“Yes, him,” Steven said, nudging my foot with his. “You looked rather chummy together, like you knew him.” I glanced at Steven and he arched his perfectly shaped brows at me, waiting.
“I don’t really know him,” I said, reaching for a handful of popcorn. “I met him once, at the concert the other night.”
“You mean the bartender?” Jodi asked, her forehead wrinkling in confusion. “No, he had tattoos and dark hair.”
“No, not him,” I shook my head, “a different guy. That was Giovanni; this guy’s name is Liam.”
“Oooh Liam!” She smiled at me over the edge of her soda can. “Sounds Irish, does he have an accent?”
“Mmm, I do love a nice brogue,” Steven said with a wink.
“That’s Scottish,” I corrected, “and no, I didn’t really notice an accent.” Although now that I thought about it, maybe he did have an accent and he was just hiding it. If he was as old as he felt, I highly doubted that he was originally from the States. I shook my head, trying to push thoughts of getting to know Liam better out of my mind.
“Anyway,” Jodi pressed, stretching out the word to urge me on.
“Okay, okay, I wasn’t going to say anything, but since it doesn’t seem like he’s leaving anytime soon, I guess I better tell you.”
So I told them. After the initial shock of learning a real live, or rather dead, vampire was in our town, they took it in stride. It was a mark of how far we’d come in the last few years that talking about a vampire outside of movies or books just seemed commonplace to us now.
“So what’s he doing here?” Jodi asked.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Looking for a new place to live, I guess.”
“Why is he following you?” Steven asked this time.
“Oh, I don’t think he’s following me.”
“Don’t you?”
“Um,” I faltered, my hand pausing midair between my mouth and the popcorn bowl.
“Yeah,” Steven nodded, “so why is he following you?”
“I don’t know; maybe he just thinks I’m interesting?”
“Why would he think that?” Jodi asked, earning a look from both me and Steven. “I don’t mean it the way it sounded.” She rolled her eyes, but I knew what she meant.
“When I sensed him at the bar, he sensed me too. He knew I had power. He, uh, he thought I was a vampire too.” I finally managed to get the explanation out of my mouth and it was my turn to get looks from the others.
Steven finally said, “I thought vampires could hear pulses and smell blood.”
“He thought I was a psychic vampire.”
“What, like Jensen did?” Jodi asked, and I nodded.
“What does that mean?” Steven asked, looking from one of us to the other.
“That she feeds off of people’s emotions and energy.”
“Huh.” Steven tilted his head to the side and glanced up, thinking about what Jodi said, then said, “Yeah, I get that.”
“What?” I exclaimed, unable to stop myself to check the volume of my voice. The three of us froze in place, watching the door, waiting for it to fling open and reveal the pissed off face of my dad. We waited almost a full minute before collectively exhaling and turning back to the conversation.
“How can you say that?” I hissed at Steven, leaning toward him. “I do not feed off of people!”
“Yes, you do,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Shay,” Jodi said, placing a hand on my knee to stop me from arguing. My mouth hung open for another moment before I closed it and leaned back, nodding at him to go on.
“You don’t drain people like a blood vampire does, but you do feed off of people’s emotions and energy. You absorb their ambient energy,” he continued. “When they’re angry or upset or feeling any negative emotion, you’re like a sinkhole for them to pour that into and it drains you, but get you around enough positive energy and it fuels you.”
“He’s right, you know,” Jodi said, quirking an eyebrow at me.
“How so?” I managed to ask through clenched teeth.
“It’s a lot easier to be in a bad mood, angry or sad, around you because you take on half the burden if you’re not shielding against it.” She popped a few kernels into her mouth, crunching happily through them before licking the salt from her fingers.
“It, I, what?” I stumbled through my words, my thoughts and questions firing through my head too quickly for me to pick out one. I took a breath and unclenched my jaw and picked a question. “Why didn’t one of you tell me that?”
“Tell you what? That you take on half the load?” Jodi asked with a look of deep confusion on her face.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t know that?” Steven asked, just as confused.
