Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (36 page)

When the basement door was thrown open, the vampires tried to fight, but whatever was attacking them proved stronger. Her master started to pull her towards the abandoned furniture, much of which was broken and ruined; but he and a couple others realized that they were in danger. Even a good plaything like the girl could be replaced, so at the front of the wicker stacks he abandoned her leaving the girl to die or not depending on fate.

As she had told Nicola, the girl had managed to follow only to fall down through the shaft beneath the furniture. Their escape hole had served the vampires well, but their toy was left to die; only she didn’t stay dead. The blood they had shed and wasted above had fallen through the shaft’s open grate getting into her wounds. The fifteen year old had woken to darkness but managed to hide within the garbage. Just another thing discarded down the shaft left to rot.

The tears came and her chest tightened as Sami could feel the despair she had felt, the utter abandonment and violation that had been wreaked upon her and the ending of her old life. She had seen some of the movies, some that her parents hadn’t wanted her to see with her friends but they had snuck out to see anyway. A vampire couldn’t return to their old human life. She was dead and returning just risked her killing those she knew when the hunger overcame her humanity. A monster and killer, the new vampire was effectively dead to her family.

Wrapped in a towel, Nicola knelt at her side where she had slumped to the floor. The older vampire drew the girl’s head to her breast stroking her short, blonde hair trying to comfort her.

“Oh, Sami,” Nicola said quietly feeling her heart break for the girl.

Chapter 20- Little Sister

Shopping with Charlotte had taken longer than he had planned. The sun was already dipping behind the western buildings casting long shadows by the time they were driving home. While the woman hadn’t bought out the store, she had certainly spent more time than he would have thought trying to find clothes for the girl.

Like a fostered child, they weren’t supposed to be keeping her for long, so they didn’t need to worry over every possible need or to dote on the girl. Unlike such a child, he was planning to pawn her off on the coven and that meant someone would have to dress her and keep her clothed. Since she was his responsibility as the one who had both found and saved her from the pit, Nick knew that it fell to him. Sami wasn’t Marek’s responsibility, though the head vampire took on a certain amount of a fatherly role over the ones in his coven as eldest and leader. No, she was sponsored by him and was too young to even have a job before he had found her.

Sami was little more than a child, especially compared to someone over a century old like the voran.

“You’re worrying, aren’t you?” Charlotte asked looking at the side of his face. “Sami hits a little closer to home?”

Giving a brief smile to the brunette before taking her hand in his on the center console, Nick shook his head, “How close can it hit? She’s a child and I can’t imagine what a girl suddenly turned into a vampire would be thinking. No, I do worry over where she’ll go. Giving her to Marek is a good plan on
paper, but it’s like we have a chance to help raise her. She’s fifteen and in some ways fully grown, but in other ways she is just a child who needs to learn what to become.”

“Can’t Marek and Audrey teach her like they taught the others?”

“Teaching adults how to cope, especially when they all decided to become vampires of their own volition, is different from teaching a fifteen year old girl who suddenly woke up a vampire with her old life destroyed and gone in a blink,” Nick replied with a sigh. Only Marek and Jake knew what it was like to be turned against their will, and they were like Nick, over a century old and men. They didn’t know what modern day, little girls, even teenage girls, were like and how fragile they might be.

He wasn’t saying that he did, but maybe Charlotte was correct. This hit home more than he at first thought. Marek had caused him to change as well against his will in a fit of hunger. He didn’t want Sami to go through those changes alone. Marek had him and he had Vivian. Both men had come full grown into the changes of their lives and still there were those growing pains, as men not children.

“You’re doing it again.”

Nodding in response, as he watched the road ahead of him, Nick replied, “She’s fifteen and has a family... had a family. I didn’t have a chance to check the data bases for missing people. She’s going to want to go home, but do we dare let her?

“Sami can’t go to normal school, but she’s only fifteen and still needs to learn about the world. Does a vampire need a diploma?” the last was asked sarcastically.

Charlotte watched him as he watched the road and wanted to answer the questions, but no one could know how loose a leash to give until something bad happens or they got used to the leash. “If you could somehow convince her family to give you... or Marek guardianship, it might make things a little easier. Her family wouldn’t have to look for her or fear that she’s dead, even if she kind of is.

“Then all you need to do is look up home schooling and teach her what she needs for a G.E.D. or whatever. It may not be the most social way of doing that, but her life starts when the sun goes down now.”

He snorted at the second part, “Me, try and teach her a current curriculum? I haven’t been in children’s school for over a century. I literally didn’t have electricity when I was growing up,” Nick had to laugh. The popular insults of a child to their parent of being so old they hadn’t invented light actually suited someone born during steam power.

Charlotte was laughing as well, but as the idea settled, the woman suggested, “I don’t have anything better to do and at least I graduated less than a century ago. If you decide to try home schooling her, maybe I could do it?”

Shaking his head, the man glanced at her and replied in amusement, “You like her already too.”

Miming the squeezing of Sami’s cheeks, Charlotte made a face like playing with a baby as she said, “She’s just so cute!”

He couldn’t help but laugh. There was something about the young girl that seemed to want to pull them to her. It was like they had been
glamoured by the new vampire.

When the two entered the apartment, Logan and Kate seemed to eye Nick guiltily. It was Kate who confessed, “We heard crying coming from the bedroom a little while ago and no one’s come out of the bedroom, but I think Nicola’s up.”

Listening for any noise coming from the bedroom, the voran took his time walking across the room and down the hall. He could feel Charlotte nearly breathing down his neck as they made their way
and opened the door. A floor lamp was turned on from one side of the bed giving the room some light. Nick flicked a switch turning on the recessed lights bringing two sets of eyes to the doorway.

