Chatper Eight:
We almost drove out of my driveway when Harry gave me a good look and said I should probably change my clothes. I looked at myself and jumped out of his car. I ran back inside and rinsed off my feet before I slipped into my skinny jeans and Black Veil Brides band tee. I looked in my mirror and decided that a hoodie was needed.
I jumped into my black converses and grabbed my iPhone. I texted my father, letting him know I was going out and locked the doors behind me. Harry and I drove off toward the more rural part of town and talked on the way.
"Look, you are going to think I'm crazy for saying this," he started. "But I'm different."
"Well of course you are," I started. He cut me off before I could say anything else.
"I'm different physically," he said. I looked him over, nothing seemed wrong. He was ripped and all his body parts seemed to be in it's proper place. Harry pulled over into a wooded park's parking lot. He put the car in park and looked at me.
"What have you noticed about me that's different?" he asked looking at me. I looked at him and started to say I didn't notice anything. "No, you have. Think."
I started to think about our past. His sharp, white teeth when we met. His pale skin. No body heat. No heartbeat.
"Your sharp teeth? Your skin and heartbeat?" I asked. He nodded.
"Those are what makes it obvious that I'm different," he took a deep breath and continued. "Bethany, I'm not human. I haven't been human in 500 years."
"What?" I asked. I was completely confused. Was he blowing smoke up my ass or something?
"Bethany, I'm a vampire. I've been a vampire since 1513. I was dying after a man attacked me and Zayn found me. He turned me and I've been this way ever since."
I looked at him with a look of disbelief. How on earth could Harry be a vampire? Vampires don't exist. They only exist in Twilight and Dracula. Not in real life. Not in my life.
"Are you serious?" I asked finally.
"Yes. And the red head you saw me with? I wasn't making out with her. I was feeding off of her," he continued. With every word he spoke, I began to believe him less.
He was nineteen when he was turned. Harry really had lost his family three years earlier. His mother and father died of a sickness and his sister passed right after they did. He lived with his grandparents and started to go out more and get into trouble more. He started to hook up with prostitutes and took an interest in gambling. When Harry had gotten himself into an unpayable debt, a man found him and attacked him.
Harry had fought with the man to keep him away, but the man was stronger. Harry was beaten down and left dying. As he laid in the alley, he thought of how he wished he could have stayed with his grandparents. That's when Zayn found him. Zayn was a freelance vampire and found Harry dying. Harry begged for him to change him so he could live and finally Zayn agreed. Zayn turned him and Harry became one of the family members.
Harry lived with Zayn and his mate Victoria for the first two hundred years before Liam and Lana came to the family. Then Louis and Angel and Niall and Jocelyn. Harry was left as the only one on his own. He lived not caring what anyone thought about him or what he did. He almost left his family to go on his own, but Niall stopped him.
According to Harry, Niall was the baby of the vampire family. Niall and Jocelyn showed up about 100 years ago. Niall had come to England after he had just turned. He rode on a ship and on the way met Jocelyn. She was a young girl who was coming to England with her family. Jocelyn had been abused by her family and when Niall and her met, they fell in love. Jocelyn had accepted him and decided to become a vampire with him.
When Jocelyn turned, she had an unnatural thirst for blood. She craved it as the earth craved the sun. She started to go on rampages and that's when Harry's family found her. They let her join their family and taught her control. Because Niall was the closest to Harry's age when he turned, Harry became close with Niall. Ever since then, they have been inseparable, like real brothers.
When Harry finished his story, I looked at him in confusion. I was torn on whether to believe him or not. How could someone go into this much detail with a story, just to lie to them. It makes sense when you think about it because vampires do have pale skin, they do have sharp, white teeth, they don't have heart beat and they don't have any body heat. But they also had to stay in the dark, didn't they? They would burn in sunlight, and I had seen Harry in the sunlight numerous times. And they had fangs didn't they?
"Hold the phone here for a second, babe," I said. "If you're a vampire, how are you in the sunlight? And where are your fangs?"
"There is this wonderful invention called sunscreen, my dear," he replied. "And my fangs do show, but they only get super sharp when I have to feed. Obviously, I don't need to feed right now."
He showed me his teeth and pointed at his canines. His canines were unnaturally sharp. They looked as if he had cosmetic surgery done just to make them sharper. He denied every bit of it when I asked him if he had surgery. I could only imagine what they looked like when he needed to feed.
I guess there was no denying it. Harry Edward Styles was indeed a vampire. I was a little frightened when I realized I was sitting in a car with a vampire, but realized that if he was going to hurt me, he would have done it by now. I started to think of Justice again, what really happened to her? Did he feed off her and kill her?
