Chapter Nine

Jasper locked his apartment door and headed out to the street. Though the temperature had cooled slightly, it still wasn’t enough to make him wear anything other than jeans and a t-shirt. He still had his doubts about what he was doing, going to talk to Liberty, but at the same time he believed that maybe it would help him.

The past few days more than ever before, he had been almost bombarded by his past. Living through them once had been bad enough but constantly having them pop up at the worst possible times was driving him to distraction and making him re-think everything he was doing now.

He had not left his apartment at all the day before. After his hunt he had spent a great deal of time wrapped up in his past, thinking of the deaths of his family and how he had not been able to save any of them. Then there was what he had done to Lillian, leaving her without any explanation. Even worse, he hadn’t bothered to check up on her, to see if she had been able to move on after him. Part of that was because he couldn’t forget the look on her face when he turned to leave forever, but most of it was because he feared that she had moved on to someone better, someone that would never abandon her as he had.

It was all becoming too much to bear.

That was why he had decided to call Liberty. He couldn’t tell her everything, or at least he didn’t think he could, but surely she would listen to him if he spoke of his family. To impose more than that on her would place her in a position that was dangerous and quite possibly deadly. It was extremely rare to tell someone of the vampiric race. Most were told before they were turned, or it was more likely after they were turned.

Jasper still remembered when those men had told him about Bela Maschari and what she was. He had discovered later that those men were hunters and they had been chasing after Bela for a year, since she had attacked their town. Learning of this had only made things worse. Jasper knew stories of vampires but he hadn’t believed any of them to in fact be true.

The truth had only made it worse when first Rebecca and then Margaret fell to the same affliction that had destroyed Charlotte. Then, as if it could have been any worse, his mother had fallen victim to it as well. In only took a month for Bela to completely destroy his entire family, leaving him completely alone.

With his mother buried, Jasper was left to manage the family home on his own. Now every argument he had ever had with his family seemed pointless. He never would have done that if he had known what was to happen to them. Knowing that they had been murdered by a cursed vampire only seemed to make it that much worse.

No one would believe him when he tried to tell them what had happened. They all thought that he was crippled by his grief and it was making him see things that weren’t there. They said it had affected his mind. Jasper tried to go on but day after day he only went through the motions. His neighbors brought him food and offered to help him with the livestock but Jasper had ignored all of them. Even when Lillian came over to see him, he ignored her knocking on the door until she left.

He couldn’t bear it. The solitude was tearing him apart until he seemed to jump at every sound and every shadow. It was no way to live and he knew that. Living did not seem worthwhile when he had lost everything. He knew it was wrong; he still had Lillian, but it felt wrong to want to be happy with her when the rest of his life had crumbled apart.

There was only one thing to do and it was almost an insane thought. His life would only have meaning again if he could find this Bela Maschari and avenge his family. He had no idea how to find her though; he certainly wasn’t skilled in hunting or tracking, especially if that meant trying to find a creature that had no body to follow. She could appear at any time in anyone’s body.

Jasper though of only one way that he could find her and that would mean leaving his old life behind. To do that would mean never being able to be with Lillian. She would never accept him if she found out what he had done. It was almost as if he were going to make a deal with the devil.

It even felt as if he was making such a deal, but in the end he believed that doing this would only benefit many others in the long run. By destroying Bela it would mean that countless numbers of women and children would never be possessed and killed. Families would not have to bury a loved one not truly knowing why they died.

To find Bela he would have to become the same monster she was. He would have to give up his mortality, that which kept him human, and turn into a solitary hunter.

Jasper had thought that becoming a vampire would change him into someone he didn’t recognize and in some ways it had, but he still felt as if he was the same person he had always been. Though he needed blood to survive, he often left his prey weak but alive. He was always disappointed when he failed to stop Bela. Every time she killed someone, Jasper went to his or her funerals to apologize for his failure.

She was extremely elusive. He had come to learn that in the 196 years he had been following her. In that time Bela had killed at least 100 people by possessing them and countless more when she hunted them to feed. She lusted after blood almost as much as she wished for that which she lost, all that made her a vampire. That was the one thing she could not get back, no matter how many bodies she took over. When she had been cursed, she had lost her fangs, her vampiric speed and her strength had diminished greatly.

In his mind Jasper wanted to believe that was why he hunted, to maintain his strength for when he was actually able to pin Bela down. Any vampire aside from a newborn fledgling would be stronger than her, but it took someone who had the mind of a hunter, of a predator to find Bela and defeat her once and for all.

Jasper walked into the park and saw Liberty sitting on a bench. She was dressed in a nice pair of jeans and a dark green button up top. He assumed that she hadn’t changed after church. This time her top not only emphasized her eyes, but it also brought out her light red hair as it fell in gentle waves past her shoulders.

He shook his head. No, he wasn’t going to think that way at all. Focusing on finding Bela was the most important part of his life. Besides, having any sort of inclination towards Liberty would only cause more trouble than it was worth, for him and more importantly, for her. If he kept himself distanced from others then Bela would not be able to use those ties as weaknesses.

