Whispers in the Dark

by Niranjan K

  Ray’s throat was tight and it felt as if there was a roaring in his ears. “It wasn’t about, Shane.” He forced out.

  “Ray,” Mom started.

  “It wasn’t about Shane, Mom.” he said. “We were all… we were grieving… all of us… I just… Alistair understood, and yes, it hurt… it still does, so much if I think about it, but that wasn’t why...” He drew a deep breath. He could do this. Get the truth out in the open, because he didn’t want his family to blame themselves or Alistair for something that was completely and unequivocally his fault. “I wanted the pain to be gone, but that wasn’t why I asked Alistair to turn me. I… I was in love with him, and I wanted to be with him. That was why. It had nothing to do with Shane, or you not having time or anything.” He was again looking at the ground, just not able to look him in the face.

  “Oh Ray,” his mother whispered, such a wealth of expression in those two words and Ray felt tears prickling his eyes.

  “It still doesn’t mean he should have done it.” Eve said, her voice quiet. “We… he was our friend; he knew us as children…we’ve… we’ve invited him into our home… he shouldn’t have done it.”

  “He’s a vampire.” Anton said, as if it was self-evident.

  If only it were that simple! Ray no longer had a choice. He had to defend Alistair, he had to tell the truth, because, fuck it, it was not Alistair’s fault and he couldn’t let his family think that Alistair just turned him as soon as a besotted teenager asked him to. “He had no choice.” he said, looking at Eve. “I forced him.”

  Eve opened her mouth as if to argue, but Ray was done with arguments and prevarications and lying.

  Let the truth out.

  “I poisoned myself.” he said. “It would have been too late by the time he got me to a hospital. Turning me was the only way to save my life.” He saw the horror dawning on Eve’s face, the shocked exhalation from Anton and the soft, ‘oh’ that fell from his mother’s lips. “Like I said,”—he said, his voice not quite steady,—“it was my fault.”

  The silence that enveloped them was the loudest thing Ray had ever experienced. He avoided looking at them.

  At least now they know the truth.

  His mother’s arms enveloped him in a hug and Anton and Eve joined her and it didn’t make any sense. They should be angry, they should be horrified; they shouldn’t be comforting him, but he couldn’t help but hug them back, and wish that this would never end, this moment.

  Chapter Eleven

  The ride to the hospital was silent, but it was not a comfortable silence. It was heavy, fraught with tension, and Eve felt it smother her. Despite that hug, now that Mom was not with them, she found herself with nothing to say. Anton was equally silent, sitting next to Ray. Mom had told them she would follow, with Alistair.

  Alistair. Eve didn’t know how she would face him after having tried to kill him the last time she’d seen him. Was she supposed to apologise? But, how could she? Ray was still her baby brother. Even though Ray had made it sound like Alistair’s hand was forced, she was not ready to accept it. How could he know? How could he be certain? Perhaps he could have taken Ray to the hospital in time. He could have informed them.

  Was Ray even telling the truth? If he was, then why had Alistair said nothing when she had confronted him? She felt suffocated. The memory of her futile attempt on Alistair’s life was choking her. She wished she had the courage to confide in Mom, or Dad, but Dad wasn’t well, and Mom had enough on her plate.

  What if Alistair told her parents? True, he had threatened he would tell Mom if she ever tried something like that again, but what if he decided to tell Mom anyway? She couldn’t let that happen. She had either to talk to Alistair and beg him to keep her secret, or she had to pluck up the courage and tell Mom herself. Mom might be angry, and disappointed, but she would still forgive her. She would understand. She always did.

  A soft sigh escaped her lips and Anton turned towards her, a questioning look on his face. She shook her head, letting him know there was nothing to worry about. There wasn’t. Nothing he could help her with anyway.

  “I’m sorry.” Ray said, breaking the silence. Eve wished she could have the silence back.

