Chapter 11: To Immortality and Beyond
2620 Words
I wandered the city streets with no destination in mind. I had some time to kill and I needed to settle my rampaging thoughts.
Ari and Lark were long gone ages ago on some adventure or another, I couldn’t quite understand them when they told me. Probably tormenting some more garden gnomes.
I, on the other hand, just needed to move. Moving helped me think.
Mara and I had gone our separate ways after the café. She had no desire to join me to my unexpected dinner party. Not that I blamed her, our parents had essentially thrown her out of the house after I left simply for being a vampire. I couldn’t comprehend how they could turn their backs on their own blood like that. Especially given the circumstances of Mara’s turning coupled with my disappearance.
I know that humans in general were still reeling from the revelation that all the stories they had grown up with were real. That all the horror stories, nightmares, and myths were actually non-fiction accounts. Many humans still refused to accept the other races regardless of what was real or what was right. My family was no different, even with their background. I couldn’t understand it and I couldn’t bring myself to forgive them for it.
My thoughts drifted back to the day that Mara was turned. It was truly my fault it happened.
I was eighteen when it all occurred, Mara was just about to turn seventeen. My powers had been slowly awakening over the course of several weeks at that point and the unceasing claustrophobia of it had been beginning to affect my personality. I had basically cut off contact with all of my school friends, I was avoiding my family and Hennessey, and was starting to become a secluded hermit. I was overwhelmed by voices in my head and the waking hallucinations I suffered of events that had already passed and people who were not there. I had not had a proper night’s sleep in weeks due to the sheer number of vision like nightmares that had haunted me every time I closed my eyes. My only refuge at that time had been the woods.
I had always loved the woods and had a natural affinity for animals and nature. Growing up I had thought it was just my personality but as it turned out that wasn’t the case. Witches were always close to nature, they drew their power from it, and deep down I subconsciously knew what I was even if I was not readily aware of it.
The day of Mara’s turning I was making my way through the woods to a clearing I had been frequenting because it soothed my mind and seemed to calm the ever growing energy around me. I was lost in thought as I walked but I should have been paying more attention. If I had been I would have seen Mara following me.
I had been unaware of the existence of the preternatural world at the time. I had no knowledge of vampires, werewolves, witches, or any other creatures. I had never heard of the Circle or the Council. That’s why I had no idea that the Circle was hunting for me or that they had sent a vampire stooge out to collect me for them.
I was sitting in my clearing, in the base of a hollowed out tree when I heard the scream. I didn’t know why, but I knew it was Mara. Sprinting towards the sound, I had not been prepared for the scene I had run into.
Mara had been lying on the ground in the dirt with the vampire leech at her throat. Her eyes, when I saw them, were glassy and far away, her shirt and hair covered in dirt and blood. The anger that had ripped through me at the sight of my little sister was something I had never experienced before. The power inside me reacted to my anger violently, used my volatile emotions as fuel, and then sadistically lashed out. The vampire never stood a chance.
One minute he was on top of Mara, the next minute he was dangling in the air with the wind swirling around him as if he was caught in a tornado. He gasped for breath but couldn’t breathe, and the pressure around him caused blood to foam from his mouth and nose. His eyes had turned to me wide and panicked as if going to beg me to spare his life. But then absolute terror took over his features right before he made a screechy gargling sound.
Just like that the wind died and he was falling. He was dead before he hit the ground.
I am still not sure what I had looked like in that moment right before his death, but it was apparently petrifying.
I had then found myself falling to the ground, my legs to longer able to hold me up. It was like every bit of energy my body ever had was suddenly sucked out of me through my feet. I found myself crawling to Mara’s body on my hands and knees, and had cradled her delicate head in my lap trying to shake her awake.
She was dying, I just knew it, and that thought caused a whole other myriad of emotions to flow through my body and out into the world. I was so caught up in my grief I didn’t even hear the sounds of the trees as they exploded around me.
I don’t know what drove me to phone Gideon. He was the first person to pop into my mind, before even 9-11, our parents, or Hennessey. I just knew I had to phone him and no one else. He answered on the second ring, and at the sound of my tear filled voice he dropped everything to come to my aid. He was in the woods in minutes. At the time I didn’t even think to question how he found us that quickly as I didn’t recall explaining where we were.
When he arrived and saw us, something passed over his face that I had never seen before and probably will never see again: Guilt.
He stood me on my feet, took Mara into his arms and went to make his way out of the woods. A gloomy air hanging over us both. That was until he looked down and got a good look at Mara’s face. Suddenly his entire demeanour changed and he looked like he was holding the sun, like he had been presented with the most wondrous gift in the world.
Then without a word or notice, he bit her himself.
I found myself screaming in protest, completely horrified, and I tried to rip Mara out of his arms. He had swung out one arm at me, his hand making contact with my chest. I found myself suddenly flying through the air and I struck the pine tree behind me with a sickening crack. I had wondered if I would ever be able to walk again as my vision slowly turned black.
The last thing I remember seeing before the darkness took me was Gideon slicing open his wrist with one long fingernail and placing it over Mara’s mouth.
