A Secret In Your Throat

Chapter 11

I couldn't bring myself to leave him after just one night. I called the medical center to tell them I was feeling ill. There was a code word I was supposed to speak to them if I were in danger and being held against my will.
I did not speak it.
I needed to stay. I needed answers from them all. I had almost no intentions of staking any of them - although forgetting my promise to my human beloved had been weighing on me.
"I know I told you that no matter what I said, you should stake me," he said softly, watching me with those piercing hazel eyes as I got dressed after the longest, most luxurious shower I had ever taken. I glanced at him as I stepped into my only pair of clean underwear, and he continued, "But I thought vamps were all blood crazed. I thought it would mean I was uncontrollable. I didn't want to hurt innocent people."
I zipped up my jeans and pulled my clean shirt on over my head. I folded my legs and sat down on his floor, near his dirty pile of jeans. I opened my bag of trail mix and snacked, thoughtful, as he offered me the cup of water he'd gotten while I showered.
"Tell me how it happened. Did they hurt you? Did they make you do this?"
"No," he said softly, "They wouldn't have done that. Once I was subdued, I was brought to them and I... I was so happy to see them. I knew I should be fighting them, but they welcomed me like brothers. They explained how they had been living, punishing the evil ones. They liberated a camp of humans being kept as food outside of Salt Lake City while they followed us. They showed me that immortality can mean something in this fucked up world. We can be good."
I stared at my knees. "How... did they do it? How is it different from creating a mindless one?"
He let out a deep sigh, "I think we should all talk about this, together. This coven has no secrets. We need to all be as upfront about this as possible. You should know everything." He stood, looking casual in black jeans and a plain black shirt, having just tied his beaten up Converse onto his feet. He held out his hand to help me up and smiled at me. I reached up and tucked a strand of hair away out of his face, unable to believe in this moment that he wasn't just as human as I was.
"I still love you, Gee." I whispered, "The last year without you, as a refugee, living alone in my sad little home... it was so gray. It's like the color has come back into my life with you, Gee. That's always how it felt. You brought life with you."
His face was tender, possibly because I had never said anything like this before to anyone in my life, and he knew it. I had loved before, but never anyone as bold about life as he was. Never anyone who didn't hesitate, who gave his whole heart when he had decided on something. Never anyone as silly and serious and beautiful as Gerard.
He cupped my face, "You are bravery incarnate, Rae. You carried on, you put your heartache aside and lived your life for other people. You stopped existing outside of that medical center. I watched you longer than you could know. I watched your smile disappear as you came in your door, ate your meals, and re-read your same books. You've just been surviving. You've earned your happiness and your own life. You deserve to be who you want and what you want, for YOU."
I was so overwhelmed that I felt a lump in my throat. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. He seemed to know I had exhausted my capacity for talk about emotions. He leaned forward and kissed my forehead softly, "They're all here. Let's talk to them."
"How do you know they're all here?"
"I can hear them, even if you can't."
We went down the carpeted stairs together, and found them sitting at the table with Ray's laptop open to a map. They were huddled around it, not even looking up as we entered the room.
"Gerard, that feeding camp outside of Tacoma is getting humans in from the corrections center. Human cops are making deals with the devil."
Gerard's face looked truly terrifying. His eyes grew dark under his furrowed brow, his mouth set into a hard line. "When do they take the next group? We'll need to stop it and feed if we're going to be strong enough to take that camp."
I felt my stomach drop, and then my horror as Mikey said, "Night after tomorrow. Just enough time to get Rae set, I think. They'll be strongest, if they let us all-"
"Mikey, that's enough." Ray said sharply, as the color drained from my face, "They don't understand yet. They aren't sure."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, my voice much smaller than I wanted it to be.
"Your first hunt with us." Frank said, matter of factly, "There should be four guards, that's plenty to get our strength up, plenty for Rae-"
"Frank, I said that's enough." Ray cut across him, "You're scaring them." he looked at me, a soft expression on his face, "Sometimes it's easy to forget you aren't the same as we are. Sorry."
"They're not coming this time, Frank. They have too many loose ends to tie up in Seattle, if they decide they want to stay with us. And before they do that, they need to know what that looks like. How it works."
Frank looked a little abashed, "You're right. That was rude of me. Sorry, Rae. I forget. I know there's so much you don't understand yet." He gestured for me to sit, and I did, Gerard sitting beside me.
"What is it you want to know?" Mikey asked, his eyes just as piercing as his brother's as he watched me.
I fidgeted, a little uncomfortable. Why couldn't Gerard just answer my questions on his own, without this weird impromptu meeting?
"H-How does it work?" I asked softly, "I know there's venom. I know it works through a human's system very quickly if they aren't drained. I don't understand how you can be sure I won't become... become like them."
