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The Vampire's Apprentice	By : Evilida44 Category: G through L > House Views: 1787 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own House or its fandom nor do I make any money from it.

Chapter List
- 18
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Mia's Story
The woman at the counter passed them their orders: a cup of coffee for Hadley and an herbal tea for Mia. Hadley's hand shook as she took the cup, and some of the coffee spilled into the saucer. Hadley swore at her, hissing an ugly four-letter word that made the counter woman gasp. Hadley carefully carried her hot drink back to their table. More hot coffee sloshed into the saucer.
The redhead held her cup of tea in her hands, appreciating its warmth. She breathed in the fragrance of oranges and spice but didn't drink.
Mia said, "Our connection to House isn't the only thing we had in common. Like you, I grew up in the shadow of death. At one point, I wasn't expected to live to see my eighteenth birthday. I was supposed to die young."
Hadley looked at the other woman sceptically.
"You haven't even had your eighteenth birthday yet. You can't be older than fifteen or sixteen at most, and you're not sick. I could tell if you were. I'm a doctor and my specialty used to be diagnostics."
"I'm not sick anymore, and I'm a lot older than I look. Though maybe it's more accurate to say that I'm younger than my years," Mia smiled again, an enigmatic little grin that made Hadley want to kiss and slap her simultaneously.
"An illness runs in my family, just as Huntington's disease runs in yours. One of my uncles died of it and there was a cousin too, I think. Relatives I'd never met and didn't care about. They didn't have anything to do with me.
My mother died giving birth to me, but I can't say I missed her. My father cherished me because I reminded him of her. People said he spoiled me. He was a landowner, and I had the run of my father's estate. I went in and out of the tenants' houses as if they were my own. No one ever scolded me, no matter what mischief I got up to.
Then when I was fifteen, I experienced the first symptoms. I drank water constantly, but my thirst was never satisfied. I was always hungry, but I grew thinner and weaker every day. My father consulted the best physicians, of course. They told him the disease was invariably fatal and recommended a starvation diet. With the very best of luck, I might survive a year or two. No one could offer us any more hope than that."
"You had Type I diabetes," Hadley said. "What about insulin?"
"It hadn't been discovered yet," Mia said.
"Insulin was discovered in 1922," Hadley said.
"I told you that I'm older than I look."
Hadley shook her head, insulted at being asked to believe something impossible. She rose from her seat, getting ready to leave. Mia got up from her seat as well. She took a step towards Hadley. She reached out to brush against her cheek delicately with one long varnished fingernail.
"Please, Thirteen. You don't have to believe. Just listen. Keep me company."
Hadley froze for a moment. Then she sat back down, and Mia sat down opposite her. She took one of Hadley's hands in both of hers in a sisterly gesture of affection and smiled. Then she continued her story.
"My father was a very wealthy man and well connected. He had heard of someone – a dangerous man with a very bad reputation – who was rumoured to be able to cure people that other doctors could not. He offered him an enormous sum if he could cure me.
He took me into the city to meet this man, who called himself the Professor of Esoteric Medicine, a grand-sounding title for a quack doctor with no qualifications. The Professor insisted on meeting with me alone without my father present. And my father, who had loved and protected me from the moment I was born, was so desperate that he agreed to leave me alone with this evil man for twenty-four hours to affect the cure.
When he came back to get me, I was cured. But I was not quite the same girl he'd left behind. I'd changed in ways that bewildered me and horrified him.
I had an appetite that needed to be satisfied. I could have looked after myself. I'm stronger than I look and not at all squeamish, but my father could not imagine his precious little Mia prowling the filthy alleyways of London at night. Much too sordid for his little girl.
My father got me what I needed to survive, although I think it broke his heart to do it. He brought me children, because in any city there are always more of them than are needed or wanted. He'd lure them back to our house with promises of a hot meal and a job as a scullery maid or a bootblack. The housekeeper would feed them, give them a bath to scrape off the first layer of grime and sweat, and dress them in clean clothes. Then she'd send them into the playroom, where I was waiting.
I don't know what they did with the bodies afterwards."
Hadley said, "You're telling me that you're a vampire."
Mia nodded.
"Vampires don't exist. They aren't real."
Hadley looked at the red-headed girl, who smiled at her, exposing her kitten-sharp teeth.
"I exist. I'm as real as you are."
Hadley turned away, unable to meet the other woman's brilliant green eyes. She stared into her half-empty coffee cup. Mia stroked her hand rhythmically, soothingly.
"I lived with my father and his housekeeper in that house in the city with every luxury a young girl could desire. But I wasn't happy. I was a tiger in a cage.
I loved my father though, and I couldn't bear to leave him. That's something the Professor could never understand. He'd never loved anyone, so he couldn't understand how those feelings persist even after everything else changes.
I lived in that cage for seven years, until my father died of a heart attack. He'd left the house in the city to me, tied up in complicated trust. I leased out the property and sold everything else – every stick of furniture. I went to find the Professor. I needed to learn how to be a vampire and he was the only one who could teach me."
