Struck (A Vampire Novel) ✔

Five

When I was about seven years old, I had a taste of sushi for the very first time. My mother had taken me out to an Asian restaurant and ordered some for us because at that point I was a strictly junk-food only child. To this day, I was always surprised I didn’t end up growing up to be rolled around in a wheelchair unable to walk due to weighing 500 pounds. Anyway, where I was expecting some French fries or chicken fingers, I instead got what looked like vegetables wrapped up with coconut shavings and held together with black masking tape.

“What is it?” I had asked my mother, who was smirking at me with a twinkle in her grey eyes.

“It’s called sushi. Take a bite and I’ll tell you what it is.” When I had bitten into it, I remembered it being salty, and it felt really weird on my tongue. But it wasn’t altogether bad. My mother had smiled before saying, “It’s raw fish.”

Back then, I had proceeded to spit it out and exclaim an amazing amount of disgust, but by the time I grew older, sushi was one of my favorite foods I’d ever had. So I would say I had a great deal of experience in trying new foods, but as I looked down at the dish presented before me by Aveline and Xander, made by apparently an invisible kitchen staff, I wasn’t sure I had much experience after all.

“It’s called hachis Parmentier,” Aveline told me from beside me. Xander was sitting on the other side on my left. We were in a dining area at a large rectangular table which was so shiny and unblemished that I felt it was a sin to have any dish on it at all. I didn’t know why exactly Aveline and Xander wanted to sit so close to me rather than on the opposite side of the table like normal people, but here they were, eyeballing me while I stared at this… hachis Parmentier.

“It looks like cheesecake,” I finally said quietly, feeling a bit better than before. I wasn’t a fan of cheesecake though, and yes this did look like cheesecake. But perhaps only from afar. I guess if I looked closer I could see what Aveline meant when she said it was potatoes, not cheese, and beef, not crust.

“Just taste it, I’m sure you’ll love it,” Xander coaxed me, barely tapping my arm with his elbow teasingly. I was still only in a bathrobe but so far we hadn’t come across anybody so I felt relatively safe. Well, as safe as I could feel in this situation. I sighed, digging my fork into the cheesecake-looking dish and bringing it to my mouth. And then I sighed in relief. It was delicious. And definitely not a cheesecake.

Next to the dish was a glass of water that I had requested, though I had been offered some wine. Apparently it was slightly offensive to the invisible kitchen staff to not drink wine with their amazing dish, but I wasn’t much of a drinker no matter how small the quantity of drink. So water it was. I had to say though after some food and liquids, I felt my energy start to return and felt less like curling up and crying my life away. At the same time, I felt that same energy feed the fear that wasn’t quite leaving me and send a small tremor throughout me. Something inside felt like this was similar to having a last meal. It made it slightly less enjoyable.

“How long have you two been, um, together?” I asked shyly. I knew they referred to each other as mates, but something about the word sounded too animalistic to me. And it didn’t quite explain what exactly they were to each other except obviously a couple. They glanced across me to look at each other and I looked from one to the other, noticing that intimate look in their eyes that they had each time they met each other’s.

“We were mated in 1952, back in Chicago when I was in the Bennett coterie,” Xander said softly, as though the memory were the most precious thing he could think of, “Aveline was in this coterie, the Bryant coterie, and was in our territory on some business or another. She walked into our headquarters to offer our Master his greeting for permission to access the territory and when I saw her…”