• Chapter VI: part 3


    “KIDA, I told you”—Vincent sat on the opposite side of the kitchen table than me, which was initially Seth’s idea. Obviously my distress was apparent in the way that I tried to pommel Vincent the moment I realized that—“I didn’t see anything!”

    If he was trying to sound sincere, it definitely wasn’t working. The only response I could offer was a roll of my eyes, and a kick in the leg.

    “Ouch,” he shouted as he rubbed his shin. “What was that for?!”
    Jeff snickered next to me.

    What sounded like a growl echoed in my throat. “You know what for,” I said through my teeth, shooting death daggers at Vincent with my cold gaze. “How could you not have seen me? You were looking right at me!”

    Now he rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Kida. I’ve lived for nearly a hundred years. It’s not like I’ve never seen a naked woman before.”

    My eyes narrowed in a mock-curiosity. “Oh, really,” I said with an irreverent attitude. “And exactly how many naked women have you seen?” I crossed my arms awaiting an answer.
    Vincent’s lips slowly formed into a smirk, and his gaze went distant, like he was
    remembering something, something that I highly doubted was rated G.

    He shrugged and returned his attention to me. “Enough to have a valid opinion.” I reached over and punched him on the arm with enough strength to break the wooden table and abruptly stood up out of my seat. The chair fell backwards onto the floor.

    “Ouch!” he yelled again, this time the agony apparent on his face. I got more pleasure out of that than I probably should have.

    “Kida,” Jeff began, but I was already walking up towards my room. He stood up to come after me, but Vincent simply raised his hand.

    “I’ll get her.”
    I rolled my eyes when I heard that. Seriously…what’s the point in walking away if you’re just going to follow me? I sped up to my room, but right as I was about to shut and lock the door, it was stopped—“by none other than the Devil himself.”

    My hand immediately went to my mouth. I just said that out loud.
    After the insult, the door paused from opening for a moment, and I thought Vincent had walked away. I was relieved though, when I saw it continuing to open, but only until I saw the look of hurt on his face.

    “That hurt,” he said.
    I winced. “I didn’t mean it. Honestly.” He shot me a confused look.

    “Really? Because the force of your fist on my arm seemed pretty intentionally.”
    I almost laughed. “Oh, that. Yeah, that was on purpose.”

    “Look,” he began. “I’m sorry”—but when I pressed my lips tightly together and shifted my weight to the other leg, he continued, almost desperately—“Come on, Kida! What was I supposed to do? All I heard was you screaming, and I didn’t think twice about coming for you.”

    My face heated, and I quickly averted my gaze elsewhere. The heat intensified when I felt his finger tugging on my chin, turning my face toward him. His stare was one of curiosity, and concern. “What exactly, did you see,” he whispered.

    I bit my lip, suddenly remembering all of the blood, the horror, and decided that I needed to sit down on the bed.

    “Blood,” I said, my hands trembling. “A lot of it.” Shaking my head in a quick attempt to rid myself of the memory, I turned to Vincent and half-smiled. “Maybe I’m going crazy.”
    Vincent placed his hand on my shoulder, a gesture that meant more to me than he probably knew. “You’re not going crazy, it’s just”—but he couldn’t finish, which meant that he was probably thinking the same thing. I was shocked, however, when he asked, “Have you ever hallucinated before?”

    I was speechless.
    Had I? I’d had dreams, but never hallucinations. “There was one time,” I said, suddenly remembering. “The day that we had that race, in the rain. There was—blood,” I said, bile rising in my throat. A laugh threatened to ruin the serious moment.

    A vampire…afraid of blood.
    Vincent’s mouth opened like he wanted to say something, a very troubled look on his face, but he shook his head instead. “It’s probably nothing serious. If it happens again”—he spared me a quick sideways glance and sucked in a breath of air—“be sure to tell me.”




    We made our way back downstairs and tried, with my difficulty, to explain to Jeff that I needed to go to Chicago today to train with Vincent. And after several minutes of protests—

    “So how much time do we lack until we’re there,” Jeff asked from the backseat. I looked attentively over at Vincent, whose look of disdain was enough to freeze the windshield.

