Keeping Human

Chapter Three

The lair was a beauty in the darkness, a magnificent mansion separated from society blending into the forest.

The Mustang drove the cobble-stone path leading up to the entrance of the mansion. The exterior was beautifully painted a deep-red and the tiles were pristine perfection.

As Seth parked the car in one of the available spaces in front of the building, a dark-skinned man in a black and white tuxedo made his way toward them from the front marble staircase.

He gently tapped his knuckles against the window-pane and Seth pulled it down in response. Nelly shifted in her seat.

"Master Thorne," he said cheerfully, "it's a pleasure to see you back so early."

Seth smiled at the well-dressed man. "As always, Bastion. How is..." His voice trailed off as he exited the car.

"Madam O'Reilly is doing quite well, luckily the bite was not that deep or it would have punctured her heart." He answered.

"It's got nothing to do with luck," Seth grumbled, "you of all people should know such a thing."

Bastion smiled. "Of course, Sir." His eyes suddenly began to trail towards Nelly as she exited the car and he took a deep inhale of breath. Nelly noticed his red eyes become black and deep veins appear on his face. "My my, you've brought a snack." He glanced up at Seth with a smirk.

Ophelia took a hold of Nelly and pulled her close. Seth glanced at her before turning back to Bastion with a chuckle. "No, this is the girl Ysabelle is asking for."

"My word," his eyes widened and his face returned to normal, "you should not be compelling people with the ring on, Sir." He said with his eyebrows raised.

Seth laughed and locked the car as they walked towards the giant doors of the mansion. "I know, Bastion. I did no such thing, she came on her own accord."

"Remarkable!" He said in disbelief and moved towards Nelly. "Miss, I trust you had no trouble on your way here?"

Nelly glanced up at Ophelia with a worried expression. She hadn't realised how fast her heart was racing until she remembered she was surrounded by vampires.

"It's alright," Ophelia chuckled softly, "Bastion won't hurt you, he's a sensible man." She glared up at him as she spoke, as if reminding him how to behave.

"Of course, dear," he added with a smile, "that's why I am their butler, and not their host. Now, the journey my dear, what was it like? Comfortable, I take?"

Nelly swallowed. "Y-Yes, quite. Thank you for asking." She couldn't help but notice the man was smelling her as he moved closer.

"My, you are polite aren't you? Yes, Lady of the Lair will definitely like you." He smiled again and opened the large set of front doors. "This way, dear."

"Bastion," Seth beckoned, "Angela isn't home, is she?"

Bastion breathed a laugh, "Of course not, Sir. I believe she's still abroad with the council. She shouldn't be returning for a while."

Seth let out a deep sigh of relief. "Good, I have enough on my plate right now without her adding to the mix with her primal attitude."

"You may say that again, Sir." Bastion replied cheerfully.

They stepped into the hall, a long, red, velvet carpet led up to a large marble staircase which opened up onto a balcony that loomed over them. Either side of the staircase a closed door stood, and two large archways opened either side of them in the hall.

Bastion led them through the archway on the right, which opened up into a giant lounge space. Velvet sofas pointed towards a marble fireplace in the centre-back of the room, beside another door that loomed in the corner. The other end of the room, by the entrance they stood in, held a white piano on a raised floor; a teenage boy sat at the piano and fiddled with the high-note keys. 

All of the seats in the room were occupied by a person, on the closest couch, a woman lay on her side smoking a cigarette, and behind her, twin girls sat cross legged reading books. On the left, sitting in a rocking chair, was a bald, older man with a monocle.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman." Seth said sarcastically.

Quickly, many of the faces looked up, all beside from the young boy at the piano.

"Detective Thorne," the young lady smoking the cigarette said sarcastically and smirked, "you're early."

"Exactly what I said, Madam." Bastion smiled and turned to Seth, "I will be upstairs with Madam O'Reilly if you need anything," he then glanced at Nelly and inhaled, "do enjoy your stay."

