The Vampire's Daughter

Chapter One: On Death and New Beginnings

    To put things simply, I never wanted to come to this school. I was fine going to my human school. I was used to my version of normal and quite frankly, I was happy with that. But that's just the way life is, it never lets you get too comfortable.

    Fifteen was a good year for me, and it looked like sixteen was going to be too. My older brothers had already moved out, so it would just be me, my twin brother, Mickey, and my younger brother, Achilles. I lived with both of my parents at the time. We had a fairly normal life. We lived in an old, Victorian townhouse by the sea.

    Our family had almost outgrown the house by the time that Achilles was born, but when my youngest (and favorite) brother was born, our house was bursting at the seams. It was then that my older brothers decided that it was time to move out.

    I was sixteen and living off of the high that fewer brothers and a newly minted driver's license had brought about. I was enjoying one of these delicious bouts of freedom with my younger brother when the incident happened. We were out late, far later than we were allowed. I checked my phone and realized that it was nearly eleven-thirty. I corralled my sugared-up brother into the car and called my mom to apologize for being out so late.

    She didn't answer so I assumed that she was asleep. I stopped by the store and bought some of her favorite candy on the way home as an apology. I saw the flashing lights of the police cars long before I realized that they were at my house. I pulled the car to a screeching halt. I couldn't get my seatbelt unbuckled fast enough.

    "Achilles, stay in the car," I yelled over my shoulder as I ran up to the police tape. I saw my dad being wheeled out on a gurney. He looked as if he had the life sucked out of him. He was deathly pale, but I could tell by the rising and falling of his chest that he was still alive. "Dad," I screamed as I ran towards him. I was caught in strong arms. They held me back as I kicked and screamed for dad.

    "Ophelia," I heard the man say. "Ophelia! It's me. It's Michelangelo. It's Mickey."

    I turned into his chest and started sobbing, "What happened, Mick?"

    "I don't know. They won't tell me anything. I just got home a couple minutes before you did," he paused. "The cops were already here when I arrived."

    "Where's mom?"

    "I thought she was with you," Mickey said.

    "No," I said. "I had Achilles and that was it. Have you not seen mom?"

     "No, maybe she's inside just trying to calm down."

    I looked around at the gathered police officers. "What could have happened, Mickey?"

    "I don't know." He turned and looked behind us. "Go get Achilles out of the car."

    "M'kay," I murmured under my breath and walked back to the car. I unbuckled Achilles' car seat and I had pulled him when he started screaming. Mickey ran up behind me and covered my eyes and from the way that Achilles was moving, I could tell that he had his eyes covered.

    "Mickey what's-"

    "Don't turn around," he implored, tightening his grasp on my face. He pulled me in closer and held both me and Achilles tight.

    "Mickey," I said, my voice thick, "What's going on?" I asked even though I knew the answer.

     When tragedy happens, the almost constant phrase that you hear is, "Why us?" The truth is that almost everyone thinks this in a crisis even if they don't say it out loud. When my four older brothers arrived at the hospital, Ares, my second oldest brother, whispered it under his breath, almost like he was reciting a prayer. No one else wanted to say it, but we all felt it. "Why us?" was echoed through the halls of this hospital, but I suppose that you could go to a hospital halfway across the world and still feel the weight of injustice like that.