San Francisco Covens: Crucible

by Manuel Tiger

  “Henry!” Daman called to me but I ignored him.

  Why was he even here? Didn’t he have a husband to be with? Or to go back to some ignorant fool waiting for him somewhere? Pining away for his return?

  Oh wait.

  I was that ignorant fool! And here I am!

  And I was quite sure I wasn’t pining for him.

  At least that is what I told myself.

  “Rules me out as a possibility,” I mumbled as I stepped onto the dance floor, swaying my hips and moving to the music that swirled around me like the dancers. “Been so damn fucking long since I have been out on the town!”

  I began to randomly dance, weaving myself in between couples till I found myself in the middle of the floor with couples all around me.

  After a few minutes of moving in place and people watching I began to mimic the dance moves I saw, letting myself become caught up in the music and closed my eyes as the music changed to something more sensual, more slow. I opened my eyes as a young Spanish man approached me, placing a hand on my hip, a questioning look on his face.

  “Why not?” I said with a grin, grinding against him as an invitation. He smiled back and held onto me by the hip, placing his leg between mine, spreading them apart. I placed my hands on his shoulders and we began moving as one to the rhythm of the music.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and was turned around to be greeted by another male who cupped my face and teased my lips with his by lightly brushing his own against them.

  “I haven’t got this much attention in a damn long time!” I laughed letting them both touch and grind against me as the music began to pick up, the strobe lights overhead flashing from red to dark purple, and to blue. It felt like I was in another world entirely, one far removed from all the troubles and pain of this one.

  Just let me reside here then, for as long as possible, I thought moving to the music, to them pressing in and against me slowly as each turned me, taking turns dancing with me till the music began to change to a much more slower one.

  Suddenly they stepped away from me. I frowned and felt another hand on my shoulder.

  I allowed myself to be turned around half expecting a third dance partner only I came face to face with Daman. He looked at the two men with narrowed eyes for a moment, that gaze burning cold. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder and both scurried off the dance floor, vanishing among the sea of moving bodies.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded as I reached up to remove his hand only he latched onto mine, lacing our fingers together and tugged me against him. “Oh? It’s okay for you to get the bump and grind on with two people but not me? Let me go Daman!”

  He said nothing as he looked into my eyes. I felt his arm encircle my waist as he began to follow the music, to turn with me slowly. I had no option but to move, to follow his steps least he drag me across the floor which I’m pretty sure he would have done.

  As he moved with me, as we moved together, memories began to flood back, that gate opened now with no hope of closing it.

  One memory took hold and sent me spiraling back into time.

  The music room, the slow steps, the pressing of our bodies together, the intimate closeness, and the looking into each other’s eyes followed by what occurred afterwards.

  No.

  No, not again.

  Not ever again!

  “Let me go!” I whispered pushing my chest against his yet he didn’t, wouldn’t, let me go. “Daman!” I growled low at him. “Let me go! Release me!” I said as he then leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips taking me by complete surprise.

  “I made the terrible mistake of letting you go once, Henry. Not again,” he whispered against my lips. Tears were glistening in his eyes and his voice raw with sorrow and regret even I could hear. “Not again,” he repeated turning me with him.

  I stared at him, refusing to believe him, to even believe he meant what he said.

  “No,” I whispered harshly as the song seemed to build, to rise and fall around us as he held me closer, never keeping our faces more than a few inches apart from the other. I could smell the peppermint scent of his breath and wondered, oddly out of place, if he kept a pack of breath mints on him at all times.

  “I have never wanted anything more in my life as I want you, Henry,” he said intruding on my hazy drunken thoughts. “I had all of you once. Now it feels like I’m chasing fragments of you, hoping to gather them all up so I can have you fully back.”

  “That was your fucking fault!” I said pushing against him. “It was your fucking fault! You ripped my throat out and left me in a pool of my own blood as you waltzed out the door with Bryan! The very last fucking sight I saw! The very last sight I took me with me as I died! You and your husband walking out the front door of River Haven!” I shoved him away from me causing him to stumble backwards before he caught himself.

  “My…what?” he said in shock. His eyes were wide with disbelief.

  “Stop with the lies! Just stop!” I shouted drawing attention from other dancers. My eyes were burning with tears and I shoved my way through the sea of moving bodies, looking for the front exit but I couldn’t remember which direction it was in, where I was even at in the bar to orientate myself.

  Then I spotted a back door with the words EXIT blazing brightly above it. I ran toward it. Pushing open the door I found myself in a small courtyard with a water fountain. “Of all things!” I shouted lurching forward, falling to my knees before the fountain as I gripped the rim. “Of all fucking places to end up at!”

  “Henry!”

  I looked over my shoulder to see him stepping through the door. He let it close behind him as he approached me.

  “What do you mean my husband? Are you saying…”

  I shook my head, tears streaming down my face as I looked at the reflected moon in the surface of the fountain’s basin.

  “When were you going to tell me Daman? When huh?” I said. “Bryan told me everything! He came to me and told me everything! You were married all that time we were together!”

