by Martha Woods
I ducked my head instinctively to avoid his gaze, I’d never seen him truly angry before but it was clear that he was heading that way very fast. I would like to say that it made me glad to have found one of his buttons so I knew not to push it in the future, but being this close to it was enough to make me regret ever bringing it up. But still, I had come here to tell him all I knew, he asked me to tell him as much as well, so it was my duty to do so.
“I went into work today to hand some things in, make sure that the workers in the labs are actually doing their jobs, you know, the usual stuff…” I sighed, rubbing at my eyes, “I decided to swing by Rick’s office, let him know that I was starting to feel better and… that’s when I saw him. Tristian.”
* * *
“They were cooperating?” He asked, “You’re certain? This couldn’t have been extortion or… coercion?”
* * *
I shook my head. “No, the way that Rick was acting… he was calm about the whole thing, like this wasn’t the first time that he had been in his office. They were comfortable around each other, they clearly trust each other, that took me a very long time to get and Tristian just has to waltz in with a promise to kill all of us and he’s his best friend.”
* * *
“How do you know that he’s working with him? For all we know he could have been warding him off, maybe telling him to back away from the three of you or the police will get involved.” Joseph ran a hand through his hair, actually looking his age for once. I wasn’t proud to know that I was the reason for that. “Just to be clear I’m not calling you a liar or doubting your suspicions, I just need to know everything and we need to go through everything before I can risk making a move. Rick isn’t some bargain bin serial killer from off the street, people will notice if we’re following him.”
“No it’s fine I… understand that we need to be sure, I spent a while trying to convince myself that I hadn’t actually seen what I’d seen, or that maybe he was trying to work with us. But then I remembered…” I shook my head, everything really was unravelling around me. Things were finally working out nicely for me and now I have to deal with something as world shattering as a personal betrayal. “He was giving Tristian files Joseph, a whole lot of them. He treats… he treated information very carefully, he wouldn’t just give those over as a ruse. They contain crime scene information, possible motives, identities of witnesses, there is just too much in there to treat like a random macguffin to fool people with. And then there’s everything that I’m starting to remember…”
They were silent waiting for me to continue, which I very much appreciated, given exactly what I was thinking of. There was a lot about this that just wasn’t sitting right with me, but what I was about to tell them next was maybe the one that I was taking the hardest.
“There was a witness to the latest crime, the one that killed those witches…” Joseph sucked in a breath, from the look on his face he was still far angrier about that than he let on in public. “She said that she could positively identify who she thought was the killer, even said that he had blood on his suit and a strange aura around him, the whole thing was spelling out killer to me right away. I took her up to her apartment, got her information, told her that we would keep her safe and then I left. But not before I called down to Rick to let him know about the report.”
“I take it he was surprised?”
“Yeah, that’s the word that I would use. Said that they’d already checked around for witnesses and hadn’t found anyone, then he told me to come down and take care of things with the scene. So I told him her address and said that she needed protection.” Things were rapidly beginning to fall into place in a way that I didn’t like. “That night, that same night, she got attacked by the killer in her apartment, Damon and I getting there and killing him was the only thing that stopped her from being killed that night. He’d only encountered her once when he was walking out, how could he know her specific address without someone telling him?”
“It could have been someone else on the force…” Joseph groaned, “But he treats information very sensitively, he wouldn’t have let just anyone know about her right away. The witches were attacked that same night as well weren’t they?”
“Yep, right when I went downstairs I got the call. That can’t have been a coincidence when I was making some headway on finding the killer.” I grabbed Vincent and Damon’s hands, squeezing them just so I could have something to brace myself with. “My mentor helped someone kill two innocent people and almost killed a third, how could I not see it before?”
“You were blinded by the respect that you had for him, and by the relationship that the two of you have shared for years, but this isn’t your fault.” Joseph stood, pouring a drink quickly from a bottle that seemingly appeared from nowhere and sliding a glass towards me. “Drink, please. I think we could all do with something to calm our nerves, no?”
I accepted the drink gladly, half of it already down my throat by the time I started to feel the burn. He’d obviously been expecting that outcome, given that he calmly waited for me to finish my glass before pouring me another. Two more glasses appeared out of nowhere for my two companions, Vincent curiously choosing to have a drink as well. It wasn’t going to calm him down like it would for Damon and I, either he was more rattled than I thought or we were rubbing off on him more than I had thought. Probably both actually.
“Now,” Joseph said, taking a few more breaths to make sure that he was calm and in control, “I know that this is a very shocking development for all of us, most especially yourself Amy, but I need to stress how important it is that we handle this the right way. We cannot just go head first into a fight on this one, not if we wish to keep a low profile after all is said and done.”
“What do you mean the right way?” I placed my glass down, leaning forward and asking, “Joseph, what are we planning to do?”
