Chapter 61 Two Sides Of Me
Two Sides Of Me
A few weeks passed quickly. I continued to train.
Slowly, my body hardened. Muscles I never knew I had bulged on my arms and shoulders.
I’d gotten fitter and better, I spent less time on the matt and more time punching, kicking, and blocking Ethan.
My runs were no longer slow and leisurely.
Now they were hard and fast. Some days Ethan would push me until I vomited.
As much as I thought I might hate him in the moment, we became much closer.
He never mentioned it, but the threat of attack, and having to go into battle, hung over us like an encroaching darkness.
Dahlia continued to train my powers. We used knives, arrows, balls, branches, anything I could throw with my mind against a bullseye in the distance.
I practiced throwing things in the air, holding them suspended, then shooting them off to wherever I wanted them to land.
I found this relatively easy and tedious.
She taught me how to shoot a bow. Physically, without the use of powers.
I was yet to master it. Like healing, it wasn’t a gift bestowed upon me.
And my invisible barriers or walls were as shaky as ancient ruins.
She taught me how to recognize a witch’s vibration, a vampire’s, and a human’s, without the need to touch them.
Just by simply entering a room. A witch’s vibration, whilst similar to a vampire’s, was much faster than a normal human, but it also had a different feel.
It was more a tingle to my senses, rather than the pressure of a vampire’s vibration.
Between all the training, I tried to juggle normal life.
It was as if I walked two separate lives, lived in two worlds simultaneously.
One leg in the normal everyday world where I would meet friends for drinks, talk about ordinary things, like work, boys, gossip, and crack smutty jokes.
It was a world, by comparison, that was as light and fluffy and as palatable as fairy floss.
The other leg was planted in the supernatural world, where creatures thought to be myth stalked the night and drank blood from unwitting people who would wake in the light of day with no memory that they were last night’s blood bag.
A place where magic not only existed, but surrounded us in abundance, unnoticed by a mainstream, oblivious world.
Behind closed doors I could pass a drink to Karson with the flick of my hand.
Turn on music, play any song just by thought.
Sometimes it was hard to keep the two sides of me separated.
I felt guilty for not being able to share with my friends, other than BJ, who I truly was.
I wore my ring every time I went out so I didn’t accidentally forget which Amy I was meant to be in that moment.
Also, someone trying to kill me if they knew what I was, was a strong incentive to keep it on.
I stretched my legs out, marveling at the long, sleek muscle that hugged my thighs.
Karson and I had just finished dinner, well, I ate, he didn’t. We were seated on the balcony of his apartment above the bar and overlooking the street.
Twilight burned a pretty orange glow across the horizon.
The light from inside cast half of our silhouettes into a shadowed light.
I took a sip of wine and glanced across at Karson.
His face held a softness, indicative of a mind at peace.
It was a face he kept hidden from the outside world.
Maybe he thought it reflected weakness, and weakness in his species was preyed upon.
When he held that organic state, his ethereal beauty radiated. My heart fluttered.
He caught my admiring stares and cocked his head to the side like he was a puppy trying to work out what I was thinking.
“How many of you are there worldwide?” I asked, as the thought came unbidden.
“Hundreds, maybe thousands. Many major cities would have a reasonable population.”
“How many are like you, born vampires?”
“I do not know for certain. We stay apart mostly, some stay hidden. I have only ever met five others. I assume there are a few more.” He stared absently into the distance, not exactly engaged in the conversation.
“Why do you stay apart?”
He looked back, appearing bored, like he was at work repeating the same idea over and over.
“Aside from one that I have a friendship with, the rest I have met like to control their domain and will fight to protect it. First-borns are dangerous to each other, it’s best for everyone if we remain apart.
It’s an unspoken respect we adhere to, we can’t afford to draw attention to our kind. ”
“What happens when a vampire draws attention to themselves?”
“We seek them out and remove them and anyone who we consider a threat. Our kind must remain a secret to the general population.”
I knew what removing them meant, but I also knew what would happen if they were discovered by the mainstream population.
The thought dwelled in a deeply disturbing place.
I didn’t have to wonder what it felt like to constantly have to hide what you were, to live a half-life lie.
