The Vampire Pirate's Daughter (11 page)

I smile, trying to lighten the mood. “I am
going with you, besides what is the use of staying here? How long
will it be before Andrew has outgrown me?” I laugh sadly. “If
Andrew and I ever did get married I would never have to worry that
he would leave me for a younger woman, because I would always be
the younger woman.”

She laughs softly at my frivolous
silliness and I am glad to hear the sound. I am only acting
ridiculous to make her feel better about me going with. It will be
heartbreaking, but I convince myself that it would be better for
Andrew in the future. Amanda will probably mourn Shayne for a long
time to come. She has that same hopelessness about her that humans
have when someone close to them dies.

*

I do not go back to school. What would the
point be anyway? Amanda and I are going to live at the château and
restore it to its former glory. My stepfather, Francois, often told
me how beautiful it used to be and I wanted to do it for him. He
never managed to restore it completely before his death. I will not
go to school again for a while and I will live as a woman of
leisure for the next few years. I will miss the young people I have
loved to surround myself with over the last decades, but I can
always do it again later, once Amanda has learned to adjust to life
without Shayne, which could be a while.

*

I am busy packing our personal belongings
into a box. We sold the house with the furniture, but we have
little things that we have collected over the years, sentimental
things.

I hear a knock at the door and pulling my
back straight, my hand resting in the small of my back I walk to
the door.

I cannot help feeling miserable when I see
Andrew standing on our doorstep and he says desperately, “You
cannot leave.” I have not seen him for a while because Mr. van
Heerden grounded him for falling asleep at school and Carmine must
have told him that we are moving.

I explain urgently, “I have to, because
Amanda needs me.”

He has a pained expression on his face.
“Carmine says I must forget you and move on, but I cannot. I know
you can feel it too, this feeling that we should be together.” He
looks at me searchingly. “Don’t say that you cannot feel it!”

I turn away from him and walk toward the
lounge. I pick up a glass vase that Shayne bought at the turn of
the century and I start to wrap it carefully in bubble wrap, when I
feel Andrew standing behind me.

He leans past me and he takes the delicate
glass container out of my hands. Bending down, he puts it on the
coffee table gently and then he turns back toward me.

He reaches for me and he asks enquiringly,
“Can you not feel it, the feeling that this was meant to be? I know
it with such certainty and I know you know it as well. I have never
felt this way about anything. I have always had the feeling that I
belonged nowhere, until that day I held you in my arms and I
unexpectedly had this sense of belonging, a feeling of promise for
tomorrow. Susie, I love you.”

I smirk, “Love? You say you love me, but do
you even know what you are saying? It would never work between you
and me, because I live forever and you will eventually die.”

“
We all eventually die, even you. Look at
what happened to Shayne. I bet nobody ever expected that. Besides,
I have been thinking, you could turn me.”

I gasp, “Never! It is not allowed and if I
did we would be hunted forever by my community until they find us
and dispose of us in ways you could not even imagine.”

He takes me in his arms and I hear the
doof-doof of his heart again. That sound will stay with me in the
years from now, in the imagined dreams I would weave around what
could have been.

Pulling away from him,
I add, “My world is a completely different
world from that which you are used to. Only recently…” I laugh
sarcastically. “Before you were even born, we could never come out
in the day. Is that not just too far away from anything you could
ever imagine? You would never adapt in my world, even if I was able
to turn you.” I have to hurt him, so that he will forget this
entire episode, so I say, smirking, “You would not survive the
turning, you are too weak.”

He pulls me abruptly to him and then I see
him bring his face closer to mine. I see his full lips and then I
feel them on mine. He moves his lips against mine firmly and I open
them under his. His hand moves around my waist and he holds me
close to him, pulling me tightly into him. I know that what he is
saying is true, I also felt it when I first saw him and I started
contemplating mortality. I know I am supposed to be with him, to
love him unconditionally and completely, but I cannot allow him to
think about me. I cannot allow him to come after me. When I leave,
it will have to be over between us.

Amanda clears her throat as she walks into
the room and he pulls away from me. Amanda suggests, “Perhaps you
two would like to talk outside on the verandah.”

Embarrassed, I turn away from Andrew.

Silently he takes my hand and we walk out
toward the verandah. The moon is full and he leans against the
railing looking up at the sky. “It would not be so bad to only live
at night.”

“Everybody always wants the whole package,
nobody is ever happy with just a part of the deal.”

He reaches out toward me and then he pulls me
against his chest again. “I understand that Amanda needs you now
that Shayne is gone. I cannot even imagine loving someone for that
long and then they are just stolen away in the blink of an eye. If
it was me, I would have been devastated, knowing what I feel for
you now. Next year, I will leave here and I will find you.”

“No, Andrew. You must not come looking for me
and you must find someone else. Please!”

He laughs dismissively. “From that day at
the café, there were so many things I wanted to say for so long but
the words always seemed to get lost before I could say them. I
never thought I would be able to say any of this to your face, to
actually come to you and hold you in my arms.”

I sigh. “You are not listening. You don’t
understand the full complexity of the situation.”

He brings his head down to mine and close to
my ear he whispers, “You have not yet noticed my obstinate streak.
I am determined and anything is possible.”

In a halo of moonlight shining down through
the tightly packed clouds, where every cloud has a silver lining, I
give him my heart entirely. There is the possibility that he would
meet another and stubbornly I hope he does.

*

A week later when Amanda and I leave on an
airplane to France, Andrew and Carmine come to the airport to say
goodbye.

After we have checked in and our bags
disappear on a conveyor belt, Amanda says we had better start going
up to the boarding gates.