“Does this look like the face of a girl who knows what the hell you’re talking about?” I demanded.
“So what? You just thought you were feeling what other people were feeling and that’s it?”
“Pretty much.”
“That would be a pretty useless power, Shay.”
“No, it wouldn’t be.” Jodi shook her head. “She’d still be able to tell when people needed help, like when Tracy was dating that jackass, Nick.”
“True,” Steven conceded.
“Why haven’t you guys told me this before?” I asked again, letting my frustration color my words so they’d stop debating and get back to the issue at hand.
“We just assumed you knew,” Jodi said, and Steven agreed. “You’ve never really let yourself be in group situations since your empathy got so strong, so we couldn’t know the positive emotions would be similar.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” I said. “But I’m not feeding off of them.”
“Shay,” Jodi said before Steven could argue with me, “do you realize the concert was the first time you’ve ever danced in a large crowd? Now think about that and think about how you felt at the bonfire; how did you feel?”
I looked away from them and out my window at the black sky beyond to think about it, not wanting to see the answer in their faces. I thought about both nights and felt heat all through my body. The heat of so many bodies so close together all experiencing the same emotions, sort of a strange, calm excitement. I could smell the sweat and smoke. My tongue tasted of spices.
“I felt really good,” I whispered, but still looked away from them.
“And have you felt like you needed to recharge lately?”
“No.”
“Even though we used magic after the concert against those thugs?”
“No.” My stomach was one big knot now.
“Babe, don’t be like this,” Steven said, his voice softer now as he scooted around our food until he was close enough to pull me into him. He hugged me against his chest, filling me with the scent of roasting peppers and campfire smoke. I closed my eyes and breathed him in, letting my shoulders relax.
“You don’t steal anything from them like a blood vampire,” Jodi reassured me with a hand on my back, rubbing small circles. “You’re just letting their energy fuel you. They’re already putting it out there; you just know what to do with it.”
“But how can I be a vampire and an angel?” I whispered, hearing my voice catch.
“Just like magic,” Steven whispered, and before he finished, I had a moment of déjà vu, only I was the one comforting him as he tried to reconcile his magical abilities and a strict Catholic background. “There is no black or white, magic is both, and clearly so are you.”
It was a bittersweet explanation, but it made sense. I had started to attribute my empathetic abilities to the fact that I was a budding guardian angel and I had never had the illusion that angels were rescuing, beautiful creatures of peace. I had always seen them as warriors, bloodied and terrible. Was it fair that I benefitted from the same ability that could hinder me? Why not? I had risked my sanity to help people through trouble; why shouldn’t I reap some rewards? I cringed as my own thoughts echoed Liam’s words, but
he was right; hearing them from Jodi and Steven put them into a whole new perspective for me. Maybe I was just being biased. An angel with fangs, that seemed fitting for me.
***
It was hot again. The air was filled with black smoke, making it difficult to breathe. There was screaming in the distance, pain filled screams ripping through the air. The ground was choked and cracked, trees stripped of their leaves while braches burned to wicked points – the flames throwing macabre shadows through the smoke.
My pulse pounded through my ears as I ran. My feet were bare, but I was separate from the earth, my steps slapping against the barren dirt. I could feel the polluted air burning through my lungs. I couldn’t take a full breath; every time I tried, my lungs contracted, making me cough and throwing me off balance until I dry heaved. The screams echoed in my head as they battered me from every direction. I could feel the trees burning alive, but I could do nothing for them; I had to find the people screaming. I had to pick out their thread of pain in the tapestry of the forest burning around me.
My arms were red and angry with heat. Sweat soaked what little clothing I was still wearing, but I couldn’t remember when I had stripped off the other layers. It wasn’t important now. A fresh howl of pain ripped through my mind, sending me reeling, my back bending from the shock. I grabbed my head, trying to catch myself before I fell, covering my ears with my palms, but the screams were as much inside of me as they were in the space around me. Their pain and anguish tore through me like a rake against leaves. I could smell their skin sizzling in the smoke filled air.