  “Bryan said…,” he sputtered. “I was never fucking married to him, Henry! He just told people we were! I never corrected him for would toss a fucking bitch fit when I did!”

  I stood up and spun around. I was breathing hard, anger flowing through me like I had never felt before, had never experienced.

  I charged him.

  I struck him across his chin with a fist and went to strike him again when he caught my hands in his. I struggled against him, bucking, thrashing and kicking at him.

  “You lying son of a bitch! I loved you Daman! You made me feel safe for once in my life! You made me think I could have something that wasn’t as tainted as I was!”

  “You were never tainted, Henry! Not to me! Not ever!”

  I refused to hear him, to even acknowledge his words. “And you lied to me the whole time! You fucking lied to me!” I screamed, giving up on fighting as I sagged against him. “I hate myself for loving you still! But if I could? I’d rip every fucking memory out of my head of you! Of us! You made me believe…you made me believe that you loved me!” I pushed away from him but his hold was fast, strong.

  “I do love you Henry! I still love you Henry! That never went away!”

  I looked up at him half grinning and laughed. “Yeah? You ended our story when you fucking walked out the door with Bryan!”

  I kicked him between the legs and he released me, doubling over.

  “Fuck!” he cried out clutching himself.

  I staggered backwards and looked for a way out. But the courtyard was enclosed on all sides by buildings. If I couldn’t get out of here the normal way? I would go up.

  I ran by the fountain and there on the wall in front of me were decorative stone fixtures in the shape of faces. They looked sturdy enough. I grabbed the first face and began hauling myself up the wall. Hand over hand, agile as I had never been and this was no doubt fueled by anger, with the desire to get as far away from him as possibl
e. I reached the top of the building in what had to have been record time and pulled myself over the edge.

  I stood up and looked around and ran forward, sensing him already behind me, his steps closing in as I reached the edge of the building and looked down.

  If I was to jump it would be a twenty foot fall. I might end up with a few broken limbs, but they would heal, maybe. I hadn’t fed since that morning and could possibly bleed to death, could die, a true death.

  “Henry, I was never married to Bryan. Not once, not ever.”

  I closed my eyes and felt the wind blow against me, tugging at my hair, at my jacket. I could smell a floral scent to it and wondered where it came from.

  “You never questioned the injury to my hand,” I said as tears ran down my cheeks and dripped from my chin. “I ran into the house to tell you what had happened, that we had to leave. What did you say? Oh yes,” I said laughing bitterly as I opened my eyes and stared out onto the city below me, of the vehicles passing by in bright, shiny blurs. “It was a mistake. A whore is meant only for release and nothing more. Someone as damaged as you belongs in a whore house for there you will find someone interested in the dirty boy used by a hundred men.” I quoted. “And then? After you flung those cruel words at me? Even bringing up my past and using it against me?” I laughed and looked down. It would be a short fall. Maybe I would hit the awning to cushion the impact onto the sidewalk. “You just flew at me, biting me, tearing at my throat.

  “I truly thought I was in some nightmare for how cold the man I love be doing this to me? Where did the man that I fell in love with go?”

  “He is still here, Henry. Please, come back from the edge.”

  “I’ve always been pushed to the edge over and over, Daman. But somehow? For some reason? I always fought with taking that leap. And I had reason to do it, to leap. For I’ve been hurt a million times. By my father who used to beat me when I showed signs of weakness. When he thought I was acting too feminine or un-boyish. When I was raped by his friend and those other men. Yet all that pain? All that hurt that was heaped on me by my own father and those men?” I turned around to face him. “Did not even equal the pain I felt when you said what you did to me! When you did what you did to me!”

  His eyes were brimming with tears. “I’m so sorry Henry! I am! I never meant to hurt you! That was the last thing I have ever wanted to do to you in this world! But it was the only way! The only way to make sure Bryan never could hurt you!”

  I stared at him confused. “By turning me into a vampire and leaving me?” I laughed shaking my head. “I think he won Daman. For you left with him and left me broken and dying!”

  “Bryan would have never left you alone, Henry! He had people, the connections, among both supernatural and mortals to see to that! He had his hand on the balls of the fucking police force and city council of Heaven Falls! Doing what I did? Saved you from ever coming to harm even if you don’t see it that way!

  “He came to me that week, said he had been told about me and you! That even as he stood there talking to me you could already be coming to harm. At any second he so desired he could have ripped you from my arms! From my life!

  “He knew I had moved on from him, had found someone that I truly loved! And he couldn’t abide by that! He expected me to come back to him, to fall back into the old role! But I refused! He said that if I didn’t leave with him, leave Heaven Falls and you behind? He would see to it that you were framed for the murders that had occurred! You were mortal at the time! All too mortal! There would have been nothing I could have done to prevent it from happening!”

  “You…you really expect me to believe that? Why didn’t you kill him?”

