Fifty Percent Vampire, #1, page 2
“So,” she said. “You’re the type who likes to seduce innocent young maidens.” She tapped her index finger on the glass. “Well, sir, let me give you a warning. Know that all who decide to enter my home come under the protection of the Lord God Almighty. And any powers your sick deluded mind imagines you can wield here are sadly ineffective, because this is Holy Ground.”
At that she stood up, turned her back on Vampville’s finest, and walked stiffly up to the house, her head held high.
I tried not to smile. She hadn’t changed.
Astrid made up her mind and scooted round to haul her suitcase from the trunk. When Jean saw her niece struggling with the weight of it she told Emma to go fetch her father, but Astrid shook her head. “I can manage,” she said bravely, with the determined look on her face I’ve known since the day she was born.
So this was the moment. My daughter bent down to my window. “Goodbye Mom,” she said. “I love you. See you in a week or two, right?” She kissed me gently on the cheek, turned away to hide her tears, and dragged her suitcase up to the house. As Jean closed the door I gave a little wave and watched my beautiful red-haired baby vanish.
“Are you sure you made the right decision?” George asked me gruffly, turning the key in the ignition.
“No,” I whispered as I shut the window and removed my sunglasses to brush away a cold tear. George was right about one thing. Astrid would face many dangers out here where I wasn’t around to protect her. “No, I’m not sure we made the right decision. But it’s what my daughter wants.”
“Hmmph,” growled George. “I give her till the next full moon.”
CHAPTER 4
(Astrid)
A New Beginning
“Don’t just stand there on the doorstep, Astrid. Come on in.”
I managed to flash my aunt a smile in reply, although I was still in shock—stunned if you will—after hearing what she’d said to George. There aren’t many people still around who would dare speak to him in that fashion. I thought I just might come to like Aunt Jean, despite the barrage of stern looks she’d been firing my way since the moment we met. This Lord God Almighty she’d mentioned must be really powerful.
I picked up my suitcase and stepped inside the entrance hall, waving at Mom as George reversed the car onto the street. As Aunt Jean closed and locked the door, I dropped my case on the deep carpet, next to the grandfather clock (which stood taller than me), and began checking out the line of family photos that adorned the hallway. But then I froze. Halfway up the stairs a dark wooden crucifix was hanging on the wall.
“Something wrong?” asked Aunt Jean when she saw where I was looking, and if you ask me her tone was way too innocent.
George’s frequent doom and gloom warnings about crucifixes ricocheted around my mind. There was a huge reason I’d only ever seen religious symbols on television. But George and Mom weren’t here to protect me anymore, so what was I to do? I couldn’t very well bed down every night on Aunt Jean’s hallway carpet. I smiled nervously. “No, I’m good. Just new house jitters.”
“Interesting,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Your room’s upstairs, second on the left, past Emma’s. Go settle yourself in and I’ll call you when lunch is ready.”
Lunch? I didn’t eat lunch. Or breakfast, or dinner. Mom and I had discussed this minor issue the night before I left. “If you want to be human,” she said, “you’ll have to do what humans do. And one of the things they do is eat. I’ll supply you with flasks for now, but if you want to stay out there, you’ll need to wean yourself off them. And besides, how are you going to explain your lack of food intake to your cousin? It won’t take long before she notices, and you’re not exactly underweight.”
But that problem could wait a day or two. Right now I needed to unpack. I lugged my suitcase upstairs, past the scary crucifix, without any detectable burning sensation or whatever it was George had warned me would happen, heaved a massive sigh of relief, and opened the second door on the left, the one that didn’t have ‘Emma’ written on it in flowery script. At least nobody had scrawled ‘VAMPIRE’ in big red letters on mine.
I opened the door, stepped inside and let out a stunned gasp. Wow, was my new room lovely. So much bigger than the tiny attic at home, with white-painted walls crying out to be decorated with lots of pictures and posters, and a tall window with full-length red drapes that Aunt Jean had thoughtfully left closed. There was a pleasant scent in the room that I learned later was the smell of newly-cleaned carpet. A gentle breeze blew back the drapes and I glimpsed greenery beyond. I figured the room faced west, which might cause me a problem at sunset, but I decided I could live with that. More importantly, I had a real bed at last.
