“So where are we going?” Tania asked Bredon as she got into his car.
“It’s a surprise,” He replied before shutting the door after her.
“You’re going to have to tell me eventually,” She said once Bredon opened his door.
“Actually I don’t. You’ll see it before I tell you.”
“Now I don’t know whether to be excited or nervous.”
“Well I hope you’re not nervous. Unless of course you’re afraid I’m going to eat you. But I assure you my intentions are honourable. I’d tell you if I was going to do that.”
Tania laughed. “I don’t what it is with boys and telling me and Ilana you’re going to eat us. Theron and Alexander say the same thing all the time. Of course in Theron’s case he’s going for the sexual innuendo.”
Bredon laughed as well. “Don’t worry about it. The council has a strict rule about biting people who don’t want you too. The only worse punishment is for turning someone against their will.”
“Really? Those must be the only two rules Alexander hasn’t broken.”
The black-haired vampire looked surprised. “How’d you know that?”
“Because he told me he’s never bitten anyone so there’s no way he could have turned anyone and obviously he hasn’t bitten anyone who’s unwilling.”
“Are you serious? He’s never bitten anyone?”
Tania frowned. “That’s what he told me. Why?”
“Well up until Blood Banks were established the only way to get blood was to bite people. I’m curious as to how he managed before that. I know he’s still upset with Kale and so won’t turn anyone but I didn’t think he’d gone so far as to refuse to bite anyone,” Bredon explained.
“Kale’s the council leader right?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“Why does Alexander hate him? You promised to tell me later and it’s later. A week later in fact.”
“I…well I’d like to but if Alex finds out I told you he’ll take me out and beat me.”
“First off, I thought you wanted to duel Alexander, secondly, I’m not going to tell him and thirdly, since he can’t charm me he’s not going to find out that way.”
“He can’t charm you? Really?” Bredon asked.
“Nope,” Tania replied smugly. It was a source of great comfort to her that Alex couldn’t charm her into doing things she didn’t particularly want to do.
“Well that explains a bit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alex almost always befriends people he can’t charm. I think it’s so he still has some way to manipulate them but then again when it comes to Alex I almost always think the worst of him. And since generally he avoids places with large communities of non-humans, because that means an increase in the presence of the council, there are often very few people who aren’t used to charismatic vampires.”
“So that’s why he started following me around!”
“Probably. Oh, we’re here,” Bredon said as he pulled into the parking lot beside a handsome grey building.
“What is this place?” Tania asked.
Bredon grinned at her. “Why a restaurant of course. You were the one who complained that we don’t know each other that well and talking during a movie gets you in trouble with the people around you so I thought dinner would be a good idea.”
Laughing, Tania followed him inside. Bredon had made a reservation so they were being seated almost immediately near one of the windows at the far right of the restaurant.
“So what’re you going to order?” Bredon asked after the pair flipped through their mutual menus for several minutes.
“I have no idea. The balsamic chicken sounded good. What about you?”
“I’m thinking the ribs.”
“You’re going to get all messy.”
“I am not. I’m not a child.”
“I can get you a bib if you want,” Tania teased.
Bredon laughed. “Keep making comments like that and I’ll change my mind about eating you.”
“I’d totally win in a fight.”
“How do you figure that one?” He asked amused.
“Well I’ve got better aim with a snowball.”
“Yeah but I’m taller and stronger then you.”
“Taller just means more of a target.”
“I’m also faster.”
“Hey I beat you back to my rez last time.”
“Only because Alex tripped me and I took him down when I fell.”
“I still won.”
“Because of interference, so it doesn’t count.”
“No it just means I’m better then you.”
“Because you weren’t tripped?”
“Yep,” Tania replied grinning. “It means I have better balance then you.”
“Alex didn’t even try and trip you,” Bredon complained.
“That was your bad luck. It also means I have better luck then you as well.”
Bredon shook his head. “I’d still win in a fight. Unless you’d forgotten that I’m a vampire?”
Tania laughed. “With all your comments about eating me? I think not. And just because you’re a vampire doesn’t mean you’d win. I bet Kayne could take you.”
“Kayne’s a psychic. You’re not,” Bredon pointed out.
“So. It doesn’t mean I can’t fight.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t fight, I said I’d win in a fight. You wouldn’t make it easy but I’d win in the end.”
Tania frowned. “That’s not fun.”
Now Bredon laughed. “Nope but it’s what would happen.”
They would have continued their argument but their food arrived and in a mutual unspoken agreement, they changed the topic and began talking about their favourite video games.
“I can’t believe you haven’t played any of the Smashbrothers games! They’re so good. Super Smashbrothers Melee is my favourite.”
