by Erin R Flynn
I shrugged. “Fair enough.” I moaned at how good the coffee was with full fat milk instead of fake creamer. “This was worth coming out of hiding for.”
“Why were you hiding?” Cerdic asked as he sat with his own coffee. “Was the book you read last night scary?”
“I thought you were reading about seeds?” Vance added.
“Thanks guys,” I whispered, knowing what they were doing and appreciating it. I realized a very small part of my emotional roller coaster might have been PMS when I felt cramps. Great, so that was coming. “I didn’t get much reading done. I fell asleep.”
“Well, you needed it,” Vance said. “I got a nice nap when we switched off driving. Normally I can’t on road trips, but that camper is just too comfy not to sleep.”
“I can in the semi because those seats are so big,” Callum replied, all of them talking like nothing had changed and we were all good. Then they started trading the strangest places they’d fallen asleep, some of them having doozies.
“I fell asleep on a lass who was trying to get my attentions when I was piss drunk,” Jaxon said. “She pulled me on her half dressed, and there I stayed until the morning. She gave me a good earful about crushing her for a few hours, but I remembered none of it, so she was far from innocent to deserve that.”
“None of mine are really funny,” I admitted when they glanced at me like it was my turn. I shrugged, bringing my feet up on the chair and wrapping my hands around the warm mug. “I fell asleep in a broken bathroom stall that stunk, hoping it covered my scent and I could get some sleep after four days of none on the run, laying traps just so I had some warning if either corrupted or Clarence and his crew found me.”
“Wow, I didn’t realize it had ever gotten that bad,” Wolfe muttered, giving me a worried look. “Did that kind of thing happen often?”
“Yes,” I confessed, knowing I kept a lot of that locked away and that had boiled up into last night’s breakdown. “I couldn’t ever get far enough ahead, and it never made sense to me.” I felt new tears somehow, completely sure there wasn’t a drop of hydration left in me. “I was always so down on myself that I couldn’t escape when I could start electric cars. I could drive off and still I would turn around—”
“You can start them?” Cerdic asked, sitting back in his chair with a raised eyebrow. “Now that isn’t one I’ve heard. I thought you were a bit squirmy on your answers there, Mr. Electrical Engineer.”
“Not the point,” I muttered, knowing it was valid to ask but I was already opening up about something hard for me. “Anyways, yeah, I would have a second to think I’d gotten away, and there they would be, no vehicle. I thought I was losing my mind or losing time. How was that possible? Yeah, I’d stop and find stuff, but still, how could they just always find me again? It was maddening and horrible.”
“You didn’t get a chance to really process it was over,” Darius comforted, rubbing my back. “We keep dumping more fears and worries on you so you’re not blindsided, but it just all builds like you can’t get away from any of it.”
“Yeah, but thinking you were crazy for years isn’t easy to get over either,” I chuckled darkly, staring into my coffee. “No matter where I went, no matter where I was or hid, corrupted came for me, focused solely on me but cutting down anyone in their path.” I ran my shaky hand through my hair. “Sometimes I stop and think I’m still crazy, that this is all…”
“In your head?” Darius asked.
“Yeah but no, I mean, yes, I know this is real, but five years of running and I never—only Clarence noticed me, and now people are finding me?” I gestured to all of them. “I’ve been all over almost every continent finding stuff and just happened to miss all the surviving covens? But we had to sneak around a few already?”
“I don’t think it just happened,” Jaxon said gently. “I think that pull you feel for the certain order is the answer.”
“Right, but you get how crazy that sounds too.”
“Yeah, so is a lot of everything,” he agreed. “But it makes sense your mind goes there.”
“You’re too distrusting to be delusional,” Kristof said from my left, and I flinched but swallowed the yelp at the last second. “People with delusions or mental issues are self-reinforcing in what they see. Like those camps you detest. They believe in some misguided part of their doctrine and survived the apocalypse, so it must be that they were right and should dig in deeper to their beliefs.
