*Unedited; forgive grammar and spelling errors for the time being.
CHAPTER 37
I remembered being carried in the arms of someone running.
The jarring motion made my head whip and my hair fly and blurred my already blurred vision and my head hurt. The fire had filled my lungs and throat and stung my eyes while my home burned down around me. I was hiding in the wardrobe- My mother's. Her clothes were soft and cool against my hot stinging flesh, all cool silks and soft cashmere and fine cotton. My mom was a lady, a real lady. Delicate and sweet. My mom was a blonde haired English rose.
James was running me away from the building, and I kept reaching back for my home. For my mom.
A flashing image. My mother, engaged in a fight with a large man while red flame reached burning fingers from the floor to the ceiling across the walls. Her yelling at me to run. "Katherine, Go! I'll be right behind you, Darling." But she wasn't.
I was little enough to have to wrap both arms and my legs around James' large frame; he was always so big and tall and I loved it when he carried me. My hair continued to fly in the night's wind and I could see the stars. At least, I could see the ones that weren't hidden by the thick black smoke.
"Get her out!" Kat screamed at the top of her lungs. I turned to stare.
She was tall and thin and beautiful but not so much in this moment, dressed simply in dark jeans and a white t-shirt that was smeared in blood and soot, one side of her face pinked in what looked like a sear mark. She was in the building. I'd wondered why Kat would run into the building when James and I were safe because I'd thought we were her family. We weren't. Amy, my mom, was still in there, fighting the man. Where was my father?
Kat caught up to James, took me and held me up with hands covered up to her elbows in drying blood, her fingernails caked with mud and blackened soot and dirt. She pressed me to her chest and I caught a face full of hair that smelled like fierceness and strength but also singe and smoke. It didn't smell comforting anymore. Her shoulders were shaking and her voice was thin and she was sobbing and now I understand why. My mom was in a building burning to the ground.
So I hugged her neck and pressed my face to her collarbone. I was wondering where my mother was. Wasn't she coming for me?
A pale pink blanket being tucked around me by my mother. A book with a fairy tale princess and a unicorn on the cover. A soft little plush rabbit with blue fur and red spots handed to me by a pale hand. I hadn't been missing silly toys. I'd been missing the mother that handed them to me.
Darkness, and then I woke again in the helicopter. It was so loud and so cold and Kat was crying. "I'm sorry baby, I'm so, so sorry. Oh my God, I'm so sorry baby-" James's eyes were midnight blue behind the tears I could see brewing there.
"We need to keep her safe." She pulled me to her chest and hugged me so close. Something was wrong. I tried to ask where my mom and dad were.
"It's okay, Baby. Here, okay?" she set me back down and took the emerald necklace out of her collar. She put it on me and it felt ridiculous, the long chain surpassing my navel.
"Are you sure that's a good idea? If they find her-" James started.
"They won't." she cut him off. "They won't ever find her. Not while I'm alive. They won't." she sounded desperate, her face dark. She said; "Everything's gonna be all right baby, we've got you." but my voice was shrill and stubborn when I demanded "Where's mommy and daddy?"
She shook her head fiercely, hair flying and tears streaming down her face.
Darkness. My eyes were slatted closed and I was being carried again. "Take good care of her, watch her." James said quietly. I saw a red blur, coppery red, and brown eyes and heard a deep, deep rumble that murmured something back- "We will. All of us. She'll become a ghost, old friend, and so should you." Alex Cavalier came into focus as I was passed up to him. I saw the two spots under his lip. And I realised I'd seen them before.
We'd had thanks giving together a few times at our house. Kat came around the kitchen doorway carrying potato salad and laughing while looking over her shoulder at my mother, who rounded the corner moments later. My mother was tall and slim and slender and her skin looked like cut and polished pearl marble. Her hair was long, worn up and back in a straight pony tail that emphasises the sweet, warm slopes and curves of her delicate face. Her fingers were slim and delicate, carrying a heavy steaming pot with a cloth.
Alex and James were sat next to two other men. One had a woman on his arm with blue hair and I realised this was Kat's brother and his wife, Daniella. Their daughter, six years my senior was drinking teat.
The other man was my father. The tree of them next to each other made a picture. Not so much Kat's brother wo had begun to get paunchy on the middle and balding on top, but Alex, James, and my father Dimitri. A redhead, a brunette and a blonde, all built strong, tough and powerful.
