Antithesis: The Vampire Alliance Book Three - FIRST DRAFT COMPLETED

Antithesis Chapter 26: Eve Blakethorn-Sullivan August 2013

Eve Blakethorn-Sullivan, August 2013

Showering and dressing is a quiet affair. I’m exhausted by my inability to sleep and even though we’ve spent a night and most of a day in the seclusion of Rob’s room I feel more tired now than I can remember feeling in a long while. Hiding for the rest of forever still seems like a wonderful idea, but the time has come and Pat wants us to meet the rest of the Yorkshire group.

Once we’re ready I sullenly follow Rob and Tul back downstairs even though I’d prefer to curl into a ball and continuing to cry. Pat meets us at the bottom of the stairs then leads us to another a large room which is currently laid out with rows of chairs. From the mats propped against the walls I deduce the space also functions as dojo. The walls are plainly painted, the windows protected by bars and mesh designed to stop any misfired bolts or flying bodies from crashing through the windows.

Horrified shock thunders momentarily through Rob before he manages to rearrange his furious expression into placid serenity. “What?” I enquire softly, concerned by the abrupt negative emotion.

“Ballroom,” his answer is resigned but his flickering irritation can’t be hidden from me. “This was the ballroom, it used to be beautiful with crystal chandeliers and mouldings on the walls as well as the ceiling. My great-grandfather designed it himself, he drove many of the master craftsmen he had working on it away with his demands for perfection. It was stunning.”

“The chandeliers are in storage, we didn’t get rid of them,” Pat reassures him, but there are notes of both concern and defensiveness in her tone. “We’re a rebel group, we needed a dojo. You did give this place to Johan.”

“Of course he did,” Tul answers, positioning himself between Rob and our host, “and I’m sure Rob appreciates your circumstances. This room was obviously a testament to his family’s vision though, and it’s a shame that it’s just one more thing lost because of the Senate. No one doubts you’ve only done as necessary considering the situation.”

Glancing around the room and trying to imagine its former glory I ponder out loud, “You could always convert it back, after the Senate are removed from power.” Even if I don’t live to see it I still hope that Rob and Tul will, and that they’ll learn to live without me.

“People don’t need ballrooms now,” Rob answers, more than a little sadly, “what would be the point? People want to go clubbing.”

“Oh yeah,” shrugging I concede to that, “to get drunk, to pick up dates, then if they’re unlucky to get mugged on the way home,” I expand, still trying to picture how enchanting the room could be, “but a ball isn’t about getting drunk and picking up a one night stand in the vague hope it may turn into more. Also, we’re vampires, there are plenty of oldies like you who might appreciate a ball. Then there are women in general, old and young; whether we admit it or not, most of us dream of some gallant prince whisking us off to a palace to dance the night away. We would love to waltz around in a beautiful gown in the arms of a handsome Lord. Fairytales are still sought after, even if a night club is the closest most get. If you turned it back and market it well you could make a business out of it.”

“You want to be whisked away by a prince?” Enquires Tul, perhaps a little put out.
Laughing I shake my head, “I’m not so bothered by titles, and as I’ve been swept off my feet twice I’m more than happy to enjoy what I have. However, other girls are still in need of being dazzled.”

“Here, here!” Agrees Pat and I force myself not to read anything into it.

Continuing, I add, “Really, why stop at a ballroom? This place is huge. If you want to cater to more modern tastes then turn one of the other rooms into a night club. Personally I’d keep it more upmarket than that, or build extra building for less traditional entertainment. You could add in a spa, leisure facilities; you have the grounds for a leisure and entertainment complex.”

With his head tilted slightly, Rob frowns as he studies me. “My great-grandfather would have liked you, you have vision.”

“Yeah, he would’ve loved me, right until her asked for my previous occupation. Norham House has potential though; it’d be a shame to waste it once its current purpose is served.”

Considering my suggestion Rob sighs, “It’s almost a shame I gave it to Johan. It’s up to him what happens to it should its current use become redundant.”

Rolling my eyes I shake my head at him, “As if Johan would refuse if you asked for it back. Your bigger problem would be funding the conversion.”

“Hmmm,” Rob murmurs, pondering as he studies the blank walls, the blank canvas of the room. “I never thought I’d want to come back here. I never thought this place would be any use for anything really, beyond what it is.”

