Blood Ties; The Ties that Bind
…here we go again…
Synopsis; Asteroth is defeated but the price of victory was high and left its mark on the hearts of our trio. But the supernatural doesn't stop for heartbreak and there are new dangers waiting in the dark. Can they recover and find the strength to fight again?
Words of Warning and Disclaimer; I do not own the Blood Ties universe, characters etc. they are the work of the very talented Tanya Huff, and brought into 3d living colour by the ingenious creative mind of Peter Mohan. That said, my fanfiction is based solely on the television show, Blood Ties and any inconsistencies with the Blood Books is therefore to be expected.
Secondly, I wanted to draw readers' attention to the fact that this is the direct sequel to my previous fanfictions entitled Blood Ties Blood Bond, and Blood Ties First Blood. Without reading those stories before starting this sequel there will be absolutely no context or background to the story and you would, in essence, be starting in at the end. I chose to start another story instead of just continuing the last because this one will have a very different focus and feel even though it takes up the plot almost directly where First Blood left off. Also, this fic deals with explicit adult themes (more so then the others) and is not for young readers, please use your own discretion.
This will be the final fanfiction that I write in this series, making up a trilogy of;
1. Blood Ties Blood Bond;
2. Blood Ties First Blood, and finally;
3. Blood Ties The Ties that Bind.
I hope you enjoy them all and, as always, I welcome comments!
---------------------------------------------------
Blood Ties; The Ties that Bind Ch. 1
Ice clinked and cracked in the glass, the sound the only music, only joy his world allowed. He stared into the depths watching the golden liquid mix and swirl with the melting ice, water creating spirals as he lifted the glass and drank half it down in one gulp. Gold…he hated the colour. It was the colour of her hair in sunlight….and the shimmer of her skin…the very taste of her on his lips…
He lurched upright, throwing the glass as hard as he could against the wall, watching as the liquid amber scotch and broken shards fell in drops to the floor. He didn't want to remember. People said it would help, said he should talk about it, that it would help him to heal if he remembered….but how could he remember if he couldn't even bring himself to say her name?
Drinking helped…made him sleep, forget for an hour, a day, the pain that engulfed him like a shadow and stole the colour from his world. He groped around blindly on the table beside him, searching for the bottle, damn the glass. It was dark in his apartment, but whether that was because the shades were drawn or it was night he didn't know and couldn't bring himself to care. It was hard to care about much these days…friends, family, work, it all seemed so pointless.
Crowley had assigned him to a psychiatrist, meetings twice a week. He'd never gone. Finally after he nearly killed a pimp trying to get a confession out of the bastard when a blonde undercover cop ended up in the hospital she'd put him on suspension and then after he showed up to the review hearing hung over…well…work wasn't' something he needed to worry about anymore.
Leave of Absence…it sounded almost ironic, especially after how hard he had worked to get back on the force, the extra cases, late nights, ignored phone calls and invitations to dinner…and now Crowley was forcing him to leave…because of her absence. She was gone…and the world was falling apart anyways.
…………………
……………………
A sharp knocking woke him. Recollections of another night, another girl and caught up in the memory he stumbled to the door. Opening it before he had a chance to think…before he remembered.
"Mike," Coreen stood on his doorstep clad in a simple black dress, her eyes narrowing, half questioning as if she couldn't believe what she saw.
He stood, leaning against the doorframe, holding it for support. Rumpled police sweatpants were loosely tied at his waist, face covered with what could conservatively be 3 days of stubble. Coreen leaned in closer as he withdrew, blinking from the lights of the hallway, hardly daring to believe that this was Mike Celluci standing before her. He'd always looked so put together….she couldn't even remember seeing him without a tie on, let alone without a shirt! And it was only early evening…
"Have you been drinking?!" she exclaimed, face creasing into a frown of disbelief.
"You come all the way across town to lecture me Coreen?" He said trying hard not to slur the syllables together and catching the door to steady himself as the world rocked and lurched, threatening to send him spilling to the floor.
"You don't remember?" she said, her voice rich with disbelief and her eyes begging him to say differently.
Didn't remember, if only he didn't remember…if only he could forget, but memories of her followed him…haunted him everywhere.
"What do you want Coreen?"
She looked away, hands opening and closing around the handles of her black on black bag.
"It's today, Mike…" she paused, waiting for him to stop her before continuing. "Vicky's funeral? It's today and…"
The door slammed in her face, the air from its closing blowing her hair back and leaving her gasping as shock quickly heated into anger.
She pounded on the door, her fist turning red where it struck the wood again and again.
"Mike! Open the door!" she yelled, not caring who was listening, barely knowing what she said.
"I lost her too Mike, and it hurts and I'm sorry, but she died for us! For you Mike! And the least we could do is to be there for her!" Tears were streaming down her face as the anger collapsed back into the familiar grief and pain. She struck half hearted at the door again, as if she could force all her pain into the wood and metal.
"Mike please…" she begged, leaning against the wall, all her anger vanished. "I don't want to have to go alone."
Mike sat just inside, his back against the wood of the door, hearing the pain in her voice as if from a distance. Good old Mike would have gone with her, he thought, he wouldn't have made Coreen go alone, be alone in this… But he wasn't that person anymore. He couldn't help someone else, even a friend deal with their grief when he was slowly being eaten alive by his own. He couldn't bring himself to go to her funeral…even if they weren't really burying her…even if it was just an empty pine box…
He crawled across the floor, vaguely hearing Coreen's heals click down the tiled hallway as she left. Giving up on him at last. He needed to forget….forget what had happened, what day it was…forget everything.