My father's hair was darker than my mothers, more ashen with light eyes. He'd let it grow slightly long to the point that my mother liked to say he looked like an American surfer. But his eyes were mischievous and he called me Little Cat in Russian. Russian? We were Russian. I remembered now. My mother wasn't just reading me some little fairy-tale. It was the story of Beautiful Vassilissa. In Russian.
Our house was so warm and almost Victorian English with a wide dining hall and warm wooden floors and high ceilings and burgundy curtains and leather. It was beautiful.
Gabbe came in then, and Joey at age three clung to her ankle. A warm hand took mine and I looked into Toffee eyes-
"Let's go play on the swing set!" an eight year old Matthew whispered conspiratorially to my four year old self. I blushed, grinned and whispered back "Okay." I looked back at the front door as we ran out of it, and the image blurred being replaced with flames. This was the home on fire. My home was on fire.
Other things flashed into the forefront of my mind. I remembered a Barbie themed bicycle that Matthew insisted wasn't a real bicycle because mine had training wheels and was pink and Matthew's didn't and was Batman. I remembered falling half way down the stairs and having to get stitches on the back of my head. I remembered sitting and having my long blond hair combed through for hours by loving, slim, delicately pale fingers in front of an elaborate, gorgeous vanity that I now remembered as my mother's. I remember looking up into the glass at the beautiful reflection of my mother who's skin looked like gold flecked porcelain when mine was pinkish as I wondered if I'd ever be as pretty as my mom and if someone would ever love me like my dad loved my mom.
When I was passed into Alex's arms, I turned my head and I saw little Matthew, his small, serous face pinched and upset. And then he saw me looking and smiled, reaching up to take my hand.
"It will be okay, Katherine." He whispered and smiled, little eyes blurring with tears. "I promise."
Darkness.
***
It is a terrible thing to search for something and find it, only to realized it wasn't what you needed. I'd seen it happen to girls who chased men in relationships only to find that they held some overarching repulsive quality they disliked. It's a common theme in romantic comedy movie clichés; girls who spend the whole film chasing the perfect guy to realize that the best for them has been the cute and quirky best friend or neighbor. That's different through, because in the end, it's for the best and they get something better.
I'd spent most of my life believing my parents were dead. If not, my ideas were that they'd be nothing worth noting. I'd fantasize and create constructions in my head about Disney princesses and fairy tales. But at the time, I knew these were lies. And that was OK.
But having the hope of parents who broke all the ideas I had and replaced them with one better was spectacular- spies, warriors, badasses. I'd like to think it was more than I could bear- I'd been given every lost child's daydream. I'd begun to believe.
And now that thought was torn asunder and replaced by new ideas; the warm comforting life I'd dreamed of before. A gorgeous, kind, elegant mother and a sweet, strong, handsome father who loved her and I like we were the reasons for the stars shining and the sun rising.
I'd begin to associate myself with being the Daughter of Katerina Veynox and James Allegresso, dangerous and strong who sacrificed loving me to protect me. But now, I was nothing again. Tethered to an idea of listlessness, of loss. I knew nothing about what I now remembered, and losing one idea reminded me of how shitty it actually was to not know your parents. The same way a child born without a limb won't see its absence unless shown the alternate. I was living in ignorance of what I'd lost. Now it hit me full force and I understood.
"Why didn't you tell me?" my lips formed the words but my breath simply ghosted over them, not making a sound. My ears rand with deafening certainty and it made it hard for me to understand the rush of hissed words around me- Kat clearly ragingly angry at Matthew, Matthew hissing at her and James growling beneath his breath to calm them both down and shut them both up. It was not working.
I tried again, past the boiling hole I could feel in my throat. I tried again to address Matthew Dyllan Veynox.
"Why didn't you tell me?" the words were sickly and to my own ears they sounded like they were mumbled under water. The upper corners of my vision began to static in grey, my head feeling lighter than the air around it.
Matthew threw an arm around my waist and pulled me up against him so tight, my chest finding his and constricting me breathing even more as tingling began inside my chest like a band of morphine needles wrapped around and squeezing my heart and lungs. He quickly pulled the comm out of my ear and followed it with his, pushing them into his pants pocket.
