Chapter IV - Healing

Charlie was sprightly and pixie-like. Skye, on the other hand, appeared to be her polar opposite. I worked this out as they pulled me into their room and shut Teddy out, quickly assuring him that I would be fine in their hands.

Hearing the door click as it closed behind me, I wondered if I would be fine in their hands. Those hands were vampire hands, after all. The woman showed me how deadly they could be.

But these two… They were deceptive. Deceptively human, I mean. If I’d seen them roaming around the halls of my high school—however long ago that would’ve been—I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash.

Well, I might have. Normality could only stretch so far when your eyes were red and, at least in Charlie’s case, your hair was pink.

“Sit down, sit down,” she said excitedly, ushering me onto a stool in front of a weirdly antique vanity table.

The room was fairly small for a bedroom intended for two people—and, now, three people, including me. Still, it was larger than the prison cell I’d been kept in. Calling it a prison cell seemed hyperbolic, especially when I was cautiously getting used to these vampires and their hospitality, but I felt like a prisoner. I still did.

Their stupid vampirism had trapped me in my own body, but it didn’t feel like it was mine anymore.

Strangely, the room didn’t contain any beds. It screamed ‘bedroom’ in many other ways, like the tall wardrobe which was made out of the same dark wood as the vanity table and the plush, violet carpet, but how could a bedroom not contain beds?

Their replacement was even more jarring: sofas. Two of them, jammed next to the walls as if they were trying to imitate beds. They faced each other with nothing between them but the vanity table. I’d never been a good judge of old-fashioned things; I just knew the difference between ‘made now’ and ‘made a long time ago’, although even that measure didn’t work for knock-offs.

In any case, those sofas could’ve easily been labelled with ‘made a long time ago’. They were identical, with soft pink material trapped inside a sturdy wooden frame. Dark wood. It wasn’t quite the same as what was used in the vanity table and the wardrobe, but someone was trying to keep to a theme in this room.

I suspected it was Skye. She sat on one of the sofas while Charlie hopped around, picking up random objects off the vanity table only to put them down again. Skye held her hands together on her lap with a small smile resting on her face. It wasn’t distant, but it was somewhat muted. Sensible, I decided.

See? I couldn’t help but humanise them. They weren’t so far from humans, I knew, but I couldn’t look past the more monstrous side of their existence. It was my existence too, after what that woman did to me, but I… I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Physically, I knew I was somewhat different. Looking into the mirror on the vanity table only confirmed my budding suspicions.

Once, my eyes were plain. They bounced between blue and grey, but no one cared about the difference.

Now, they shone blood-red.

Well, that was a small exaggeration. I’d seen shining eyes, like Teddy’s and, oddly enough, Skye’s, but I’d also seen Sebastian’s and Matty’s. It was a lot of eyes, but they fell into two different groups. Bright, and muted.

As soon as the shock of the colour wore off, I realised that they weren’t glowing or glistening. They were just red.

Who you were, who you are

“Don’t let the mirror spook you,” Skye said, leaning back on the sofa. “You’re still the same person you’ve always been.”

“Nah, you’re way cooler now,” Charlie reassured me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Vampires are the best.”

“Don’t be childish and scare her,” Skye frowned.

“I’m not being childish!” Charlie stuck her tongue out at the other vampire, who rolled her bright red eyes. When Teddy was sent out hunting, Skye must have gone with him.

So they were both murderers. Everyone in that house, except me, was a murderer. I just felt like I’d been murdered. My past life had been wrenched from me in a matter of half an hour, if that.

It wasn’t a particularly nice or comfortable life, but it was human. I preferred it to this hell I’d been thrown into. Hunting, killing, red eyes everywhere. Vampires and ghouls, whatever they were. Sires and children who were spelt weirdly and everything else they decided to fling at me.

“Would you like me to sort your hair out for you?” Charlie asked kindly, grinning at me through the mirror. My eyes moved to Skye instinctively—out of the three vampires in the room, I trusted her the most.

I still didn’t know the implications of my new vampire status in terms of self-control and urges to do unspeakable acts of violence, so I was out of the question.

“If you want it to mysteriously turn pink…”

Laughing, Skye shook her head and leaned forwards. Her dirty-blonde hair ran past her shoulders, straight and neat. It was a stark contrast to Charlie’s short pink ponytail.