Liquor burned his throat, like fire settling and boiling in his stomach but bringing peace with it…he took another drink, and another, feeling the darkness gather at the corners of his mind. Who would have thought that after so long fighting the darkness he'd end up needing it, welcoming it? It made the voices of his conscious stop, blocked out the memory of her voice in the morning….he closed his eyes, willing himself to fall faster into the dreamless sleep that would allow him to forget everything… to forget Vicky.
But as always, the last thing that he heard in the heartbeat before unconsciousness took hold was the voice that whispered in his mind, the voice that he couldn't silence no matter how much alcohol he poured down his throat, an insidious thread under the pain and self incrimination….the voice that whispered that he could get her back…if he was willing to pay the price.
---------------------------------------------------
Coreen bit her lip almost clear through trying to stop the tears from spilling out of her eyes as she watched the first handful of soil being sprinkled on Vicky's grave, the brown dusting scuffed the shiny black surface of the coffin, marring the artificial picture with harsh reality. She turned away as the first wetness touched her check, not able to watch as it was lowered into the ground and slowly covered over. Arms hugged around herself she tried to focus on something else, tried to use the headstones and manicured grass and flowers around her to build the picture that Vicky really was lying in that box and going back to the earth, a natural cycle of life and death….it wasn't much of a comfort but even Vicky being buried was better then the reality. But most of the mourners were gone now, the black town cars and taxi's filling up and leaving, heading to the service. The heat of the day that released scents from the floral bouquets was fading as the sun sank to the horizon.
She watched, unable to leave, as first the minister left, then as Kate took Vicky's mother by the arm and walked her to a waiting car. At lot of the police force had shown up, despite the fact that Vicky had left them years ago. Coreen couldn't look at Vicky's mom as she walked by, she had almost the exact same shade of hair as Vicky did, but it was that slight difference that hurt more then the similarity. As she walked she just kept mumbling; "but she wasn't a cop anymore…this doesn't make sense…" Coreen entertained a small and fleeting thought to try and explain it to her, try and make her understand that Vicky had been doing something so much more important, and dangerous then being a detective, but the ending of the story would have been the same. Better that her mom think that Vicky was dead and resting in peace, buried in the family plot, then being tormented in hell by Asteroth for eternity.
She shivered as the cool wind blew, seeming to cut right through her wool skirt and pierce into her skin. It was easy to forget in the warmth of day that it wasn't yet spring. Coreen could still see bits of snow, left hidden behind tall statues and gravestones like a child's forgotten toys.
She stood waiting, knowing that she should be going to the service, that she should be there to try and help in any small way, or at least to maintain the myth of Vicky's death, but somehow even as it got darker, as the sun touched everything with pink and gold and then grey as it sank below the horizon, she waited. There wasn't anything to fear in the dark anymore, thanks to Vicky.
She looked up, not quite knowing what she was looking for as she scanned the darker corners of the cemetery, trying to make her eyes see into the shadows. There---at the curve of the hill where two trees almost touched, she saw him. A shadow figure waiting, watching from the outside.
He was who she'd been waiting for, what had kept her here even without her knowing it. Henry.
"I just…I don't know why I came," he said it quietly, offering it to her and the night like an apology for transgression or trespass.
She waited, still silent. It was a change in her, once upon a time she would have gotten goosebumps at just the thought of being alone in the dark with Henry and need to fill the space with mindless words, but now there was a quiet waiting inside her. As if she knew that if she could only wait long enough there would be answers.
"I'm leaving tonight."
Still nothing.
"I know she's not….she's not here…but leaving without coming here first…" he sighed, trying to find the words that would explain it to her, explain it to himself.
"It would have been like not saying goodbye," Coreen finished for him, looking him in the eye.
Silence stretched and he looked away.
"Where will you go?" she asked.
"I don't know. I just need to get away. Too many memories here, too many ghosts."
Coreen watched him, his eyes going unfocused as he stared at her gravestone, fingers idly tracing the words without really seeing them. She knew that he wasn't just thinking about Vicky, he was remembering the others that he'd lost…dark hair and blonde circling his mind like night and day.
"Will you try and find her?" she asked making Henry's head snap up, fingers going still on the stone. She was doing that far too often for his comfort, guessing his thoughts, knowing what would happen next. He should be worried, Coreen had tapped into powers far beyond anything that she ever had before with her small love charms and protection spells. But it had become painfully clear that he couldn't protect her from
herself, or from the world. He'd learned that lesson the hard way…with Vicky.
"I don't know," he answered honestly, trying to mask his worry. Coreen wasn't his problem anymore but he still felt a sense of responsibility for her.
"Will you come back?"
"I don't know."
She felt her throat tighten and tears threatened to spill over. First Mike, now Henry….Vicky was gone and everything was falling apart, they were falling apart. She blinked, looking down and taking a deep breath. She couldn't lose them all. "I'll be back if I can, take care Coreen," she felt the warmth of his hand on her face, his fingers wiping away a tear and she looked up but he was gone. And she was alone in the night.