Breach (The Blood Bargain) (12 page)

“I’m your mother, I always will.”   Linda set a bowl in front of Cole, then went back to her cooking fire.  “So what do you do when you’re no
t making important decisions?”

“I...”  Hmm...What
did
I do?  It had been so long since I had thought about hobbies.  We fought, we drank, we lived to fight again, and there had never been much time for interest cultivation. “I used to play the piano and draw a lot.  Now I pretty much just read when I’m not working or helping around the house.”

“Do you cook?”

“Not really.”

“Sew?”

“Nuh uh.”

“Mom!”  Cole looked mortified, the blood rushing to his cheeks.

“Okay sorry!  I’ll back off.”  She put her hands up with a laugh.

We made light small talk over lunch, I told Linda about the family that lived with me and my dad; the twins, Zoe, Mark and Candice.  She was particularly interested in the twins and my interaction with the twins.  Traits that screamed of a hidden desire for grandchildren.  By the time our plates were cleaned I was fairly comfortable around Linda, she was what I’m going to c
all the three S’s of awesome motherhood; smart, sweet and sincere.  The kind of Mom mine had been.  The kind I hoped to be someday.

I found myself regretting how long I had put off meeting his family.  I had figured after I had almost gotten him killed she would absolutely hate me.  That I’d show up and she’d chase me down the street with a broom screaming I was a
home wrecking vampire lover and likely a witch.  I found myself grateful that at least one of my fears was unfounded.

“Hey Cole, I need a hand.”  A forty something man called out poking his head in from the garage.

“Sure thing Gary.”  Cole got up from the table, giving me a quick grin-he obviously thought today was going well too-as he disappeared to help his housemate.

Then I was left alone with his Mom.

She was still cleaning up dishes, I offered to help but was shot down with a friendly smile and a mandate to relax and take a load off.  Several further attempts to help got me ordered to ‘go sit’.  Like a polite guest, I took the command to heart and searched out a place to park my rump.

On the other side of the kitchen was a once formal living room with fancy leather couches, and a bookshelf lined with classics and knickknacks that didn’t seem to fit the marshals. Little metal planes and antique toy soldiers, a strange looking ceramic chicken and a few ballerina figurines.   I parked my butt on the couch and tried to appear like I wasn’t sitting on edge.  For whatever reason I found it hard to get comfortable here.  Be it the first time I met his folks, to the odd scenery to his housemates.  Whom for the record were perfectly nice and non-combative.  There was honestly nothing to put me on edge.  Not. One. Thing.

So why was I holding onto the couch cushion like a cat in the bathtub?

I forced my hands to flatten out, taking a long deep breath.  Then another for good measure.  On the third inhale my eye caught a familiar face in the framed photo above the piano.  A younger version, with a whole mess of hair.

Drawn to it, I walked across the room to the oak console piano.  The 5x7 photograph was in a brass frame, but the picture itself was worn at the edges.  I picked it up, running my finger tip over the face I had grown to...love?

“That’s Cole when he got his black belt.  His father had never been so proud.”  Linda mentioned from behind me.  Funny, I had been so enthralled I hadn’t heard her sneak up.

“Are these his brothers?”  The four boys although varying in height looked so much alike. The older two kept their hair short and screamed football player by their thick necks, Cole looked as he always had to me even with his hair was somewhat long, hanging over his eyes almost down to his collar.  The youngest one looked like he was in early middle school.

“Yes.  Jimmy, Dan, Eli.  All the Marshal boys.”  I felt horrible looking at that picture.  Cole had lost so much...

“Must have been hard on him.”  I found myself murmuring.

“I’m sure it was.  He never showed it though.  Through everything, he just kept moving
forward.”  She smiled proudly.  “He saved my life.  More than once.”

“Me too.”  I left it at that.

Linda turned to look at me, her eyes suddenly looking out of place with her perky features.  They were flat, listless, as though the happiness she projected as simply a facade.  A mask to get through the hell she had been dealt.  A phenomenon we knew all too well.

Junct
ion was home to many masks, unknowns hidden beneath was what truly terrified me. Each person reacts to their own personal hell in a unique way.  For beneath the pleasantries some are violent, all shreds of real humanity stripped from their minds leaving them empty husks no better off than the dead at our walls. Some are broken,  the pieces of who they were and who they are never able to form a complete puzzle.  There are those that just slip into quiet madness draped in a friendly smile, able to snap at a moment’s notice to unspeakable acts. Finally there are a few whom endure, taking their pain and using it as a catalyst to continue on.