I knew, though I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have centuries of it. To be actively hunted . . .
I finished off the wine in one last mouthful.
He reached over, grabbed the glass and poured another one, handing it back. I leaned forward on my elbows and rested my chin on my hand, studying his face. “And the ones who are born a vampire like you, do they turn people, so they have a loyal following?”
“Sometimes,” he answered, resting his muscled arm on the table. “Although it’s not always assured. Vampires will do what they need to do to keep themselves safe. They are not always the most reliable creatures.”
“Safe, from other vampires?”
He hated it when I asked questions about vampires and how their society worked. He’d always answer loosely, or not at all, and this was no exception. He glanced outwards, away from me. “I think it is a world you would struggle to understand.”
I scowled. “I think you underestimate my comprehension.”
His lips tightened, and he made no response.
“How do you choose who you’re going to turn?” I persisted.
“Enough with the questions.” He cut the air with his hand dismissively.
“I’m just going to keep asking until you answer,” I said stubbornly.
The look on his face was dark and forbidding, but I was more than used to his moods and was unaffected. I held his gaze with a questioning look. When no response came I said, “Well if I had to guess, which it seems I do, I’d say you turn the males for following and the females for sex.”
“Correct,” he answered with an arrogant arch of his brow. His admission shot a pang of jealousy through my heart. “Happy?” he threw at me.
“Excessively,” I spat out, shooting a few large gulps down.
He sighed loudly and sat his glass down. “I do not set out to turn anyone, but if I see someone I think is brave, or might be of some benefit, then sometimes I do.”
I retreated. “And you have a tribe of vampires who are loyal to you?”
“Some are, some aren’t. All pretend to be, they are too scared not to.”
The comment unsettled me. “You lead via fear, not respect?”
He frowned and flashed me a sharp look. “Both.”
“But if you have fear you can’t have respect. Respect is earned, fear is forced.”
He threw out a hand in a gesture of annoyance. “You see. You do not understand.”
“Of course,” I muttered, “because I disagree with you, I can’t possibly understand.”
I sighed and dropped my arms, folding them across my chest, sitting back.
I twisted my head out into the night. Cars ambled slowly past, headlights stark against the graying light, like great whites stalking prey.
Inexplicably, a cold pricked my body. The hair rose on my neck.
The light behind us became a spotlight. The balcony, a stage.
The same feeling I’d had a few times before . . .
I sat forward, squinting into the quickly darkening landscape. A car pulled up and a group of rowdy twenty-somethings got out, laughing, the doors snapped shut. They headed in beneath us to the bar. The sound of muffled music floated out onto the street and dimmed again.
The feeling of being watched remained. I had my ring on, it could hardly be some presentiment of doom.
Nonetheless, I stood up, moved over to the edge, clutched the white iron rail, and scanned down the street.
The streetlights fanned out, breathing a faint glow onto the road like a society of ghosts over a flat tombstone, deepening the shadows.
The vampire who hurt the dog was dead. No one should be watching us, and I had my ring on, I reiterated. This wasn’t some great ‘witchy’ insight. I was being silly. I swung back and rested my ass on the balustrade.
Karson studied me for a long moment, then stated flatly, “I’m heading away late tonight.”
I’d irritated him and now he was fleeing the pesky girlfriend. “Do you have to go?” I tried to keep the whine out of my voice and failed.
I’d fallen for him, hard. I loved him so much that when he was away the sense of emptiness was almost unbearable. I hadn’t told him. I didn’t know if he felt the same for me. It was just three words after all, my happiness didn’t, at this early stage, depend upon hearing them.
His eyes burned through to the back of my head. “You know I do, if I feed more regularly it helps me resist you.”
I remained quiet. There was nothing I could say that I hadn’t already. I turned back and studied the sun as the last ring descended behind the hills, feeling his gaze on the side of my face.
“What is your problem?” he asked, seeming perplexed.
I fiddled with the stem of the glass, awkward under his scrutiny and the revelation.
“I don’t like the idea of your mouth on another female’s neck,” I said faintly. “I can’t help it.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Are you jealous?”