Get over it. I chastised myself.
Still I wondered where he was, how he was passing the winter. When I thought about where he was I found myself filling with an unbidden sense of dread I couldn’t explain. A worry that he was in danger or hurt.
A silly thing really, to worry if a vampire was injured. Far as I knew he could mind control humans, rip the undead to shreds in the blink of an eye and travel just as fast.
I needed to focus on more immediate matters, like Candice.
Turning the page in my book I realized she was really more akin to these stories than I was. Candice was always out for true love. Though it never found her. She just needed that one guy to come along and change her world. A silly notion in a modern age, the esteem of a woman deemed by the man she loved. Yet, this was no longer a modern age. On the hierarchy of needs we had been thrust down into survival, procreation being so very important to that fact. Easier said than done in a fixed colony. While the guys out numbered us gals, there were only so many of them to go through.
Perhaps...
My mind toyed with an idea that started out as wistful and ridiculous. Imagery of
Candice dancing about with prince charming all smiles and sunshine. Which led to mental auditions for the role of the prince, which led me drifting back to the tall blunt and fierce Rylie Everen. He wasn’t sociable by any means, but he was strong and able. The kind of guy she could build a life around. The kind too honorable to cheat on her. The perfect knight in shining armor for her ever after, one she could hold her head up high as he spun her around to Cinderella style waltz. Hell, I even came up with the perfect ball for that dance.
In the spring after the all clear from winter had been given we held a massive party. A testament to continued life and beginnings. Only one of its kind we did. The whole town came out for a feast, one of the few times we had meat available to all. Flowers would decorate the center of town as we could find them. There would be ceremonies, tributes to those that didn’t make it through the winter months and all sorts of happy events as well. Typically the council would bless at least two marriages at the festival, whomever had decided to tie the knot over the long winter. Live music and dancing would carry us through the evening and by torch after the moon rose. At that point even Caius would show up to the reverie. In past years he would even dance with Antonia, I remember watching them twirl from the sidelines. Thrown off by two people that were so attractive and well groomed in our midst. The pair of them had been spellbinding; he in his black waistcoat, her in a gown of the finest silk. Nobles among the peasants. Funny, looking back I don’t recall ever seeing Dimitri there. Not that I was looking for him. I spent most of the festivals I remember hanging back from the crowd, picking on Adam when I could or being dragged around by my father as he glad handed his ‘Constituents’. It was easy to picture him in a dashing suit however, drifting through the crowd with that little smirk of his. I wonder if he ever danced.
Stop it.
This wasn’t about me. This was about Candice. I could help her write her own fairytale. No, I damn well was going to. With my internal declaration complete, I placed a bookmark in my novel and closed the cover.
“Zoe.” I whispered across the living room.
She ignored me.
“Zoe!” I hissed louder, her eyes flipped up from her needlepoint.
“Yes?”
“Can I talk to you in the kitchen?”
“Alright.” She gently put her needlepoint down then stood, wrapping the shawl that was around her shoulders tighter, the tips of her thin fingers peeking out from behind the pink flannel material.
The temperature dropped significantly the further away we got from the fire, my arms shivering slightly as we stepped onto the kitchen tile. Soon as we rounded the corner away from view I turned around. Zoe was staring at me in that reserved patient manner. The kind of look my mother had on her own face when she thought I was about to deliver bad news.
“I was wondering if you had any spare cloth lying about the house that I could use?” I fiddled with the angel pendant around my neck as I spoke, unsure of how she would take my request.
“Cloth?” Her eyebrow kicked up as she spoke.
“Yeah I ah...” I lowered my voice. “I want to try to make a dress for Candice for the
Spring festival?”
“You don’t know how to sew.” She responded, sounding confused. I winced. “Yeah, but for her I will give it my best.”
Zoe wrinkled her nose and made a clicking sound with her tongue, a sign to someone who had lived with her forever that she was thinking it over. The look on her face made me think I was going to get a friendly not right now and she was going to walk away. I couldn’t have that.
