“Hey,” I said, opening the door and about to turn around and shuffle back to bed. But it wasn’t Liam or Sarah standing there. It was an unfamiliar male, standing at least 6’2”, with high cheek bones, and scruffy facial hair. “Can I… help you?”
“Are you Amy?”
“Not again.” I buried my head in my hands, holding open the door. “Let me guess. Liam? Selene?”
The vampire’s mouth hung open.
“How did you know…?”
“Experience,” I said dryly, reaching for my phone. “Come on in. I’ll call Liam.”
Over the next few days, word spread like wild fire as more and more vampires arrived at the school. For some reason, all of them sought me out first, perhaps afraid to approach the reputation that was Liam. They assured us that our plan to kill Selene was being kept quiet, whispered in underground circles and put in prayers of safety. Some of them were old, some of them brand-new, but all of them had been under Selene’s thumb and were used as puppets by the mother of all vampires. We received vampires with hardened battle weary spirits, and new vampires, afraid and in tears, wanting to get back to their normal lives. Connor and Isabelle were just the beginning of the interesting stories. I talked to vampires that were older than I could ever imagine, vampires who had seen great wars that I read about in history books, and vampires who had met long dead heroes like Shakespeare and Kit Marlow. They had done so many things with their lives, struggling to be normal, to pretend that they hadn’t been cursed.
But not all of them were old. Some of them were only a few months old, and had met the right person at the right time to turn to for help. One in particular, Nina, was heartbreaking. The gentlest, sweetest girl, Nina worked for a homeless shelter in her human life, showing compassion and kindness to anyone who had come through the doors. She was one of those workers who went the extra mile, always giving money, slipping them an extra bread roll from the soup kitchen, lending them her cell phone to stay in touch with friends and family. After becoming a vampire, she couldn’t bring herself to feed on human blood at any point, or even live animals. She lived on buying raw hamburger meat and squeezing it out, licking the meager remains from a plate. The very thought of it made me gag, but she couldn’t be convinced of anything otherwise. She was tiny and weak. When she came to me, while I was walking to rehearsal, I thought she was going to collapse into my arms. I practically had to carry her to Liam’s office, nearly breaking down the door to beg for assistance. I had no idea what the secretary must have been thinking about what went on behind his doors, but at that point, I was past caring.
“Can she die?” I asked Liam.
After he had met with her and we were alone. Liam sighed, looking sadly in the direction she had left. “She can’t die, no, but she can fall into an eternal slumber that she can’t be woken from without a proper feeding. She was practically trembling, my heart breaks for her.”
“And this will work?” I asked him for the hundredth time. “If we kill Selene, you’ll all be mortal again?”
He put his arm around me. “Yes, Amy, it’ll work.”
“But what about… us?” I asked, carefully. “Have you thought about that, about us? About having an… intimate relationship with me, if we’re both human?”
He sighed, running a hand through my hair. “Amy, we have to get over such a hurdle and that’s what you’re worried about?” He kissed the back of my neck, trailing down my throat. “Perhaps we should take advantage of it now, hmm, while we still can?”
I nearly melted into his arms, as he trailed them down my body. Perhaps we should.
And so, we became a vampire haven, a safe house, for the broken, tired and damned. None of them stayed at the school at night, except for Nina, so precariously close to death that Liam didn’t want her alone for an instant.
Since Liam had mostly kept to himself, he knew none of these new vampires, but he welcomed them with open arms.
“They come to you because you are safe,” he told me one night. “Because you don’t tempt them, and they know you are with me. You can’t snap and bite their heads off.”
“Literally,” I said, dryly, as we finished lunch in his office. “But what are we going to do with all of them?”
He took a swallow of water, giving me a tight smile.
“I have a plan, don’t worry. I just need you to be patient with me.”