Chapter 2 : The New Neighbors
Charlotte's Point of View
London, 1666
"Thou will not go!" Aunt Vivian strongly pronounced, gaining the attention of the busy maid and her two beautiful sisters. Crumpling the invitation in her hands and throwing it with the other invitations on the coffee table, Aunt Lora warily picked it up.
"That doesn't sound like the usual." I replied, my eyes surveying my closet for a new gown to where. Even if they tell me not to, I know they'd let me.
"Vivi, is this it?" Aunt Lora whispered. Trembling, her eyes stapled on the crumpled courting ball invitation that her sister just threw. Blood rose to her cheeks in a slight fit of anger and anxiety. She becomes even more beautiful with the look of warmth on her pale face.
"Oh Lora dear, tis just a courting ball. Our Charlotte won't be left in the wall if that's what thou worries about." Aunt Margaret assured Aunt Lora as she soothingly stroked her back.
"Tis the surname dear Margaret. Tis them finding out our Charlotte, I fear and not some silly wall flower problems." Aunt Lora sat on a nearby chair and leaned on the coffee table to inhale the sweet fragrance of the newly picked roses sitting on a white porcelain vase.
Aunt Lora is the paranoid one, a paranoia that only the scent of roses can cure. The scent of it has become more of an aroma therapy for her. I wonder what she really was when she was still human.
"What might be wrong with the Ravenhearsts?" I asked as I finally picked a gown and went to the other side of the closet to look for shoes to match it.
"Christ! Charlotte have you forgotten the news we told you last year about the new surnames? The Ravenhearsts, they're the French circle. That ... venomous woman, Portia Bay married the owner of that manor, which left her with his son when he died." Aunt Vivian blurted, her eyebrows meeting with irritation of my forgetfulness, or shall I say insensibility.
"Hence?" I replied gasping for air as the maid tightend my girdle up. Too tight. Too tight girdle and too tight Aunt.
"Ohh, dear God." Aunt Vivian sighed hopelessly as I saw her raise both hands motioning an 'I give up' gesture to Aunt Margaret who tried to talk me through.
Aunt Lora was still inhaling the sweet fragrance of the pretty blood red roses as Aunt Margaret left her to fix my hair. Aunt Margaret is the considerate one. Maybe too considerate that I'm beginning to become their spoiled little brat... as I am.
"If thou really dread to go then..." Aunt Margaret started, looking at me and releasing the last word to the mirror in the dresser along with a soft uncomfortable sigh.
"Oh please. Oh please Aunt Margaret." I clutched her hands, begging my way through my favorite Aunt.
". . .As long as all of us come with thee." Aunt Margaret suggested, turning to me with a faint smile.
"Goodness me, of course!" I leaped on my seat and embraced my dear Aunt. Clapping my hands like a five year old receiving an award, Aunt Vivian pulled Aunt Margaret by the arm and dragged her out of my room seemingly disappointed of her sister's idea. Aunt Vivian was the overprotective one. She's the main elder anyway, always protective of her precious circle of vampires.
Now all that's left in the room were the maid, whom I asked to fix my hair, Aunt Lora, who's currently starting to doze off, and me, trying to eavesdrop a conversation on the other side of the door.
They were talking about the fulfillment of some prophecy and the danger it might bring to the main circle and the kingdom and something like that. I don't really care. And then, I heard a...
"What?!" A loud shrill scream was heard just outside of my room. Surely that was Aunt Bertha, the exaggerating one. She was a theatre actress when she has'nt been turned yet. She usually does the yelling with Aunt Vivian as close second so we didn't mind her.
After my hair and makeup was done for quite half an hour of boredom, I went downstairs to the living room and saw all of them. All eighteen of them dressed in ball gowns. Wait, where's Aunt Lora? Okay, make that seventeen.
"She's asleep dear" Aunt Monica answered as she hauled her white fur shawl and wrapped it in her bare shoulders. Aunt Monica's the only one who could read thoughts. I find her 'abilities' really cool but she always gets upset when I try to appreciate her, saying it was a hideous curse not some silly gift.
There was something heavy in the air tonight. No smiles on their pale dead but ravishingly beautiful faces, no playing with the cats and no petty fights from my younger Aunts that might actually be over 600 years old.
