22. Xander

Ishouldn’t have let Luke go so quickly, but forcing him to stay back and talk things through would have only exacerbated his doubts. Luke still had agency over himself and could do what he wished, although I still wasn’t certain what had upset him so much. He enjoyed our morning together, or at least, he told me as much. Nevertheless, his demeanor changed so quickly. Was it something I said, or perhaps something I did without realizing? Whatever set him off, I was now left all alone in my massive, empty house, and nothing about that was good for me.

I wanted to pen a letter to him immediately so he would get it in a day and have a chance to at least read what I had wished to say in person. I decided against that, however. Some of those thoughts were coming from a nasty and bitter place, one of past rejections and insecurities, and keeping them trapped in my head was a better outcome than letting them spill out through the ink on paper.

I walked over to the bedroom window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Luke walking down the driveway. Luke was long gone, so I stared through the filter of the curtains at the lawn, glittery and damp with dewdrops.

The morning light, even dulled by the thick fabric curtains, burned my retinas, forcing me to look away. I blinked a few times, the dryness stinging each time I closed my eyes. If only I could have been blessed with humanity, I would never have had to feel the burn of light or the overwhelming desire of bloodlust, or the sheer nothingness where my beating heart should have been.

No, I had to be cursed with vampiric parents, one turned long before my birth by someone he considered a friend, the other born into it through her own mother’s lineage. I never stood a chance. The moment I first opened my eyes as a newborn they were red, indicating hunger not for milk, but for blood.

I’d been raised on the taste of animal blood, something widely available even to humans, but nothing could replace the sweet, sharp taste of pure, unadulterated human blood. I craved it every waking hour, and whenever I finally got it, the satisfaction was short-lived.

Luke changed all that for me. I craved his taste more often than I cared to admit, but he gave it to me freely, with as little hesitation as I could hope for from a mere human. His willingness to make me happy gave me a different outlook on my desire. I thought I had found someone who understood me after centuries of searching.

As it turned out, all I had found was that I was still lacking in tact and the ability to love unconditionally. How could I not see that? And how could Luke not understand what I was going through? He took to everything else he learned about me so well.

I descended the stairs to the first floor, stopping for only a moment to look out the window for any sign of Luke. I’d waited long enough to give him time to get out of the front gate, but I still couldn’t help but check in case he changed his mind and turned around to come back to me. I hadn’t lost him yet, and I would allow myself to hold out hope for a little while longer.

I turned away from the window and descended the next flight of stairs, the one that led to the dungeons. In a select few vampires’ houses, these cages held prisoners kept there for blood harvesting. In others, they were used for the unlucky animals that replaced the need for human blood. My dungeon was used for the latter. It still wasn’t pretty, but at least I didn’t have to live with the knowledge that I held hoards of naked human beings captive for my own nourishment. I never understood how those vampires could exist with the knowledge of their crimes, and I hoped Luke would never reach that chapter in his vampire history book. It was an ugly one, to say the least. If I ever turned to that kind of sadistic life, I would carve the stake myself to drive straight through my heart.

I pushed open the heavy iron door, revealing that I didn’t have any livestock stowed away in here after all. I’d released the last of them after Luke came into my life, thinking I would no longer need inferior animal blood.

How wrong I had been.

With a sigh, I let the door thud shut behind me and I leaned against it, the weight of everything that had transpired this morning finally sinking onto my shoulders. If I had the ability to cry, I would have done so now. Never did I envy humans more than in this moment, when my lack of tears only served to prevent me from the breakdown I so desperately needed to have.

The dark, cold, musty dungeon surrounded me, its emptiness a painful reminder of everything I didn’t have. I knew what I needed to do, and I knew it would disgust Luke, but in times like this, I needed blood to give me strength.

I waited for nightfall and in the blink of an eye, I found myself at the local farmer’s house, asking him for a brood of his plumpest, finest meat rabbits. It didn’t please me to take them home, and it pleased me even less to condemn them to a life of deprivation in my dungeon. I could blame Luke for driving me back to this life all I wanted, but at the end of the day, I was responsible for my own actions. Luke was merely a spark in an endless series of dull, lifeless days.