Apologies to everyone for not posting this sooner. I haven't been able to get in contact with my editor, but I have gotten a few emails asking where the next chapter was, so I thought I would post it. So excuse the mistakes (it's all me)... Enjoy! Oh and thank you to everyone who keeps commenting. I love it.
CHAPTER 11- THE HALLOWEEN PARTY
Bell had waited until after 3 in the morning for Ragon to return. She had sat on the couch with Sandra and Larissa, playing card games and chatting, all the while her thoughts stuck on Ragon. Patrick had gone to bed early. Occasionally from his room on the second floor, the girls could hear outbursts of songs from 'Pricilla Queen of the Desert.'
"He always loved that film," Larissa said, after one particularly off tune chorus came blasting from above.
"I like the night life, I like to boogie, On the..." Patrick's voice sung loudly.
"What happened to Sameth's gaffa tape?" Sandra asked, carrying her voice so that the other vampires on the veranda could hear her.
There was muffled laughter from outside, but no one got up.
"Well I think I am going to call it a night... or day... or whatever" Bell said, hopping up from the couch.
Her left leg had gone numb from having it tucked under her right one for so long, and she hobbled for a moment, waiting for the pins and needles to abate.
"Honey, wait a moment," Sandra said, reaching up for Bell's hand.
Bell fell back onto the couch, her numb leg giving out the moment Sandra had pulled her. Instantly she rubbed hard, hoping to fight off the pain of blood re-circulating.
"You know with Ragon, well any vampire really, it's hard for us to control ourselves around mortals. At the end of the day we are predators, when you put a predator in a room with a blood source, no matter how much they care for them... Sometimes emotions just take over. He wouldn't hurt you in his normal frame of mind, but when a vampire is... excited, it's a little more difficult to control ourselves, especially when we are already hungry," Sandra explained.
"I get it," Bell said, failing to hide her disappointment.
"But I don't think you do," Larissa said.
"No I do. Maybe vampires and humans shouldn't be together?" Bell asked.
Larissa and Sandra exchanged looks.
"Well, I don't know. I have never dated a mortal," Sandra said, directing a long glance at Larissa.
"But I have," Larissa added.
"What?" Bell asked, before adding, "but I thought you and Cambridge had been together for ages?
"We have, but he wasn't always a vampire, not until I decided I couldn't live without him and turned him," Larissa said.
Bell had stopped rubbing her leg; in fact she had stopped doing anything: even breathing. She was staring unblinking, transfixed at Larissa, as if she were looking at her for the first time.
"Tell me everything," Bell said.
Larissa smiled warmly and said, "well it was the late 1780's, and my father was the owner of a large tobacco farm in Minnesota. I was only 6 years old when the first black slaves came to work the fields. Black labour was cheaper than any other sort. I had been forbidden to converse with the Negro men and women. I still had my governess, her name was Mary, but her thoughts were exact opposite to that of my fathers. She spoke of black and white equality, though never around my father. She was what you might say, a forward thinker. In hind sight, had I told anyone back then how she thought, she probably would have been hung.
So it wasn't until my 8th birthday, when I was playing hide and seek in the grounds with friends from neighbouring estates, that I had my first conversation with a black person. He was about my age, although he was much taller and larger, having been bred for hard labour. I had been hiding behind one of the less used barns when he found me. I can still remember his disjointed English. I had ignored him at first, my father's warnings swimming in my head. But looking closer at the boy, I couldn't see anything dangerous about him. For over two hours we spoke, until finally a large search party, headed by my father, found me. The boy had managed to get away without being seen, and I had lied and told them that I had fallen asleep in the sun.
It was two full weeks before I saw him again. This time when we met, we talked for almost half of the day and I found out his name; Cambridge. For the next few years we continued meeting in secret and going on adventures. I would spend the day with him, and the night talking to Mary about him. He was the closest thing to a friend I had ever had. He told me about Africa, and the animals there and the arid landscape. It wasn't long before I dreamed of his home land often, seeing what I imagined to be lions, giraffes and elephants.
By the age of 15 I stopped seeing him as a friend, and began dreaming about the two of us, living in Africa together. My mother had died the previous year, and almost as soon as my father was re-married, his new wife Selena wanted to send me to the city for boarding school. I screamed and cried, but my father was deaf to my requests and spoke only of how it was the premier school for young ladies. On the eve of my departure I decided to meet with Cambridge one last time. I knew that I might be followed; that it was stupid to go out at night: but I had to risk it.
