by Heather Linn
I remembered all the nice things that he did for us and I chose not to spar with him any longer; damn old people and their mental games. If wearing the ring was enough to make him happy after the years of grief that I put him through then so be it. It was too big for my ring finger but it fit my pointer finger perfectly. It felt like it had always belonged there.
Chapter Nine
The drink did its job. It wasn’t long after I finished it that my body suddenly felt so heavy that I was having problems holding up my head. I don’t remember even trying to fight when I felt my eyelids going shut. I just remember thinking that I was going to miss something and never know the truth. Somewhere in the empty space where I was floating bodiless, I heard Dr. Walker’s voice; it sounded like it was coming from a million miles away.
“Cat, it is important that you know that you are safely among family. Nothing that you see or hear is real, and none of it can hurt you. Do you understand?”
I heard myself answering him. I knew it was my voice but I was almost just as sure that it wasn’t coming from me. “Yes Doc I understand.” If Doctor Walker told me that I was safe, I believed him. This was the man that had taken care of me from the day I was born. He had kept me alive this long; he wouldn’t let anything happen to me now.
“OK Cat. I want you to release the last bit of heaviness. You are no longer held down by the weight of your own body. You are floating above yourself. If you look down, you should be able to see your body lying safe and warm in my office. Look down now. Can you see yourself?”
I looked down; there I was, just like he had promised. I should have been terrified, but I wasn’t. Dr. Walker assured me of my safety and I believed him. “Yes Doc. I can see me. I look so far away”. There was that voice again, the one that was mine but not coming from me.
“Ok, Cat, I need you to leave your body behind and travel backwards in time to the night of the masquerade.”
As Dr. Walker said it, I felt my surroundings change. I was no longer in Dr. Walker’s office. I was standing arm in arm with Akia at the ball, except I felt way more alert and completely sober. Everything was happening the exact same way that it happened that night. The girl on the stage was once again announcing that it was time to line up and go to the rooms, but this time I could see by the mannerisms of the man that she had by the hand that it was Darien who was frantically searching the crowd for me. When he finally spotted me, I could see through his eyes that he was telling me that he had failed to get to me in time, and that I needed to be careful.
How is it possible that I hadn’t realized it was him? I mean, yes I was wasted, but this was Darien; my rock and my best friend and I had been so far gone that I hadn’t even been able to tell that I was looking at him? I was so disappointed in myself.
“Cat where are you?” Dr. Walker’s voice floated through my head, it was almost like he was the one talking over the speaker at the ball, and then I heard someone answer him back.
“I am at the party, but it is different this time; I am not drunk. I can see Darien. He is on the stage with that girl. He didn’t save me like he was supposed to; he didn’t find me in time.” I sounded accusing, but more so hurt. Darien had been watching my back ever since we were kids and he had let me down. Part of me felt like I should apologize because I could almost see the hurt look on Darien’s face, but as soon as that image crossed my mind it was gone and forgotten. I almost died because he was off his game; it was just as much his fault as it was mine.
“It is OK Cat. You are safe. Nothing can hurt you this time. I just need you to tell me everything you see and feel.”
Hearing his promise, I was once again at ease. I calmly walked back through the evening, sharing with him every occurrence, reliving all of it over again. In the far echo of my warm feeling I could hear myself spilling every detail, even my most intimate secret ones, like the kisses and the warmth from Akia’s mouth that was still lingering on my lips. No matter how hard I thought about keeping secrets from the prying ears of everyone I knew, I couldn’t manage to do it. I just kept talking and telling until everything faded and went dark.
“Cat where are you now?” Dr. Walker’s voice was so calming, so reassuring that I almost felt like I let him down when I couldn’t give him the answer that he deserved to hear.
“I don’t know. I can’t see anything. I think I am asleep; yeah that is it, I fell asleep. I am warm and safe; just sleeping.” “OK, Cat. I need you to think forward to when you woke up.”
He said it and I did it without even having to think about it. I felt myself wake up just as I had that morning. I recited the entire conversation with Akia, even the angry, stalking of Darien and the blood sharing part. I ended my story with me slamming the door in the King’s face. Then I was asleep again, and just like that every little detail that I had gone out of my way not to share with them was out in the open. Damn it! What was wrong with me?
“OK, Cat. When I count to three, you are going to forget everything that just happened here. One, two, three, wake up.”
I sat straight up “Gee Doc, judging by the look on your face, nothing exciting happened. Sorry to disappoint you. I didn’t think I could be hypnotized.” I hated to admit it but the little nap had done me good. I almost felt refreshed.
“Catalina you shared blood with him?” Damn! How did I let myself tell him that? I couldn’t tell if Walker was more worried or terrified.
“It is OK Doc, not enough to hurt anything.” I could not believe that this hypnosis thing had worked.
“If you hadn’t woken up when you did then that self-righteous bastard would have turned you into one of them.” This angry realization was provided by Darien, who appeared to be so mad that he was trembling. He was suddenly doing less and less to help my cause; I would have to remember to thank him properly with a good kick to the shin.
