Too Human - Forbidden book 1

Chapter Twenty - Violet

Chapter Twenty

Violet

Chasseur paced and I sat in bed watching her. Her movements were too fast and graceful to be mistaken human; her fingers were curled into claws as if she were ready to scratch some one’s eyes out. She looked lethal. There was nothing human about her when she was like this. I didn’t know if I should be running from her or staying still so she didn’t notice me. Of course I didn’t have to do either but it’s how she made me feel. After all, she was a predator and I am not.

 “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, not looking at me.

“Like what?” I asked, giving her my most innocent look I could manage.

She sighed and dropped onto the bed. She draw her knees to her chest and rested her forehead on them.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Lorenzo?”

“Yeah. I mean, if its private, by all means tell me to stop being nosey.”

“He – he was um, my.” She stopped, chewed her lip and started again. “I met him when I was about a hundred and fifty years old, give or take ten years. Jager and I were in France by that time and I met Lorenzo. He wasn’t French, I have a certain fondness for Frenchmen but he took my fancy too. In human years he was probably three years older than I. He was travelling with his family. He had a big family, lots of sisters and brothers and he was the oldest. And he was human. I had to have him, though.” She laughed bitterly. “We spent three weeks together and we fell madly in love. We spent every minute of the night together. He’d sneak out to be with me and I’d meet with Jager to find a resting place again just before sunrise.” She looked up at me and smiled gently. “I, I told him what I am and he believed me without a second thought. He was fascinated when I showed him some of the great things about being a vampire. Strength, enhanced senses. Speed. He and I tested how far I could push myself and he seemed more eager than I to do it, and I become suspicious about his motives. Fearing that he only liked spending time with me because I was different and dangerous. I’d learnt over time that some men liked that sort of thing. After a month his family was moving on and he declared his love for me and told me he wanted to be with me forever. I believed him and I turned him.

The three of us lived together for thirty years until one night he tried to overpower us, wanting us to follow his leadership. We wouldn’t have it. We were so much older than him, he was like a child to us. Would you take orders from a toddler?” It was a rhetorical question but I couldn’t help applying it to Jager and I. He was more than five hundred years older than me. I wasn’t even an adult to humans. He had hundreds of years of life, travelling, other women. I looked down and away, biting my lip.

Chasseur reached out and touched my cheek. “I do not believe Jager thinks of you like that, Violet. Do you know that when we die, not only does our body stop aging, but so does our maturity. When you think about Jager, he still is only twenty-four, he’s just a wise twenty-four year old, but twenty-four all the same.”

I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’m sorry, please continue.”

“Well when that happened and we refused his leadership he grew angry. Attacking Jager at random moments. Being cruel to me. We developed a love-hate relationship and it continued for another ten years. Until.” Chasseur closed her eyes and was so still I wanted to poke her. She opened her eyes again and continued. “Until one night he attacked me. We began to fight, physically and verbally. I could beat him physical, I was so much older, stronger, faster, but that wasn’t the problem. He said he never loved me, that I was just his way to power and that if we didn’t follow him he was leaving me.” She shook her head at the memories. “It was an easy choice. I didn’t want him around if he didn’t love me, what was the point?” She took the chain around her neck and pulled it out from under her slip, on the end was a little vile of something clear. I looked at it, puzzled. “It’s holy water. As long as it does not touch my skin directly it does not burn. I’ve carried it around for hundreds of years. It was a gift from Jager, sort of like pepper spray for a human. I used it on Lorenzo that night. I had been aiming for his face. I wanted to scar his beautiful face and so that other women would not be attracted to his beauty and stay away, but I missed and only got his arm.” She shrugged. “Still burnt him like acid, so I didn’t mind too much. While he clutched his arm to himself, I crushed his neck to a pulp and broke almost all of his ribs, snapping his spine in two different places and then left him there.

I didn’t see him again until the mid seventeen hundreds in Mexico.” She laughed. “And I did the exact same thing to him, minus the holy water that time. He came and found me once he’d healed and he begged I take him back. Jager warned me not to but I still loved him. Years later he started to become controlling again, manipulative, he tried to turn me against Jager  but I knew Jager far too well to believe the things Lorenzo said about him, so during the day, while he slept, we moved on without him.

We’ve seen him many times since, to many to count, always running into each other in different places. Sometimes I ran from him, sometimes I ran to him. But in the end he always let me down. The last time I saw him.” She looked away from me and stood and turned away from me and I could hear her holding back sobs and sniffing. I crawled across the bed and knelt next to where she was leaning on the bed and put my arms around her. She continued, not bothering to brush tears from her cheeks. “We were here. Jager had just killed the master here after the old master tried to feed from me.”

“Vampires can feed from each other?”

“Yes, but it’s more sexual than feeding.”

“Oh.”

“So Jager became master and when Lorenzo found out, since word of new masters travel fast, he came a-running, didn’t he? I’d learnt this time but he convinced me he just wanted to stay with us. Again Jager tried to warn me but Lorenzo had such a strong hold on my heart even after all those years. I told him when he entered our home that we were just friends, that he was not to touch me. Of course that lasted all of a few months and I kicked him out the night we had sex because I knew he’d just hurt me again. And now he’s back. I’m not stupid enough to be his fool this time. I just want him gone.”

A knock on the door interrupted us. I let Sasha in and told her to hang our things in the walk-in-wardrobe. I went a washed up, I’d filled the bath with bubbles so that Chasseur could use the mirror in here. I trusted her not to look, I didn’t have anything of interest to her, except I was still insecure about my scars, hence the bubbles. She was still in her slip, doing her make up in front of the mirror, we were talking and laughing, teasing each other like any other two girls would on a birthday.

“May I come in?” Jager asked, knocking on the door.

“No,” Chasseur said, seeing my face. “Were both washing up.”

“Chasseur, I can tell you’re standing nowhere near the tub so it’s just Violet washing up. I can close my eyes if I must.”

“What do you need Jager?”

“My suit. It’s on the towel rack.”

Chasseur grabbed his suit and walked over to the door her heels clicking on the tiles with each long stride. She glanced at me when she put her hand on the door knob and I sank in the water a bit more under only my head was out of the water. Chasseur stood in front of the door while she opened it an inch and slid the suit through. She closed the door again.

“May I use your room to dress since you two want your privacy?” he asked.

“Of course.”

His footsteps retreated and Chasseur didn’t move for a few moments then went back to the mirror. “He’s gone.” She glanced at me in the mirror. “He had his eyes closed and was looking in the other direction.” She grinned. “I raised a gentlemen,” she said, to herself. Before I could ask what she meant she continued talking. “Now, out, out. Let’s get you dressed.”

I got out and followed Chasseur into the wardrobe where our dresses hung in black dress bags. She unzipped the first to reveal my dress and the second was hers. It was long enough to sweep the floor behind her, but plunged down at the front showing off a lot of skin. It had spaghetti straps and was dark red, the colour of blood.  We dressed and were ready by nine-thirty.