Nelly nodded a thank you in fear and kept as close to Ophelia as physically possible.

"And you brought dinner home with you?" The bald man said with a raspy voice.

Seth laughed loudly. "No, not quite, this is Nelly Fox."

The boy at the piano stopped tinkering, turned around and glanced at her without expression. The two girls looked up from their books simultaneously at the mention of her name and revealed that both girls had a side of their face covered in burn scars.

"Really?" The man said, moving his monocle to adjust his view of her. He smiled. "Well then, nice to meet you, Nelly. My name is Carter."

Ophelia nudged her. "H-Hello there." Nelly stammered.

"-Nelly!" The woman placed her cigarette in an ashtray that sat atop a coffee table in the middle of the room; she had long, silky black locks pulled up into a strange-looking up-do and deep red eyes. "So nice to finally meet you! Ophelia hasn't stopped talking about you since she joined us! I'm Justine." She rushed forward and grasped her into a tight hug. Again, Nelly felt a rush of cold as she was held by yet another dead-alive woman. Nelly flinched in response. "Oh my, I am terribly sorry. I suppose you must be a little floundered right now, you're in a room with seven vampires! It must be quite the shock! But don't you worry, nobody in this room will lift a finger to hurt you." The woman smiled gently.

Nelly picked up on her choice of words. Nobody in this room..?

Seth cleared his throat. "This is Odette...and this is Odile." He gestured towards the two girls by the fireplace. They both shared lengthy, mousy-brown hair and a pair of bright red eyes; their clothes unsurprisingly matched, a tucked-in shirt with a skirt and long socks. "Sisters. Twins. Partners in stupidity. Parents named them after famous ballet dancers in the early 1900's. I don't know why to be honest, they're not exactly graceful. They decided to figure out what the sun was like on their skin without wearing their rings...I'm not sure what they were really expecting."

Nelly gulped down her fear and took a deep breath. "Can't you...heal yourselves?" She asked curiously, trying desperately to hide her voice from shaking.

Odile laughed. "We're good-"

"-but not that good. Our bodies can't heal everything. Too much sun exposure or take a knife to the heart and it's game over." Odette finished.

"Knives? You can't survive knives? I thought it was a wooden stake to the heart?" Nelly replied quickly.

"You and me both, child." Justine said smugly. "We are still very much human, perhaps our souls have been lost along the way, but our bodies are still flesh and blood. A knife or any other object can pierce our skin just as easy as it can yours."

"This is, uh, Adam." Seth flicked his hand carelessly towards the boy at the piano. He looked around the same age as Nelly, with pale skin and ashen blond hair; his eyes, Nelly noticed, were a pale orange, which was very different to the rest of the red eyes in the room. "You don't have to worry about anything from him, the boy's a vegetarian."

Nelly frowned. "A vegetarian? I didn't think that was possible, a vegetarian vampire. Won't you die if you don't drink blood?"

"Oh you will die," Seth assured with a huff, "but very slowly. It'll take about 30 long years before this one will hit the dirt and turn to rubble. I'm not quite sure why he does it to himself, perhaps it's guilt." Seth smirked in Adam's direction.

He quickly hopped from the piano stool and left through the door at the back of the room. Nelly noticed he walked as though he was wounded.

"Oh, Seth. He's just a boy." Justine scolded.

"He's reckless." Seth retorted with a glare.

Justine scoffed, "That he may be, it doesn't give you the right to make the poor lad feel more terrible than he already does." She turned away with a roll of her eyes and followed Adam through the door in the back of the room.

A beat passed, Seth forced a smile. "This way, please."

After a rather elongated tour of the lair, Nelly was brought into the main hall where the leader of their clan, Ysabelle Callista was waiting for her.

Her name sounds so familiar. Nelly thought, but she could not place it.

