Blood Ties (NaNoWriMo 2015)

Nineteen

"Damon I got those files you wanted..." Keith came through the door and caught sight of us on the ground. "Should I come back later?"

"What was that?" Damon gasped, still tense. It was then I was aware of what he was talking about, I'd heard a slamming seconds before he'd tackled me.

"I dropped these," Keith held up two thick manila folders. "Must've been louder than I thought," he shrugged and smiled apologetically. "Sorry for the scare."

"Me too," I groaned, feeling my heart slowly return to a normal pace. I tapped Damon on the shoulder. "Will you please let me up?"

"Yeah sorry," he jumped up and offered a hand down to help me. I ignored it and stood up. "You hit your head?"

"No," I answered, "just got a good scare."

"Sorry," Damon said rubbing the back of his neck, looking rather embarrassed. "I thought there was trouble, again."

"It's fine," I said, feeling a bit upset with myself at how I'd reacted. He had meant well, but the initial pain radiating through my tailbone made it a bit hard to see that right away. "Nice reflexes," I bent down, wincing and certain I'd bruised by tailbone with that fall. I gathered up my papers, not bothering to check the order they were in. I could figure that out later on. "Seems you two have some work to do so I'll show myself out, thanks for the papers."

I exited the room quickly, thankful for the escape from the awkward feeling. I had feeling Keith was going to shove some jokes Damon's way and I did not want to be around to hear them. I hurried upstairs, out of the business office and began walking back towards my room, rearranging the papers as I went.

Damon had heard the files dropping to the floor before I'd even had time to register the noise. Then he'd leapt over the desk and knocked me to the ground. The entire process had only taken seconds, how fast he'd picked up on the situation (well it hadn't really been a situation) and how fast he'd reacted to it startled me. Though I knew Damon was not human, every time I'd been around him (save the night I was attacked) he'd seemed very normal to me. He'd acted very much like the average guy, that event had been a fast reminder that Damon Lockwood was not the average guy. He was a vampire, a predator, something that hunted humans like myself.

Well or at least they were designed to, the fact that he had the Red Cross's number made me think they acquired their blood differently than Dracula did. I was suddenly curious about that and I made a note to ask Ife about it next time I saw her. I just had to figure out to word the question so it wouldn't be so morbid. "By the way, how do you drink blood without killing people?" was of course not the best way to go about getting an answer.

I reached my room and turned the knob, ready to properly read through these request forms and get to filling them out, however that plan got kyboshed the moment I entered my room. It had a small construction crew in it, five guys and about three women were taking measurements of the walls, some had tool belts wrapped around their waists, most had those thick drafting pencils tucked behind their ears. Standing in the center of the mess was Caiyun Lockwood, her long black hair was pinned up with two hairsticks that had patterns of cherry trees painted on them, the colors vivid against her hair. She was focused on a draft that a construction worker was holding out to her and I saw her make some sort of motion with her hand, she might have said something as well but the sound was lost as I heard the shrill whining of an electric drill.

"Hey!" I shouted across the commotion. "What's going on?"

Caiyun looked up. "Oh hello Ember! Sorry for the chaos, I wanted to run this by you earlier but I couldn't find you."

"What's going on?" I repeated, watching as blue painting tape was placed along my empty wall.

"Right to the point then," Caiyun said. "Well as you know, we try not to keep human food around here, not healthy for us. But with you being here that's no longer possible, but we've been storing food for you in the community kitchen and sadly, some people lack self-control. To deal with this problem, Johnathan suggested building a sort of kitchenette for you in here. Kind of turning it into a studio apartment I suppose. We wanted to get started on this right away, so as of now we're just mapping things out with how much space we have to work with and how much we can afford. Of course, we won't start going for styles until you arrived. Don't want you stuck with something you don't care for."

Caiyun smiled warmly at me and I blinked, feeling much like a deer caught in headlights. "Makes sense," I said slowly, adjusting to the idea. I could see the logic, vampires and human food weren't an ideal mix, some people lacked impulse control and I still needed to eat so cutting it out entirely wasn't an option. Moving the storage of it all, however was. "I like the idea, what's the plan so far?"

Caiyun lit up instantly and began excitedly showing me how they planned to turn my far left wall into my mini-kitchen. The size of appliances, was yet to be determined but she informed me that they were fairly sure I'd be able to get most the standard items such as stove and fridge. She pitched the idea of having a fall away counter top so I could have extra counter space when needed but be able to remove it when I didn't.

"I like that idea," I told her. "Makes the most use of the space."

"I thought so too," she said with a wide smile. One of the workers approached her then and handed her a clipboard. Her eyes scanned it and her smile grew. "Excellent! We can work on the design now." She faced me again and tilted her head. "I have some samples in my studio already working, some will have to be scrapped, too big for the space, but some could still work, care to see them?"

I looked around at the still on-going chaos in my room. There was no way I was going to be able to focus on my forms here. "Certainly," I said with a smile trying to match Caiyun's enthusiasm. I'd taken an interior design class my sophomore year of high school, but I hadn't been that interested in it. Caiyun however, appeared to have the opposite feelings on the matter and I didn't want to dampen her excitement.

"Wonderful!" Caiyun rolled up some of the papers she had and then nodded towards the door ."Let's get moving."

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Okay I admit this was a filler chapter, but I do promise more will be happening in the next one! I still hope this wasn't too bad of a chapter!

Thanks for reading!

Write on!