Blake
Ithought about his name. I didn’t know anyone else with that name and had never heard of it before. Was Marlon a strange name for a vampire? Not that I knew any vampires or any other vampire names, but I never imagined one to have a regular name, well, as regular as the name Marlon could be. He walked around the small farm, taking his time and occasionally snapping off a stalk of grass or smelling a flower that now grew wherever they wanted.
“What would you do if you suddenly had more money than you could imagine?” Marlon turned to face me then. It was dark, but moonlight illuminated his features enough for me to see them, and I again thought of how different he looked before his burial.
“Buy my parents’ house. They live there with my grandfather, but they don’t own it and they’re constantly worrying about the rent and what they’ll do if the landlord sells it.”
“Isn’t it on your land?” he asked.
“Not anymore. They sold some property and the plot their house is built on years ago.” He considered my words a moment before he spoke again.
“What would you do for yourself?”
“Fix up my truck. I mean, I wouldn’t mind a new one, but I love the one I’ve got, and I don’t have to worry about it getting dents or dings while I’m driving down the old country roads.”
“Is that all you’d want?” He seemed surprised, and I noticed a bit more of his accent.
“Yep. I rent my house, and I don’t want to own it. It’s fine for now, but I’m not sure I want to live here for the rest of my days. I might decide to travel the world.” I’d always wanted to know what life was like outside this little town, but so far, I’d barely crossed the county line.
“Where would you travel?” he asked as we walked back to the truck.
I leaned against my truck and rested my elbow on the bed. “I want to see it all. You said you’re from Ireland. Have you been back?” He narrowed his eyes and looked off into the distance before shoving his hands in his pockets.
“No. Not since I left. At first, I wandered all of Ireland before I stowed away on a ship bound for England. For a few years, I moved around Europe, but being a vampire is a lonely existence. Every night I explored and hunted, then found a safe place to sleep during the day. They thought we were a scary storythat most didn’t really believe. But in later years they feared us.”
“What did you hunt?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Humans. Mostly those that were the dregs of society, but anyone unfortunate enough to cross my path when I was in need. I did not have control of my urges and fed often, which made me unable to be around humans. They knew not to trust me, and I didn’t trust myself.”
“What did you do to the man who had the gold?” I shouldn’t have asked, but I needed to know.
“Do you really want to know?” The way he looked at me confirmed I did not and all I could manage was a headshake to answer.
“Have you killed many people?”
He surprised me with a grin before answering. “You really are quite curious,” he said, making me chuckle.
“Yeah. Like I told you, it usually gets me into trouble.”
“Let’s make a deal. For every question you ask me. I get to ask you a question. I guess I’m curious about how humans live now,” he said.
I thought about it for a moment, and I had to admit the thought of being able to ask him anything was tempting, but I was a little afraid of what he might ask me. Not that I had anything to hide, but it was strange to think he’d want to knowanythingabout me. “Okay. I’m not sure my life is all that exciting.”
“Humor me then,” he said. “Come this way and I’ll show you where some of the gold is.”
“Some?”
He ignored my question and led me over to where old boards covered what I knew was an abandoned well. He stood for a moment with his hands on his hips before lifting one board, then lay on his stomach as he stretched his arm down inside and fumbled around. “This was the water supply for the farm. It took us weeks to dig the well and line it with rocks. I could have done it all in a day or two, but I enjoyed working together with my mate.”
“Was he mad you didn’t just do it and save him some work?” I asked.
“If he was, he didn’t mention it. We liked to work together. At least, I thought he did. I wonder how much I was wrong about in our relationship.” His voice held a touch of sadness as he spoke. But his eyes shot to mine when he gripped something I couldn’t see then pulled his arm out of the well before holding his hand out to me.
“What is it?” I asked. After everything I’d seen the past two days, I wasn’t willing to take something from him until I knew what it was.
“Trust me,” he said. The two words that I knew meant something to him. Someone he trusted had betrayed him, and I doubted he’d do something that would make me not trust him.
I held my hand out, and he dropped something heavy and again wrapped in cloth into my hand. I carefully opened it, and in the back of my mind thought how different it was that now I’d seen two things he’d had from the past that were both cloth-wrapped, which no one would have done now. “A rock?”
