Within a few months, little Donovan and his sister, Dominique, became the newest Bartletts in the family. Vanessa wondered at how tiny and frail they were. Like human babies. She more than marvelled that she felt none of the natural vampire blood lust when holding or feeding them. In fact, their little heartbeats which so thrilled her in older mortals, soothed her in a different way.
The tomes said that this was normal… a natural bond between mother and child. It is the way that natural vampire bloodlines are protected. Because otherwise, the mothers would kill the babes in childbirth for the blood.
Vanessa shuddered when she read that, thinking of how small her babies were when they were born. She thought back to her own mother, now gone, and wondered how she had felt on the day she first saw her own little twins.
In her spare time, Vanessa continues her work teaching. She also begins a lucrative side job as a digital artist… for more discerning patrons. If Victor knew, he would have guilted her into stopping. Forging art isn’t legal, Van, his voice said in her mind.
But it’s a way to make a living without having to stray too far from her babies.
And then, there was Eric…
Not unlike Dominic, Eric is a married man, from a large, blended family in Willow Creek. What he was doing out here in Brindleton Bay taking an art class, Vanessa couldn’t say. But she did know what he was doing in her coffin that night after the class had ended.
He looked pleasantly surprised when they tumbled, laughing, from the coffin. It was such a shame she’d have to erase the moment from his memory, even briefly.
“Take this rose, Eric,” she told him as she gazed into his eyes. “Breathe deeo it’s scent and think of our time together…” She watched as he held the rose to his face, nostrils flaring… “no more, my sweet.”
The rose, she had learned, was a means to help the victims of a vampire bite forget their attacker until the time of their transitioning. She had not done so with Dominic. Had not known to. But the tomes revealed so many things.
One last taste of his blood… and hers… and then the deed was done.
Downstairs, Geoffrey Landgraab was asking to see her online portfolio. She smiled and queued it up for him, all the while thinking of the tiny heartbeat she could already feel quickening inside her.
Her senses were becoming more attuned to her body and its needs. The tomes said this would happen the stronger she became as a vampire. It was an amazing feeling!
Ushering Geoffrey out the door with the rest of the class, Vanessa tumbled into her coffin and slept like… well, the dead.
In the following days, Mortimer Goth began to show an interest in her, as well. Another married man… Vanessa was beginning to sense a theme here… but one married to the one and only Bella Goth. Mortimer was a writer by trade. Smart, sophisticated, and until now, totally uninterested in flirting with her. He just came for the art, he claimed. Nothing more.
And yet… she sensed it was lingering in the back of his mind. A thought, a forbidden thought. One which might change the harried writer’s life if he but gave into it, and let it take form.
Still, Vanessa knew he would be a hard one to latch onto. The stories of his great love affair with Bella were well-known. This one needed a gentle and cunning hand.
In the meantime, she still had the twins to deal with. They were growing quickly and learning so many things in such a short period of time. Sometimes the men from her art class would take a break from the easels to dote on them.
The smell of the food they ate, however, made her sick to her stomach, but she needed to carry on. How, though? One hundred babies? One hundred mouths to feed this human rubbish to?
The tomes said there would come a time when they would grow no more and cease to human.
Not unlike someone else, who finally returned to her to finish his transition and receive his first training as a fledgling vampire.
Welcome to the clan, Eric Lewis, newly made vampire.