  “Ray,” Anton said quietly. “It’s… It sucks to be honest, what you did, but… you were a child and you had just suffered the first and biggest loss in your life, and no one had any time for you, so it was natural that you should have gone to extreme ends to get what you wanted. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You’re back now. That’s all that matters.”

  Eve wanted to bring up the bond, but it wasn't her secret, and the one who had told her had done so in confidence and she couldn’t betray that. She had known about Ray’s feelings for Alistair. She had known, and had done nothing; she had not even talked to him about it.

  It didn’t matter what Ray said or believed. The fact of the matter was Ray had been alone, with no one to pay attention to him at a time he needed it the most. Otherwise, she would have told Mom or Mom would even have guessed the truth. They would have taken care of Ray, of his fragile heart and his naive mind. They would have protected him. But he had been alone and he had chosen something that he wouldn’t have if he wasn’t emotionally vulnerable.

  Would anyone tell Dad? Mom had already said they couldn’t tell him. She would tell him, but she hadn't said when. Presumably when he had recovered. But was he even going to recover? The doctors had talked only to Mom, and Dan and Anton might simply have assumed that Dad was all right since they were allowed to take him home. But sometimes they allowed people to go home when there wasn’t anything else they could do for them, didn’t they? Eve didn’t want to think of Dad dying, but why else would Mom be looking so despondent?

  She suppressed a sigh. Her brothers were blind, and she had never realised just how much. They only saw Mom’s smile, but Eve saw how that smile almost never reached her eyes and how they remained sad. She wished she could ask Mom outright what was wrong, but it was the grief in Mom’s eyes that stopped her as much as her own fear. Fear of knowing she was about to lose her father, and fear of hurting her mother. But… they all deserved the truth. If Dad was going to die, they needed to say their goodbyes. If Dad was going to die, Dan and Ray couldn’t go back to where they lived as if nothing was wrong. If Dad was dying, perhaps he would like to see his only grandchild.

  Not the only one.

  Eve brushed the thought aside, looking down, afraid that someone would see the tears that had gathered in her eyes. She was trying not to cry, but she didn’t want to lose her father. She wanted to know the truth, but she also dreaded it. She stuffed her fist into her mouth to muffle the sob that broke from her throat.

  Deep breaths, Eve. You can do this. Deep breaths.

  Nothing was helping, and frankly, nothing would help, but she did regain her composure. Why was she like this now? She hadn’t cried or been this emotional in years. Not since… she clamped her lips tight and wiped her eyes. She was not going to think of that. She was over it.

  Why the hell did it feel like she had an empty hole inside her?

  The car stopped. Eve checked her face on the small mirror in her bag. Her eyes were red rimmed, but not swollen. Her face was red as well, but that was all. She had put on the waterproof make up that Dy had been pushing her to try, and it did look like it worked. She ought to tell Dy.

  The hospital was larger than she remembered. She hadn’t noticed anything the previous night, tired, worried and excited all at the same time. Even so, how could she not have noticed? They had added at least one wing, and modernised the exterior. It was a far cry from the building she remembered from her youth, the one they had to pass every day to go to school. It somehow made her feel betrayed that it should have changed so much and caught up with the times.

  Everyone and everything moves forward, except for me.

  It was a depressing thought and she didn’t need any more of them.

  Chapter Twelve

  Daphne smiled and go
t into the car, but Alistair could tell immediately that something was wrong. He had known her long enough to read her at a glance. It could just have been worry about Ned, but he didn’t think so. Did she get into a fight with her children?

  “Shall we go?” Daphne asked.

  He set the destination to the hospital and keyed in the command, before turning to her. “So, what happened?” She shook her head and opened her mouth, but he forestalled her. “Don’t say it’s nothing, all right? If you can’t talk about it or you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine, but don’t say nothing and dismiss your own feelings.”

  She smiled at him. “I always forget how much older and wiser you are than all of us.”

