Rose Blossom - By Renee Travis Page 0,24

Avalon, when I saw the excitement in her eyes I stared back at Julian, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I had no idea you weren't allowed to celebrate Halloween, I just figured you didn't care," Julian said, looking a little unsure.

"Oh Julian, if you can convince my parents to let me go I'll.... I'll do.... I don't know what but something!" I squealed and kissed him. He froze under my lips and then his hands were linked behind my back and we were locked in a deep embrace, I felt like he was devouring me and it was a pleasing sensation.

I heard Avalon cough, "Someone's home."

Julian and I pulled away from each other and sure enough a minute later, though I had heard nothing, the garage door opened.

Julian smiled down at me, "give me 10 minutes and I'll get the okay." He quickly left the room.

The minute he was gone I turned to Avalon; she sat back a little, probably not liking the expression on my face.

"Avalon, may I ask you a hypothetical question?" I had craved this chance to get her alone for days now. The girl retained knowledge and ideas better than a computer.

"Well, I guess, if it is hypothetical then yeah, sure," she shrugged, watching me with careful eyes.

So I launched into my theory, "If you and Julian were....say....vampires, how would you get around the whole sunlight issue?"

I watched the light dawn in Avalon's eyes. She sat up and crossed her arms in front on her chest and thought about it, and finally she answered.

"Well...if such things existed it would be tied into the basic blood diet, I would guess. If, say, a vampire drank only human blood then things like sunlight and holy objects would affect them like in stories of old."

I could feel excitement building inside of me, "well what else besides human blood would a vampire drink?"

"I would assume animal blood," Avalon's eyes glowed a bit and I could tell she was enjoying our game.

"And would drinking animal blood have negative effects?" I was desperately trying not to seem too interested, I didn't want to scare Avalon off, but it was hard, I knew she could hear my heart and its beat was slowly speeding up.

"Well since it would go against the vampire's base nature, in theory, it would weaken some of their powers, but they would be able to withstand sunlight and have no problem with holy objects."

I stood up and began to pace, I could feel her eyes following my every move. "How do you think a mortal would be able to tell if someone was a vampire?"

I heard Avalon take a deep breath, "well, I've heard that vampires who drink mainly animal blood have floral and metallic smelling breath and unless they've fed recently their skin is supposed to be cool to the touch. And their eyes glow when they are in a powerful mood, supposedly."

I bit my lip as I heard the door from the garage open; we both stilled and watched as my father walked into the room. He smiled at us, shaking his head in laughter," Julian and your mother are still outside," he said then went upstairs.

My eyes darted to the door and then to the clock, I was afraid we wouldn't be able to finish our conversation before Julian got back.

"Okay, let's say a vampire made friends or dated a human, how much danger would the human be in?" I asked.

Avalon froze, and I noticed her eyes had a faint red tint to them; I inched away from her and waited for her response.

Slowly Avalon answered, "The human, no matter how well behaved the vampire, would still be prey. I mean these vampires would be able to smell their blood and hear their heart beat. But I think that even with all these factors the human would be safe enough. Especially if you added in how the vampire felt about them and the vampire's strength of will."

After she finished talking there was silence and the only sound that came was the ticking of the clock, I took a deep breath and into that powerful silence I asked my last question, "how would one become a vampire?"

What I wasn't expecting was Julian's voice to answer from the front entryway, "The human would need to die. The vampire drains the mortal’s blood they are very near death, and then they in turn drink from the vampire and pray it works."

We both turned to stare at Julian as he came