Reminiscence {Book Two of the Vengeance Trilogy}

Chapter Sixteen: The Worst Memory

"Tom...he's not looking to make the world, our world, a better place. Everything he does is fueled by his own bitterness. His father was a psychopath and despite whatever he tells you, Tom is on that same path. He has tortured Elliot in so many different ways and his father killed my aunt and uncle in cold blood," I finally finished explaining. I figured it was better to stop myself there while I was still ahead of myself. Peter probably didn't want to listen to more of my lecturing anyway.

For a good five minutes, silence swirled around the two of us in the cold, winter air. Peter stared out towards the miles of city that stretched out before us. I could see the tears welling in his eyes, but he didn't allow a single one to fall. I wasn't expecting an immediate response. How could I? I told him that the person he loves is a cold-blooded killer. It was like when Daley told me that Kay was a siren; a vampire who could attract anyone she wanted just so she could drink from them and turn them. All the love I thought I had for Kay was fake, something she had spun together for her own personal gain. Tom didn't even turn Peter, but his love was as real as love could be.

"I keep trying to come up with something that would justify everything he's done, but I...I just..." Peter said. His voice was trembling over every word as if he were trying to hold back everything he was feeling in the moment. Without telling him that I was still in Elliot's pack, I told him everything that I could. I told him about how Tom forced Elliot to give into the natural thirst and how his father tortured him by keeping him from feeding after that. I went into the story about how Tom killed his own father just to become the alpha of the pack. Everything I knew that made Tom the wicked creature I knew him to be was out for Peter to know. The ball was in his court now. What he did with this information was up to him.

"Look, I know what you're going through here. Finding out who someone is after falling in love with them...it's rough. You still love them and you find yourself grasping at straws to find a reason to make what they did okay and even if you can't, it doesn't change the fact that you love them," I said and just like what usually happened when I talked about her, I could see Kay perfectly in my mind. I could still recall every curve of her body. The way her eyelashes would flutter when she looked at me. Her strange yet wonderful American accent. The way her silky sheets of hair tangled in between my fingers. Kay wasn't a good person. She would turn men into vampires and then disappear before anyone had the slightest chance of finding her. She abandoned people. She abandoned me. Still, if she were standing right in front of me now, I knew that I would fall to her knees without a second thought.

"So...you were close with your aunt?" Peter asked, tearing my mind away from thoughts of Kay. I glanced at him with a single arched eyebrow. I took in a deep breath, knowing that I would have to hold myself back from saying too much and giving myself away.

"Yeah, we were close. I knew her before we were both turned. When she was human, she was more like a mother than my actual mother. Aunt Aileen took care of me and made sure I stayed out of trouble. I could stumble into my parents house shit faced and neither one of them would bat an eye at me. If I was drunk and I called my aunt, she would be there to pick me up and take care of me. Even in the morning when I was puking my guts out, she was there rubbing my back and telling me it was going to be okay. When she was turned by my uncle, she faked her own death because she was scared to come back being...you know, one of us." I explained.

"I didn't know that you two were turned at different times." I nodded at him.

"For five years I was on my own and I just kept living without her. Then, when I was turned, my uncle found me and we were reunited. For a while I didn't really accept who she was, who I was, but I eventually adapted. She was there for me like she was before. Things were different, she didn't remember a lot about our past, but she knew who I was. Over time, Daley became a father figure to me and Elliot was more of a little brother than my cousin. The only thing that really mattered was that I had my aunt back."