“Look I messed up royally, I know that. I’ve been a horrible friend to her for years, I want to try to be a good one.” I pleaded, reaching out and putting my hand on her forearms.
“Please...”
“There’s some pink silk in the basement. I know her measurements so I will help you get started.”
I couldn’t contain my excitement, I threw my arms around her in a tight hug. “Thank you
Zoe...I mean it. Thank you so much.”
“Yes yes...now let’s get back by the fire before we freeze.”
Two hours later once we had gained feeling back to our fingertips we braved the cold one more time to venture into the basement. Guided only by the light of a hand torch, we maneuvered through the crates of supplies and dry goods to the far corner of storage where I was tasked with holding the light steady while Zoe dug about.
True to her word, after ten minutes of rummaging through boxes she produced the prettiest pale pink shade of cloth, a pattern book with a pretty smiling trio of girls on the cover holding scissors and a sewing kit. Together we poured through the patterns, judging difficulty against the materials we had and my inexperience with a needle. In the end we selected a layered skirt sleeveless pattern called simplicity that looked like it fell right out of 1955.
The challenge from that point became when and where I could work on my secret project. I couldn’t very well drag it over to the living room and spread out my materials by the fire. She’d see it which would blow the whole surprise idea right out of the water. I could wait till she fell asleep every night and try to get some work done before everyone got up, but I needed Zoe’s help with this and I couldn’t rightly ask her to stay up all night. She had the boys to tend to in the morning after all. So in the end I elected to sacrifice some comfort. In the afternoons I would wander upstairs to my room and work on my project until the sunset or my hands got numb. Zoe warmed back up to me after the first two days, her casual smile giving way to fluid conversation as she taught me a variety of stitches and cuts to make the garment. It was a kinship I had been desperately missing and hadn’t realized it. A bright point in my day that allowed me to get through the rough night visits from dark and dreadful with my sanity. I was not alone, I wasn’t going to suffer alone. Caius would lose interest with me, I was sure. At that point he would leave me alone and my life would go on. My vampire worries a thing of the distant past.
Yet, two weeks after I had been trying to push a needle through thread that my night did not go smoothly.
I woke in the middle of the night in a panic, sitting up before my brain could process my surroundings. There was an aura of terror in the air, surrounding my body like a fog. Dread washing over me in waves that made my stomach wretch and my chest feel heavy. Drowning without water.
There was no reason for it, everyone around me was blissfully asleep by the fire. Mark and Zoe curled up with their twins, Candice not far away. Dad in his easy chair. Content, happy as could be.
I exhaled sharply, rubbing at the sore spot in my chest. A bad dream perhaps? Just one of those I couldn’t remember. Resolved to shake it off I stood and stretched, my bright pink fleece pajamas looked too close to blood red by the light of the fire. The thought of being bloody from head to toe was unb
earable. I left the room quickly, my socks making no sound across the hardwood while my feet carried me into the dining room. With the fading light from the fire the temperature followed suit. I shivered in the darkness, the cold ripping the last throes of sleep from my consciousness. If only it had freed me from the angst as well.
Pacing in the blackness I wrapped my arms around myself for warmth, repeating a mantra in my mind that everything was fine. There was no reason for me to feel such despair.
Nothing was wrong. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Still I fought the urge to run out into the frigid night and keep going till my legs gave out. I swayed slightly, realizing I had been hyperventilating so much I had begun to get lightheaded. Perhaps this was a dream, maybe I was still lying on the couch in the dark blissfully-
“You felt it too.” A male voice brought my head around, a silhouette lurking in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Adam.” I breathed his name, as he stepped into the moonlight that seeped in from the windows there was something off about him. His features were tight, his stance ridged like he could pounce at any moment. Rather than his usual ratty jeans and shirt combination he was dressed for bed. Or maybe fighting. The tight black muscle shirt clung to his frame, his legs covered in what looked like black track pants.
