Midnight Solstice

Chapter 11

Picture: Jayden Volturi
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   "I swear to God, Aro if this EVER, and I mean EVER happens again, she's coming back home to live with me!" Lorne shouted at Aro. We just finished explaining tonight's events to him and he was not very happy about it.
"I can assure you this won't ever happen again. Now that we know how often Katerina needs to eat and sleep, we can make sure that happens." Lorne scoffed.
"It better not. I don't care about any promises you made to her mother about training Kat's gifts, or making sure her father doesn't get to her, or any of that other stuff that she told you! If anything endangers her life under your control again, I'll come after you!" At this point he was standing face to face with Aro, who looked amused.
"Lorne, her mother wanted what was best for Katerina. You and I both know she wouldn't have wanted her to be placed in my care if she didn't trust me enough to keep our dear Katerina safe."
"Yeah, you're right, she did trust you. But because she trusted you..." He pinned Aro to the wall and held on to him by the collar of his shirt. "She's now six feet underground! Fern is dead because she trusted you!" Felix pulled Lorne off of Aro.
"Cool it, let's not start something I'm going to have to finish." He told Lorne calmly, keeping a firm grip on his arm.
"Fine, I'll try to be civil...for her sake, certainly not for his." He shook loose of Felix's grip and went to sit next to Katerina, who was holding a cowering girl in her arms. That must have been Gracie-Lynn. Lorne placed his arms around the two of them.
"Kat...what's going to happen now?" Gracie-Lynn asked as she looked up at Katerina. She gave the young girl a smile.
"We just go on with our lives as we usually would. I just need to make sure that I keep myself healthy." She responded as she stroked her head.
"Well it shouldn't be just you making sure you are healthy." Lorne added, giving the rest of us a glare. If looks could kill, we would have all dropped dead right then.
"It was my fault Uncle Lorne, I should have said something. Why don't we just drop this and move on? We all make mistakes."
"And I can definitely tell these people will make a million more before I die so why don't we all just shut up and get along." I heard Katerina's voice say, but her lips didn't move. My eyes widened.
"How did you do that?" I asked her. She gave me a weird look.
"Do what?"
"Talk without your lips moving."
"I didn't..." She was looking at me like I was nuts. I probably am. Next stop is the looney barn!
"Yes you did! You said that these people were going to make a million more mistakes before you die so we should all just shut up and get along."
"Woah Alec, I know you're upset but geez dude, but let's not get sent to a mental institution today." Felix told me.
"No, he's right. That's exactly what I thought. Maybe this bond thing is telepathic!" She exclaimed.
"Are you kidding me?! Can we just decide what this damn bond thing is and keep it that way!" Lorne shouted angrily. He ran a hand through his messy black hair. "So what type of bond is it then?"
"It appears that the bond between Katerina and Alec has multiple traits to it. It makes sense that the whole bond is based on telepathy." Marcus told Lorne as he stepped forward. I was thankful that no one mentioned the mate bond to him.
"Alec, I want you to think something; anything you'd like, and Katerina, I want you to try to guess what Aleczander is thinking." I had to fight my glare. I hate it when people call me Aleczander.
"Are you ready?" I asked Katerina.
"No, but I don't think either of us were ready to figure out that our minds are connected." You think? I wasn't even ready to meet her yet, let alone figure out that we have some sort of freaky mate bond. She then closed her eyes and pressed her lips together so that they created a thin line across her mouth.
"I don't like it when people call me Aleczander." I thought. I waited a few seconds before I got an answer.
"Why not?" She thought back.
"Personal reasons."
"Will you tell me what these personal reasons are?"
"Someday, pet..."
"Alright, fine." She changed the subject. "Did you feel that pain in your head right after I passed out?"
"Yeah, what was that?"
"I think that was me trying to get in your head. I felt myself being pushed away from my body almost. It was really weird."
"I felt something similar. I kept blacking out every now and then as well. You're right, it was really strange." We fell silent for a moment.
"We're really bonded, huh?" She asked me. Katerina's eyes opened and we were staring right at each other. I smiled and nodded.
"It appears so." I said aloud. Her smile widened.
"I'm going to have so much fun messing with you!" She exclaimed.
"Well thanks. I'll just make sure to get inside your head early enough in the morning to scare the crap out of you. That will be something nice to wake up to, won't it?" She laughed. Her laughter caused me to start laughing too.
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it worked." Lorne said. His gaze snapped on me. I felt my smile drop. "I want a word with you before I go." His crimson eyes darkened to a black color as dark as the night. I definitely don't want to piss this man off right now. I might later...just not now.