His other hand cradled the back of my skull and he pushed his forehead against mine. "I'm sorry. I couldn't tell you, I'm sorry." He pressed his lips between my brows and kept muttering. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. They told me they'd kill us if I told you. It was too dangerous for you to know, for you to go looking. They'd find you. I'm so sorry."
"Yes, they would have." Kat snarled. "And now, Matthew, you've brought her to them!"
Matthew didn't hear her. The heat coming off of him made my skin prickle. He'd lied. He'd allowed me to believe what was wrong; that his parents were mine. He'd tried to warn me, but not enough. Matthew was the Son of Katerina Veynox and James Allegresso. He was the legacy I'd thought I was. I was wrong. I was a fool.
"You said-" I began accusingly, choking on the words. "You said Kat was my family. You said "I know Kat's your family, or whatever". You said that. You said!"
The more I thought about it the more I realized that no one had ever admitted she was my mother, or James my father.
"She is your family, Katherine. More so than she ever was mine." He said slowly, cupping my face, eyes earnest, trying to make me see his point.
"That's enough, Matthew!" Kat snapped, anger and fury in her tone. "You know why that was. Do you really think it would have been a better life with us?" she hissed.
"No." he growled. "But if you're going to convince yourself you were doing me a kindness by staying out of my life the least you could have done is stay completely out of it and hers. What makes her so different from me, huh? Why the hell were you involved with her but not with me?"
"How were we to determine the things that lead us to this?" Kat snapped, her eyes filling. "How was *I supposed to know this would happen, Matthew? You were never supposed to know! And the difference is that she is not my son, you are. My role in her life was as an Aunt, as a Godmother. That I could do, but you know damn well, Matthew, that I would have failed you as a mother." Tears crested her eyelids.
Matthew's expression hardened.
"And you did." He snarled. "And when it came time for you to actually be Katherine's Godmother, you failed her and Amy and Dimitri too. Don't try sell me that bullshit about protecting either of us, Katerina. You just couldn't handle it."
"Enough." James said, so low and deep it hit me in the lungs. Matthew's hand on my waist and cheek stiffened and he pulled me a fraction closer, but the strength of his stance never wavered. He looked his parents head on.
Kat barreled on over James' warning. "And you've failed your father and I because we entrusted you to keep her safe and now you've brought her here! Every person here is trying to kill her, Matthew!"
I gasped, my lungs filling with what felt like ice suffocating me.
"Oh," Matthew bit out sarcastically. "Because an eight-year-old should be culpable for protecting a young girl's life?"
Katerina scowled.
"Matthew?" I said slowly, finally understanding. Kat didn't want to be a mother. So she gave Matthew up. To Alex and Gabbe. Just like me. Matthew was a foster kid too.
Just. Like. Me.
He looked down at me and I saw it then. The resemblance.
"Ladies and gentlemen." A warm, hollow voice called out. "The auction will now begin."
The discussion was tabled. For now.
***
So, there were a couple things I had to come to terms with.
First off, Matthew was the son of James Allegresso and Katerina Veynox. Ok. Fine.
Kat and James must have decided not to be his parents -to give him up to Alex and Gabbe. I was assuming. Because, well. That's where he ended up. Right? Right.
Why did a part of me find that so repulsive? Was it the Ideas I'd conjured up of where my parents were? Some days I had nightmares that my mother and father were drug addicts or just a prostitute and client or a teenage girl who got pregnant by accident. But no. This was my worst fear- parents who were perfectly able, but just didn't want me. I mean, I was assuming.
Let's face it, I didn't exactly have all the info I needed on hand.
Amy and Dimitri. My mom and dad. No one told me where they were. Were they hiding out, waiting for Kat and James to take me to them? I remembered them. They were amazing parents and God, I loved them. But where were they? Why was it Kat and James we were facing down and not my parents? A sick feeling gnawed through my abdomen.
Also, the comments earlier made something clear. I was in a room which was filled to the brim with people who wanted to kill me. Which was all fine and well. Until you put the pieces together.
Matching seals? This wasn't one mondo-bad guy. This was an organisation. This was a cult. The symbols were reminiscent of Illuminati; a modern myth even I'd heard of and oh God, I was terrified. We really had walked into the lion's den; Matthew was right. So was Kat. We should have done more research. Should have realised. Matthew had said the diamonds on sale today were my legacy. That must have meant pre-disappearance Little Katherine. Of course they'd all be there. It was their closest link to the little girl they lost- stolen diamonds.
