Then I realized that I knew the dead woman.Then I realized that I knew the dead woman. Grief and guilt assaulted me. I had flirted with Jennifer many times when I had been mortal; she had been a friend. Now she was dead. Worse, I realized that she was going to be a vampire in three days. And it was ALL my fault. I immediately flew to our house and rang the bell frantically. Victoria answered, dressed in a robe. I immediately grabbed her, crying like a baby, babbling incoherently. It took her a while to calm me down enough to find out what had happened. She left as soon as I got the word "vampire" out of my mouth. I drowned in tears of guilt while she was gone. She came back quickly. "Police are there. I could not retrieve bodies. Good news is that man is truly dead. You killed him before you drained him." "Jennifer?" I asked, more than a little hope in my voice. Victoria said nothing. I cried some more. Victoria picked me up, and carried me to bed. She held me and rocked me until I had no more tears left. I went to sleep in her arms, haunted by guilty dreams. It truly was the sleep of the damned. I would have been better off staying awake. The next three days were the longest in my life. Victoria refused to let me go to Jennifer's funeral. "You will do something stupid, because of your guilt. If you love me at all, you will not go," she firmly said. My mood grew increasingly worse. My fiancee got fed up with my self-flagellation after two days. "David, we _must_ talk about Jennifer." "No. I don't want to," I stated through clenched teeth. "You must call her to you tomorrow night," Victoria continued, ignoring me. "She needs to be trained." "You do it." "No, I cannot. She is your responsibility, because you made her, and she will only obey _your_ every word. |