Ray seemed to be the first to understand that THIS was my fear. Becoming mindless, thirsty, out of control.
"Rae," he said, "When a human is drained almost to death, but not entirely so the venom stays in their body, or they're bitten again so that the venom lingers in their body... those are the ones that become wraiths. Their minds are dead. They are perpetually starved, no matter how much they glut themselves."
"If," Frank continued where Ray left off, "there is still a good amount of blood in your body, and venom works it's way through tissue that isn't dried out and thirsty, the person can keep their mind. If they were never that close to death, they seem to stay themselves. And the more venom, the more of us that bite, the stronger that vampire will be. I was stronger than my creator, because she didn't understand that many bites, that much venom would be her undoing in me. I destroyed her within hours of being turned. I was the only one to turn Ray, but my strength is his. It was doubled in Gerard when we both turned him, and tripled in Mikey... who's stronger and faster than all of us, because we all three helped to turn him."
I sat there, letting this sink in. If all four of them bit me... I'd be the strongest. If they took human mates and we all participated in their turning, too...
"So we could be maybe the strongest coven, couldn't we?" I asked, "No mindless ones, just carefully created strong ones, each more powerful than the last."
"Which is why," Ray said, "It took so long for Gerard to come to you."
I looked at him and he shifted, "I wanted to make sure that you didn't have any human ties, anyone that you would love or miss or want to destroy us for. Your loneliness broke my heart. I had to act, in the end. You weren't moving on. Getting better. You weren't happy."
They all looked at me. I stared at the wood grain in the table, imagining, suddenly, smashing it to pieces with a sledgehammer and driving a thousand bits of wood through them all.
It wasn't fair, this choice. This world. I couldn't go back to my old, colorless life. Not now. Not knowing he was in the world and that he loved me. Not knowing my best friends, really my only friends, were here - and all of them wanting so much for me to be with them.
God I wished Lisbeth had made it. For the first time, I wished I hadn't staked her. She hadn't been close to death. She had just been bitten. She would have been okay.
I just wanted to go to sleep and never to wake up. To never have to make a choice like this. Spend eternity killing, when I had built my life around saving people.
"I need to go home," I mumbled, feeling sick.
"Rae," Mikey began, "It's not bad. We aren't bad. There would be systemic abuse going on everywhere even without all this. But we can change it now. We have the power to-"
I stood up, suddenly angry. I wished I could tower over them, but I had to settle for hoping my anger would blister them, "I know you think you're so fucking noble, but what's to stop you from becoming just as bad as the human monsters you're fighting? You're serving as judge, jury and executioner all on your own."
"Juries of peers are a joke, and you know it, Rae." Mikey said calmly, "Innocent people are found guilty, and monsters are allowed to walk free because they have the means to buy their freedom. I wish... I wish there was a way to show you, as different as we are from each other, how little it matters. We're a law unto ourselves, and we're..." he swallowed hard, almost a though he was going to cry, and in fact his voice broke when he said, "We're doing the best with what we've been given."
My lip trembled. I knew that feeling. Why was I so angry?
I sat down slowly. Frank opened his mouth but Gerard held up a hand, "Give them a few minutes. Please."
I appreciated this. I worked at this problem. I tried to unravel it, like a knotted ball of thorns. Why was I so angry that they wanted me to stay so badly? Why couldn't I understand this different moral compass than I had? Was it just a change of perspective? Why didn't I want to change my own?
After several minutes I came to the conclusion that I had fought for so long. My fierce independence, the loneliness in which I took refuge for safety were in danger, because I loved these men the way I should have been able to love my family. That vulnerability was exposed without my ever having known it, my anger at them it's last defense. These people had been my family since we took off across the desert together, even though Frank was left behind.
And we could be bound together by blood, and by venom. They could become my family in every sense, though the love I felt for them now, my heart swelling almost painfully as I looked at Gerard, rendered it almost unnecessary. Gerard, who demanded the silence I so cherished and required. Gerard, who understood everything about me that I'd never told anyone.
It took several painful minutes and several tries to swallow back the lump in my throat. God why couldn't I just talk like a normal person? Why did my throat get all thick while I clammed up like an idiot?
"S-Sorry," I managed, "I know you don't think you're so fucking noble."
Mikey laughed, and the tension broke. Evaporated. I sat there embarrassed like their younger sibling while they reassured me, kindly and patiently though with a rapid intensity that was altogether inhuman. Would I be like this, too?
That's when I realized that I had made my decision.
While the others talked and impersonated me exploding "You're so fucking noble!" in a good-natured way, I looked at Gerard.
God, I could not live without him anymore. Not another day without him, after a year apart.
"Okay." I whispered.
He caught me up in a hug so fast I didn't even see him move, lifting me off the chair and even off the ground, laughing with relief. I laughed, too, my arms around him.