“What a challenge it would be, turning it into something else and making a success of it.” Leaning up I kiss him lightly with a smile, “There’s something to occupy your mind with in the future.”

His frown deepens as he tries to understand the undertone of sorrow in my voice. Rob kisses my jaw, then lowers his head to my ear, “And should I do such a thing, you’re dancing the first dance with me, otherwise there’d be no point.” Is that a warning, that if I were to surrender then he would too? Is that possibly why they had developed, as Tul had put it, their own agenda after my untimely demise? Had their intention been revenge and finally death?

“We’re over due a talk about why you stormed the Senate archives,” I retort, “because suicidal foolishness is not something I approve of.” Not that I can really hold such action against them, hadn’t I behaved the same way at times?

“Unless you’re partaking in it yourself?” Tul demands, voicing my own thoughts while his face remains a mask of faux innocence.

More vampires enter the dojo, drawing our conversation to a close before it can become an argument. Making their way to their seats the newcomers eye us with curiosity as we progress to the front of the room. We stand in silence as the room fills, avoiding the conversation I am damn well going to have with them regarding suicidal stupidity, whether they like it or not.

The dojo fills and I wish the ground would swallow me, I hate being the centre of attention even when the limelight is shared with my husbands, or especially with them. Weddings, executions, generally we don’t do well when we’re lined up in front of an audience.

“Hello everyone!” Patricia greets her vampires when the congregation finally settles, her jovial demeanour entirely different to Johan’s formal presentations. “We’re going to keep this short but I just wanted to introduce Robert Blakethorn, Tulloch Sullivan and Eve Blakethorn-Sullivan. Some of you will have seen Eve on her last visit and most of you will recognize Robert from the portrait. They are our respected guests and each of you should treat them as such.”

There’s more of a warning in that last sentence than makes me comfortable, it relays to me that not all of Pat’s people are happy we’re here. I hear Rachel’s name whispered by the crowd I lower my gaze guiltily. Rob and Tul insist that it’s not my fault that Rachel, Gail and Craig fell in our failed raid on the science facility. Personally I can’t help but feel I should have stopped that atrocity. I should have changed it. Why do I keep failing to make a difference?

Distracted by my self-destructive train of thought I don’t notice when Pat asks a number of people up to formally meet us. “Eve!” Tul hisses my name and I growl as his elbow hits my rib. Ignoring my snarl he explains, “These people are from Pat’s council, they run the facility, the security team, everything, really.”

“Blake,” the man in front of me announces without offering his hand, “Blake Farrah, I’m Rachel’s fiancé. I was Rachel’s fiancé.” The blue of his eyes is closer to ice than Tul’s slate and with his chilly expression they suit him.

Tears well and the pain in my chest winds me. “I’m sorry for your loss,” the stammered words are the best I can offer. They’re true but he’s not going to see any value in them, no more than I did. People were ‘sorry’ that my parents died, that Rob died, that Tul was captured. Them telling me about it didn’t change what had happened and didn’t ease the agony of bereavement.

“Yeah,” Blake replies, his scent belying the calmness in his voice. “I guess not everyone comes back,” he comments, eying the men at my side.

“Blake!” yelps Pat, obviously surprised and visibly disgusted.

There are a thousand things I could say, a million retorts to make. I could point out that I’ve just come back. I could point out that I had mourned just like him and without his support network. I say none of those things, instead I meet Blake’s accusatory gaze and tell the truth, “And you know what? Some people don’t want to come back but shit just keeps happening.”

A communal gasp follows my announcement. Stunned grief renders Rob and Tul speechless as I push past Blake and flee the hall.

How far can I run? How fast? Why couldn’t Hardy have just left me dead? I don’t want to deal with the guilt, the remorse over people I couldn’t save and people I have hurt. Beth, Sophie-Jane, Craig, Rachel, the human Hardy has scarred to replace me, I couldn’t do anything for any of them and now they’re dead or as good as. My mother didn’t even have Strix blood in her veins. What did she die for? Me?

The fear is too much as well, living with danger all around me. I’m hunted and those who hunt me want to make me suffer. I don’t want to be someone else’s prey any more. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to be a Strix, with my oh-so valuable blood. I don’t want to be a vampire at all.

