by Heather Linn
“The Vampires didn’t even have the balls to make the decision themselves. The town was forced to vote, forced to vote for the families that they would like to see tortured in this way. Of course, we were a target. Everyone was jealous of the relationships we had within my family, they were envious of the bond and the love that our home managed to build and share and they wanted to see it ruined. We got the highest vote count, Cat. The feeling of being abandoned and shunned by the rest of town and knowing what was to come completely destroyed my mother. She slipped away instantly into some kind of delusion. She was there Cat but she was gone. I never heard my mother’s voice after that day, she didn’t respond to anything, not even my father’s touch.
One by one, all the families in town were called to the center square. I remember looking around at the other people, at the other families that had been chosen to go through the same horror as us and I remember envying them Cat. They were nothing more than complete strangers sharing the same space with each other. I hated my parents at that moment. I cursed them Cat. What the fuck had they been thinking? Their decision to keep us close now made us weak. It made everything so much harder. I was in deep thought when I heard my father’s righteous protest rise up and silence the crowd.
“I will not stand for this. I will not allow you to use my family for sport, take me and let them go.” He was a proud man and his voice never once quavered and he never once flinched, not even when he heard the words the Vampire in charge said to him.
“Well, well, it seems we have our first hero. Are you telling me rodent that you are begging to take yourself out of the games and sign your life away to save your family?” My father didn’t even hesitate to step forward.
“That is exactly what I am saying.” I remember thinking that my father’s willingness to sacrifice himself might just save us. I felt my body release a breath. Everything was going to be OK. I was going to lose my father but it would be a heroic loss and I was proud of him for saving us all.
“Stupid human!” The Vampire in charge spit out the words. “Do you really think it is going to be that easy?” I never even saw the beast move forward.
My father had been standing right beside me Cat. I didn’t see the beast that took him, but I felt the breeze on my cheek and to this day, I can still smell him. And the sound Cat, the scream that escaped my father’s lips as his throat was torn open? I can still feel my father’s warm blood splattering my face,” Jace said and then his voice trailed off and he retreated to a place deep within himself. I could only stare transfixed and watch as Jace reached up and touched his face, tracing an imaginary something, a stain of blood long gone perhaps, as if his fingertips could wipe away the guilt and horror. His breath picked up and I sensed he was back in his nightmare again.
“They killed him Cat and my last thought as he died was how much I hated him for being weak and leaving me with the burden of doing what had to be done.” I was shaking. I could feel every emotion that was hidden in the dead sound of his voice.
“I was older than the other kids. My little sister was fourteen; the twins were just six and then the baby. I was older than all of them Cat. I was the oldest! My mother was gone; she could do no good for anyone now. She had died before my father but she was too stupid to just lie down. I knew that I had to protect my brothers and sisters from a death worse than the one my father had suffered, no matter the cost to me. I was not going to let the Vampires win. I was not going to let my family become a death spectacle for everyone. I did what I had to do Cat.” He stopped talking and closed his eyes and I watched as a single tear slipped slowly down the side of his face.
I needed to say something but I didn’t know what the words needed to be. He told me he had to get it out, that he didn’t want to die with his guilt locked up in his mind. I should have changed the subject. I should have told him to stop, but that would mean denying him his regret.
“What happened next Jace? Tell me.” The words came out before I could stop myself. I knew that he needed release from his deeds, as much as I had needed release from my own.
“I killed them all Cat. I couldn’t bear the thought of what the royal line would do to my little brothers and sisters. I couldn’t stand thinking about what would happen inside them if they were forced to live with knowing that they had killed the others so they themselves could survive. One by one I freed them from that fate. My mother was the easiest. She didn’t see me coming; she didn’t see anything for that matter. I kissed her and I grabbed her neck and took away her pain in one swift motion. I died on that same day with her I think.”
The memories of Jewel’s final moments flooded back to me in a crushing rush and I couldn’t stop them. Everything Jace said brought back everything I felt the day I took her life. I didn’t think anyone could ever understand how I felt that day, and yet in a twisted twist of fate, I had been thrown in a cell with someone that understood better than I how it feels to kill someone you love. This however, wasn’t the time or the place for me to get swept up in my own pain. The boy sitting beside me had earned his time to grieve.
“I did what I had to do Cat. I had to turn it off or I wouldn’t be able to finish what I was doing.” As the words came out of his mouth, Jace’s demeanor changed. I could see the change in his face and his eyes, I could hear it in his voice, and I could even feel it somewhere down deep. I shivered, hoping that he didn’t fully understand the “it” that he had turned off. I knew what it was. The “it” that he was talking about was his sanity.
“The baby was sleeping in his crib. I picked up a pillow and placed it on top of my baby brother’s face. I pushed down hard and steady. I wanted to make sure no one would hear him if he cried out. After a while he stopped kicking his feet. I left the pillow to cover his face and I went down the hall to take care of the twins. They were so trusting Cat. They trusted me! I told them we had to play hide and seek. I knew that was the only hope I had of separating them. I didn’t have any weapons, so after I counted and after they hid, I picked up the sharpest rock I could find and I hunted them down like helpless young animals, like they were just food. I left the bloody rock by their bodies. I wiped my hands on my shirt. The only one that was left then was Becca. I knew where to find her though. She couldn’t hide from me. She had been in her room crying all afternoon. I was out of control. I ran down the hallway and opened her door quietly Cat, hoping that I could sneak up on her and she wouldn’t see me coming.