Chuckling, Tania followed Bredon out of the restaurant. “Well given I’m quite a bit younger then you, I haven’t had the opportunity to play as many games as you have.”
“That’s no excuse. They’re awesome! That’s what we should do next time. You can come over and we’ll play the Super Smashbrothers Melee. If there is going to be a next time…”
Tania laughed again. “There is. How about Sunday?”
“Sounds good,” Bredon said before taking her back to campus.
“I think my brain’s going to melt,” Tania said as she sat down beside Madison at dinner.
“I know what you mean. It’s like all the profs got together and decided to make everything due the last few weeks of school,” Jill complained.
“And then it’s exams,” Chloe grumbled.
“Well after that is the Christmas break,” Madison added. “It’ll be nice to have a break from working. When are your last exams?”
“Sixteenth,” Jill said gloomily.
“Likewise,” Sarah replied.
“Ha. I have you beat. Eighteenth,” Chloe announced.
“Thirteenth,” Tania answered.
“Well I’m done the fifteenth so we’ll all have to get together before Tania leaves to say goodbye. We could have a little party,” Madison suggested.
“Can we come?” Alex asked, resting his tray on top of Tania’s head.
“Alexander, get that off me right now,” The black-haired girl snapped.
Madison smiled. “That’d be great. The more people the more fun it’ll be.”
“Great,” He said, standing for an extra few moments just to prove he wouldn’t do what Tania wanted before sitting down. The others had already gotten themselves seated during Madison and Alex’s exchange.
“So when are you all going home?” Chloe asked Alex’s group.
All five of them exchanged glances. “I’m the only one going home,” Aiden finally replied.
“But it’s Christmas,” Jill protested.
“Well my family’s still pissed at me for coming here and not going to the school they had picked out,” Kayne explained.
“I’m an orphan,” Ilana offered.
“My family’s all spread out,” Theron said.
“My…father…and I don’t get along,” Alex finished.
Both Chloe and Jill flushed. “I’m sorry,” Jill whispered.
Alex shrugged. “Doesn’t bother any of us. We’re all used to it.” Grinning suddenly, he continued. “Besides, we’re going to have our own Christmas.”
Tania chuckled. “I can only imagine,” she said.
“You make it sound like something bad,” Alex complained.
“That’s because I know you.”
“You always think the worst of me,” He grumbled.
“That’s because you always do things to shock and annoy me.”
“But that’s funny.”
“Only to you,” Tania replied, before listening in to Madison and Jill’s conversation, doing her best to ignore the vexing vampire.
“Where’s Alexander?” Tania asked, surprised not to see him leaning against the wall as was his habit.
“He said he had an essay due tomorrow that he hadn’t started,” Bredon explained, falling into step beside her.
“Oh well. So what’re you doing for Christmas?”
Bredon shrugged. “Not sure yet. I might hang around here, I might go to Ottawa and see what’s up with the council or I might go see what my friends are up to.”
“Is it always like that? Holidays I mean.”
“More or less. Depends on what I’ve been doing and where I am. It’s part of the price for being immortal. I normally spend holidays with my friends but sometimes I hang around council headquarters. A lot of other vamps who have nothing really to do show up and we have a party. It’s pretty fun.”
“Your family…” The girl asked hesitantly.
“Dead.” When Tania winced, Bredon smiled. “They were dead before I was turned so I didn’t lose anything. Had I not been turned, I probably would have ended up working some meaningless menial job until I died.”
“Is everyone like that?”
“You mean without a family? For the most part, yes. Sometimes parents will turn their kid once they’ve reached adulthood but that depends on the child’s and the parents’ preferences. Sometimes some people will form a family group but mostly we’re pretty separate. Except for our ‘father’ or ‘mother’. Most people keep pretty close to their creator.”
“Then you’re not going to spend Christmas with yours?”
Bredon shook his head and his smile turned a little sad. “He died about four hundred years ago.”
Tania gasped. “I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be. He was never all that comfortable being a vamp in the first place. Some people are like that. They just don’t feel right about it afterwards or in some rare cases, they go crazy. That’s where a lot of the negative stereotypes come from.”
Frowning, Tania asked “What do you mean by uncomfortable?”
“Well he really didn’t like the whole blood-drinking thing. He told me he’d thought he’d be able to get used to it but he never really did. I know some other people couldn’t deal with the immortality aspect and some others became convinced they were monsters. Generally those who aren’t comfortable either commit suicide or die doing something reckless.”
“So those who dislike being vampires always die?”
Bredon coughed and flushed slightly. “Almost all of the time.”
Tania eyed him suspiciously. “Almost? And why does that make you feel awkward?”
“It’s nothing really,” Bredon said, refusing to meet her gaze.
Stopping dead, Tania grabbed his arm. “Tell me.”
