by Martha Woods
“That’s not…” I stopped myself before I could continue, denying him the fault of his actions wasn’t going to do anyone any favors. And honestly? I think that he’s been wanting to admit all of this to himself for years now, even before he met me.
“We’re trying to fight so hard against him now because we know that he’s wrong, but for years I was him Amy! I was doing the same things that he’s doing for the same reasons as he is, because I was just so angry at the world that I wanted to make the part of it that I thought responsible pay. I haven’t… I haven’t paid for any of that, you know? Even if she decides that she wants to get away from him, and that’s a big if considering he’s been the closest thing to family she’s had in years, how could I possibly expect her to be able to forgive the things that I’ve done to people just like her? If she winds up hating him enough to leave, why wouldn’t she hate me just the same?”
“Because you’re trying to be better,” Vincent said, “you might not think that it matters, but it does. Do you know how long I’ve been alive? Do you know how much evil I’ve seen in my time? I mean even if I told you honestly there is no way that you would believe me, it would just make you go insane.”
Brushing the hair out of his eyes rougher than was strictly warranted, Vincent turned Damon’s head to look into his eyes, dark irises almost alight with the fire that kept burning inside. “I have seen more horrible things and deeds than you could ever hope to dream of, I’ve seen men and women debase themselves in the name of higher powers, I’ve seen entire towns go up in flames because of the misplaced anger of those that cursed them, but through all of that I’ve been lucky enough to see people who want to be better than they were in their pasts.”
“And you think that I’m trying to be better? You think that I can be better?”
“I wouldn’t bother with you if I didn’t,” He said, “I’d toss you aside just like all the other monstrous trash that I’ve tossed aside for centuries, I’m not going to let myself be brought low by someone who wishes to cause nothing but pain and misery to everyone that they meet. This world is hard, it is filled with harshness and pain, and it is so easy to just give in and let it break you, and often it will break you without you wishing it so to begin with. But clawing yourself out of that, to take yourself from the lowest depths and spend years making up for your past not to make yourself feel better, but just because it’s the right thing to do? That’s not so easy, not in the slightest. But that is what you are doing.”
“But what if it’s not enough?” Damon asked, “What if I do all of that and she still doesn’t want anything to do with me?”
“If you make yourself a better man and she still doesn’t want to forgive you or herself for what you’ve both done in the past… then honestly that’s her right.” Vincent reached out, grasping around Damon’s bicep and hauling him up to his feet. “Sometimes we can’t make up for the past in any way that makes us worthy of forgiveness, sometimes the only way that we can make up for everything is by accepting that we’re always going to be reviled by some people, and that is the price for becoming a better person. We shouldn’t want to be better just so that we can make people love us again, we should be better because it is what we are supposed to do, do you understand?”
“Not at all,” Damon laughed, tired smile stretching across his face, “But… I think I might be able to in time. Have you ever done that before?”
“Made up to people who still hated me for the rest of their lives? Of course, more times than I can even think to count. But every friend lost is a price that has to be paid for the horrible things I’ve done in the past, that’s how the world works, as hard as it may be sometimes.” Squeezing his fingers around Damon’s arm in hopes of comforting him, he smiled as kindly as he could. “If things do go that way I have no doubt that it’s going to be hard, it was by no means easy for me, but we’ll be here for you every step of the way, no matter what. You can believe me when I say that, we’re not going anywhere.”
“I know,” He said, nodding at us both and exhaling shakily, “This has… been one hell of a night, hasn’t it? I didn’t think that I would ever actually see her again, you know? There wasn’t even a body in the grave, I couldn’t even be comforted by that…”
“You never really got the chance to mourn, but now you’ve got a second chance in its place.” I ran my thumb over his knuckles, glancing over his shoulder where the others were waiting patiently for us to finish. No doubt they were eager to discuss the next stage of the plan, especially with this surprising revelation, but none were daring to intrude on this time that Damon desperately needed to himself. I appreciated that, we all did.
“Do you think that we’re ready to go Damon?” Vincent was the first to ask, as I thought he might be. “At the very least can we get somewhere a little more dry?”
“Yeah...” He nodded, stepping out of our hold and starting back towards the others. “Sorry about that I… it’s just been a bit much, I’m ok now. Let’s go focus on saving whoever it is that needs saving!”
There was that familiar bravado, always boisterous and cocky in the face of trying to outrun his feelings, though I could hardly criticize him for acting like a human being could I? At the very least he wasn’t kneeling in the mud staring off into the forest with such heartbreak that I could hardly breath looking at him. To see him back in the moment and focusing on the thing that made me fall in love with him, to see that same compassion and drive to help people was… well, it definitely warmed my heart after it had come so close to breaking.
Christine certainly agreed, if the wide grin that spread across her face as the three of us approached again was any indication, Damon’s shoulders squaring and his posture improving with every single step, Vincent looking as confident and determined as ever and me… well, still walking forwards in spite of what was very clearly a broken nose. I suppose I might be the worst off in terms of how we look, but as far as I know Christine would just consider it another badge of honor.