At one end of the extremely long dining table sat the woman, turned at around twenty-five years old, petrified in her youth. She stared bright-red eyed in Nelly's direction as she walked into the room. Ophelia nudged a curtsy into her.

"H-How do you do?-"

"-Madame Callista." Ophelia whispered.

"-How do you do, Madame Callista?" Nelly couldn't help but shake. According to everybody else in the room, this woman was one of the most powerful vampires in the world, and she'd asked for Nelly personally.

The lady smiled. She had strawberry blonde hair tied up in a bun, revealing a pale face with deep red lipstick painted onto her lips. She wore a long, tightly-fitted red dress and dark stilettos to match her eyes.

"Nelly Fox." She smiled, revealing a pair of thin fangs - it confused Nelly as to why this woman had them on show but nobody else did, a show of power perhaps - she stood to her feet as everybody took their seats at the table.

Nelly glanced at it, the table was set with plates and cutlery, but nobody was going to eat. Each wine glass was filled with a red liquid. The lady smiled as Nelly grimaced at them.

"Not to worry, dear. Your glass is filled with wine. Do take a sip, I would like for you to feel at home here." She smiled compellingly.

Nelly felt a hint of sickness, but nodded with a gulp and lifted the glass to her lips, taking a sip, she felt relieved at the fact the woman was telling the truth.

"Do you know why you're here?" She asked Nelly, taking her seat.

Nelly shook her head. "If I didn't come, I would be dead by now." She said quickly.

Ysabelle chuckled. "Yes, that is true, but do you know why you are here?" With the lack of response, Ysabelle continued. "You are part of a very renown family, a family that happened to fight for both sides."

Nelly frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"Your mother was one of my children, a lady of the darkness, and she broke the very rule that our house was built upon and married a werewolf - your father." She explained.

Nelly shook her head. "Rubbish."

Ophelia and Seth both looked at each other and Ophelia gave her another nudge.

"No, it's quite alright Ophelia, she is under-educated, she simply needs to listen." She turned to Nelly again. "It has never before been recorded a child of a vampire and a werewolf, it's rare for a vampire to be with child, let alone to have one with a wolf. It is even stranger, that a child like yourself does not belong to one or the other. You are human, Nelly, and that is extremely, extremely interesting."

Nelly frowned and gulped down her nerves. "It can't be that strange, my brother, my sister, they're both human too."

"Are they?" Ysabelle smiled confidently. "What makes you so sure?"

"I just..." Nelly furrowed her brows. "They just are."

"They just are." Ysabelle repeated slowly with a smile. "Has it ever occurred to you, that your family may not be as truthful as it seems? Has your brother, perchance, ever acted strangely? Possibly, with another man? Perhaps, somebody mentioned a tattoo of some kind?"

Nelly felt her heart stop and her body sink.

"Ah, the tattoo, yes. Your brother, my dear, is a werewolf, I am sorry to have to tell you this way, we hoped he would tell you himself. He used to belong to a pack called Native Ash, at the Ohia River. He left about a year ago, and they want him dead...unless, he gives them you."

Nelly's eyes widened. "Me? What do they want with me? What do you want with me? What does everybody want with me?!" She panicked.

Ysabelle calmly held her hands up, "Calm down, my sweet, sweet child. Everything will be fine, you are simply - special, and both factions of this war want you on their side." She explained. "It's lucky we got to you first, or your brother may have given you to the wolves."

Nelly felt a tear drop down her cheek. "My brother would never do that to me, he loves me."

"He also wants to keep you alive dear, the best way, in his eyes, would be to hand you to the wolves. Because if they find you, they will kill you to avoid you joining us. They believe that having you dead would be...beneficial to everybody."

Nelly stayed silent, her heart was thumping out of control and she could hear it coming out of her ears. She felt sick, as though she would vomit at any second.

"And my sister?" She asked quietly.

Ysabelle made a face. "Your sister is another story. We are not entirely sure what she is exactly. No human, that's for sure, but too young for us to find out more."

