Dark Enough - Health
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Another pro of 'Being a Vamp 101'? Fast healing.
So by the time Christian had dragged me - that's right, dragged - to the nearest taxi in the middle of traffic, the back of my head barely made me wince. He rattled off my address but then patted the guy on the shoulder so he would look at him again and added on, "As soon as we exit the car, you won't remember us."
Extreme but okay. But then again did I really know the gravity of the situation? Nope.
The car crawled through the streets, horns blaring, people shouting all the while I was sat seething my shorts off. The fear had worn off completely; now, I was just plain old fuming. I could see the driver glancing in his mirror at me with a look of confusion almost the sort of look you'd give if you ever saw a cow with a horse's head. The double take. Because I knew in my frame of fury, my veins were beginning to throb.
"You need to calm down."
I gritted the back of my teeth to keep myself from spitting a fire storm. "You're lucky this driver won't remember any of this." I grumbled. "Because I'm going to push you out of this car."
"It wouldn't do much damage, the cars barely moving."
I didn't know what came over me but I actually socked him in the arm. "This isn't a joke, Christian!" I barked. "You got me into whatever the hell this is which by the way you have to explain. Did you know that Dante guy had horse tranquiliser? Two fucking doses?"
The cab driver swerved a bit and his heartbeat a little faster but shockingly, he carried on. I half expected him to ask us to leave the car or hell, get out the car himself and run away from the craziness in his back seat.
"Watch your mouth." Was Christian's weak-ass reply.
I glared at him staring out the window not even having the decency to look at me or even flinch at the punch. "Are we really going to do this?"
He exhaled sharply. "As soon as we get back, I'll explain everything. There's no point in me explaining it once now and then again to Kate and Callum. Am I right or am I right?"
At my silence he turned to me.
"Yeah, I'm right. Did anyone else see you? Apart from Dante?"
Crossing my arms over the other, I turned away from him. "Some Moroccan guy, Feisal."
I tensed when he didn't reply. Turning from the window, I was surprised to see his own veins beginning to outline his face. "I didn't think they'd send him."
"What is he?"
"A vampire, turned at seventeen around six hundred years ago." He said, glancing at me. "He's ruthless, dangerous, and because of the childlike innocence to his looks, he gets whatever he wants. I've despised him since the day we met."
"That sounds like every vampire."
He pinned me with a glare. "Don't be stupid. You met him so answer me this: could you resist him? It's not just the way he looks, he has the power of persuasion over us as well as humans, Chelsea."
My blood ran cold. "I-I've never heard of that before-"
"He made you think it was your idea to help him didn't he? You started to doubt yourself. It doesn't last long, it's not like how we can ask whatever we want of humans, but it's long enough to get what he wants."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "You saw him ask me for help? Why didn't you help me then?"
"I wanted to see how you looked after yourself. And I didn't see Feisal's face."
I would have punched him again if I didn't hurt my hand doing it the first time. "Who is he? Who were those people?"
Christian leaned back against his seat and lay the back of his arm behind our seats. He watched me carefully and then made me scowl when he tugged on a lock of my hair beside my ear. "I told you, kitten. We'll talk about it when we get there."
Huffing a frustrated and impatient sigh, I glowered quietly in my own corner while the cab started to move from a crawl into a fast creep.
Another silent ten minutes and we were parked next to my building. I walked ahead of him up the stairs allowing him to pay the driver and pushed through my door. But I barely entered three steps before Kate pulled me into a hug. "Are you okay? Did they try to hurt you? Hell, Chels you change your mind so much I barely had the opportunity to see Christian help you." I opened my mouth to reply but she squeezed to the point where speaking wasn't an option. "One minute I see you on your way back to us at the bar, the next you're being kidnapped into a truck and then the next Christian's dragging you away from two corpses!"
More like one. My lip quivered slightly as the gravity started to weigh on my shoulders. "Kate-"
"Where is he? There you are you asshole," She released me, spinning me into Cal's embrace and approached Christian. He closed the door behind him and stepped away from the fireball that was Katherine Phillips. "What the hell have you gotten her into now?
He darted his eyes over to me and Cal as if asking for help - yeah right - and then back to Kate. "Do you want me to explain it to you or not."
She nodded and took me back from Cal. Am I a rag doll? Giving Kate a reassuring pat on the back, I matched Kate's glare with my own and directed it straight at him. "Start talking."
Slowly, he swerved around us stood beside the window mirroring the same position as earlier. "It's a long story."
Cal sat at the edge of the couch and said, "I've barely been here twelve hours, so I'm not going anywhere and neither are the girls."