“You know,” She laughed, reaching forward and taking hold of my nose gently, “I don’t think we really paid any attention to that battle wound of yours. It is definitely hard to miss.”
“Tell me about it,” I sighed, wincing at the light squeeze around my bridge, “Now that you brought it up again I can’t really think of anything else, so could you… I don’t know, do something to fix it?”
“Fix it? Hmm… I suppose I could reset it, but it’s going to hurt a lot.”
“Will it be straight at least?”
“It should be, it’s far from the first broken nose I’ll have fixed in my life.”
“Then do it, I’d prefer to breath properly.”
Nodding, she shared a sympathetic look with Vincent and Damon before squeezing down tightly and wrenching my nose back into the middle of my face. Now, I know that I said that I was prepared for it and knew that things would be better after it was taken care of, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the blinding pain that shot out from my nose and turned my vision absolutely white, making me want to scream out so badly that my throat closed up before any air could even get out properly past a squeak.
So yeah, to say that it hurt was definitely an understatement.
“Oh jeez...” Damon winced in sympathy, taking hold of my chin and sweeping his thumb through a tear that had escaped. “I probably should have given you a quick warning about that, it always sucks to get your nose reset.”
“Oh, you think?” I groaned, brushing my fingers lightly against the bridge of my nose and grunting in pain, “Well, at least I can say that I’ve done that now. Scratch that off the action movie bucket list.”
“Let’s get inside before you can come across anything else to scratch off, far as I can see nothing dislocated so let’s keep it that way.” Before I could even take a proper step forward Vincent picked me up in his arms, ignoring my brief squawk of protest before he was walking forward towards the center of the warehouse district, Christine keeping
pace next to us and not even bothering to cover up the smile on her face. I had to begrudgingly admit that in her place I wouldn’t have bothered either.
“Well, I think that I can speak for everyone when I say that we’re glad that you’re all right.” Joseph was reserved, but I knew him well enough by now that I could recognize when he had relief in his eyes, I wasn’t the only one that had grown to care about this group after all, not by a long shot. “If anything irreparable had happened to you I assure you that there wouldn’t have been an enemy clan by the time the sun rose in the sky.”
“Thank you Joseph, that’s a very… colorful promise.” Not an unflattering one either given the circumstances, but I’d still prefer to keep blood to a minimum, especially now that we had an idea of who exactly was still with them. But right now I had more important things to tell them. “How are the rest of the shifters?”
“Healing, Anthony still doesn’t have an arm, so that’s not likely to change anytime in the near future, but they seem to be settling in well enough.” Christine narrowed her eyes. “I feel like you’re leading into something with this.”
“I am,” I said, glancing back to the door of her office, arching my brow in question.
“Sound-proofed, don’t worry. No one will be able to hear us in here.”
“Good,” I exhaled, brushing my hand through my hair and taking the moment to get my words in order. It wasn’t some small thing that I was going to tell them, even if I didn’t have any plans of actually following through with any of it. “When I was in their camp I was made an offer, and under any other circumstances you could probably say that it was a fairly generous one. The shifters in there are what he wants more than anything in the world, the rest of us he is perfectly willing to give up on and let us go about our lives, but they are something that he’s going to fight tooth and nail to try and kill.”
“What was the offer?” Joseph asked, connecting the dots and coming fairly close to figuring it out already, “If it’s anything like what I’m thinking then it’s nothing to scoff at.”
“No, no it’s not. If we hand over all of the shifters with no further questions then he’ll take his people and move on without another move of fuss, on top of telling us the names and locations of every single spy that both groups of shifters have inside our walls, meaning that Anthony is far from the only spy that we’ve come across.”
“I figured as much,” Vincent said, “Though I have to say that I’m not a fan of being spied on by the people that we’re trying to protect. But would be really give up his own people on top of that?”
“I asked him that myself, with that same amount of disbelief. He really wants these people dead, and he’s willing to give up just about everything to make sure that it happens, I think he’s probably trained his people to just accept what happens to them as well, if the answers I got from Claire were any indication.” I shuddered. “It’s a really weird cult of personality that he’s built up around himself, they’re not going to give up a fight unless he tells them to back away, barring some very extreme circumstances.”
What scared me most though was just how… normal so many of them had seemed, even if I’d only gotten a very brief look at them from my position in the camp. They were sitting around, singing songs and looking at each other with a fondness that you would only ever reserve for friends and family. They weren’t some evil, monstrous force, they were made up of men and women just like we were, they loved, they laughed, they did all the things that we woke up in the morning and wished to do. And with all of that, they were still being twisted into doing evil because of the whims of a complete madman who I’m beginning to think is absolutely empty aside from that anger and hate that gets him up in the morning, the same hate that kept him moving even when his guts were spilling out between his fingers and he was running further into the forest away from death.
“Anthony definitely isn’t the only spy that we’ve come across, I was kidnapped just a few hours ago by one belonging to this other group. How they managed to get through to us without being seen I have no idea, but that’s the entire point of a spy, isn’t it? That must have been a very intentional play on his part, he knows how much I want to know who was the one to break my nose so easily, it’s tempting just because of that.”