Both of them put my bird’s nest to shame. It was dark, matted, and dirty. It’d been ages since I had the time to brush it, or even had access to a hairbrush, and my access to showers was spotty at best.

Heat rushed to my cheeks. Sitting there felt inherently wrong, on a human level. I was there with my torn clothes, stinking of blood and sweat and mud. Would they have looked twice at me in any other situation?

I became sure that they were only being nice because they were told to. Vampires could threaten and control other vampires, right? Especially younger ones, I reckoned. Looking back at Charlie’s reflection in the mirror, I searched for details which could’ve proved my theory.

Unfortunately, she seemed to be an expert at distracting people. Before I could search for too long, a hairbrush appeared in her hand. Skye laughed again, standing up and walking towards the wardrobe.

“Don’t worry. She can’t change your hair colour without dye,” she said. “I don’t think she can, anyway.”

“Stop talking about me! I’m right here, y’know!” Charlie protested, before looking at me through the mirror again. Her olive skin tone glowed under the room’s yellow light, but I suspected the effect was heightened by some form of makeup. “So, want a makeover?”

“Sure,” I replied quietly, remembering one of my new rules. Upsetting a vampire was not a good idea, even over something as simple as a makeover. We would have to stay in the same room as each other, as well.

I tried to focus on what Charlie was doing to my hair, but my concentration regularly lapsed. Skye was rooting in the wardrobe for something, or maybe setting aside some space for my clothes. If it was the latter, then her efforts would be in vain. The only clothes I had were the ruined ones on my back, torn nearly to bits by Sai. The woman.

I actively tried to not humanise her, but in such a weird world it was difficult not to. If Charlie and Skye were human-like, why wasn’t Sai?

The simple answer stared me in the face. Sai attacked me. Charlie and Skye were trying to look after me, whether they’d been told to or coerced into it or not. People who did nice things for you were easy to like.

On the other hand, people who killed you and forced you to become a monster were easy to dislike.

Being dead was difficult. I kept finding myself breathing, but was equally shocked when I found myself not breathing at all. Both felt unnatural. My body was unnatural.

I tried to locate my pulse sometimes. It was easier to find it when I stayed extremely still, because of the way it moved, like a snake. Constantly travelling around my body, it was just another reminder that life wasn’t normal anymore.

It couldn’t be, considering it wasn’t even life. Death was weird.

Speaking skulls, creaking bones

“What colours do you like, Kassidy?” Skye asked across the room. “Ah, we probably should’ve properly introduced ourselves. Sebastian’s gonna kill me if we don’t teach you that.”

“Teddy mentioned it,” I said. I had the urge to nod, but I was also aware of Charlie’s grip on my hair. She’d brushed it through, and decided on braiding it.

Braiding it quite extensively, I had to say. I felt like I was back in primary school. She’d only just started, but I had more thin, intricately-braided plaits in my hair than I could count on two hands.

“Basically, Sebastian’s old and boring,” Charlie explained helpfully. Again, I wanted to nod, but I controlled myself.

“He thinks we should be civilised and respectable,” Skye corrected her. “I don’t think there’s much wrong with that. The introductions are just a bit much.”

“How do they work?” I asked gingerly, a little curious about these ‘introductions’. I knew I shouldn’t have been humanising the vampires, yet again. But I also knew that I had to get used to how things worked here.

Saying ‘the vampires’ was also misleading, even if it was only misleading to myself. They were vampires, or monsters, or devils, or whatever, but so was I.

Still, I couldn’t shake off Sai’s first impression. Whatever they were, vampires were dangers first, and everything else second. No matter if I was one or not, I still had to be careful.

“You just say your name, then—well, I’ll just do mine,” Skye said, appearing in the reflection of the mirror with a bundle of clothes in her arms. “You say hello, or whatever, then: I’m Skye Taylor, of twenty-first generation, sired by Jasper Wells and of the Hardy bloodline.”

“What’s ‘generation’?” I asked, curiosity once again ruining my resolve to be as careful as possible with these vampires.

“Oh…” Skye trailed off, moving to sit back down on the sofa. She placed the clothes down beside her, fidgeting with a blue hoodie on the top of the pile. “Well, it’s kinda like how old your vampirism is. You’ll be one lower than your sire. Jasper’s twentieth, I’m twenty-first and Charlie’s twenty-second, because she was sired by Matty who was sired by Jasper.”