“Or they were saved to spread what they now have reinforced as true. That’s delusional, as it completely ignores random chance and circumstances and locations. Plus, others who don’t believe as they do survived, so how is their doctrine not right? To those people, it’s proof they are there to convert people since there are people who don’t believe as them.”
“But if their starting belief is that they were saved because of what they believe in, everything is circular and there’s no foundation to any of it,” I muttered, having had several conversations like that with people trying to convert me. “They can’t listen to anything other than their own arguments, as it breaks the circle and they fall apart.”
“Right, but all of what you experience now is linear, building on a starting line,” he said gently. “Take one thing you know deepest. You said from the moment you woke on your birthday corrupted have hunted you. Yes, they hunt people, but you have seen them come for you over the settlement you left. You said several times that you left a settlement before night so they were not collateral damage.”
I nodded. “I didn’t go back and check on them.”
“But I was at the settlement you landed at,” Darius reminded me. “I went back and got those tacos. They weren’t attacked.”
I bobbed my head, thinking that was a pretty good starting point. “From there the logic doesn’t circle back, is what you’re saying. It builds. Fine, they don’t like non-humans, but I’m a vampire princess and everyone super smells me. I’m on a mission for Aether—maybe—and the apocalypse was done by Her brother.” I opened my mouth but then closed it. “That one seems a bit circular.”
“No, because you didn’t associate the two,” Jaxon defended. “We did. We drew the lines for you on that one. You knew two facts and kept going, so it’s not circular logic if we show you they were connected or running parallel, whatever the analogy on that one is. Or like you knew the ghosts were the corrupted you put to rest and the seeds, but Darius taught you how to push up the timeline.”
“Thank fuck for that,” I whispered, shivering at how it used to be. “That alone almost broke my sanity. They hunted me and then harassed me, getting worse and worse until they finally dissipated.”
“Worse and worse?” Vance asked, scrunching his eyebrows together. “I don’t really get the whole ghost thing.”
“I killed a corrupted that had been hiding in the ship I’d gotten the ticket for from Europe. Just hiding in the lower deck and the crew didn’t even notice. I slice him up, and they barely thank me, tossing me a few extra cans of tuna, which hey, great, you promise the ship is safe, but whatever. So he dies, and the next day mid-morning his ghost shows up.
“And it’s not just I can see and hear them, it’s like this bubble popping against my skin. I feel them. And they know I can see them. They don’t always know I killed them, as they don’t get they were corrupted normally. Or they know I killed them and they think I just murdered them. They get really angry then. The guy that time didn’t. He just kept singing the Oscar Meyer commercial jingle over and over again.
“And like fuuuck, that made the trip so much worse. But as time passes, they deteriorate. The day I met Darius the ghost was mixing up the song and I felt that confusion, that slipping away feeling. I’d feel the loss when they were gone.” I wiped tears again. “I didn’t know at first that they would dissipate or that only I saw them. I was talking to them, thinking they were survivors too.
“That first week I thought it was a chemical attack or something and I wasn’t the o
nly one who forgot, as they didn’t know much either, but then I started slowly putting the pieces together even if they didn’t seem to line up. I was so far behind on everything, not knowing I was in the fucking apocalypse, and no one would give me the same answers or even take the time to answer.
“Half the time I was so desperate for answers I would ask the ghosts of the corrupted I killed just to get information. It was—it was so fucked up. And then when I’d kill a pack, I couldn’t be around people. No one can just ignore so many talking to you. I couldn’t hear the real people around me. And I would always feel the loss when they left. They tried to eat me, and I wanted to cry when they dissipated.”
I cleared my throat, feeling their stares and hating I’d gone on that long in my ramble.
“You never told us any of this,” Darius muttered. “You keep too much in.”
