chapter 3

(Catching The Past.)

As we drove down the highway I remember when there were more houses than trees and skinny, one lanes that horses had to squeeze by on as dust flew up into the carriages. I watched the world and watched it change before my very eyes. I saw war, peace, then war again, boats, cars being made, and then the invention of planes. Telephones, computers, microwaves, humans got really smart. Ball gowns became skimpy dresses, jeans emerged, ballroom music replaced by rock and roll, then pop music and yet this continuous change in the quest for a better way of living brought us down roads of destruction. I looked out the car window as Doug drove, trees became only decoration on the lawns of expensive, show houses.

Finally, after half an hour, we started to enter the heart of Mala. Mala is a small island folded neatly at the edge of the world, at least that was how tourists described it. The land creased the borders of a sea frothing at the mouth, appearing like beer trapped in the bosom of a half-moon. The billboards in the distance, the skyscraper buildings, and the snail-paced traffic lead us into the town. It was a beehive of pedestrians, stores, vehicles. Doug parked before a Cafe, that had umbrellas outside so that customers could sip their coffee and eat their doughnuts while watching the town pass them by. The town was familiar and yet a stranger. Same alleys but different stores, that fitted the times as smug as bell foot jeans fitted what they were calling 90's babies.

Doug locked up the car and we prepared for the exhausting task of shopping.

Two hours later we had placed the final shopping bag into the back of the car. Doug kept a silent presence behind me at all times, watching from every angle, behind those dark shades for any signs of danger. His dominance could be felt and people instinctively moved out of our way as we went about our business. A lady was struggling with her bags and a baby stroller to go over a ramp at the storefront.

"Let me help you with that."

Doug stated. He went over to lift the stroller over the ramp.

"Thank you."

The Lady said and pushed her way down the pavement. In a quick second, Doug was by my side and he said not a word.

How could one not love a man like that? A man who could bend steel with his hands and yet had a softness of heart. I looked at Doug's hands, they were tender to the touch and yet a deadly weapon.

He opened the car door for me, closed it, then went around to the passenger side and got in himself.

"Where to Miss Bloomfield."

"Home please."

We drove out into the traffic. Twenty minutes later we stopped at a red light. The window was down and I noticed from the corner of my eyes some men smoking pot by a dumpster.

Then one spoke.

That voice, I knew that voice. That foreign accent that chipped away at the end of his words, the voice that dripped into my heart, drip, drip, like a leaking faucet. Until it was indented into my dreams and became a nightmare.

Jesus Christ! I had not heard that voice in all my one hundred and twenty years.

The light turned green.

"Pull over please Doug."

My hands were trembling in my lap and sensing something was wrong he did just that, and then his eyes surveyed the area. He found a parking space on the curb before an old, beaten-up, red van.

I imagined gunshots, a blurred face, a voice saying,

"Drink this and you will live."

It was him. The man who killed my Father. I stared at him as Doug and I got out of the car. He wore a leather jacket, blue jeans and a ravishingly handsome, caucasian face. Evil had never looked so beautiful.

I felt pain and rage and yet as I looked at the man across the road, I knew that despite wanting him dead, I also needed him alive. He was the one with all the answers, not only why he killed my Father, but also the explanation of what Doug and I were.

Cars zipped by, and a woman came up to stand beside us on the sidewalk, then waved her hand to signal the attention of a taxi. The yellow and black car stopped at our feet, she got in and it eased back into traffic.

"Miss Bloomfield, what is it?"

Doug looked at the men who were now laughing at a shared joke, his hands went to the back of his jeans jacket, where I knew a gun was tucked into his belt. Danger for Doug had a distinct smell and the men were reeking of it.

"See the man on the left?"

Doug shook his head.

"I need him tonight."

Doug never questioned my wishes, we trusted each other.

"I will drive myself home. Keys please."

Doug hesitated.

"You know I don't like to leave you alone."

I smiled and touched his cheek with my blue, painted, fingernails.

"I am a big girl Doug, surely I can take care of myself for a few hours while you are gone."

I pouted my lips like a little girl and stretched my hands out. Doug dropped the keys into the palm of my hand. He knew I was more than capable to handle myself.

"Ok well go straight to the house and stop nowhere."

"Ok big daddy."

The voice of the seductress was surfacing.

I got into the car, flipped my long black hair over my shoulders, blew him a kiss and drove off. My heart was slamming in my chest. I was trying to avoid a scene and if Doug knew, he would have blown the man's head off right there on the street corner. Doug would take him to me, then I would torture the truth from him. I gripped the stirring wheels until my knuckles lost colour.

As Doug skipped the cars all the way to the other side of the road, he imagined Opal's long hair wrapped around his neck and leading him to the bed. He snickered. Opal could be such a tease sometimes.

He walked over to the dumpster.

"Hey how about I give you a hundred for some of what you are smoking."

They looked at him like he was crazy, because, in all honesty, they knew the crap they were smoking wasn't worth twenty dollars. Doug could tell it was crap too from the smell of it.

"You a tourist?"

The package asked, because that was what Doug thought of the man that Opal wanted as. Just a package he had to deliver.

"Yeah."

Doug smiled and let his hands fall to his side, relaxing his muscles.

The men looked at each other and laughed. They thought Doug to be an idiot they could easily get a hundred from.

"Sure. Why not."

It was a deal no one would refuse. Even if they were rich, it was also a good joke to win one over on an unsuspecting tourist.

"Sure, why not, highest quality weed this is man."

Said the package on the left.

*******************************

I went home to cry into my pillows. One hundred and twenty years and I was still crying. Some wounds go deeper than a gunshot wound could travel, I thought.

Recollections flooded my mind.