"Harry, what really happened with Justice?" I asked.
"Justice is alive and well. When we got into an argument at school, she tried blackmailing me into turning her into a vampire. I didn't want her to become one of us. She would never leave me alone if she did, plus she was too young. She was only fifteen. I wasn't going to turn someone so young. When I snapped at her, she went to Zayn. Zayn turned her without a second thought and helped her fake her death.
"Justice is currently the co-owner of The Bite. She owns it with her mate Zack. We talk occasionally, just to catch up."
I leaned back into my seat to process everything. Either my boyfriend was a psychopath or he was telling the truth. I was in love with a vampire. I sighed and thought about it some more. Every time I thought about it, I felt like I was going to be sick to my stomach. Yes, it explained a lot of the weird things that I noticed about Harry, but did that mean that they were true?
"It sounds insane, but it's the truth. Every word," he said as I turned to look at him. "Shit, you look like you're going to be sick."
I felt like I was going to be sick. Finding out you were dating someone who drank human blood and probably killed someone in all of an hour would make your stomach turn. I put my head between my knees to hopefully stop my nausea, unfortunately that didn't work out. I jumped out of the car and laid down on the concrete and let the rain fall on my skin. The cool rain helped a bit, but I still felt sick.
Harry joined me on the concrete and continued to talk. He asked if I really believed him and if I was scared. I had to admit, I was a little. I didn't know if he was going to come after me or not in a blood lust rage. I laid on the concrete, letting the rain find it's home on my face and thunder boom across the sky. The sky was ruthless today and started to bring the rain down harder. Every drop that pounded on my face stung, but helped soothe my nausea.
After a few moments, I decided that I could believe him and that he really was telling the truth. When he asked again if I believed him, I nodded and continued to let the rain sink deep into my clothes and splatter my face.
He moved closer to me and pressed his body against mine. His body was chilled from the April storm and his no body heat. I turned onto my side so our chests were just barely touching. Both of our clothes soaked from the rain, clung to our bodies as we lie together. He placed his tattooed arm around my waist and pulled me closer, so there was not even a millimeter of space between us.
I looked at Harry's scruffy face and into his blue green eyes. He was still the boy who I had fallen in love with, but now I looked at him and saw him as a predator. He wasn't human. He hunted in the night and killed people to survive. The blue green eyes that were looking into my ice blue ones had seen five hundred years worth of pain, sorrow and loneliness. His eyes were full of compassion and chivalry. They also held a desire for the hunt. I ran the back of my fingers down his face, stopping at his chin and tracing it's chiseled structure. He smiled and took the hand that held me close to hold mine. He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed them gently.
I smiled and said we should probably get back in the car, otherwise I would get pneumonia. He smiled and carried me back to the car like I was a doll. I had to admit, I was surprised that he actually carried me. I expected to just get a hand and be pulled up, but no. I was picked up like a doll and carried in both arms to the passenger seat.
Harry set me down and started to walk around to the driver's seat. I looked into his back seats and figured there was enough room for two, so I climbed back and tapped on the window for Harry to join. He opened the door and slid in with me. He sat down on the seat and smiled at me. The water streaked down his face into his soaked clothes. I smirked at him and grabbed the collar of his uniform. I pulled him on top of me and started to kiss him again.
I kissed him with the same passion I had felt the night I told him about my scars. He kissed back ravenously and wrapped one arm around the back of my neck and the other on my hip. He moved his hand on my hip slowly down to my thigh and to the back of my knee. He caressed it for a moment and then pulled my leg around his waist.
We made out in his car for a good half hour. There was something about that moment in the car that made our love stronger. Harry had just laid the cards on the table and bared everything to me. We were now even. As he drove me home, he played Def Leppard in the car, just for me. We sang along to Pour Some Sugar On Me, like we did on our first date.
When Harry dropped me off, I invited him inside so we could talk more. He accepted the offer and followed me inside. My father still wasn't home so I figured we would be okay if Harry stayed for a while. He followed me into the kitchen and sat down on the counter as I dug through the cabinets. I found two packages of hot chocolate. I looked at Harry and motioned for him to get off the counter.
He gave me a pouty face and jumped down. There was a little pool of rain water from where he sat. I cleaned it up and started to boil the water in the kettle. I felt his arms wrap around my waist and him bury his chin in my shoulder. I felt him smile and kiss my neck.
"God, how I missed you over the last weekend," he whispered to me.
"I missed you too," I whispered back. I looked up into the cabinets and retrieved two mugs. I set them on the counter and turned to look at Harry. His face was only inches from mine and was smiling. He kept his strong arms wrapped around me and pulled me closer to his body. He was freezing from the cold water in his clothes and his skin. I smiled and broke free of his grip.