I turned my head on my knees and looked at him with a smile. “Yeah, because you’ve had a chance to talk to me about stuff too? We’ve been fairly busy, and it hurts to think about. Maybe it’s better in the long run to get it out, but it hurts to do it, and that’s not fun.”
“True, but we want to hear it.”
“Not everything helps to hear it,” I whispered, turning my head and staring at my coffee when the tears started again. “Like the ghost who was so sure I was her daughter and I’d killed her. She was so, so sure, and it was horrible.”
“How did you know she wasn’t right?” Jaxon asked gently.
I shrugged. “I didn’t, not completely. She didn’t remember her name, but I woke up in Australia with a US passport, and she was French. I had to think it didn’t match up, but for three days all I heard was her telling me I was her daughter and she’d been searching all over for me and I killed her, a ‘murderous waste of space that should never have been born’ is what she called me. Thinking of that just hurts.”
I was glad when they dropped the subject and fast.
7
“Hey, do you guys know yoga?” I asked the twins. “I was thinking I should start doing something like that on days we’re not working on fighting.”
“I know a bit,” Wolfe answered. “And you definitely shouldn’t be training or working out hard when you’re so dehydrated.”
“I actually wanted to work with you on your control,” Cerdic said from behind me. “Now that I’ve got a better grasp of what’s really going on, I think I can be of help.” He smiled when I gave him a suspicious look, that statement way too loaded and potentially trapping. “I mean Tai Chi. Give me a bit this morning to show you. We’ll stay in full view of the others.”
I nodded. “I’ll change.”
“Not needed. Stay in your fuzzy comfort. It might help.” He held out his hand to me and, after glancing to make sure Darius and Jaxon were okay with this, I accepted the gesture.
“Will this help with my flexibility?” I asked under my breath when we were far enough away from the others.
“Is there some reason you’d like to be more flexible?” he asked, his eyes dancing with amusement as I flushed, clearly knowing where my mind was. “For the record, you are more than flexible to bend your luscious body as they would want, but yes, this will help you and in more than just body.”
I stood on the workout mat he had ready so my feet weren’t on the cold, uneven ground. “What do you mean?”
“This will help your mind, your emotions, and how much you carry,” he said gently. “Last night was more than what happened with Kristof. Your past traumas and so much you have suffered compounded the situation, yes?” He waited until I nodded. “I’m going to help you with that if you’ll let me.” He shook his head when I opened my mouth to object. “You move forward instead of dwelling or sinking in problems.
“That’s commendable, but you drag it all with you. From everything you even said this morning, you carry that with you, Inez. That is exhausting. You need to drop some of that emotional weight to move forward and not every step be such a struggle.” He gave me a moment with that, smiling as I studied him. “Yes, it actually works and helps. Not everything, but lots, and losing any of it is good.”
“What do you still carry with you that you can’t let go?” I asked, understanding what he was telling me.
He reached for my hand, almost like he would need comfort to tell me. I let him take it, wanting to know because he was maybe one of the most easygoing people I’d ever met. Even over a few days I could see that. He was flexible and moved with people, his super power was to adjust and flow with a group.
“I have a twin, born just after me, and I believe a lot of the evil twin jokes are based on him, as he was always the more mischievous one. We competed in everything and I thought the best of friends. The one thing I never wanted to compete with him for was the love of a woman, planning to find a different court that was best for me as I wanted the same for him, standing on his own without comparisons.
“And I thought I found it. I fell deeply and madly in love with a princess. I would have sworn my very soul to her, such a lovely heart I couldn’t live without.” He glanced out at the forest. “It was all a lie. I found them in bed together, heartbroken he would do such a thing to me, but it was worse. He was involved from the beginning, both of them set on humiliating me for all my sins.”
“What sins?” I asked quietly.
“Winning all the other competitions, whether it be studies or athletics or apparently the love of our family, as he stated clearly he wanted to make sure I knew how it felt not to be as loved by someone I loved. And here I was hurt more by learning he had no love for me.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hugging him without even thinking, needing to comfort him. “I’m so sorry, Cerdic. I didn’t mean to bring that all up.”
