all_inclusive | Gathering: New Guest Reception

Bella stayed to the back of the reception area. It wasn't that she didn't trust herself around humans, her super self control hadn't done anything but strengthen since she'd opened her eyes to this life a few months ago. She felt the burn in her throat, yeah, but it wasn't anything she couldn't handle. Especially if she remembered where that door was, the one that lead outside into the forest.

Or it did for her. Or something. This place was putting even her mind through a workout. One she should be grateful for since it took her mind off other things. Like the frantic search she'd been through trying to find her way back to the cottage, to Edward, to Ness. To her life.

100 doors later, and she was still out of luck.

She was here to try and see who else was on the off chance that this wasn't what it seemed, that somehow Aro had found a way past her shield. Something. Anything she could fight against.

Being in a room full of humans was a test to his self-control that Eric wasn't sure he was entirely prepared to handle. While he had drunk on both Olaf and the Bellefleurs' fae girl, it still didn't change the fact that smelling humans made him long for blood all the same.

The girl in the corner was interesting. She didn't smell human and, strangely, smelled the closest to vampire of anyone he'd scented since arriving here. He drew closer, a little further into personal space than normally acceptable.

"You are not human," he whispers, just below the audible range of most humans.

Bella spun and darted two feet back when the strange man spoke behind her. She studied the man, listening to his breathing, a definite heartbeat though it sounded different, but nothing about him made the burn in her throat feel worse than usual. "Neither are you," she said back, her voice like bells and not much louder than his.

"No, because I am vampire," Eric said, watching her carefully for a reaction. She was some sort of supernatural creature, that was certain, but he had not pinpointed exactly what. He grinned, showing his fangs.

"But you have nothing to fear from me. Something tells me you wouldn't be very good to eat."

Bella frowned. Fangs? Edward said that was Hollywood's thing. He didn't have them, none of them did. They didn't need them.

"You could try to bite me, but you'd probably just chip one of the fake fangs you've got there, Dracula," Bella sniffed, trying for bravado. He wasn't human, that much she knew, but it didn't mean she was going to be the helpless human she'd once been.

"Fake? Hardly," Eric said, biting into his own wrist lightning fast. Vampire blood wouldn't sustain another vampire, no, but it was more about proving a point and less about tempting her with anything.

"Enduring the presence of all the humans, I assume?"

She'd heard the others talking, both here and around the hotel as she'd checked the doors for the one that would lead her home. That people were here from all kinds of different places - maybe wherever this guy was from vampires had fangs? Considering she was stuck in a hotel, it wasn't like it was the weirdest thing she'd encountered lately.

"So you're a vampire where you come from? Are the others like that?" she waved a hand towards the fangs, and the blood - and damn did that stuff smell almost Jacob level rank or what? "With the teeth and blood and heartbeats?"

"Yes, all vampires are like me. Except, apparently, you, which is an anomaly. Can you walk by day?"

The biggest fascination for vampires for as long as Eric had existed had been daywalking. The Queen of Louisiana had built a palace that simulated a beach party and Russell Edgington had met the true death seeking the sun again.

"No offense, but from where I'm standing, you're the anomaly. My whole family is like this, and so is every other vampire I've met. Some have extra abilities, but they're nothing like you."

Bella smiled, showing perfectly normal, straight, white teeth. "You mean do we go up in a puff of smoke and ash if we stay up past dawn? No. We just have to make sure the humans don't see us if we do. Our skin is more like a diamond than anything you could bite into," she said with a wave of her hand towards the blood on his arm. "And just like diamonds, we throw prisms when the sun touches our skin."

"Curious, curious. How do you make progeny, then? Since you don't have to go to ground, I assume coffins and graveyards aren't involved."

This was quite possibly the most engaging conversation he'd had since arriving here. This girl was young, no older than Nora when she'd been turned, and Eric wondered how long she'd been a vampire.

Bella couldn't help the small, bittersweet smile and the memory of her first time at the Cullen's house and Edward outlining the lack of coffins and cobwebs. In one respect, she was glad she'd taken the time in those first moments to remember everything she could about her human life. In another, she wished she could forget it. Being here, without her family, would be easier that way.

"No, no coffins or graveyards. Our house is open, one wall made entirely of windows to catch what sun we get in northeastern Washington State." She took a moment to consider. "Do you mean having children? Or making other vampires?"

We'd found out from Nahuel that other vampires had mated with humans to make other hybrids like my daughter. On the off chance this vampire knew anything about them, she wanted to know.

