The receiver clicked into place and Monica emerged from seclusion, untying the red scarf from around her neck as she strolled into the living room. I could not help but notice the manner in which she held herself. “Hitting the healing spells?” I asked.
The corner of her mouth quirked in a reluctant grin. She slid the satin from its place and draped crimson red across my black coat. “What use is it having a few magical tricks if you don’t put them to use?”
“Is that – how do the members of your Order put it – in accordance with the natural order?” A smirk blossomed on my face. I sat on the arm of the couch, folding my hands atop my lap.
Monica rolled her eyes and wagged a finger at me. “Don’t get cute on me, Flynn, someone needs to protect your ass from getting thrown to the wolves. You’re the one who decided to save me from the Council. That means you have to put up with me, spells and all.”
I sighed. “I shall do my best to endure.”
“Cheeky bastard.” Monica swatted my shoulder as she walked close to me, but leaned close before I could respond. If I had chosen that moment to inhale, I might have caught my breath when I felt her warm lips touch my skin, precisely at the spot where my chin swept beneath my ear. As it was, my eyes shut partially, and a shiver ran the length of my spine. “I’m going to get some rest,” she said as she stood straight and motioned away. “Try to sleep, too. I might hit you up for a walk tomorrow evening when you wake.”
“As you wish,” I said, not even glancing in her direction. Counting her steps all the way to the bedroom, I listened to the door creak open and swallowed hard the moment it clicked shut. Within that span of seconds, I entertained a hundred mental images, none of which I dared replay. Instead, I slid onto one of the couch cushions and rested my head against the back, reclining in such a way as to stare up at the ceiling.
‘You have not bedded anyone since Sabrina, ’ I thought to myself, being mindful to speak the confession behind a mental wall. ‘You have not bitten anyone since the night before Robin’s death. Close contact is muddying your thoughts and you need to focus. ’ Bringing both hands to my face, I rubbed my eyes and ran my fingers through the locks of my hair.
I tried to think of anything else. My hair was getting long and I was due for a haircut. I should be mindful to locate the nearest hospital or blood bank, so I could stay fed while in Chicago. I would need to clean my katana. The ceiling bore a few cracks. Would switching on the television provide a proper distraction? No matter what I conjured, though, I could not stop the fantasies from playing. Her creamy white skin flooded my mind, the veins in her neck almost as alluring of a sight as the path downward to her breasts. If she was any other human, I would have liked to lay her down, remove her clothing in a slow, deliberate manner while relishing the moments of holding back fangs straining to descend. I struggled to remember the taste of her blood and a primal, urgent temptation surged to life. That I could drink from her just once more…
If she was any other human.
“In your heart, you’ll just keep fooling yourself into thinking you could be better, but this is what you are, Flynn. Nothing but a murderer. ”
Julian’s words knocked me from the haze and shot me into an upright position. Both hands fell to the couch on either side of me and my eyes met the television, failing to see my reflection in the vacant glass. “I would never harm her,” I whispered harshly. “Not a hair on her head, you bastard.” Still, I frowned and felt the sharp tips of my fangs scratch at my bottom lip. They had slid down without me even knowing it. The vampire clamored from within.
Retracting them, I stood and fetched my coat, snatching it in such an abrupt manner it knocked Monica’s scarf down onto the ground. I held my coat in my hands while watching it descend. Delicately, it touched the hardwood floor and I indulged in a steadying breath as I thought of fragile and precious things.
My eyes shut fully as I slid on my coat.
“You do not have the luxury of indulging these thoughts, seer,” I said, threading my arms through the sleeves. My deft fingers swept across each button, securing the coat shut. “Think as an assassin, if you must, but remember you have a mission to accomplish. Leave this nonsense at the door when you return.” With a huff, I headed outside and spent the remainder of the evening scouting around, getting my bearings and liberating a few pints of blood from a local hospital. Three cigarettes and four hours later, I ascended the staircase to the apartment and disappeared inside our new place of hiding.