"Yes, sir." I responded. Just then, Demetri walked in with Jayden. He walked over to Aro.
"Hello father, what's going..." He stopped himself short when he took in the scenery of the room. "What happened here?" Aro placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You don't need to worry about that now." He turned Jayden to face the Morgynstein's.
"Jayden, meet Lorne, Katerina, and Gracie-Lynn."
"The Morgynstein's..."
"It's nice to meet you." Katerina told him, flashing him a smile that made the corners of his mouth twitch upward.
"So your the gravity girl...Father says that you like to break things." She laughed.
"Yeah, you could say that. I broke the glass doors over there a couple of minutes ago." She looked over at Afton.
"Sorry about that by the way."
"It's okay, I was thinking about remodeling anyway." He told her. Jayden's eyes then wandered to Lorne.
"I've heard that you can see the future when people sing." Lorne gave him the same smile Katerina did.
"Yeah, that's my gift. It's kind of a pain when you own a karaoke bar though." Jayden nodded thoughtfully. His eyes wandered again and stopped on Gracie-Lynn. His heart started beating faster. Teenage boy hormones much?He gently smiled at her.
"Hello...I haven't heard much about you, other than you are half human, half vampire. Do you have a gift?" Gracie-Lynn jumped off of the hospital bed and stood in front of him.
"Yep. You can call me Gracie though, everyone else does." She held her hand out and shook his hand. Gracie looked back at Aro. "Are you the guy in charge?" He nodded. "Do you have a candle?" Aro looked at Afton who grabbed a candle out of one of the broken cabinets. He handed it to Gracie who mumbled a small thank you.
"Dude why do you have candles in here? I thought this was a doctor's office?" Felix asked.
"It is, but you never know when the power is going to go out. I don't think a patient would feel very safe if I had to stitch them up in the dark." Afton responded. Demetri chuckled.
"And you also never know when you need to set the mood for your mate. Those woman can be very picky sometimes." He teased. Chelsea inhaled sharply and walked over to Afton who took her into his arms and rolled his eyes.
"Anywho, lets heat things up!" Gracie exclaimed.
"Come one Gracie, why don't you just tell the boy what your gift is and skip the theatrics and really bad fire puns?" Lorne suggested.
"That's no fun daddy!"
"Well turning into fried daddy isn't fun either." He told her. "I've been there and done that too many times."
"But I've been practicing!" He sighed.
"You know what, fine. Just don't scorch us all too badly, okay?" She looked up at Jayden and covered the top of the candle with her hand.
"Are you ready?" Gracie asked him. Her voice changed from the lighthearted tone I heard when she first spoke, to a much darker tone that would sent shivers down a grown man's spine. He nodded. A look of uncertainty was plastered on his face.
She moved her hand around the wick of the candle and with the snap of her fingers, a flame shot out of it, at least a foot high. Gracie and Jayden made eye contact for a moment, causing them both to smile. This was the most I've ever seen Jayden smile in one day. And of course, it was over a girl. Gracie closed her eyes, and the flame went away.
"Wow..."Jayden whispered.
"Yep. Pretty cool, right?" He nodded.
"Why don't you two go to the library and get acquainted while we finish up talking here?" Aro suggested. He looked quite interested by Gracie's ability.
    "And do NOT set anything else on fire." Carousel told her sternly.
    "Yeah yeah, Mr Blondie. I get the same lecture from my dad at least once a day."
"If that's alright with you sir, I wouldn't mind taking Gracie-Lynn..." Jayden smiled sheepishly. "I mean Gracie to the library with me." He told Lorne.
"Of course he's okay with it." Gracie looked back at her father. "Right daddy?"
"Just be careful." He told her, but his gaze was on Aro, who's smile faltered when he realized Lorne knew exactly was he was thinking. Aro was going to ask her to join the Volturi someday. But Lorne wasn't going to let that happen. Gracie's voice broke my train of thought.
"Let's go!" She grabbed his hand and Jayden started leading her out of the room. He wiggled his eyebrows at me before he left, as if he knew too much about my woman troubles; specifically my Katerina troubles. We were going to have a very long discussion later.
"Hey Afton, do you have any form of pain killers?" Katerina asked. "My head is pounding like crazy." He took a bottle of pills off of the counter and handed two of the red pills to Katerina who swallowed them quickly.
"Make sure you eat something soon so that you don't get sick." He told her.
"Thanks."
"Alec, do you mind bringing Katerina to the kitchen to get her some food? I'm sure there is something down there for the human staff that she can eat." Marcus told me. I nodded.