I saw three-year-old me riding on my Father's back as he pretended to be my pony. At sixteen years old I was dancing across the room with my Father at my debutante ball.

This man had not only taken my Father away from me, but he had also taken my Mother, my family, and my entire life. At the age of Thirty my Mother realised I had not aged a day since my Father died, she was afraid of me and locked me away from my friends and Family. So terrified was she that she was found by me, hanging from the ceiling with a rope around her neck. I had fled Mala and as the years passed, cousins and uncles took control of the estate. Assuming I was somehow dead, no one bothered to try and look for me and I had never returned until now. I had lived many meaningless lives, until I met Doug.

I watched the day flutter its lashes, shut its eyes and then night yawned and came awake. Dusk rode in slowly on a dark horse, dropping diamonds across the sky, they twinkle around a silver moon. As I showered and changed, I wondered how it is that one could not know the exact second day turned to night, even if you never take your eyes off the sky as the shift changed. I put on a navy blue dress that hugged my figure and flirted above my knees. Flat black slippers on, I gathered my hair in a bun a top my head. I looked at my face in the mirror, it was a beautiful face, white with supple cheeks, blue eyes and pale pink lips. A typical, heartbreaking, Bloomfield's woman face. I didn't go downstairs until I heard the front door open and close. Doug had arrived.

"Hey"

I said to Doug, coming down the marble stairs. Doug kept his head down and didn't reply. He was sitting on the sofa close to a man who was tied up in a chair. I knew he would be upset with me, but I couldn't risk him shooting a man on the sidewalk in plain daylight. That was not the type of attention I needed drawn to me on a small island.

Coming closer I saw that Doug's face was covered in blood and various places on his body were caked with the crimson residue, where the skin had at some point split open and healed itself again and again. His t-shirt and jeans were ripped to rags, dirt and sweat made them cling to his body for dear life. Doug had been in fights before with men and came out with not so much as a single scratch, leaving the men to attend to their broken bones. What Doug had never done before was been in a fight with one like himself and from the looks of it, he had taken quite a beating.

Doug stood, took a hunter's knife from his pocket and placed it on the center table before the tied-up man. He too was badly beaten and looked like butchered meat. I came up beside Doug and smiled sweetly.

"Don't smile with me like that."

Doug was not buying it.

"Is there something you forgot to tell me? Like perhaps be careful Doug, he is one of us."

Doug mimicked my voice.

"I do not sound like that."

I giggled nervously, he was really mad.

"I wanted to test your abilities against a worthy opponent."

"I took a whopping out there Opal, I could have died!"

Oh so now I was Opal? I thought.

To him I said,

"You, die again?"

Doug threw his hands up in the air and let them fall back to his side. He took a deep breath and let out his anger.

"Ok so who is this clown? Is there anything else you're not telling me, Miss Bloomfield?"

I sighed.

I looked at the man. His wounds had healed but one could tell it was no easy task getting him here. The look in his eyes stated that he recognised me.

My voice dropped to an audible hush. A serious, soft, vulnerability that I didn't like.

"This is the man who had killed my Father. This is the man who made me what I am."

Doug's voice was dangerous, as he looked at the man who was staring at me.

"Say the word Miss Bloomfield and I will make him wish he was dead!"

Doug pulled out his gun and aimed it at the man.

"Put the gun down Doug."

"Are you serious?"

I had imagined this moment countless times but never had I ever imagined that I would want to keep this man alive for even a second.

"What is your name?"

"Simeon."

He replied with not a second of hesitation.

"Well Simeon, why did you kill my Father?"

How was it that my voice was so cool, calm and collected? I fingered a vase of purple tulips on the table.

"He took our money and had not done the job."

My mind told me he was not a man to lie and he was also a man who feared nothing.

"What job?"

"To kill someone or rather," He smiled, " Something."

"My Father was a Farmer, he was not a killer!"

I protested.

The man sneered at me.

"Your Father was a born killer!"

I was not going to listen to this man corrupt my father's name. I would get all my answers tonight.

"What are we?"

"Vampires. The elite of the Immortals."

"Are there more of us?"

He laughed and his voice was irritatingly cruel.

"Many Creatures my dear girl. Vampires being at the top, you should be elated that you are not a werewolf, witch, mermaid and others on the lower rung of the ladder."

The man took a deep breath. I could not believe my ears, it was like living in a dream. Doug sat down in the chair shocked that he didn't know the world we lived in at all.

"Kill me girl. I am dead the moment I was kidnapped anyway. They will come for you and your little pet mate!"

Who will come for us? I thought. Were we watched and by whom?

"I need to know more about my Father."

The man suddenly looked wiery.

"Look child I have lived centuries old. I am a man who has lost too much. Your Father...."

At that moment an arrow came flying through the window and shattered the glass. It lodged in the heart of the man in the chair and in seconds I was on the floor, with Doug covering me with his body.

"Are you hurt!"

Doug demanded after a few minutes.

"No"

Even if I was, the wound will heal. One would feel the pain of the wound, but once it heals all the pain would vanish.

"Stay low, I will search the compound."

"I am coming with you, Doug."

"For once in your life listen to me, Opal! Stay down for God's sake!"

For the first time in my life, I heard Doug lift his voice at me and it crippled me to the spot.

Doug opened the door and I saw him take to the air, he would circle the premises until he found the culprit.

I looked at the man in the chair, waiting for his wound to heal. It did not. I sat up and waited some more, looking from the man to the shattered glass window behind him. Splinter was all over the floor and furniture. Half an hour later, Doug was still outside searching and the man still had not moved.

I knew then how our kind truly died. It was by piercing something really sharp through the heart. I was right back where I had started, not knowing anything at all. Except that Doug and I were Vampires and we could die.