16. Tavia
Chapter 16
Tavia
“ Y ou want to meet our guest?” Amy’s voice was full of mirth as we got ready the next morning. “She’s feisty. Reminds me of you actually.”
“Sure. You were planning on seeing her this morning?” I pulled a brush through my hair and yawned.
We’d been up most of the night talking, and I only caught a few hours of sleep in the early morning. Back at the vampire compound, I would have slept well into the afternoon. Here, I fell back into my human habits and had risen with the sun.
“It’s Robin’s turn to bring her breakfast this morning, but I like to tag along and give her some company.”
“What’s her name again? I’m borrowing a shirt, by the way.”
“Heather. And sure, help yourself.”
“I can’t wait to see Robin, too.”
“She’s gonna flip her shit when she sees you.” Amy went quiet. “We never thought we’d see you again. It sounds dumb now but we even had a little memorial for you. We thought...”
“Hey.” I pulled her into a hug. “I know. I thought I was a goner too. But the vampires aren’t so bad, actually. I might get to visit regularly. Maybe you can even visit me.”
Amy pulled away with a cringe. “Visit a vampire clan? That’ll be like a lamb hanging out with a pack of wolves, won’t it?”
“It’s not like that. Everyone’s very respectful.” Although to be honest, I couldn’t be sure. People didn’t mess with me because I was Cyan’s blood pet. Would Amy be as safe if a vampire didn’t have a similar claim on her?
“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” I tacked on. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah. You hungry?” She led the way out of the trailer and locked up behind us.
“Starving,” I admitted. “The market over there has a deli that makes amazing breakfast burritos, but sometimes you want something classic like pancakes, you know? I’ve been there a few times and have yet to see a basic box of pancake mix on the shelf.”
Amy was quiet for a while as we walked. She kept facing forward, ignoring the looks of disdain from others we passed by. Some eyebrows raised and whispers were exchanged when they saw that I was in fact alive and well. I met the eyes of anyone who dared to keep looking, an open challenge to come mess with us. No one held my gaze. Bullies were cowards at their core, after all.
“So they’re good to you over there, huh?” she asked.
“Yeah, I would say so.”
“Makes you wonder if we’re really so much better off here,” Amy muttered. “Cut off from the rest of the territory in the name of freedom and independence. But are we, really? Free and independent, that is.”
Hope fluttered in my chest, but it was quickly weighed down by reality. I wanted to say the words, to offer her a way out of Sapien. Cyan would let her come home with me, he would have to. Amy and I would be together, and she’d be safer that way.
But bullying and mob mentality didn’t just exist in humans. Vampires were just as likely to push her around because she struggled with some things. Leaving Sapien wouldn’t necessarily mean a better life for her, but I would be able to protect her better.
My unspoken thoughts swirled as we caught up to Robin on her way to the council building, carrying a stack of sealed food containers. I called her name and waved, making the poor woman nearly drop her load when she saw me.
“Tavia?” she said in a gasp, her eyes welling with tears. “Holy shit, is it really you?”
“Really me, back for a quick visit. I’m only staying until tonight.” I rested my elbow on Amy’s shoulder. “I crashed at the short stack’s place last night, otherwise I would have come said hello sooner.”
“Well, holy hell, you’re the last person I expected to see.” Robin’s eyes scanned over me quickly. “You look well.”
“She says the vampires actually treat humans well.” Amy’s eyes went from me to Robin, making me wonder if they had been talking about leaving Sapien before.
“You’ll have to tell me all about it.” Robin smiled, and I realized it had been years since I saw genuine joy on her face. “Did Amy tell you about the stray we found?” She angled her head toward the council building.
“Yeah, I wanted to meet her actually.” The three of us started in that direction, Robin leading the way.
“She’s scared,” the older woman said with a look of sympathy. “I actually just got done with talking to Nancy and she agreed to let her out. Keeping her locked up won’t help her trust us. We’ll prepare a trailer for her to stay in, but what she does from here is her choice.”
“Glad old Nancy came to her senses,” I muttered.
Amy and Robin both shot me harsh looks. Amy even make a tsking noise, which I ignored. I stopped respecting the elders years ago. And I wasn’t part of the community anymore, so there was no point in even pretending to kiss their asses.
