Totally worth it. I thought I’d have to carry my dad’s jaw separately onboard! For safety’s sake, they each got a medicine cup with a drop of Vitamin Cedarcrest (aka my blood) before being offered a real drink by the crew. I’ll thank Bobby and Amy for sticking with us onboard; they keep my secrets.
Anyway, my mom already looked sleepy after our pickup, so it wasn’t the cocktail that did her in as she ended up napped out while dad and I talked during the flight. Cole and Travis hung around for a while before slipping off to the front of the plane to check accommodations.
So, of course, my dad drops a bombshell on me. “I want you to drink from me.”
Oh no you didn’t, you silly old man. “What?” I answered, feigning inattention and relevancy to his words. “No… I’m covered. I’m here as your daughter, not to feast off of you.” I added a chuckle to make it sound less sinister, but I’m not sure he noticed. I nervously grabbed my mobile and pretended to thumb through something… anything.
When he said nothing afterward, I looked up again to see him staring at me. Actually, I felt it long before I looked, but I’d hoped I was wrong.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll ask because you’re waiting for me to: why?”
“Guilt. Maybe.”
“We’ve talked about this.” And we had… at length, but never face-to-face. “I made you shoot me –”
“I put you in that position.”
“You didn’t know I was a Vampire.”
“Yet you showed restraint. I can only imagine how hard that was for you.”
“Damn straight,” I said. “Imagine all you like. I promise you’ll never know.”
He gestured toward my guys. “You drink from them, don’t you?”
I smiled. “And pay well for the privilege.” He was still serious and I wasn’t getting through to him. Was there more to it than the obvious? “Why would you want to be bitten by a Vampire, let alone your only daughter? That’s creepy on a couple of levels. Does mom know?”
That’s when I saw it: humility from my own father. “It’s the only way I know to still provide for you.” He was completely serious… wasn’t he?
I felt a tear form and, not wanting my dad see me bleeding from my eyes, took a moment to recover. What could I say? “I don’t need you anymore” would have been horrible. I kept thinking through the angles. Maybe it WAS guilt over not trusting his daughter once, but he’d made sure mom wasn’t hearing this. Was he just curious?
There was right after Ian turned me, the whole Louisa conversation. Daddy loved books about the supernatural, too. Have you ever heard the story why funerals in New Orleans have these grand parades that wind through the streets before burial? They say it’s to confuse the dead so they can’t find their way back home afterward… and likely destroy their surviving family.
I doubled-down before I left Cedarcrest — standard operating procedure: two full pints.
He was offering, and hey, I could eat.
Hmm…
Take your power seriously. Keep each other safe. Be indomitable.
~ Janiss
Email janiss.connelly@cedarcrestsanctum.com
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My dad always tried to give my mom and I the best of everything growing up as his businesses improved, but I’m looking forward to seeing the look on his face when I invite him onboard our Gulfstream G650ER.
But why sex? We can’t procreate to create half-undead babies no matter what popular fiction suggests: animated dead bodies can’t conceive… but we CAN feel. All of our senses are heightened and we can become inexplicably aroused. Living blood is some of it — okay, most of it — but even without the thirst, we crave touch, an intimate familiarity with someone other than ourselves to quench a different thirst.
I hate myself for daydreaming about my taloned hands around their throat, enjoying their pointless struggling viewed through my empty eyes, and smiling at their raspy protests choked short before forming discernible words.
Centuries ago, villagers once lived their entire lives in terror that a bloodsucking corpse would enter their homes at night to steal their children. It’s not that Vampires couldn’t — no invitation needed — it’s that we choose not to. Destroying one another is always a missed opportunity for any future benefit.
Whether you believe in your elected leaders or not, whether your candidate got in or not, the Vampire Vote just doesn’t carry any weight unless you’re bringing ire and grief to our doorstep — in which case, there won’t be any emergency actions or filed appeals, but it also won’t go any further than the foolish individuals who knock on the crypt door.
The world looks renewed after a snowfall. With ice and snow covering everything, color and individual details merge into monochromatic shades and textures, becoming something different — perhaps something more. Everything familiar and unique becomes joined in single theme. The skies turn gray, a blanket over the stars and heavens.
Life is precious; believe me, I get that — read: I’m a Vampire — but you cannot fully appreciate what you have until you’ve lost the ability to choose for yourself. History is littered with the casualties of loss of choice — both slavery and genocide in the extreme — often because those in power use it against those who needs their help the most. With the open global communication of today, it’s hard to sweep these kinds of activities under the carpet… we can see you, and we’re not putting up with it.
I think she combined these ideas for Cedarcrest. While she certainly ruled the roost, I don’t think she saw herself as the high priest or queen of the damned; it was a place of refuge and safety — a sanctuary. Even under the guise of an elder care home, she actively sought her residents, scouring public records for the homeless and those in dire situations. Her days were long past acting the part of den mother to a sorority… something she actually did for a time after she was turned.
We can really only maintain sixty residents, forty staff, and one immortal… by design. For people who don’t know about 
Cedarcrest Sanctum 