"How do you make vampires?" Eric clarified. "As far as I know, we can't reproduce any other way but you're some strange hybrid I've never encountered before."

It was almost as if the best of the fae and vampires were entwined in her and that seemed impossible, other than Warlow.

Bella was halfway to correcting him about hybrids, but she stopped herself. She had no idea who this guy was, really, and she wasn't about to tell him about her daughter. Not unless she had to.

"We're venomous," Bella replied instead. "If we bite a human, the venom starts to spread in their bloodstream, burning through their bloodstream. If the venom reaches their heart before it stops beating, they'll start to turn. As I understand it, though, that rarely happens. When they bite, it's almost impossible to stop until the last drop is drained."

It certainly was for her. Even though she had only ever bitten animals, and even with her self control, she'd never even thought of stopping until she pulled and no blood came from her effort.

"Ah, different from us. We exsanguinate the human and then feed them our blood. Vampire blood is a powerful drug to humans and there's a brisk black market trade."

Eric had considered it here given his own accounts were somewhat less liquid than he liked back home.

"I guess that's the main difference between us. We don't have blood at all. If you could even break my skin, that's all it would do. Break. The blood we drink sustains us, but that's all."

Bella thought back to when she'd had to drink blood as a human to keep herself alive long enough to deliver her daughter. It had been necessary at the time. But if she'd had to do it on purpose? "So people where you're from drink "vampire blood for...kicks? That sounds kind of disgusting."

"You would be surprised what drug addicts are willing to do. Besides, it cures most human ailments. Makes you stronger, faster, makes fucking better. Nobody fucks like someone on V."

Eric grinned. "Or a vampire. Do you have a mate?"

"I'll take your word on that," Bella said simply, shrugging a little, for all the weirdness of her life before she stopped being human, she'd never had much to do with anyone on drugs.

Sex as a vampire, though? Yeah, since she'd insisted on a real honeymoon, she knew the difference well enough to know that there was no comparison at all. To answer, she raised her left hand to show her engagement ring. "Married."

"Congratulations," Eric said, unsurprised. She was a beautiful girl and it would be out of the ordinary if she weren't paired up.

"May I recommend no turning infants to fulfill those baby dreams. Try to wait until they're at least teenagers and can speak their minds."

"Thank you," Bella responded automatically, then stilled her body before the chill along her spine showed visibly. She kept her face as blank as she could, through she wasn't too sure how well she did on that one. "It's against our laws to turn children, anyone found having made an immortal child is killed outright. Where I come from, there was something of an epidemic of them in the middle ages and whole covens were destroyed."

It was still a little too close, a little too recent, for her not to feel the near-loss of her daughter and everything that went along with it.

"We should have a rule. Apparently The Authority doesn't care if we turn children or not, though I always thought it was cruel to turn someone before their personality fully developed."

Godric had been a teenager when turned but that was infinitely preferable to the child vampire who sat on the Authority before everything went to shit.

"I find that child vampires make irrational decisions. It's best to exclude them from the bureaucracy."

"I think its because our bites are fatal that they crack down so hard on covens that create them. The immortal children can't control their impulses, especially when they're newborn vampires, and that makes them a risk for exposing us to the humans."

That part she understood, but it was still too close to the fight with Aro over her own. And while it raised her apprehension level, it also made her miss her daughter, and her husband.

"Your ruling body is called the Authority? Not the Volturi?"

"It was, yes," Eric said, shrugging slightly. "They are no longer due to certain circumstances. It...is complicated."

Eric had never heard of the Volturi but given the differences between himself and her, it wasn't surprising.

"I think we come from very different places, ah," Bella said then paused, an expression on her face an odd twist of sheepish that would have been a blush if there was blood in her body left to redden her cheeks. "I"m sorry. I've been rambling and didn't even find out your name. I'm Bella," she smiled, then extended an ice cold hand.

"Eric," he offered in kind, taking her hand. It was cold, as all vampire hands were, though he found if he fed shortly before fucking someone he didn't seem quite so cold to the touch.

"Have you been here very long, Bella?"

Because she'd learned one thing from Emmett, she squeezed his hand tight. She was five months away from being a full newborn, but she knew the strength that let her pummel her new brother in an arm wrestling match. And she didn't want this vampire thinking she was weak.

"Not long. Two days. I was home with my family and walked into the main house, or so I thought, and landed here. It was just a little disconcerting."

Gathering: New Guest Reception

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