Take This to Your Grave and I'll Take It to Mine

William started to speak. "I'm English. Born to a poor family without a drop of noble blood. My parents were married." He shot me a look, not a mean look, just a look. "I had seven older brothers and one younger sister, so I was eight out of nine. I was a very sickly child, they thought I'd die before I turned ten. I got better but I was still the frailest of all my brothers, my sister had a waist as thin as mine. I was frequently harassed by my brothers and very seldom it was that I didn't have bumps or bruises from them.

"I was always told by everyone that I would never be anything because I wasn't strong enough to work a farm like my brothers and my father and I wasn't smart enough to do anything else. That was all I ever heard until I was roughly twenty. I had grown tired of they way they'd just harass me so I was leaving. Not caring about having nothing, nowhere, and no one." He was pacing as he talked. I'll just assume that's his nervous habit.

"No wonder I‘ve disliked you so much, I have that deep bred in hate of you, Englishmen." I said with a smile. "Come lay with me and tell me where you went." I said patting the bed next to me. This was one of those moments I look back on and don’t understand. I really hated him, so why was I trying to make the best of that situation by attempting to be his friend.

He came and laid down just looking at the ceiling. "Well that's the part you'll find strange." He paused as always for no reason. "I went to Ireland. I got there around when I turned twenty-one.

“One night I walked into a tavern and I heard the most beautiful voice singing. I saw a beautiful girl singing, she wasn't seventeen."

I gasped. "Oh my god." I remembered him. "That was you?"

He turned his head to me and smiled. "It's good to be remembered"

"Before when you were singing I knew your voice was familiar. I just couldn't remember where I'd heard it before. I can't believe that was you." I moved closer and put my head on his chest.

His hand having a mind of it's own started running through my hair. "Well that night I decided to learn the songs and sing with you the next night. I was a pick pocket and a damn good one. I have long arms and quick hands so I was built for it. So I had enough money for rooms and clothes. The next night I came back and as you remember I sang with you."

"You were the first boy I'd ever found attractive." I blushed a little.

"Than that night when I tried to kiss you why did you tell me to go home and that I should at least get an Irish accent before I touched you?" He looked confused.

"I knew what happened when you were with someone your parents didn't like or you weren't betrothed to and you were from England my family hated the English. I pushed everyone away before Andres." I said solemnly thinking of Andres.

William's face grew dark at the mention of Andres' name. "I didn't come back to that tavern until my bruised ego healed, but in the mean time I wasted myself in booze. I had grown depressed from everything and needed a way out.

"This man I'd never met before had started sitting with me and talking with me about my life. He was an excessively hansom man, I'd later learn that he was a vampire and that his beauty was the trademark of the vampire.

"At one point I told him of this girl from the tavern's beauty. I told him that she rejected me and that I was still crazy for her. He told me to return to the tavern and try to get her to be mine. If she would have me never to speak to him again.

"He was giving me the chance at a normal happy life with a normal woman. He was a great vampire." He smiled at the memory of his maker.

"Well I found his words odd to say the least, but I went back anyway. I went to the tavern in which I met you, and saw you sitting on the lap of another man singing your heart out. I watched you with a jealous rage. Then I saw you look at him, I saw the love in your eyes and when he looked at you he returned it. How could I be angry with two people more in love then I could ever imagine being.

"This was the night before your life came crashing down around you, but at the time I thought my life was the worst. So I returned as usual to talk to my friend at the other pub and finally learned his name, Eric."

I shot up. "Eric? Eric was your maker?" I was almost franticly asking him these things.

"Let me finish." He said gently. "Yes, Eric was my maker, but he gave me on more day. I didn't know it would be my last day before an eternity of night.

"The next afternoon I was following a large crowd, as any good pickpocket would, and saw the gallows assembled before a grand castle. Then I saw the scene that would change your life forever play out before my very eyes."

"You saw the whole thing?" I questioned.

"And more. Before it all started, before he was on the barrel. I was disgusted by the whole situation. Andres was looking for someone to tell something and he chose me.

"He told me to tell you he loved you, no matter what happened to him he would always love you and he'd never blame you. The last thing he said to me was, 'Tell her I'll always be with her.'

"I went to see you at the tavern the next night and you weren't there and so I went to go see Eric.

"He turned me that night, if you couldn't guess, and the 'greatest flaw' as you call it was created. Don't ask me what happened or how it was flawed, because I was in so much pain that I don't even remember more than flashes.

"So I caused the snowball effect that lead to this, the vampires of today I mean. I was so hungry for company that I kept making them and they'd make more and so on. As the first of this new race they listened to me, so when I told them to leave and spread out they did.

"I was still in contact with Eric we spoke frequently and he went to your tavern because at first he said he just wanted to see what had me so enthralled.

"Once he saw you he said you were beautiful and pregnant. This was the first time you showed up to the tavern and you weren't even showing. I didn't get how he knew he said he just had his ways.

"He told me when you started to show you were just glowing and everyone loved you. You were charisma. That's why I said that it was refreshing to see you care again.

"He told me when you were getting big that you walked like a penguin. That the girls would sit with you and talk. You would comment on the kid kicking and everyone would ask if they could feel. So you'd have people standing around you with their hands on your belly.

"He came to me later and pulled me out of an important meeting. He told me that something happened to you. You were beaten and you lost the baby. He told me that he read your mind and it was the same guard that held you on the day your lover died.

"I decided that he deserved to die. I was going to be the one to kill him too. I remembered his face from that day he was holding you back from the love of your short life.

"So remembering him I found where he lived and dragged him out of his room soundlessly so I didn't wake his wife. I took him into the alley by his house and told him what I knew he did. He did what all humans do and begged for his life. He stated that he had a wife and children to support. I pointed out that he killed your child and held you back when your love was being killed so this is what he deserved. He told me he didn't want to kill your baby that he had to do it or your grandmother would have him killed.

"I ended the conversation by beating him because I wouldn't have a scoundrel like that's blood cross my lips. I beat him until he was unrecognizable.

"Weeks later the rumor spread that your grandmother was dead. I knew it was you." He smiled at me.

He then continued "One night Eric and I were discussing how good of a vampire you'd make. What was it seven years later that he turned you?"

"Yeah I was eighteen when my grandmother died and twenty-five when I was turned. He might as well have turned me when I was twenty-one. I looked the same. I had a fear of being forever twenty-one and I just wanted to hurry up and die but that didn't happen." I said seriously, I wanted to die and return to my love's arms.

"Come on get up, your thirsty I can tell." He said gently lifting me a little.