The thought of Madeline being anything but human made her sicker and she placed a hand on her mouth to stop herself from throwing up on the table she sat at.

"So you see," Ysabelle continued, "it is of vital importance that you join us and not them. For I fear what will happen to the world if they get their hands on you."

Nelly was listening, but she couldn't hold it in any longer, she had to go to the bathroom. "May I be excused?"

Ophelia glanced at her worryingly, but Ysabelle waved her hand. "Of course dear, the bathroom is upstairs, third door on the left."

Without another warning, Nelly fled the scene and made her way up the marble staircase towards the bathroom. She couldn't help it, the entire situation was terrifying, and the idea that her brother had been lying to her for almost eighteen years hurt her heart. She vomited into the toilet after shutting the door behind her and clung onto the bowl for support, uncontrollably crying through her makeup.

"It's going to be okay," she told herself, "you're going to be fine, just get home tomorrow and tell Caleb everything. You can trust him. He's your brother, he would never hand you away. He'll protect you from them, he will."

She took a deep breath and flushed the toilet before leaving the room. Outside the room, leading to the balcony, she noticed a large tapestry on the wall depicting a war between vampires and werewolves. It was a grisly picture, and it almost looked like the c*****e was real...though it had been real, and that was what she couldn't seem to bring herself to understand - that all of this was no dream, it was real life.

Below the tapestry stood a photograph encased in a pretty frame. It was a photo of a group of people and the lady at the front caught Nelly's eye.

"Mum..." she whispered to herself, "mummy, why are you in this photo?" She picked it up and grasped it in her hands; it was indeed her mother in a long, delicate dress and fine shoes.

"She was a part of this place."

Nelly jolted around and turned to face Ophelia. "Y-Yeah, I guess she was."

"What are you thinking, Nelly?" Ophelia asked calmly.

Nelly shook her head and placed the photo back on its stand. "I think that you're eyes are starting to creep me out." She chuckled and Ophelia smiled softly. "I'm also thinking about what I'm doing here, about how my whole life has been a lie...about how I'm going to go home and face the fact that my brother is a werewolf and my sister is some...thing." She sniffed some mucus that had sneaked down her nose.

"I'm sorry, Nelly. I really, really am." Ophelia crossed her arms and sighed. "They were going to kill me, y'know?"

Nelly turned to face her with a worried expression.

"Yeah, for real this time. They said that if I couldn't convince you to come back with us they would burn me, and kill you after." She shook her head with a breathy laugh. "It's weird when I say it aloud, right? This place is nice, everybody is family but...it's not the same; I miss my mum and dad, I miss my puppy, I miss your brother and sister," she glanced up and sighed, "and I miss you. I'm going to say something really selfish: I don't want you to become what I am, but I don't want to lose you either, so I'm going to ask you to make this life-changing decision with the thought in your head that I can't, and won't, live without you any longer."

Nelly thought about what Ophelia had said on the journey home. It was long, and with only Seth in the car there wasn't much conversation either.

They pulled up at the end of her street and she took a deep breath before opening the car door.

"Nelly." Seth called before she exited.

She glanced up at the rear-view mirror he was looking at her through. "Yes?"

"Make the right choice." He mumbled. She furrowed her brows and nodded slowly. "And...should you need us, call this number." He handed her a scrap of paper with a number scribbled onto it.

"Thank you." She muttered and left the car, shutting the door behind her.

"Yeah..." Seth said quietly and glanced down.

Nelly felt the wind the car kicked up as it sped off and as she turned to watch it leave she heard a familiar voice from behind her.

"Nelly! I've been looking all over for you, where have you been? I thought the trip to the station wouldn't take long. God, you don't know how worried I've been."

She turned to face her brother with a sad expression.

"What? What's the matter?" He asked quickly and took a hold of her arms.

"I..." she mumbled, "I have to talk to you."

CHAPTER THREE, END.