I can still remember trailing through the black people's camps, calling his name. His people didn't want us together almost as much as my family. I could tell by the way they looked at me, that they despised me. But I didn't care if they saw me that night; I had to say goodbye. For a few blissful hours we talked, holding hands. I promised that as soon as I could, I would return. He laughed at me, called me a silly white girl, but I didn't care; I think even then I loved him. Maybe an hour or so later one of Cambridge's friends found us. He told us that my father was looking for me. I moved robotically over to Cambridge, desperation overpowering my innocence and did the one thing I had wanted to for years: kissed him. He returned the kiss eagerly; his hand cupping my cheek, and for the first time in my life I felt uncontrolled and alive. Moments later and I heard a man scream, and felt myself being ripped from Cambridge's arms.
I was packaged up and sent away that night. Very few females were privy to education in those times, not that you could really call what we learnt, education, but back then it was the elite. The school in the city was full of snobby girls. Each aimed to outcompete the other with the latest fashions, the tightest curls, the largest estate; whatever was coveted at the time. For four horrible years I was stuck there, with only the memory of Cambridge's lips on mine, to keep me company. My father, who had by now had two sons with his new wife and had not forgotten of my betrayal, probably saw me as a mistake. He did not ask me to return home for the summers, and every holiday I remained at the hall. Still, my father did not entirely abandon me. He had left me a tidy sum of money, which I promptly invested, eager to run away at the first chance.
I must have been about 18 years old when Mary, my old governess, came to visit me one night. She was still just as lovely as before, and asked me about Cambridge, and if I still thought of him. When I told her that I thought of him every day, she told me that she knew a way that he and I could be together: forever. At the time her promise had sounded like the best thing in the world, and I agreed instantly. She told me the cost would be great; that we would not be able to live among normal men and women, and that we would need to be creatures of the night. These terms seemed to me to be acceptable. After all, it was illegal for mixing of black and white people in those days. Off course we would have to keep our lives a secret.
That night she turned me. As soon as I woke as a vampire I felt a hunger within me, and commenced feeding on anything in my path. Desperate to leave my old life behind me, we lit my room on fire, and left the corpse of a girl I had drained in there, so that my father would think I was dead. I was completely different, not just in my abilities: but in my thoughts. I still craved Cambridge, but not as much as I craved blood. Perhaps my upbringing had left me resentful and bitter? Anyway, Mary described my appetite as insatiable. It took her months to get me to calm down and kill with style, and even then, I couldn't drink from a mortal without killing them. Needless to say, I wasn't going to be able to see Cambridge in that state, let along persuade him to be a vampire with me.
Three years after my transformation I decided I could wait no longer. I was gradually getting better and better, and had even managed drinking from sources without ending their lives. I had also learnt how to disassociate them afterwards, which made life a hell of allot easier. Mary and I commissioned a carriage, and fashioned it so that no light could get in. The trip from town into the country took two days hard riding. We brought a donor with us; some young man from one of the villages we passed through, who directed the carriage during the day, and we feed off during the night. It was late one night when we rode into my father's farm. I was tense with anticipation. I prayed that my father had kept Cambridge on as a farm hand, but even still, I had no idea what he might look like or how he would respond to seeing me.
You can't imagine how happy I was when I saw him. He was still young and handsome, with full lips, large muscles and long black dreadlocks that were slightly golden at the edges from all his hours of work under the sun. I asked him to leave with me and he agreed. It was as if no time had passed, and we picked up things right where we left off. That night we said goodbye to Mary and boarded a boat to South America. There were very few options for a black and white couple back then, let alone a black man and a white vampire. For a while I hide what I was from him. It wasn't easy, not being able to go out into the sunlight. I pretended to have caught some mysterious illness on the voyage over. But eventually he worked it out. I thought for sure that he was going to leave me. But he didn't. He just told me that he needed time to think. You can imagine the late night conversations and screaming matches. He wanted to be with me but not as a monster; he had to die to be with me; he was too young to die; he would keep aging while I stayed the same; we could be together forever. There were so many points, for and against, his becoming a vampire to be with me.
"So," Bell said eagerly, "what happened?"
