Chapter 8

What I loved to do most, was practice jousting with Sebastian. It wasn't the most useful tool in real fights, but it was calming to me. I liked having someone to teach. He always paid careful attention to my instructions, and was a kind listener whilst I talked of my Caretaker's training. Sebastian seemed to be the only one really emphatic to my attachment to my Caretakers. He talked about his dad teaching him baseball, after I told him about Caretaker #1 teaching me to stab the head off of dummies, and it was comforting to feel my past connected to the world outside of Antigen.

The Manson had been turned into something that resembled the "schools" I read about in my books. Adults and children filled twelve rooms out of the fourteen. We had classes three hours a day, and a lunch break after the first two hours. As I slowly sipped blood, Calev would try to impress me with whatever story he had from the day's training.

Jayden ounce said "Hello Eve" to me between classes. I did a double take, I said "Hi" just because I felt like I had to, then I made a point of avoiding the hallways he walked through, or ducking behind people when I couldn't. I did not need another Jayden theory. Seeing him was a reminder of what I had chosen to ignore.

I no longer slept. My body would collapse on its own accord at night, for more or less than an hour. Not nearly enough time to dream.

Calev would occasionally remark I looked tired. He noticed every detail about me, and asked me about it. The scratch on my arm from sword-play with Sebastian, the braid in my hair Sarroria had made, even the glint in my eyes from David's praise.

Sarroria had insisted on showing me how to do my hair properly, and I knew Sebastian or David put her up to this. As much as I liked Sarroria, her presence made me nervous, and I wished that my skin wasn't so pale because I expected I was blushing. Her affections felt invasive. As she was combing my hair she murmured "Antigen must have been tough, your mother should have been there to teach you how to comb your hair"

My angry thoughts were quiet, yet persistent: stop feeling sorry for me, I don't need or want your pity! It's not my fault she's gone…it's not…The last two words trailed away as my thoughts were handed over to doubt.

I now shared a room with David, where previously I had slept alone. David had gone back to being my gruff, humorous father. I tried not to think about the thing.

The problem was, I wasn't thinking about it. It was its own being, coming into my mind, asking me how I felt about it. Sebastian would be taking me on a sight-seeing ride in the red Tesla, and suddenly it would jump into my mind: What would your mom say about this car? Or that weirdly shaped building? Calev would bump me playfully while telling a story and it would ask me: was your mom like this with Michael? It hit me hardest when David came back from a raid on a lycan camp, covered in his own blood as much as others' and it would ask: could my mom have protected him better?

I was restless to become the weapon I was born to be. I wasn't like the other vampires, clumsy, weak, naive. I was sharp-willed, cold. I was ready to fight in this war, to rip apart the lycans who had ripped apart Michael, who had ripped apart me and…that thing I don't think about.

David would not let me asses my pain tolerance. I took my knife and cut deep into my muscles anyway, in front of the class. I wanted to convince him of my strength, and ability to fight in the war. He wouldn't let me go to classes for a week after that, for disobeying him. During free hours, I couldn't resist sneaking a knife or hammer with me into the bathrooms, or sometimes the library because it was mostly deserted, and assessing my pain tolerance. I would bring blood with me to heal the broken bones, and tears in flesh and organs. I knew rationally that this was abnormal, but it was calming to me because it had been part of my routine at Antigen.

Jayden caught me in the library one time. Of course it had to be him, basically the only other vampire who would enter the place. I stopped dead, holding the hammer above my big toe, about to crush it.

"Dissociation, may allow you to push yourself farther, but it blocks your ability to do it correctly, For example, while swimming, you should be thinking about your form, even if it's more painful that way, because if you don't you might sink"

I had read about swimming before, so I had an idea of what he was talking about. I watched him walk away, my mouth slightly open, and then I brought the hammer down as hard as I could. I found myself gasping on the floor and holding my foot, in too much pain to drink the blood. I didn't cry, I no longer had the ability to cry. Eventually, with a shaking hand, I reached down and grabbed the blood bag. My injury healed slowly, and before it had finished, I crushed one of my fingers. Luckily it was Calev, who found me on the library floor, a bloodied mess, and not David. Calev spoke frantic soft words, as he tried to get me to drink the blood. I was in so much pain that my mind rejected the idea. Like when you're dehydrated and have a stomach ache and water hurts the first time you have it. I finally mastered the self-control to drink. The blood hit my stomach sourly, and then filled me up with energy.

"Do that again and I will tell David" Calev said, so I had to be a bit more careful.

When David met a woman-vampire from his old coven, and she moved into his room, and I moved into Abby's, I didn't realize that my emotions would escalate to far more than annoyance and rejection.

