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Title: My Amalie: Chapter Four: Angelique

Author: Lia

Rating: PG-13

Summary: We meet Lucius's younger sister Angelique.

Warning(s): Angst.

Disclaimer: None needed. It's all mine.

Note(s): None.

If Nicholas and I had left Paris immediately or if I had obeyed him and not gone off to find my mortal family I would never have broken so many of the rules or created Amalie.

It was two weeks after Nicholas had given me his blood. He had given me the rules and told me one of his own: Never let your family see you, have no contact with those you knew as a mortal. I made every effort to obey him at first. Then I started to think about Angelique, my youngest sister.

Angelique was six years younger than me. She was always ill from one disease or another. The latest, the one she had taken to her bed with on the night I left, was pneumonia. Her doctor claimed Angelique's illnesses came from being born nearly two months early. Angelique was my favorite sister and it was I who took the responsibility of caring for my wheelchair bound Angelique, or Angel as I called her. Mother, caring only to go to parties and gossip with her friends, would have had Angelique institutionalized after father died if I had not intervened.

I wondered who was caring for her after I left. That curiosity and love for my sister drove me to go back to my old home. I did not care who saw me or that Nicholas would surely punish me severely when he found out.

And so, one night, just before sunrise, I went to visit Angelique. I climbed quickly up the side of the house, using the bricks as hand and foot holds. Her window was open just far enough for me to slip my fingers beneath it and raise it the rest of the way. I slipped silently inside where only a single candle on top of her wardrobe illuminated the room where Angelique slept in a huge half-tester bed, surrounded by mountains of pillows.

I had always viewed my sister as beautiful without really looking at her. Now I saw her with newer, sharper eyes. She was still beautiful but that beauty had deteriorated so badly in the little time I had been away that I hardly recognized her. Her skin was too pale for a human, almost as pale as my own. There were dark circles beneath her eyes. The bones of her face were sharply defined and she had lost weight since we had last met. Even in her sleep she struggled for breath. The pneumonia had not released its hold on her and I could smell death in the room. Though I knew she needed her sleep I sat down on the edge of her bed and whispered, "Angel. Wake up, love."

She stirred and her eyelids fluttered open. "Lucius? Mother says you are dead."

"No, Love."

"Then where have you been? Why did you not come back to me?"

"I couldn't, Angel. Not until now and I must be gone before sunrise."

"You have found a lover."

"Yes."

She smiled. "I knew it! Who? Male or female?"

"Male. And I can not tell you his name." Then, to change the subject I said, "What has life been like here since I left?"

Angelique sighed. "Perfectly wretched, Lucius. Mother is a complete drunk and Nicole will be married soon. Her husband-to-be bought the house and is letting mother stay here. Day after tomorrow I am to go to the sanitarium."

"I see."

"You told me that would not happen as long as you were alive."

"I know I did. But I am hardly alive, darling."

"Then what are you? A ghost?"

"No, Angel. A vampire. But why do you not fear me?"

"I have no reason to fear my own brother."

If only I had some way to heal my sister. That, however, was not within the power of a vampire. Unless... "Angelique, would you become like me?" It would be breaking the rules, several of them actually, but how could I let my sister die when I had it within my power to let her live?

"Like you?"

"To live forever. To be well and healthy. To be strong."

"I would like that very much."

I glanced out the window. The stars were fading and in minutes the sun would rise. "Tomorrow, then," I told her. "Tomorrow, I will be here just after sunset."

Angelique held out her arms to me. I bent and kissed first her forehead and then her lips. Seconds later I was gone, back to Nicholas's rooms to fall asleep in his arms, dreaming of the next night when my sister would join us.