Reckless

Chapter 14 Part 1

Present Day

Character POV: Roxanne

The road is relatively empty at this time of night, which is a good thing because the driving conditions are hazardous. A dense fog has rolled in that my headlights can barely penetrate. I'm basically driving blind, which is why it is probably a very good thing that I am driving sober on this particular night.

There's a small tingling sensation I feel that makes me look around and really evaluate the fog. I peer up through the windshield at the sky, trying to see anything that gives me a clue as to why I feel like I have eyes on me. I remember it used to be one of Ariadne's specialized tricks, her ability to dissipate into fog or use it to hide her approach. The fact that the fog gets denser the closer I get to the club makes this seem like it could be plausible instead of just being something my brain concocted.

A small chuckle from the seat next to me draws my attention to the passenger seat where, yet again, Hallucination Ariadne is seated, running a hand through her wavy brown hair as she drags her violet eyes back to look at my face. Her own breaks into a grin as she says with a wink, "Wouldn't it be such an inception of myself if I were watching you right now?"

I roll my eyes, reminding myself that this isn't the real Ariadne. This one is just a figment of my imagination. I am not going to entertain her, I am just going to ignore her until she disappears. Another chuckle from Ariadne draws my attention before she groans, "Oh, come on. You used to be so much more fun than this. And then, I leave for a couple of centuries and you get all boring. You let everyone assume that I am the one who came up with the hunting the witch hunters idea and I look like the cool one while you just fade into obscurity. How drole," she groans again.

Despite how hard I am biting my lip to keep from retorting, I can't stay quiet any longer when she keeps throwing jabs like that at me. My head whips in her direction as I hiss, "I got better. I learned to live with the past. . ."

"Sure you did," she says with a faux sympathetic pout before her face falls and she snarls, "You learned to mask the past. You forget," she says, holding up a finger to drive the point home, "I'm in your head. I see what you do when no one else is looking, and baby-- it doesn't look like living in any fashion. It looks like dying in slow-motion."

Her words make me so angry that I can't see straight, which makes the fact that the driveway to the club suddenly appears out of the fog a good thing, despite how I don't really want to have this meeting with Ariadne for fear that she'll be just as heartless as the hallucination version of her has been these past few days.

It's the next night from my visit to Zahra by the time I have made my way to the vampire club which I am getting the impression is Ariadne's new base of operations. I pull into the parking lot and see one car there, with impossibly dark windows. It's as good of a tell that vampires are here as there could be. Normal cars don't come with windows specifically designed to keep all UV rays from entering the car. It's an expensive addition, but something every vampire is going to have in order to survive.

I sit in the car for a long minute, wrapping my fingers on the steering wheel as my nerves begin to rise inside of me. I keep going back and forth, half of me wanting to just back up and leave, go back to my lifestyle of hiding and self-medicating. But there's what Zahra said to me, that the person who I thought was to blame would have the answers and that the one I thought was in the right would be the source of my problems, that gem keeps cycling through my head on an endless loop. I don't want to think about the implications of the last part of that, but I will focus on the part that implies that Ariadne isn't completely crazy and wanting to destroy my life brick by brick. And that means that I need to muster up whatever scraps of courage I have, if any, and go in there to face the music. If Ariadne wanted to hurt me, she would have done so already. She had the perfect opportunity when I refused to hurt her. So, I best get on with it, right?