Chapter 18 #2
“I’ve never…” Tai tried to process the reality that if this were all true, he could have been coping better.
All these years. He swallowed a hard, salty lump of emotion that pushed into his throat, blinked hard as a burning began behind his eyes.
Somehow Peter’s matter-of-fact advice felt overly kind, even sacred.
Tai cleared his throat of the overwhelm, the old hurts.
“I do get cold. A lot. But I tell myself to toughen up, no one else is this cold, don’t be a wimp. ”
“And how does that work for you?”
Tai ducked his head. Felt stupid now.
Peter’s voice gentled. “Some folks resist taking care of themselves.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“I’m truly sorry, Tai. You shouldn’t have been alone with this.”
“It’s fine,” he said quickly.
There was the hand again, a firm grip on Tai’s shoulder that compelled him to meet Peter’s eyes.
“No,” Peter said. “It isn’t fine. None of us should struggle alone.
And I’m not going to lie to you; it is a struggle, even at my age.
It never goes away. But, kid, if you’ve got the needles that bad, then you’re in a worse place than you need to be.
The needles go away altogether when we take care of ourselves.
They’re a warning sign that your body’s having a hard time. ”
Tai scrubbed a hand down his face. “Sounds about right.”
“Let’s work on it together, okay? Call me when you need to. We can meet out here and talk through it. If it’s getting to you in the moment, I’ll give you tips over the phone. Mid-attack, it can be hard to remember what to do until the habits really get ingrained.”
“Yeah. I will. I…I appreciate the offer.”
Peter gave a smirk. “What else is a relic for than to pass along our hard-earned wisdom to you lookers?”
Tai chuckled, and it felt good, lightening the weight on his shoulders. “Okay. What’s next? What big obvious thing have I never heard of?”
“This isn’t your fault.”
He rolled his eyes. “Um, I already knew that one.”
“No, kid. Look at me.”
When Tai did, Peter took him by both shoulders and studied him hard. His eyes flared with a golden-green shine that Tai felt all the way to his cold bones. Peter was letting Tai see the fullness of his age, two centuries plus, despite the usual caginess of relics.
“Why are you showing me?” Tai whispered.
“So you’ll believe me,” Peter said, and his voice was melody and harmony, point and counterpoint, a dozen instruments while Tai’s fullest voice held only a few. “I’m nearing my three-hundredth birthday, young one. I have never harmed a human. Nor will you.”
Tai gripped the back of the bench. He needed to hold onto something. “Peter, I’m scared.”
“I know you are. I know you’d rather die than hurt a human.”
Tai nodded. That was it. No, he didn’t want to die. Not at all, not when an attack was at its very worst, not ever. But if he had to choose between himself and humans who couldn’t protect themselves from him…
“You need not choose,” Peter said, as if his power as a relic included telepathy. “You won’t hunt them or take them. You won’t slake from them.”
“How can you know that?” Tai whispered. Now he was scared of hope.
“Having lived this long, I’ve got an acute sense of people, what’s knit into their souls.
One of your thickest threads is compassion, Tai.
And you’re incredibly strong for your age, stronger than you know.
Those two things together will never let you slake from them.
” His grip on Tai’s shoulders tightened.
“But you’re holding shame. You’ve held it so long, it’s become a thread too. ”
Tai nodded. Shame was certainly part of him. Compassion and strength? He hoped so.
“I want you to trust this, if you trust nothing else I say today,” Peter said. “You won’t harm them. You need not keep living with that fear.”
“I feel weak sometimes.” He shut his eyes against the admission, but then he opened them again. He needed to see Peter’s reaction.
The brightness of Peter’s eyes banked to a typical vampire glimmer.
He gave Tai’s shoulder a firm clap, then let him go.
His voice receded too, his choice of words casual again, no longer so formal and old.
“We all feel weak sometimes, Tai, but you and I, we’re mighty.
We win a war every time our genes try to ambush us.
And it’s not something we asked for. It’s not our fault. ”
Tai tried to listen, to believe despite the voice of his father in his head.
“Claire said I’m strong,” he said at last, and his voice sounded small, almost childlike.
“Claire’s brilliant,” Peter said.
Tai’s laugh was broken but real. “She really is.”
“Somebody else called you weak.”
Not much of a stretch to that conclusion, but it pierced anyway.
Tai nodded. Weak. Defective. Vile. “Sometimes I wonder if…if I’ll last my full lifespan.
A thousand years of this. I want to make it, Peter, but sometimes I think having to fight so hard…
it’s too much. It’s going to shorten my years by at least a century. ”
“That’s what the tools are for, kid. You don’t have to muscle through it on sheer willpower; in fact, if you try that, you really might steal years from your life.
Look, I’ve been bundling up in blankets and slaking as often as my metabolism dictates since before the signing of the Constitution, and if you dare call me a weakling for it, I’ll take you down to the ground. ”
Sparring, training, speed and agility—forget all of it. Tai would not want to fight a vampire as old as this one. Peter was anything but weak.
And there it was. The whole point he’d been trying to make since Tai got here.
“And hey,” Peter said, “you’ve got tools I never dreamed of back then. A thermostat built into the wall of my house? Electricity and self-heating blankets? Get out of here.”
Tai laughed, then shook his head. “Peter, I…I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I can tell you how. Take my tips and use them. When you’re having a hard time, call me. Stop trying to muscle through this alone.”
“Okay,” Tai said.
“And one more thing. Find a way to put down the shame.”
“That one might take longer.” But oh, how he wanted to achieve everything Peter asked of him. He’d never felt so hopeful about his condition, never in his life.
“Hope is good,” Peter said quietly. He must be able to sense this too, rising in Tai like a crescendo of sweet strings and flutes.
“Yeah.” Tai swiped at his cheeks, sure he’d find tears, but his eyes were dry. “I want to get there. I think maybe I can. To a place that’s not so hard.”
“You’ve got a millennium, kid. Start now and you’ll get to that place before you know it, get to enjoy the rest of your life.”
“With Claire,” Tai said, then laughed. “I guess that’s presumptuous, given we’ve been dating for all of a month.”
“Nah.” Peter gave Tai’s shoulder a light shove. “When she talks about you, she’s talking about the man she loves. So do your part. Get to work.”
Tai had never felt more ready for hard work. For hopeful work.