"Is my attending this ball very much concerning? If the answer to that is a yes, then I will stay. I would not want to be responsible to this discomfort all of you are suffering from." I said noticing the burden on the air rising from our living room to the stare case where I stand.
"No love. The Ravenhearsts sent ye that invitation for they surely are up to sumfink. Whatever that is, facing em is our lone choice." My optimistic Aunt Susan sounded quite desperate in her usual deep nasal British accent that once amused me.
Aunt Vivian lead Aunt Veronica and I to the first carriage. She waited for us to get settled before she gave her sister a trustful nod. She closed the carriage door behind her and walked towards the carriage next to ours with conviction written all over her face.
I looked at Aunt Veronica, wanting to ask if their planning something again but the look on her face just answered me. She wore the same face of confidence that her sister Vivian had. Now I'm sure their up to something, something big, something I might not like.
As all of us got settled, six carriages had come out of Bridge manor. Off to the newly bought Ravenhearst manor, an hour and a half away through the dark forest.
The moon was full and the trees were shedding their precious leaves around them. The light of the moon gave these lifeless dry leaves their warm color of burning orange and gold. Just like how it gives power and vitality to my Aunts and all their kind.
The sweet calming scent of lavender slowly filled the air inside the carriage as I turned to look at my Aunt Veronica. She smiled a smile that matched the sweetness and calmness of her scent as I felt tired. I felt weird and dizzy.
Damn so this is their plan. To drug me in her witchcraft and put me to sleep again. They always did this to me back when I was a stubborn kid that hated bedtime so I was kind of used to it.Aunt Veronica was once a white witch, she cured people and was hanged because of it. Now she is what she is.
A thick white mist appeared on the corners of my eyes as I saw her smiling face, saying:
"Sleep dear one sleep
spare not a peep.
Consciousness seep,
lessons to keep."
She whispered as I fell asleep.
First it was dark, my feet starting to hurt. Then I saw a door, a huge wooden door that I've never seen before. I was about to touch its golden knob when I heard a male voice telling me not to.
I noticed that I was in some heavy white gown. With thick laces covering my sight, I felt my loose bun as I noticed that it was a long white veil. I'm in a wedding dress.
I neither know the place, nor know why I was in there, but I know only one thing; it was that I was looking for someone; someone of great importance to me.
Ignoring the unseen owner of the voice that keeps telling me to get away from the door, I turned the knob.
Shocked by the sight I witnessed, I tried to pull myself together by pulling the veil off my face to have an even better view.
Dead bodies on the sinks, dead bodies on the white tiled floor all naked with only bandages and white blood stained fabrics to cover the wounds are scattered all around the room.
I stepped in the room desperately praying that I don't recognize any of the corpses. And then, I saw a dead male body.
Removing the bandage wrapped on his mandible and whipping the blood off both his cheeks with my silk gloves, I felt it in my heart that I knew him.
He was the one I was looking for.
"We have arrived." I heard Aunt Veronica say as she tapped my back.
Waking up with such a bad dream, it won't be normal for me to clam up and think silently think about it. So I opted to ask. Aunt Veronica has the ability of making you see forebodings in your dreams and interpret it.
"Aunt Ver, I had a dream. God tis was an awful one. I was in a white room with dead bodies on it. God, Aunt Ver, what might that mean?"
"To dream that thee visits a morgue searching for someone, denotes that you will be shocked by news of the death of a relative or friend. Oh and to see many corpses there, much sorrow and trouble will come under thy notice." She answered looking very much worried.
"Wait, wait I was wearing some kind of a wedding gown." I blurted as I successfully forced my brain to remember.
"Oh dear Charlotte, for a young woman to dream that she is a bride, and unhappy or indifferent, foretells disappointments in love, and probably her own sickness." She breathed, deeply worried.
"Thou should be careful of thou conduct, as enemies are near." She added as she pulled me into a cold, supposed to be warm tight embrace.
The forebodings scared me, off course. It totally rocked my world that I didn't notice we were entering the manor's gates. But I didn't really believe them anyway. I was told of ill forebodings every time I ask them of the meaning of my dreams. Nothing happens. I'm still the happy person that I am so those death of people that they're saying doesn't really matter much to me.
The carriages stopped as an old seemingly pissed valet opened our carriage door. I stepped out of the carriage first letting the cold night breeze sweep my face, excited of what a party hosted by someone not from London might look like.
