I Don't Belong Here

Chapter II

~Reflections~

There’s a girl in the mirror
I wonder who she is
Sometimes I think I know her
Sometimes I really wish I did
There’s a story in her eyes
Lullabies and goodbyes
When she’s looking back at me
I can tell her heart is broken easily
~Girl in the Mirror (Brittany Spears)

Author's Note: YA-HA! An update! Finally! Well thanks to the two people who reviewed last time, and I hope you will find this chapter satisfying. :)

The voices, more often then not, had frequently visited Eden in her sleep without fail. No, these were not the voices of monsters or phantoms or horrible memories of abuse. They were just the voices of her younger self and her father, echoing in the long laden labyrinth of her memories.

This time the silver pool of her mind's eye rippled a frequently replayed and fond memory.

Her father and her younger self were sitting in a richly decorated room, perfumed with delicious incense that she could easily remember and sorely missed, a comforting scent that could only be harvested in the City of Stars where she had spent a small portion of her childhood.

Her father had been sitting behind a dark brown varnished oak desk, a pen in his hand along with several papers outlining complicated aspects of engineering which layered the desk beneath his clawed hands. Eden remembered sitting a few feet in front of the desk, playing with a deck of worn out blue cards, her favorite pastime, besides playing with her father of course, which had been on such rare occasions that she could count the events on the fingers of a single hand.

She watched as her younger self finished shuffling the cards, then rose to her feet in the clumsy demeanor that a young child uses and ran up to her father, throwing her arms over the desk and shoving the cards over the papers and into his line of sight in a desperate attempt to snare his attention.

"Pick a card Papa." She demanded, gently bouncing on the tips of her toes, emphasizing her desperate want to play.

Her father had stopped writing, then sighing, he closed his eyes and dropped his pen.

"I'm afraid that I can't now my little lamb. I'm busy." He then pulled a piece of paper out from under his hand in order to show her the complicated mess scribbled on it.

"Do you see?" He asked, tapping the paper with a single sharp claw. Eden had looked upon the paper with confusion.

"What is this Papa?" She asked, discarding her playing cards and taking the paper into her tiny hands and flipping the scribbled words and sketched images both left and right, up and down, trying to make sense of the adult nonsense.

"They are plans…now don't be so rough with them Eden, you'll wrinkle them." Warned her father, gingerly plucking the sheet out of her infant hands.

"Plans for what Papa?"

She asked eyeing him curiously, leaning foreword some more so that he might look at her. He didn't.

"Plans for our trip."

"A trip? Really? Where are we going to go Papa? I hope it's somewhere warm! I like the City of the Stars, but it gets awfully cold here sometimes. Will there be horses there Papa? I've never seen a horse before, only in story books, but I want to see one because they look so pretty and I would like to pet one. What about…"

Her father had chuckled softly then, his lips pulled back in a rare gentle smile, exposing brilliant white fangs. He looked at her then, his eyes and normally stern facial features gently softened as he looked at her.

"We will be going to Earth Eden. Mama's home before I brought her here. I think that it should be her final resting place."

At the mention of her Mama, Eden eyed the small golden locket draped delicately around her father's neck, catching the light with a golden twinkle. Her father caught the change of direction in her gaze, then smiled when he realized what she was looking at.

"You want to see Mama again?"

Eden had nodded, extending and opening her tiny white palm, as her father removed the locket and placed it in her hand. Eden then proceeded to wedge her nail between the two golden sheets, until a tiny snap sounded, and the locket was opened, revealing a tiny image of her mother.

"Mama was really pretty wasn't she Papa?"

Sighed Eden as she stared at the picture of the elegant queen to whom she was unable to draw any deep emotional contact with.

"She was." Was all her Papa had said.

There was a pause then, between father and daughter, an empty space that was supposed to be filled by a mother, but unfortunately that moment was nothing but a vacant position in time and space that could never be filled.

"I wish that I could see her in real life." Eden said wistfully, closing the locket again and returning it to it's rightful place around her father's neck. Her father said nothing for a moment, but then he pulled back, his chair squealing against the floor as he pushed himself away from the desk. He patted his leg.

"Come here Eden. I'll tell you a secret."

Eden's eyes lit up at the prospect of sitting on her father's lap. She scrambled around the desk and up onto her father's leg, he helped her up most of the way. When she had sat herself upon his leg, her father leaned in and whispered into the shell of her ear.

"Do you know the silver glass sheet that shows the world around you but not yourself?"

"The mirror Papa?"

"Yes."

"But it's useless! I can't even see myself in it. What is so secret about a mirror Papa?"

Her Papa had paused for a moment, but then resumed his telling of the secret.

"If you look, really, really hard into the mirror, you can see Mama's ghost."

Eden's young eyes had popped open wide, her mouth falling agape. This was a big secret! A wonderful secret!

"Really Papa? I can really see Mama?" She asked enthusiastically, her heart pounded in excitement. Her Papa's smile was long gone from his face, his stern and sad features returning, but his voice still remained soft and yielding.

"Yes. But remember, it's our secret, you can't tell anyone. Promise?"

"I promise Papa!" Eden cried out.