“You are right, but I did wake up. So can we please just drop this? There is no point getting pissed off. It is over now. There is no reason anyone other than the three of us needs to know about every little detail.” I doubted very much that the rest of them were paying that much attention. They were standing outside the room behind the glass. I was almost positive that unless they could read my lips, they couldn’t have caught it all. Let’s face it; I am just not that interesting.
“Pull her from the field. It is too dangerous for her to seduce any more Dominus. Pull her from the field or I am turning us all in and saving us the agony of waiting for some screw-up to happen.” Darien’s words were so full of rage that my jaw dropped to the floor. I could not believe the words that were coming out of his mouth; I had never felt so betrayed in my life.
“What are you talking about? I messed up and let me remind you that you messed up too Darien. What are you getting so pissed off at me about? I am not the one that didn’t complete the little task that was at hand. If you could have pried yourself away from the babe on the stage the other night, you could have gotten to me first and none of this would have happened.” I knew that I shouldn’t have said it. I knew that it really wasn’t fair to put all the blame on him, but why was he going out of his way to make it look like it was my entirely my fault? We all played a dangerous game and we all knew what the risks were. Any one of the Dominus could have figured out what I was before the deed was done and killed me. It was a risk that we all faced every single day.
“I didn’t put anyone at risk Darien, you did. You shouldn’t have been drinking at all and I am almost positive that you were. You could have gotten me killed. You failed the mission. If anyone needs to be pulled from anything it is you.” I couldn’t stop myself. I knew Darien enough to know that he was blaming himself too and I was piling on to his beliefs.
I could be a bitch if that is what I needed to be, and right now he was being unreasonable and pig headed. He was supposed to be on my side, not fighting against me. If Darien turned against me then I was truly alone.
“Now, now kids. Let’s not speak in anger. You might say something that you will
regret later. As far as telling the others, I have to agree with Catalina. The less of us who know all of the details, the safer we will be. That is why I made sure that the others were out of hearing distance when things started to take a turn for the worse. Cat, you have never given me a reason to worry about your safety up until this point, so your position in this family will remain the same.” Wow! First the King lets me leave and now Doctor Walker was taking my side. I just might have to lie down again.
“Thank you Dr. Walker.” I don’t know whose attitude towards the whole blood sharing incident surprised me most. I would have never imagined in a million years that Darien would have reacted the way he did, yet the fact that Dr. Walker wasn’t lecturing me was a little unnerving too. I did however know that Dr Walker I wanted to hug, and Darien, I would have loved nothing more than to strangle. Instead I did neither because I decided that for one of the few times in my life, I would take the high ground. I gathered every bit of strength that I had left and I got up and left without another word, slamming the door behind me. I was doing a lot more door banging than usual. I walked out, not only on their absurd ideas, but on them. Darien had no reason to act the way that he had and no one else had really said anything to defend me. I wasn’t sure if they believed that loon that had a dream or if they thought Doctor Walker was just as crazy for thinking I was the subject of that dream as I did, not that it mattered to me in the least either way.
Jaden and Jewel were looking at me through their twin eyes. They had that look on their faces that said they were convinced that I was born to save them and give them back the normal life that had been stolen from all of us. I couldn’t stand their look. I was not going to save anyone. I couldn’t even save myself from things that I knew were going to cause grief, Akia being the prime exhibit for that argument. Jaden and Jewel had always been the two hopefuls of our little family. They were closer than the rest of us, but maybe that was the twin bond. I envied them; they loved each other unconditionally and always had each other’s shoulders to cry and lean on. Both of them were great at their jobs and Dr. Walker constantly praised them for it. I shouldn’t be jealous. They were the only other two that reached out to me.
Before Dr. Walker accepted me for the solider that I was, Jewel would go out of her way to explain things to me. I never caught on as fast as the other girls. I was a disaster in the kitchen and any other girl’s chore that Dr. Walker would try to teach us. Jewel had always been very patient with me and nurturing. It was almost like she was years older than me, even though we were the same age.
Jaden, on the other hand, seemed to be everyone’s buffer. If a fight occurred among us, he was always in the middle trying to calm everyone down. He cared for everyone, even the siblings that didn’t care back. A lot can be said for someone that can love unconditionally. These two had pure hearts and thinking about that quickly sent my head into motion. I usually went out of my way to avoid thinking about the past. There was nothing left of the old way of life, so it did no good to think about it because that just made me want to be able to give everyone something that didn’t exist anymore.
I had one of those moments that I always tried to avoid; I let my mind drift to what might have been if life was normal. This happened every time I saw Jaden and Jewel together and it killed me a little bit more each time. I started thinking about the bond that they had and I instantly thought about their parents. Their mother and father must have been genuinely pure. I always pictured their parents as saviors of some sort. I mean, they would have almost had to have been to have two children that, despite the world we lived in, had hearts of gold. If their parents were saviors, what were mine?
