Created by blood

Chapter 4

Jonathan worked her hard the last 9 days, offering little to no time to relax, save for the few fleeting moments where they lay reading before the sun took them. She, much like him, was full of curiosity and questions. Questions which he answered to the best of his ability.

It was, he mused, nice, if he was being honest to have someone like her around. Yes, their physical ages were vastly different; Jonathan did have a good seven years on her, but their "newborn" status as ekons and drive for knowledge made it a moot point.

Things were made ever easier thanks to dear Edgar, who, bless his little heart, was as understanding as ever. The bloke would keep Reid's rounds short, only assigning him and notifying him personally if something serious came up that required special attention. Otherwise, Swansea handled Jonathan's rounds himself, simply waving the vampire away with a grin when he enquired if it was all right.

The ease, he thought, at which she slipped into their lives was astonishing. No matter what the situation they found themselves in over the last seven days, be it polite or impolite company, Odessa had a mask for each situation he learnt. Growing up on the docks, living with a sailor for a father will do that, she told him. It made sense. How could a dock girl, where "impolite" company was the norm, ever hope to make it through nursing school if she did not have a mask for it?

Even Jonathan himself had different masks for different situations. He had his professional one, which he wore for patients, the "toff" mask, as Odessa called it, for polite company, and at the very bottom of the many layers was his true self, of which even Edgar would never know the whole truth, for Jonathan Emmit Reid may have been a civil man, but he was not an innocent man.

Though that was all he had allowed her to learn thus far, as this was not about him; no, it was about her. And he had learnt a great deal about the little blond-haired hazel-eyed Nurse that was Odessa walker.

The main thing that he had learnt was that she was a quick study and was great at adapting to new situations, easily proving his theory that, with round-the-clock help, she would adjust faster to her... New condition. And she had, though not all was easy.

Complicated things like accepting the hunger just enough for the blood sight were trivial, while other abilities such as shadow vail eluded her. Making it hard, he found, not to laugh or often smile at her behaviour.

The little vampire has retained so much of her humanity that I did not need to teach her how to appear human. From the moment I met her, she kept her idle movements, whereas I have had to relearn them. Not only that, but, despite keeping her humanity, she has somehow fully accepted what we are. So much so that our nightly skal hunting sessions have become almost enjoyable...

Jonathan scratches his beard as he returns to reality, eyes staring at the clipboard that's been in his hands for some time.

He frowns when the words on the page finally make sense through his pondering mind. Mister Sean Hampton? He had been discharged, had he not?

Sean Hampton, a ginger-haired Irish immigrant, was a man Jonathan had saved during his first night as a vampire. Disorientated and dazed, Reid had found the bloke in the clutches of a semi-lucid skal named William Bishop. He had a lot of injuries and was severely anaemic, leading to a rough 3 weeks in the hospital, many nights of which he spent unconscious as not only did he have to fight to recover from his encounter, but he soon fell to the flu in his weakened state.

It was only days before meeting Odessa that Jonathan had allowed Mister Hampton, or the Sad Saint as many call him, to return to his "flock", as he so lovingly called the people he cared for. The fact that he had returned of his own accord when his waking moments under intensive care were spent lamenting how his flock needed him deeply worried Reid.