I bolted awake, gasping desperately and loud. I clutched my chest, pressing against the pounding of my heart, keeping me in the dream for a few more confused moments. Jodi was on one side of me and Steven the other, both awake now, watching me with worried faces and whispering soothing words, but I couldn’t hear them. The screams were still bouncing in my mind. I could feel their energy circling around me as they each tried to shield me from my own imagination, but Steven’s energy was all fire and heat – too much like the hell I had just woken from. I pushed his energy away from me and pulled on Jodi’s power. I inched my body closer to hers, taking her arm and holding on to it like a lifeline. Without Steven’s fire, her air became cool and soothing, whisking away the smoke.
I took big, burning lungfuls of that fresh air. The sweat on my body cooled, making me shiver. I closed my eyes against the flickering light of my T.V. left on as a nightlight and habit from childhood. Once my mind was calm again and the frantic beating of my heart slowed, I reached out my hand for Steven. I expected him to be hesitant in taking it, but he wasn’t; his larger hand grasped mine, intertwining our fingers without question.
“Was it just a dream?” Jodi asked, breaking the near silence finally.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back. Most people get to hear soothing words like, “It was just a dream,” but with me, it rarely was just a dream.
“Is that what pain feels like to you?” Steven asked, letting me know they had at least a vague idea of what my dream was about.
“Other people’s pain, yeah,” I said with a nod. “At least, that’s what extreme pain feels like. Sometimes it’s just a sick feeling, but yeah, that’s what it’s like for me in a hospital.”
“God, I had no idea.” He gave my hand a squeeze, keeping his eyes cast down on the bedspread.
“Have you had that dream before?” Jodi asked.
“I don’t know, I think maybe I have.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a nightmare the other night, but I couldn’t remember it,” I explained. “Except when I woke up, I remember it was really hot.”
“Was it me?” Steven asked.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and squeezing my eyes shut until lights blinked in the darkness.
“How do you know?”
“Because,” I sighed and opened my eyes to look at him to reassure him, “my mother had that dream the other night.”
“Really?” Jodi asked, shocked.
“Yeah, really freaked her out,” I said. I pulled my hands free of them and rocked forward to crawl out of bed. I stumbled to my feet and reached for my brush on my dresser.
“Go on,” Jodi said. I almost laughed at her confidence that there was more to what I was saying, but since there was more to it, I couldn’t laugh. I pulled my brush through the tangled, sweaty mess my hair had become, brushing it away from my face.
“She thought I died in the fire.” It was blunt, but it seemed silly to sugarcoat it. “She even got out her cards to read about it.”
“I thought she gave up cards?” Steven looked up finally, confusion etched on his face.
“She did, but I guess it was so realistic, it bothered her enough to get them out.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to read for yourself?” Jodi asked, just as confused.
“You’re not,” I said, setting the brush back on the dresser. I was tempted to open the window, but thought better of it. It was the end of December and I had been sweating; the last thing I wanted was a head cold over New Year’s.
“But you didn’t die in the dream,” Jodi said, but sounded like she was trying to work out a puzzle, not really talking to me. “It sounded like someone else was dying and you were trying to get to them.”
“Yeah, but my mom said that’s what happened.” I sat on the foot of the bed, drawing my feet up to sit Indian style. “She said I ran into the fire to save someone and never made it out.”
“What did the cards say?”
“That her dream was just one possibility.”
“Wait, you let her finish?” Steven asked with wide eyes.
“No,” I said. “I stopped her and did the reading for her.”
“Creepy,” he whispered. I agreed.
“Shay,” Jodi said, pulling my attention to her. “Please promise you’re not going to go running into a fire and get yourself killed.” It should’ve been a ridiculous thing to ask, but my own voice echoed in my mind. “She will have to choose whether or not saving another is as important as keeping herself safe.”
