The Family Eternal: Part Two- Chapter One

Chapter One

In The Closet

Life with Svetlana: year 2

"...What is...this!" Hadley pointed at the thing on the floor in the closet of Svetlana's bedroom. Or more specifically...things. Plural. A pile of them.

"It is body of Human man," Svetlana said.

"A dead Human man!" Hadley said.

Svetlana fanned her hand out in front of her, checking-out her manicured finger nails, an attitude of indifference to something that shocked Hadley.

Shocking Hadley Price was not an easy thing to do. And this one was a double whammy. There was a dead body in her home. And the young girl who carelessly put it there obviously didn't know- or worse, didn't care -about how much of a bad thing that was.

"I was going to take it away. Later."

"When?" Hadley demanded.

"Just...later."

"This is bad, Svetlana. Very-very bad."

"But--!"

"You can't just leave dead Humans in this house."

"But--!"

"I will not have such behavior from you. You--"

"But--!"

"But nothing!" Hadley said. "You've been one of us for only two years. That makes you twenty-three years old." Hadley was aware that her newly adopted daughter was taken into the fold, when she was a twenty-year-old Human. "By Human standards, that would make you young. By our standards, you're very young. A babe in the woods. You don't yet know poop from poop-oh-la."

Svetlana laughed.

"Is something funny?" Hadley said with a stern look on her face.

"You said...poop." She giggled. "Why do you not say," she giggled again, "...shit?"

Svetlana would always look twenty years old. Granted, she would appear to be a woman among girls. She did have that exotic quality. But she would always be viewed as a teenager. Likewise, the way she spoke would not change. Svetlana would never lose her Russian accent while speaking English. If anything, there would be times, when she was stressed, that it would be more pronounced. When necessary, she would be quite articulate in English. But she was frozen in a time when she was still new to English. She would never totally master English slang. But that didn't prevent her from trying. For some inexplicable reason, however, she did not have any challenges with English profanities.

"A proper lady does not say that word in polite company," Hadley said.

"Poop?" Svetlana said. "I can not say that?"

Svetlana thought she was being clever. But she found out how clever Hadley thought she was, when the shorter Vampire grabbed her arm and dragged her out of her bedroom, down the hall and into the dining room.

Svetlana had heard of Hadley Price when she was still living with Viktor. She had heard about the legend of the Heroine of Victoria. Svetlana had heard that that woman was stronger than most of her kind. Unique among Vampires. But it wasn't until the petite woman clenched her arm and gathered the tall blonde into her inhuman inertia, that Svetlana felt her true power. There was something very different about this red headed Vampire. Something scary. Something worthy of respect.