Of course, in reality, the existence of her mother's ghost had been fabricated by her father in order to ease her solitude. Due to the fact that she was a dhampire, when she looked as hard as she could into a mirror, she saw a ghostly transparent figure looking back directly at her. The figure had looked exactly like her mother, except much, much younger. At first, she was delighted at this, but she then later discovered that it wasn't her mother, but the remnants of her human reflection. With that discovery came that of why her father avoided looking at her. Her great resemblance of her mother caused him great pain and grief every time he looked upon her face. In spite of this, Eden never felt bitter or held a grudge against her father against it. It bothered her, yes, but she knew that it was neither of their fault.

"Eden!"

The pool of her dreams rippled, distorting her memories. Eden grumbled at the disorientating event.

"Eden! Eden! Wake up!"

The pool had now become a splashing pond of blackness, her memories now far away in the confinements of her mind.

"Eden! For God's sake wake up you lazy dhampire!"

The plain of dreams shattered, bringing Eden to the surface of consciousness and out of the black restless ocean of sleep. She did not open her eyes however and continued on pretending to sleep...wanting to piss off the voice a little more.

"Eden! Wake up!"

This time her shoulder was violently shoved with a hard object.

"I know you're awake you little devil, and if you don't come to right this instance I am going to go medieval on you. I don't care if you had outgrown my beatings or not, you are still my daughter, and I have every right in the world to beat your ungrateful ass."

Well, if that wasn't a wake up call Eden didn't know what was. At that Eden opened her eyes to reveal a very pissed off Xhex wielding a very intimidating looking stick. Eden would have bet one hundred dollars that the vampire had purposely sought out the scariest looking stick in the forest just for the purpose of waking her up.

Eden sat up and yawned, stretching her arms into the air and cracking several bones.

"Welcome back to the world of the living." Xhex mumbled sarcastically, placing her stick into the ground and leaning her body weight onto it.

"Geez, you could have let me sleep for another hour Xhex. What time is it anyway?"

Xhex gripped the stick again, and shook it menacingly inches in front of Eden's face.

"I'll tell you what time it is girl. It's time for you to get your butt on that horse and to get to your next job. Sleeping under apple trees does not put food on the table. You should be ashamed!"

Eden yawned again, then stood up. She was not as tall or muscular as Xhex, but if they were ever to fight, both females knew who would be the victor. Eden smirked at the person who was the closest thing to a mother that she ever had.

"Yes, but it does wonders to skin composition. You're starting to show a few wrinkles so I suggest you try it."

Eden barely had the time to duck out of the way of a perfectly angled swipe of the deadly stick which would have cracked her upside the head if she had not. She laughed at Xhex's puff of annoyance when she realized that she had missed.

"How in the world was I able to put up with you for over a century?" Xhex shouted in aggravation at the sky, lifting her arms and hands to the sky in an overly dramatic fashion.

Eden said nothing, but instead made her way to her horse, to which Xhex had already saddled and strapped all the equipment she needed for her journey. She had even packed her an extra dagger and change of clothing. Eden snorted, rolling her eyes. Mothers. Eden mounted her grey stallion with ease, stroking his mane tenderly as he seemed a bit off that night.

Eden's horse was defiantly a rarity, and one that had taken her forever to find. Her horse was not cybernetic, but wholly real, composed of flesh, heart and spirit. Eden rarely got attached to anything, but she loved her horse very much, he was her constant companion on her travels, the only one who was always there right along with her. His deep brown eyes were large, kind, and fiery.

Eden gently rubbed her horse's belly with her foot, urging him forward. Xhex stopped her rant towards the sky when she noticed that Eden was about to depart.

"What would you ever do without me Eden?" sighed Xhex, shaking her head of cropped messy blond hair. Eden shrugged, pulling on the reins and stopping her horse momentarily.

"I don't know…be late all the time?"

"You'd be poor, that's what you'd be!"

Eden chuckled at the flustered old vampire, wishing that she could spend another week with her in her home, but knew that her duty called to her above all things. There was a moment of silence before Xhex spoke again.

"But above the money Eden, know what your true goal in this business is."

"I know Xhex."

"Our kind is steadily becoming extinct, hunted and slaughtered by both humans and Vampire Hunters. If it wasn't for you Eden, we would have been given the last page in the book of life a long time ago."

"I am not of your kind Xhex." Eden mumbled.

"Poppycock! You may be a dhampire Eden, but you fight for all vampires everywhere. And for that we are eternally grateful and accept you as our own."

"Tell that to the nobility. They have disowned me from the race when I was twelve remember?"

"Well the nobility can take their pampered and oiled asses, and can try and fight off the growing threat of humans by themselves. The only reason that they are alive, is because you wish them to be."

Eden became silent, digesting that fact. She was a hunter of humans, but above all, a protector of vampires, even though they cast her out as a half breed. She was not allowed to eat at their table, to talk to them, or be be a part of the whole, however, she was more then welcome to bleed for them.

It was a pitiful life, one of murder and savage slaughter, but she knew nothing else. Her father must have not wanted this for her, but then again, why did he bring her back to earth, if he knew that it was inevitable that she be treated as an outcast? Well, the past was the past, intentions no longer mattered. What mattered was her family. Xhex.

Nothing would take her away from her goal, nothing would make her stop, no matter how monstrous vampires were perceived by the rest of the world. They were the only sort of family that she had ever known, she would not allow them to drift into the gallows of extinction, for then she would be truly and undoubtedly alone.

"I'll send you the money once I collect it. Until then, goodbye Xhex."

"Goodbye Eden. And be careful. Remember that I love you."

Eden then urged her horse into a steady gallop, and disappeared into the night leaving Xhex alone underneath the apple tree.