“That’s a complicated way to put it,” Charlie remarked. “Just sounds like a mouthful when you say it like that.”

“Alright, say it better then!” Skye huffed. “And explain Kassidy’s as well, while you’re at it.”

Charlie was making her way around the back of my head at that moment, so I saw her eyes flit up and check on me through the mirror. She smiled nervously.

“Okay.” She gulped and moved her eyes back to the plaits in my hair. Her fingers moved a little slower through my hair. “I’m twenty-second generation, because Matty is twenty-first. Teddy is sixteenth generation, which would make you seventeenth generation.”

“But I’m not,” I said, quickly seeing where the conversation was headed. “Because of Sai.”

“Yeah, the crazy lady,” Charlie confirmed. “I think she’s something insane like second generation. Super old. Sired by the original vampire, who could be the devil or an alien, depending on who you talk to.”

“Or just some poor guy who ate the wrong poisonous plant or something,” Skye added.

“That’s my point; we don’t know. But I’d guess you’re like… third and seventeenth generation?”

“It doesn’t matter that much,” Skye said quickly, “just for your introduction. Oh, and don’t call Teddy ‘Teddy’ when you introduce yourself. Sebastian doesn’t like us using nicknames in them.”

“Sebastian is allergic to fun,” Charlie groaned. “But we’re not! We’ll make death super fun, promise!”

“Which will start when you get a shower, some new clothes and a couple days’ worth of video games. They make life much less boring,” Skye promised. “Having your first hunt’ll probably be good, too. I don’t think I’ll be able to go with you—I’ve hunted way too recently.”

“Teddy did too, though, so maybe she’ll have to wait a bit anyway.” Charlie shrugged. “You never said what your favourite colour was, though!”

I was hoping that question wouldn’t come up again. My eyes drifted from the heavy-looking curtains which guarded us from the outside world—mainly sunlight, I guessed—to Charlie and Skye.

Not thinking too much about it, I told them I liked purple and blue, since they were pretty similar and unobtrusive. I didn’t feel like getting dressed up in highlighter yellow or green.

As Charlie finished braiding my hair, which made me realise that I’d need to ask if they had a shower cap before I went anywhere near a shower, Skye presented me with a potential outfit. Charlie’s gasp and whisper of ‘hey!’ led me to believe that it was largely made up of her clothes, rather than Skye’s.

But I didn’t have any issues with it, aside from feeling like I was being a bit of a burden. It couldn’t be helped, and I knew that. I’d just been turned into a vampire and transported to a random house in Dreswell where I had no belongings, clothes or even ID. For all intents and purposes, I didn’t exist to the rest of the world. Being a burden was practically required.

The inoffensive pairing of jeans, a dark purple t-shirt with a lighter purple floral pattern running across it and a black zip-up jacket suited me just fine. Skye mentioned that Charlie probably had some spare boots and socks, which prompted a passive aggressive discussion between the two girls about why Charlie was giving so much of her stuff away—especially when Skye was in charge of giving it away.

Luckily, I was closer to Skye’s shoe size than Charlie’s, so the burden was shared a little more fairly. I wasn’t paying enough attention to the mild argument to work out exactly how many of my new clothes belonged to Charlie or Skye.

For a moment, I looked at my reflection again. It was the same reflection I saw in shop windows and puddles, just a little crisper and clearer. My skin was also clearer, coincidentally, because I was certain I’d been going through a hellish bout of acne just a few days ago. I seemed eerily different yet the same, although that didn’t make much sense.

I held in a sigh. I didn’t want to catch the girls’ attention, but I felt so strange that I didn’t know what else to do with myself. The transformation was over. I couldn’t go back to being a human, even though I wanted that more than anything. Tearing out those mocking red eyes could’ve been my next step, but that didn’t seem wise.

Looking out for myself would be more difficult if I was blind. Not impossible, but it would be another obstacle which I really didn’t need at that moment in time.

That train of thought threw up more questions about exactly which human qualities transferred over when you were transformed, but I didn’t want to ask them. I didn’t want to learn any new monstrous facts that would shatter my world and what I thought was true yet again.

All I wanted was a hot shower, a change of clothes and some time to sit and think in peace. Ideally, I wanted to sleep for hours on end as well, but the lack of beds in the bedroom meant I didn’t even have to ask that question.

So much was different in the world of the dead. Sitting there with a still chest and a buzzing mind, I wondered if anything would ever feel normal ever again.