The Vampire & the Rebel (Completed)

Part 3: Chapter 12

After Jamie excused himself to go and be tediously responsible, I turned my attention to finding some way to occupy my morning until the darkness overwhelmed me. I put a lot of effort into not wandering around and annoying people who were working towards the success of my rebellion. No one really understood the great efforts to which I went for success.

I checked in on Marcel, who was almost literally dead to the world, lying as if a corpse in one of the visitor rooms.

I had not seen a resting vampire for a very long time, not since the days when Drak and I had been intimate so long ago, and even then, our resting habits had been nearly simultaneous because of the similarity in our ages so I had only ever viewed his unconscious form through my own clinging weariness.

Before that, it had been my sister fledgling, Diane. She had been my junior, and there were times when we would rest in the same room so as to be guarded by the same loyal humans.

I had never seen my sire rest, because I was always so lost in my own darkness whenever he finally succumbed.

But now, I had the clear view of the state that generations of my humans had well guarded for me. He was so still and silent and I took my turn watching over him as he had so often watched over me, until the day got so heavy that I had to seek my own bed, this time for a much less pleasing purpose than when I had drawn Jamie there.

Lucas watched over my vulnerable hours, while my mind again wandered to my favourite, working away at whatever was his responsibility of the hour. He was undoubtedly somewhere, busy under the sun and completely inaccessible to me. My mind then moved to Marcel, who was surely still lying prone in a room somewhere below me, and then everything faded to blackness for an undefined period of time before it again released me.

From outside of the dark, a sound caught my attention and I pushed myself up to discover the source. Lucas was holding his infant while he watched me and I rolled my eyes at him. The underdeveloped human had certainly not been there when I had went to sleep and why would it have been, because the little creature was nothing but a vulnerability at this point in its lifecycle.

"Afternoon, Vienne," he said when he noticed that I was awake.

I slipped out of my bed and went over to my human and his progeny. I eyed the blanket-wrapped infant. It stared back as if it had no instinct to warn it that I was a monster that could easily harm it. Its absurdly huge eyes seemed like they were trying to burrow down into my soul and I took a step back to increase the distance.

"Want to hold him?" Lucas offered.

I tore my gaze from the infant and looked at its father. "Did you seriously just ask a vampire if she wanted to hold your defenceless child, Lucas?"

"Yeah. Well, does she? You seemed interested."

I ignored his observation. "That's terrible parenting. Shall I go and hunt down a manticore to read your child a bedtime story next?"

"A manticore?"

I held in my dramatic sigh at yet another unknown reference. It was not Lucas's fault that foolish vampires had ruined pretty much everything. "A monster, Lucas, but that is beside the point. My point is that you never hand such a vulnerable human over to a vampire."

"But you're not just any vampire, Vienne. What would you do that I should worry about?"

"Nothing, but that's entirely beside the point. You should be listening to your parental instincts. Look at that thing, it's fragile. And, I hate to tell you, but it smells far worse than the average human. Perhaps you should be changing its diaper rather than dangling it over a lioness' mouth. And, I doubt that Rene would approve. I should tell her of your insane suggestion so that she can yell at you about it."