LOI-huiswerk: eerste en laatste zin waren gegeven. Dus die zijn niet van mij ;) de rest wel...
“Do you do that often?” she asked with curiosity.
Thomas dropped the dead body onto the floor. He licked his lips, wiped the sweat from his forehead and shrugged. “It’s not a habit, if that’s what you mean.”
July looked at the man her brother had just killed. She knew that killing the reporter had become inevitable. But she never expected Thomas to kill with this ease. She always thought he was gentle, even a bit soft maybe. In the last five minutes, she had learned more about her brother than she did during the last century. She wondered what else he could hide from her, and the answer was very simple and very disturbing: if he wanted, he could hide almost anything.
“We should hurry,” Thomas said.
She nodded, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the reporter. The gaping wound in his neck was still bleeding. Blood seeped on the dusty floor, leaving stains on the old carpet.
“There’s no time for that. Besides, he will not be very tasty, since he’s already dead.”
She glanced at him. He was right. Blood from a dead person wasn’t nearly as good as blood from someone who was still alive, but her thirst was overwhelming.
Thomas grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the dead reporter. He led her through the empty house, as if she were a five-year-old.
They walked in silence, until they were outside, standing in the slowly descending snowflakes.
“How long will it take them to find him?” July asked. She shivered – temperature dropped rapidly, and her thin coat wasn’t enough to keep her warm.
Thomas put his arms around her. He looked at the old house. Centuries ago, it belonged to them. When they were still human, when people loved to come by, when they still had friends and family. Now, they only had each other. The reporter somehow found out their resemblance to Lord and Lady Stapleford and he had asked questions about them, not knowing he was actually talking to the people he was interested in.
If the reporter had left it at asking questions in the pub, he would have survived. But Thomas could not let him go. Not after the reporter had suddenly appeared on their doorstep, peering through the cracked window. The man saw them, as they were having a meal. A meal consisting of two foxes they had caught – they preferred animals over humans, not because animals tasted better, but because humans were high-risk victims.
“I think his wife will start searching for him pretty soon, but if it keeps snowing, it could take them a while.”
July sighed. “We can never come back here, can we?”
“No. We have to go.”
“I really loved this house.”
“Me too.”
“It’s a good thing we never furnished it.”
Thomas smiled, but his smile never reached his eyes. It was the second time they left their old house, but this time they could never return. People would recognize them, they would remember the reporter’s story about the old house on top of the hill, and they could fill in the blanks. Thomas and July had been through a witch-hunt before and he didn’t want to go through that again.
He rubbed her arms, in an attempt to make her feel warm. “Sometimes I wish those ridiculous stories they write down in books about us are true,” he said. “I’m sorry, July.”
“Don’t be.” She paused for a moment. “Let’s go somewhere warm. Spain, maybe. Or Italy.”
“You want to go roaming again?”
“Yes. I’ve had it with this life. We’re vampires, we can do whatever we want if we’re careful. We’ve tried to fit in, we’ve tried to live a normal life – this is how that works out. We have to stop fooling ourselves.”
“Maybe we should furnish the next house,” he said.
“Then we’ll have to have money, don’t we?”
“Yeah.” He turned around and started walking. After a few minutes, July followed. They would have to make a choice; people always seemed to feel they were different. They could just drift, as they once did, living off the blood of human beings, robbing those same humans of their money. But they could never stay in one place too long.
“Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“I never thought you could do... what you just did.”
“We are three hundred years old, July. It’s not the first time some idiot got too curious for his own sake.”
“I know, but still...”
“I will never let anything bad happen to you. Just remember that, all right?”
She nodded. Her hand found his and they walked into the night, just as they did hundreds of years before, hand in hand – only this time, they weren’t chased by half a village carrying torches and pitchforks.
In the empty house, the reporter’s body would not be found until the next morning. And while the two vampires vanished in the cold, dark night, snow fell heavily. Gently the snowflakes descended on the empty house.
