by Amira Rain
Now nearly vibrating with rage, I spoke with my fists balled. “Liar. You’re lying about everything. My dad never got anyone killed. I just don’t believe it.”
Matt heaved a sigh. “Everything I’ve told you has been the truth.”
“Says the man who has apparently been lying to me for weeks or is lying to me now. First, you said my dad was a great man and a war hero. Now, he’s an evil villain who got lots of innocent people killed. Which is it, Matt?”
“I’m deeply sorry that I’ve been lying to you. Please believe me. I was just terrified of this whole thing driving us apart and taking you away from me, which is now clearly coming to pass. I also just thought that maybe you being able to carry a positive image of your dad in your mind might be best. I understand now, though, that that wasn’t my judgment call to make. I should have just told you the truth about your dad from the beginning, come what may.”
“You should have just told me the truth about yourself…that you’re a cold-blooded murderer.”
Sighing again, Matt raked his hands over his face. “I’m not, Kylie. I did what I had to do to Seth to save people. There are dozens of people in the village who can attest to this, too. It was Mack who initially overheard Seth giving information to the Bloodborns. Then later, others of my men overheard the same, observing Seth meeting with a Bloodborn leader with their very own eyes. The final proof for me was when we hacked his personal email account and found hundreds of emails from him to the Bloodborns, giving them all sorts of classified information that, like I said, ended up getting many innocent people killed.”
“Right, like I’m going to take your word for all this. Like I’m going to believe any of your men, either. I’m sure they all have their lines well-rehearsed. I bet even Uncle Dan will continue lying for you, too…probably afraid you’ll kill him next if he doesn’t.”
Matt sighed for the third time, his expression of frustration illuminated by the pale sunlight slanting in through the window. “Look, Kylie…I’m so deeply sorry for what happened. I’m so deeply sorry that I was forced to kill Seth. I’m so deeply sorry that I’ve been lying to you for well over a month now. But you have to know…I’m not lying to you now. I’m, not sure how I can convince you, but--”
“You can’t. You can’t, and I don’t even want you to try. I just want you to leave the house and leave me alone before I do something I might regret.”
Trembling with a quiet, lethal, coiled sort of rage, I was actually afraid I might try to shove or punch Matt, and the last thing I wanted to do was sink to his physically violent level, not that a shove would have been anywhere close to a murder.
Almost surprising me, I didn’t have to ask him twice to leave. After giving me one last long look, eyes filled with pain (although I was sure he was just pretending to be wounded), Matt turned and began heading to the foyer, grabbing his jacket from the island along the way.
Discovering that I still had a few last things to say, I called out after him. “At least now I know why you’ve been acting so funny and quiet sometimes these past few weeks. You’ve been wracked with guilt, and you should be. You should be sick with yourself. You took away my chance to find Mr. Decker again, Matt…and I will never, ever forgive you.”
With his back turned toward me, he froze for a long moment before continuing to the foyer. He then opened the front door, stepped outside, and closed it, leaving me alone like I’d asked.
I’d never been a “day drinker” before. I’d never even been too much of an evening drinker, enjoying a glass or two of wine with dinner sometimes, but that was about it. However, I was about to make my first daytime foray into alcohol excess. I felt like I needed to, almost had to. I just needed something to take the edge off and tamp down my rage because I just didn’t know where to “put” it.
On the counter was an opened bottle of merlot with only a splash missing. That was all I’d needed the day before to make a braised beef recipe in the crockpot. Now, I was going to need just a little bit more.
After grabbing the bottle of wine and uncorking it, I poured at least a third of the bottle into a large wineglass, filling it nearly to the brim. Then, I lifted the glass to my lips and just “shot gunned” the contents, “glugging” the alcohol in a way that I’d never done in my life before. I’d always been a “sipper” and an “enjoyer.”
Two minutes hadn’t even gone by before I began to feel the effects of the alcohol, becoming a little lightheaded in the most pleasant possible way. Feeling my anger begin to dissipate, I had the idea to call Amy to tell her what had happened. However, once I’d pulled my phone from my pocket, I set it on the island, deciding to have another drink or two first instead.
