The Vampire Pirate's Daughter (7 page)

Once I felt him watching me and when I
looked up at him sideways, he turned his gaze toward another group
of people standing to the side of our table. Andrew did not have a
lot to drink and for most of the evening he sat there pensively,
turning the green beer bottle around and around, with his
fingertips resting on the open mouth.

Carmine was singing at the top of her lungs
and at one point, she was even dancing on top of our table. She was
not drunk though, she just had that permanent intoxicated state
about her. Some people had to drink to be this exuberant and
enthusiastic, but to Carmine, it came naturally.

Besides, except for me trying to avoid
Duncan, I had a pleasant evening. It was not like when I went out
in the seventies or even the nineties when things got wild and out
of hand and the friends I had on those separate occasions used to
call me a wet blanket, no matter how hard I tried to fit in. Now in
the new millennium young adults seem to be more mature and
grown-up, perhaps a sign of the times. Young people have to grow up
fast these days.

Duncan looks away from the road, over his
shoulder, at me. “Are you inviting us for coffee,
Susie?”

I am about to say that it is after two in the
morning, but I gasp instead as I see the road ahead narrow and as
drunk as Duncan is, he sees the look of fear in my eyes.

He turns forward and he yanks the steering
wheel sharply to the left. I feel the car swerve and then I feel
the car on my side lift.

As if in slow motion, the car lifts into the
air. It lifts so high that it twirls once and then drops down onto
the tarmac with an explosion of sound. It does not stop though. It
bounces over again … again … again.

The car comes to a stop on its side. It rocks
violently from side to side and then the rocking slowly stops. I am
hanging in my safety belt and I look toward Carmine beneath me. In
a daze, she holds her hands in front of her face, staring at the
glistening red crimson blood coating her fingers.

Amazingly, I hear Duncan laugh from the front
and then I see Andrew slumped over against the broken glass of the
shattered window under him.

I pull at my safety harness with such might
that I pull the bolt out of the seat with one hand and it pops with
a loud crash, while I hold onto the doorframe with my other hand. I
did not want to fall down onto Carmine.

Hoisting myself out of the window, I hunch on
the car and then I leap down. I land on my feet and then I run
around to the other side of the car. Without a moment of
hesitation, I crouch down and grab onto the frame of the car - easy
really, because all the windows on the car had been shattered. I
lift the car without difficulty and it bounces over onto its
tires.

Fear makes me open Carmine’s door first.
She has a gash across her arm and leaning over her to undo her
safety harness; I suddenly have an urge, an awful urge to massacre
her and the rest of them. The smell of blood is cloying its way up
my nostrils and I feel the saliva in my mouth. I feel an ache in my
throat and an unimaginable thirst.

I rip the clip out of the mechanism and then
I help her out of the car, letting her sit on the side of the road
on the verge. The car bounced into the grass next to the four-lane
highway.

I hear Duncan struggling against his door,
where it is wedged into the frame of the car. With lightening
speed, I run around the car and pull the door off its hinges. He
climbs out, laughing hysterically and almost walks into the
oncoming traffic. I pull him around the car toward Carmine and he
sits down next to her, his legs suddenly buckling under him.

With trepidation, I move toward the car
again. I should not have left him until last, I know. I have an
awful feeling though that he might be dead, judging by the way he
is still slumped forwards. The bouncing over of the car should have
woken him, but it did not.

With a violent scraping, I open the door on
his side and noisily it falls to the ground. Leaning in, I know I
need to hurry, because the smell of iron is overwhelming in the
car. I am unsure how long I can stay focused, how long I will be
able to push the animal in me aside.

With feeble fingers, I compress the safety
harness buckle and it pops. I pull the belt away from his chest and
he folds over double. I pick him up and relieved I hear his
heartbeat when I carry him. Just as the headlights of a car sweep
over us, I place him softly on the ground in front of Carmine and
Duncan. The engine of the car stopping behind us die and I hear
cries of shock and doors slamming.