I notice Andrew looking at Amanda
nervously and then I see Amanda smile at him reassuringly. Andrew
takes my hand and he leads me away from Amanda and Carmine. In a
quiet corner away from everything and everybody he
stops.

Softly he cups my elbows and he turns me
toward him.

I look up at him sadly, while he pulls a
little red velvet box from his pocket and then smiling tentatively,
he holds it out to me. “I bought you a going away present.”

“You shouldn’t have, I didn’t get you
anything.”

“It is just something small.” He hands it to
me anxiously.

I take it from him, feeling guilty.

He watches me worriedly, while I lift the
lid off the little jewelry box. Inside, there is a gold chain with
a golden heart and I immediately notice my name engraved onto the
heart.

I lift it from the box and then look up at
him again. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

He takes it from me. “Let me help you put it
on.” He turns it over and smiling he shows me the flipside. I see
his name engraved on the back of the heart.

I turn away from him and I lift my hair. He
drapes the necklace around my neck and then I feel his breath on my
skin as he fastens the clasp. He softly kisses the back of my neck
and I feel the same delicious warmth as always spread itself
through my body.

I turn toward him again. I rest my hands on
his shoulders, standing close to him, while he looks down into my
eyes, smiling demurely.

He holds the chain softly between his fingers
and then he lets his fingers trail down the chain. Softly his
fingers brush against the rise of my chest, until the heart is
nestled between my breasts, safely resting against my skin.

He leans toward me and whispers close to my
lips, “Now when you meet someone else, they would have to get
through me first, before they can get to your heart.”

I want to remind him that I do not have a
beating heart, but I did not want to spoil the moment.

He says, “I need you to know that I would
never let you go. I love you, Susie.”

I lean into him and I rest my cheek against
his chest. I can hear his booming heartbeat as if it is my own.

Amanda and I arrive at the run-down, sad and
ruined château late in the afternoon.

When we drive down the dirt road between
the tall trees and past the derelict, once white, wooden fencing, I
have a sad feeling of dread. We drive through the overgrown bushes
and then there it is, large and majestic, from a lost
era.

We stop the car in front of the defunct pond
that used to be so imposing. The walls crumbling and the floor
bright green, covered in a multitude of moss variants.

Hesitantly we walk up the wide, flowing
stairs and then in front of the large wooden doors we stop.

Amanda looks at me apprehensively, while I
look for the key I have kept all these years. I pull the heavy
silver key from the navy velvet satchel and I push it into the
keyhole.

It scrapes as I force the lock to turn and
then together we push the heavy doors open. It opens silently and I
am shocked when I see the splendor and glitter that I was so used
to when walking through these doors, non-existent. Everything is
dull and grey, all the color sucked out of the heavy chandeliers,
the rich wood and furnishings.

Amanda walks further into the foyer and then
into the first reception room. Immediately she starts to pull the
heavy white sheets off the chairs and billows of dust explode into
the air.

I follow her and then I stop at the door,
looking up at the portrait of my mother. It is as if I am looking
up at my own reflection, except for our different hair color.
Although the painting is dull, I can still see her dark, long hair
and the brilliant sapphire eyes. This is the first time I notice
the sorrow in her eyes.

When I was younger, I used to look up at
her sadly and wish that I knew her. I grew up wishing that she
never died when I was born and I often wondered what it would have
felt like to feel her arms fold around me. I grew up with Francois
as my only family member, and more often than not, he used to look
at me with regret and longing in his eyes. I knew when he looked at
me he saw my mother and he missed her. The feelings of loneliness
and solitude I used to have flood back and I feel like that little
girl again.

Amanda’s voice breaks through my dark
memories, “Help me. We will clean this room, so that we have
somewhere to sleep. Tomorrow we will walk through the rest of the
house and plan how we will restore it. It is going to be a mammoth
task.” She laughs bitterly. “Not that we have anything else to
do.”

I look at her and frown, and then silently I
start pulling sheets from the furniture.

After a while, Amanda announces, “I am
going to the car to get some dust rags, then we can start
dusting.”

“
Dusting?” I ask incredulously.

She sighs. Since Shayne died, she has been
very bossy and even more motherly than usual. It seems as if she
feels she needs to protect me even more now, in case she lost me as
well.

“We cannot sleep like this. We do not even
know if there is water here. Either we will have to walk down to
the river with buckets to bathe, or sleep like this. I prefer to
sleep clean and comfortably.”

She turns and walks out of the room, while I
continue pulling up dust covers. The dust covers did not really
work, because once you pull them off, the dust that rises into the
air settles back down onto the furniture it is meant to
protect.

When she comes back, she is carrying car
interior polish and two soft cloths. Silently we start to clean the
room and when it starts getting dark, she is happy.

She sits down in one of the chairs. “I think
this is okay for now. We would not be able to clean it all as it
should be. Tomorrow we will drive into the village and get
everything we will need to fix this room and then move on from here
– room for room.”

I consider despondently that it will take
forever, but it would be nice to restore it for the memory of
Francois and my mother.

I turn toward Amanda and I say cautiously,
“I am going for a walk.”

“
Okay, but don’t be long. It is not like
the last time you were here. Things have changed and the world is
more violent now.”

I give her a peck on the top of her head.
“I’ll be fine.” Then I walk out of the room toward the main
door.

I walk toward the little graveyard a distance
away, past the conservatory. The flowers in the conservatory, or
what is left of them, grow wild and I look at them sadly.

When I reach the little graveyard, I walk
straight to the grave of my mother. Although the grass sweeps
against my knees, I know instinctively where it is. I used to spend
so many lonely hours here, talking to her softly, as if she could
hear me and wondering whether she would have stayed with me if she
had a choice.