Maybe halfway through the bottle, I decided that I didn’t even want to call Amy anymore. Although she was my best friend, for some reason, I just had a hunch that she would take Matt’s side of things, telling me that he must be telling the truth and urging me to investigate. And that was not what I wanted to hear at present.
Leaning over the kitchen sink, I looked out the window, periodically taking a chug of wine, for quite a while. It had been unseasonably warm the previous week, melting all the snow in the yard, leaving nothing but brownish, withered grass. It was at this bleak tableau that I looked, noticing that the bright sun had disappeared when Matt had left the house. Now, dark clouds, probably filled with snow, or maybe rain since the temperature was somewhere in the mid-thirties, were rolling across the sky.
I probably finished the entire bottle of wine within an hour or an hour-and-a-half. I really wasn’t sure. The kitchen clock had stopped the day before, apparently needing new batteries, and I hadn’t put any in yet. And as far as checking the time on my phone, I’d tried a few times while drinking, but each time, the phone had vibrated without unlocking, with a message flashing across the screen saying that the four-digit passcode I had entered was incorrect. “Well, that’s your problem,” I’d angrily said to my phone at one point before just giving up.
I wasn’t quite sure how I eventually wound up sitting at the little computer desk in one corner of the kitchen, but somehow, after finishing a very unusual, sloppily-made snack of yogurt-topped crackers, I did. And somehow, not long after that, I found myself putting into a search engine the following words and phrases: tourism, visit, gene-positive, and Bloodborn Federated States. After hitting go, I didn’t even study the search results before clicking on the first one, soon seeing that it was precisely the website I’d been wanting. At least vaguely wanting.
With the room spinning slightly, I really wasn’t sure what I was trying to do. I was just kind of doing whatever I felt like, or whatever I found myself doing. And what I found myself doing after a quick look around the Bloodborn’s “tourism” website was filling out a form labeled contact, not even caring or understanding what I was trying to do, and not even bothering to stop and correct numerous typos.
Hello, Bloodborn guys. I want to remain anonymous, but I have some information you guys might want to know about. See, I just found out t5hat my bio dad, who was a dragon shifter named Seth who maybe, possibly (I really don’t believe it that much, though) tried to work with you guys or something. I also just found out that he was ki8lled completely in cold blood by my husband, who is Commander Matthew Grant of Greenwood. (Doesn’t he sound fancy for a murderer?) Matt lied to me about all this. He’s been lying to me ever since I told him about my dad. He is such a damned, damned liar. He makes me sOOOO SICK. SIck enough to drink wine in the middle of the day.
Pausing to rest my spinning head on the side of the computer table, I wondered just what, exactly, I was trying to accomplish with my email. Eventually, though, I lifted my spinning head and began typing again, deciding that I just didn’t care.
I DON’T BELIEVE MY DAD WAS BAD. I think he COU&LD have maybe become some kind of a Mr. Decker-type dad, but Matt TOOK THAT CHANCE AWAY FROM ME. Didn’t he. He did. I THink Matt isn’t even telling me the truth about the whole story. I think maybe Uncle
Dan WAS considering Seth for commander or something, and that’s why Matt killed him- to get rid of the competition. And Uncle Dan probably let him do it because Seth was always a thorn in his side his whole life, just because he had a little rebellious streak or something. SO WHAT. Lots of kids try out cigarettes. I smoked one myself once, and right in the girl’s locker room at school, no less. And ***I*** wasn’t some damned huge problem child or anything. In fact, taking three puffs on that cigarette was the worst thing I ever did in high SCHOOL BY FAR.
Again, I paused in my typing, realizing that whatever I was trying to do, I was probably getting way off track. Maybe. That was awfully hard to determine, though, because I didn’t really know what I was trying to do in the first place.
Telling myself aloud to stay focused, I went back to typing, finally getting a sense of what my goal was in filling out the contact form.