"I'm going to change out of these clothes before I get sick. You should too," I said. He followed me upstairs and asked what he would be able to wear. I just about opened the door to my room and thought if my father had any clothes he didn't wear anymore.
I dissapeared into my father's bedroom and retrieved a pair of his old sweat and a tee shirt. I tossed them at Harry and pointed to the bathroom. He carried the clothes in his arms and entered the bathroom. He shut the door behind him and I went into my room. I changed into a pair of sweats and my old wrestling cheer tee shirt from America. I looked at my hair in my vanity and took it out of the soaked hairtie.
My hair cascaded down my shoulders like a black waterfall and didn't look too bad damp. I dried some of my hair off so it wasn't making wet spots on my shirt. I walked out of my room and found Harry waiting outside my door. We walked downstairs together and into the kitchen to check up on the water. We made ourselves hot chocolate and talked more about his vampirism.
Harry explained fact from fiction about vampires. He told me how they have a Coven and that the Coven rules over the whole vampire race. The Coven was run by six Elders: Ezra, Xander, Zyah, Jeremiah, Obediah, and Phillip. Obediah and Zyah were the oldest of the Elders. Jeremiah and Phillip were the newest edition to the Elders.
The Elders were around from the very start and set the strictest laws known to the universe. They make our govornment's laws look like house hold rules. The oldest vampire in existence, Obediah, was the one that passed the laws. He was the leader of the Coven's council and wasn't a vampire that showed mercy to those who broke the law.
If any vampire broke any of the laws, they were to be burned in sunlight or stabbed to death with stakes. There would be a trial first, to prove yourself innocent or guilty and then the sentencing trial. During the sentencing trial, you were lead to the Coven's sacred round hall and placed in the middle of the floor. The six Elders would be sitting in their thrones, with Obediah in the largest throne. They would be wearing the sacred Red Robes of Ruling and have their faces hid in the hoods. Only the bright or dark colors of their eyes would be showing.
Obediah would speak and repeat your charges. Once you accepted your guilt, he would read your punishment, which was usually death. You weren't given any last words, they saw that as a form of weakness. The six Elders would all stand up and carry out your sentence, either by opening the ceiling and letting the daylight in or staking you, all at once.
I looked at Harry with bewildered eyes. I told him I hoped he hadn't broken any laws and that he never would. He smiled and replied, "I haven't" and started to tell me about his vampire Family.
Since all vampires were part of the Coven, they divided themselves up into packs called Families. Harry's Family had been one of the oldest Families in existence. First came the Coven in 1200, then the Families soon after.
Harry had nine people in his family. He told me about Zayn and Victoria and Niall and Jocelyn. He had mentioned the other siblings, but never really explained them to me. Liam turned when he was twenty years old. He was three hundred years old and came along when he was attacked. He was a soldier in the British army and had been wounded when Zayn found him. Zayn found all of the boys, except for Niall.
Liam was dying from a gunshot wound and Zayn had turned him without Liam's consent. Liam was a religious human and when he awoke to a new life as the undead, he wasn't terribly pleased. Liam went on a rampage and nearly destroyed an entire town. He killed all of the humans, except for one: his mate Lana. Lana was the daughter of a widowed farmer in the town. Liam had killed her father and just about killed Lana when he noticed something about her. He fell in love with her and turned her without consent, like Zayn had to him.
Lana was plenty mad at him for a few months, but she never left him. She felt the same. Eventually she forgave him and has never left his side since.
Louis was the youngest vampire, along with Angel. Louis was from the "Roaring Twenties" era. He was born and raised in England, but went to New York for a vacation. Louis had met Angel at a speakeasy in New York and fell in love with her. Angel showed her true nature the night before Louis left and turned him as well. Louis returned to England with Angel and the two hid in the shadows together until Zayn found them. Zayn brought them into the Family and the whole pack stayed together ever since.
"Will I ever get to meet them?" I asked when he finished. He shook his head and told me that Zayn and Liam and Victoria weren't particularly fond of humans. I asked why and he shrugged.
"Beats me. In the five hundred years I've known them, they never told me why. Just that they despised humans."
We continued talking about the Coven and different Families as the storm raged on outside. The lightning had gotten worse and the thunder boomed louder across the sky.
To me, thunderstorms were like a foreshadowing. They always started before something major was going to happen. I didn't know what the future held for me, but I now knew I wouldn't have to face it alone. I had Harry and I knew that as long as I had him, I would be safe. And so would he.