| Background
Layla Oxford was born in Hood River, Oregon and raised in a small rural town called Parkdale. Her parents owned a farm winery that had been in the family since her ancestors traveled the Oregon Trail, settled in the Hood River Valley, and founded the place. Her childhood home was a pinkish-red single story ranch house, which was obscured from the road by shrubs that looks like small pine trees. Funky mobiles hung off big, leafy trees in the front yard, as well as a colorful wildflower garden and a patch of green lawn. Inside, the house was a typical three-bedroom and one bathroom deal that was decorated to be colorful and eclectic, with arts and plants in every room. Layla’s parents practiced attachment parenting with her and her five sisters. The girls were raised in a close-knit Catholic family environment. They had regular morning prayer, attended daily Mass, home-schooled with a Catholic curriculum, and so forth. Layla considered her sisters to be her best friends. Together they roamed the farms, orchards, fruit stands, wineries, meadows, country roads, coniferous rainforest, and such of their Mount Hood homeland, incorporating the outside world into their games.
On February 28, when she was in the fifth grade, Layla was kidnapped while walking her basset hound-beagle mixed dog, Snuggles. It had been a snowy day, which was the point. She wanted to take Snuggles out to romp in the snow. This was only his second winter. She was about a quarter-mile from home and expected to be back soon for lunch time (With her parents working from home at the winery and the girls all home-schooled, every meal was the whole family at the table; nobody ate until grace was said or left until the after meals prayer). A blue Ford Ranger pickup was driving behind her, but the area was such a popular spot for agri-tourism that Layla paid him no mind until he began to pull over along the side of the road without decreasing speed. Her anxiousness to avoid being hit caused her to slip and fall into a ditch which Snuggles scuttling after her. The man got out of the pickup truck and pretended to check if she was okay, but then forced her into his pickup truck at gunpoint. He took her and left Snuggles in the snow.
The man who took her was Jacob Hart. He was a man in his mid-thirties with a potato-shaped face framed by shoulder-length, stringy brown hair and narrow, hooded eyes of reddish-brown. He stood 6-foot-3 and weighed 235-pounds, against Layla who was then 3-foot-11 and 65-pounds. Jacob was an abuser of people in general. He would lie, steal, and cheat to benefit himself. The abduction happened simply because the opportunity presented itself, Layla a vulnerable target, and he thought, “Why not?” Force and manipulation was how he controlled her.
She was kept in his Portland, Oregon condominium. He initially intended to kill her after the first day, planning to bludgeon her with a hammer, but she pleaded and he agreed to let her live if she promised not to tell anybody or run away. She agreed, but even so, she was locked in the secondary bedroom for six months. Because it had an attached bathroom, she was never allowed to leave for any reason. For the following four months, she was allowed out of that one room, but still under house arrest. In October, she was allowed out but only with Jacob who remained closed and watching. Around the first anniversary of her disappearance, a rumor was circulating that said she had been the victim of a hit-and-run and soon people began to believe that she was not a living and findable girl. With the search for her all but cold and Layla herself presumed dead, Jacob began to allow her out on her own. Of course, he reiterated that he would kill her family if she attempted to escape, describing how terrifying, gory, and painful their deaths would be. It seemed noble to stay.
And so she did for 4.25 years, until Jacob became bored of her. He was increasingly inconvenienced by raising her as his faux daughter and worried that she risked him being caught. He took her to Forest Park with plans to murder her. The first bullet when through her chest and two more entered into her leg, preventing her from running. Instead, she was lying on the brush, crying, when he picked up by the braided crown she had woven her hair into and shot her in the head.
