When Thomas Riovas married Allay, he didn’t think he would outlive her. Most people don’t think they are going to outlive their spouse, but he had even less reason to see it coming. Allay had been alive almost as long as humans had been civilized, being born in one of the northern providences of ancient Mesopotamia, circa 1500 BC.
As far as he knew, being married to a vampire was no different than being married to a normal woman, aside from her getting into debates with history professors. She had never even bitten him, she had been purely on a diet of bag blood, which he understood to be the case with most vampires now, as the licensing process for live feedings was long and a pain in the ass.
Before he had met her, vampires were one of those things he never really thought about. He knew they existed, as most people did, but he didn’t think one would be working as a bartender. Makes sense when he thought about it, vampires don’t drink booze. However at the time, the beauty behind the dark oak bar was just another girl. Nine years later, he knew that walking into that bar was the best idea and worst idea of his life.
Nine years, nine wonderful years together, but when they tried to expand their family, everything went wrong. He came home to one of the worst thing he could ever imagine. A pile of ash and a crying baby right in the middle. The ash was still warm when he touched it, a stake that lay quietly right where his wife’s heart would have been painted a picture of what had happened. The stake was the one she had kept in her bedside table. She had said it was if something went wrong, with her or the baby. She must have gone into labor, and something had gone wrong. She made her choice, saving the baby.
A month later, the little girl sucked happily on a bottle of custom mix formula that had had been bought from an undead affairs office. Apparently he wasn’t the only man who needed formula for a half human baby. Maybe vampire woman can’t reproduce and live through delivery; maybe they should have gotten a surrogate. Maybe-
Then, the sound of rubber being chewed pulled him back to the real world, and looked down at the tiny hazel eyed baby, to see the bottle was empty and she was chopping on the rubber, as was her habit when she was done. Thomas smiled, and started the slow process of talking her out of destroying the bottle nipple, and exchanged it for his finger while he reached for the new Pacifier he had prepared before giving her the bottle.
He was happy that this time she hadn’t drawn blood, sucking on his finger instead of biting him, with her impressive little fangs she had gotten in her first week of life. that wasn’t the only odd thing about his little girl either. She was different than other babies; she was not as warm, or as soft. She felt like she was born with all of the muscles she was going to need as an adult, making her feel a little like an American girl doll.
Not that he cared. She looked like what he thought her mother would have looked like at that age, despite her bronzy brown hair color. Her eyes were the same mix of blue, gray and a amethyst purple color. The eyes he had been thinking about looked at him, then started to look a little concerned, and he realized he had spaced out
He offered her the Pacifier, and after a moment she traded the digit for the baby blue piece of plastic. She started chewing again, and Thomas sighed, seeing the immanent death of this poor Pacifier within the next 2 days, as all of them had gone before. His little monster was hard on plastic things, he sometimes thought about getting her a raw hide, but knew it would be too hard to explain away when she got old enough to go to day care.
He wrapped her in a blanket, and carried her into his office, eyeing his computer with contempt. The wretched thing was hard to finagle, and while Leila would tolerate being put down, she always looked so sad when he did so, and if he left her for too long, she would start to cry. Not a normal baby cry, but big bubbly tears would stream down her little face as she tried to make as little noise as possible. He didn’t know if this was a vampire thing or if she was a lot smarter then she should be by some by product of being half human, but it broke his hart when he saw it.
He could feel the pair of little eyes on him, and he gave another big sigh. He sat down, and propped his feet ageist a chair he had brought in a while ago just for this. He sat with his torso turned at almost 90 degrees to the side, while his daughter kept her baby-self entertained with the light show he had playing on a secondary monitor.
After about 2 hours of this, it took him a moment to make his body listen to him after he herd the doorbell rang. He hefted his small daughter along with him, and she looked at him quizzically as they started towards the door. “Come on sweetie; let’s see who has come to say hi”
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