“Ah…well…” Bredon sighed. “Fine but you can’t let him know I told you. The only vampire, still alive, that wasn’t comfortable being a vamp is Alex and he’s in the top ten for oldest of all our kind.”
“Alexander isn’t comfortable being a vampire? The person who goes out of his way to point out the fact he’s a vampire to everyone? The person who routinely threatens to eat the people around him? That Alexander?”
Bredon’s flush deepened. “It’s…well it’s complicated.”
“How so?”
“I…I really don’t think I should tell you.”
“Tell me or I’ll stuff you full of snow,” Tania threatened, glaring at him.
Dropping his eyes, unable to take her intense stare, Bredon admitted defeat. “It’s…well it’s a bit of a scandal really,” he said as the clouds overhead parted and the moon began casting shadows around and on top of them. “Because Alex never wanted to be a vampire. Kale asked him three times and Alex refused him each time. That’s supposed to be the end of it but Kale…no one’s sure why, but he hunted Alex down and turned him, completely ignoring that basic rule.”
“He didn’t want to be? Alexander was forced to be a vampire?” Tania whispered, shocked. Is that what he meant when he said ‘old problem’? She wondered before another thought made itself known. “Wait a second! I thought you said Kale was the council leader.”
“Uh, he is.”
“The council leader broke one of the council’s own rules?” Tania snapped.
“I did say it was a bit of a scandal,” Bredon replied, embarrassed. “And it was before he was on the council. About a decade before.”
“So he breaks a rule and they just let him on the council?”
Bredon coughed. “Ummm…no. They didn’t find that out until later. About a hundred and fifty years later.”
“What?”
“Well Alex came in to see the council after ten years of what we think was wandering but we’re not really sure. At that point Kale had just been newly elected council leader and as soon as Alex saw him sitting with the others he ran away. No one heard from him until a little over a century had passed. Then he publicly announced at one of our general meetings he wasn’t going to follow a hypocrite, explaining how he had been turned against his will, and that he was leaving Europe. That’s about the time he came here.”
“So Kale’s the leader of the vampire council in Europe.”
“No. Not anymore. He decided to start a council in North America and so left Europe a few years after Alex did.”
“So in other words he’s stalking Alexander.”
“Not exactly. He mostly leaves him alone,” Bredon said placatingly.
“He followed him to another continent. I call that stalking,” Tania retorted angrily. “I can’t believe you people let him do that. Wasn’t anything done about him breaking the rule? Wasn’t he punished at all?”
“He was the council leader and none of the other council members called for his arrest so…”
“So because he had the entire council wrapped around his finger, nothing was done? How is that any kind of justice?”
“I knew telling you was a bad idea,” Bredon muttered.
Tania whipped about to glare at him. “Because no one’s done anything! You not only let a known criminal lead you but you continue to allow him to torment his victim.”
“It’s not like that. Alex does a lot to provoke the council,” The black-haired vampire protested.
“I’m surprised that’s all he does. I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to kill this Kale bastard.”
Bredon made a choking noise. “Attacking a member of the council could very well lead to his execution or at the very least imprisonment.”
“So what you’re telling me is that this sick-twisted fuck named Kale is completely untouchable? That nothing can be done?” Tania demanded.
“It’s really not as bad as you make it sound,” Bredon said half-heartedly.
“No it’s worse because none of you find any of this to be a problem.”
Bredon sighed. “Come on,” he said. “It’s cold out. You should get inside.”
The pair walked in silence, Tania still fuming about the lack of action taken by the vampire community as a whole and Bredon so as not to spark another argument.
Tania spent a great deal of her free time Wednesday thinking about what Bredon had said. She knew she needed to get used to the idea before she saw Alex or she’d slip up and Alex would be angry with Bredon. It’s not like I can actually do anything about it, she thought to herself, staring up at her the white tiles, complete with drawings in pen from several of the previous residents, which made up her ceiling. This all happened hundreds of years ago and I’m not a vampire. I’m just a normal human. No one would listen to me anyway. Sighing, Tania did her best to put the conversation from her mind and so when Thursday came she was more or less her old self.
“Was your essay hard?” Tania asked Alex as both he and Bredon fell in beside her.
Alex snorted. “No. It’s just the sourcing that’s annoying. It’s hard to source stuff you’re writing from personal experience.”
“So you make up sources,” Tania stated rather then asked.
The brown-haired vampire laughed. “Bingo.”
“Which magazine did you use?” Bredon asked.
Snickering, Alex answered “Dark History.”
“I thought you’d use ‘Spirit of the Ages’.”
“I used that in the last essay I wrote for this class.”
“What are these magazines?” Tania wanted to know.
