Blood Rebel [COMPLETED]

Chapter Fourteen - Xander's Story

“I was brought up by a man called Alexander."

Selene giggled. She wasn't even sure why. Perhaps it was the story-telling tone Xander had adopted; perhaps it was because she was lying next the only man who had ever held her in his arms and kissed her like he meant it, and not because he wanted to feed on her.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing. Sorry."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"Ok, let me start again." He cleared his throat, coughing dramatically. "I was brought up by a man called Alexander. I’m named for him. My earliest memories are living with him in a small cottage in an isolated area of Northumberland. There was absolutely no sign of civilization up there, which was why he had chosen it as a place to make his home, outside of Vampire rule. 

"No one ever came to the house, and for many years I didn't speak to anyone other than him. It never even occurred to me that there might be other people like us; other humans. I knew nothing of the world but what he chose to show me.

"He taught me everything I know. I learned how to read and write, and how to count. He was an excellent teacher, and although I was a good student I never once questioned why I lived with him, or how I had come to be there. As far as I was concerned, he was my father."

Xander paused, and scratched his forehead.    

“Wait, I should start at the beginning," he said, dropping his hands and using them to flatten out the sheets that rested over his lower half. "Years ago a woman knocked on Alexander's door. She was heavily pregnant and exhausted. He was shocked at her appearance: it had been years since he had seen a living, breathing human woman, and he had never before seen a pregnant one.

"He tried to help her, but she was too weak to survive the birth of the child, and died soon after I was born, never even regaining consciousness for long enough to even tell him her name.

"But Alexander had noticed tattoos on the insides of her wrists. He thought they might have some important significance so he copied them, tattooing them onto his own wrists so that he wouldn’t forget, and so that he had something to offer me when I grew up, some tiny snippet of information about my mother."

Xander paused, looking at Selene to check she was still listening.

“Go on.”

“A few years afterwards, Alexander suspected that our existence had come to the attention of Vampires and we had to move; although that’s not what he told me. He told me we were going on an adventure, and boy, what an adventure it was. Everything was new; everything was exciting. I couldn't get enough of it.

"But the adventures never stopped. We continued to move until his death, living in the sewers beneath cities: Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, and finally London, always moving south.”

“In the sewers?”

“Yes."

"You lived beneath the cities?"

"We did. I spent my formative years down in the sewers, covered in vampire excrement. I became so used to it that I could no longer smell it at all. In fact, it smelt like home to me; it still does."

He closed his eyes, a blink that lasted a fraction of a second too long. He took a deep breath and continued:

"Alexander had worked out how to purify Vampire sewage. You have to filter and distil it, and then simmer it down until it becomes thick.  It has no scent.  Before we went above ground we covered ourselves with it.  It’s viscous, like cream, so you don’t need much.”