    “Not much longer,” I added before Vincent had a chance to speak. Jeff sighed impatiently and leaned back in his seat.

    Fortunately, for his sake, he fell asleep.




    TAP…TAP…Tap
    I rolled my eyes.
    “…honing the senses to—”
    Tap…Tap

    “Jeff,” I sighed. “Could you please stop that?”
    Jeff baulked. “Sor-ry,” he said placing his hands on his lap. “It’s just so boring!”

    Vincent growled and slammed a book back onto the shelf with enough force to receive a very angry glance from Seth. “Well you didn’t have to come,” he shouted.

    Before Jeff could reply something sarcastic, I added, “He’s right, Jeff. You insisted on coming.”

    “Well”—he leaned back in his seat, a frustrated look on his face—“I thought it would be interesting. Couldn’t I—”

    “No,” Seth interrupted, sternly. It was hard to suppress a laugh.
    “You didn’t even let me finish,” Jeff said. “I was just going to ask if I could—”

    “And I said absolutely not.” The finality in Seth’s tone made Jeff wine a little, and I could understand his troubles. It’s got to be hard to be in a Warlock/Faerie’s house, and not be allowed to look around.

    It wasn’t until I had followed Vincent upstairs earlier that Seth had walked in and scared the crap out of Jeff by shaking off his glamour. I sort of wish I’d been there.

    “Seth,” I began, surprised by my courage.
    Come yesterday, I could barely even look Seth in the eyes, now I was talking to him as if we were close friends.

    “Couldn’t you just show him around a little bit? Maybe you have a television somewhere that he could watch.” Seth’s lavender eyes narrowed, and I could almost feel the weight of his stare. For a moment I regretted even asking and thought about crawling under the table.

    “Fine,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Follow me, Jeff.”
    “Yes,” Jeff whispered with a clench of his fist. I smiled as he walked off, but that smile soon disappeared as Vincent sat down in the chair next to me.

    I could practically see the tension surrounding him, a dark and morose aura engulfing us both. He’d been like that, ever since the incident. I had the deep suspicion that there was something he wasn’t telling me.

    I tried to continue on with my reading, but I couldn’t help glancing at him from the corner of my eyes. He was staring at an invisible object on the other end of the table, like he was thinking, very hard, about something, most likely about what happened this afternoon.

    With me.
    I bit my lip, thinking about why I had the hallucination, and how it hadn’t started up until Vincent arrived. I wanted so badly to ask him about it, to reassure myself that it really wasn’t anything serious, like he’d said earlier, but the threatening feeling in my gut said otherwise. My fingers involuntarily found their way to the necklace resting on my chest, and a smile played on the edges of my lips.

    I suddenly remembered, though, the talk about my mother, and how no one knew that I was really her daughter, not even me. And also—how the Council had cared less about my existence, until they found out that I was a half-breed. Why did that matter so much?

    I looked over at Vincent, and wanted so badly to ask, but the weariness in his eyes
    made me feel so guilty.

    “Vincent,” I began timidly. His head jerked toward mine, a disoriented look on his face, like I’d just interrupted a deep reverie. “Sorry,” I relented. “It’s just, I was wondering about some stuff.”

    Vincent narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously but nodded his head nonetheless. “Go ahead.”

    I swallowed and took in a breath of air. “How is it, that so much time went by, without anyone knowing who I really was? How did our parents hide it?”

    A flash of surprise crossed his face.“You really want to know?” I was taken aback by the question and a little nervous now to know the answer. But it was an answer I needed nevertheless.

    “Yes,” I breathed.
    He nodded and averted his eyes back to the invisible object. “There was another woman, a pure vampire, who my father had gotten pregnant around the same time as your mother’s disappearance. Your mother said she just needed some time alone. No one found it suspicious. No one would have thought she was pregnant.” He spared me a sideways glance and continued.

    “You were born around the same time that the other woman’s child should have been born, so your parents passed you off as her child.”

