The Donor House: Advent Story (part 1)
One of them had to stay at the House in case of emergencies and it was Alice’s turn. She didn’t mind, as it gave her a chance to start sorting out the decorations, but that was until she saw the tree. At first all she could do was stare at it, unable to believe that they’d really chosen to purchase what appeared to be a 10 foot tall Christmas Tree. Unfortunately it would fit where they’d planned to put it, because the reception had lovely high ceilings, so there was really no reason to tell them to return it and get something less ostentatious. They had, thankfully, bought a tree with roots, as John had asked, which would be planted somewhere after all the festivities were done. It made the amount of money they must have paid for it a long term investment rather than a waste.
It took the three of them, plus help from several of the vampires and donors who were also waiting for the arrival of the Tree, to get it into an upright position. Alice stood at the base of the stairs, hands on her hips, and tried to decide if she was more amused or annoyed. When she saw the smiles on everyone’s faces she couldn’t help smiling herself.Maybe it wasn’t the tree she would have chosen, but it was obvious that it was going to make everyone very happy She’d always known that Nick, Lewis, and Issac loved Christmas, and as they’d chosen not to celebrate the first year they were open it meant it was their first true Christmas at the House, a place they’d all come to think of as home.
The year before that they were still working hard to get the House ready for their planned occupants, even though they hadn’t been sure then that their plans, that Nick’s idea of building a community for both vampires and humans, would work out as well as they hoped they would. Sometimes she couldn’t help thinking that it was all going to fall apart, and she was certain the others all had the same problem, and she’d been making the most of every moment they were open, just in case. No one wanted anything bad to happen, not after all the work they’d put in, but they knew they had enemies, both within the vampire and human communities, who wanted to get them shut down. Biting hard on her lip she told herself not to worry and instead turned her attention where everyone was gathered around the tree.
As Alice looked at the group of vampires and donors who were gathered around the tree, all wanting to help decorate it and the rest of the House, she couldn’t believe how lucky they’d been. Every year they grew, with more humans applying to enter the house, more vampires who visited for a day choosing to make the House part of their daily routine, and they had friends outside the House as well. Cate would be coming to help, which might also mean that Sam would, although he still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of spending time with them all after the mess he’d made of his first visit. Garion was going to try to pop in at some point, as he was working. Friends of the donors would probably come and help too, because some of them had become as much a part of their family as the donors themselves.
Dominic, who was talking with Jean-Luc, had been their first long term donor, and she was still grateful for his honesty the first time she met him. None of the other donors at the time had opened up in the way the Dominic had. Alice remembered feeling exactly the same way when she started spending time with Nick, because she’d owed him for saving her life. Over the years their relationship had changed, from her falling in love with him to everything that had happened after he’d saved her life by making her into a vampire, and there were times when she wondered how different her life would have been if he hadn’t been there when she needed him. Being angry with him for what he’d done had never been logical, but emotions were something that didn’t always make sense, no matter how much she wished they would. Her anger had never stopped her from loving him.
Every decision that each of them had made had brought them to where they were. If it hadn’t been for Nick’s quick thinking Alice might have been an addict or dead. Nick might not have come up with the plan to create the House without her being there as he’d always said that he was doing it, in part, for her, he definitely never would have helped Blake, and then Caleb wouldn’t have had a place to go when he decided he didn’t want to be an addict or someone to help him through the hardest moment who had been there himself. Maybe there were times when she wished Nick hadn’t seen changing her as the only option, but at that moment, standing there watching the people she loved, she was grateful that he had, that he’d given her a chance to be there with her chosen family, even though he’d done it for a selfish reason - he couldn’t imagine what his life would be without her in it.
When she thought about what Nick must have gone through to make that choice she felt even more guilty for being angry with him for so long. It wasn’t fair of her. Alice knew that, but knowing and feeling were two entirely different things. The longer she was a vampire the more comfortable she became with his choice, although it was the Donor House, the vampires and the humans she’d got to know in the short time that they’d been open, that had made her realise that she didn’t mind being a blood sucking creature of the night. Her parents hadn’t been wrong to hate the auction vampires, they were evil, but they had been wrong to think that all vampires were the same and they’d been wrong to think that the daughter they’d brought up would turn out to be one of them.