As I clatter out of Norham House and career down the stone steps I ignore the voices calling for me to come back. Rob and Tul chase after me, of course they do. I’m not very easy to catch though. My feet pound over the ground as I run through Rob’s family estate. The perimeter wall is as easy to jump as the electric fences back home and I don’t slow, even when I hear my husbands landing behind me. We’re on the North Yorkshire moors before I stumble to a stop, falling to my knees among the heather.

“Say you didn’t mean it,” Rob blurts out as he throws himself down in front of me.
“Say you don’t wish you were still dead.” Tul demands as he joins us.

With tears streaming over my cheeks I glare at them, furious with what I’ve made them, furious that I had it in me to make them into something else. I loathe that my life is what it is. “I wish I were mortal.” Tul cringes at that admission, shrinking back from me. “I wish I could age, I wish I could marry a mortal man and have children and introduce my children to my mother, who didn’t have one drop of immortal blood in her veins. I want a job and house and I want to grow old and meet my grandchildren and then I want to die peacefully in my bed surrounded by photos of a human life lived well. Can you give me that?” The question goes unanswered, just as I’d intended, “No? Then I wish I’d stayed dead.”

Their combined hurt is overwhelming and doesn’t alleviate my guilt in the slightest. Lowering my head to my hands I sob, trying to sort through the jumble of thoughts and regrets in my head. “That isn’t strictly true.” My admission doesn’t relieve their upset so I ramble on, “I wouldn’t change either of you. I’m so confused. I am happy with us but at the same time I would have liked children and I would have liked my mam to meet my sons and daughters. What a ridiculous notion; I wouldn’t want to breed another generation contaminated with my blood.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your blood.”

Laughing at Tul’s protestation I raise my wrist to my mouth, tearing a chunk out of my arm. Spitting out a mouthful of flesh, muscle and tendons I use my nails to open the wound further, not allowing it to close, letting myself bleed profusely. “How many people have to die because of this, because of me?”

“Eve stop,” begs Rob, trying to tug my right hand from where it claws at my other arm. “Evie, you’re hurting yourself.”

Pushing him off I shake my head, my laughter becoming maniacal, “No, I’m not. I barely feel this. I could tear my arm off and barely notice because unless all of my limbs are being simultaneously torn from my body while my guts are unceremoniously ripped from inside me and dumped on a concrete floor I can’t feel.” Frowning I growl, “Only that’s not true either; I can feel but it just doesn’t matter. This is inconsequential; this isn’t big enough to make an impression. I’ve felt so much pain that this tiny wound simply doesn’t register.

I haven’t even reached three full decades on this wonderful planet and I’ve been whipped, beaten, tortured on such a regular basis that I live every day waiting for the next time and because of that there is part of me that wishes Tess had taken my head into the woods and chopped it into a thousand pieces just like we did to Donal.

And the guilt? Christ. My family died because of me. You died because of me,” I tell Rob, “Tul, you were tortured because of me. The Senate Strix, the Paladins, the zombies, they all exist because of my blood or the blood of my family. Everyone they’ve destroyed is on my conscience. 

I grieve, I hurt, I live every day weighed down by a thousand regrets. I fucked, what, thirty or forty people while working for Van because I had regulars as well as one-offs. When I was on my own, picking vampires out of clubs? Christ, the numbers run into hundreds because there were no regulars. Just curious men looking for a cheap fuck. Hell, when I had a pimp there were nights all I had to do was open my legs and let a conveyor belt of men have me. All so I could afford drugs, so I could hallucinate, because real life was unbearable.

Since then? I’ve killed people. I’ve killed children! I’ve tortured people! There are times when I would do anything if I could block it all out. Take a pill and have an hour or two lost in a drug induced fantasy. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to wait for my next mistake or the next time Hardy captures me.”

Pulling me into his embrace Tul kisses my hair, “It will get easier, Evie, it won’t always be this way.”

“But it will always have been this way,” I murmur, looking up at him, “I can’t erase what happened.”

There’s silence while they try to figure out a way to comfort me, to give me hope. The quiet stretches on though and more and more memories and regrets play through my mind, shaming me. “Hardy,” I say but my voice breaks and I have to start over. “Hardy touched me. You know that, I know you know that. Hardy touched me against my will and there was nothing I could do about it. I’m more ashamed of that than I am of having been his whore. He took away every ounce of strength I had and removed the last veneer of free will. It shouldn’t matter; my body hasn’t been sacred in a long time. Hardy had me more times than I care to remember anyway. It shouldn’t matter. But it does.”