  “I’m not a wise old man.” he said lightly. He was a sentimental fool was what he was, one who never learned his lesson. “Age doesn’t equate wisdom, Daphne.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “Can I just say you’re a good friend and a sensible one?”

  He suppressed a derisive snort. If he were sensible, he wouldn’t have come to Vrelsk when he heard Ned was sick. If he were sensible, he would have done as Magnus asked and saved himself the possibility of being an outcast. If he were sensible, he would have killed Eve after she had tried to kill him. If he were sensible, he would tell Daphne what really happened with Ray, instead of trying to protect him.

  He was, not to put too fine a point on it, a damn idiot.

  “Ray told us what happened.” she said abruptly, breaking the silence that had fallen, shattering it like glass, and the shards were everywhere, piercing his skin, his heart, his lungs and he was choking on them, unable to speak. “He told us,” she repeated. “And… Ned and I had always known, you know, not that Ray would do something like that, but that you… that you wouldn’t have done it just because Ray had asked… that you… you’re a good friend and you saved his life and we… we were angry with you, even when… even though we knew that there had to be something we were missing. We knew you, and yet we… we never thought to question him when we got him back...”

  “Daphne,” He swallowed around something that was choking him. Ray had told them? That was something he would never have expected. “Don’t blame yourselves for whatever you thought. He was your son, and I was your friend. You thought I’d betrayed you. It was perfectly natural. I’m glad he decided to come clean.”

  He could have laughed at the dry tone that came out of his mouth. No wonder she thought him sensible. He did sound so unemotional, so sensible.

  “Thank you.” Daphne said. “You saved his life. It must have been… traumatic for you, but you did it anyway. I’m sorry he put you through that.”

  Alistair shrugged. “He was sixteen. He was a child, and he was hurting. He didn’t know any better. It’s in the past.”

  “Alistair,” she began, and he shook his head.

  “It’s in the past, Daphne.” he said, trying not to sound weary. He felt weary, and when had that happened? “I’ve put it behind me, and so should you all. Ray is back now.”

  “Yes, and he… he’s a hunter, and he’s better than us, though he would never see it that way. He thinks the years he spent as a vampire has affected his ability to be a good hunter.”

  Alistair snorted aloud this time. “He’s a damn fool.”

  Look who’s talking!

  “He had always been impulsive and headstrong, but also sensitive, and so, so emotional…” she smiled. “They were both like that. Shane and Ray. It changed him, you know, Shane’s death. He might not agree, but it did change him.”

  “If you’re trying to justify what Ray did,”—Alistair said quietly,—“you don’t have to. I get it, Daphne. Believe me, I do. Don’t forget that I’d known him virtually all his life. I know what he was like, and the Ray who came to me after Shane’s death… that wasn’t the same … it was like he grew up overnight, became this whole other person that I’d never met before… a stranger who wore Ray’s face.”

  He hadn’t meant to say so much, but she nodded as if she understood. Perhaps she did. Because the Ray who she had got back as a human was also a stranger. He had grown up and changed while a vampire and though his body reverted to that of his sixteen-year-old self, he didn’t lose his memories of the intervening ten years.

  “He had been a man trapped in a child’s body when he came back to us.” she said softly. “And none of us knew how to treat him, especially Anton… his big brother was suddenly younger than him… and we… we didn’t even know what to do. He had a job when he was a vampire, but suddenly he was sixteen and no longer could go back to work… he couldn’t go to school, because he had already finished school, and even otherwise, how would we explain his age to anyone? He spent five years doing part time jobs and learning, and he left the day after he turned twenty-one, and never came back, and we… none of us felt we had the right to ask him to stay or come back…”

  Alistair didn’t say anything, but he understood. He had seen how much Ray had changed. The boy he had left behind was not the man he had come back to. “I’m glad he told you.” he said before the silence could become more oppressive.

  “I need to find a way to tell Ned.” she said. “Any other time, I could have waited, said it wasn’t the right time, but now… if I wait, I may never get to tell him, and I want to. He needs to know.”