I wasn’t an overly happy person. In fact, I was quite sarcastic and cynical. Where these genetic traits? Maybe I had real brothers and sisters. They more than likely wouldn’t have been in the hospital with me that night, which meant that they could still be alive. If I ever found them how would I ever explain to them what I was? Maybe I would have been the black sheep in my real family too.
Dr. Walker couldn’t save the records from our births. He tried, but there was no way to sneak them out. He had taken the time to speak to most of our parents just for a brief moment and he had written down what he remembered, but it wasn’t much.
I knew that my parents were an older couple. This was the main reason that I thought I could have brothers and sisters out there. They were a professional couple, busy, and very much in love. So in love, that my father wouldn’t leave the hospital; he had insisted on sleeping in the room with my mother. I often wondered if he would have lived if he had been home in bed. From the day that Dr. Walker told me about my parent’s love for each other, I associated love with weakness. The planet, in one way or another, had always functioned on survival of the fittest, and my father, who could have survived, had lost his life that night because of love.
Love scared me; you should never be so involved with someone that you do foolish things. Foolish, irrational things lead to early death. If you die without making a difference, than what was the point to begin with? Jaden and Jewel’s parents died the same way as my parents and yet they were the complete opposite. They were young and underprivileged. Dr. Walker always made a point of telling the twins that their parents may not have had a lot, but they had love like no others. It was sad but all our parents were a perfect example of why you should listen to your head instead of following your heart.
For the second time in a little over a week I felt like the walls were closing in on me. For the first time in my life I felt like I couldn’t be safe in our little bunker. I couldn’t deal with this anymore. I needed to escape from the reality that surrounded me.
Chapter Ten
Once again, I found myself wandering the streets. I still wasn’t sure what had just happened. Maybe I had overreacted when I left Akia’s this morning. After all, he did save my life. I was even more upset about the blood sharing than Dr. Walker was which was odd. I thought for sure he would insist on transfusing me with some human blood, even though we both knew that wouldn’t counter balance what had been done. I probably would have let him do it just to make us both feel better. The longer I walked the more and more upset I was about Darien’s reaction. I could not believe that the one person that stood with me when I protested my role in the family with Dr. Walker now thought I was incompetent. I wasn’t incompetent though, I just happened to be at the way wrong place at the way wrong time. Everyone knew that risks came with this job. If sharing a little blood with the Regent was the worst thing that was going to happen to me, than I figure I got off easy.
I was angry at myself and disappointed that I had charged out of Dr. Walker’s office the way that I had, but I had been upset and my heart literally hurt. It was still beating, but it felt like it had just been ripped in two. I knew that I said some hurtful things, but that is what I do when I am backed into a corner. It is another one of the things that makes me, me. Everyone around me usually understood and accepted that by ignoring me during one of my rants and raves but this time I wasn’t so sure. The worst part was the knowledge that Darien and I were both so stubborn that it would be a while until either of us admitted that we were sorry. How do you live without your best friend? Hell, how do you live without your only friend?
Chapter Eleven
I had never been so happy to see my frumpy little four room apartment in my life. It wasn’t much at all, but it was the one place that I could truly go and be alone. It was the place where I could be myself and not some human that was fighting an endless battle to save the world. Darien and Ihad spent a lot of nights on the couch under a blanket watching stupid old movies that we managed to get our hands on. The Vampires had made a lot of human history disappear; what was the point of keeping it? An educated human was a threat to them. By burning books and destroying movies, they could make people more and more animal-like. When you decide to enslave an entire race, you want to make sure that you do it right. I always wondered how much more was ou
t there that I will never get to experience because the monsters destroyed it.
Dr. Walker was a smart man, but he was a scientist by nature. He spent more time reading text books than he did the classics. I would do almost anything to have the chance to talk to somebody that could fill me in on all the things that had been destroyed. I could understand why it was important to get rid of all the weapons and the technology. The less the humans had, the better. If it was possible that they could get their hands on a bomb, or weapon of any sort, it was also possible that they could do something to change their fate. The Vampires were smart enough to know that. I, however, thought that burning art, books, and films was just a part of the mental warfare they waged on us. Anything that the monsters could take away from the humans was a successful step in turning humans into a mindless herd.
Dr. Walker had managed to save a decent amount of films and literature throughout the years. He saved them to be used for educational purposes. He thought that we could learn a lot about the past way of life by watching the movies. Now and then, Darien would come across a copy of a movie or book that had been misplaced, and we would watch it or read it over and over again. It was our only peek into what was normal. The memory of us laughing and acting out the scenes suddenly made me very sad. I hadn’t realized that the last night that we spent being carefree could have actually been the last night we would ever spend together. That thought sickened me so much that I pushed it out of my mind.
What I needed was a nice hot bath and to crawl under the covers and forget that any of this happened. Maybe if I was lucky, I would wake up to my alarm clock and realize that it had all just been a bad dream. I could tell Darien about it and we would sit and make fun of me for hours. Yeah, that sounded like enough of a glimmer of hope to keep me sane long enough to fall asleep for a little while.
