Creatures and Legends (Wattys2018)

9: Conflict Among Family

As Thomas stalked the halls of the empty estate he shared with his brother, his anger became greater and greater by the second. Dale doesn't have any right to promise that, he thought to himself as he continued to search the halls and rooms. After about ten minutes, he finally made it to Dale's room. Furious with what he had said to Krista, Thomas slams open the door to Dale's room to find him sitting at his desk as he always is. 

"What the hell were you thinking?" he yells, "You have no more right to her than I do! I thought the deal was to let her choose. That's the only way this stupid bloodline will continue, you idiot! It has to be her choice because it has to be real love if she even decides to stay with us after she finds out about everything."

Dale chuckles sourly, "You don't think I don't know that? I may have let a bit of information slip, but you don't seriously think it didn't come with repercussions? How naive is this little race making you, little brother?"

"Don't even think about calling me that. As far as I'm concerned, we aren't brothers right now with the way you stabbed me in the back and what do you mean by 'repercussions'?"
Dale sighs and pulls off his white t-shirt to reveal a dark patchy spot that looks like a burn.

"Heh, well, I guess this whole binding magic isn't just a hoax then. But getting back to you and me, once Krista figures everything out, which I don't believe will be very long from now, she will have to choose. You know that as well as I do. With her being a Valerie, she will have to choose one of us Enochs and become queen just like her mother and ours," Thomas says, still angered by what Dale did. Dale becomes uninterested, having heard this same speech from his parents when he was younger many times. Thomas notices and becomes furious again, deciding to push his so-called brother as he leaves the room.

"At least I'm not tricking her into thinking I actually care about her," he says, closing the door behind him. Now alone in his bedroom, Dale begins to reflect on everything. Why does this have to happen? Why was I put into this position...? He thinks to himself and begins pacing in front of his bed. Soon after, Dale walks towards the hidden front door and steps outside into the inky dark garden. With the moonlight being his guide, he follows the path to the very edge of the hedges and to where his mother's grave was placed long ago. On the way down, he had plucked a pink rose from one of the bushes surrounding the path and Dale places it in front of the headstone. 

"Why can't you be here? Why did you have to leave us?" he says beginning to cry. Before the Enoch brothers' mother had died, she was always there for her boys. She had loved and cared for both Dale and Thomas. With her being queen before the war, though, she soon ran out of time with her boys. However, after surviving the war between humans and vampires, the queen's guilt and grief of having so many of her people die, she became severely depressed. 

About a year after the war ended, Wendy Enoch, their mother, took her own life. Dale had found her after his father had left one night on business. He had gone looking for her, only to find her laying on the floor of her study. There were burn marks from where she had wrapped her wrists in silver handcuffs, which were attached to a metal loop on the bed frame. Silver was considered extremely dangerous to vampires. This was one legend that was always kept from mortals, in hopes it would never be used against them. Until the war.

Remembering the day he saw his dead mother, Dale quickly leaves the site of her grave and goes back into the house.

Thomas had stalked off to his bedroom, mumbling to himself and cursing Dale. Once he closed his door, he collapsed on his bed and began to think about nothing in particular. His thoughts drifted to Krista, who was asleep in her room. Krista made him feel something he hadn't felt in such a long time. After his mother died, he fell into deep anguish and had loathed Dale for not being upset about her death. To an extent, Krista had reminded him of Wendy with her stubborn attitude and feisty behavior. At first, Krista had brought back memories he'd pushed away in hopes of forgetting them, but later, that hatred for her had turned into something more pure.

Thomas's thoughts had drifted to the night they were both attacked by those monsters Dale insists on keeping. That night he had shown her a glimpse of his powers. He had protected her without even hesitating, almost as if something inside him clicked again. Krista had brought that piece of him out again. She had brought out that playful happy little boy he once was and as these thoughts surfaced, Thomas realized how much Krista actually meant to him. He realized for the first time since his mother died how thankful he was for the binding magic placed upon he and Dale.

"She needs to know," he said to himself, sitting up from the bed. Suddenly a sharp pain forms in his abdomen and he yells out in agony. Lifting his shirt, he finds a dark spot that looks like a burn similar to Dale's in the spot of the pain. A warning, he thought, I have to find a way to tell her without killing myself in the process. With that final thought, Thomas began thinking of a plan as he fell asleep.