“I know what you are here for Jace and forget it,” she said. Her words threw me off, there was no way she could have known. But somehow she did.
“I am not going to let you kill me Jace,” she said quietly, the look of a cornered animal was in her eyes. She faced me and stood. “I am not going to die here Jace. I am going to go out there and I am going to avenge Daddy, so I suggest you stay the hell out of my way.” I knew she would be planning something stupid. She was so headstrong and innocent and she thought she was invincible. I knew she would get herself tortured.
“Don’t be stupid, Becca,” I said. “There’s nothing that you can do to bring Daddy back. You are just going to get yourself tortured. I was talking so calmly I guess I hoped I could convince her to just lay there and let me kill her. Instead, she attacked me with a broken piece of glass she had hidden in her hand. What happened next was completely unexpected. She attacked me hard. She was fighting back wildly. She had determined that I wasn’t going to ruin her plan. She sliced me pretty deep, and I stumbled back, surprised by the blood. For a second I thought she was going to kill me. The stubborn little brat was going to walk right into the mouth of hell and I couldn’t stop her because I would be bleeding to death from the cut to my arm.” As he spoke he traced the jagged eight inch line where she had cut him. I had never paid attention to his telling scar. I figured it was given him by the monsters, and not by a desperate little sister.
“I wasn’t going to let her go out there. I was bleeding badly, but I knew if I could just get to her, I could kill
her. I outweighed her by fifty pounds. With the last bit of strength I had, I threw myself at her. I knocked her down and she stabbed the glass into my chest and then self-preservation took over. I grabbed her throat with both hands and I squeezed. She thrashed around for what felt like forever, but eventually she stopped. I watched her eyes cloud over, the light in them slowly faded and I knew at that moment she was gone. They all were gone and I was going to join them. I laid there waiting for death to come. I waited there with their bodies through the night, and through the sunrise next morning. Nothing happened. No one came. Eventually I had to get up. I turned myself into the Vampires that ran the town and soon after they assigned me to your asshole friend Drake. It’s been hell ever since Cat, but a murderer like me deserves nothing better. I took their lives away from them, so now I accept everything that Drake does to me. Let the punishment fit the crime.” He shook his head, as if to shake away images that I couldn’t see. We sat there for a minute, neither of us wanting to move because moving would make murder more real.
I knew he needed me to speak up. Through his tragic story, he made me understand that killing Jewel had been a selfless act on my part, and right now, he needed me to justify his family’s death by his hands. I only hoped when I opened my mouth, the right words would rush out because my brain had no words planned.
“Do you know what those sick fuckers would have done to those twins if they had gotten hold of them?” I said. “Worse than that, can you imagine how a six year old’s mind would shatter if they were forced to kill their mother, or their other half? What about Becca? Drake would have raped and destroyed her: body, mind and soul. You know that Jace. You saved them from a fate more horrible than death. You did something that most people could never do. You are the bravest person that I’ve ever met.”
As the words poured out of my mouth I realized that I truly believed them. I had killed Jewel without forethought, with no time to plan it and it had almost destroyed me. I could have never killed her the way Jace had, with time to think about it. I wouldn’t have been mentally strong enough to walk away from it after if I had. Jace had not only walked away, but he had managed to live with himself after doing something that most would consider vicious and cruel. For a minute I wondered if I should be afraid of him. If the takeover never had happened, would I have been reading about him in the newspapers? Was he a heartless man capable of taking the lives of countless people? I shook the thought away as soon as it crossed my mind. This was a man that had survived something I knew I couldn’t. He needed my trust and my acceptance, and I was going to give it to him.
“Thank you Cat. I didn’t want to die without ever saying it out loud, but can we please drop it now? I needed to put them to rest, to make my peace with what I’ve done, and you allowed me to do that. I am done mourning them, and for the first time since their blood was fresh on my hands, I feel at ease.”
I wanted to talk more, I wanted to drag more out of him and make sure that he was OK. I shook my head yes and agreed to drop it. Who was I to make the last hours of his life a darker nightmare? I changed the subject. There was something I needed to get off my chest, something that I needed to say out loud too, so that maybe I would feel less insane.
“Can I tell you something Jace? And you promise not to get jealous, possessive or mad?”
“Cat, I assure you I’m not that type of person. Tell me what is bothering you.” His words were music to my soul.
For once I allowed my thoughts to flow freely. I told Jace about life growing up with Darien, about how he had always protected me, how he took care of me and how I now knew that he was in love with me. I told him how his lips felt on mine and how maybe I loved him too. I wanted to say these things out loud to Darien by I couldn’t so I did the second best thing. I let the words fall upon my own ears. Saying them out loud with someone listening seemed to help.