I want to tell you Bloodborn guys something, because I want revenge for what Matt did to my dad. I want to tell you guys that when you guys att6ack Greenwood, Matt is going to go a mile to the west or something when you guys are coming. The second he gets words that you guys are flying over, he’s going to go over there, to the west, and he’s going to be by himself. So, if you guys want to take him out, just go west first and go get him. He’ll be all alone. I know you guys want to kill him, and I, too, want him
I abruptly stopped typing because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t type the word dead, because it wasn’t true. Even though Matt had killed Seth, I couldn’t even stand the thought of him being hurt in any way. The truth was that I still loved him, and I knew it. I knew I probably always would love him, despite what he’d done. I just couldn’t force my heart to not feel what it did.
Knowing that my little blowing off steam session, or revenge fantasy, or whatever I’d been doing, was now over, having served its purpose, I grabbed the computer mouse and began moving it to close the website tab, obviously without hitting send on the message I’d written.
However, right then, Charlie came charging into the kitchen and didn’t start skidding to a stop quite fast enough, which made him bump into the back of my computer chair. Which made me lurch forward a bit, which made my hand move. At the same time, I squeezed the mouse reflexively, just trying to hold onto something and not fall out of my chair in my drunken state. My head was spinning so much that Charlie merely bumping me had made that a distinct possibility.
Once I’d kind of gotten my bearings, I looked at the computer screen and saw a line of words that I had to read twice, slowly, just to fully wrap my intoxicated brain around them and make myself understand.
Success! Your message has been sent.
Below these words were more words.
Thank you for your interest in the Bloodborn Federated States, formerly known as Canada. We take all tourism inquiries very seriously, and this mailbox is continually monitored twenty-four hours a day. Your message will be read and a response issued within five minutes.
With Charlie whining beside my chair, probably sensing that something wasn’t quite right with me, I reread the message for a second time before flying up from my chair and staggering over to the sink. I then got sick, vomiting up a disgusting mixture of barely-digested yogurt-topped crackers and wine.
*
After spilling the contents of my stomach over the sink, I sprayed it all down the drain with the dish sprayer hose thing, then brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth out with mouthwash in one of the ground floor bathrooms, never more glad that I kept oral hygiene items in every single bathroom in the house. Not that oral care was my top priority right then, even though I did always feel an urgent need to immediately clean my mouth after vomiting.
Currently, I had much bigger problems and things to think about. Namely, the message I’d just accidentally sent to the Bloodborns. I hadn’t filled out the name and contact info part of the form, not that that even mattered. What did matter was that they now knew Matt’s battle plan, or they would know it anyway within a few minutes.
Back out in the kitchen, I began pacing, trying to figure out what to do. I was definitely still feeling the effects of all the wine I’d drunk, but they were dissipating now.
“Just give me a second to just think, Charlie, and I’ll figure all this out. Just give me a second. Just let me clear my head a bit and just think.”
He wasn’t doing anything to stop me. Sitting in the corner wearing a very human-like expression of concern on his furry little face, he just watched me, periodically whining. At his feet was the plastic dinosaur chew toy that I’d seen Shadow possessively protecting with an arm when I’d seen the dogs sleeping on the landing earlier. I suspected that this chew toy was the reason Charlie had come charging into the kitchen and had bumped me, leading to me accidentally sending the message to the Bloodborns.
I guessed that Charlie had probably either snuck the chew toy away from Shadow, or had wrested it away from him, and had come charging into the kitchen with it in his mouth, excited to show me his “triumph.”
Before I could figure out what to do, a knock sounded at the door, and thinking it might be Amy, since she often stopped by without calling, I flew out to the foyer and pulled open the front door without even looking to see who was on the other side. Surprising me, it wasn’t Amy, but Uncle Don, and he didn’t even say hello, just immediately held out a notebook.
“Please take this. It was one of your Aunt June’s journals. Read the entry marked August third. It’s one of the last pages.”