I helped Katerina off of the hospital bed and walked her out into the hall. The poor girl looked like she was going to pass out again as she began to stumble down the hall in the wrong direction.
"Oh Katerina..." She turned to look at me. "The kitchen is this way." Katerina began to walk over to me. I met her halfway and scooped her up into my arms and began walking.
"I am perfectly capable of walking you know."
"That's not what it looked like a moment ago when you were stumbling in the wrong direction."
   "Alright, I'll let this one slide."
    "Oh I'm so relieved. I thought I was going to get my ass kicked for that one." I told her sarcastically. She smacked my chest with the back of her hand.
  "Are we there yet?" She asked in my head.
  "No, we just started walking."
"How about now?"
    "No, Katerina, we are not there yet."
"Are we there now?" I groaned.
     "Okay, you know what, this is going to get annoying really fast for the both of us if we start this now."
"But I'm not annoyed."
    "Yeah, well I am."
     "I've got an idea! Why don't you run at your top speed to the kitchen so that I can eat before my stomach starts an earthquake? I've done that before with my gravity, and believe me, it's scary."
   "Yeah right."
    "No really, Alec you have no idea how bad it is. But if you want to find out, just take it slow, we'll both be on the ground trying to take cover soon enough." I adjusted my grip on her, and began running. I couldn't take any chances with her. 
     Seconds later, we were in the kitchen. It was empty since the humans who worked here had probably gone to bed. Or got eaten during the work day, which happens more often than you would think.
   The kitchen had plan white walls with a light grey trim. Empty metal carts that would hold food were scattered around the room in between the metal topped tables that were in three rows down the length of the room. I turned on a set of lights that illuminated the center row, but it was enough for us to see. I set Katerina down on her feet.
   "There should be food in the cabinets and the refrigerator." I told her. The cabinets and the refrigerator were also the stainless steel metal color that the metal tables were. She walked over and began taking food out of the fridge.
"So can you really make earthquakes when you're hungry and your stomach growls?" I asked her. She shook her head.
"No, I just wanted you to hurry up because I am literally starving." She looked in the cabinets and let out a squeal of delight.
  "I've got an idea!" Katerina took a bag out of the cabinet and ran over to me. She jumped up on one of the tables and gestured for me to do the same on the table opposite from her. She threw the bag at me. "You are going to throw those little fish crackers at me, and I'm going to catch them in my mouth!" She exclaimed happily.
   "Why?" I asked.
    "Why not? It's fun!"
    "We are going to make a mess."
    "Yeah but we can clean it up after!"
     "I refuse to pick up crackers off the floor with my bare hands because you decided it would be fun to make a mess."
   "You don't have to pick it up with your hands silly, there's a broom and dust pan in the corner over there." I slapped my forehead. 
"What? Come on its fun! Trust me."
  "Alright fine." I agreed. I opened the bag and took a cracker out. "Now what?"
  "Throw it in my mouth." She sat with her mouth opened wide. I rolled my eyes.
   "Hey, I saw that!" She said as I threw the cracker. It hit the side of her mouth. She caught it in her hand when it fell and plopped it in her mouth, and with a big crunch it was gone. "I wasn't ready..." I threw another one and it did the same. She growled.
   "You have to wait until I'm..." I threw another one. This time she caught it in her mouth.
  "Hey, I made a basket!" I exclaimed.
   "Yeah, but you have to wait until I'm ready."
   "Where's the fun in that?" Her mouth changed to an "o" shape and I threw another fish. It landed in her mouth. "Touch down!" I said as I put my arms up in the shape of a goal post for American football. She laughed.
   "Geez Alec, I thought you said this wasn't going to be fun." Another fish landed in her mouth.
  "I never said it wasn't going to be, I just didn't want to worry about the mess."
   "Well in that case..." She jumped off of the table and ran around to sit on the one farthest away from me. "Try it from here."
And then the mess started. She kept getting up and moving around, trying to catch the flying fish crackers. A couple went down her shirt, but she still ate them anyway. Pretty soon, we were laughing and running around the room pelting fish at each other.
   "What are you two doing?" I heard someone ask. We both stopped and looked to the door. Jayden and Gracie were standing in the doorway.
   "He started it!" Katerina shouted, pointing a finger at me.
   "No, you're the one who told me to throw fish in your mouth, I never told you to throw them at me."
  "Yeah well..."
   "Yeah well..."
     "Yeah well you two fight like an old married couple." Gracie said as she and Jayden walked in the room. "Come one Jayden, let's show these losers how it's done."
   "My father doesn't like it when we make a mess." Jayden told her.