Everything was beautiful, the ivory fountains, the vines crawling up the gazebos, the well kept wisteria garden and they also had huge bat statutes on the doorway pillars just like ours. Indulging with the view, I literally forgot about my dream and the warnings Aunt Veronica told me.
"Breast out, stomach in and walk straight. Thou eyes are straying. Thou might want to appear like a guard dog perhaps?" Aunt Vivian walked with me to the doorway smiling at the people who waved at her in recognition.
"Keep smiling." She retorted tightening her grip on my wrist as my brain started wandering off again. "Always be on a lookout and... just be careful alright." She added as we went separate ways when I saw my friends. I waved at them from afar and looked back to check where my aunts were seated. I kept my eyes on my Aunts as they took a huge round table as I bumped into someone.
I nearly lost my balance but she was quick to grab my arm and keep my feet planted on the marble ballroom floor. I looked at her to apologize as I felt something unnerving with her ice blue stare.
She was a blonde too sophisticated looking lady. Her dry scarlet tinted lips were pressed into a small frown, that seemed like she was hiding something that her eyes mirrored out; a brutal nature.
"Please do excuse me m.miss." I uttered, slightly trembling with her cold stare. Her eyes cold in ice blue, her nose pointed and sculptured, her cheeks tinted though can never hide how pale and dead she really was.
She smiled a small forced smile as though covering a long lingering pain. She then let a her hand glide its way through my cheek as I felt how cold she was even with the thick black woolen glove she had it with.
"What is thy name?" She asked with an obvious French accent that sounded so inquisitive and desperate for an answer.
Right then and there, I knew, she was a vampire. And she's not the type that settles for bland animal blood. They say it takes one to know another, but I'm no vampire. I'm just your usual seventeen yearold kid who loves parties. But trust me on this. This woman she's one. maybe you kind of know one when you've been living your entire life with a bunch of them
"B..Bridge. My name is Charlotte Bridge, Madame." I answered, starting it with a small shudder but bearing in mind my proper posture which my Aunts say is the key to hide fear. I straightened my back again.
"Bridge it is. The host of this Ball is moi. Tis for my son's birthday. Great isn't it? Are you kindred with Lady Catherine Bridge?" She bragged, her eyes open wide and brows raised.
How did she know my mother? Does she know her? Every time I ask my aunts about who my parents really were, and what they were, they would all answer the same thing. That my vampire mother died of childbirth and my father died on a war all of them ending it with 'What matters is that they loved you so much'. After that, nothing. This lady might somehow know my mother, my father perhaps?
"How did thou became acquainted with my m..." But I was cut off.
"Portia! How have you been?" Aunt Vivian interrupted as Aunt Margaret led me away or shall I say dragged me way.
We sat on a table across the refreshments as I glued my eyes on the lady and my Aunt Vivian.
"Who is that lady Aunt Margaret?" I asked her, still having my eyes on the card room door where they disappeared.
"Aunt Marg...?" I turned to her direction but she wasn't there. Turning back to the card room door, I saw my Aunt Margaret entering it with Aunt Veronica and three others. Fast as usual.
I couldn't keep myself from thinking straight; I just couldn't sit around knowing my Aunts are settling important matters. Though I don't know what it may be, I can somehow feel that I'm becoming the main course of the talk.
With my seventeen year old Aunts Jenny and Lourdes, becoming the apple of the eye of many men around them, I decided to get some of the lemon punch in the refreshments table. I was parched with all these weirdness and talking around me. Good thing Jenny and Lourdes isn't having their small war of wits and elegant sounding curses that always ends up in petty fights.
I was enjoying my cup of cold lemon and the view of the people talking. I lounged around the corner of the long table and there on the corner of my eye, I saw him staring at me. I pretended not to see him as I sipped my punch.
Though I can't deny the fact that he's drop dead handsome with those emerald green eyes and feathery flaxen hair, he's still starring; and starring is rude.
Five foot eight? Six? No, he's six two. Figuring out his height as I turned towards to our table. Still, I can feel him following me from eight to ten feet away. Thank the creator I was raised by vampires, everyday training has made me adapt their strong senses.
I felt him getting near me. And yes at last he did it.
"Who might thee be?" He spoke.
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Who might that guy be?
End of chapter 2. Please do vote as well. :D