My Most Precious Human

I had never seen any medic so excited when collecting blood. Doctor Duarte surely couldn't control his constantly increasing enthusiasm while watching the drops of my blood fall into another test tube. At that moment, I already knew he was insane, but his insanity was also his charm. Certainly, he kept sniffing the drops of my life essence as if they were the world's greatest perfume, but my instincts were telling me that his scientific excitement was even greater.

When he finished, he bowed down to me, thanking me for the fifth time that I had agreed to test my blood. I would lie if I said that I wasn't curious about his test results. When I was a child, my father, whom I knew had never shared an interest in science, managed to gather a team of experts from among the pack, and they got the results that tagged me as a pricey item. What if their results weren't correct? Or what if I possessed some supernatural ability that I could actually develop and use? I bet that the outcome of the tests provided by an over three-hundred-year-old vampire would be more accurate. I started to get excited myself.

"Thank you, Lilith! Um... I can call you Lilith, can't I?" he asked, agitatedly. "Please call me Will from now on." He grinned, heading towards the door.

"Why not... Will." I chuckled, "Thank you for treating my headache."

"My pleasure, Lilith," he said charmingly and left the room.

I spent more than half of the day in Sariel's bedroom, and I felt it could have been a good moment for me to get back to my room before I would start to feel comfortable there. I went out to the corridor and started to head back to my chamber in the west wing. Each castle servant I met on my way bowed to me while grinning as if I had suddenly become the castle's mistress overnight. It made me uncomfortable, but the best thing I could do was to ignore it. Luckily, I didn't meet any of the blood-bags, since I was quite certain they would like to kill me. Not that I was afraid they would, but injuring those girls wouldn't make my position here better either...

Once I closed the door of my chamber, I heaved a sigh of relief. I still felt weak and slightly dizzy, but at least that agonizing headache was gone. Thankfully, I had the day off, and I could regain my strength before going back to work the next day. For the time being, my brain was only working at 5% capacity. It might have been enough to embrace simple body functions such as eating or walking in a well-known direction, but not enough for logical thinking and drawing conclusions. It was obvious that there was only one way I could regenerate, and that was to get a lot of sleep.

I forced myself to turn on my laptop, but I was so drained of energy I could barely type anything on my keyboard. Two hours later, Martha brought dinner to my chamber and eating it consumed the rest of the strength I had within my body. I used the luxury I had and went to bed at six o'clock.

Just before I closed my eyes, I once again felt grateful to Will for his marvelous drug. I wished that I could have had it with me when I had my first hangover. That memory immediately brought to mind Ezra, the person who had been my life teacher, friend, and substitute father, despite the fact that his method of raising me was quite peculiar and not exactly correct in human terms. When I turned seventeen, he decided to teach me how to drink. It wasn't the smartest idea, especially since werewolves have completely different alcohol tolerance... Let's just say that the hangover was the only thing I could remember when I thought about that time. Even though it was one of the happiest moments I was able to recall, a carefree moment when I could simply laugh at my own stupidity while suffering from a headache. I closed my eyes and suddenly found myself in St. Anna's Orphanage, where I had been growing up. In the dream, I recalled my first day there. I could barely remember anything from the time I spent with my biological mother, yet I could remember every hateful thing that had happened at the orphanage. One day, I had just woken up in there. It was the cruelest way of telling me that I was unwanted. I had been taken from my mother's arms while I was sleeping. When I opened my eyes, I found myself in a strange, unfamiliar place. I remember being terrified. I was lying on some shabby bed, and there were three nuns observing me with disdain. I trembled and cringed in the bed's corner. One of the nuns took out a cross and turned it my way as if I was some evil seed. I started crying.

"Silence!" the nun yelled.

She sounded so intimidating that I began swallowing my tears, trying not to make any sound.

"Can you speak, child?" she asked in a tone full of superiority.

I slightly nodded my head, looking around and trying to understand where I was.

"My name is Sister Celestine. I'm a Mother Superior here. You will live here at our St. Anna's Orphanage from now on," she said, and added, "You will stay here in an isolation room until I say that you are ready to join the other children. You will be obedient, and you will work, learn, and pray as we tell you to. If not, you will be punished. These rules are simple. Do you understand that, child?" She glared at me with disgust.

I looked around the place I was in. It was a small room with a bed and a small stool to kneel on inside. It was dark, humid, and dirty. I looked at Sister Celestine and nodded my head, vigorously this time. I could do whatever they wanted me to do, as long as I wouldn't be left alone.

I started living among the nuns, who hardly ever treated me kindly, or more like, for some reason, I was treated like a pure devil. They even hated my name and forced me to change it because they said that "Lilith" was the name of a demon. I tried fighting them, proving to them I was a good girl, but it seemed that nothing could have changed their minds...

One night, when I was eight years old, I was dragged to the porch to kneel on the cold ground as my punishment.

"It wasn't my fault! Angelica pushed me first! She said that I am stained, and I have demon blood in me!" I cried loudly.

"Silence! Sister Beatrice shouted, "Angelica is a kind and God-loving girl who doesn't lie. She said you hit her without a reason! Why don't you admit it?! God forgives those who tell the truth, Lucy," she hissed. "My name is not Lucy!" I burst out.

"I will not call you by a demon's name! You live here, and you should finally accept the name of the saint, Lucy! If you embrace the name, perhaps it will finally bring some good into your heart," she preached in an infuriated, filled with hatred tone.

"I am not Lucy..." I muttered.

"Fine... Initially, I wanted to let you go to bed as soon as you admitted what you had done wrong and apologized, but now I will let you kneel here until the morning. Let the rising sun fill you with God's presence. I will pray that you will accept the saint's name by then," she stated and left me there alone.

I wept and sniffed softly, watching how the lights in the sleeping house of the orphanage disappeared, and the entire area sank into a deep sleep. I was shivering from the cold and exhaustion. Since no one was watching me, I stopped kneeling and lied on the ground, curling up into a ball. I closed my eyes and clenched my fists, hoping to fall asleep despite the cold.

Suddenly, I felt something soft and warm covering me. I smiled faintly without opening my eyes and finally drifted into a dream. The rising sun poked my eyes with its brightness. I lifted my hand to shield myself from the sunrays and slowly prepared my vision for the light of day. I still felt something warm all around me. I reached my hand out to touch it; it was... fur.