   "Well we can clean it up after."
    "Yeah, there's a broom and dust pan in the corner!" I said, mimicking Katerina who smacked my chest as she walked by and started tending to her food from the refrigerator.
   "Jayden sit on that table right there. And make sure you open your mouth." She sat on the table across from him. I handed her the bag. "Ready?"
   "Sure..." He caught the fish right in between his teeth. "Hey I did it! Do it again!" Katerina walked over and stood next to me, eating some sort of sandwich.
"They seem to like each other." She thought to me. 
"Yeah, this is the most fun I've seen Jayden have in ages."
  "Really? It must be lonely here for him, I mean it doesn't seem like he plays with kids his own age much."
   "He doesn't. The past twelve years have been hard on him. He talks to his mother and Caius's wife, Athenodora mostly. He talks to me too, more than the rest of the guard. I think this is the first time that he's met someone his own age."
   "Well she's close to his age. Gracie is really ten but she grows faster than a human, but slower than your average half vampire. She ages more human like now, but still quickly. Uncle Lorne wants to put her in public school next year. Gracie doesn't want to though. She has a hard time making friends."
"Jayden does too. Aro was thinking about putting Jayden in public school as well. Maybe they could go to the same school. That would make it easier on both of them."
Katerina smiled and we went back to watching the kids throw fish back and forth at each other. Soon we had to clean up the mess. Instead of using the broom and dustpan, Katerina suggested that we all race to see who can pick up the most fish. I had to count them all once the three were done throwing themselves on the floor after the fish.
"Hey, Kat! Make them swim to the trash!" Gracie exclaimed.
"Yeah!" Jayden agreed. His smile hasn't faded since he got here.
"Alright, let's see what I can do, hopefully I don't crush them all, then we'll have to race to pick up all the crumbs."
"Hey, I was cool with counting the fish, but I will not count all those crumbs." I said.
"Aw come on Alec, don't be a grouch!" Jayden told me, lightly elbowing me in the ribs.
"You want to see a grouch?" I asked him as I pulled him into a choke hold (But don't worry, I didn't actually choke him. I just held him gently so he couldn't get away) and ruffled his hair. I let him twist out of my grip. He laughed.
"I'll get you back for that one." Then fish then started to float. One by one, they wiggled their way into the trash.
"Kat, you have to do Dad's fish voice." Gracie said.
"Here comes ze fishes. Swish, swish, fishy fishy..." Katerina spoke in a weird accent that made the kids laugh. I chuckled.
"What the heck is that?" The girls both groaned.
"So when I was a baby and started being able to actually chew things, all I wanted to eat was those little fish crackers. But sometimes I wouldn't want to eat. So Dad would say that to make me laugh so he could shove those crackers in my mouth." Gracie told us.
"And it was so annoying, you have no idea. He would just keep saying that until she laughed, but most of the time she wasn't laughing at him, she was laughing at me because I was standing behind him and pretending to shoot myself." Katerina added.
"Really?" Jayden asked.
"Yep." Gracie said. "I was a very stubborn baby."
"Oh my gosh, do you remember the time when I got a really bad concussion and I passed out in the hospital?" Katerina asked her. She nodded and doubled over laughing.
"So I was just lying in the hospital bed and Lorne was talking to the doctor so he put Gracie on the bed with me. She was like four at the time. So while he was talking to the doctor, she grabs the bag of fish crackers off of the night stand and just sits on my chest. I woke up a couple of minutes later and her face is right above mine. She shoved a cracker in my mouth and told me "Here comes ze fishy." Uncle Lorne looked over at us and just started cracking up. He just stood there and watched for a second and then told the doctor "what can I say, the kids love ze fishy fishys." It was so funny."
"Lorne seems to have a weird sense of humor." Jayden commented thoughtfully.
"Yeah. If you ever come to my house, it gets scary. Dad just lets it all go, especially after he and one of his buddies had a couple of drinks downstairs. So Kat and I usually just sit in the living room and listen to him sing "don't worry be happy" with the fish on the wall." Gracie said.
"Lorne has a fish problem." Katerina added as we left the kitchen. The four of us began walking up the stairs and to the library where Lorne was standing, looking impatient.
"There you all are." He said as he walked over to us. This was the first time I noticed his limp. He didn't make a big deal about it, but it was definitely noticeable. "Kat, why don't you bring the kids somewhere while Alec and I have our little chat?" She looked from me to her Uncle.
"Uh sure..." Katerina said as she lead the kids away. Lorne went into the library and I followed. He locked the door behind us. Whatever he was going to tell me, it certainly was not going to be good.