Shuddering, I swallow hard, trying to fight my nausea. “I keep feeling his hands on me. When I close my eyes I see him leering at me. I’m terrified it won’t be the only time it happens. Yes, he wanted to use me to incapacitate you two but that was only the start of his plan. After that he swore to keep me, to use me until he grew bored at which point he’d pass me on to his men. He’d do it too. He’s always wanted to own me.

Is that my future?” The denial I feel from them in response to my question is strong, determined, but they can’t know that I’m safe. “I could look, I could search the future and try to find out but I’m too scared to see the path I’m destined to walk because so far my path has been pretty grim.”

“Then let me paint a picture of the future,” Rob requests, sitting next to me on the mossy ground, “the Senate will fall. We will survive. We will get that house you want or come here and convert Norham House like you suggested. We’ll have a home, a proper home, and we’ll start making new memories. Better memories.

Evie, there’s nothing wrong with your blood so we can try for children if you want. Yes, it’s a one in a million possibility but there are things we can do to improve our chances. Keeping you extra well fed should help, if you want a baby. Starving vampires don’t conceive but studies show that well fed vampires find it easier. It might take a century or two but we can try.

We’re never going to be able to give you a normal life, I admit that. We can try to make it as peaceful as possible though. Alex manages; so can we.”

“Rob, are we really having the baby conversation now? We didn’t even have it before and we’re having it now?”

Nodding he laughs, “It’s as good a time as any.” He grows serious though as he confesses, “Look, Eve, this isn’t the baby conversation as you put it. It’s just a promise. I promise, we promise, that we will do everything we can to keep you safe, to create a home, to have whatever you want. Children or not. It will get better and then we’ll make a life for ourselves, a proper life.”

His desperate promises at least draw a smile before I remind him, “You do realise that even if we manage to remove the Senate we’re still going to be an anomaly, the three of us? We all say we’re married but officially what is our status because I don’t know? Am I married to you, Rob, because we had our ceremony first? Or am I married to you, Tul, because technically death parted Rob and I, even if it wasn’t a permanent parting? Or am I currently single because I died and therefore both of my marriages have been terminated?”

“It’s true that we’re unusual,” Tul interrupts, his thumb rubbing gentle circles on the back of my hand. “However, it’s not completely unheard of for vampires to be married to multiple partners concurrently. Vampires don’t have bigamy laws, Eve. Our possessiveness makes us loyal so in the past it’s been assumed that bigamy laws are fairly unnecessary. However, we’re also very long lived and very rarely people have taken second partners for variety. Those people are normally much older, older even than me and Rob. Usually they’ve been married for at least five centuries or so, in fact. It’s so rare no one concerns themselves with it.

We are unusual in that we’re actually all living together, rather than taking turns every five hundred years, but legally speaking this has precedent.

I admit that I don’t know if having all died changes things but at worst we’ll just have to get married again.” Feeling my tension he adds quickly, “Or we can remain happily unmarried, although I would choose to see any future ceremony as third time lucky rather than fear that history is doomed to repeat itself. All three of us could get married and yes, it would be a little controversial but that’s all, people would get over it quickly enough. After all, it probably won’t be the most bizarre thing we’ve done over the years.”

Looking past me Rob grins, “Want to marry me Keep?”

Rolling his eyes Tul shrugs, “I feel like I’ve been married to you for a century, what with the amount of your shit I’ve had to put up with. I want to marry your wife, I’m not averse to you tagging along.” That last line isn’t strictly true, we’re a three and we’re all happy with that. However, I like seeing them tease each other and I enjoy the affection that their words don’t manage to hide.

Chuckling I allow my mood to lift. Although I know it means nothing, guarantees nothing, I demand a promise from them, “Say you’ll both be with me forever?”

Nodding, they both pledge to stay with me and that warms me. Looking up at the crescent moon I sigh. It’s beautiful out here, with the moonlight turning the heather and gorse to silver. The sweetened breeze swirls over the moors carrying the clean scent of the unpopulated countryside. “It’s lovely out here, away from people.”

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Rob promises, “but for now I imagine Pat is frantic.” He smiles reassuringly at me, “Are you ok?”

I nod and while it’s not the whole truth I do at least feel better.