When I woke up, it was the middle of the night and I was tucked comfortably in my bed. Dazed and confused about how it was so dark already, I almost let myself drift back to sleep not quite sure why I felt so unsettled. The moment my eyes had closed though, the images of recent events ripped through my brain like a movie reel on high speed.
I had stumbled my way to Mara’s room, and I didn’t care if I woke the whole damn neighbourhood while I did it. I was surprised her door didn’t rip off its hinges with the way I threw it open. I rushed to her bedside frantic but came to a dead stop when I got there. There she was, safe and sound with no visible damage, sleeping peacefully with deep even breaths. I nearly fell to the floor in relief.
I sat on the edge of her bed staring off into space and wondered if I was losing my mind. It had all felt so real. But I momentarily chalked it up to being another bad dream. I had been having so many of them that it felt like a distinct possibility. I finally convinced myself this was the case, and decided to go back to bed.
I bent down and placed a light kiss on my sister’s forehead. I was so relieved that she was all right that I would have missed it if I wasn’t so close to her neck.
A dark bruise the size of a golf ball and two little holes.
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He had known I was coming before I did. He already had the kettle on and was in the process of making me a cup of Earl Grey tea when I barged into his unlocked apartment without knocking.
I don’t know how long I stared at him while he stared back at me. Long enough for him to place my tea on the island in front of me, fix himself a drink, and lean himself up comfortably against the counter of his kitchen.
When I had finally found my voice I blurted, “It was not a dream.”
He regarded me with those haunting two toned eyes like he was trying to determine how fragile I was and how delicate he should be with me. He had finally settled on a simple, “No.”
“What the hell are you?” Saying those words had been like choking on air.
“I think you have already answered that yourself.”
I had been shaken, frightened, and confused, but somehow still had enough sense of mind to know that those thoughts were crazy.
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it? Then why are you even here? If you truly didn’t believe it you would have gone back to your bed, fallen asleep, and thought about it no more.” He said this to me like the conversation was the most normal thing in the entire world and that I was being an unreasonable child.
I paced his apartment like a mad woman, that’s how I now know it took fifteen steps cross it. I muttered a “No, no, no, that’s not possible, that’s crazy, you are losing your mind,” multiple times slowly driving myself into insanity. As if sensing the switch in my mental state, he lost patience with me.
He was at my side in an instant, I hadn’t even seen him move. He had clutched both of my arms and held me in place. It was like being trapped in a vice grip.
“Say it,” His impatience only grew when I had shaken my head. “Say it!” I kept shaking it, and flat out refused to be cooperative.
“Say it!” He had roared at me, finally losing that calm collected attitude he usually wore. I had been too scared to fight him anymore.
“…Vampire…” My whispered voice had been so forced it didn’t even sound like me. We just watched each other warily. And when he didn’t disagree, didn’t argue, and his angered promptly faded, I did the only thing that had made any sense at the time.
I had burst into tears.
We sat on the floor of his kitchen with me curled into his side weeping like a baby. He had stroked my back and whispered words of comfort in my ears while I grappled with the idea that I knew nothing about the world. It was some time before I had settled down, but he didn’t get angry or impatient, he had just let me cry and occasionally moved the hair from my face.
Finally I managed to whisper a small, “Thank you,” before a, “how much?”
“Pardon?”
“How much of it is real? The stories, the myths, everything. How much of it is really real?”
He had given me a smile that I didn’t understand at the time before responding, “All of it.”
I sat like a statue attempting to wrap my mind around the very idea of it before I gave up. I was not going to reconcile it in one night. But there was other things I wanted to know.
“Mara will be a vampire.”
“Yes.” It seemed unbelievable.
“Why? Why did you do it?”
“She was dying, already dead basically. There was no way to save her other than that. And I could not let her die.”
“Why?”
“I will explain that in due time. For now just please trust that I just could not let her go.”
I had to fight back my natural urge to argue, and had let it go then with a nod. I knew the answer would be out eventually. I hoped Mara would be okay with her sudden shift in humanity. I had doubted it greatly. “What will happen to her now?”
“I will be there every step of the way to help her adjust to her new… existence. I will make sure that she doesn’t hurt herself or anyone else, or do something she may come to regret. I know what I have done and I will be the one to handle it. Don’t worry.”
I snorted, “Kind of hard not too…” I trailed off so overwhelmed with information my brain wasn’t even taking it in anymore. But there was one more thing I had been sure that he would be able to explain.
“Gideon…” Fear and dread gripped me, “What is happening to me?”
It was one of the only times I had ever seen Gideon truly sad. Like he was watching an innocent life fade. In a way, I suppose, he was.
“Ria…” And then he began.
And that was how Mara and I were rudely thrust into an entirely different world that no one else knew about.
And that is how I discovered I was a witch.
We had sat into the wee hours of the morning on the cold ceramic floor while he divulged to me the secrets of the real world: vampires and witches, werewolves and demons, magic and immortality.
That he was the one to tear apart my worldview and force its reconstruction may be the real reason I hold a grudge against him. I hold him accountable for something that was never his fault, it was fate. It would have happened with or without him, but he is a good enough man to put up with my bratty behaviour anyways.
A witch and a vampire were sitting on the floor talking about the world and their place in it. I chuckled humorlessly at the thought.
Sounds like the set up to a god damn supernatural romance novel doesn’t it?
- Writer
