Adopted Into the Supernatural

by Francheska Fifield

  "Are you laughing at my misery?"

  "No, it's just you seem ashamed and there's no reason to. You were essentially lowered to basic instincts. Sex, food, shelter. Those are the things the primitive brain is hardwired for. You had shelter, so your subconscious went for food and sex. Both of which you could find in a human female. If another non-relative female had walked through the door you likely would have felt the same. It's not just one thing Alastair, so don’t be embarrassed."

  He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even move. I finish writing down everything we talked about and put the papers in the drawer for later.

  "Do you want to be a doctor?"

  "Maybe. It would be nice to help people."

  "Does that mean you are going to return to the human world in two years?"

  "No. I mean, I will for college obviously, but I actually want to become a doctor for supernaturals. I know you have healing witches but well, you don’t exactly have medicine cabinets like humans do for things that are minor or if you can't afford a healing witch. I want to fill that gap. Medical school will take me a while, and most of it won't be relevant, but if I ever end up having to practice with humans because there isn't a need for my potions and creams, I would rather have the degree done."

  "That's really what you want to do?"

  "Yes, but I would need somewhere I can study the anatomy of all supernaturals. I have talked to Fergus and he promised to ask the king if I can be given a tutor on vampire anatomy. I will be given medical secrets that no one else is to know. I also petitioned the werewolf alpha for the same and explained my plan to him. Heather is going to help me petition to the witch council, to have me tutored in all the potions they know that they don’t give to outsiders. I know a lot already, but I need to know about every single supernatural. I will be a neutral party that makes potions for everyone and all of them will have a one hundred percent success rate.

  "Of course, this means all the councils will have a joint meeting and the vampire king will be invited to represent the vampires. I still need an in with the Fae. I will have to make a joint petition after I get individual permission. The rule would be that no one can ask or torture me for secrets on other races. I would have protection from all races; if one hurts me, everyone is responsible for punishment. I will trade with everyone and so on. I think your father only agreed because of the possible implications. If all goes well, it could open diplomatic relations between those that have fought for centuries."

  "How come you didn’t tell mother or me?"

  "Your father needs to know I am serious and willing to see this through, and if he is on board the king will take me more seriously. Everyone knows you always side with your mother on the big issues and your mother is more emotional. I need to appeal to everyone on a completely rational, unbiased level. Your father is known to dislike me, so if he agrees to help me, it looks better. There was no point in telling you two until I knew for sure I could at least get the ball rolling."

  "I wish you had told me."

  "I'm sorry. You didn’t seem to entirely care if I left or not after school. I mean, we are closer but we aren't siblings. You've made it clear on many occasions that although I am family, I'm still not family. And I didn’t want to get Fiona's hopes up if I couldn’t succeed."

  Hands pressed down on my shoulders and un-wrapped my bandage. I knew he was going to demand to see it at some point. He would feel too guilty to not burn it into his mind as a way to drive him to have more control later. That's just how he is. I don’t expect him to force my neck sideways so he can see it or to lick it. I try to move but can’t. He has an iron grip and if he doesn’t want to let me go, I am not going anywhere.

  I have studied vampire salvia in school when we got around to vampires. There is a reason I don’t want Alastair to do this. The salvia is the part of the vampire that secretes pleasure. It's why they can hide their bite. I don’t want to feel it, not with Alastair, it will be weird. He is so focused on healing me; I don’t think he has considered all the implications.

  "Alastair, you don’t know what you are doing… ahhh." I can’t stop it. It feels so good. My whole body is tingling. My body starts responding as if it were preparing for sex. I am still a virgin, but I have read enough romance novels to know how it works, and my body is ready for the work.

  "Feels so good."

  Breathy voice? Check. Perky breasts? Check. Panting? Check. It doesn’t help when he rubs his nose along my freshly healed neck.

  "You smell good again."

  He lets go of me and walks out of the room after that. Holy God, what has he done?

  Alastair:

  Holy hell, what did I just do? Is the drug still in my system more than I thought?

  "Alastair. You are back. Where's is Amber?"

  I am shocked that is father's first question. "Cleaning up the cabin."

  "You bit her again?"

  "No." They can smell the blood I licked off her neck.

  "Is she alright? Are you two fighting?"

  I shake my head at mom. "No, we aren't fighting."

  "Don’t get involved, Alastair, she has a plan and it requires her to be neutral. Meaning she cannot be romantically involved."

  He would know. Not that he bothered to mention it to either mom or I while we sat at the dinner table, worrying over never seeing her again when she left for college.

  "I felt responsible. I healed her neck. I couldn’t use blood, so I used saliva. That's all there is to it." I won’t yell at him for it. Amber has been part of the decision to not tell us as well, and though I can understand her reasoning, it pisses me off. If I start yelling, they will both get a verbal lashing.

  "It might not be that simple for her. Teenage girls are impressionable."

  "She's not. She didn’t even tell mom and me about her plan. But she told you and asked your help, didn’t she? Even though mom worried about it, you said nothing." So I am not so good at keeping my cool. Everything about today is out of character for me.

