She giggles and he laughs.
“Hee hee! This is so much fun!” Annabelle says as she flies close to the ground.
They are chasing rats, trying to compete for the most catches.
The year is 1811. Roughly one year before Roland left his family.
Roland swoops down on his rat, ready to snatch it. His little claws are closing in, ready to take it from the ground.
Just as he is about half in inch from it, his beady red eyes focused on his prey; it turns to the right. Roland keeps going straight and smacks into the tree.
“Aaagh!”
He flops on the ground. “Ugh. My nobse! Wheb ab I eber going to get the hang of this?”
He looks cute. A little bat, half sitting half lying on the ground with a small tuff of red fur sprouting from the top of his little head.
Annabelle lands on the lowest branch. She’s cute also. Her face seems softer, more feminine. She has more red fur flowing from her head. Her humorous expression softens as she takes pity on her brother, “Don’t force it. Just glide above the rat, acting indifferent. Then, when it doesn’t expect you, pounce.”
“We just started learning this! How can you be so good at it?”
“I don’t know. Learning has always been easy for me. My dear, dear brother. Don’t try to make it so hard. Just have fun with it.”
She starts to carefully bite into her rat. She drinks softly.
He just looks at her and rolls his eyes. “Sigh. I’m going to try again. I’ll be right back sister.”
“Good luck.”
He takes to the air, focusing on his heightened sense of smell.
The moon casts a nice light everywhere but he doesn’t need it. In fact he thinks that maybe, if he journeyed through the trees into the more darkened secluded area he might find just the rat he needs.
Soon he’s surrounded by pitch black. He lands on a limb and waits.
It’s been thirty minutes and still no rats when he hears the sound.
He was hoping for the familiar scuffling of a rat but instead he heard something quite different.
A whisper.
He silently flew closer to the sound, following his powerful little ears into the darkness.
Bats are blind. This much is a fact. But when it comes to the vampire, when he or she transforms into a bat they keep their night vision, allowing them an advantage real bats do not have.
He eyes them in the darkness. Two men hunched over a tied up child. The kid can be no more then nine years of age. Roland looks ten but he’s really twenty-nine. Still, despite the oddity of it, he feels for the mortal child.
“Who are they brother?” she whispers softer then a falling leaf.
He jumps.
“GAHH! Don’t scare me like that Annabelle!” he whispers back. “Those two men are hiding out in these trees. I think they’ve kidnapped that child.”
“Really? Oh my! We must alert father!”
“No, lets just watch them.”
One of the men is whispering to the other. To the kids it’s like they are shouting, “Cletus, what if the kids parents don’ pay up?”
“They’ll pay. The dads the richest man in the county. Don’ you worry Beufus. By morn’ we’ll be livin’ off the hog!”
Annabelle is fascinated. In the twenty-six years of her life she has seen mean mortals before, even met them, but never has she witnessed anyone rotten enough to kidnap a child from their home.
“Brother how can this be? Who would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know sister. I guess they are evil men.”
“Yes but to take a child! It’s wrong! I would weep if someone took me from my home.”
“Annabelle, father would never allow that. Besides, these are mortals. You know how different they can be.”
“Gretchen Jinkens wasn’t that different. Remember how we used to play? Before she grew tall and married and moved away?”
“Yes. I had mortal friends too my sister and they grew tall too, but maybe these men are the worst sort that father always warns us about?”
“Maybe.” She has always been curious about things, but seeing this sleeping child there just stirred something within her he’d never seen before.
She started to shift her tiny bat body and flew down to have a closer look.
“Annabelle! What are you doing? Don’t get too close!”
“I just want to see the boy brother. I want a closer look.”
He dropped down to the ground as well.
Within seconds her furry little bat body was next to the child’s head.
“He’s so sweet. He’s too innocent for this! Roland, can we free him?”
The men couldn’t hear this, even at this close range. However they were looming over the child in the dark. Sitting, waiting for a sunrise that was still scheduled for hours to come.