The double doors of the council building were held together with a chain and padlock. They were swung outward slightly, as if someone had been pushing against them from inside. A spark of anger ignited in me. The same people who imprisoned this woman allowed my best friend to be mistreated and abused. They would have sent Amy to die if I hadn’t stepped in.
I would’ve tried to run away too.
I held the food containers while Robin unlocked the doors, pulling the chain through the handles and discarding it to the side. Amy walked through first, the warmest and most non-threatening of all of us.
“Hello?” she called out. “It’s just us, Heather. We’ve brought you breakfast and the doors won’t be locked anymore.”
A bright blonde head popped out from behind one of the desks. Her hair was tangled and her blue eyes were wide. “I can leave?”
“At your own risk,” Robin said in her mom-voice. “I highly suggest you stay here, at least until you get your strength up. It looks like you haven’t been eating.” She nodded at containers of food on a side table next to the door.
“Like I’m going to eat anything you psychos give me,” Heather hissed.
I popped the lid on one of the containers in my arms, the smell of cheese, spices, and warm scrambled egg making my stomach growl. “Robin, you got a fork?”
She handed me the utensil from her back pocket, and I used it to cut into the omelet. The blonde’s eyes went even wider as steam rose up from the cooked interior. Breakfast potatoes, mushrooms, and cheese spilled out, and I stabbed a generous forkful in my mouth, moaning as I chewed.
If she didn’t want it, fine. I was fucking hungry.
“The council are a bunch of assholes, but Maureen sure as hell knows her way around a kitchen.” I shoved more omelet into my mouth, thinking I should probably steal Amy and the head cook away to Blood ‘til Dawn’s compound.
“Who the hell are you?” Heather was almost visibly drooling as she watched me eat.
“I’m Octavia. I was actually sacrificed to the vampires by this lovely community about a month ago.”
“Ugh, again with the vampires,” she groaned. “I don’t know how they got you people so brainwashed, but it’s really concerning.”
I waved my fork at her, her eyes following the scrambled egg and potato speared on the tines. “Come out and eat, and we’ll talk. Whether or not you believe is up to you.”
“Obviously I don’t believe.” Heather came out from behind the desk slowly, her stomach growling as her gaze fixated on the food in my hands.
I set the container and fork on the floor in the middle of the room and backed away. “A vampire is coming tonight to take me back to their compound. You’ll be able to see one with your own eyes.”
“Sure.” That was all she said before she pounced on the omelet, inhaling ravenously. She’d forgone the fork entirely and picked the whole thing up to eat like an eggy burrito.
We gave her water and allowed her time to eat as Robin, Amy, and I settled into nearby chairs
“You must know, on some level, that you’re in another world,” Robin began gently when all the food was gone. “It feels different here, doesn’t it? The air pressure, atmosphere, whatever you want to call it. One thing I notice when I go to the human world is the distinct lack of magic in the air.”
Heather snorted dismissively before taking another gulp of water. “Sure, okay.”
“You felt something the moment you crossed the border into this world,” I said. “Everyone experiences it differently, but it’s a sensation passing over your skin. It could feel like spiderwebs or a cool mist.”
“Convenient,” Heather drawled, “that it feels like something you would totally expect to feel while on a hike out in the woods.”
“How would you explain that you can’t find your way back home?” Amy added. “You retraced your steps, went back the same way you came, and that sensation of passing through never happened again. You kept walking, but never found the trail familiar to you. How do you explain something like that without magic?”
Heather gave her a hard stare. “Are you kidding me? It’s called getting fucking lost.”
“You don’t have to be rude,” I snapped. Even with a frightened, hungry stranger, I’d always come to Amy’s defense. “This is hard to understand if you’re not from here, we get that. We’re trying to prepare you in the event that you never return home.”
“Why, because you’ll kill me?”
“No. Because if you didn’t grow up here, the borders between our worlds aren’t perceptible to you,” Robin said. “You haven’t lived in the magic, so how is the magic supposed to reveal another world to you? You’re more likely to wander around meeting all the supernatural species before finding your way back home.”
“Supernatural species, the fuck?” Heather muttered.