Taking the notebook without understanding why Dan could possibly be giving it to me, I opened my mouth to ask him, but he cut me off, speaking loudly to be heard above Charlie’s barking behind me.
“I really don’t want to get too involved in this business between you and Matt. It’s your marriage, and the two of you need to work things out together. That being said, I’ve already been pulled into it, in a way, by going along with Matt with what he wanted to tell you about Seth, and then overhearing some of what was said when I’m assuming he dropped his phone earlier. I wasn’t trying to be nosy, although I’m sure I was, but now I’m a bit glad I was, because it gave me the idea to give you June’s journal to help you see things more clearly.”
“But what--”
“Just please read her August third entry. It’s written in a lady’s script, and the pages are a bit weathered by now from me thumbing through them, so you’ll know that this isn’t some document that I just now forged in an attempt to help Matt. This was June’s journal, and she wasn’t conned or pressured into writing what she did. She just wrote the truth…just the truth of a heartbroken aunt dealing with a nephew who’d committed some evil acts and had gotten some innocent people killed. Please, just read it. I think it will help you understand that Matt may have been lying to you the previous month or so, which was terribly wrong of him, but he wasn’t lying when he told you what he did earlier. He killed Seth because he had to, Kylie. And it was certainly a hard thing, and a gut-wrenching thing for many of us, but it’s what he had to do to keep this community safe. And that’s the truth.”
With that, Uncle Dan turned and left the porch with more speed than I’d ever seen him use. Wondering if maybe I should tell him what I’d just accidentally done and ask him for help and advice, I called out to him when he reached the driveway, but whether because he just didn’t want to or because he just couldn’t hear me, he didn’t stop or even glance back at me.
Not knowing what else to do, and very curious to read June’s August third journal entry anyway, I shut the front door, went into the kitchen, and opened the notebook on the island, flipping to the page marked August third. Then, gliding my finger beneath each line of writing to help my slowly-sobering-but-still-very-buzzy brain focus, I began reading.
Today, I’m in anguish because Dan told me that Seth must be killed. There is no other way, he says. Dragon shifters can’t be contained in a prison, as I’d hoped might be possible. But it’s just not realistic. Seth must be killed
before he hurts anyone else.
Dan brought me all the proof of Seth’s treachery that I asked him for—all the emails, all the sworn statements from Matt’s men, and the pictures of Seth meeting with the Bloodborns. I can see now that he’s guilty of what they’ve accused him of. I have no doubt now. Remembering the sandy-haired, thirteen-year-old boy who once told me that he loved me but just felt “too embarrassed and lame” to show it very often, I’ve talked myself into denying the truth about what Seth has become for so long. Not anymore, though. I told Dan to tell Matt to please just kill him quickly. That’s all I want now. Making him suffer won’t bring back any of the people who died as a result of the information that he gave to the Bloodborns.
I’m going to sleep now, and when Dan returns home tonight, I hope he wakes me and tells me it’s all over.
Feeling sick, though not like I was going to vomit again, I closed June’s journal, knowing I’d made a huge mistake. Matt had been telling me the full truth about Seth earlier in the kitchen that day, and I hadn’t believed him. Not that I could really blame myself very much, since he’d been lying to me for over a month, but still.
I now wished that I would have trusted him when he’d told me that he was finally telling the truth. Maybe having a little faith would have prevented me from feeling that I needed to drink all my pain and anger away. Which, of course, would have prevented me from writing the message to the Bloodborns that I had, and I currently wouldn’t be faced with the problem of trying to figure out how to fix things.
I paced around the kitchen for a while, anxiously twisting and untwisting my fingers. On the one hand, my impulse was to call up Matt and just come out and tell him what had happened and what I’d accidentally done. On the other hand, though, now that I knew that he’d been telling me the truth that afternoon, I didn’t want to lose him. Which I thought there was a pretty good chance of if I told him that I’d actually given his battle plans to the Bloodborns. I didn’t think it would even matter if I insisted that I’d done it accidentally.