Gingerly, I tested the mattress with my hands and found it softer than expected. I slid my fingertips along the crisp white cotton sheets, lay down and rested my head on the pillow and closed my eyes. It was a blissful moment. When I reopened my eyes I propped myself on my elbow and flicked on the bedside lamp, nervous of how much it might affect me, but the glow from the lamp was gentle and I didn’t feel a thing. Electric light. Wow!
I stood up again, opened my suitcase, peered inside the walk-in closet with the pointless full-length mirror inside the door, and arranged my few things on the shelves: a spare pair of pants, some skirts and tops and running shorts. My two pairs of shoes—my old black lace-ups and my runners—looked pathetically lonely on the long shoe rack. I’d brought so little stuff with me I had plenty of space to store the suitcase in the closet too. I made a mental note to ask Mom to bring more of my clothes next time.
Someone knocked at the door. It was Emma. Uh-oh. Aunt Jean’s warning that “Under no circumstances is my daughter to discover our little secret,” echoed ominously inside my head. Time to test out the Emma-proof cover story. I began with a diversionary tactic. “Oh, what a cute little cat!”
My cousin was holding a yellow-eyed black cat in her arms, but to tell the truth, although it did indeed look cute, the cat’s manners left a lot to be desired. In fact it was yowling and spitting and squirming and scratching to get free.
“Ow, Hermione, stop it! What’s wrong with you?” Emma tried to hold onto her pet but in the end let go and watched in amazement as the terrified animal shot from the room, its tail frizzed out like a bottle brush. “I’m so sorry,” she said, mortified. “That’s strange. She usually loves meeting new people.”
But not new half-vampires, I thought despondently. I’d never had a pet. Nothing would come near our house, except spiders. I’d been living in hope it was only George and Angus to whom furry creatures objected, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Oh well. I stood there awkwardly facing my cousin, desperately searching for something to say. “So, um, you’re my cousin.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Emma looked down. “Can I ask you a question and try not to sound offensive?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Like, are your parents criminals or something?”
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “No! Why would you ask that?”
“Sorry, it’s just … Mom’s never mentioned you and, um, your dad looks kind of creepy.”
“Stepdad,” I corrected. “And trust me, he scares me too on occasion. How about yours?”
“Only if you try to take the remote,” she muttered. “You speak funny. What’s that accent?”
“Oh,” I said. “You can hear it? Romanian. That’s where I’m from. Romania. In Europe.” This was part of the cover story Mom had cooked up. Luckily, George had never lost his original accent, despite him not having visited the old country in countless years. And I was a good mimic. All I had to do was copy his voice to make myself sound convincingly foreign.
“But your mom’s, like, American?”
“Emma, she’s your mom’s baby sister,” I said.
She laughed. “Oh right, I forgot. You’re lucky. She has such a beautiful face. And you look like her too.”
I ignored the compliment, went to the window and leaned out to inhale the fresh clean air. “Your home is lovely. I’m going to enjoy living here.”
I watched the three brown hens and the sickle-tailed rooster as they scratched the earth in their secure enclosure at the far end of the yard. The backdrop was pure forest. Lots and lots of beautiful green treetops, for miles in all directions, bursting with happy birdsong and cicada chirps, teeming with hidden life. I gazed longingly. “So much nature to explore.”
“I guess so, though I don’t go out there much. Sometimes I think I’d rather live in a big city, have more stuff to do, more places to hang out. We only have one mall in town.”
Only one mall? Compared to where I came from, which had zero malls, this was the big city.
Emma scratched her nose. “So, what happened to your real dad? He run off with someone else?”
“He died before I was born.”
“That’s so sad.” Her face dropped and she reached out her arms. But I held back. Nobody had ever hugged me before except Mom. Emma stood waiting with her arms outstretched until I gave in and took a step toward her. As she wrapped her arms around me I had my next big surprise of the day. My cousin’s body was so warm and so soft as it pressed against mine and I felt the steady beat of her heart against my chest—such a contrast to the iciness of Mom’s sterile embrace. I could get used to this wonderful feeling.