  “Daphne, if it’s on my account-” he began.

  She shook her head. “He needs to know. He would want to know. We… as I said, we both thought things, not very charitable things, about you, and… still in the end, we had to ask you for help, and you didn’t let us down… you betrayed Ray for us...”

  “It was hardly a betrayal,” Alistair said. “It was the right thing to do, and it was in Ray’s best interests.”

  “Don’t tell me it didn’t hurt you.” she said. “We know, Alistair. We may not understand, but we do know that it wasn’t as easy as you make it seem.”

  “To lose a fledgling.” Alistair said quietly. “It does hurt. It felt like I was ripping my still beating heart out, but that doesn’t change the fact that it needed to be done.”

  “It would have hurt Ray just as badly.” she said after a moment.

  “Worse, I would assume, because of his trust in me.”

  It hurt so bloody much even to speak the words, but he wasn't sparing himself. The pain Ray had gone through might have been unimaginable.

  “And yet you did it, knowing that it would probably alienate Ray forever.” The expression in her eyes were warm, though her eyes were full. “You did that for us. We knew then what we had suspected all along, that you wouldn’t have done what you did without compelling reasons. That’s why Ned needs to know, if only to feel he was right about you, and he may not have a chance again. So, yes, I have to tell him. I just don’t know how.”

  “You’ll figure it out.” he said softly. “You always do.”

  “I’m glad you’re here.” she said, just as the car stopped.

  “Daphne.” he said. “I’ll come in after your children have left, if that’s all right with you.”

  Her eyes held understanding. “Of course.” she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The hospital was too big, the corridors too long. Had it been so the last time? Not yesterday, when he’d come to see Dad, but the last time, when they had come to see Shane and he had stood near a metal and glass room and saw his twin's dead body. Ray hadn’t thought of Shane in years. He hadn’t needed to, because it was always there. Buried under his skin, burned into his insides, the knowledge that Shane was gone, that he was incomplete, broken, irreparably damaged, because the other half of his soul was torn from him. Shane’s loss was a phantom pain that never left, and he had got used to living with it now. So, no, he hadn’t thought of Shane. He never had to think of Shane.

  Anton led him through the corridors till they reached Dad’s room and Ray could feel his mouth go dry. He hadn’t seen Dad in seven years. Video calls didn’t really count. Whenever his parents had offered to
visit him, he had found excuses to be out of town till finally they had stopped offering. Now, standing here, he could not think of a single valid reason why he should have shut his family off the way he had. No wonder they blamed themselves. Did they think he blamed them? Did they think that was why he ran?

  Dan opened the door, smiling at them. “Dad's awake,” he said. “And being difficult.”

  “Mom will handle it.” Anton said, grinning. “He thinks he can get away with things if she isn't there. You just need to play deaf till she gets here.”

  None of it made any sense, but Ray smiled. They probably expected it. Eve and he followed Anton into the room. Dad was sitting on the bed, looking sulky, but his expression changed, morphing into a wide smile as he saw them. “Eve! Ray! You're here! I didn't believe Dan when he told me.”

  “And why is that?” Eve asked, mock indignation colouring her tone as she bent down to kiss Dad on his cheek and hug him loosely.

  “Just being foolish in my old age.” Dad smiled at her, hugging her with the arm that didn't have the IV line.

  Ray sat down at the foot of the bed. “So, Dan says you can go home soon.”

  “That's what the doctors say.” Dad nodded. “I can't wait to go home, to tell you the truth. The food here is awful, and they don't even feed me properly.”

  “So, Ray, tell Dad about the case.” Anton said, giving him a wink. “Not every day Magnus comes to a hunter for help.”

  “Magnus asked for your help?” Dad asked, sounding pleased. “That has to be a hell of a case.”

  “It looks like a rogue vampire.” Ray said. “But it... It's like they're still in the feral stage, but there's also some inconsistencies with that theory.”