Linda Marshall
was not just a friendly smile draped over a broken soul.  Linda Marshall endured.

“I like you.  I do.”  Her mouth fell flat, her tone matching her eyes.  “I was worried you were going to be a problem earlier this year, now that you’re off the wall I’m resting a little easier.”

“A problem?”

“He’s all I have left.”  Her
grim eyes focused on that picture.  “If I lost Cole...”

“I promise you I will do nothing to put him in harm’s way.”

“Don’t make a promise you can’t keep.  This world of ours has a way about it.”  Her tone was sharp yet resigned. For a mother who had lost so much I was sure she had lost most hope for the world, I know I would have in her shoes.

“I won’t hurt him.”  I rephrased my vow, absolute in the statement.  Cole was the one guy I never wanted to cause pain.  I did a mental replay of our last month’s together, so many happy times.  So many uncomplicated days and nights-

Dimitri’s face flashed through my mind at that moment; ice blue eyes, his thick black hair and superior little smirk.  His masculine scent strong in my nose as though he were standing next to me.  There was a sense of foreboding that flowed through me as I thought of him, an unknown I could not explain. Fresh pain licked at my heart as I tried desperately to think of something else.  Anything else.  Linda put her hand on my shoulder.

“That one,” she gave me a half smile, “that one you can keep.”

As Linda regarded me with open acceptance, I wondered desperately if I could.

When I got home I had to sneak in the back door.  Ben had stopped to say goodbye to

Candice for the season apparently.  The screaming that flowed from the front yard let me know I had my work cut out for me in repairing my friendship with her.  It didn’t help that Ben feigned ignorance, causing her to get all the more worked up about the entire mess.  She even threw my name out several times, I knew once the snow thawed and The Garage reopened I was going to have to deal with his anger as well.  Serves me right for not minding my own business. No. Screw that.  I was being a good friend now, I had been an asshole before. A good friend would have said something day one.  A good friend would fix this.

I just wasn’t sure how.

Thanksgiving came and went and Candice was still giving me the cold shoulder.  A week after Christmas and I saw no signs of that letting up.  Even in our close quarters winter living she found a way to make me a ghost.  I knew I needed to patch things up with her, I didn’t know where to start.  I’m sorry didn’t quite cover it.  Maybe that’s what I needed to lead with, I’m sorry.  Then maybe she could kick me in the shins for a few hours and feel better.

Since Cole had elected to pass the season with his mother and his communal household, it had been almost two whole months since I had laid eyes on him.  I knew it would probably be a good month more till the spring festival.  I found I missed the big guy a ton.  At least five times a day there was something that occurred I wanted to share with him, or a joke I had to tell that I knew only he would get.  Perhaps that meant I was falling for him in the serious forever kind of way, or maybe I was just lonely because of the Candice situation.  Neither scenario seemed to be the clear winner in my mind, good thing was I had another month to think it over.

As we all huddled around the living room, I tried to get her to make eye contact with me using telepathic abilities.  Unfortunately I possessed no such superpowers, her eyes remained on the fire and my ass remained plastered to my forehead in the minds of females present.  Zoe never told me she was upset with me, but I felt it in the undertones.  Her words seemed a bit more forced than usual, eyes focused so pointedly on the knitting in her lap.  My only sanity saving this winter had been the men since they were as oblivious as humanly possible.  It gave me a few faces to exchange words with and remind myself that I was only a partial house pariah.

When I wasn’t feeling like princess assface of the apocalypse, I tried to pass the time by reading.  Adam had stopped by-knocking first- and brought me a few here and there, but overall I hadn’t seen him much since the bleak blanket of white nothingness blanketed our town.

I wish I could say the same for his elder.  Caius had...come calling I suppose was the best way to put it. Every Friday without fail.

I’m not sure how to explain it.  I would fall asleep in the living room with everyone else by the fire, then I would wake up...somewhere else...with his large dark form looming over me. There was no moonlight in that room, I knew I was elsewhere based on the smell and feel of the furniture beneath me.  I assumed it was their farmhouse but who knew it was so very dark.

There was no conversation, only feeding.

I’d try to speak sometimes, to protest or move, but it was like I was in a lull.  That weird state between consciousness and unconsciousness where my mind functioned but my body would not follow any commands. The next thing I knew I’d be waking up on the couch, just where I had fallen asleep, usually in a pretty similar position and feeling like I hadn’t slept a wink.

