Reckless Abandon - The Secrets of Avelina Chronicles 2

11: Catalina

Catalina stayed around the clan house for a few days, helping Clarke to adjust to his new life. They tried to search his memory to try to identify the vampire who had attacked him. After two days, he had managed to remember the face that had cursed him to a life he hadn't wanted. An older man, who had claimed to have been mugged outside the bar. He had asked Clarke to show him to the local police station to report it, only to attack him the moment they were out of sight of the busy pub.

It was an obvious lie now that he had time to look back on it and see where it had led him.

"I wish you'd stop beating yourself up about it." Catalina sighed, linking her arm through his as they walked. "I would have been ashamed to know you if you hadn't stopped to help the man. What if he really had been mugged?" She reasoned, trying to convince him he wasn't naïve. He found her passion all too amusing to continue being angry with himself for falling for the trick. However, he was still angry with himself for feeding from her. She was a young, innocent girl and whether she wanted to help him or not, he was going to have to learn some self-control so that he didn't hurt anyone else.

"That doesn't excuse it, Catalina. I still fed from you. That was stupid and dangerous. I could have killed you." He protested to her kindness. He didn't want her to keep making out like he was some wonderful person. He had killed someone. It might have been by accident and instinct, but that didn't excuse the taking of a life.

"You didn't hurt me Clarke. I offered to help you. I knew what that meant." Catalina soothed his worries as they walked through the woods where they had met. She was hoping to spark a memory of the man who had attacked him. He could remember that it was a man, that he was older than even Damian looked, but as for hair color and features, it was all still a little hazy. And though her words did nothing to make him feel any better, he kept quiet on the subject, not wishing to talk about it any longer. He wanted to focus on the task at hand.

"So if you're not a vampire, how do you know so much about them...us?" He wondered quietly, not looking at her nor acknowledging that she was glaring at him.

Catalina had made it perfectly clear that she was frustrated every time he couldn't forgive himself for feeding from her, when he most needed the sustenance. If he was going to ignore her, she supposed there was only one other thing to do and that would be to talk him into submission. She decided to answer his question. At some point, when he was chatting away happily about something else, she would ask him why he fed from her if he hadn't wanted to and see what he had to say to that. He was going to have nowhere to hide.

"Well, I've studied a lot. There are classes at school and my parents have told me stories. In the olden days, it seems that the word vampire was used not for creatures like you, but for people who killed others. Serial killers, they were called and they were called vampires because they desired blood." Catalina explained. She began sifting through her knowledge to find something that would interest him and that would ultimately come back around to what she wanted to talk about.

And for a while he was happy to listen as she explained about John Polidori's The Vampyre and the first sympathetic vampire of novelization, Varney the Vampire. She told him of the ancient myths, of aversion to sunlight, which some authors agreed on and others didn't. How there was a true medical condition in humans that required a diet of blood, called Haematophagy. Clarke learned more than he expected he would need to know that afternoon, hearing about the first mention of the word 'vampire', in a pre-fourteenth century book, The Word of Saint Grigoriy. And how there was a first wife of Adam, in long ago legends, Lilith, who was suspected of being a vampire in Mesopotamian culture, though the Ancient Greeks called her Lamia.

"So you see, everything stems back from the Slavic culture. All stories of vampires originate there and everything after that is a combination of legend and imagination." She said excitedly. "Did you know that the only reason vampires are associated with bats is because the legend of vampires leads back to Dracula or Vlad the Impaler? Vampire bats have a saliva that is a natural anticoagulant. It's called Draculin. It's really amazing." She smiled, knocking Clarke's mind from one thought to another in that single instant.

For the past twenty minutes she had told him all she knew about vampire tales and all the things that humans believed about them. He paid as much attention to her as he could, listening and trying to take it all in so he could learn and understand more about his people. But something happened when she smiled then, something unexplainable and yet, completely understandable.

For that moment, as Catalina started to talk about the true abilities and 'gifts' of vampires, Clarke was unable to listen. All he could do was stare at her rosy cheeks, her bright blue eyes and think about the softness of her skin, the curve of her lips, the way the wind swept gently through her hair. As soon as the thought entered his head, he looked around them at the utter exposure of the area where they stood. There were no trees or bushes around them, only open ground. Instantly, his mind started searching for privacy from prying eyes. He recalled they weren't far from Catalina's house, from her own admission not a few moments before and decided that it would be the only privacy they would find in the woods.

Ignoring her words, as she continued to talk, he took her hand and led her towards her house, surprising her. As she went quiet from curiosity, she wondered if he remembered something of his attack or his attacker and was following the memory. When he came to the small, rundown hunting shed her father had long ago abandoned, that lay on the very edge of the woods outside her home, she wondered what he was up to.

"Clarke? What's wrong?" She asked, but she got no answer.

"Inside." He whispered, surprising her with the mystery of it all. Catalina began to wonder if someone was following them, if he had heard something that had him worried or afraid. She couldn't understand the sudden change in his behavior Although she required an explanation, she was willing to trust him enough to wait and allow him to explain himself. "I thought I heard someone coming." He lied, finding the darkness of the hunting shed the perfect privacy from the exposure of the woods.

Once his eyes naturally adjusted to the dark, as Catalina's were struggling to do, he found the privacy intensified any thought that crossed his mind in the open wood. And he couldn't fight it. In the darkness, Catalina was at a loss and couldn't tell the distance between them until she felt the touch of Clarke's hand on her face.

"Don't be afraid." He whispered to her. She felt his breath on her skin and her pulse raced at his touch. When he kissed her a second later, very gently, she started to feel afraid again, remembering her dreams of such passion shared between them. She was desperate to ask if he had kissed the woman he had killed or if he had chosen her because of how attractive he found her. But no words of any importance could break the barrier of Clarke's kisses.

Catalina had no will when it came to stopping the romance that swept through the hunting shed. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to kiss him. And for the first time in her life, she was allowing herself to live her life without asking someone else's permission first. Her family had always treated her like a child, despite her age and yet, she had allowed them to because she thought it was natural. At least she thought that way until she met Clarke.

One look had been enough and as she responded to his kisses and let the feeling between them grow, she knew that meeting him had set her free. She refused to be confined to asking for permission or believing that she was a child and not worth any attention. She was a young woman, with love to give and a desire to be loved. She wanted nothing, at that moment or any other moment since she had found Clarke in the woods than to be with him.

And right there, in the hunting shed just outside the boundaries of her home, Catalina lost herself to freedom. She gave herself over entirely to Clarke's will and each moment felt like a lifetime of romance and sensual kisses. They made love that afternoon with no thought or care for anyone else.

After an hour of talking together and returning to the purpose of their visit to the woods, they returned to the clan house in secret and made love again. Catalina was afraid that he would get into trouble, but Clarke knew beyond any doubt that he would live his life with her. That was enough to keep her happy for the few hours they could steal for themselves. Before Damian would have to be informed of their relationship and dealt with them appropriately.