Vampiric: Chapter Nine, Part 8

Christmas morning was interesting. We gathered downstairs and presents were passed out, but no one moved to open them. Then Ian insisted her parents start, Caroline backing him. All of their gifts were thoughtful and beautiful, my own to them a set of 20 pairs of scented taper candles and two glass, box-shaped candle holders. Caroline opened hers next and politely thanked her parents for the cashmere sweaters. I didn’t know what to get her, so I gave her a certificate for a few spa days—not that I was insinuating anything.

Ian refused to open his before me, so I went next. He had given me a spa day package to the same place I had picked up Caroline’s. Her gift was a pearl necklace—“Because every girl needs one.” I was surprised her parents had also given me a gift—a tri-gold piece, the different gold strands entwined to create a thin rope necklace.

Ian opened his last, thanking me for the collection of crocheted caps, then laughing when he found Caroline had gifted him a similar set. Caroline had also given him a set of oil paints to accompany the large canvases from her parents. Well, it was the receipt for the canvases which were to be delivered to his loft sometime after the holidays.

While we were at the beach house, her parents were pleasant, but I had this strange sensation it was all a ruse. That while I walked on the beach—sometimes over the water—not all was as it seemed. I didn’t press Ian or Caroline for answers; I didn’t much want them. It seemed silly to add more problems to my plate before my own were taken care of.

Sometimes I wished I would ask, though. Every time I would talk to Caroline, she seemed tense, as though she was reeling in her stress and anger so as not to worry me. Even Ian seemed changed; he wasn’t as relaxed and carefree. I wondered if it was something her parents kept telling them. They never called me in to talk like they did those two. It made me grateful, though I felt slightly guilty.

When we left, Caroline confided that she was glad the rounds were done until Easter. Ian teased her that he didn’t have to return for another year and she slapped him on the arm for it. I was willing to bet he would have been smacked upside the head, but he was driving.

Whatever had happened while we were there was past, thankfully. I was discovering part of the peace I found came from their energy. Still able to feel the caress of the ocean breeze in combination with their typical energy, I felt much better. Things were slowly returning to normal.

Vampiric: Chapter Eight, Part 2

Caroline offered to give me a week or so off from work, but I knew there was still so much to get done before the broadcast. So when she refused to drive me—not that I complained—I hailed a cab most of the way and walked the rest. I needed to do something to occupy my mind and time; I would go insane from the unanswered questions and instant replay if I didn’t.

To say she was livid when I showed up would be hugely inaccurate. She was way past that. I could tell by the fireball that was hurled towards me, barely missing my head. That, and the storm of yelling that followed, summing up to basically question why I was so hardheaded. When she shushed long enough for me to say anything, I simply told her, “I need this.” I could only hope she would understand how painful it was sitting in her apartment alone.

“Fine;” her arms, previously crossed over her chest, dropped to her sides. “But I’m not giving you any work.” Turning to Ian, who stood behind her, watching the goings-on with a mixture of confusion and interest, she said, “And you won’t either.”

“Then I’ll find something.” She nodded and began listing things they still needed to do before Saturday night as Ian followed her to another area of the building.

Left to my own devices, I made my way into her office, a project already in mind. When I’d had to file the charts I redid, I remembered thinking her cabinets were a mess and it was a miracle she could find anything. The chaos probably stemmed back to Conan; I doubted he was much concerned with keeping her organized.

So I set to work, pulling all of the files, emptying the folders, and re-sorting the papers into stacks around the room. At one point, I decided I should start stuffing folders again, so I went out to buy a few multi-color packs to help further organize everything.

The project took up my time during the day. Trying to determine where everything belonged was all that mattered. I wasn’t hungry so I often skipped meals without trying. Caroline stopped in occasionally during the week with food and sat down, telling me I had to eat something. I would eat some of it while listening to her talk about what was happening and ask if I needed anything. Every time my answer was the same: no. I was fine. Don’t worry about me. But I knew the more I said it, the less she believed it.

After the first day, she gave me rides there and back, her reasoning being she couldn’t stop me, so she might as well save me the cab fare. The morning trip was laced with conversation, mostly her prying and trying to coerce me into dealing with what had happened. It didn’t work because I wouldn’t let it. I wasn’t ready to deal with it. I just needed more time.

My nights were spent outside. I would wait until she was fast asleep before sneaking out. Sometimes I went out to the rooftop garden—I was drawn to it despite how painful a reminder was. Other times I would find a park and walk around aimlessly. On those walks, I often felt as though I was looking for something in the trees, searching for someone in the clearings, hoping for one thing or another to lead me away from this half existence. The only thing I ever found was the moon.

When I saw her hanging in the sky, Jake’s words returned to me from all those years ago, from the night before he left the camp to return home. Drei had struck some deal with the Lady of the Moon, keeper of promises. I didn’t know what he had promised, or if she was doing her part in it, but every night I was out there, I asked of her the same thing.

“Bring him back to me...please. I can’t keep living like this.”

I would stare after her until she began to disappear over the horizon. Then I would sneak back into Caroline’s apartment, pretending to have just woken up. She didn’t know I left at night; she didn’t know I couldn’t sleep. It was just another reminder that no one could replace him; it was also a painful reminder of how much and how little he really knew about me.