Some nights I wondered if I had dreamed it, if cabin fever had finally gotten the best of me after all these years or it was some kind of post-traumatic stress.  I had been through an extra special dose of hell in the last year, maybe my mind was just working out the tremors through sleep.  It was a theory I could easily fall into if I didn’t find myself with physical abnormalities as well.  The soreness in my neck and the scent on my clothes kept me grounded in reality. Once in a while I’d catch the slight hint of bruising or little bumps made by twin scabs. We did not have really big bed bugs that traveled in pairs.  Those were from fangs with a capital
F.

I thought of the deal I had struck with Caius about not removing my memories, it seems he had stuck to his word. On both counts; using me and making sure I remembered it.  If I was anyone else, that meant I could be plucked from my home, used as an appetizer the deposited without a memory of the affair.  How often was that done?

That fact rattled me to the core.  Dimitri had often acted like he needed to feed more than every other day.  Was the blood liaison just a front?  How many survivors were dined upon from their homes at night?  Or perhaps it was just me and I was his meal of choice for the winter.  After much internal turmoil I figured the only thing I was doing was stressing myself out.  After all, the only one with the answer wasn’t talking to me about his motives.

Rather than worry about my reality I tried to lose myself in books.  I figured even I deserved some down time, mandatory as it may be.  I read the spooky ghost novels Adam had brought me cover to cover three times I moved on to my ‘in town’ stack; everything from more agriculture books to east Asian history. I tried to borrow a section of books this year that I had to read for my ‘job’ combined with a set I hadn’t touched that looked interesting.  After a decade, the percentage I hadn’t read in our tiny town was seriously starting to dwindle. Sometimes my eyes would get sore, especially in the evening when my
only light source was the flicker of a candle.  It was late at night that I yearned for a movie, something that required little effort on my part to enjoy.  Just popcorn and shinies on the screen.  Instead I read on until my eyes hurt, keeping to myself in the crowded room.

I was working my way through the Princess Bride-again-my eyes drifting from line to line where Buttercup discovers her dear Wesley was still alive when I found myself picturing
Dimitri in the role of the hero.  Not that he had ever muttered anything subtly romantic like as you wish...

You’re mine.
  His voice-or the closest recollection to his voice I could muster-overtook the words on the page, putting me in my own fantasy of the poor princess thrust upon an evil prince yearning for rescue from her true love.  Visions of riding on a white horse holding onto his back as my long hair flowed in the wind.

Get over it.
  I chastised myself.

Still I wondered where he was, how he was passing the winter.  When I thought about where he was I found myself filling with an unbidden sense of dread I couldn’t explain.  A worry that he was in danger or hurt.

A silly thing really, to worry if a vampire was injured.  Far as I knew he could mind control humans, rip the undead to shreds in the blink of an eye and travel just as fast.

I needed to focus on more immediate matters, like Candice.

Turning the page in my book I realized she was really more akin to these stories than I was.  Candice was always out for true love. Though it never found her.  She just needed that one guy to come along and change her world.  A silly notion in a modern age, the esteem of a woman deemed by the man she loved. Yet, this was no longer a modern age.  On the hierarchy of needs we had been thrust down into survival, procreation being so very important to that fact.  Easier said than done in a fixed colony.  While the guys out numbered us gals, there were only so many of them to go through.

Perhaps...

My mind toyed with an idea that started out as wistful and ridiculous.  Imagery of

Candice dancing about with prince charming all smiles and sunshine.  Which led to mental auditions for the role of the prince, which led me drifting back to the tall blunt and fierce
Rylie Everen.  He wasn’t sociable by any means, but he was strong and able.  The kind of guy she could build a life around.  The kind too honorable to cheat on her.  The perfect knight in shining armor for her ever after, one she could hold her head up high as he spun her around to Cinderella style waltz.  Hell, I even came up with the perfect ball for that dance.

