Epilogue
“You must be getting nervous, huh?” Dylan asks me as he grabs a beer from the fridge. He’s about to close it, then thinks twice. “You want one? You’re almost legal after all.”
It’s rare my brother shows me any consideration so I should probably take him up on his offer. Besides, maybe a beer will help calm my nerves. No point denying how anxious I am about my birthday.
“Sure,” I say as he hands me a can. I snap open the lid, relishing the feel of doing so. I had to get my gel nails removed because of tomorrow. Apparently they can be used as a weapon, so my parents made sure mine are cut short. The last thing I want is to accidentally hurt them.
“You’re lucky,” I tell my brother as I sit down on the sofa.
A spring juts into my ass and I have to adjust myself.
I’ll be in this room for a few days and while my parents didn’t want any of their good furniture to get damaged, then didn’t want to lock me in a barren room either.
Everything in here has been furnished from garage sales.
In fact I think this sofa belonged to Brady Williams’ family who live down the street from me.
I kissed Brady one drunken night, maybe on this couch, as it happens with the boys in the neighborhood.
They never knew what I really was.
Or rather, what I was destined to be.
Not that the world thinks vampires are a myth. They don’t anymore. They know they’re out there, living among us, but as vampires are driven into hiding more, it’s getting harder for the humans to come up with any proof.
My family are the only vampires around where I live, in Newport, Oregon.
Sometimes I think we may be the only ones in the state, but my father assures me there are others.
The Pacific Northwest has becoming a breeding ground for them now that so many places are becoming too hot for us to live in comfortably.
Tomorrow is my twenty-first birthday. It’s the day I’ll go through The Becoming. When I’ll finally become a vampire. Though Dylan is a few years older than me, he won’t go through it until he’s thirty-five, so he has no advice to give me.
“You’ll be fine,” he says, leaning against the fridge. “Though that horny phase sounds pretty psycho.”
Ah yes. The bloodlust and the just pure lust. In the fridge there are bags of blood for me to drink when my hunger makes me crazy, but before that I’ll be tied down to the bed in the corner so I don’t go insane with needing to come.
It’s definitely the part that everyone always talks about, and let me tell you, talking about it with your parents is all sorts of embarrassing.
That aside, they’ve both gone through the process so they assured me that no matter what I will be okay, and when I’m finally out on the other side, I will feel better than I ever have before.
“You’ll finally feel like yourself,” my mother said and that’s the part I’m looking forward to the most. Even knowing that I would fully transform one day, I spent my life feeling like there was something wrong with me.
I just didn’t fit in. I was always different and no matter how hard I tried to fit in, I just never could.
But in a week or less, I will emerge from this sound-proof garage turned vampire transition den, and finally feel at peace with the world.
“I’d rather not talk about the horny phase with my brother, thank you very much,” I scoff at him.
He shrugs. “Well there’s always the vampire porn sites that can tell you about it. Do you feel any other changes yet?”
I give him a steady look of disgust.
“I mean otherwise,” he says with a raise of his hands. “Jeez. I mean like, cravings. For blood.”
I take a long swig of my beer and nod. “Lately all I want is meat, the more raw the better. And the world is starting to feel a little different, you know? Clearer. Brighter.”
“Well tomorrow you’re gonna step into this room as Rose Harper, pain-in-the-ass sister, and leave it as Rose Harper, bloodsucking monster.”
I laugh. “Probably not. You know how puritanical mom and dad are about feeding.”
Vampires need blood to survive. In the recent past, vampire clubs and feeding bars were common. They still are, but they’re harder to find because of some shit that went down in Italy a long time ago.
Thankfully for vampires like us, who don’t live near the cities, we have become users of both blood bags and a drug that makes it so we can get nourishment from old blood, even animal blood.
When it’s supplemented with regular human food, people, like my parents, don’t have to go out anywhere and kill people to survive, or live close to the underground clubs, which are usually sex clubs at the same time.