Vampiric: Chapter Three, Part 2

No one was outside as far as I could see or hear. I was relying more on my ears than my eyes—the cracked windows along the north side of the building looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in forever—which was probably closer to the truth than I cared to know.

About an hour earlier, we were all loaded into various vehicles—so as not to appear suspicious—and arrived in this other building. There were three other lookouts, each of us patrolling a different cardinal direction. Mostly everyone else was in the broadcasting room. Being an air elemental was great for me. Though most people would remain in the dark, I used my gifts to figure out what I wanted to know. In a few minutes it would be 8:30 and Caroline’s broadcast would be on every television screen within fifty miles, and I would be tuning in while keeping an ear open for anything strange.

A minute ‘til, I pulled the conversations from the broadcasting room to me. They still weren’t ready and I could hear Conan trying desperately to keep Caroline calm amongst the chaos so she could still go through with the broadcast. A few people were babbling about a traceable signal and the bodyguards were itching, just as nervous as everyone else that this would fail.

“I thought you worked out the—”

“C,” Conan chided. “Language please. The equipment will be running in twenty seconds whether the signal is traceable or not. We can’t back out now or people are going to be staring at a blank room for ten minutes.”

“I know!”

“Five…four…three…” a female voice said, silencing Caroline.

I knew the program had started, but no one said anything. For a moment, I thought it was all a waste; she wasn’t going to go through with it. Drei had been wrong about her and, after all her talk, I was disappointed.

“Fellow citizens,” she started, and there was a wave of relief from everyone in the room. “Our government has lied to us.”

The line was intended to provoke incredulity at the accusation. Our government, founded by the people, couldn’t be against us. There was no way. The gut reaction was inescapable.

“Our government stopped caring about we the people ages ago when it started redirecting funds for education to wars abroad; wars to intimidate others into falling in line. It has fed us bile and manure about why we must solve the world’s problems, why we must sacrifice our brave men and women, why we need to be the bringer of peace. Under our government, there is no peace. There is no contentment without an enemy or a cause. We feed the war machine which in turn feeds the wealthy. And while the rich become richer, the poor can barely scrap together enough to live.

“The truth is before your very eyes. The career politicians do less and less every year and still earn more than the hardworking families who keep this economy going. They sit in gilded luxury while some people work two or three jobs just to make ends meet. They tout the benefits we provide to other nations in pursuing conflict and war while we underpay teachers, underprepare students, and consistently fail to provide any solution to random acts of violence plaguing campuses, schools, and public establishments domestically.

“Ask yourself why?” She paused, letting her words sink in and the audience ponder her question. “To keep the people weak, the very people who give power to the government, gives them greater strength. If we are weak and distracted by our everyday struggles, our fight for survival, we cannot organize successfully to demand change. If we are divided along party lines, believing someone else cannot possibly support the same causes, we provide a reason for change to stall. And if we buy into the lies we are fed about our involvement abroad, we will not question the lack of attention paid at home.

“Our government is cunning. It has done well to distract, divide, and bully us into a silence, claiming we are unpatriotic or socialist or heathen if we attempt to break free of the illusion. We have been misguided; worse yet, we perpetuate the falsehoods and misguide each other.

“But it is not too late to change the future. We need change in our society, and the only way we can do that is to demand it—”

There was a staticky noise outside. I tuned out Caroline’s speech—which, if she played this last part right, would anger the general public into following her religiously—and focused on finding that strange noise. Reaching my hearing out as far as possible, I could just make out a vehicle and murmurs inside about following something. The conversation was too broken up.

I ran, searching for Caroline’s voice in the building again, hoping we could all make it out of here safe. My biggest fear was that it was too late, that she wouldn’t be able to wrap up the broadcast soon enough to evacuate. She was halfway through her lengthy conclusion when the outer ring of bodyguards let me through.

“—we’ve started over before; we can do it again—” Caroline was saying as Conan crossed the large room to me. “What is it?” he whispered shortly, as if more annoyed I was there than worried about why I was there.

“Someone’s headed this way. They’re following some trace or something.”

“How far off?” he asked, not even bothering to ask how I knew. I was grateful because there wasn’t time to explain it, and I certainly wasn’t going to be captured because of this.

Running some quick, more than likely inaccurate, calculations in my head, I guesstimated, “About eight minutes, less even.”

Without hesitation, Conan swirled around and made the guillotine motion. It amazed me at how quickly everyone jumped to work. Most of the crew started cleaning up their computers as quietly as possible so as not to interrupt Caroline’s crash ending.

“This revolution has been long coming, and it’s time we bring it out into the open. We’ll be back, and if you want to see a brighter future, you will be, too.”

Someone capped the camera and Caroline slipped into her coat, speed walking out the door, the rest of us following her. We split up into the different vehicles and they all took off in different directions. Ian sped off into the heart of the city. I didn’t know where Drei was, but those people who were coming scared me more than not knowing where he was. We would find each other. The drivers were supposed to drive in circles for an hour before converging on HQ again.

Ian said, “Don’t worry, love. We gave them the slip thanks to you.” He winked a sapphire gem at me in the rear view mirror.

But that wasn’t what worried me. That might have been the bad feeling I was having all night, but the feeling wasn’t gone. Something else was going to happen, but I dared not say anything without knowing what first.