An Unborn's Verdict

He looked at the passenger seat next to him. It was still there. The evidence of his own foolishness and weakness. To think it took less than five minutes to lose a life-time's trust. Slumped over in her seat, the girl seemed almost serene, at peace. He knew that the peace was deceptive. Already slight tremors were indicating the changes her physiology was undergoing. His acute vision allowed him to see inside her veins. What should have been red blood cells now more closely resembled black blood cells.

He slumped over the steering wheel. HONK!

His heart felt like a racetrack. Horses were thundering through mercilessly. It took him a minute to calm himself. His own meticulous nature had ensured that the car was parked in a secluded spot. Even if somebody did hear the car's horn, they would probably have a hard time spotting the car. The rocky overhang and tall trees provided a perfect natural garage. He was safe - from humans at least.

He became aware of a sound. It was a slight rustle, a light rasping. The regularity of the sound at first caused him some problems to locate its source. Finally he realized that it was the girl's breath. His pulse quickened. Once she was breathing, it would only be a matter of seconds...


Once again he asked himself where everything had gone so wrong. He was a respected vampire, wasn't he? For goodness' sake, he was a Pureblood! He had two wonderful parents to look up to. Both his father and mother were the perfect examples of what Purebloods should be like. They kept their diet to animal blood and the occasional hard-to-digest, solid, human food. For all intents and purposes they were humans, humans with long canines and a strange diet. The local community was not even aware of their dual existence. The Scarlet family was accepted without question.

Reflecting back on it, he realized that this naivety was exactly what allowed things to happen the way they did. He could still remember the first day he met her. She was catching butterflies with a net. The funny thing was that she would capture them, keep them for a while, and then release them. He finally could watch no longer and asked her what she was doing. The simplicity of her answer momentarily stunned him.

"I'm catching butterflies, silly."

He asked her why she released them after going through the trouble to catch them in the first place. She was philosophical.

"If I keep them, they die. If I let them go, they live, and I can be with them again tomorrow."

He still was not satisfied. He wanted to know the reason she was catching them. It certainly was not for food.

"I catch them, because they are beautiful. "

He finally understood those words years later when he fell in love. He had a butterfly to catch. He did not wish to harm her, he just wanted to catch her since she was beautiful. As fate would have it, it was the very same girl who taught him about the butterflies in the first place.

As his feelings for her began to grow, so did the furrows between his parents' foreheads. They felt it their duty to warn him about the dangers of such a relationship and about the lure of human blood. Apparently it was an almost irresistible taste - much richer than the animal blood he was used to. He also had listened to countless stories of the "reverse curse". In essence it was a way for an Unborn to have revenge on the vampire who stole its mortality. He chuckled nervously at the word Unborn. The term was coined after vampires heard that humans refer to their recently born offspring as newborns. An Unborn was simply an undead newborn.

An Unborn's special privilege is to bite a vampire, causing that vampire to finally die. He shuddered. The worst part was that during the Unborn's transformation, the offending vampire was not allowed to leave the site of his crime. An invisible force kept them rooted to the spot. The decision to bite or not is entirely up to the individual Unborn. A decision which was usually ruled by spite.

He sighed. It was true that their current location was his own doing. He simply wanted to be alone with her. Doubt was filling his mind. Did he have some subconscious agenda from the beginning? He shrugged it off. His original intentions were nothing sinister. He would show her a nearby waterfall, they would have a picnic under the ledge, perhaps kiss and then go home. He did not foresee that they would never leave the car. It started with an innocuous remark:

"Matt, something's bitten me in the neck."

Those words should already have alerted him to the danger, but his inexperience caused him to volunteer to take a look. She had thrown her hair forward so that he had a full view of her neck. The sight of that slender, healthy neck made him lose all control. Before he knew it, he had leaned over and sunk his fangs into her neck. It was true! Human blood was incomparably tastier than animal blood. He felt like he could drink forever. In reality, he had scarcely drunk enough to make her faint. After the initial giddiness of tasting her, came the gnawing realization. She would soon wake up...

He listened to her breathing again. He had to get out of the car. An invisible force was pressing down on him. He felt claustrophobic and nauseous. Her eyelids began to flutter. Suddenly they were wide open. Her eyes were sparkling red! He resigned himself to his fate. Her decision was clear. He was going to die.

She inched towards him ever so slowly. She had not said a single word yet. He deeply regretted the fact that he would never know a vampire's unnaturally long lifespan. He could feel her breath on his face. It seemed as if she was enjoying herself. He could feel her fangs brushing his neck... He braced himself. She moved her lips to his ears. Her whisper was almost inaudible:

"If I let them go, they live, and I can be with them again tomorrow."