Embrace
This girl was not even like the most innocent of mortals I’d come across. With her, there was not the slightest doubt of true goodness. Her purity was almost a visible thing. More strange perhaps, she seemed to lack all of the qualities so prevalent in a great number of both adolescents and adults of this era. There was no dissatisfaction, no feelings of emptiness and alienation evident in a large percentage of humanity. She was free of all the human anger and loneliness and confusion, born predominately, I thought, of a lack of sense of one’s true nature. And yet, I did sense passion in her, a great deal of it; desires stringer by far than the directionless lusts and indefinite aims of most of her peers. And too, there was a deep sadness in her, but not of the type experienced by those left to sink or swim in a world that seemed more and more to believe in nothing while demanding an everything it could not ideate. Her sadness was more focused and mire vital, though I could not grasp exactly what inspired it. No, what I saw in this girl, what I sensed in her, it was unlike anything I could recall having felt before.
On The Soul of a Vampire, Krisi Keley
The first three bullets had spilled her blood, though, attracting Martin Lynch, a Toreador vampire who had been hunting for trespassers in Forest Park. It was with Auspex that he saw her aura was a golden amber color, indicative of spirituality and holiness, someone perfect for conversion to the Road of Heaven. Likewise, he pitied the girl who seemed so pure and innocent to be mercilessly killed. And so to her, he granted the Embrace before death could clasp her in its irrevocable hold, and he kept Jacob Hart for her first Hunger.
Her sire’s name was Martin Lynch. In life, he was a Knight Templar in the 13th Century. He lived as a monk and fought as a warrior for Christ. Then he came across a Kindred who entranced him with her Presence, seduced him, biting him at the point of climax and draining him of blood. He died in the exhilaration of orgasm and the ecstasy of the Kiss. His sire fed her blood to him by slitting her tongue and feeding it to him with a kiss. Martin had been conscious for the sudden burning Hunger and the agony of his body dying. Having compromised his vow to chastity, died in mortal sin, and been turned into a predatory monster, he was horrified. He hid away in a monastery, aided by a priest who kept him from sunlight and fed him goblets of pigs’ blood. He remained there in penitence until the Inquisition, when taking refuge inside of the Church no longer felt safe. It was during the time when he finally met other Kindred and learned the lore that he caught wind of a path to rein in the Beast called the Road to Heaven, that he felt a glimmer of hope for redemption. He thought Layla would be a good convert to the road because he could see her aura and sense her faith, and believed that it was merciful—“God’s will”—to bring her into the world of the Kindred.
As a side note, his Embrace wasn’t tactical at all. A flighty Toreador simply wanted to bed him and preserve his beauty forever. Unless a Nosferatu, most vampires were perfected as they changed, and Toreador were known to be especially attractive, but Martin was even prettier. He was twenty-five when he was sired and had chiseled cheekbones, a narrow jaw that could cut diamonds, a strong chin, a wide sharp nose, full lips for a man, deep emerald green eyes, and overall a certain soulful softness to his visage. His hair was sable brown and sometimes the right kind of light (artificial, of course) would bring out golden and chestnut undertones. Naturally, his hair was coarse and wavy, but he gelled and waxed it into a stylishly messy, perfectly imperfect look. His physique was tall and thin. Even before becoming a vampire he was especially pale and skinny. Still, girls found his lanky build and chiseled features to be achingly beautiful. He was a classic dresser: dark jeans, button-up shirts, sweaters, coats, Oxfords, and he looked spectacular in a suit. Dark colors like black, grey, navy—those were what he preferred to wear. Cologne and cigarettes made up his scent. Because he was an Englishman, he has the received pronunciation kind of British accent that made girls melt. Martin was fond of pointing out that the woman who sired him was French.
Present
Layla’s main ambition is to return to the home she once knew. She misses her family quite deeply, but finds herself prevented to do the Masquerade and the threat of her own Hunger, just as the invisible chains and threats of her kidnapped prevented her before.
She and her sire decided to move from Oregon to California in order to evade the small level of local fame that surrounded her disappearance. Here, Layla knows nobody and could be anybody, from any kind of past, and relishes in her ability to re-create herself. She and her sire have taken up a haven in an abandoned cathedral, which they have converted into a home.
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