    My eyebrows furrowed, not only at the fact that they could manage that, but also at the fact that Vincent referred to them as my parents. But that wasn’t the issue and therefore wasn’t important.

    “Then what happened to the woman and her child,” I asked curiously, my mind too innocent to assume the answer.

    But Vincent’s wistful look was just as efficient as a verbal response. My parents, they, killed that woman and her child. My hand slowly covered my mouth, sickened by the idea.

    How could she let that happen? My mother? I remembered now how quickly Vincent’s opinion on my mother fluctuated, and now I understood. She didn’t act like that sort of person, so no one would be suspicious of her.

    “Thy glamoured you, so that you would look more like a vampire than a Nephilim. They had us all fooled,” he said bitterly. My mind was a mess, a complete wreck. It hurt so much to think that my mother was a murderer.

    “Wait,” I said. Vincent’s last statement suddenly sunk in. “Glamour? So someone knew then. A Faerie.” The corner of Vincent’s lip pulled up slightly.

    “Yeah. One did,” and his sardonic smile could only mean one thing.
    “Seth,” I gasped. He nodded, and I couldn’t believe it. Seth knew the entire time. What exactly was he to my parents? “How did the Order find out about me?” Vincent stubbornly averted his gaze elsewhere, his jaw muscle set. “Vincent—”

    “Someone told them obviously.”
    He shot me a harsh expression, but it didn’t hurt my feelings any. I wanted to get to the bottom of this. When he saw the suspicious look on my face, he continued, “And it wasn’t Seth. Trust me, we’ve already been there. It was a dark time in our friendship, and I don’t want to reanimate it. If Seth had ratted them out then he wouldn’t be here helping us now.”

    I nodded. It made sense, and I could tell that Seth cared a lot for Vincent. Besides, why would Seth even bother glamouring me for so long if he’d planned on ratting them out.

    “So you have no idea then?”
    “No,” he said callously. “But when I do—”

    He didn’t finish, just clamped his mouth shut. My eyes lingered to his clenched fists. He obviously wasn’t happy about the betrayal, despite his ardent speech about his distaste for my mother, probably because his father was involved. So I decided to drop the subject.

    “I don’t understand, though, why it was such a big deal? Why did the Order care so much, if I wasn’t a threat before, why would I be now?”

    “It wasn’t about what you were, Kida, it was about who your parents were.”
    Once again with the ‘your parents’.

    “Celeste was already suspected as the ring leader in the case of dead officials, so the fact that they were hiding you—it was just suspicious.” Although it was a point, it wasn’t a good point. At least not good enough for me. I shook my head.

    “That doesn’t explain why they’d want me dead, or why they’d execute us. I was only a child, and not just any child, the first half-breed. Wouldn’t they find that interesting and want to study me? Why dead?”

    Vincent looked at me, searched my face, and replied, “The Council doesn’t like change, Kida. They don’t like different or interesting. And they don’t need a good reason to kill you—or your parents.” Vincent’s eyebrows suddenly merged, like he was confused about something.

    “What’s wrong?”
    He blinked hard a few times and shook his head.
    “Nothing, it’s just”—He started fidgeting with his fingers nervously—“Seth?”

    Seth appeared right on cue, which wasn’t a surprise by this point. “Yeah,” he asked concerned.

    My lips twisted in thought. I had a new found respect for Seth, knowing that he’d helped my parents before. There was a bond between us that I didn’t really want to acknowledge, and by the way he treated me, neither did he.

    “Why don’t you take Kida downstairs? Teach her some hand-to-hand combat.” He spared me a reassuring look. “She could use some self-defense techniques.”

    “But what about y—”
    “Sure,” Seth said quickly. My gaze shifted skeptically between the two, who were now staring at each other with a knowing look in their eyes, like they were somehow communicating through some sort of invisible network. “Come on, Kida,” he said, turning his attention toward me.

    I spared one wary glance at Vincent, and nodded. “Alright.”
    By the time we reached the door to the downstairs, Vincent had already left the room.
    What’s he up to?

    It seemed like a redundant question. I’d been through enough in the past few days to know, that it was useless to try and figure out what went on in Vincent’s mind.


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