake for a few hours, bathe, snack on something, listen to some music, and
then fall asleep. He ran her so ragged, she would sleep a full nine hours
sometimes. And then she prepared a small dinner for them, which they would eat
when he arrived, as scheduled, at 8 pm sharp. They would talk, leisurely eat,
and then go for a hunt (in human form) and share their prey. Then they would
take off their clothes and run into the ocean to hunt some more. Aaron, who
didn't typically hunt very much because he subsisted mostly on the blood he was
able to suck as a bat, thoroughly enjoyed the increase in his activity levels.
Hunting had always been a chore for him, but hunting as part of a pair made it
feel more like fun. And then they would spend the rest of the night in the
bedroom. As promised, she never refused him. She did whatever he wanted without
question.

Aaron
knew that the hard part was over for him. He had broken her. Finally. It had
taken him a whole month, as well as turning her into a half vampire, to
accomplish it, but he had successfully tamed this woman. During the
Paleolithic, his parents had been an anomaly. No woman in his tribe wanted to
mate with his dad, because he was a Neanderthal. And none of the men wanted to
mate with his mother, because she mated with a Neanderthal. He wondered if he
had been part of the first nuclear family in human history. During the Stone
Age, and even beyond in some cases, subduing the woman and conquering her would
have signaled the end of the chase. He might have dragged another woman back to
his tent, mated with her, produced or not produced some more children, and then
grabbed another. Mating with many partners and producing children through
several of them was the norm. But he found himself wanting to remain with
Elizabeth. He was starting to dread the idea of giving her up. He dreaded it so
much that he felt like punching something in anger.
 
Never before had he ever been beholden by any
kind of agreement with a woman to release her at a specified time. It had
always been simple. He wanted a woman, he took the woman, and then he eventually
tired of her. Only this woman did not tire him (or at least she didn't tire his
interest). Every day, he found her to be more and more stimulating. Her life
story, the reason she wanted to go camping, her desire to be "all grown
up," and her incredible hunting skills fed his interests long after he had
experienced all the novelty that her body had to offer him. Their encounters
were only enhanced by the fact that she was now a willing participant in the
relationship. There was no awkwardness to interfere with their interactions.
She didn't flinch or hesitate when taking her clothes off in front of him,
because she had promised to be obedient to him and there were no secrets
between him and her body. He wished he could find a way to break his promise to
her and keep her with him for eternity.

Elizabeth,
on her end, was intentionally making herself more desirable to him than she had
ever made herself for any man. She purposely changed clothes and freshened up
when she knew he was about to arrive. She wore a dress, put on a pushup bra,
brushed her teeth, and handled whatever other grooming she thought she
needed.
 
When he arrived, she did all
that he asked with enthusiasm. She hoped this would be enough to convince him
that she should stay.

Because
Arthur was gone, she had taken to preparing their nightly meals. Besides
receiving weekly groceries from Marnie and Lyle, Arthur had always liked to
gather up edible plants to put in the salads. Wanting to add something special
to her meals with Aaron, she had decided to continue this tradition. There was
something about going out, gathering food, and bringing it back to prepare for
them that she thought conveyed her unspoken love. She hoped he might get the
hint. She imagined that he was charmed by her gathering because of his early
life in a hunter-gatherer society.
 
He
had never mentioned it, but she noticed he savored the things she had
handpicked. He sucked on them, picked them up with his hands, and spent more
time chewing.

Today,
Elizabeth thought of the island's abundance of natural food and decided to head
for the nearest patch of dandelions. She brought a little wicker basket from
the cabin in order to collect them. She arrived at the patch of dandelions and
began to pick them. When she was about to pick a last dandelion, she saw one of
the island's many monarch butterflies land on top of it. She paused and studied
its beauty for a moment. Her eyes trailed from the white spots adorning the
black border of its wings and body to the vibrancy of its red, orange, and
beige wings. A flower on top of another flower, she thought to herself. And
then she remembered that dandelions are actually weeds. She shook her head at
herself and decided that today both the dandelion and butterfly could be
flowers. And why couldn't she be a flower today as well? She was a flower
gathering flowers for her love. She left the last dandelion and the butterfly
undisturbed so they could continue to beautify the island. Next, she headed for
the cattails. Part of a small pond ran through Aaron's side of the island, and
it was abundant with ripe cattails, spilling their yellow pollen in the summer
breeze. She yanked these up one by one and carried her load home in her
hand.
  

Preparing
the food was not difficult. She started with the cattails. She cut off the
roots and lower stems, scrubbed and peeled them, put them on a baking sheet,
and began baking them in the oven. She took the pollen and washed it through a
sieve. This she would save as a flour substitute on days she made pancakes for
them. Next, she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of elderberries
she had picked the other day. She washed them, opened up the oven, and put them
on the baking sheet with the cattail roots and stems. These would be her raisin
substitutes to put in her salad. At last she got to her dandelions. She took
the yellow flower part and the stems and decorated the table with them. The
dandelion leaves would go into the salad she was to prepare for tonight. She
went to the refrigerator, grabbed a romaine heart, and began chopping it up.
Then she added in the dandelion leaves. When the elderberries and cattail parts
had stopped cooking, she waited for them to cool and then mixed them in with
the rest of the salad. She grinned at her masterpiece, sure that Aaron would
appreciate the effort. It couldn't be more obvious that this little cooking
adventure was done with love.