After refrigerating the blood, I lay down on the couch and noticed my mind no closer to settled than it had been when I departed. Fatigue held me soundly in its throes, though, and no sooner did I switch on the television than I felt myself surrendering to the siren call of dawn. The debate was left unresolved and seemed liable to be for quite a while.
Even if it meant surrendering my more human impulses for the time being.
***
A hand nudged me awake the next evening and a smile greeted me when I woke. “Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Monica said as my eyes focused on her. “We need to get a few things for this place if I’m going to call it home.”
She continued grinning as I blinked several times and waded into lucidity. “As you wish,” I said groggily, rubbing at my face and sitting up. The television had been turned off and my coat folded neatly on an adjacent chair. The scent of coffee wafted in the air and Monica confessed she had slipped out just before dusk to fetch a cup and a small morsel to eat. “I don’t want to spend our cash on take-out, though, so you’re accompanying me to the store.”
The corner of my mouth curled in a grin. “Am I to be your bodyguard now?”
“Yup. Bodyguard, doctor, and seer, rolled into one.” She winked and walked away, making note of my acquisition of blood in such an idle fashion, it almost made me wonder if my habits had desensitized her. I mentioned showering after we returned and she scribbled notes on a rudimentary grocery list she had penned. The entire ordeal had gone from frenzied to domestic with such alarming swiftness, I had to stifle a sneer of revulsion as I walked with her to the store. Still, something about it bore a comfort I had not enjoyed since my days with Lydia.
She held onto my arm, just as she had been doing while more infirmed. We admired the sights and scents of Chicago while navigating the city streets and I caught myself chuckling more than once when she pointed out some familiar vestige of humanity that had captured her attention. Her stride had quickened, and while she watched her step at points and winced at others, I could not help but to notice the color which had returned to her countenance. By the time we made it back to the apartment, I was carrying brown paper bags without any derision, nearly pleased at how much my aid seemed to delight her.
The rest of the night passed with a similar tenor and the next two days followed suit. During quiet moments, I continued losing myself in my private thoughts, and during more active ones would engage my watcher in discussion. The flat was filled with the aroma of dinner when I woke and a cup of coffee always waited for me, on the table beside the couch. By the third night, enough time had passed for me to notice effect of what Monica had done to me at the train station. I found the opportunity to talk to her about it as I tended to her wounds.
She sat on her bed with me, blanket covering her bare chest enough for modesty’s sake and gazed at me in a conciliatory manner. “How did I know you were going to eventually bring that up?” she asked.
I smirked and wiped at her stitches with an alcohol swab. Granting myself a pause in conversation to assess her injury, I perked an eyebrow at the condition in which I found it. “Tell me more about these bloody healing spells of yours,” I said.
Monica laughed. She inched away just enough to cast a downward gaze at her chest. “Well, I don’t know any magic powerful enough to mend an injury like that in one application, but you can usually speed along the healing process without getting into chicken bones and sacred artifacts.”
As our eyes met, I laughed.
“You mean to tell me there is some truth to that whole concept?”
“The right words and enough aptitude and yeah, there sure is.”
“Remarkable.” Bending, I reached for the duffle bag on the floor and lifted it onto the bed with us. The scissors and tweezers provided to me by Chloe lay on the bottom. I fished them out and set them down with the other items I had extracted earlier.
Monica watched, a faint grin on her face. “What is your prognosis, Dr. Dawes?”
I sighed. “I truly wish you would not call me that,” I said, but failed to frown in a stern enough fashion to lend any credence toward my irritation. Within moments, I had inched close enough to tug at one of her stitches with the tweezers. “This looks mended enough to remove the sutures.”
“You sure that’s a good idea? Doesn’t someone need to dig in and remove whatever they put inside me?”