He looked almost regretful when he looked back up at me, though he couldn’t disguise that level of anger that coursed through his entire being. It was intimidating without any effort, and whatever it meant for Rick surely wasn’t good even before he spoke up
.
“Amy… we are going to research, we are going to confirm one hundred percent that it was him who leaked the information and is actively working with Tristian, we have agents all over the city, it shouldn’t take much time at all. But if he really was the one…” He sighed, “Amy he had a part in killing two of us, he was part of an attempted cleansing of the entirety of our witch population, there are men far more important than him who were guilty of far lesser crimes that we have disposed of. I… cannot afford to treat him any differently.”
* * *
“You’re… going to kill him.” I felt sick, there was no way that this was happening, but my life had gotten fucked up enough lately that I couldn’t be bothered to even deny it. “Oh Jesus he’s meant so much to me for so many years and now he’s just going to be snuffed out…”
“Amy, Amy listen to me.” Joseph knelt in front of me, taking my hand in his and bowing his head. “I am not sorry for what will happen to him, but I am genuinely sorry for the grief that it will cause you. I… understand what it is like to be betrayed by people you have been close to, to feel like you can never really trust again, to wonder if anything that you went through with them was ever actually real or not. But I am telling you that there are people out there who will cherish you and who will lay themselves on the line for you. You’re sitting with three of them right now.”
“But… everything that the two of us have been through, all the cases and all the late nights…” I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, but even with everything going on I wasn’t going to let them fall. I was already losing too much tonight, I wasn’t going to lose my dignity. “I can’t just forget about what he meant to me out of nowhere.”
“If it makes you feel better… no that’s not right, if it makes it easier I should say, he was all too willing to throw that asi
de when he tried to kill you along with all the others. And even if his aim was not to kill you that night, by allying himself with a madman like Tristian he is clearly aware that it will eventually happen, he is not stupid.” He tapped the back of my hand before moving back to his chair, and for the first time I noticed the lines of stress that marked the edges of his face. “I sympathize with how you feel, believe me I do, but you need to accept the inevitability of his sentence. If he is truly involved in this, and we will have an answer in almost no time at all, then he is living on borrowed time as it is.”
“It sounds harsh Amy, but it’s the way that our survival is assured.” Vincent sipped at his drink, making sure to keep his eyes trained on mine. “We cannot afford to coddle our enemies, not when they so easily butcher and disrespect us at every turn. The only way that we can be safe is by proving ourselves to be more ruthless than they can hope to overcome, which means that by the time this is over there will not be anything left of Tristian’s group to speak of.”
* * *
“If you wish I can ask that Rick is kept… intact, in case you feel that his family would like to pay their last respects at a funeral. It is much more than we normally reserve for those that have killed us.”
“That’s about as best I can hope for, isn’t it?” I wasn’t an idiot, I knew there was no way that I would ever be able to convince Joseph that Rick should live. He burned down Chicago when his brother was killed for god sake, why would he care about one man? But the best case scenario to be for Rick would be to still at least have a body when all was said and done… it all just felt so wrong, this wasn’t the sort of thing that I’d signed up for when I decided I wanted to help people. There is blood on my hands already, Vincent is only here because I was willing to engage in a human sacrifice, but for more of that blood to belong to Rick of all people? How can I possibly make peace with that?
* * *
I’m also not blind to the rather disturbing knowledge that I only really care because I called him a friend. When it comes to someone like Tristian I have to admit that part of me is actually looking forward to seeing him finally go away for good, and I have to say that I am very much not thrilled by knowing that. But if the two of them are working together, if I’m really seeing the truth and not going completely insane, then they really weren’t that different from each other after all, were they? Why would it be fair of me to be willing to act out the punishment on Tristian but not on Rick, if they are guilty of the very same crime?
Much as I may hate it, much as I might go to bed sick for years from now on, I’m not going to sit by and let my compassion for a murderer get even more people killed. If the time comes, if there really is no other option… “If it comes down to that, I’ll do it myself.”
Chapter 2
Conversation wasn’t on our high list of priorities the rest of our stay there, all of us trying to work through our own issues regarding what was going to come in the next few days. Vincent and Joseph were clearly worried about how they were going to kill Tristian and Rick without alienating Damon and I, Damon wasn’t as worried about killing the two of them as I thought he would be, but he was understandably concerned about potentially killing a cop. That sort of thing never went well, even if the cop was corrupt.
* * *
Especially if the cop was corrupt.They probably had more of a relationship with their fellow officers out of necessity.