“We can’t do that! They’ll see and then they will try to hurt us. Father said stay away from the mortals. Don’t you remember what happened fifteen years ago?”
“Yes, I remember. It haunts me. But if I let these rotten men have this boy that will haunt me too. I HAVE to do this! A child shouldn’t be hurt!”
Roland saw it for the first time that day. In her beady little bat eyes. A fire, a determination. She’s always been the sweet one. Sure, she’s had doubts and fears but generally she’s been sweet and optimistic.
Now, however, she just couldn’t sit back. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her. He caught a glimpse of the woman she would be.
He silently nods and she giggles with glee. She crawled her little bat body over to the child’s tied hands. She was careful not to bite the boy as she gnawed off the ropes.
“Brother! Do the feet!”
So determined was she that she didn’t realize she had given him an order. He followed without question.
Soon the ropes were severed. She hopped on the boy’s shoulder (for he was on his side) and moved towards his face.
The men were snoozing and didn’t see. She nudged her furry bat head against the boy’s chin. She had to do it for a few times before the kid awoke.
“Whu? Where am I?”
The men woke up, startled.
“Cletus he’s awake!”
“Shh Beufus! Grab him!”
The boy started to get up but the strong man’s arm blocked him. Beufus grabbed the boy by the shoulder.
“YEEAOOW! Something bit me!” Beufus let go. The boy bolted up and ran out of the darkened spot in the trees. They scrambled up and after him. The boy tripped and fell on the hard forest floor.
“WE GOT HIM NOW CLETUS!”
But as they approached the fallen, crying little boy they found two other children standing there in front of him.
“What you children doin’ out in th’ woods at night?” Beufus asked Annabelle and Roland.
“It does not matter. Let this boy go.” Annabelle demanded. To the men she looked like a little six year old child.
“Who are your parents kid? They rich like his?” Cletus asked. He could see more money coming from this.
“Never you mind that!” Roland barked back, “Just leave or we’ll have to make you leave!”
Both men laughed. They moved in closer and laughed some more. She looked at them, then looked at the little boy, crying, and something turns on within her. Her face changes.
“You men don’t care do you?”
They stop. Cletus snorts and replies, “Care? About what? All we care about is money you little twerp! What else is there?”
She may look six and she’s been acting sweet, but inside she was twenty-six. Everyone comes to a point when they start seeing things for what they truly are.
Her little eyes grow dark; “Cant you see this boy is scared?”
“Annabelle, they’re just mortals, they don’t care.”
“No Roland! Mortals are good too!” she replied forcefully then turned back to the men, “Cant you see this boy is scared?”
“Yeah? That’s the point! Now come here and..” he lunged forward and she snapped at his hand. Both men saw her fangs in the moon light.
“What are you?”
Annabelle continued on, stepping closer to the men, “He’s scared! He’s crying! Leave him alone!”
Beufus looks to his brother for guidance but Cletus just stares at her in shock.
She walks towards them, no longer a frightened little girl but for a moment an angry little predator, “I.SAID.LEAVE.HIM.ALONE! GO! GET!”
The men scramble into the darkness.
She turns and is amazingly back to the sweet, innocent girl. She brushes the little boy’s hair from his eyes (he looks older then her but she’s acting older then him) and says softly, “It’s alright, it’s alright. We’ll get you home.”
2004, on the very top of a skyscraper in Paradopolis, Annabelle clings onto its spire and looks out into the night. She looks eight years of age, yet she’s over two-hundred years old. She’s thinking to her self.
“You sure are deep in thought sister.” Roland asks as he glides to the spire. He grabs on. “What troubles thou, m’lady?”
“Remember that boy Roland? The one those men were going to kidnap?”
“Wow! It’s been years! What about him?”
“Oh nothing. I was just thinking about him. We stopped that dock manager last night but remember what he was dealing in?”
“Selling children?”
“It’s the same thing Roland. The very same thing. When will these mortals learn?”
“I don’t know sister. I just don’t.”
a.g.
Amazing Guy
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