“No. The ones inside of you dissolve.” I murmured the comment while already reaching for the scissors. “Hold still and speak to me while I do this.”
Monica nodded, but failed to talk while I snipped the first two knots. As I settled into a rhythm, though, I felt her relax and stopped working only briefly as she drew a deep breath inward and exhaled it. “When I first brought out your abilities,” she said, “I didn’t think you were ready for the whole shebang. You have to figure, it’s a lot of juice to give a sociopathic killer and while I didn’t expect you to go as kid-in-a-candy-store happy as you did, I knew there’d be some sort of learning curve. So, I… had you on lockdown.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I created a lock. Granted, you’re powerful enough that you could’ve picked it, but you’re not trained enough to know how.”
I frowned, but did not look away from what I was doing. “So, I have not had full access to my abilities until now?”
“No, you haven’t.” She paused and finally, I glanced upward in time to catch a flash of guilt cross her gaze. Monica tilted her head. “Can you really blame me all that much for doing it, Flynn?”
We regarded each other in silence for several beats. Finally, I shook my head and directed my attention back to her wound. “No, I suppose not. I did run amok a trifle with what I did have.”
“You see? I wanted to make sure you had a handle on the basics before we moved you to the major leagues. And I…” She trailed off.
When she failed to continue, I furrowed my brow. “You did what?”
“I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t fall into your old ways. That’s why I waited until we were at the train station.”
What was meant as a soft chuckle came out a sardonic huff. “That danger yet exists. Why give it to me now?”
“I disagree, but I don’t want to fight with you. Especially not while you’re holding a pair of scissors.”
The best I could offer her was a nod. The topic had been visited once in the past three days and yielded a spirited debate I finally demanded cease when we reached an impasse. Not in the mood for a rematch either, I let her assertion stand. My focus shifted to the final sutures. “What should I be able to do now?” I asked.
“Who the hell knows?” Monica tensed with the next tug, but continued talking without being deterred. “You’re a vampire-seer. If I hold up one finger, I’ll be able to count the number of those I’ve even heard of, let alone met.”
“That one being me.”
“Bingo.” She sighed. “What that means? I have no idea how the two sides blend together. And considering you were made to be some incredible vampire hunter, you could have a pretty extensive list.”
“I took to knives and sword exceedingly well.” The thought threatened to provoke a sigh to mirror hers, but I managed to suppress it. “Within a year, I was ready to assume my duties as an assassin. Sabrina flew in specialists when I eclipsed Robin’s talents – masters from as far away as Japan, and they dubbed me some form of savant.”
“You found your weapon of choice pretty early, then.”
I glanced at her for a brief moment. “My weapon of choice?”
She smirked. “Every seer has one. And some don’t need their gifts to be drawn to it. There are stories of seers from centuries ago who wielded sickles because they had become so damn good at using them in their normal lives.” Monica shrugged and shifted a little as I continued removing her stitches. “In any event, that’s how it starts. You get really good at shooting arrows through things or whipping swords around and then, you start hearing voices in your head. Before you know it, you’re piss drunk at a party and accidentally throw someone across the room with your mind. When you wake up in the morning, you have green eyes.”
Laughing, I snipped the final knot and pulled the last of the sutures from my watcher’s chest. I deftly gathered the discarded pieces in my hand and stood to walk to a trash can across the room, my fingers still threaded in the holes of the scissors. “You make it sound somewhat like a hangover.”
“I’m sure to some people it feels that way.”
“The Order comes to collect you at some point thereafter?”
“Anywhere between a few hours and a couple of days. They try not to make it longer.” Monica slipped the blanket over both shoulders when I turned to face her again. I shook away the urge to linger on the brief glimpses of her skin I had been granted. “The longer they wait, the better chance you’ll do something stupid.”
I set the scissors down on the top of a dresser and dusted off my hands. When I glanced back at her, I smirked. “You covered up before I could finish.”
