“Come on, do it,” he growled.
“I can’t,” I replied in a small face.
“Fine,” he said taking the knife from me. “Watch,” he demanded.
I brought my eyes up to his. He looked so vulnerable. So, human. What he was saying couldn’t possibly be true. It just couldn’t.
He scraped it across his skin. There wasn’t even a scratch.
I didn’t want to believe what my eyes were telling me.
He still held tightly to the knife and this time he tried to stab himself. The sharp blade did nothing.
I began to cry. “This can’t be real. It just can’t. This is impossible. You’re impossible,” I said motioning to him.
His chest was heaving like he couldn’t get enough air but I guessed he really didn’t need it.
“It is real. I’m standing right in front of you. I’m a vampire. I’m not some myth,” his breathing began to slow.
“You’re real,” I said trying to convince myself, “You’re real,” I said again. I stood up and put my hands on either side of his face. His face, like his whole body, was cold but I couldn’t feel it. Looking in his eyes I knew what he was telling me was the truth. “You’re real,” I said yet again and this time I brought my face up to his and kissed him.
His arms automatically wrapped around me and he held me to him. This, right now, was perfect. I never wanted to stop. But we had to. He pulled away and looked down at me. His silver gray eyes were so trusting.
“You believe me?” he asked, his forehead pressed against mine. His eyes bore into me as his arms held me close so that I couldn’t break the gaze.
I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “You’ve asked me to believe a lot of impossible things but with the proof you provided it’s kind of hard not to believe you.”
He laughed too. “I guess I went a little overboard with the proof.”
“You guess?”
He laughed again.
“I hate to say it, but I probably wouldn’t have believed you otherwise.”
“I don’t care. I’m just glad that you do. But there’s a lot more that I have to tell you,” he said leading me back to the bench.
After my initial shock and fright I thought I would still be scared but I wasn’t.
I wondered briefly if that was strange. I should be scared. But instead I felt content. I should be running around screaming. But this just felt, well, right.
“Do you have any questions?” He asked obviously relieved that I finally believed him.
“Tons.” I choked out.
“Alright ask me anything. I no longer have anything to hide.” He said. Jonathon seemed relaxed and relieved.
“How old are you?”
“I was born in thirteen thirty and was turned into a vampire in thirteen forty-eight. You can do the math,” he said leaning back against the wall of flowers. I was amazed that they didn’t just swallow him up.
“Wow,” was all that I could say.
I decided to ask the inevitable.
“Do you drink human blood?” I asked shaking.
“Yes and no. Sometimes my family and I look to go out hunting, so when we do that we only hunt animals, not people. But most of the time we do drink human blood. Only it’s donated.”