Nicola’s gray eyes looked sad, and he thought that she had perhaps been crying as well. Barely covered in a bath towel, the woman held Sami in a hug around her shoulders and appeared to be comforting the much younger girl. Green eyes and the younger girl’s nose appeared reddened from crying, but she managed a smile for the two at the door.

He didn’t know if he should ask. It could end up being like kicking a hornets’ nest.

Nicola saved him the effort and stated, “The past two days’ events and changes finally caught up to Sami.”

Sniffing, the teenage girl agreed and her words came broken with choking sobs, Sami apologized, “I-I’m sorry. I just couldn’t stop thinking of him taking me and the blood. People died all around me and I couldn’t move or react.”

“The vampire who kidnapped you
glamoured you,” Nick said with a nod as he entered placing the bag of new clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed. Charlotte placed a second bag next to the first and sat on the bed looking at the two vampires looking about to cry as well. “It’s an ability of vampires to take control of a human mind and make them do anything. It’s probably part of what helped keep you together initially.”

Nicola looked at him and she appeared annoyed as she reprimanded him, though he had tried to be analytical to help calm the girl. “She understands what he did to her. That wasn’t the only thing he did to her and for any woman, whether she’s fifteen or older, it’s a scary thing. You don’t need to teach her what movies have already taught the girl. It is two thousand eleven, Nicholas.”

He had garnered a ‘Nicholas’ from her, so he knew that he was somehow in trouble.

Charlotte stepped in and said, “We went shopping to get some clothes for you. Do you want to see?”

Both of the vampires perked up at the idea and quickly moved to the end of the bed to start looking at what Charlotte had picked out for the girl. Seeing the situation rapidly deteriorating into what he would call a girl thing, Nick started to back out of the room; but Nicola caught him. “Don’t think about escaping yet, Nick. You might not understand teenage girls, but you do have something we both need.”

If she had included Charlotte, he might have misconstrued the inference; but knowing that Nicola often cheated by taking a little extra blood from his hand he could figure out that she needed more blood. After having given Sami some earlier, he was a little surprised that Nicola believed she needed to feed again.

“Charlotte can show us the clothes while you lend us a bite,” the vampire stated in an off handed order.

“I gave her quite a bit earlier,” the voran stated unsure of how much extra he could afford to donate even if he did heal faster than a normal human.

Sami started to shake her head, but Nicola caught her with both hands and pried open her lips revealing vampire fangs, albeit the small ones he had noted earlier in the day. “She can’t get them to retract yet, so either you help her or we need to go find a human donor.”

Grinding his teeth, Nick knew that she was pressing his buttons. The voran had never sanctioned a vampire’s taking of human blood in all the time he knew Marek and his clan, which was from the start. It was why he donated his blood to keep the clan from hurting others.

“Why haven’t her fangs retracted? She took blood from me. That should stop her need already.”

“Not for a brand new vampire,” Nicola said with a sigh. “Marek probably never told you that we went through extra voran blood with each new initiate. He just would tell you that we ran low or it spoiled to get you to give more. Two or three feedings in the first twenty four hours should set her fangs to be able to retract to normal human proportions, though I admit hers are about the most dainty I have ever seen.”

Sami reddened at the odd compliment of her teeth. “I had braces for three years,” the girl stated, “if that makes a difference.”

“Who knows?” he replied and moved to sit between the girls. Nicola and Sami each moved aside to give him room, though the towel didn’t move as easily exposing the vampire until she pulled the cloth back into place.

Sami giggled and said, “She flashed me earlier too. She’s been wearing the towel sitting with me for an hour, so it was bound to happen.”

Nicola took Nick’s right hand as she nodded to Sami to take the left as she replied, “Nick’s seen all of me and used all he’s seen. I only fixed the towel out of courtesy to you and Charlotte. Personally I don’t have such body issues anymore.”

Charlotte made a sound of derision as she sat in the chair pulled from his desk. “When you have a perfect body forever, I guess I wouldn’t worry over who saw me either.”

Raising an eyebrow at the pretty, brunette werewolf, Nicola stopped suckling a moment to retort, “Says the beautiful werewolf who undressed in front of her pack every full moon.”

“Yes, yes, you are all beautiful,” Nick said irritably. “Now can we get this over so I can go eat to start replenishing what you two have taken?”

Nicola released his right hand with her mouth to kiss his cheek before turning him to kiss his lips. “Sorry, my love, but you know that she is beautiful and doesn’t need to hide that body out of shame.”

The vampire managed to get Charlotte to blush and Nick turned as he heard Sami laugh and lost her bite on his hand. She had caught the look and found it amusing. Her smile was in her eyes now as the teen managed to find humor even after so trying a day.

She returned her teeth with an apologetic look for a little more of his blood. When he felt slightly light headed, the voran shook loose of both girls. He knew that Nicola hadn’t taken more than a few drops in reality. Her tongue had flicked at his skin tickling him for most of the time as she enjoyed the intimacy of the gesture.

Sami on the other hand didn’t know when to stop and this was her second time taking blood from him today. Even his ability to heal required a little more time than the hours he had been afforded and the limited amount of food he had been able to take in to help replace the blood he had lost.

Charlotte got up noticing his eyes and put her hands before him as she said, “Just sit, Nick, I’ll get some food and drink for you.”

The other two girls gave him brief worried looks before the clothing bags called to them more than their concern. Nicola knelt on the floor while Sami sat on the other side of the bags and Nick to pull out blouses, t-shirts, shorts, jeans, and a couple dresses: both a sun and a club style dress. Charlotte had picked up some under garments, but didn’t guess at her bra size. Nick also knew that he had let the woman shop more than just for a temporary guest.