  "Don’t mind him, Fergus; the drug is still in his system a bit. It's making him act differently. If you don’t mind, I'm going to shower and change. I feel gross. I'll sleep until later and heat up leftovers, or make myself something, so don’t worry about waking me for food."

  Amber walks past me and upstairs, shutting the bathroom door. We hear the water come on and mom looks at dad and me, worried as we glare at each other.

  "Don’t involve her in our world any more than your mother and you already have."

  "Her plan will completely immerse her in our world, in everyone's world."

  "I have been trying to figure out what you two are talking about for the last few minutes, but listening has gotten me nowhere. So, someone tell me, what about Amber is pissing everyone off and causing this disturbance?"

  "Ask dad, he's the expert."

  I open the fridge, grab our jug of blood, march upstairs, slam the door and down it. Maybe some rest will do me good as well. I need to sleep off the drug so that I will stop acting like a child.

  Amber:

  I spend the next week eating and sleeping. Taking care of Alastair while injured had just about killed me. Now that my wound is healed, my body can focus on replenishing blood and resting. I skip martial arts training. I can’t bring myself to be alone with Alastair. So I do yoga with Fiona and we talk out my plan. She is upset that I hadn't talked to her about it sooner, but she understands my reasoning. She also tries to get to me to talk about the salvia thing with Alastair. She gets the hint that it is a taboo subject when I run away. At least, I assume she did, because she doesn’t bring it up to me again.

  Meals are slightly unnerving because I can feel everyone staring at me. I, on the other hand, keep my eyes on my plate or looking at Fergus, as we can have our reports on the petition to the king out in the open now. No one else says anything, they just listen. It is the most awkward situation I have ever experienced in my life.

  We go back to school shopping and Fiona
and I break the ice a bit then. It turns out to be easy to get her to forgive me for not telling her everything, and once again I have a mom. I am glad, Fiona is the only mom figure I have ever had, and I make sure to tell her. It leaves her crying because she is happy she says and all is forgiven and in the past. She is such a sappy mom.

  The night before school is supposed to start, I am on my balcony thinking about the past two weeks when I notice Alastair's light still on. Fiona and Fergus are asleep already and we have to get up early for school. Why is he still awake? I stand on the balcony and jump over to his landing, almost silently on the balls of my feet. I hear the door unlock and, taking that as a sign I am welcome, go in. We had done this a lot over the summer. He allows it because it is good practice.

  "You're still up? Aren't you going to be exhausted tomorrow?"

  "Aren't you?"

  He has me there. "So what are you doing up still?"

  "As you are still awake you cannot exactly scold me about it, can you?"

  "I wasn’t going to. I was just asking. But if you must know, I've just been thinking over the past two weeks. I think they were the most stress-filled I have ever had. I wish I had longer to recover before school. Your turn."

  He spins in his chair pulling up pages he minimized on his computer.

  "I've been researching human anatomy and psychology. At first, I was unsure about why you didn’t want me to close your wound when I just wanted to do it to ease my guilt. To help after you went through so much to help me. Your reaction wasn’t entirely expected. I hadn't ever really thought about what happens to humans when we lick them. I know it's supposed to mask the bite and heal the wound so we can cleanly feed, but I have always been fed from a bag so I didn’t expect what happened. Then I decided to research why it happens to humans to see if it can be overcome."

  They have internet pages on that? "So, I get the bio but why the psych?"

  "You reacted by avoiding me for over a week. I wondered why."

  Alastair at his finest. Completely logical. He wouldn’t fully understand, even if the answer kicked him in the face because he doesn’t have the type of emotions needed to understand. Some things have to be experienced before you can understand.

  "How about embarrassment over my reaction?"

  "I deduced that was part of it, but I also found that humans seem to prefer to be intimate with only their chosen mates. And licking the neck is a sign of intimacy."

  If I wasn’t red in the face I would die of shock. This is not the type of thing you can just say to a person with a straight face.

  "I embarrassed you again"

  Why, why does he have to see all the blood rush to my face? Not to mention even if I could hide that, the increase in sweat and pulse rate would give it away.

  "Alastair, no one on the planet wouldn’t be embarrassed with this conversation, unless they had been intimate with so many people that it didn’t matter anymore."

  "So it’s a taboo subject."

  I am not sure if that is a question or not so I sit down, ready to explain.

  "Some people are fine with talking about intimacy with anyone; others like to keep it between themselves and the person they are intimate with. Some are in between, where they will tell people, but only certain people like a best friend or something. No one wants to talk to family about it because, well, thinking about your parents having sex is uncomfortable, so telling them about your sex life is going to be even worse."

  "And all humans fall into one of those categories?"

  "Except nuns and certain types of priests that don’t have sex at all, and aren't allowed to talk about it." That is not the entire truth but I am not about to explain religion to a vampire.

  "Hmmm. Which category would you classify yourself under?"

  If he weren't asking for research purposes - he is an OCD thorough researcher, it is something we have in common - I wouldn't answer the question. "I guess it depends. Likely, I would only talk to my partner about it; or maybe one close friend, if my partner was alright with that."

