After Gunnar was born, Vanessa moved on to the next vict– er, man in her sites. Alika Kahananui, a sophisticated but slightly older man from Sulani. Alika had been in her class for a while, and like some of the others, he was married, no children, and seemed not to have an interest in them at all.
He did, however, have an interest in woohoo, and fooling around on his wife.
Vanessa, who was a romantic at heart, and had, at one point, believed in such things as true love and soul mates, wondered what had happened to the world where people cheated on their spouses at the drop of a hat. It seemed like most the men in her fledgling clan were married… and had cheated with her.
In no time at all, it seemed, her little ones were growing up.
Gunnar went from a baby to a handsome toddler with brown hair. Thus far, most of Vanessa’s children had been blonde, like most of the Bartlett family. Morticia did have her father’s gorgeous black hair, but until Gunnar, she was the only unique one.
Theodore was now a child starting school. He was a mischievous boy, though he loved art and loved his brother.
When Alika’s baby was born, Vanessa named her Ailani.
Being from Sulani made it difficult for Alika to get to Brindleton Bay all the time. And since their ‘affair’ Alika had been distant. Or that could have been the Rose Vanessa had given him? Who knows…
However, when he started noticing that something was off about himself, he returned to Brindleton Bay, but didn’t quite screw up the courage to go to her house and ask the burning questions inside himself.
He was out and about, walking on the beach, asking the winter breeze about those thoughts when he Transition took place.
At home, Vanessa felt him. All the tomes said that as her powers grew stronger, she would be able to sense her fledglings. Alika was the first. But she could tell that he was in peril.
She left the safety of her home and risked the daylight to find him, though it took convincing to bring him back to her house for his first training and some much-needed plasma.
“I don’t think I should,” he protested. “I don’t feel well.”
“Of course, you don’t,” Vanessa told him. “You’re a vampire now.”
“What!? When!? How!?” he spluttered, then his eyes narrowed. “When we…”
Vanessa just looked at him. “Come home with me. We’ll get you something to quench your thirst and then I will explain everything.”
Alika returned with her and soon learned that his life had changed forever and that now, his beloved Sulani would probably be the worst place in the world for him.
“I just can’t leave my wife,” he protested.
Vanessa shrugged. He already had, he just didn’t realize it yet. “No matter,” she told him. “In time, she will leave you.” Death would claim the ones who weren’t turned. “It’s my job now to teach you the things you need to know in order to survive.”
But as he left that night, Vanessa worried that the sunny shores of Sulani would be this one’s downfall.
But soon, her worries turned to thoughts of someone else.
Geoffrey Landgraab, husband to Nancy Landgraab, heiress to the Landgraab dynasty. Geoffrey took his wife’s last name, and was basically ruled over by her in every way. When their elder son, Johnny, wanted to become a comedian, Nancy disowned him and Geoffrey just when along with it.
He was older, but then, so was Alika. Vanessa had taken the chance on an older man and it worked out fine.
However, unlike Alika, Geoffrey was a bit of a prude, and the idea of woohoo in a coffin revolted him. So she was forced to drag the bed that came with her house out of storage and actually use it.
Had she left something different in his heart beat just before she drank from her and made him drink from her in turn?
Looking back on it, Vanessa couldn’t say for sure if she had, but just days after her interlude with Geoffrey, the news broke out of Oasis Springs that the husband of Nancy Landgraab had died of a heart attack in his home.
Shocked, because she had been sure she’d felt his Transition beginning, Vanessa called upon the Tomes. She could nothing. So she called Lilith and confessed that she had turned Geoffrey.
“He was old,” Lilith told her.
“So was Alika,” Vanessa reminded her. “Should it make a difference?”
Lilith was silent. “Sometimes,” she said, at last, and in a very, very quiet voice, “the older they are, the more their bodies cannot handle our gift. It is best if you do not turn the elderly.”
“But you’ve done it before,” Vanessa said. She could hear it in Lilith’s voice.
“Yes… I have…” Lilith’s voice was cold and distance, and there was so much pain. “And I won’t do it ever again. Neither should you.”
The next question on Vanessa’s lips was cut off by the sound of the phone going dead. Lilith made it quite clear that she wasn’t going to discuss whatever had happened so long ago. Vanessa knew that Lilith had no vampiric offspring, and now wondered if this was by choice … a painful choice made sometime in her past.
But the other message was clear — leave the elderly alone.