She regarded him steadily, running her tongue against the backs of her teeth, as she considered whether or not she wanted to answer his questions. It wasn't that she was secretive by nature, but the things he wanted to know were attached to the still raw and damaged bits that had only started mending themselves. Talking about William and how he had treated her could go one of two ways: either it would make her feel better or she'd pour salt into her old wounds. She remembered a time when talking about her troubles had been cathartic, though, given the right person, and it prompted her to take Indie by the hand.
"I want to sit down first," she said, guiding him away from the waterline, farther back to where the sand was dry and still warm from daylight rays. After finding a spot mostly clear of debris, she eased herself onto the ground and Indie sat next to her. She pulled her feet close and then began removing her boots. Her socks were next, and she tucked them into her shoes before putting them aside. Finally, with a satisfied smile, she dug her toes into the sand and clasped her hands around her knees.
Now she was ready to talk.
"I do not know much about William, but he knows everything about me. It makes things difficult between us. He keeps himself locked away from me, but can see my every thought and feeling. This connection you speak of? It only allows me to know he is still alive. It would do more if he let me in, but," she shrugged, "he has refused."
She went on to explain something of her shared past with William, how he'd saved her from being forced by gunpoint to leave her village during one of the worst winters recorded in Georgia. "I could hear my mother screaming, saying that she needed another blanket for my youngest brother, but they wouldn't let her go back." He'd died on the way to the reservation in Oklahoma, she knew, but she couldn't bring herself to mention it to Indie. "I tried to go to them, because I... I was convinced I could help - all those soldiers with guns, and me, just one furious woman... but William, he stopped me." It'd been no trouble for the vampire to hold her down, despite how she kicked and screamed, begging to be released. "I hated him for it. I did not know at the time that so many died. Most of my family..." She shook her head sadly.
Then the settlers had come. They hadn't even waited for the embers in their fireplaces to die before moving into their homes. Anna had, again, wanted to march down the mountainside where William's cabin was and into her old village, but again, William had stopped her. "But I think he understood my need to take from them, since they had taken from us. He made me into what I am now, and when I was strong, we went into the village and we restored balance."
In hindsight, she remarked, it had been unwise to completely eradicate their food source, for they'd then had to rely on the blood of animals. There had even been a few occasions William had given her his wrist, to keep her from going mad with hunger. Eventually, though, more white people arrived (for the land they'd taken was far too fertile to let stories of ghosts and demons deter them for long), and they feasted once more.
It was around then that she discovered one of her tribesmen had remained behind, though not entirely by choice. He'd been out hunting when the soldiers had arrived, so that by the time he started back toward the village, everyone was gone and they shot at him out of principle, she supposed. Wisely, he'd fled, but not very far, because the soldier had not missed. "I found him in a cave, starved and his leg stinking with infection. But he still smiled at me. And he thanked the spirits that I was well." Her mother's brother, the man who had taught her to swim, hunt and fish despite his misgivings (she'd been a very persistent little girl, even then) had survived, somehow, and she took him back to William.
"I asked William to heal him... I did not know how, or I would have." Her face grew cloudy. "I begged him, but you see, William is in the habit of refusing me." They had fought that night over a dying man's body, and William in his anger had threatened to leave her if she didn't stop asking him to save her kin. She'd thought he was bluffing, but the next night when she woke, she was alone with her uncle. "I buried him the very next night," she said, dropping her head to stare at her knees.
It was a thoroughly depressing way to end her story, but she couldn't bring herself to say anything else for the moment.