It was the word "vampire" that broke Mia's spell. It evoked images of overdressed Europeans with silly accents and brooding teenagers with cheekbones to die for.
Hadley had allowed herself to be drawn into a troubled girl's fantasies. She felt foolish. She hastily removed her hand from Mia's grasp.
"I'm not buying any of this," she said sternly. "Either you're crazy or you must think that I am."
"I'm not offended that you don't believe me," Mia said. "I know that I'm going to have to prove myself to you. Come with me and I'll show you."
Mia stood up, but Hadley stayed seated until Mia pulled her effortlessly to her feet.
"Please, Thirteen," Mia said. "You're already showing symptoms of Huntiington's. This is your only chance for a cure. You don't want to throw it away."
Reluctantly, Remy Hadley followed the red-headed girl out the door of the coffee shop and down the street. She had decided that Mia was a con-artist rather than delusional. Hadley was too intelligent and too grounded in reality to be fooled by anyone promising miracle cures, so it wouldn't do her any harm to listen to the girl's patter. At least, Mia promised more entertainment value than her current girlfriend, who was good for half the rent and not much else.
Mia stopped in front of a movie theatre. It was showing the premiere of My Name is Vengeance, the third in the popular Lord of Vengeance trilogy. There was a line outside the theatre that went down the block and around the corner. A few of the more enthusiastic cinephiles had even dressed up as their favourite characters.
"Pick one," Mia said, waving toward the line-up.
"Anyone?"
Hadley looked over the crowd. She immediately disregarded anyone in costume, too likely to be confederates that Mia had placed in the crowd.
"Him."
Remy Hadley pointed to a nondescript young man hanging out with a crowd of his buddies. He was of college age, perhaps eighteen years old, of average size, and dressed in the typical student uniform of t-shirt and jeans. After she had made her choice, Hadley felt a second of doubt. Maybe he was too ordinary. Maybe she had been meant to pick him all along.
It was too late to change her mind. Mia was already heading towards him. The red-headed girl stood on the fringes of his group and joined in the young men's laughter whenever someone made a joke. She smiled, following their conversation. After a few minutes she ventured a comment of her own - a slyly humorous quip that caught them off guard and made them notice her at last.
Hadley watched Mia as she became part of the group, and then as she turned her attention to Hadley's choice. Mia laughed hardest at his jokes. She brushed against his arm and leaned in towards him whenever he spoke. She smiled at him, a shy, sweet smile, and lowered her eyes when he looked at her, too bashful to meet his gaze.
Not subtle at all, Hadley thought, but then subtlety would be lost on a teen-aged boy.
It took Mia less than a minute to separate her intended victim from his buddies. Hadley followed a discreet distance behind as Mia and the college student headed for the fire lane next to the theatre.
"Is this where you lost your wallet?" the young man asked, peering into the darkness. "What were you doing here anyway?"
"I didn't really lose my wallet," Mia said, sounding a little embarrassed. "I just wanted to be alone with you, away from your friends. Sorry."
"That's okay," the young man said.
Emboldened by Mia's confession, he put an arm around her shoulder and then leaned in for a kiss. There was nothing shy or demure about the way the red-haired girl responded to him. She kissed him back passionately, and his eyes opened wide in pleased surprise.
When Hadley caught up with them, Mia was backed against the wall of the theatre, locked in a tight embrace with the young man. The man didn't register her presence at all, but Mia looked straight into Hadley's eyes, smiled and winked. Then, still smiling, she bit into the young man's neck.
He struggled briefly, but Mia was stronger than he was. It was over so quickly that he never had a chance to call out for help. Although the alleyway was only a few yards away from the movie-goers, no one noticed the attack. The doors into the theatre had finally opened and the excited crowd was moving forward at last.

Mia was sitting in the alley, her back against the wall of the movie theatre. The young man's head was on her lap and she was absent-mindedly running her fingers through his hair. Hadley stood over them, one hand against the wall for support. She felt dizzy and sick. She took a deep breath to compose herself. This had to be fake. She hadn't just watched a young man being murdered and done nothing to help him. It had to be a trick, somehow.
The details were so authentic though, even down to the sweetly metallic smell of the victim's blood. Hadley knelt down to touch the young man's face, pale and still, and to look into his glassy, unseeing eyes.
The blood wasn't fake. His pallor wasn't makeup, and he wasn't breathing.
It had to be some drug that stopped his heart temporarily, something that mimicked death without endangering the user. Some rare substance unknown to medical science.
"He's not really dead, is he?" she asked, sinking to her knees.
"Not quite yet," Mia said. "Soon."
Mia had taken no more than a mouthful or two of his blood, since she wasn't really hungry, but she knew the venom in her bite was especially potent and would kill him quickly. She leaned forward, putting her finger to the bite wound on his neck. She touched Hadley on the forehead, marking the young woman with her victim's blood.
"This one's yours," she said.
- 18
- 19
- 20
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The Vampire's Apprentice