He paused about three feet from me, his nose wrinkling.
“You still smell of Caius.” He muttered, his expression dropping into a sneer that showed the tip of his fangs. His fists ball momentarily at his sides, thin but defined arms flexing in the moonlight. He was angry...but his eyes carried something else. It couldn’t have been jealousy. Adam wasn’t like that. We weren’t like that.
“What's going on, why do I feel...” I didn’t even know how to finish that. I grabbed on to the back of one of the dining room chairs for balance. “Dimitri. You fed from him.” “Never.” I argued.
“Then you were deceived into it, blood in a cup or glass.”
“He never poured...” I trailed off, thinking of the dinner he had cooked for me. The deer...and the wine. It had been so delicious
“Looks like he did.” Adam replied with a smirk.
“Why would he...”
“To keep tabs on you likely. It’s a link thing.” All of a sudden the crippling fear lifted. In an instant I went from holding onto the chair back so tightly my knuckles were white to calm. There was no explanation in my mind as to what had occurred. “That’s better.” Adam voiced what I was feeling.
“He’s not alright is he?”
“No. He’s not.” Adam looked into the adjacent room, frowning at all the sleeping faces.
“Come with me.” He reached out and grabbed my arm.
In a flash we were no longer in my home. The pair of us were in a candle lit living room with a roaring fire. It was warm, so much more so than my chilly dining room. The couches were oversized brown leather luxuries, the rug between them appeared to be actual sheepskin with a glass and metal table sitting in the center. Fine art hung on the walls, a bookcase overflowed with classics in the corner. The walls appeared light colored from what I could make out by glow of the fire. It was a GQ paradise and one I did not recognize as ever setting foot in before. On some level I wondered how far away from town he had taken me, or if we were still somewhere in the colony. I did not know the range of their little transport ability. Not that it mattered to the immediate topic.
“We have to bring him home.” I announced, sitting on the mantle so I could warm my hands by the dancing flames.
“Caius won’t let me go up there. I’m bound to his wishes.” Adam sprawled on the couch to my left, running his hand over his face in frustration. On one hand gangly Adam in his ratty clothes looked out of place in this rich man’s room. On the other, since I knew what he was it almost made him seem attractive. For Adam didn’t need fine clothes and hours at the gym to be lethal and respected.
“I’m not.”
“Bullshit, you are too. We all are.” Adam let out a curse in a hiss.
“Well then what do we do, just leave him up there? And why are we...feeling this way?”
“We’re linked to him, when he suffers we feel the vibrations of it. I am his child and it is something that will remain with me always. You fed from him, unintentionally or not, so you area as well. I don’t know if it’s something that will fade for you or be a permanent deal. For now we are both bound in soul, linked to one another physically as well as mentally. It should also help with his location, allowing us to find him.”
“I can find him?” My eyes widened at the thought of internal vampire GPS.
“Just like he can find you. Like when he had me pick you up from downtown.” I had wondered how Adam had come upon me before my death.
“How does that work?”
Adam shrugged. “It’s all touchy feely ethereal shit, I don’t know.”
“I see.”
“Seriously, for all my love of Sci-Fi and Fantasy...” Adam trailed off running his hands through his brown hair, looking frustrated. “Yeah they could keep this crap. It’s goddamn maddening.”
“You’ve felt this before haven’t you? A couple times.” I asked him.
“I know you know the answer to that.” Yeah I did. However, until just now I had figured it was my own mental shock from the incident with Antonia. Being dumped defenseless in a city swarming with the hungry dead had seemed like a logical explanation.
“We can’t leave him there.”
“We can’t go get him.”
“A reason. We need a reason to go north. Something Caius won’t be able to argue with. Something I can get the council to push on.” I paced around playing with the angel pendant around my neck while I opened every dusty file cabinet in my brain for an angle we could use.
“Good luck. After what happened with that horde and the caravan deaths I highly doubt they’ll be willing to put anyone outside the wall.”
“There has to be something.”