We move around a lot, though. We have to. People get suspicious. We’ve lived in Newport for about five years and that’s the longest we’ve ever been anywhere. We’ll have to move on somewhere else before people realize that my very young-looking mother and I look the same age.
I have no idea where we’ll go next. Maybe I can convince them to take me to a city. Or maybe I’ll just go off on my own. See the world, that sort of thing. I’ll stick to cooler climates though. With my fair skin and red hair, the sun isn’t a friend of mine.
“Well, here’s to you then,” Dylan says, coming over and hitting his can of beer against mine. “I hope you turn into the bad-ass you were always meant to be.”
I laugh. “That might be the nicest thing you ever said to me.”
He laughs and we drink up.
“Rose, honey? Can you hear me? Do you know who I am?”
I buck against the restraints, opening my eyes.
I’m staring at the roof of the garage and for a moment I wonder what the hell is going on in here. Why am I…
But then it hits me.
The Becoming.
I’m going through The Becoming.
Least I think I am.
How long have I been here?
“Mom?” I say but my voice sounds foreign to me. I don’t see her anywhere. I turn my head to see her coming toward me with a bag of blood in her hands, the fridge door open showcasing a row of blood bags and my brother’s beer.
“Hey sweetie,” she says. “It’s time for your first sip.”
I swallow, suddenly painfully thirsty, my throat as dry as a desert. My stomach gnaws at itself like I’ve got a ravenous beast inside me, eating me from the middle.
She stops beside me. “There you are,” she says brightly as she smiles down at me.
“What happened?” I ask, looking around the room, though my attention is brought right back to the blood in her hands.
“You went through your first stage. You know. The lusty one. We thought you would have broken through the restraints already and gone for the blood but you haven’t yet. That’s okay. That’s a good sign. Means you didn’t get a chance to trash the room. Your hunger is more civilized.”
I stare at the blood in the bag, the rich crimson.
She holds out a pill. “Open your mouth.”
I do so and she places the pill on my tongue.
“Chew.”
I chew. It tastes like fake cherry, a taste I used to tolerate but now it makes me want to vomit. But if I don’t have it then I won’t be nourished by the blood and since it will be my first feeding, it’s extra important.
“Good girl,” she says. “Now I’m going to untie you and give you the blood and leave you be. There’s more in the fridge there if you need it.” She leans over and kisses my forehead while undoing the leather straps around my wrists. “I am so proud of you.”
Then she leaves the room rather quickly.
I slowly sit up. I feel like I have the world’s worst hangover and I ache between my legs. I know that I was restrained, so I hadn’t done anything to myself and this is just a leftover from days of being in the lust stage. Thank god I don’t remember any of it.
As for the rest of me, I do feel different. My skin is extra sensitive, my eyes, my senses feel like they’re working overtime. But I couldn’t say I feel like a vampire.
I eye the bag of blood beside me.
No, this is what will bring that feeling on.
I take a deep breath and then pick up the bag.
I raise it up above my head.
Weeks ago I would have looked at the blood in disgust.
Now I see it as a gift from God.
I open the valve, put it to my lips and drink.
It hits my tongue and my entire world changes.
I was expecting the usual taste of blood, the metallic pennies in your mouth thing. And maybe it does still taste like that, but suddenly having a mouthful of pennies is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted. It’s all I ever want, for the rest of my life.
I drink and I drink and I drink, the blood flowing down my throat, filling me but not filling me, and I’ve almost drained the bag when suddenly my head explodes in a flurry of stars and pain.
I scream. “Fuck!”
Drop the bag and grab my head, my fingers digging into my scalp.
Is this part of it?
Is this—
But my own thought ends in my brain because suddenly I’m flooded with a million different images, all of them awful, all of them bringing me pain.
I see myself on the ground, staring at a crowd of soldiers holding back someone I know is my lover, while my father brings a sword down on my neck.
I see myself lying in bed with a big belly and covered in blood, staring into the dark eyes of the man I love.
I see myself in that same man’s grip, his face contorted in rage as he drains the life out of me.
I see all my deaths.
The deaths of Mina.
Lucy.
Dahlia.
I remember everything.