Young Forever (10 page)

But
nevermind
them. I had to carry Otis into an abandoned warehouse and there we hid, him bleeding and me crying. I had no choice and I had to bite him, to take his life, to turn him into what I was, a blood-thirsty vampire.

Once it was over, I had to put him in the ground and wait. I would wait on him forever, but I knew it wasn’t going to be that long. He was rise up again and become one of us, like me, like
Gerta
and
Aloiki
. He was going to make a great vampire, I just knew it. But I had to wait until the process was completed, until he became one of us, until he became young forever.

Even though
Aloiki
and
Gerta
were furious with me, they joined me by the grave I’d dug for Otis. We sat in silence and waited, not speaking. It was a long time before I heard him clawing his way out of the dirt and once he did, once he was finished, I ran into his arms. He hugged me tightly, told me he’d never felt better. He would take to it like a fish to water, being a vampire. But it didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped. Not quite. He became a problem because all this new power went to his head. And he became a problem also because of what
Gerta
had warned me of. He came with people who loved him and didn’t take kindly to the fact that I’d turned him into a vampire. But, in my defense, I didn’t know he had a girlfriend.

However, that didn’t matter, not at first. I loved him still and thought I always would. Love blinds us. It truly does. But this was the sort of thing that happened when you’re bitten by love and young forever.

“I told you so,”
Gerta
said. “I told you he’d be trouble.”

And she’d been right. But that is a story for another time.