"Okay, around fifty to sixty years ago I got into... well, a little trouble with the law. No don't ask me about it. Usually, I have no problem with resolving any of my run-ins with the law but this time it wasn't disappearing. I didn't know why, but after the Steinsson's appeared at my front door I knew they had something to do with it."
"The Steinsson's are?" Callum asked.
"I'm not surprised you haven't heard of them Callum, even with your age. The Icelandic equivalent to the Russian Mafia but of course for supernatural. Iceland because no one would think twice about looking there for something as outrageous as that. They accept the odd human or two but not many." So Dante's accent was Icelandic. "Their family's name is only a whisper in the wind which it should remain unless of course, you're misfortunate enough to cross their path. Then you have the entire world on your arse."
Joining Cal on the couch I thought, ass. The British equivalent to ass still sounds odd to me.
"Caesar and his twin brother Henrik, their sister Jannika and of course their father Andreas. He is the head of the snake. They're vampires of course, a few centuries younger than me give or take. Henrik and Jannika were at my door and presented me with a promise. The government will stay off my ancient tail. At that point I couldn't even leave the country - Britain - without MI5 swarming me at check-in so I agreed. In return they get one favour from me. Any favour. And poof. My crime was gone just like that."
Tapping my fingers by my side impatiently I waited for the anecdote's climax. I had a terrible feeling I knew how I fit into this. "And now?"
"And now, sixty years later they want their favour. And of course I refused. They could ask me to assassinate the queen or kill the president those are the types of favours they would ask for. So as soon as I got a summons I threw it away without any given shits." His eyes darkened to a sea grey. "But then a few months ago, my brother got involved."
Uh-oh. Christian never talked of the brother he disowned. I mean I know why from Evie but he's never volunteered the information not ever. All I'm supposed to know is his brother - someone he turned - wasn't in his life anymore. What I did know: he walked in on him and the woman Christian loved and turned centuries ago, doing the nasty on their living room floor. Albeit she was a complete and utter grade-A psychopath-
I shook my head of that... woman and jolted my attention back to his story.
"They pulled him from his hole and interrogated him about me. Tried to grab some form of leverage just so they could get me but obviously I don't care what they do to him. He can look after himself." His hands curled into fists at his sides before flexing outwards. "I've turned three people in my entire life. My brother, sister and..." We never spoke of her and to this day we never will. So instead he implied her name with a clench of the jaw. "And until seven years ago that was true. My brother let it slip that you, Chelsea, exist. I don't know how he found out."
I decided to finish off the story myself: "And now they're new idea is to use me as leverage."
"They believe that because you're the only person I've turned in so long that you're extremely important to me. So they want you, alive of course but who knows what they'll do to you if they ever got hold of you. Just to clarify, I won't allow that."
I moved from my frozen spot off the couch. "Doesn't that just confirm what they think? Protecting me from them? Even if it isn't true you still protecting me just makes them think that I am important to you."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you want me to hand you off to them? I will if you want me to, here. Let's go find Feisal. Go ahead. No, seriously, let's go outside. Shout for him, let them take you and cut off your fingers."
At his clipped and unnecessarily sharp answer, I stepped closer anger consuming me. Anger at the situation, at him, at how I got here, at absolutely everything. "Why did you have to say that? You never tell me anything straight and I hate it. Despise it in fact. Always flirting around the truth, always teasing. Well this time, stop it. I need you to be real with me."
But all he did was glare. The silence was heavy and it only added thick blocks of wood to the fire. "Fine," I said. "Hand me off to the Steinssons'. I'm sure it's be better than listening to this."
"Chels."
I jumped at Kate's voice. I'd forgotten she was here, even Cal. She gently took hold of my forearms and turned my body to look solely at her. "You're tired and shocked. You need to rest before you explode."
"You're right." My voice shook. "I'm going to bed."
"You can sleep with me tonight." She said. "Cal?"
"Yep, got it. I'll go to her room. Still can't believe I've barely been here twelve hours... We'll talk tomorrow."
I held my head high as I ignored Christian and walked into Kate's room. She didn't follow me in like I'd expected so I just undressed and slipped under the thin cover. I just about heard their voices and I didn't have the energy to try to hear what they were saying. Instead I held in my hot tears, buried my head in the pillow and slipped into unconsciousness.
**
I hadn't had this dream in years.
The woods behind Evie's house was exactly how I remembered it all those years ago. The trees ruffled above me, the birds chirped into the early morning air. It was perfect here, always had been. I glanced behind me at my two best friends talking. About what? I didn't know.
But almost as soon as I'd blinked I was in her arms. One arm around my neck the other around my arms. I remember that smell, the smell of burning flesh. I was so confused, it all happened so fast.
Her words to them, I'll always remember: "You take someone I love away from me and I take someone you love."
Crack.
I jolted awake at the sound, the feeling.