I turn around and I start to walk away, I
cannot manage the monster anymore. It wants to surface and it wants
to drink. The beast in me does not care if there are other people
around, it has one purpose and one purpose only and that is to
satisfy its craving.

When I am a distance away, I hear Carmine’s
voice as if she is talking next to me, “Susie, where are you
going?”

I hear Duncan ask, “How did she do that?”

I could not walk away now, because it would
result in us having to move again, move somewhere far away. I would
have to stay and somehow explain what had just happened, before I
appeared on some most wanted list. Could I even leave Andrew, when
I have this unexplained pull toward him? I have these emotions and
feelings in me, when I look at him or when I see him that I have
never experienced before. I have always wanted to know what it
feels like to love and to be loved, and this could be my one and
only opportunity. I know I will always have Ethan, he would always
try to convince me that he feels affection for me, but this with
Andrew, could possibly have a different prospect for me. I laugh
cynically - a different prospect for a short moment in time,
perhaps.

Turning toward the wreck again, I slowly walk
back to them.

When I reach them, the people who had arrived
are helping where they can. I hear the ambulance, before they see
the lights approaching.

The white vehicle stops next to the crunched
up metal that used to be a car. The red light blinks… blinks …
blinks irritatingly.

Standing separated from them I notice the
paramedics lean over Andrew, where he is still lying where I left
him. The paramedic looks him over, prods here and there and then
they lift him onto a stretcher.

The paramedic calls to me and I walk back to
them. He wants to take my pulse, but I pull my arm away from his
probing fingers. I say determinedly, “I am fine. Will Andrew be
okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” he replies dismissively.

A paramedic leans over Carmine and they clean
up her arm. The amount of blood did not justify the injury.

A police van stops behind the ambulance and I
see them leading Duncan toward it. He goes willingly and I think he
must still be in shock.

The paramedic standing across from me
turns back to me. “There is a police squad car, behind that red car
parked over there.” He points his finger toward it. “You and your
friend there with the wound on her arm, can drive with them to the
hospital. Even if you say you are fine, and you look fine, you
should still be examined and kept overnight.”

He starts to walk away from me and I follow
him. I come to a stop next to Carmine and the paramedic helps her
to her feet. She is weak and I immediately put my arm around her
shoulder to support her to me.

Slowly we walk toward the police car and then
a police officer opens the back door for us and we get into the
car. We sit there silently waiting for the police officer while he
is talking to another officer. The scene looks like a nightclub,
with all the flashing lights in blue and red.

The police officer gets into the cruiser and
he starts his car. We follow the ambulance back into the city and I
watch everything around me with a distant disassociation.

I feel Carmine reaching toward me. Her hand
folds around mine tentatively and I hold her hand tightly.

When we eventually get to the hospital, I see
the stretcher Andrew is on, pushed into a different direction to
where the officer is leading us. I stay with Carmine while they put
antiseptic on her wound again. It is not big enough to warrant
stitches.

Moments later her mom and dad rushes into the
emergency room. Mr. Van Heerden is an imposing figure and at school
he reigns with a steel fist. He is frowning irately, but Mrs. Van
Heerden is a real motherly figure, and looking at her, I feel sad
that there is nobody coming to rush to my side. Amanda and Shayne
probably do not even know I am here. I wonder how it would feel to
have those pudgy arms fold around me and to sink into that
plumpness.

I excuse myself, mumbling that I have to
phone my brother. I hear Mrs. Van Heerden ask Carmine where Andrew
is and then Mr. Van Heerden grumbles something incoherently.

I walk out of the hospital. Nobody came to me
to see if I was okay. They assumed I was only a passerby lending a
helping hand. Looking at me, you would not say that I had just been
through a traumatic experience. This however is nothing compared to
other experiences I have encountered before.