“I don’t know if I can promise that,” I finally said. “It might be a piecrust promise.”
“Easily made, easily broken,” she whispered, her voice steady, but I felt the fear ping through her and into me.
“Okay, so let’s just assume it was real,” Steven chimed in. “Let’s just figure out where and when your dream was and we’ll be able to take steps to prevent it.”
“If it were that easy,” I sighed, bending forward to get to my hands and knees to crawl back between them and snuggle down into the mound of pillows.
“Why not?”
“You saw it, Steven,” I said, turning my face to look up at him. “There is nothing to go off of. Hell, the smoke makes it so you can’t even tell if it’s night or day; you just assume it’s night.”
“Why?”
“Because I assume it’s night,” I said, closing my eyes only to feel them burn with exhaustion. “You see the dream the way I saw it. I feel like it was night, so therefore you do too.”
“Fine, then let’s just say it’s night.” He shrugged the argument off. “What else?”
“There is nothing else,” Jodi said, shifting her hips to slide back down under the covers next to me. “You saw it, Steven, no signs, no roads, no nothing.”
“No, we know it’s a wooded area where people are allowed to be at night. That’s something,” he pressed.
“You’re assuming again,” I said, feeling the sleep start to pull at the edges of my consciousness. “Just because people were in a wooded area at night doesn’t mean they were allowed to be there. We go places we’re not allowed to at night all the time.”
“Besides,” Jodi interjected, pausing to yawn, “that doesn’t really narrow anything down. There are dozens of campgrounds and parks between here and wherever.”
“Shay,” Steven said in a softer, scared voice. “Do you think
she was just dreaming about the fire I started in the park?”
“I guess that’s possible,” I said around a yawn. “No way to be sure though.” I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.
“But,” he started to argue the point further, but I grabbed a handful of fabric on his shoulder and pulled him down onto to me, shoving him into the pillows.
“Steven, we’re asleep again,” I whispered. “It’s quiet time.”
“But,” he said again.
“Shhhhhhhh,” I soothed, putting my fingers across his mouth to stop him from saying anything else. Jodi’s breathing had already slowed next to me, becoming heavy and hypnotizing. I let my hand fall away from his mouth and snuggled into the hollow created by his shoulder and the pillow. My movement drew Jodi into the curve of my back, mirroring my position comfortably.
I could feel the tension still pulling Steven’s awareness tight, keeping him wide-awake. Maybe he was worried because I had dreamed of fire and pain, but he’d been on edge all day. He was bound to jump to conclusions. I opened the channel between us again, letting my desire to sleep and need for a quiet mind soothe his worries. After a few moments of our auras slipping in and around each other until they resonated a complimentary energy, I felt his body relax against me.
He slipped down a few inches so his head rested comfortably on the pillows. I lost the hollow I had cuddled into, but the curve of his shoulder and neck caught me. I breathed in the scent of roasting peppers and campfire smoke; strangely, the familiar smell chased away the angry skin scented nightmare. Sleep pulled me under before I could compare the two; all that mattered was this one was warm and familiar, not hot and angry. My last thought was that Steven hadn’t caused the fire. Somehow I knew that.
When I woke up the second time, it was dawn. Both Jodi and Steven were curled around me, deep asleep. I was on my back now, looking up at the ceiling. The warmth of their bodies and the comforter covering us was hypnotic. I blinked slowly, knowing if I wanted to, I could go back to sleep. But I wanted to enjoy this for just a moment.
Steven’s heavy arm was draped across my stomach and his face was just inches from mine, his slow breaths hitting the curve of my neck. Jodi clutched her pillow between us, but sometime in the night, she’d hooked one leg over mine. The mound of her pillow blocked most of the view of her face, but I could still see the tip of her nose and chin and a spill of short, yellow blonde hair shot through with white. I turned my face a little and I could even see the curve of her envy inducing long eye lashes. She’d slept in her mascara, but not even the dusting of black on her cheek took anything away from her beauty just then.
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