Lost & Found

Lifetime Debt

I'm not sure exactly when it started, when I started wearing low cut clothes and hanging around not so safe places. Waiting, being the perfect underage doe eyed bait that Adelaide needed to satisfy her taste in meals. I might have been fifteen, but then again I blocked most of the first few times out until I was numb to it.

Adelaide hadn't made me of course. It had been something I thought of on my own. She didn't like killing people, but she had to survive too. Before me she'd stalked people, figured out the bad people and justified what she did by taking those people out.

That's how she'd found my family on Sunnyvale Court. She'd followed my father, who other than being neglectful towards me had been cheating on his wife. She'd explained all of this to me the night she'd found me...

Rain pounded against the thin glass windows that separated my room from the outside. The sky wasn't thundering but I wouldn't be surprised if it began to. I looked up from my book to look at the window. There was a tree outside of it that I used to climb down to the ground on. That was back when the boys were still here, but they'd been gone for over a month and I doubt they were coming back.

I slipped off my bed and walked over to the light, but before I made it over to the switch the electricity flickered for a few moments before finally failing. I sighed and turned off the switch anyways. Before my alarm clock had flipped off it had read nearly midnight.

I'd need to be up in a few hours if I was going to catch the bus to the middle school in time.

I was pulling my covers over my head when I heard it. The door being opened downstairs. It wasn't something normal people would be able to hear, but after years of abuse through the hands of my family I'd tuned myself into this house for protective reasons.

Marie was still in her bed, and she was barely fifteen, only just starting to do more daring things like sneak out. She'd done it once before and had been caught, this was two days ago so I doubt she was already trying to risk it. 'I sat up in bed, making as little noise as I could muster and tilted my head.

Someone was in the house. Though their footsteps were silent and swift, I still heard my parent's room downstairs open up, letting me know where the person was at. Not a few seconds later did I hear my mother scream.

The commotion downstairs hid any noise I might have made as I quickly made up my bed as if no one had been in it at all, and hid in the little attic space in my closet. I started crawling deeper into it than I'd ever dared before. Fear of spiders and other little things kept me from doing so before but now I was too worried and scared to care.

I paused slightly when I came to a small hole in the wall, probably from Marie moving something. The attic space seemed to run along the back part of the house, all the way from my closet to Marie's. I pressed my face against the small hole and looked through, trying to figure out where Marie's bed was.

I'd never been in her room, despite the many times she'd blamed me for breaking something so that she could get a new one. There was a lump in her bed. I knew it was her from the soft snores she emitted with each inhale. Downstairs my mother's screams stopped, and there was a thump as something hit the ground.

My heart picked up and I crawled over to the little door that would lead into Marie's door. It wouldn't open. I smacked a hand over my mouth to muffle my breath. It seemed to loud, it would get me noticed.

Of course her little attic space wouldn't move. It was locked from the outside whereas I'd fixed mine to lock from the inside. I crawled back over to the little hole in the wall. Maybe the intruder wouldn't come in here. Maybe he'd be satisfied with whatever it was that he'd done to my parents.. Maybe.. My whole body began to shake.

Someone entered Marie's room, they wore dark jeans and a red tank top... no. The tank top was blue.. The blood was red. The blood covered her shirt and her hands. Her hair was blonde and curled, but in a natural sort of way rather than the burnt up curls Marie liked to force her hair into.

She hovered over Marie's bed for a few seconds, looking down at the sister who'd treated me like an unwanted pet. I watched her shoulders rise high as she inhaled. She clenched her fists, and then quicker than lightning she'd ripped my sister out of bed.

Marie screamed, more in startlement than fear, and kicked out. The girl growled and in one swift movement she ripped Marie's head to the side, at an unnatural angle. Marie stopped moving. The girl then bit into Marie's exposed shoulder. I turned away, covering my face.

This is a nightmare Sang. Pinch yourself, wake up, wake up...

When the girl had finished with Marie she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sighed.

"Little pet I know you're in the walls. I can hear your heartbeat."

I felt myself still.

"Be not afraid, I am not a monster..." I wasn't even sure the girl believed herself, so I didn't move, "Or I try not to be at least." Her shoulders fell and I started shaking again.

"I will not hurt you. You have my word. I am a vampire by the name of Adelaide. I try to be good.. I only feast on the wicked souls... your father was a cheating man who let you rot in this house. At first I was only going to eat him you see, but then I caught a wiff of his wife. I can smell out rotten blood, the blood of people who are sour and cruel. She smelled worse than your father.

"I was going to stay downstairs, but I couldn't help but catch scent of your sister here. She wasn't as pungent as your parents.. But to smell as she did so young... I did the world a service young doll."

She pulled one of Marie's hoodies on before turning to look at me. She seemed to stare right into the hole in the wall, right at me. I flinched back. The shadows worked in her favor, as I couldn't see her face.

He voice became soft then, "Little doll, won't you come out, I promise to take care of you, and never let harm fall upon you so long as you are in my care."

I don't know what it was about her voice, but the next moment I was crawling out of my attic space, and she urged me on down the stairs. I stood outside in the rain, watching as she moved quicker than I could keep up with. She doused the house in gasoline, starting with my room and working her way to the rest of the house.

She explained in her car that it would look as if I'd had a candle. It would look as if the whole house had simply been old and gone up in smoke. It would look like an accident. And no one would question the lack of a fourth body because my room would be ashes, and there was no one to contradict my presence in the house.

It would be liked I had died.

When we got to her home she locked me in a room, using her sweet voice to assure me it was for my own good. I stayed in there for weeks, getting a meal here and there when she remembered that I was human and had human needs.

When I finally came out of the room the season had changed from fall to winter, and she informed me that I could either keep my name or make up a new one, it didn't matter either way as apparently according to the government, there was no Sang Sorenson.

I became Sang, just Sang. I used my middle name sometimes as a replacement for my actual name. Not long after spring began to bloom did the first Hunter come to town. Adelaide had made a mistake and we moved. That summer she showed me her face for the first time, and a sweet voice told me I didn't have any reason to be afraid.

We moved four more times and by the next spring a sweet voice had trickled into my sleep, sighing about moving. The next morning I'd volunteered as bait to lure in sick men to her home so that she could rid them from the world.

I was helping her, because after all, she had saved me when no one else had cared. Whenever I started to question my role, whenever I'd wanted to get friends or go back to school or get a real job... that sweet voice reminded me of the debt I owed Adelaide.