Broken Warrior

Confessions

Eliza

As they got on the elevator, I picked up the folder, closing it and carrying it back to my desk to store away again. My heart was heavy, leaving me at a loss, unable to fathom what I could do to be useful while standing beside my desk, staring at the folder in my hands. I remained there until Tim's door opened and the vampire stepped out, bringing with him the smell of roses.

"Eliza?" Tim stopped in front of me and I blinked up to him curiously. "Sam says that we need Eirene. She doesn't know why, but she says that she went because she felt that Eirene was important to us."

The witch and her feelings. I understood voodoo and spirits and was not one to balk away from what I didn't understand, but I did prefer a more concrete explanation than that.

"Tim. Her presence... The Head Order is going to want to know what we're doing about her. Ryker is barely holding it together and she wants to murder our boss." I sighed softly, putting the folder down when I realized I had never put it away.

He shrugged while giving me a careful look."Yes. But Sam was pretty insistent. Where is Ryker, by the way?"

"Daryl and him went down to the training rooms. Probably the only place they'd have privacy, and gives Ryker something to do with his anger." I pulled up a split screen to show the training area, flipping through till I found the feed of the room containing the two men.

"Meri told us that Cadman admitted that he had planned to take down Carbry with Yuri and also mentioned having connections in the other orders that were of the same mind as him." Tim murmured softly.

"Daryl... thinks we should... consider everything about her and not just the fact that she's a murderous bitch." I shot him a glance as I spoke, seeing him digest the words with far more understanding than I expected.

Tim finally nodded. "I mean. We could claim we killed her when she attacked Cadman, remove the suspicion of whomever he's working with. It wouldn't be hard to provide a body, no one knows what she looks like, other than us."

I glanced towards Carbry's door, moments before it opened and he stepped out of his office. He glanced around the floor before zeroing in on us and approaching. I recognized the conflict and guilt in his expression and knew that our boss wanted to bear the weight of this on his own shoulders.

"Where's Ryker?" He asked first, glancing around the room with worry. He relaxed a tiny amount as Tim nodded to the screen where it was clear that Ryker and Daryl were in a full on shouting match. "Meriwa's asleep on my couch. My primary thought is that I don't want to turn Eirene over to the Head Order, but I do believe we should make our decisions once she wakes up and we can speak with her."

"Car..." I opened my mouth to say something, anything, to help chase those demons from his expression.

But he shook his head, his expression getting stubborn. "I know what you're going to say, but the truth is, this is my fault. My past has returned to judge me. The things I did... I don't even know whom it was, which family it was that we slaughtered, that belonged to her. I may have broken her irreparably, or the last several centuries may have, but... she is proof and reminder of the monster I was. And if I can't face that... I am no better than I was then."

His eyes shifted to the other half of the screen, where Eirene was lying unconscious on the floor. "Get her blankets. I don't know if we can trust her with a bed, but that room... it looks entirely too much like the rooms in that monastery. Right now."

"I met her." I whispered softly.

And for a moment, neither one of them reacted. I didn't know if I could repeat the words louder, and was wondering if I could force them out again when both of them turned to look at me in surprise.

Neither one of them said a word and I sighed softly. "At the bar, the other night. And I was in her hotel room a couple hours before this all went down."

"For fuck sakes Elizabeth!" Carbry jerked in surprise, his voice loud enough that I could hear the rest of the floor go silent. "Why?!?"

"I didn't know it was her."

"You just thought that two foreign, ancient vampires that no one had heard of before showed up at the same time and weren't related to one another?" Tim snarled, running his hands through his hair. "You know that she hunted you down on purpose, right? That she was trying to use you."

"She didn't seem like she had been turned for a century, let alone several!" I shot back, baring my teeth at him and narrowing my eyes. "And I know. I know now. But she seemed lost, and scared. Alone. I brought her blood... two bottles, and it seemed as if she had never drank to fully satiate her thirst before. I had no idea! Not until I found all her stuff in her closet and I ran."

"She let you run?" Carbry gave me a hard look, and I could see him trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

I wish he could, so he could tell me.

"She left me in her hotel room for a couple hours. I snooped. Then I got out of there before she came back. But it didn't add up. She honestly moved more like a human than a vampire, didn't seem to know how to feed... seemed absolutely surprised at the concept of Knight Corp." I shrugged and shook her head. "When I got back, I doubted myself. And with everything going on, I didn't want to send you down the rabbit hole. I didn't know until I saw her on the drone footage, not for sure."

Tim shook his head and paced away angrily, leaving me facing off with Carbry. He frowned for a moment, before sighing softly. "Ryker didn't know how to properly feed either, he half starved himself constantly, when he first got here."

"And hunger, thirst, a lack of blood, it makes us more aggressive, less logical. Constantly on edge. I can't... imagine..."

"I have seen how much self control Ryker has around blood, it was beaten into him." Carbry shook his head slowly, letting out a slow breath. "And I remember how surprised he was when he didn't go crazy from drinking too much. He told me that he always thought if he drank as much as his body asked for, he would... go into a blood lust."

"It still... Eliza... you could have been hurt. I told you that you were a target." Tim had paced back to us, letting out a calming breath and shaking his head. "She didn't ask you about Knight Corp?"

"Surface level stuff, but she wasn't interested in it. She shut down whenever I mentioned that we could help her." I shrugged, though I wracked my brain for any memory, any indication that I was wrong, that she had been trying to pry information out of me. I couldn't think of anything.

"Are you ok, Eliza?" Carbry asked softly, gently, his words stilling Tim's bluster, leaving me blushing as the two of them seemed to bore into me with their gazes.

"Just feeling stupid." I whispered and shrugged, turning away from them. "I have an awful track record with my heart at the wheel, and this is no exception. I'm sorry. It was irresponsible of me, and I don't know what I was thinking... I just... saw her... and every part of me felt like I needed to be around her. She tricked me. Played me."

To make my mortification worse, Carbry merely reached out and pulled me into a hug, shaking his head and holding me for a long moment. "It is fine. You have nothing to apologize for, my friend."

I didn't want his forgiveness. Him getting angry at me would have made it far easier to feel anger towards Eirene. But still, it was nice to have.