“Oh yeah,” I told her cheerfully. “It’s not just vampires. The werewolves have their own territory. As do dragon shifters and angels.”
She stared at me, blinked, and let out a scoff. “You cannot be serious.”
“We are,” Amy said. “And there are humans who live in the supernatural territories. Humans who have lived among the supernaturals their whole lives.”
“This is crazy. You’re all fucking crazy.” Heather rubbed her temples.
“You say that, and yet you know exactly what we’re talking about,” I pointed out. “You know what a vampire and a werewolf are. How is that possible?”
“Because they’re in scary stories and shit,” Heather cried out, exasperated. “They’re in books, movies, TV shows. They’re fucking Halloween costumes. Doesn’t mean they’re real.”
“How did they become stories?” I pressed. “How did those legends and folk tales originate? I’ve read that every major civilization in the human world has their own mythologies about dragons, or dragon-like creatures, despite those cultures never having been in contact with each other in ancient times. How do you think that’s possible?”
“I don’t know!” Heather’s brow furrowed in the silence that followed. She was starting to think about it, starting to see the possibility.
Robin grabbed a piece of chalk from an end table drawer and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Heather. It reminded me of when Amy and I were kids, and Robin would teach us math problems with chalk and colorful pebbles.
“We can’t prove it, but our theory is, our world and the human world overlap a little. Kind of like a venn diagram.” Robin drew two circles on the floor with chalk, overlapping them in the middle with a small sliver. She wrote HW for human world inside one circle and SW for our world, which most called Shyftworld.
“We’re somewhere around here.” Robin drew a small X in the SW circle close to the overlapped sliver. “But sometimes there are shifts.” With a finger, she erased the overlapping silvers of the two circles and re-drew them, making the overlapped portions slightly smaller. “Most people believe the human and supernatural worlds were far more overlapped thousands of years ago. Practically on top of each other.” She drew two more circles off to the side, making their shared area much bigger. “It’s possible that thousands of years ago, crossing between worlds happened far more frequently than it does now. That’s how everyone knows about dragons and vampires, yet they supposedly don’t exist in your world today.
“Also, nobody lives in neat little circles.” Robin tapped her finger on her drawings. “So what we’re probably looking at is more like this.” Her arm went wide over the floor, her chalk making a large, random shape with both wavy and sharp edges. She completed the shape with a single closed line, then made a second, equally random polygon slightly overlapped the first one. “You get what I’m saying?”
Heather had been staring intently at the drawings, then shook her head as soon as Robin posed the question. “You’re fucking nuts, lady. Alternate worlds aren’t real, no matter what your cult leader tells you.”
“Alright, well.” Robin gave her a patient, motherly smile. “Enjoy your breakfast. If you’d like to stay, we’ll prepare a place for you. You’ll be expected to work some kind of skilled trade to contribute to the community. Farming or construction would be ideal, but if you don’t have those kinds of skills, come find me. I’ll find something for you to do. Otherwise,” Robin stood from the floor, brushing chalk dust off her pants, “Best of luck to you, Heather.”
She headed for the double doors with Amy and me on her heels. The doors stayed open, the locking chain piled in a heap on the ground.
“You weren’t kidding.” I rested my arm on Amy’s shoulder. “She’s a feisty one. I just hope she’s not too reckless.”
“She’s scared,” Robin said, sympathy crossing her features. “She’s one of those who lashes out when she’s cornered.” Her eyes narrowed in my direction. “Just like someone else I know.”
I stuck my tongue out. “Only to assholes who deserve it.”
Robin grumbled something that sounded like reluctant agreement to me.
“Do you think Maureen will make pancakes if we ask nicely?” Amy piped up, bringing her arm around my waist. “I think someone’s got a craving.”
“Couldn’t tell ya. She’ll probably ask for some blackberry mead as a bribe.”
“Done,” I said quickly. “Cyan got me a bunch of equipment and I’ve done a few batches of wine already. I’ll start on Maureen’s mead as soon as I get back.”
“Well.” Robin looked at me with muted surprise on her face. “Sounds like you’ve got it good over there.”
“Yeah,” I answered quietly. “I guess I do.”