It didn't explain the immortality thought. Was it genetic? Did I fall into a vat of toxic waste? How did all of this happen? Why? When?
What did this mean? And how do we move forward? My brain began to throb and I touched the space between my temples. Matthew gave my hand an inconspicuous squeeze. My brows fell.
Then there's Matthew. Fuck.
I didn't know what to say or do. Matthew was what I thought I was. I was the hero, and now he was. I was the legacy but now all the focus had shifted- to Matthew. I guessed I understood him now. His laser-like focus. He was a spy's kid. Of course. But what did that mean for everything? Memories raced at me of Matthew and I as children, and no in a single one did he call Katherine "Mom" or James "Dad." No. Those titles he gave to Gabbe and Alex Cavalier.
Had he known his whole life? What was this crap? Did Joey know? Of course joey knew. A small snort escaped the back of my throat. Of course Joey knew. It explained his behavior.
But more central to the problem was this- How did I feel about Matthew now?
He'd never lied to me. Omission, sure. But Kat had threatened him- what was it she's said? It was too dangerous for me to know?
He was still sexy, I thought as I peripherally looked at him. Did I still want that? A part of me remembered how he made me burn in certain physical areas that had never before – uh, been so responsive. I couldn't give him up, he was addiction. I could feel the stress rolling off of him and yet somehow, amidst all my panicked mind jumbling, I still thought to myself that I would love to rid him of his shirt, pants and waistcoat right then and there. So my hormones had apparently made up their minds.
Sluts.
But how did I feel about it? I dug deep, thinking some kind of thing has to exist in there. What was it Matthew did. What was his purpose, why did I need him?
I began to remember things. Him being all violent and scary, seeming untouchable in the lesser years of high school, juxtaposed to the fact that his Batman bicycle was SO not better than my Barbie one. I thought about Jordan Reich and the fact that her being with Matthew before wasn't even a blip on my radar. I was different than she was and that's ok. Fine by me. I thought about his apartment and the young man he lost to flames. I thought about him as a firefighter. I thought about him as a professor, speaking Latin. I thought about the night I'd thought he was a crazy serial killing murderer going to kill me only to discover I was the crazy bitch that couldn't die. I thought about him as a high school heartthrob and then the silvery scars I'd seen on his back and side. I thought about him kissing me. His sexy, dark side that appealed to me.
And then I thought about me.
I thought about Reena, who'd been a cheerleader and the one who'd been afraid of the cheerleaders and I thought about that time when I was afraid of Matthew. I thought about me loving gymnastics and training and running and Ingrid. I thought about Tommy, my brother and my mother and father. I thought about Joey and the Jackass brigade and Blueberry cheesecake ice-cream with Turkish Delight on top and football games with Matthew where he was just an ex-football player and I was just an ex-cheerleader. Could it really be described that simply? And ex-cheerleader going out with an ex-football player? Kind of like little misfits in our own special way. I thought about him and I in the car when we argued and I thought about the way he looked in the moonlight carrying me to bed and the way Matthew was dangerous and sexy and he made me feel alive, but also like I was a hundred different girls. I thought about the way he and I fought and laughed and the way I'd been a hundred different girls to him and he'd been a hundred different boys to me.
And then I thought about Kat and James. And I thought about Amy and Dimitri. And all of this spy drama. And death.
And I realized that none of it was for me.
That is, none of it except Matthew.
And right there, in the middle of that stupid auction behind stupid Kat and James and all of the stupid shit going on, I raised my right hand and tugged on his sleeve like a little girl wanting to ask a grown up a question. And I didn't care.
He looked down, all furrowed brows and deep concern and fear and anger and hatred. The kid was gonna have grey hair by the time he turned twenty-five, I mused.
I smiled at him, and his frown deepened. He stopped closer to hear what I had to say, deep concern and the angry swirls of shame and doubt and frustration never leaving his face.
"I hear eight-hundred, may I hear eight-hundred and twenty?" a man asked calmly from the front. Kat raised a paddle. I didn't care.
"What's wrong?" Matthew muttered quietly.
"Let's get out of here." I whispered, hearing the happy smile in my voice and barely tamping down hysterical giggles.