She was crazy. Florence. The woman Christian had loved was the one to kill me all those years ago. When a maker releases a protégé, they release any and every tie to them. It's almost like cutting a tether connected directly from them to you. Because of how she felt for him still - in her own sick way - it was probably the equivalent to cutting out her heart, putting it in a box and throwing it into the Grand Canyon. And that was what Christian had done. He'd released her for various reasons. But that was another story.
I wish I could forget, I wished every day.
The sun peaked out from the curtains and I sighed. The bed opposite was empty and untouched. It didn't look like Katherine slept at all or if she did probably not in here. Cal's bag was open but half empty which was odd. I didn't even hear him come in. Stretching and yawning I made my way into the adjoining bathroom. The big question that remained as I washed my hair was, what now? Do I go on like last night never happened? Go to work?
Maybe that was the best idea. I needed to keep some form of normality in my life and work would do just that. Blow drying my hair into neat waves, I threw on my tan combat trousers and a white vest and slipped on my boots. I'll go to work, even if it's just for today.
I walked into the dark living room determined to stuff my face with whatever I could rustle up when a voice from the couch startled my steps. "Bad dream?"
Sighing, I resumed my steps to the kitchen. "No."
Christian followed. "You sure? Thought I heard your heart beating on a bongo in there."
I easily ignored him. "Why are you here? Where's Kate and Cal?"
"They left after I came back from my hotel." I raked my eyes down his body swiftly. He'd changed out of his jeans into a pair of khaki army shorts and a black t-shirt. "They're getting a car."
"Oh? For what?" I asked opening a few cupboards to grab a cereal bowl and a box of Lucky Charms - something I requested from Kate before she came to Cairo. "Are you taking a road trip?"
"No. We are."
"Well, no." I laughed, pouring in a half a cup of milk. "That's not happening."
"Unfortunately, we don't know how far they've taken this Chels. They hold a lot of power and I'm going to go ahead and assume they have your name plastered over the airport no fly list. They only don't know what you look like because I have far enough connections to erase your image on every government or legal documents." I tried to hide my surprise. That's deep. A bit excessive but okay. "So we are all going to meet my contact outside of Israel for new passports and then we're going to meet my sister in Qatar."
Qatar?! Driving... that's over thirty hours. If he was right about the passport thing what would a new name do? If we couldn't fly, driving just seemed... mad. "Christian, I'm not going anywhere with you, I'm going to work."
"...Did you completely ignore what I just said?"
"I did yeah," I shoved a spoonful into my mouth and shrugged. "I need to go to work today. Tell them I can't go to Jordan. If you want me to come with you then fine. But I need today to sign off. To hold onto some part of my mundane lifestyle."
Finishing my cereal in silence, he watched me with trained eyes. He was assessing me, thinking up some sort of plan probably. Turning away from him, I washed my bowl out and whatever Kate left this morning.
His hands landing on my shoulders caused me to pause. "I didn't get to apologise for last night." He said.
I lifted my shoulders a little but his hands remained. I turned my head slightly to the side when he squeezed. There was a look in his eye. One of mischief. Turning in his hold, I faced him but he simply lifted his hands and put them back. "Don't worry about it." I said slowly. "We argue all the time, no need to apologise."
His lip twitched upward. "I know this is a lot to take in."
"Yeah, well-"
And then he shocked me even more by wrapping one arm around my shoulders and pulling me into his body. He was... hugging me? My eyes widened on their own accord as his other arm went under my arms and around my waist. This was... different. Resting my chin on his shoulder so I wouldn't suffocate into his shirt, I looked around the room for the hidden cameras - because clearly this was a joke - and remained stock still.
"You can breathe, it's only a hug. It would be nice if you returned it."
Oh, right. Hesitantly, I slide my arms around his torso - a strong one at that - and relaxed a little. Alright, well this wasn't bad. He was a great hugger, I guess.
I released a breath and said, "Thanks. I'm sorry too by the way for what I said."
His hand skimmed along my neck in a comforting squeeze before he pulled back. "It's okay. Not a problem, kitten. I really can't convince you not to go to work?"
"Nope. And stop calling me Kitten, I mean it."
He dropped his arms with an unusually large smile. "I have to get going, I have to grab a few things from my room. So I'll be a few hours."
"Yeah, okay."
"Also," He moved toward the closed curtains in the living room slowly. "You remember that I'm your maker right?"
"You don't ever give me the opportunity to forget." Christian laughed, quite hysterically actually. I narrowed my gaze and followed him. "Why...?"
"Well, as your maker - also I'd like to apologise in advance for the two other things that are about to happen - I kind of need you to stay in this apartment until I return. More like, I command you to stay here."