  “For it would have brought down the vampire council upon us, Henry. What they would have done as punishment for a vampire killing another vampire over a mortal? It would not even compare to what Bryan would have done to you! And he had connections to the council and if I had killed him? It would have been a life of always looking over our shoulders constantly! Of wondering when they would catch up to us and punish us both! I did not want that for you for a life on the run is no life at all!”

  The Vampire Council. Alistair had told me about them, had warned me of them.

  They were an old order, the American branch off the main order that resided in Europe which saw that the laws set down that governed vampires were obeyed. There were severe punishments to those vampires that broke them and the worse punishment I heard was that of another vampire killing their own kind without trial and jury of the council.

  Alistair was only one of a few vampires that did not bend the knee to them and they left him well enough alone for they knew how powerful he was and what he could do.

  But now I had my answer as to what particular vampire tree Daman was part of. In some murky gray area I no doubt did as well since he was my sire. But I was under Alistair’s protection, adopted as his charge, his fledging.

  Vampire politics, they were as complicated as mortal ones.

  “I had planned to just leave you, Henry,” Daman said, his voice quivering. “To just up and vanish, like deleting myself out of your life and I thought that would satisfy Bryan. But Anna came to me and told me what she had found out that very night! Upon my leaving Heaven Falls with him he was going to have you captured, tortured and broken. He had not decided the full punishment. To either have you turned into a werewolf or have you found among the bodies of new victims. But he was leaning toward killing you, insuring that you were fully removed from the picture!

  “And I thought you had died, Henry! I thought you died when a year later? I no longer could feel you! Sense you!” he said dropping his gaze to the ring that Alistair had given me. “I now know why,” he whispered staring at the ring before lifting his eyes up to me. “He was overjoyed when that day came, when I suddenly felt you no longer! And a part of me died as well that day and that is when things ended between us for good!”

  “So,” I said staring at him, my own voice quivering now. “Changing me into a vampire and abandoning me saved my life?” I wanted to laugh, I wanted to scream!

  “Do you not understand Henry? By turning you into a vampire Bryan could not lay a hand on you, could not order your death! He was tied by the rules and laws of the vampire council! He could not even justify pleading a case to them for your death for you had done nothing wrong!

  “And he cannot touch you at all for you are under the protection of Alistair Crane! One of only a few vampires the council will dare not mess with! It hurts me but I am so fucking glad that he was the one who found you, who helped you!”

  “I wish you had killed me,” I whispered. “I wished you had not turned me Daman! For all my life it has been one pain after another after another!” I screamed at him, striking my leg with my fist. “And the one moment I thought I had finally found happiness? That I would stop having the nightmares of what was done to me? Were replaced by new nightmares of what you did to me on constant repeat!” I laughed and began to lean back. “I don’t know if the fall will kill me Daman but I’m tired of hurting! Of always being hurt!” I looked over my shoulder toward the sidewalk far below. “I’m damn sure if I land on my head from this height? And the lack of blood in my system? I should die rather quickly.” I smiled bitterly. “Like I told you Daman? I was never worthy of actually experiencing love in any form! I was stained and dirtied by many!” I held out my arms. “And you helped prove that even if what was done to me was to save me! Only? I was lost long ago.” I pressed off from the edge and backward into open space.

  I expected gravity to latch onto me, to pull me down, but it wasn’t gravity that latched onto me.

  Daman jerked me back, his hands holding onto the front of my leather jacket as he swung me around and took us to the gravel covered roof top together.

  “You are worthy of love Henry!” he cried as he looked down at me with tears glistening in his eyes. “You are not allowed to hurt yourself! To even dare contemplate removing yourself fro
m my life! I would follow you! Damn me to Hell! I would!” he said. “But I’ve been to Hell. It was when I thought you died! When I thought I truly lost you forever Henry! And I never once stopped loving you! Never!”

  “I was with someone earlier this week. Do you still want me?” I whispered, hoping my words were a knife to his heart.

  “I’ll fucking erase them from your memory,” he replied in that low growled tone of his. “I’ll erase every fucking terrible thing done to you from your memories! Even what I did! I told you once I would spend a lifetime making sure that you were not haunted by the actions of others! That you were happy! I will make up for my betrayal,” he said. “Just don’t fucking leave me! Don’t fucking leave me alone in this world without you, Henry! Please!”

  Something broke inside of me.

  I, who thought I was broken beyond repair, who moved through each day, each week, each year in a forced task to present some semblance of being alive, in being present when I wasn’t, felt that hate toward him, toward everything, break away and shatter like a billion fragments of glistening glass.

  He had been the first to show me love, the first to take me as I was, as I am. He was still here when all others who had hurt me, betrayed me, were mere flickering ghosts at the fringes of my thoughts. He had burned them away, had chased those ghosts out of my life and all I wanted was for him to do that again.

  It took too much to hate, to let it fester inside of you like a cancer that was constantly growing, eating away at you.

  I had hated him for ten years, but now knew the truth, the missing puzzle piece as to why he had done what he did, what could only be done in that moment, had been given to me.

  I knew I could love him for a hundred years and more, if he would have me.