Emma let me go and we stood together at the window in silence. I was half-expecting her to remark how cold my body was but she didn’t say a word.
Aunt Jean called from the hallway. “Get yourselves down here, girls. Lunch is ready and it needs a little help getting to the table.”
I pasted a smile on my face. “My stomach’s in knots. I need to lie down for a while. I’ll meet you downstairs later.”
Emma frowned. “You can’t stay up here. Mom’s cooked something special today. In your honor.”
“I’m really not hungry.”
But Emma wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I trailed after her down to the dining room, where Hermione arched her back and hissed at me again before springing up to make her escape out of the window. Emma was apologetic. “She really doesn’t like you. Bizarre.”
Lunch was awkward. Aunt Jean made Emma chant grace (“Lord, bless this house and everybody in it ...”), and I sat at the head of the table feeling a million miles outside my comfort zone, sipping tepid faucet water while my new family ate. My stomach twisted when I realized I would have to endure this ordeal three times a day, every day. The strange smells wafting my way from the dishes bothered me greatly, and the colors of the meat and vegetables and fruit too I found disturbing. I wasn’t used to ingesting anything that wasn’t red and it was all I could do to stop myself running out to the yard and throwing up. But, to be honest, these strangers would have felt equally as disgusted if I’d let them watch me feed. Mom was right; sooner or later I was going to have to make an effort to accept the offerings Aunt Jean put before me. And keep them down.
Uncle James was a strange-looking man, I guessed in his mid-forties, with a round belly and prematurely graying hair, what was left of it. He didn’t say anything to me, didn’t even make eye contact, just scarfed his meal with much enthusiastic scraping of silverware and practically ran back to the den. I heard the chink of bottles as he helped himself to a beer from the refrigerator.
Aunt Jean ate slowly, and made polite conversation, and thankfully she didn’t question my queasy stomach excuse. She’d no doubt come to the conclusion this was about as normal as I could get.
Emma continued to eye me warily, and after finishing her dessert she excused herself, saying she needed to go call her friends. I understood why. Lots of news to broadcast about her weird cat-spooking Romanian cousin.
After the meal Aunt Jean hauled me to the kitchen to help wash the dishes, after which she sent me on my way to do whatever ‘teens like you’ did in their spare time. I considered venturing outside to explore the backyard, but the sun was shining too brightly for my liking, so I joined my uncle in the semi-darkness of the den. He sat staring at the TV as though mesmerized, and not a word passed between us.
By nightfall I was curled into a ball on my bed, holding tightly to a teddy bear Emma had given me, missing Mom and bawling my eyes out. It seemed being human was not as they represented it on television, nor did the experience bear much resemblance to the vivid bedtime stories I’d been told since I was tiny. Maybe this long-awaited adventure wasn’t going to turn out so fantastic after all. I was already convinced Emma imagined she had an escaped anorexic lunatic staying in the next bedroom, and I’d heard Aunt Jean muttering incantations under her breath, no doubt to ward off evil spirits. Uncle James had laughed at her and patted me on the head several times. At least he seemed oblivious to my weirdness.
One out of three on my first ever night away from home wasn’t bad, I supposed. But if I wanted to make it as a human, I needed to improve ... by several zillion percent.
CHAPTER 5
(Astrid)
Hallelujah!
Next morning I woke to the sound of Aunt Jean banging on my door. “Up, sleepyhead,” she called. “Wake up and smell the humans. It’s Sunday, and you know what that means. Church.”
I rolled over beneath my nice warm quilt and peered groggily at my alarm. Seven o’clock. I groaned. We had to start getting ready for church this early?
My aunt bustled into the room carrying a stack of pink towels, which she set down on my chair. “I want you to take a shower and wash that lovely hair of yours, and be dressed in your smartest outfit and ready to leave the house by nine,” she ordered briskly. “It’s a glorious morning. Mass will be held outdoors today, I should think.”