“I know you didn’t,” he murmured, holding me close. “But I wanted to show you how I can discuss that without as much pain as most would expect. It won’t ever not hurt, but I’m no longer tethered to that original pain. It takes work, but don’t you want to be free of that Clarence and all that pain? The pain and hurt of the ghosts?”
“It sounds impossible,” I admitted.
“Nothing is impossible, and you are proof of that, Inez.”
I pulled back, wanting to see those pretty ocean eyes when I asked what I wanted to next. “Why would you ever even think of courting a princess if you were betrayed by one like that?”
“Because you are truly pure as your name means,” he whispered, cupping my face. “I do not mean virginal, though you are certainly not a master of all that is the bedroom fun. I mean everything about you is pure. Your upset that I was hurt was pure, not thinking that touching me would make my body react to you or thinking I might read into it. Your mind doesn’t go there.
“You’re pure in your intentions. We all see it. You want us happy and want to help. You never do something thinking what you will get back for it. Yes, you tease your men or friends, but even that is done with a pure heart. You are unlike any princess I have met. Your rage was pure even, your justice, as you brought on that warlord what he deserved, while making sure your men got blood they needed.”
“I didn’t mean to tease you,” I muttered, hearing what he said about how hugging him made him react.
“I know, and my reaction is mine.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Do not change how you would react to me at all. That would upset me, as I like that you would hug me to comfort me, needing to comfort me. That is a rare person in this world, and I like that about you, we all do.” He smiled at me. “You are so much like a stray kitten who is all reaction even as they distrust all who come near them.”
“Not sure that’s flattering, as I’m not a child,” I grumbled.
“You are as a vampire,” he clarified. “And I don’t mean it in a demeaning way at all. Even little claws can ridiculously hurt if they hit the right spot in the wrong way. But you are an underdog, Inez. And undercat if you forget the cross terms. You’re the scrappy stray that no one can leave alone and is
building a family of the right people, as she knows what being a stray is like.”
“I’m scared they won’t be the right people and it will be my fault as I’m princess,” I whispered, as if saying it any louder was any less scary.
He nodded. “Yes, it is terrifying, but you also have so much in your vision, it gets harder to see it all clearly. Let’s try and fix that.” He winked at me when I nodded. “Now, I want you to do what I do as I do it as best as you can, but don’t worry if it’s not exact. It’s just getting the feeling of it.”
“Got it.” We moved to our mats, and I mirrored his position.
“Take in a nice, slow, deep breath,” he said as he raised his hands over his head. “Feel your lungs and take a moment to appreciate them, thank them even for working another day for you. I picture them clear and healthy, grateful to me for giving them clean air as we work together in one body.”
I did as he said, getting a mental image of my lungs and sort of giving a wave. It felt ridiculous, but it was nice to just focus on something simple when there was so much chaos.
“Now, we do it again, and this time think of your arms,” he instructed, his deep timber soothing, alluring while still comforting sort of like he was hugging me. “I think of my arms helping me to fight last night, glad they got the workout and grateful I have arms that are so strong, knowing they want that as well.”
I thought as he did, watching as he moved. My arms felt tight, stiff, making me realize I was really dehydrated and not just joking how much I’d cried and my eyes were still swollen.
“Now your hands this time.” He moved in that same way. “Mine are dry, need some lotion, and a bit sore from holding and wielding a sword so much last night. They’re not used to that, and I know to give my fingers and wrists a good stretch as I listen to my body.”
I nodded, hearing him and listening to myself as he said. My hands were sore too, and I realized it was from how much I’d squeezed my fists when I’d cried last night, hitting the bed—which didn’t hurt—but that clutching for so long. He moved us through a few more reps, talking of shoulders, back, and chest. I felt myself flush as he made me realize my breasts were tender.
