CURSE OF THE BLOOD MOON

“Anyway it’s a good thing we are immortals, or else we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the little tyrant.”

They walked back to the house, SJ was playing tag with the bigger boys. Scarlet watched her little boy run around happy without a care in the world. She wondered whether Stephan had gotten the opportunity to know their son before he left.

“So what exactly am I?” Scarlet was curious about what she was because she was not human.

“We don’t know, now that you are awake, Eric and I will keep our eyes on you. But I highly suspect you are a vampire because other than Stephan I don’t know anyone who has been turned into a beast.” Solara answered her, it wasn’t a conclusive answer but they were at least getting headway.

She admired how his little smile and hearty laughter, brightened up his face. His long brown hair bounced around his face, his silver eyes pulling her into them with each second.

“He looks exactly like his father.” She said in a low serene voice.

“He is his father,” Solara said in a chuckle.

“Where does he think Stephan is?” she watched her son, afraid that he wouldn’t get the opportunity to know his father.

“He talked to him before he left. We don’t know how much of it he understood, but he knows who his father is.” Kayla took Scarlet’s hand, “he left him his phone with pictures of himself and you. He also took some photos with him, when he was a baby.”

“Where is it?”

“He hides it somewhere in the house.”

She watched her son do cartwheels all over the front lawn. Her hand fell on her flat belly, thinking of the last time she had contact with him, was when he was nudging inside her. Everything about him reminded her of Stephan and she couldn’t help but miss the father of her son.

“I don’t know what I’m going to tell him once he starts asking for his father.” Scarlet was confused about how was she to explain Stephan’s whereabout when she didn’t understand what was going on.

“Kayla I think it’s time for his lunch.” Solara left them and walked to where the little boy was. He was already covered in dirt and gave Solara a workout before he let him catch him.

“What does he eat?” Scarlet was hoping that he ate anything or everything except blood. As much as she was in love with an immortal that drank human blood or the people around her needed human blood to sustain their identity, she didn’t want the same fate on behalf of her or her son.

“As much as you don’t want to hear this, SJ does drink blood, but he also eats some human food. He’s got each foot in both worlds. We are trying to teach him how to control his thirst.”

Scarlet breathed out a sigh of defeat, she couldn’t fight with nature no matter how she tried, “Where does the blood come from?”

“We have a freezer in the basement with human blood, but we often go out to hunt. We haven’t taken him with us yet, but we plan to as soon as he’s old enough.” Kayla tried to ease her friend’s worry, but there was so much that she could do.

“When is that? It’s only been four months since his birth and he can pass for a five-year-old?” Scarlet calculated in her head and she was sure that at the end of the month her son would have grown a couple of feet taller.

“Scar, it’s his body that we are waiting for to grow bigger not the years to pass. This is a special child and at his size, he can walk through a wall and knock trees down. If you are hoping to hold on to the baby blues Scarlet, you are out of our mind.”

“I know all that K, but I want him to have some normality in his life. He is my baby no matter how many centimeters long he has gotten today or any other day.” Scarlet knew she was going against reality, wishes and hopes never superseded the reality of a situation, but she still held on to the innocence of her child.

“When you feed him the blood, does he know how to tell the difference and does he know why he’s taking it?”

“Yes, we’ve explained it to him. His little mind absorbs so much and he can reason like every other grown-up. He knows what he should and shouldn’t do. What is expected of him and he understand what he is and how different he is from the other children.”

Scarlet felt a pang of jealousy and guilt listening to Kayla tell her what her child understood and knew. This was a mother’s role, to know her child through and through, teaching her child right from wrong. But she had been unconscious when he was growing up and all she could do is be grateful that he had Kayla to explain all these things to him.

Now it was up to her to raise him into the man he ought to be, and she hoped she could do as good a job as Kayla had done with the limited time she had.

“Thank you K. For the time you and Solara have been his mother and father and I can’t thank you enough for that.”

“Don’t worry about it, right now we need to think of a way to get the father back to the son.”

Scarlet knew that Kayla was referring to a way to get Stephan back home, but she didn’t think that anything they would come up with would be successful. It was up to Stephan, and she knew if he thought he was doing the right thing he would never come back home.

They weren’t a match for Marquis and her army and any attempt to free him from her claws would be futile.

“Well, the father needs to come up with the plan.” Scarlet left it at that and went to the house.

Scarlet sat in her room, thinking about everything all at once. That morning she had woken up to a new life, but she didn’t know how much different it was from her previous life. She was only sure of three things, the fact that she was a mother, that Stephan had left to chase his demons, and that she wasn’t human.

She had always been against being turned into a vampire, but not knowing what she was made her nervous. This was her new life and she had to figure out what she was before she could start living it.

She lay back on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Her son had been fed and was happily playing outside, so she could take the time for herself. She spent the better part of the afternoon alone, but the rest of it was spent with SJ, who cuddled beside her for his afternoon nap.

His little body curled around hers and his fingers clang tightly on her shirt. It was like he expected her to disappear while he slept. She couldn’t blame the child for being frightened, his mother had just woken up from a long nap and his father left soon after his birth.

Scarlet expected some sort of explanation from Stephan, she couldn’t accept the reason he gave for leaving their son when she was unconscious. She thought that he should have waited for her to wake up.

She watched her little boy peacefully sleep beside her. Although at first, he was a stranger to her, having him so close by reminded her of the twelve weeks their lives were tied together.