But me? I was just thinking over what I had said, so stupidly in the heat of the moment that I didn’t even consider the oath that I was taking. “I’ll kill him myself”, what the hell was I thinking? My mentor is trying to kill me and everyone that I love, he tossed everything that we’d been through together aside in the name of hate, so of course I should make this whole ordeal even harder on myself by vowing to strike the final blow. I can’t back out of that promise either, even if the others would fully understand, I’d said that I was going to do it so there was no choice but to force myself through the entire, shitty situation.
I wasn’t even hungry when we pulled into our usual burger restaurant, not realizing that we’d stopped until Damon tapped me on the shoulder and I came face to face with their worry. “What?” I asked, shaking my head to try and clear my thoughts, “What’s going on, why are you staring at me?”
* * *
“You’ve been quiet the whole ride over, I asked you what you wanted like ten times.” Damon leaned over from the back seat, pressing a kiss to my shoulder and squeezing my hand between his. “You can talk to us ok? We’re here to listen, always, just like you’re always there to listen to us about the oodles of angst that we’re carrying around with us.”
* * *
“Speak for yourself,” Vincent scoffed, “I’m at least somewhat well adjusted.”
* * *
“Right, sure,” I found myself laughing, “No existential dread from the century old creature of the night, that’s not like vampires at all. I can’t believe how thoroughly normal you are to us boring humans.”
* * *
“See? Now we’ve got you smiling, that’s the least that we can do.” Damon grinned, eyes shining in the early night light. “But you can tell us about the things that don’t make you smile, we’ve been together for a long time now but I don’t remember if I ever actually sat down and told you that.”
“Nor do I,” Vincent said, “But if something was troubling you, no matter how trivial, I would absolutely want you to know that you can trust me with it.”
“I know, I… I know.” I took a breath, shuddering out the air through my teeth, “It’s just… it’s hard to talk about it right now, I don’t even know what I’m feeling about it, let alone how to put it into words.”
They waited for me to take a breath before I continued speaking, which I appreciated. I was having a hard enough time working everything out in my head, I didn’t need to be rushed into an answer on top of that, though I’m sure that soon enough I’m going to have to be quicker with my answers. Still, I’m glad that they could give me this time at least to ease myself into that.
* * *
“I’m going to tell you two what’s on my mind, trust me, but we should at least wait until we get home first. I’m not really hungry, but I can’t have a conversation like this on an empty stomach.”
“Alright,” Damon said, rubbing my shoulder comfortingly, “Alright. We can wait as long as you want, but for now we’ll just go in and get the food. Do you still want the usual?”
* * *
I was about to answer yes, like I always did, when I stopped myself. I always got the same order, mainly because it was one of my favorites but also because it was just… routine. One beef, one chicken, each one was what the two of them always ordered, and I liked sharing that with them, but I guess… it wouldn’t hurt for a little change for once, who knows? I might find something that I’d been missing out on all this time.
* * *
I smiled. “Actually… pick me out something new, I want to see what you two think I would like.”
I didn’t say that I didn’t have to involve the two of them in the decision.
* * *
One venison burger and one fish burger later I was finally ready to air my thoughts, it sounded strange but it made me feel easier about the whole thing. I don’t know how having a different pair of burgers can make you feel better about change coming in your life, but we all deal with these things in our own little ways don’t we? At least I’m not getting drunk and hopping into bed with a stranger like I would have done in college, but maybe comfort eating two pretty greasy burgers and… hopping into bed with two boyfriends wasn’t really that much different in terms of health.
* * *
“Alright,” I said, wiping my hands on a napkin before laying back against the couch, “Where should I start?”
* * *
“Probably at the start,” Vincent said, “We want to help you but… we don’t want to make things worse by treading on something that we
shouldn’t have. It would be best for you to guide us as best you could.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.” I tilted my head back, staring up at the ceiling and exhaling a heavy breath. “Where to start, where to start? I suppose the thing that I’m having the hardest time reconciling is just how long we’ve known each other. You know we met on my first day on the force? Here I was, some unpaid intern stumbling through the lab almost dropping every blood sample that got passed my way right in front of the man who I had no idea was my actual boss. I thought he was just some old janitor!”
* * *
They smiled, but remained silent. Looks like it was down to me to keep talking, but that was ok I suppose. I had to get this all out sometime, may as well be with the two men that I loved and trusted most.
* * *
“Anyway… I almost stumble over my own feet and send a tray full of samples straight into the wall, but he reaches out and prevents the lab from having me and a bunch of blood sprayed all across the floor. I think that I’m going to be chewed out, probably fired, everything that I worked for was going to go up in flames all because I forgot how legs were supposed to work.” I smiled, even with everything else this was a nice memory. “All he did was straighten me up, pat me on the back and take the samples off my hands. Told me to go get a coffee and take ten minutes to myself to calm my nerves. After that I didn’t make another mistake, all I needed was a chance to take a breath and center myself.”
