Changing Fate (A House of Night Twins Fan-Fiction)

Chapter 3

Carla's reaction was priceless, in Erin's opinion. The young Fledgling was still worried about the impact her new fate would have on Jenna and her father, and yet the almost-fainting and gasping of her shocked stepmother was cheering her up.

"You- You," the older blonde woman was placing her left hand on her chest and using her right-hand index finger to point at Erin's sapphire tattoo. "Daniel!" She screamed hysterically, looking back for support from her husband.

As the strongly built, dark-haired man in a suit walked through the wooden door of the apartment, his eyes widened at the sight of his daughter's alteration. "Erin!"

Still focused on Erin, Daniel Bates put his arm around his wife, trying to calm her down.

In that moment, as the younger blonde stared into the despair and dissapointment in her father's eyes, she cursed her sister for not being there. Jenna would've supported her. Jenna would've protected her. Jenna would've helped her.

But Jenna wasn't here. So Erin had to help herself.

Silently dropping a tear, she walked closer to her father, her black heels hitting the tiles of the hall loudly. Daniel and Carla both took steps away, out of fear and rejection.

She knew she'd lost him, then. As Erin's father looked at her with a horror, as if he were staring into the empty eyes of Satan, her heart slipped further away from him that it ever had.

"You don't have to understand or keep loving me. You just have to let me go," Erin said bravely, swallowing the tears and putting her hands in her pockets, clutching the needle she so desperatly craved to stick through her skin at that moment.

Carla muffled her cries in Daniel's jacket, as he looked away from his daughter's broken eyes and to the ground.

"Pack your bags," he said in an emotionless, cold voice, that froze Erin's heart, as she turned around, ready to walk to her room.

"I'll call Jenna and tell her," Carla said, wiping her tears and slightly caughing.

"No! Don't you dare," Erin screamed, turning around and running back to grab the landline phone.

As her parents gazed at her even more afraid and distressed, she calmed down and dialed Jenna's mobile number. "I'll call her," she said, before the quirky voice of her older sister answered.

***

Shaunee was in the front seat of her mother's silver-coloured Citroen Picasso, leaning on the window. Mrs. Cole understood this wasn't Shaunee's fault. She helped her get ready, and Johnny was accepting of his sister's life-change as well.

So why did Shaunee still feel so alone?

The streets of Tulsa were cold, leaving the young Fledgling to curl up in her warm winter coat, smiling to her brother, who was looking at her from the backseet.

"I love you," he said, leaning forward and kissing his sister's cheek quickly, then sitting back and massaging her shoulders.

Shaunee's heart warmed at the feeling of her brother's affection. "I love you, too."

Reaching the tall, majestic mansion, that used to be known as Cascia Hall, Shaunee gazed at her future home. Her dark eyes filled with tears, heartbroken as she abandoned the beauty of her life, and blazing with hope, as the darkness of her past left her, step by step.

The young fledgling felt a rush of adrenaline in her bones, the glory of a new future. She would've been satisfied with forever sitting in that car, with the two people who mattered most to her, and the engine constantly shaking her body. She could've lived with a fiery excitement in her heart, just the way she was in that precise moment.

But then, a moment Shaunee had been anticipating, yet out of fear, hoping would never come.

The car stopped.

Mrs. Cole sighed as she unfastened her seatbelt and looked at her frightened daughter. "Are you ready, baby?" She asked, cauciously, faking reassuring and brave smile.

Shaunee nodded her head, swallowed hard, and stepped out into a new world.

***

Erin had one suitcase with her. It was quite a large suitcase, and yet, she was probably the only teenage girl in Tulsa who could pack all her belongings into one single bag. There was some clothes in there, a picture of her family, from eleven years ago. Her wallet, phone, charger, laptop and set were all stuffed into the smaller pocket at the top of the suitcase, and a small jewelry set was tucked away at the bottom.

That suitcase, everything she owned, was lying in the backseat, as her sister drove silently.

The car, naturally, wasn't silent.

Erin heard the quiet buzzing of the engine, despite Jenna's old tape of Millenium playing a mediocre song in the younger sister's opinion. Above all, Erin could hear how loud her heart was beating, now that she was leaving a place, where she had nothing, and going to a place where she wouldn't have anything.

Wrapped around in a coat of sparkling white snow, Tulsa was becoming a more and more welcoming enviroment for the young fledgling. Erin always loved snow.

As Jenna parked the car, and Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely came to an end, the Bates sisters got out of the car, stepping out into the cold, isolated yard of the House of Night school.

Erin was too little, then to depressed to remember when Cascia Hall students attended their last day of school, before the building was sold to the Vampyre comunity and their High Priestess, Neferet, but Jenna Bates and her friend witnessed every day, walking home from school, how the uptight, Catholic-because-their-parents-said-so deliquents smoked cigarettes and weed outside the main entrance, hiding their stashes and packs away before their private limousines picked them up.

All of Tulsa was outraged as creatures of the night took over Cascia Hall, and Jenna probably wouldn't have cared, if her best friend wasn't attending it.

Beth-Rose LaFont, daugther of Tulsa's mayor and Jenna met in the early days, at a playground, five years old, before the Bates family fell apart. Instant sisters, they couldn't imagine a world without each other. And even as they split after middle school, the older Bates sister attending Southern Intermediate and the LaFont family's only child enrolling in the best Catholic school Tulsa could provide, they stuck together, until one day.

The day Beth-Rose was marked, the day Beth-Rose LaFont was no longer Beth-Rose.

That was the reason Jenna didn't mind her little sister, turning into such a dark creature. Because she knew, or at least hoped, that once the beautiful daughter of Charles and Frances LaFont learned that a Bates girl was the new addition to the House of Night, she would look after her.

She was always a best friend to Jenna.

She couldn't have known that inside the thick walls of the Vampyre school, Aphrodite LaFont was a monster.