CRIMSON AND FUR

This book is a work of fiction and the characters and institutions mentioned are totally fiction

Journey with Amelia through her unforgettable college experiences as she escapes death several times, falls in love and is faced with the choice to choose between honour and love.

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I could still hear my uncles arguing with my father downstairs as I lay in my bed and pretended to be reading a history text book. It would look good if anyone of my uncles barged in after barely knocking and found me reading -- at least I hoped it would make them support my decision to go to college at the state.

I flipped the pages of the book, something about Christopher Columbus discovering America and blah blah blah, I didn't really care. What I wanted to hear was their decision at the end of the long argument. My father is king so his decision is always final but most times, he tends to let his judgment get swayed by his brothers. I don't like that.

The intercom by my bedside buzzed and I snatched it up immediately, the history book now totally forgotten. It was my father asking me to come downstairs.

I got out of bed and walked over to the mirror to make sure my hair and make up was intact. Even though I was only going downstairs to speak with my father and maybe my uncles, I still had to look good. I was a vampire princess after all. And I did look good in my peach tank top and Ash coloured shorts. My hair was not pinned up in any way and I liked the feeling it caused as it swished behind me when I walked.

My father was lunged on a sofa and my uncles all sat down in couches but they didn't look relaxed at all. I threw on my biggest, 'fakest' smile.

''Hello uncle Richard, uncle Winston, uncle Jeffrey.... Hello father.''

My Father waived away my greeting. ''You say you have been accepted at the state University?''

I nodded. He already knew I had been accepted but he liked to start all his boring long speeches by asking obvious questions, there was a rumour that he had once played at being a lawyer some hundred years before he met and fell in love with my mother.

''I was offered admission at the state University father.'' I prompted when he remained silent. I was trying very hard to remember all I had planned to say, the perfect arguments I had come up with in my head about learning how the outside world behaved or keeping in touch with my human side of the family.

My father got up slowly and picked up a photo of mother that was by the window. He sat down again, looking at it with an odd expression on his face and for a moment, I thought he was going to cry but when his raised his head and his eyes met mine, they were dry.

'' You're still very young Amelia -- even by the human standards. You're only nineteen--''

''And nineteen year old humans are in school Dad. I've been a good girl, I've studied hard at my books and the history of this family. I understand the core values this family stands for. Give me the chance to make you proud in a regular University.''

My Uncle Jeffrey snorted. ''You want a chance to make this family proud and you haven't even learned to hunt yet. You'll starve to death if you were not offered blood on a platter like some damn --''

''Jeffrey!'' My father snapped at my uncle and he kept quiet, before my father continued. ''Amelia, I have decided that you would be allowed to go to this university you have chosen but -- You must keep a low profile and must never try to hunt. My servants would supply you daily with blood. That would be all.''

As I ran up to my room, barely leaving the place civilly, my heart kept racing as I imagined what it would be like staying with humans. My mother was human and I inherited her ability to stay out under the sun, but that was the closest I came to being human. I had been home-schooled by the rest of my vampire cousins and was hardly ever allowed out of the house, while my older cousins, who were several hundred years old enjoyed the nightlife of Los Angeles, going on hunts and night parties and coming home with stories of weird hunts where they had allowed humans to have sex with them before they sucked them dry, or sometimes, my cousins Juliet and Helen gushed about some human they had a crush on, then they both fought over him and to settle the issue, they then decided to suck from him together, leaving his dry corpse for the police to figure out.

I wanted advice from an older sister but being the only child of my parents, I may just have to settle for advice from my cousins and somehow I didn't want lectures on how to make a man say my name as I dried out his veins. I wanted advice on the kind of things to wear to your first class, what to say to the hot boy sitting beside you when he looked your way, regular stuff, I wanted to be a regular kid and I knew my cousins didn't have any advice for regular kids so I didn't tell any of them that I was going off to college.

The truth was that I didn't really want to go off to college. I was afraid. Being a vampire princess meant you didn't need to hunt to survive and I had been home schooled all my life, always playing it safe.

It was like I was niether full vampire nor full human so that I never quite understood what I wanted out of life. And each day, I kept wearing the right clothes and saying the right things. I was Daddy's little girl, and in vampire life, nineteen was nothing, yet -- I couldn't shake off the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I had my mother's mortal life and that I would never be nineteen again.

I wanted to fall in love, to have my heart broken to try out new ideas, to fail, to succeed, I wanted to live and now that the opportunity was finally given to me, I was scared. I was afraid of what might happen if I left the comfort of my house for college but I was more afraid of what might happen if I didn't, if I continued waking each day and, drinking a cup from the bank, reading old text books and sleeping each night. I was afraid of what my life would become if I didn't take a chance, and so I did. I was to leave for college the next week.