“It looks fine enough. I doubt you need to bandage it again.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“Fair enough.” Walking back to the bed, I sat on the edge and sighed. My hands folded on my lap and my gaze shifted away. “So, what you are telling me is these alleged ‘textbook’ abilities of which you have spoken actually defy any sort of textbook when it comes to me.”
In my periphery, I saw her nod. “Seers are diverse enough as it is. Some are more combative. Some are better with the mental tricks. Some do a little spellcasting and others are jacks-of-all-trades. You? Hell, you could be the one ring to rule them all.”
“A comforting assessment.”
Silence fell between us. My thoughts circled around the concept several times over while failing to land on solid ground. I became so lost in speculation, I almost jumped when I felt her hand settle on my shoulder. My eyes darted toward hers and my brow furrowed as she inched closer to where I sat. “Don’t try to figure it all out at once, Flynn,” she said. “We’re writing the textbook as we go along. Sometimes necessity will spur you along to learn the lessons faster than I can teach them. It’s a good thing, too. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Perhaps.” Something about the way her fingers closed around me inspired a shiver to run the length of my spine. Our mutual gaze held trance-like while my hand lifted to touch hers. Her smile turned warm and I swore I could feel its radiance ebb into my veins. I reluctantly surrendered a subdued grin. “I would not be here without your intervention, so I declare us even on that account. There is, however, the matter of repaying the other debts I owe.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I beg to differ.” The fledgling grin vanished slowly. A heaviness settled on my heart which forced my eyes away again. “I believe I shall take a walk. I grow loathe to sit still and we have not wandered around much since that first evening.”
“No, we haven’t.” She paused. I felt the weight of her stare and looked back at her, seeing her regard me in a manner I could not quite decipher. “Can I get dressed and join you?”
“As you wish.” With a nod, I freed her hand from the loose grip I held upon it and stood to exit the room. She quipped about privacy as I offered her a chuckle and shut the door behind me. Allowing my mind to quiet itself for the time being, I walked over to where I kept my coat and slid my arms through the sleeves. The fabric settled on the slight downward slope my shoulders maintained, feelin
g heavier than I recalled it being the last time I wore it.
She emerged from the room a few minutes later, clad in a fresh set of clothes. My gaze was distant, face pointed toward the window as I studied the faint glow of moonlight through the blinds. Her pulse beat steady in the background, but I did not turn my head to acknowledge her. She lingered in the doorway. Finally, I heard her shift in place and settle again. “What is it, Flynn?” Monica asked.
I swallowed down a lump forming in my throat. “So many things all at once,” I said. “I suppose I am preparing myself for what is to come.”
“I only feel some of that.”
“You are empathic now?”
“I’m a good read of people, I’ll have you know.” She stepped closer by a pace. “Are you still churning on that whole duality thing?”
“In part. Humanity still escapes my grasp and I fear it shall always be this way.”
For a few beats; silence. The steady sound of Monica drawing breath accompanied the cadence of her heart. “I thought mingling with humans more would help me to understand, but I cannot escape the level of detachment I harbor with regard to them. Their energy radiates around me like a hum and speaks a foreign language all at once.” Reluctantly, I succumbed to a frown. “Being around them only reminds me of what I am no longer. I look to people such as the Council and see only hypocrites. And no matter how many times you pledge there is some good in me, I know the darkness lingers still.”
“Peter…”
My eyes shut. “Do not call me that.”
“I want to speak freely, if I could.”
Opening my lids once more, I finally turned my head to line her in my sight. She mirrored my frown. “Peter, I know something happened to you when you faced Sabrina again,” she said. “I’ve never seen the wind escape someone’s sails faster than it did yours and it scared you into hiding behind this alter ego of yours. I get it, and didn’t argue when you claimed this pledge you made to my sister, but I know the truth. You faced the demon again and think that’s all you’ll find when you peel back the layers. There’s more to you than that, though.”
Rebirth of the Seer Page 14