I felt a rush of relief. Mom had warned me Jean would insist on dragging me off to church every Sunday, and the thought of being surrounded by all those sacred objects had worried me intensely. Holy water, stacks of bibles and prayer books, paintings of the Sacred Heart doubtlessly much larger than the one adorning our living room wall, and crucifixes everywhere you looked—brrr! Outdoors, well, I could stand half-hidden at the back of the crowd and if it came to the worst I could run away.
I gathered up two of the fluffy towels and headed for the bathroom. A shower was yet another novelty; at home we washed in cold water I fetched from the stream, except in winter when George brought home wood for the stove once a week and Mom melted ice in a pan.
I much preferred the shower. After I’d fiddled around with the controls and scalded myself twice, the flow settled down to a comfortable temperature and I stood beneath my luxurious homemade waterfall with my eyes shut and the life-giving deluge pounding gloriously on my head. It was fabulous; I’d been transported to a place I never knew existed.
I wondered what church would be like. Mom had been gracious enough to teach me what little she remembered of her sister’s religion. “What can you tell me about God?” I’d asked.
“God’s the supernatural being Jean and many other humans believe created the world and all the people in it,” she said offhandedly. “Your aunt will give you an in-depth explanation. She knows far more about the subject than I do. I never was what you would call ‘a believer’.”
I’d poured a lot of shampoo on my hair—way too much in fact—and was frantically rinsing it out again when there came a loud hammering on the bathroom door. “Hey!” yelled Emma. “Don’t use all the hot water. And hurry up, it’s past eight already.”
In the kitchen—which smelled sickeningly of baking bread—a while later, Aunt Jean looked me over, her lips pursed. “Is that the best you can do?” Apparently my smartest outfit wasn’t good enough for church. “Emma can lend you something more suitable. You look about the same size. And I’ll bet my collection money you don’t have a hat.”
No, I didn’t.
I dashed back upstairs to where Emma was still blow-drying her hair. She rummaged in her closet and found me a dark-blue skirt with ruffles on the hem and a white blouse and took her second-best straw hat down from the shelf. My feet were larger than hers, so I had to wear my own black lace-up shoes, which was a shame as they didn’t exactly match the rest of the outfit.
“Hmmm,” said my aunt as she inspected me again. “I suppose that’ll have to do. Give me a twirl and let me see the back.”
We set off in the car at nine sharp. “Where’s Uncle James?” I asked. “Is he sick?”
Behind me, Emma sniggered.
“He’s still in bed, the lazy old heathen,” said Aunt Jean.
“What’s a heathen?” I asked.
Aunt Jean glanced at me. “Hasn’t your mother taught you anything?” she said. “Emma, please tell your cousin what a heathen is.”
“A heathen is a person who doesn’t believe in God.”
“But Uncle James must believe in something. Mom told me everyone has to believe in something.”
Emma thought for a moment. “If there’s anything Dad believes in, it’s watching sport on TV. Or lying on the couch. Yeah, that’s what he worships, the couch.” The three of us shared a laugh.
Jean found a parking space a few streets distant from the church and I peered nervously at the lack of clouds above my head and wished I’d chosen a bigger hat.
I could see the little church standing atop the hill ahead, but it wasn’t as close as I would have liked. I walked as fast as I could, but it was hard to get past the many people ahead of us. The last section of the walk was on a narrow path between two tall hedges where our pace fell away to a crawl. The bottleneck was a rickety old woman dressed in her Sunday best being helped along by her middle-aged daughter, the pair of them moving agonizingly slowly.
“Come on,” I groaned.
By the time we reached the churchyard I was perspiring, and not just because of the effort of slogging uphill.
Aunt Jean’s prophecy had come true: a little table draped in a white altar cloth had been set up at the top of the churchyard, with lines of folding chairs arranged facing it. Most of the seats in the sunshine were taken, so I sat at the back on a creaking chair between my aunt and cousin, to my relief in the shade of the cedar tree that towered darkly above the church. This was a special time and place, with magic in the air, and it overwhelmed me, to my surprise in a nice way.
