DANIEL HERON: BECOMING

18 - Now we wait.

Alone in the dark living room, Daniel was still trying to wrap his head around the conversation he heard minutes ago.

Someone was gonna come after them. Were they some sort of outlaws in the vampire world?

Thinking about not only that, but also about everything that happened to him in the last few days, was just too exhausting. He felt the onset of another headache.

Damn stress, he thought and covered his face with his hands. He exhaled and then inhaled the warm air trapped underneath the palms. It didn't help. He could still feel the tapping around his temples. He moved his fingers towards them and started massaging them in slow, circular motions. Sometimes it helped.

He stopped when he heard muffled voices. Ana and Teresa weren't resting. Judging by the sounds coming from the room they retreated to, they were both infuriated.

"Leave!" Teresa yelled. "We have to leave so abruptly!"

"We both knew this day would come." Ana's voice was calmer, but still loud enough for him to hear. "We knew we wouldn't be able to stay here indefinitely; people would get suspicious. But I always hoped we would leave on our terms."

"Well, Mr. Eber deprived us of that option." Teresa sounded like someone who wouldn't mind using the Mayor's head as a bowling ball. "We need a plan. Right away! Where is the phone book?" she added angrily. "I know we stored it somewhere. A book that thick couldn't have just disappeared. Where could it be?"

The cabinet doors behind the closed door were being opened, and then slammed shut. Muffled cursing followed. Not having anything better to do, Daniel decided to join the search. He pulled out the drawers on the dresser that stood by the wall, one by one. Inside the last of them, under some old issues of magazines he wasn't familiar with, he found what Ana and Teresa were looking for – a thick book with numerous thin, off white pages filled with small printed names, addresses and numbers.

He knocked at their door.

"What!?" Teresa opened it so suddenly that he forgot what he wanted to say. "Where did you find it?" she asked when she spotted the phone book in his hands.

"It was...it was in the drawer," Daniel stuttered.

"Give it here," Teresa said, took the book from his hands and shut the door right in front of his nose.

"You're welcome," Daniel mumbled quietly, only to be told not to be a wise ass.

The door opened again. This time Ana was on the other side. "Thank you," she said.

Teresa couldn't stay quiet at such a shameless display of gratitude. "Don't pamper him," she said. "He's nothing but a nuisance. He has been all along. And you know how I take care of nuisances." She cast a toxic glare Daniel's way, making his intestines cramp.

"Do not doubt my instincts," Ana said to her. "I'm only seldom mistaken, so trust me on this one. There's something different about him."

Teresa sized him up once more, head to toe. Her eyes then intersected his, allowing him to catch a glimpse of amber. When she turned away from him, he felt throbbing in his temples again. Still, he dared to look inside the room. It looked completely ordinary. There were no coffins, no demonic artefacts, no shrines for worshiping the Devil.

Those movies are so wrong, he thought to himself.

Teresa sat on the edge of the bed covered by colorful quilt, embroidered in golden threads, and began skimming through the phone book.

"Go, get some rest," Ana said to him. "Try to get some sleep. They say that the morning is wiser than the evening."

Regardless to the saying, Daniel didn't feel stroke of wisdom in the morning. The questions that swarmed in his mind last night were still there, answers still missing.