Part 1: Time to Grow Up
Chapter 1: Who Are You?
“Who are you,” she began. “What are you?” she asked more certainly. That was what she really wanted to know. What was this impossible creature in front of her?
The man stood in front of her, looking down with fierce black eyes. As Elizabeth passed her eyes over him, she suddenly realized that he was also sizing her up. She locked eyes with him, realizing the best way to get his focus off of her slender, pretty physique, was by having him focus on her eyes.
“I am Aaron Ayro,” he responded. “But you already knew that. What you really want to know is what I am. I am a vampire.” His eyes drifted over her body and Elizabeth had the impression that he was undressing her with his eyes. She gulped.
Chapter 2: The Beginning of Adulthood
Months before this exchange between Elizabeth Andrews and Aaron Ayro took place, Elizabeth was living life fairly predictably in her apartment in Los Angeles. Except for one thing…
That man is burying dead hookers underneath his floor boards, Elizabeth thought to herself about the man living upstairs. She decided to call her landlord in order to alert him of this issue.
“Jim, the man in the apartment upstairs is burying dead hookers underneath his floorboards. I can hear all of this stomping, shoving, and general raucous going on. When I went outside, I could see a bunch of psychotic children jumping on his balcony. I think he is the leader of a tribe of demented serial killers and their spawn.”
“It’s probably just kids goofing off,” Jim responded. He then promptly hung up the phone.
Elizabeth grumbled unintelligibly to herself. It was a bunch of hrm, hmm, hum kind of noises to express her displeasure. She simply didn’t have any real words to describe her feelings about the whole issue. Sometimes, a feeling can only be captured by unintelligible noises.
At 18 years old, Elizabeth was boldly going nowhere. It was midway through the month of May and she had finally finished home school for good. She didn’t work, didn’t have any goals, barely had any friends, and had no romantic interests. She supported herself on money she had inherited from her grandfather. He had, once upon a time, created a beloved comic book character that eventually went on to star in movies and several TV shows. You could find its action figure in toy stores, buy its lunch box at Wal Mart, and find plenty of internet fan clubs devoted to it. This character had made her grandfather a very wealthy man, indeed. Elizabeth was only ten when he died, but he left all of his money to her and her older brother: Austin. Much of her half of the money was put into a trust where no one could touch it, even her, until the day she turned 18. However, there was a substantial amount that was left specifically for her brother Austin to raise her with. He was 11 years older than herself, 19 at the time of their grandfather’s passing, and he had grudgingly taken up the task of parent ever since. And now that she had just recently turned 18 last week, she was still considering what to do with all that money.
Elizabeth had come to the apartment to get away from her brother for a little bit. The apartment in Hollywood was a great little getaway from their sizable home in Temecula. It was generally a quiet building in a very stimulating part of LA County. That mixture of excitement and tranquil isolation appealed to her. Unfortunately, that awful raucous upstairs was making it impossible for her to concentrate. She was an adult now and she felt it imperative that she decide what she wanted to do with her life. Elizabeth had always thought that 18 was a magical age where people suddenly find out who they are, what they want to be in life, and then embark on that magical journey. Unfortunately, no such mystical epiphany had dawned on her and the whole situation was becoming intolerable. Why was there no magical sign telling her how her life was supposed to be?
And then it happened. She looked out her living room window and saw several of her neighbors pointing upwards and excitedly gabbing away. One of them shrieked. Elizabeth went outside to see what all the fuss was about. She looked up and saw what had been causing her neighbors to become alarmed. A group of four little kids, all looking to be under the age of ten, were dancing around a fire they had started on their balcony. Later, Elizabeth found out that they had been using a large candle that had sunken in the middle from use. The wick, being quite long from the deterioration of the inner wax, caused the flame to grow unintentionally large. The kids had created a tiny hearth and decided to surround the wick with little bits of paper and brush. They then tried to roast marshmallows over it. Unfortunately, the children knocked the candle over on the wooden table it sat on and began to panic. Only a moment after Elizabeth arrived on the scene, a man darted out, scolded the children vituperatively, and put the fire out with a fire extinguisher. The children, crushed at being reviled, cried, “But Dad, we were just trying to make a camp fire!”