Every cell and muscle in my body tensed. Okay, another con: makers can pretty much command protégé's to do whatever the hell they wanted. And we couldn't question it. Couldn't even say no. We had to.
"Don't you dare do this." I growled advancing toward him.
Then he did one better and opened one of the curtains. And you know what happened to me? My skin started to itch and - shit - burn! Jolting backwards with a grunt I glared worriedly at my pink arms and then to Christian sauntering out of the front door. "I told you I'm sorry. It's for your own good. I'll be back soon."
He had my necklace in his hand. That... that asshole! He hugged me to get my damn daylight necklace. "I'm going to kill you."
"You can try." He winked. "I'd close the curtain if I were you."
And with those parting words he left. I tried opening the front door to leave but every single muscle and bone in my body froze up at the threshold. The loyalty in my veins made me angry. It was that stupid blood tie. I tried a thousand times to leave but then midday came by quickly and the sun from the windows started to flood the hallways.
"Goddamn, arrogant, cocky son of a-" My phone rang. It was Kate. "Kate, I am as mad as hell right now tell me you have some good news."
"I do and you're going to absolutely love me for it. One, I've signed you off work they think you have a family related emergency so they said take as much time as you need. Two, Cal and I got the car and three, look under my pillow. I have a present for you."
Avoiding the small sliver of light on the way to her room, I threw her pillow across the room and almost cried. "I love you."
"I know. When Christian left this morning I managed to make it but as soon as you put it on it'll only last a few hours. I didn't get to finish the spell. Can't believe you fell for a hug."
Sliding the new daylight bracelet into my pocket I rolled my eyes. "It seemed genuine."
"Your big heart is going to get you in trouble one day. I would have been suspicious from the moment he-"
"Alright I get it." I grumbled. I paced the room as I tried to come up with a plan. I couldn't leave until he got back and who knows when that'll be. He said a few hours and it'd been just over an hour and a half. What to do... Wait. I smiled. I know. "Do you know when Christian's going to be back?"
"No, sorry."
"Do you need to come back to the apartment at all?"
"Cal and I packed the necessary this morning so we don't need to go back."
"Good, great. I have a plan and we have to work fast." I sat at the edge of the bed as I explained. Kate seemed all for it, and we even had a back-up plan if things went awry.
Fifteen minutes later, I hung up and quickly grabbed my backpack. I didn't know how long he'd be so I only stuffed in one outfit change, my money and my laptop. I called my landlord, told him I'd be transferring my last month of rent before I heard Christian's familiar voice three floors down in the entrance. I plaited my hair in lightning speed and quietly clipped it on my ankle so he wouldn't see. If this didn't go well, I'd have to call ahead to Christian's sister, Jaqueline. She'd know what to do.
I didn't want to involve my friends and family back home, it would probably only endanger them more. They'd just want to get involved and with Amy and Evie having kids that would just be the worst possible idea.
I pushed my bag behind the couch and waited for him. As soon as he comes in, that stupid command will be void. Man this idea is stupid. I knew he would follow us. That's just the way he worked. But the thought of getting this one-up on him had me... well, a tad excited.
He pushed into the room and I blinked at his face. "Your jaw is... naked."
Christian was clean shaven. He'd always had something, a moustache, a small goatee or even both but there was never... nothing. His smooth jaw made him even more angular than usual. Made his blue eyes ten times sharper, his lips a little fuller. He lifted a thick brow and smiled. "You've got a good eye."
The tension in my body left and I knew I could escape. But... hm... how?
He dropped a bag by his feet, a backpack of his own, and shut the door behind him. How did I go about this? Take his own daylight ring? Knock him unconscious? Nah, he'd beat me undoubtedly. Oh! I know. But I grimaced. He's going to destroy me.
I stood as he approached. "We'll leave in an hour."
"Why an hour? Why not now?" I frowned.
"Because." He grunted.
He made no move to hand me my necklace so I guess I'll just have to... do it. Stepping into his path I moved my eyes from his chest to meet his bemused stare. I lay my hands on his thick shoulders - just as he did earlier - one at a time, keeping my eyes firmly on his. "What are you doing?" He asked quietly.
"I'm... saying sorry." I said.
He remained frigid under my hands as he grumbled, "For?"
"Again I am so sorry."
Leaning a leg back I kneed him straight in the crotch. Vampire or human you needed a good amount of recovery time for that. One more pro - I'm going to have to keep a list - : we're super-fast.
So by the time I yelled another sorry, grabbed my bag and ran straight out the door, he was probably only falling to his knees. And my next stop? Meeting Kate and Cal in the market.
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NEW COVER!! Thank you very much Hilda :')
Also SNAPCHATS A THING: misguidedsw
adding people back (excuse my mundane life, it'll get fun on the weekend LOL)