“Is there a reason you’re alone, Alice?” an easily recognisable voice said, and Alice turned to smile at Morgan. “If there is I’ll go away, but I hate to think of you over here when we’re all over there.”
“No, there isn’t.” Alice shook her head, hoping they hadn’t all been worried about her. “I was just thinking about things.”
“Winter does seem to be a good time for that. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking myself, recently, about the choices I made and how much things have changed.” Morgan smiled. “When I first arrived I couldn’t imagine enjoying myself here, but, Alice, for the first time I feel like I’m where I’m meant to be. The House is so different to what I was expecting, even though I went over the website time and time again, to make certain that I was doing the right thing, because it felt like the wrong decision for a long time, even after I signed myself in that first night.”
“Getting to know us, and coming to the realisation that we are people who just happen to drink blood for our continued survival, does take time. Being here has helped me understand that I’m not the only vampire who never wanted to be changed, I’m definitely not the only vampire to hate the person who changed them, and that when Nick came up with the idea to build a community for vampires and humans to live together he hadn’t actually lost the plot, but come up with a sensible suggestion that I can’t believe no one thought of before.”
“Maybe they did and it simply wasn’t feasible at the time.” Morgan bit her lip. “Sometimes it seems like you were just in the right place at the right time. Other vampires probably weren’t so lucky.”
Alice nodded, thinking about how the world had changed in the last thirty years, and how much it must have changed in the centuries that Nick, Issac, and Lewis had been alive. “It’s always been hard to accept that vampires are actually real. When I was younger I couldn’t help thinking that they could just be a story that people told to get their children to behave, but then I actually saw one.” When she thought back to her first hunt she could remember the peace that had filled the vampire’s eyes when he realised that there were hunters surrounding him and knew that it had been what he wanted - because vampires who didn’t want to die wouldn’t be stupid enough to hunt anywhere near somewhere they thought there might be hunters, unless they wanted to teach the stupid humans another lesson. “My parents were vampire hunters, although Mum didn’t hunt anywhere near as much as she once had when my brother and I were born, so I was brought up to hate them, even though I didn’t truly believe in them. It seems stupid now, but I was brought up in a little village where there weren’t any vampires, because Dad believed it was the best place for us. He didn’t want to bring us up in a larger town in case something happened to us or them and he knew if a hunt did go wrong he could rely on the people we lived with to help.
“Now that I think back I can’t help wondering if the village was created purely as a safe place for hunters to live, because there did seem to be more hunters there than in any other place I’ve lived since. It wouldn’t surprise me. Nick told me about another hotel that was used as a community for hunters and their families, set up so that any child who ended up an orphan would have somewhere to go. Unfortunately the auction vampires knew that it existed and they attacked it one night, to show the hunters that they were the predators in the relationship, even though the humans might wish things were different. He’s hoping that we might be lucky enough to help a few of the children who were taken to one of the auction schools, because they should be reaching the age when they’re sold.”
“How does Nick know so much about the auction system?”
“The vampire who changed Nick is one of the vampires who’s currently in control of it all. From what Nick said he was expected to be one of the gatherers, but he walked away from it all. It wasn’t something he wanted to be a part of. Unfortunately that doesn’t stop his siblings from turning up occasionally to try once again to convince him that he could be so much happier if he simply became the vampire he was always meant to be. There was one, Francis, who turned up at one of Nick’s houses not long after he’d changed me, and we ended up selling that house, because we both knew that there was someone who would want me dead if they found out that I had survived their attack.”
“Nick’s creator tried to hurt him by killing you.”
“It’s, apparently, a tactic that a lot of vampires use.” Alice sighed, glancing over at Sullivan, who was still hurting from his loss, and then at Nick, who’d been lucky enough to save her life. “Things were very different back then, because there wasn’t any sort of community like this where a hurting vampire could go to in order to get help, so there is every chance Nick would have done something stupid if I’d died. As he always did Nick’s creator expected things from Nick that would never have happened. I know that he would never have joined with his creator, but that doesn’t mean Nick wouldn’t have tried to kill him, which most likely would have led to the end of Nick’s life as well as mine.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.