In the spring after the all clear from winter had been given we held a massive party.   A testament to continued life and beginnings.  Only one of its kind we did. The whole town came out for a feast, one of the few times we had meat available to all.  Flowers would decorate the center of town as we could find them.  There would be ceremonies, tributes to those that didn’t make it through the winter months and all sorts of happy events as well.  Typically the council would bless at least two marriages at the festival, whomever had decided to tie the knot over the long winter.  Live music and dancing would carry us through the evening and by torch after the moon rose.  At that point even Caius would show up to the reverie.  In past years he would even dance with Antonia, I remember watching them twirl from the sidelines. Thrown off by two people that were so attractive and well groomed in our midst.  The pair of them had been spellbinding; he in his black waistcoat, her in a gown of the finest silk.  Nobles among the peasants.  Funny, looking back I don’t recall ever seeing
Dimitri there.  Not that I was looking for him.  I spent most of the festivals I remember hanging back from the crowd, picking on Adam when I could or being dragged around by my father as he glad handed his ‘Constituents’.   It was easy to picture him in a dashing suit however, drifting through the crowd with that little smirk of his.  I wonder if he ever danced.

Stop it.

This wasn’t about me.  This was about Candice.  I could help her write her own fairytale. No, I damn well was going to.  With my internal declaration complete, I placed a bookmark in my novel and closed the cover.

“Zoe.”  I whispered across the living room.

She ignored me.

“Zoe!”  I hissed louder, her eyes flipped up from her needlepoint.

“Yes?”

“Can I talk to you in the kitchen?”

“Alright.”  She gently put her needlepoint down then stood, wrapping the shawl that was around her shoulders tighter, the tips of her thin fingers peeking out from behind the pink flannel material.

The temperature dropped significantly the further away we got from the fire, my arms shivering slightly as we stepped onto the kitchen tile. Soon as we rounded the corner away from view I turned around.  Zoe was staring at me in that reserved patient manner.  The kind of look my mother had on her own face when she thought I was about to deliver bad news.

“I was wondering if you had any spare cloth lying about the house that I could use?”  I fiddled with the angel pendant around my neck as I spoke, unsure of how she would take my request.

“Cloth?” Her eyebrow kicked up as she spoke.

“Yeah  I ah...”  I lowered my voice.  “I want to try to make a dress for Candice for the

Spring festival?”

“You don’t know how to sew.”  She responded, sounding confused. I winced.  “Yeah, but for her I will give it my best.”

Zoe wrinkled her nose and made a clicking sound with her tongue, a sign to someone who had lived with her forever that she was thinking it over. The look on her face made me think I was going to get a friendly not right now and she was going to walk away.  I couldn’t have that.

“Look I messed up royally, I know that.  I’ve been a horrible friend to her for years, I want to try to be a good one.”  I pleaded, reaching out and putting my hand on her forearms.

“Please...”

“There’s some pink silk in the basement.  I know her measurements so I will help you get started.”

I couldn’t contain my excitement, I threw my arms around her in a tight hug.  “Thank you

Zoe...I mean it.  Thank you so much.”

“Yes yes...now let’s get back by the fire before we freeze.”

Two hours later once we had gained feeling back to our fingertips we braved the cold one more time to venture into the basement. Guided only by the light of a hand torch, we maneuvered through the crates of supplies and dry goods to the far corner of storage where I was tasked with holding the light steady while Zoe dug about.

True to her word, after ten minutes of rummaging through boxes she produced the prettiest pale pink shade of cloth, a pattern book with a pretty smiling trio of girls on the cover holding scissors and a sewing kit.  Together we poured through the patterns, judging difficulty against the materials we had and my inexperience with a needle.  In the end we selected a layered skirt sleeveless pattern called simplicity that looked like it fell right out of 1955.

The challenge from that point became when and where I could work on my secret project.  I couldn’t very well drag it over to the living room and spread out my materials by the fire.  She’d see it which would blow the whole surprise idea right out of the water.  I could wait till she fell asleep every night and try to get some work done before everyone got up, but I needed Zoe’s help with this and I couldn’t rightly ask her to stay up all night.  She had the boys to tend to in the morning after all.  So in the end I elected to sacrifice some comfort.  In the afternoons I would wander upstairs to my room and work on my project until the sunset or my hands got numb.  Zoe warmed back up to me after the first two days, her casual smile giving way to fluid conversation as she taught me a variety of stitches and cuts to make the garment. It was a kinship I had been desperately missing and hadn’t realized it.  A bright point in my day that allowed me to get through the rough night visits from dark and dreadful with my sanity.  I was not alone,  I wasn’t going to suffer alone.  Caius would lose interest with me, I was sure.  At that point he would leave me alone and my life would go on.  My vampire worries a thing of the distant past.