Matthew squinted at me, mouth almost pouting in confusion. "What?" he asked, stupidly. I stepped closer, putting my forehead to his, closing my eyes and breathing deep through my nose.
"Take me back to yours, Matthew." I whispered, opening my eyes. He swallowed, and I saw hope in his face that he stubbornly pushed down. "What?"
I raised my palms to his cheeks and kissed him once, hard.
"Let's go." I murmured, stepping close to put my satin encased body against his. "I love you." I breathed against his lips.
It was all very sudden, of course. The sheer volume of my feelings for the Man, but I'd come to understand something. A universal truth. I'd been pulled into all this drama driven by a need to find some scrapping semblance of what I had been. And I realized in a moment of soppy, sappy, pathetic romantic crap that in reality, I'd find myself in trusting and finding Matthew. Not in the name "Katherine" or in searching for my parents or any of it. If I understood what I felt, what he felt, and I believed I did, he'd feel the same about me. Endlessly deep, ceaselessly wide and somehow hot and cold at the same time. I'd been attracted to him, found myself liking him, kissing him. But now I wanted him desperately. I wanted him like he had me that night against the wall beside my bedroom door. Passionate enough to forget.
I'd found myself in Matthew. And now, I wanted to loose myself in him too.
"Matthew..." his name came out of my mouth on a wanton sigh that I thought breathed my intentions clearer than if I'd told him exactly what I wanted him to do to me through interpretive dance. He swallowed. Hard.
"Katherine, we can't-"
"I don't care..." I whispered, and my arms found their way around him. I rejoiced in the feeling of his body reacting to me.
"What has gotten into you?" he muttered. A wicked thought hit me.
"You, hopefully." I murmured. He stiffened, winced, then closed his eyes with a pained expression. I grinned.
"Matthew." I whispered. God, I couldn't get enough of his name. It tasted so good. Matthew, Matthew, Matthew, Matthew...
"Are you sure about this?" he asked. He meant leaving this- Kat, James, all of it. And I wasn't. He was damned if he thought I wasn't going to get rid of this stupid immortal thing, I was so going to. But before that, I needed something else. Something more.
"Hmm..." I purred. And then, quietly, and still without drawing attention, he took my waist and pulled me to the back of the room, toward the door. I felt like other teenage girls do; sneaking off with their boyfriends- that giddy rush of nervous excitement. And looking at Matthew leading me with his strong fingers wrapped around mine and that broad warm back encased perfectly, a few of my giddy giggles spilled over and my cheeks burned. When he looked back, it was worth it. Everything had been wiped off of him except pure Matthew. God, he looked like the boy you snuck off with, with that sneaky, cheeky grin he gave me.
He pulled me to him behind one of the thick brown curtains on the walls and as I giggled, he Shushed me before placing his deliriously hot mouth over mine and kissing me deeply, slowly, like I was a towering, unlit Pyre and he was the gasoline. The large, strong, warm roaming hands I could feel, separated from my skin by the thinnest sliver of satin circling my hips, were the match .
I gasped against his lips and those palms skidded up my waist, satin moving over the deeper fabric of the corset and I suddenly wished I'd forgone the damned contraption that kept the wings to my back but also his fingers and flesh farther away from my skin.
But it began to matter less when his palms slip up over my ribs, kissing me all the while until what warmed beneath his touch was no longer skin over bones but fuller, more feminine flesh. He tore a silent gasp from my throat, taking his opportunity to deepen the kiss to an intensity that stole the air from my lungs and the inhibitions from my own hands who found solid torso and back too enticing to resist. Hard ridges of muscles and lines swelling, shifting like tectonic plates beneath my fingers and his skin and soon, I imagined, my lips.
Boldly, one hand traveled south down his back and found a harder, rounder ridge of muscle to grip and when he began to chuckle, a none-too-gentle nip of teeth to his bottom lip informed him that it was no laughing matter.
He used one palm to my back to urge me tighter against him but somehow still kept the other crossing up the bodice of the dress until cool fingertips met the ridge where satin gave way to soft skin raised high and full by a corset. The tease was enough to almost undo me.
Matthew growled below his breath and caught my wondering hand, heading me toward the door, beyond which, I hoped, a very long night awaited me.
However, things don't always work out as planned.
****
Comments, please.
You guys have GOT to have something to say about this.
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