“They’re published by the councils as a whole and are pretty much used for us vamps to source stuff that we remember. Sometimes people actually publish articles in them; sometimes we just get random history articles published in them,” Bredon explained.
Tania raised an eyebrow. “And the profs don’t notice?”
“You actually think they go check every single person’s paper to see if they’ve been sourced correctly?” Alex asked, raising his own eyebrow.
Rolling her eyes, Tania replied “No but they could easily do it at random and catch you if the article you sourced doesn’t actually exist.”
“We e-mail the name of the article we made up to the magazine and they change an article in the issue we selected and rename it that. We’re careful about these kinds of things,” Bredon told her.
Tania shook her head. “It almost sounds easier to just actually use real sources.”
“Yeah but they tend to be horribly inaccurate or get times and/or people mixed up or are just weird sounding,” Alex complained.
“Well then why don’t you write a paper or an article or something on what it was really like?” Tania asked.
“But then I have to either source older documents or make-up some kind of research I did. Both are bothersome so no.”
“Well then stop bitching about it,” Tania retorted tartly.
“But what’s the fun in being immortal if you can’t whine about how hard things are?” Alex asked grinning.
“So that’s the greatest perk to being immortal?”
“Yep.”
Bredon laughed as Tania rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I bother trying to talk to you,” She said.
“I don’t know either. You’d think you’d have learned.”
“Bastard.”
“I thought I told you that I’m not…”
Alex was cut off by the snowball that splattered all over his face. Laughing, Tania ducked behind a tree and threw another icy globe at him. Dodging away from the oncoming missile and wiping the snow off his face, Alex mock-growled as he made a snowball himself. Behind and slightly to the left of him, Bredon was doing the same thing. The pair of them stalked towards her and Tania pretended to cower behind one of the larger trees as she prepared her defence.
As they came around the side and launched their snowballs at her, she rolled away and hurled her own projectiles before running back to the path giggling. Startled by the suddenness of her move, neither vampire was able to dodge and so the pair of them ended up with snow-covered faces.
Exchanging a glance they grinned evilly at one another. Re-arming themselves, Bredon and Alex gave chase, running after the girl all the way to her residence, where the three of them collapsed outside in helpless laughter at their snow-covered state.
“So this is your apartment?” Tania asked, turning around and around as she took in the whole place. There was a small kitchen that took up a corner of this, the main room. Bredon’s bedroom was down the hall as was the bathroom and the spare bedroom he’d turned into an office.
“Yep. My current home. Now let’s go sit down.”
Smiling, Tania followed him over to the deep green couch that faced the TV. In front of the couch was a low coffee table that held three bags of chips, a bowl of popcorn and several drinks. “So we don’t have to get up,” Bredon explained as they sat down.
Bredon killed Tania the first three rounds with no problem. The fourth round she switched characters and with Samus was able to put up a half-decent fight. By the sixth round it was an even match up.
“You’ve played fighting games before haven’t you,” Bredon complained.
“Street fighter two for years. One of my brother’s favourite games.”
“Here I was thinking it’d be easy wins all the way.”
“Nope. Told you I could take you in a fight.”
Laughing, Bredon used a giant hammer to knock Tania over the horizon. “Not all the time.”
On their way back to campus a few hours later, Bredon said “Thanks for not mentioning anything to Alex.”
Tania sighed. “I told you I wouldn’t. Besides what would that achieve? It all happened centuries before even my grandparents were born and I’m just a normal human. There’s nothing for me to do as much as I would like to. It’s up to you people to fix it.”
Bredon ran a hand through his hair nervously. “Yeah I know. I just…You have to understand we’re taught from the time we’re turned that the council is the supreme authority, that they have our best interests at heart, that they ensure that justice is served. To think otherwise goes contrary to everything I learned and everything I believe in. I…well I never really got close to Alex before, none of us really have. He avoids the rest of our kind for the most part, and so I thought maybe he’d done something or he’d lied or something like that. But now…I just don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Take your time and figure things out for yourself. Don’t let some shadowy council tell you what to believe in and what to think. Trust yourself and your own conscience.”
The vampire smiled slightly. “Thanks. You’re the only person who thinks I might be able to figure things out for myself.”
“That’s because you can. You’re not a child anymore.”
Laughing, Bredon turned into the university’s parking lot. “Well that’s a relief. I was worried you see that I’d somehow reverted to the body of a five-year old and…”
Tania punched his shoulder. “I mean you don’t act like a child anymore, idiot.”
Bredon pretended to lose control of the car from Tania’s punch, turning them around until he suddenly swung into a parking space. Tania glared at him and said “I take back what I said. You still act like a kid.”
“Only sometimes,” He said with a wink as they got out of the car.
Tania’s only reply was a thrown snowball.