“So what are you planning?” Joseph asked, “If you want to hand them over then just say the word, I can have my people round them up from their beds and delivered within the hour, all you need to do is tell me that it’s what you want. Is it what you want?”
“I…” I stopped, not because I was considering otherwise, but because I wanted to make sure that every single one of my words was my own. “I don’t want you to do that, but I appreciate it. I don’t want to take any deal that this asshole is giving me, I don’t trust him not to go back on his word anyway. What I want is for you to get your people, vampire and human, around the city looking to sniff out any hint of spy or secret, I don’t want to be taken by surprise like that ever again. This broken nose is the last drop of blood that any of us here are ever going to spill, do you understand me?”
“Quite.” He nodded. “I’ll make sure that every corner of the city is covered, if anyone sticks their heads up they’re not going to like the response that they get, you have my word.”
“Good, Christine are you able to keep taking care of the shifters here?”
“Yes,” She sighed, relief clear in the way she swept her arm across her brow, “I’m more than happy to keep them safe, I’m enjoying the company in fact. It’s been a long time since I’ve been around so many shifters and witches, it’s quite exciting!”
“Good, Damon and Vincent?” They looked at me in surprise, not expecting to get their own tasks for the time being. “Could you two carry me home? I think that the rest of the night is really starting to catch up to me. I just want to get some rest finally.”
“More than happy to assist,” Vincent chuckled, elbowing Damon in the side and stepping forward first, “I’ll be sure to let Damon feel useful as well, clearly he needs it.”
“Oh ha ha you dick,” Damon drawled, opening the door and waving goodbye to the rest of the group, “Just make sure that you don’t drop her, I know how hard it is for you to actually control your hands properly.”
“Are they always like this?” Christine asked, arching her brow and looking between the three of us, “I thought that you were just exaggerating when we first met.”
“No, no exaggeration here,” I laughed, “this is what it’s always like I’m afraid. And I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.”
Chapter 2
“When I asked if you could carry me, I didn’t actually expect that you would carry me all the way home.” Looking down at the ground racing below us, I had to fight not to squeeze my hands any tighter around Vincent’s arms. “Though I guess I really shouldn’t have assumed otherwise!”
“Don’t worry, it’s no trouble!” He yelled, voice barely audible over the rush of the wind, “How often do you get to feel like you’re flying either? This should be incredible!”
“The only thing that’s incredible is how much I want to vomit right now!” That wasn’t an exaggeration, I really don’t do well with flying at the best of times. And I would define the best of times by having a seatbelt and a set of walls around me, not this. Maybe I’m a bit of a snob, but I prefer vehicles when it comes to traveling.
In no time at all, yet not soon enough, we were touching down onto the balcony outside my apartment, Vincent taking care to make sure that I had my feet securely underneath me before letting me go. Not a bad thing to make sure of, considering that I almost immediately stumbled into the wall next to the sliding door. I really don’t deal well with flying.
Stepping inside however, it was easy to see that I wasn’t the only one who was feeling uneasy, Vincent had been sporting a troubled look on his face ever since we’d left the warehouse, even if he’d covered it up quickly by grabbing me and leaping into the air. Reac
hing for his hand and squeezing softly, he didn’t resist when I pulled him deeper into my apartment towards the couch, sitting him down and taking my seat next to him. With only a moment’s question Damon followed suit, sitting on Vincent’s other side and brushing their shoulders together, a secure wall that you could lean against if you needed to and be able to know that it wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. If his sigh was any indication, Vincent greatly appreciated the presence.
“I’m sorry,” He said, rubbing at his eyes, “Tonight has just been a lot, as I’m sure you can relate. I’m never used to potentially losing people I care about, and being taken right to his camp is definitely up there in terms of worst case scenarios.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, tweaking my nose slightly, “I’ll admit that… when I first woke up there I just assumed that the worst was going to happen, why wouldn’t it with the way our luck usually is right? But as absolutely insane as he is I don’t think he’s stupid, and killing me would have been a ridiculously stupid thing to do, that’s for sure.”
“But even still, I feel troubled by all of this.” With a great sigh, Vincent let himself fall back into the couch and stared up at the ceiling. In that moment, more than any since we’ve been together, he looked so profoundly… human, like he couldn’t tear a man apart with his bare hands, or that he had scars from hundreds of years ago. In that moment he just looked like a tired man desperate for some kind of peace, and it struck me that he must have felt like this many times over his lifetime with no one else to really speak to about it, for so long he must have just been so… lonely.
I placed my palm over his hand, leaning my head against his shoulder and glancing down at his chest, still amazed to this day that it never rose with breath and life. “What are you troubled about Vincent? Maybe I can help you through it, maybe both of us can.”
“It’s not so much what I’m troubled about,” He said, “it's more that you were so obviously troubled, even beyond what it was that you told the rest of the group. What you told all of us was concerning enough, but the thought that there is something more… I don’t know if I want to know what it could be.”