As he moved to sit down on the other side of the bench, Jasper saw Liberty look over at him. “Hi. Did you have any trouble finding the park?”

“No, it’s a little difficult to get lost in such a small town.”

She smiled. “That is one of the many benefits of living here. I find it to be quite nice.”

“I have lived in large cities and in small towns, and I agree that small towns are better. I feel more comfortable in them.”

She looked puzzled. “If you prefer small towns then why do you isolate yourself? That’s hard to do when in a place where everyone knows everyone else.”

Jasper looked away from her. “I used to be quite different, many years ago. Much like you I seemed to get along with everyone around me and I cared about my neighbors. We all helped each other through whatever came our way but…something happened.”

Liberty reached over and took one of his hands in her own, which cause Jasper to once again look over at her. “What happened?” she asked.

“You know, I came over here fully prepared to tell you why I’m so distant from everyone and now I just can’t seem to say any of it.”

He watched as she gazed right into his eyes. It felt like she was getting into his mind and reading him, as if she could sense that there might have been something he was going to withhold from her.

“I am not here to judge you, Jasper. I want to help you, really, I do. But I can’t help if you only want to tell me half-truths. Trust me.”

It was never that easy though. Trust took time and it was almost inevitable that trusting someone led to the formation of some sort of relationship. He couldn’t afford that. “I don’t know if I can,” he answered softly. Then, seeing the shocked look on her face, he continued. “It has absolutely nothing to do with you, Liberty. You are one of the most open and caring individuals I have met in a long time. The problem is me; it always has been. I have lost everyone I have ever cared about and I’d rather that not happen ever again.”

She squeezed his hand. “Your family…?”

He couldn’t even answer so instead he nodded. It had been almost 200 hundred years and still he couldn’t actually speak about what happened. Each time he thought about them he felt a twinge of pain in his heart. Even after all these years he still knew that he was grieving for them. He had yet to move past all of it. He couldn’t, not until Bela was dead.

“Jasper, I’m so sorry. I can’t even begin to imagine how you must feel.”

“It was a long time ago.” Jasper pulled his hand away from her. “I think this may have been a mistake. I appreciate you wanting to help me but maybe it would be best to just forget about it.” He stood up and moved away from her.

Liberty shook her head. “Why are you doing this? It seemed like you wanted to open up and now you have closed yourself off again and added a three foot moat around yourself. Please, you don’t have to go through all of this alone. Living a solitary lifestyle will only turn you into an old bitter man.”

Jasper snorted at the thought of ever becoming an old man. That wasn’t going to happen, not anymore.

“I have said nothing that is at all humorous,” Liberty responded. “Why don’t you just admit that you need help and try to move on from the tragedies of your past? I’m sure that you couldn’t have done anything to prevent what happened to your family. The best way to honor them is to go on with your life, to open yourself up again, to allow yourself to heal and to love. You need support.”

“As much as I would like to believe that, it can’t ever happen. I wish I could explain it to you so that you would understand just why it’s better this way but I can’t. In fact, it will be better for you if I say nothing at all. Thank you for meeting me here, Liberty. I’m sorry to have made you come all this way for nothing.”

Jasper walked away from her, forcing himself not to look back. It would be easier this way, or at least that’s what he tried to tell himself. Though he knew he would still be miserable, Liberty wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge of the evil things that happened at night. She would remain as she was now, pure and full of life and compassion. It was best to just leave her out of the entire mess.

“Jasper, wait!” she called after him, but he didn’t hesitate, stop, or turn to look back.

He left her standing in the park on her own. It was a bittersweet moment to find someone that he felt he could reveal everything to and finally get it all off his chest, but at the same time he also knew the danger she would be in if he said anything. Jasper smiled sadly as he turned the corner to where she couldn’t see him anymore.

One thought reverberated in his mind. “She’s safe from the truth. I just need to make sure that she stays safe from Bela.”

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She floated in on the cold breeze and followed the one in which she had held an interest for almost two centuries. She watched as he held a conversation with a particularly attractive young woman. If she was able to, she would have smiled. The young woman had even taken his hand at one point.

Finally. She had waited for him to make a slip like this one for the past decade. Now she had an idea of what to do in order to torture him some more. For some reason she had taken a liking to this particular young man, though he wasn’t exactly a man anymore.

It gave her great pleasure to fixate on certain people and completely destroy their lives but this young man brought a completely new level of amusement. Unlike all the others, he had gone a step farther than anyone ever had. He had become a vampire just to find her.

Of course that meant that she could do so much more damage to him. It was completely inevitable that he would form some manner of attachment to someone else, and then she would do everything she could to take that person away from him.

This young woman that he was spending time with, she looked like a perfect specimen. With a few changes to her wardrobe she would be perfect to lure even more people to their demises.

With every fiber of her soul she felt the desire to take a physical form once more. She had not tasted the sweetness of a human’s blood in far too many years. The need to hunt raged up once again and she made a decision.

In that moment, Bela knew that it was time. She would follow the young woman and then she would take her body.