“Cat, Darien sounds like a really great guy. I don’t see what the problem is though.” He wasn’t being mean, or smart. He truly wanted to know what it was that was making me frown, as opposed to making me smile, when I talked about Darien.
“I think I am in love with Akia, too.” It sounded so stupid when I said it out loud. I almost wanted to slap myself. I waited for him to yell and call me dumb but he didn’t.
“Hmm, quite a predicament you got there Cat. That’s not an easy one.” There was not even the tiniest hint of sarcasm in his tone.
I looked up at him. His eyes were so tender, so caring. He wasn’t judging me at all. And not being judged was something that I wasn’t sure I knew how to handle. I had always longed to experience acceptance from someone and Jace had just shown me how it felt.
“It’s OK. You can tell me how stupid I am, believe me I know.” I was ashamed of myself for even bothering him with this trivial stuff after the story that he had just told me.
“First off Cat, I don’t think that you have a stupid bone in your body. I don’t think that you get to pick who you love. I think that people, um beings, where meant to meet, and if certain beings meet then it isn’t by chance. It was because there was a force greater than them working, a force that brought them together.” I had to smile a little at the way he changed people to beings without even a blink. “Why do you think you love him though? I mean what is it that makes your feelings towards Akia so strong?”
I was really hoping he wasn’t waiting for an answer because if I could answer his question, if I knew why I loved Akia, then I would be able to fix it, and make the love go away. When he remained silent, I saw that he would sit and wait for me to answer forever. I didn’t mean to go into defense mode but it was so easy to click that switch and usually, my defensive mode made the men in my life shut up pretty fast.
“I don’t know why or what it is that makes me want Akia, I really don’t. Let’s change the subject, OK? This is just me being a girl.” Hopefully he would just let it drop.
“You aren’t getting off that easy baby girl.” Anyone else who called me that? I would have shoved a stake up their ass. But when he did it, I liked it. I was getting wishy-washy. I was almost glad I was going to die before I morphed into some spineless type that would make me vomit.
“This is about confessing your dirtiest secrets, Cat,” Jace said. “Your dirty secret is Akia and I want to hear all the gory details. You owe it to yourself to get this off your mind.” I hated to admit it, but he was right. I wanted to talk to someone about my feelings for Akia and Jace was begging me to let him be the one.
“I don’t know. There was just something about the way his lips felt when he kissed me.” I waited for Jace to roll his eyes, for him to tell me that I was just being a stupid girl, but he never did, so I continued. “Don’t get me wrong Jace; I have kissed a lot of monsters. It’s all part of the act. I can’t get them to fuck me if I’m not willing to kiss them. But Akia, as soon as our lips met, I felt electricity running through my body. I felt him in every inch of my being. It was like for the first time in my life I was truly awake and alive. But it was more than that. He was also inside my head.”
Even saying it sounded stupid, but I had to get it out and once I started, I couldn’t stop. “I could feel him inside my mind Jace, he was navigating through my thoughts, forcing me to relive memories, and I was doing the same thing to him. The things that I saw inside him were breath taking. Luckily, my common sense took over and I slammed the mental connection between us shut somehow. He would have killed me right on the spot if he had figured out that I was human. Of course, that might have been enough to save my family.”
“What happened after that, Cat? How did you get away?” He seemed like he really cared.
I wasn’t used to being able to talk openly about Akia. In fact, part of me was waiting for Jace to freak out, just like Darien did every time I said Akia’s name. The fact that Jace didn’t freak out made me very sad because I was never going to get to know him any better. We would both die in the morning anyway so I told him everything, my entire life’s story
. There wasn’t a single word that I left out. I ended my story with the ring, and with how I had laid down and given myself to the monsters, so that the man I knew as a father, and the only two other people in the world that I loved, could get away and live.
I even told him about waking up and toying with the ring. I even confessed to him about how I thought about removing it, just so I could feel Akia, just so I could know that the one I loved was alright.
“I felt him mourn for me Jace. I had never felt anything like it in my life. He was so broken.” Jace was quiet, as still as a dark and windless night.
I couldn’t tell by the look on his face if he was disgusted by my stupidity or if he was awestruck by how many people my feelings toward Akia eventually took down. Jace had killed his family to save them, if that made any sense at all. My family died because I wanted to believe that the King of all demons thought I was special. Hell, Jace didn’t have to be disappointed in me. I was already disappointed in myself. I suddenly realized how ridiculous I was for letting myself think that I was worthy of Akia. Even more, I hated myself for believing there would ever be anything between us. There is no relationship without sex and that is blunt and plain. I couldn’t have sex with Akia. It would kill him. Well, it might kill him, and besides a few minutes of sex wasn’t worth the risk of losing him every time we decided to make love. Not to mention the fact that Akia would eventually want to know why I never took him to bed. He would find out I was a human and then he would kill me. I was pretty sure he would destroy himself in the process and I cared too much about Akia to watch him go down.
“I think he loves you too.” I was lost in the middle of my internal struggle when Jace spoke, and he startled me back to reality.
