Blood Delights || bxb

Chapter 33

I watched them from a distance. My sister sitting in her garden with my little niece cradled in her arms and her husband rooting through the dirt as he planted seeds. They looked happy, the perfect family. I was so glad for her. In that moment, I realised I would probably never see her again. I don't think I'd ever be able to come back and watch and not go to her. Even now it was taking everything in me and Tristan by my side to stop me from going to her now. So this would have to be the last time I saw her at all.

A few more weeks had gone by and I was adjusting better to this new life. I still couldn't drink from a human without killing them but I was making small incremental improvements. I could also get closer to a human now without wanting to immediately drink their blood. Though, even from where I stood now I could smell my family's blood and the feelings of love I had for them were underlined by a sinister desire to bleed them dry. It was why I knew I should never see them again, but I needed to just this one final time.

I'd been lying with Tristan one afternoon, the curtains closed so the sun didn't harm me, when I'd whispered to him in the quiet of our laboured breathing after he'd just made love to me again.

"I want to see them," I'd said. "My sister and her family. Just...just once. From very far away."

"Are you sure that's a good idea right now?" he'd asked. I knew he was just concerned for me. If something went wrong and I harmed them in any way I'd never have been able to forgive myself.

"I don't know... I'll need your help to make sure I don't do anything."

"You know I'll always help you," he said absentmindedly running his fingers through my hair. We'd both been on our sides facing each other. His eyes were so beautiful in the dark, somehow they looked lighter and more alive like this or was that just love I saw in his eyes. It was nice to be loved.

"I just think...this is the last thing I need to do."

"The last thing you need to do?"

"I feel like this is the final thing holding me back from fully accepting who I am now. I think I just need to let them go Tristan. I need to accept that they can't really be a part of my life anymore and fully embrace the life I have now as a vampire. I spent so much of my life regretful and numb and sad and I just can't live this new life like that as well. I need to start fresh. I need to say...to say goodbye."

It pained me to say such things. I didn't want to say goodbye to my family like that, especially the only part of my family that ever truly cared about me. However, as hard as it was to think about I knew this was something I needed to do.

So a few days later, Tristan had driven me over to my sister's house. He'd had special tinted windows fixed into his car so the sun couldn't get in and then I'd had to use an umbrella when I got out to provide shade. They wouldn't have been out at night for me to see them, and I couldn't risk entering their house and getting too close, so I had to risk the sun itself. I could feel that I was weaker even through the shade, though the fact that my body was completely covered except for my face helped my skin to at least not burn. And so I saw them, my family, for one last time dressed a little like a mad man.

I wished so many things in that moment. I wished I could have seen my niece grow up and become a beautiful kind young woman like my sister was. I wish I could have been her fun uncle and taken her out to theme parks or the zoo. A strange part of me even wished I'd had the chance to have kids, even though I'd never wanted kids before, just so I could see them all become friends. I didn't realise what simples pleasures there were in human life until I no longer was one.

"She looks like you," Tristan said from beside me watching them too. "Your sister I mean."

"You think so?"