“Yeah...well. When you figure that out. Let me know.” Adam reached out and grabbed my arm. In an instant I was back in my dining room with no company but my fears.
Spring thaw had started to set in by mid-February. Just when it looked like the all clear was going to sound we were hit with another ten inches of snow, but that was the thing about where we lived. It was a land blessed with extremes; either really damn hot, or really damn cold.
In the summer the temp get up to 104 Degrees Fahrenheit, in the winter it dropped down to the double digit negatives. There would be a few months of in between where life was nice and the weather was favorable.
There were exceptions of course, in the spring there’d be area floods, although do to our position we weren’t directly impacted by them. I heard they hit the surrounding graveyard towns by the river’s pretty hard a few years back, the flow taking a bunch of the wandering waterlogged deadheads south with it. Guess I should feel bad about that but as the old saying goes: shit runs downhill.
If whatever colonies lay in the bible belt happened to be pelted with our soggy dead I was sure their blood drinking citizens would happily wipe up the mess, or maybe not. Either way it wasn’t my problem. We focused on our own and the unknown that could hit us here, like prairie fires. Another downside to Midwest living, or so I heard. We’d never seen one. The more nature overtook our little man made cities the more we worried one would strike up in July or August. Even so no one paid them much mind, what with Caius and his offspring about.
It was March 5th 2023, a sunny day with the temp edging up into the thirties, maybe even forties, when my Dad threw open the windows and declared he had-and I quote-‘had enough of this snow shit.’ Unofficially ending the winter lockdown.
Honestly I couldn’t wait to get outside and go find Cole, but there was something else I needed to do first. My target was curled on the couch in the living room by the front window, a nail file in her hands and a frown on her pretty face.
“Candice?” I approached her slowly, as one did
a poisonous snake. No, that was a bad analogy, she wasn’t poison. I was. If she struck, it was probably because I still deserved it.
Her light brown eyes flipped up to my own, expression unreadable. “What do you want?”
“Will you come upstairs with me for a sec?” I asked quietly. I wasn’t going to push or prod or demand, I was in no position to do so, I could only request and see if she was willing to come with me of her own free will. Holding my breath I awaited her response, trying to keep the worry off my face.
“Alright.” Her reservations clear as she rose to her feet, tucking her hands into the pockets of her bulky maroon fleece.
Without another word I turned around, walking slowly to the stairs that led up to my room. As I counted each one of the twelve wooden steps I heard the echoes of her ugs behind me. My heart started to beat in tandem with the sound, anxiety building at how the next scene would play out. This would be the first time I had to apologize to a girlfriend since I had kinda sorta taken Crystal’s spot on the junior cheer team in 8th grade. I was rusty and flat out horrible at this mushy stuff. No, it was just I was horrible at being wrong. I hated to admit it to myself, let alone throw it out there for anyone else. There was a vulnerability involved with admitting a fault, especially when also asking for forgiveness. It left the one pleading prostrate before the other, purely at the mercy of their acceptance. A humbling condition in a world that ate the weak. I had avoided vulnerability since I was fourteen. The first time I had to smash in the head of something that was once a person I had hardened my own skin, trying desperately to separate myself from emotions derived from social interaction, as unfair as that was to those who knew me. But here I go again, making excuses for my behavior rather than owning it.
Turning the knob on the door to my room I exhaled the breath I didn’t know I was holding. The door opened with a creek, the air still frigid from being closed in all winter, morning light seeping in through the curtains of my antiquated retreat.
“What's this all about?” Candice asked from behind me, her tone wary. I turned around, clearing my throat. I had expected to find her ready to hit me again but her posture was not currently aggressive. If anything she was cautiously neutral. Her hands stuffed in her pockets, her feet in a casual stance. Usually when Candice was in a bad mood it was arm crossed, hip out and head ready to start bobbing at any minute while she chewed your ass for whatever offense she believed had been committed.
The Blood Bargain (Book 2): Breach Page 11
