“Last Chance”

(Vampire) Adoption Agency

Death on our Doorstep

Chapter 1

Are your secrets where you left them cause now your ghosts are mine as well - Gwen Stefani

He was a pretty child in his pain. Charming in his panic. Stunning in his rage and despair. It was believed, that he would be beautiful in his death. Rayginna loved children. She loved pretty children with dark hair and lovely eyes. And Stephan, despite his being younger than all the others fit the description perfectly. His hair was soft and so thick with curls your fingers could choke in them, and his eyes, a blue so dark they were nearly black seemed to encompass his small angular face. The alabaster of his skin made his eyes dance with shadows.

She was mesmerized by his eyes. She would have to have someone paint him alive before…well before. Ginna felt a tad uneasy about this boy, but she brushed the feeling off as nervousness because she had never had one so young before. All of her other ‘children’ had been in their early teens and late adolescence, and she had just taken them, not gone through all the trouble of actually adopting them. Stephan, dear heart, was special and only eleven, and he had just turned that.

When she had been studying him for those two months, she had noticed that his parents treated him little better than trash. As her first sign of affection toward him, she had gotten rid of the two of them. Ginna figured that the experience would be good for him in the long run. As her second show of affection she had waited patiently for him to go through the long, complicated and mostly unnecessary process of the ‘system’. And she was not known to be a patient woman. She had been able to pull some strings, but only a few least people began asking questions that didn’t need to be answered. Such as how she had the contacts she had, how she was able to get them, and why she was using them on this particular boy.

The fact that he had been sent to her orphanage was an added bonus, that the courts had granted her custody of the boy as quickly as they had was a given. After all, she was the perfect guardian. She was happily married in public, took care of dozens of children on a daily basis, and thanks to her and her husbands jobs combined she had a more than comfortable income. She didn’t have a record, didn’t smoke, drink, or do any type of drugs. Her home was large and spotless, and she could have as much free time as she could possibly want. She was perfect for her new son. Absolutely perfect. And he was more than perfect for her. Ginna believed that this time, this time, she could and would achieve her ultimate goal.

In the weeks before the boy was to come though, Ginna was haunted by ghosts.

Small wispy things that floated around her house. Drove her into walls and made her flinch and curse every time she saw a small figure pass beside her out of the corner of her eye. Woke her panicked and sweating in the morning, screaming in her ear, inside of her head.

Screaming and screaming.

Never quiet.

A constant thing. A thing that had no end.

The ghosts forced her to see. All the blood on her hands. All the souls she had abandoned to an eternity in purgatory.

But there was hope. As the date got closer and closer for the boy to arrive, she began to watch him as often as she could at the orphanage. It became an obsession. A new one. And then one day, as she sat in her car across the street and watched him play, watched the sun glint across all that lovely black hair and sparkle in those amazing eyes, the young sweat shimmer on that pale skin, her heart clutched in her chest. Squeezed tight and held with an almost painful intensity and she understood.

This boy would save her.

He would be the last one.

Greater and more powerful than all the others.

With his death the souls would fade. Disappear.

With his death her hunger could finally be satisfied.

The hunger that ate at her.

Feeding…feeding,

Forever hungry.

C'est ein affaire a' pus finir.

It is a thing that has no end.