I stay outside watching life pass me by for
hours and then I walk back into the hospital. Wandering through the
endless corridors, I eventually see his sleeping face turned toward
the door on the snow-white pillow. A soft light glows over him in
the otherwise dark room.

Softly I walk toward his bed. I sit down on
the bench next to his bed and then softly I fold my hand over his
lying next to his side.

He stirs and then he opens his eyes
gradually. When his eyes focus on me, he smiles slowly and he
whispers, “Hey.”

The afternoon after the accident, I get a
worried call from Amanda. With her motherly concern, rather than
being an older sister, she says hurriedly when I answer the phone,
“Susie! Where are you?”

Defiantly I answer her, “It took you this
long to notice I was not there?”

Defensively she replies, “No, we noticed this
morning already, but we thought you were just having fun. It is
late now though and I was getting worried.”

I sigh. It has been a long night. “I am
okay. We were in a car accident last night and I am here with
Andrew.”

Andrew is looking at me and I smile at him. I
say Andrew, but she does not know about him. How do you explain
that you are desperately in love with someone you should not even
be friends with? We have lived long enough to integrate ourselves
into everyday living, but it would be unacceptable to fall in love
with a human. I would be the laughing stock of my community.

She asks, “Is he one of your friends?”

“Yes. He is Carmine’s brother.” She knows who
Carmine is. After that first day Carmine came to my house and
permanently borrowed my clothes, she has come over regularly.
Carmine often exclaims how idyllic it must be to live with your
older brother and his wife.

“Was he seriously hurt?” Amanda asks.

“No, he is okay. He knocked his head badly,
but other than that, he will be okay.”

“It is always so sad to watch them when one
of their own dies. Carmine is close to you, so I would have hated
to have to see her so sad when she came to visit you. It would
dampen that bubbly personality of hers.”

Since the invention of the ‘vitamin’ there is
nothing really that can kill us. Shayne, Amanda and I tend to avoid
the murderous groups of our race. Just as humans do, we have our
bad areas too, where you avoid settling down, so we are never
really in danger of being killed, unless of course we went to look
for trouble.

I agree with Amanda, “Yes, it would be
sad.”

“How long are you going to stay at the
hospital?”

“I don’t know.”

She reminds me, “You know it is new moon
tomorrow. I do not know how you can be at the hospital with all
that blood, when you must be dipping from your high.”

“I have managed to block it out.” She has
reminded me though, and once again, I smell the sweet stickiness of
the dark red fluid.

“I’ll see you later then. Do not cause a
scandal, by staying longer than you feel comfortable,” she
warns.

“Okay.”

Ending the call, I look toward Andrew. His
hand is folded around mine. I know he could not hear Amanda,
because the sound setting on my phone is set on one, unlike other
people who have their settings on full and you can hear every word
the person on the other side of the line is saying.

Sighing exasperated, I roll my eyes. “My
sister-in-law.”

He smiles up at me, his strong face turned
toward me. Softly he asks, “You live with your brother?”

“I do, because my mom and dad died when I
was.” I almost say sixteen and stop myself shocked. Quickly I say,
“When I was younger.”

“
I am sorry.” He looks sorry. Unlike the
countless people I have said this to before, he actually knows
exactly what it feels like.

Now that he seems more aware than yesterday,
I ask tentatively, “Can you remember anything from yesterday?”

He smiles apologetically. “It’s hazy. I have
flashes of things, but it is too weird though, so I do not think it
is memory, more like wild nightmares.”

I smile sadly. He thinks I am a nightmare.
To get my mind off it, I say, “Duncan spend last night in jail for
DUI and Carmine has a small cut across her arm, but she will be
fine.”

Andrew laughs annoyed. “We should never have
gotten into that car with Duncan.”

I hear Mr. Van Heerden’s booming voice from
outside the doors of the ward and get up slowly from the bench.
Leaning down toward him, I softly kiss him on his cheek.

Frowning he looks up at me, so I explain, “I
have to go, before Amanda phones me again.”