  "Did you know they have websites dedicated to pleasuring your partner and how to do a thorough job?"

  Oh, my God. Alastair had looked at porn.

  "You watched porn?"

  "No. They have medical sites that talk about which areas are sensitive to men and women, and how to max out the pleasure they feel from those spots."

  "I am sadly not at all surprised. There have to be other nerds like you that don’t want to find out with practice."

  "Doesn’t matter, vampires have some different ones than humans."

  To ask or not to ask… damn my curious nature. "Really?"

  "Yes. There's a fictional book written on it that was actually written by a vampire's pet after he died. She published it as fiction, but it's real."

  "I don’t know if it's completely cool that she was able to do that, or a horrible breach of trade secrets."

  "It only talks about how to pleasure a vampire, and the different types of sexual appetites vampires can have. Nothing dangerous to us as a species."

  I silently sit there, wondering how we could have this conversation without my head popping off from the blood all rushing to my face. Look at the medical miracles taking place within me.

  "So, you are seriously staying up late to learn how to pleasure a woman? Can't you just ask a male friend?"

  "Not all women. I was just curious about your reaction. I figured if I had all the information, I could make things less weird between us."

  Is this a thank you moment, or a really freaking weird moment?

  I drop backward and sigh. It is my own fault I was embarrassed, he is just trying to help.

  "I'm sorry, Alastair, for ignoring you. I wasn’t trying to; I was just embarrassed by my reaction. I know it was normal to react that way to vampire salvia, but I didn’t think it would be that intense."

  "It isn't always. There are various degrees. Some people it numbs the area, others are so sensitive that it just takes one lick and they are ready to mate."

  It helps he is being so clinical about it, but does he really have to tell me I got the embarrassing option rather than let me think everyone is like this?

  "Some people all it does is take away the pain. It doesn’t feel good or bad, the bite is just there after the salvia."

  "So I am one of the really sensitive ones, I take it."

  "Apparently. Most people get an increase in pleasure from the saliva while doing other things. However, they don’t get pleasure from the lick alone, other than what you would get if a human did it."

  "So I am super sensitive to vampire salvia. Noted; I will never use a potion with that in it on myself."

  "You would likely get an even more embarrassing reaction than you did from me if you applied it liberally."

  Okay, now my face really is going to melt off from embarrassment. Tell my friends and family I loved them.

  "Alastair, please stop. You're going to make me die from embarrassment."

  He comes over and sits on the bed next to me.

  "Sorry."

  "Its fine, you aren't doing it on purpose. It's just after what happened… I don’t need to hear that I happen to be a freak of nature that is going to go into heat if I get vampire saliva on me. I'm already enough of a freak with my potions thing, I really don’t need to add to it."

  "If you end up having a vampire partner, I doubt he or she would think of it that way."

  I laugh; pure, hysterical laughter. "What makes you think I will end up with a vampire?"

  "You have bad experiences with wolves, you can't bring a human into our world, and you already stated you plan to stay. You wouldn’t trust a male siren or incubus to be faithful, and with good reason. You are used to vampires because you live with us, so it would likely be easier for you to form a permanent attachment to one."

  "You make a valid argument. However, I have already accepted that I will likely be alone forever. I am most comfortable with vampires, but I
have read about the harems and being a pet, and that's not for me."

  "You might not end up a pet, or end up with one that uses the title pet, but has you as a lover."

  "Who would still have to reproduce with a female vampire at some point? I know how the system works and even if it's only for reproductive purposes, I wouldn’t agree with it."

  "You really want to be alone forever?"

  "You seem fine with it."

  "You and I are very different."

  I can’t help but chuckle. "Oh, that is very obvious, Alastair. I've thought about it and I have to be neutral for my plan to work. This is the only way I can stay in this world on my own terms and not belong to someone as an object. It’s either I am alone forever, or I leave your world forever, and I couldn’t leave and never see your family again."

  Sometimes I am glad that the house is mostly soundproof. Fiona and Fergus don’t want Alastair to hear them having sex in the room next door, and he likely does things alone they don’t want to hear either, so they soundproofed. Unless you are right outside the door, you aren’t hearing anything. The door is always the weak point.

  "You really want to be near us that much?"

  "Of course, you are my family now, aren't you? My sister lives in this world and I'm sure she would miss Helen, but even if she wasn’t part of the equation, I have to decide what I would rather give up. Love seemed the easiest dream to let go of. I can do being alone. I'm actually fairly used to it."

  Alastair lays down next to me, legs hanging off the bed, and grabs my hand.

  "You aren't alone, you have us. Isn't that the whole point of choosing us?"

  I smile over at him. "It is, isn't it?" We both look at the ceiling, not speaking, but not letting go either. It is nice just lying there, relaxing, not fighting or avoiding each other anymore.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alastair:

  "Alastair, wake up. It's almost time for school."

  The knocking on the door wakes me. I rub my eyes, looking around, but when I go to pull up one hand it wouldn’t move. Looking over I see Amber still lying on my bed, just as we had been last night. She is still holding my hand, but she has managed to curl enough to have her legs on the bed as well. I am still on my back, legs off the side, feet on the floor.