I didn't particularly like sharing a room with Abby. It wasn't that she didn't like me, we got along okay. It was just her bright attitude, superficial chatter. As if she were a human teenager instead of a vampire one. She seemed to have this obsession with shoes. I didn't care what my shoes looked like when they were splattered with lycan blood. I didn't particularly care that I even had shoes at all, considering I had enough practice with walking on nails, and the like. I half-expected her to talk wistfully about prom, something I had read about in a book, which had been laughed at by the main character. I still read books, but the vampires with the exception of Jayden all thought it was weird. Even the human-like Abby thought it was weird, but mostly just because she thought it was "nerdy".

Genelia, always smiled at me as she passed, close by David's side. She reminded me a bit of Caretaker #7, at least her expression did. I found myself idly waiting for the time she would betray us. I fantasized that she was really a lycan, so that I could rip my claws through her neck.

David left without speaking to me.

"I'm sorry Eve" Sebastian said. "He fell in love, moved back to his own coven…he was too much of a pussy to tell you, but it's because he cares about you, can't stand to see you in pain"

I scoffed. David was now my enemy. Sebastian would sometimes talk of the covens uniting, but I was not interested, I was never interested. There was only one vampire coven that would accept a lycan-vampire hybrid, and I lived in it. So much so I could forget the lycan part of me when I was here.

Sarroria agreed that I could teach the other children, that I was experienced enough to fully take David's place. I took pleasure in humiliating Abby, any chance I could get. I did it subtly to, spreading rumors when she was "sick" in her room, probably fantasizing about clothes. I would disguise insults in the form of compliments. I was able to detach myself from my guilt, pain tolerance exercises did this. The other children moved away from Abby, ignored her.

I would have slept in David's old room. Since I was in a position of authority though, I was allowed to sleep in Calev's. I moved a cot into his room, so he wouldn't feel awkward. But most of the time, he was glad to hold my cold body in his arms, to attempt to comfort me, when really there was nothing to comfort. I felt nothing but purpose.

Eventually, the rage faded away. I stopped teaching classes, or even going to them. Ironically, Abby took my place. After all my battering, although her self-esteem was severely wounded, she learned the most out of the kids in the three classes I had taught. I spent all my time in the library. I put a lock on its door at night, dragged my cot out of Calev's room, and stared at the tall ceiling, stretching towards the sky. I stopped doing my pain-tolerance exercises, and I stopped thinking about the war. I would look up into the darkness, stretching on and on, and think how that was my life. Not there, but not gone, not bad, but without a purpose.

I skipped lunch. I rarely drank. I liked the weak feeling in my bones when I went days, or weeks without it. Calev hated how I was acting. He tried to force feed me. Mostly I just ignored him. I wasn't interested in his conditions, in his care that would leave me.

Sarroria took us out on a practice patrol, when I was nearing my thirteenth birthday. We swung by David's coven, we didn't enter obviously, but he was outside when we filled by, just about to go inside. He looked at us blankly, perhaps there was fear in his eyes when he met mine, maybe it was just worry, or guilt. I'm not sure.

I couldn't stand this world. Where whatever companions you made seemed to be dead within years, and the people that you had were only the ones that you desperately clung to, the ones who wanted nothing more than to throw you down and never have to be weighed down by you again. When I saw David, so far away, in the other coven, I realized with a pang how much I had loved him. How I had been so focused on my mom, that I hadn't even given myself room to really think about David. Right now, if both my mom and David had come to me, and told me I could only stay with one of them, I would have almost chose David…almost. It didn't matter though, David and Selene were never coming back, never really coming back. All I could do was try to focus on the father I had, Sebastian. Frustration took over again as I tried to break down the wall inside of me so that I could reach my feelings for Sebastian. I felt hopeless as I realized in defeat that I would probably only know how much I loved him, when he was dead or gone.

I thought my first birthday outside of Antigen would feel different somehow. I didn't tell anyone that it was my birthday. I had to go through the dining hall to get blood bags. "You're really selfish Eve" Calev said, when I once again refused to drink blood with him. It hit me like a blow…but I realized it was true. I didn't care anymore.

"Maybe I have a right to be"

"Eve!" He called after me, there was longing in his eyes as I turned back to look at him. "Stop pushing me away! How is this helping anyone?"

I started to walk away, no longer interested. "Eve!"

I found that it was easier to spend my time when I wasn't training, in David's room which I had finally claimed as mine just so I could be alone, reading. I didn't want to make any more feeble connections, that would pull away like pieces of thread on a frayed shirt at Antigen, and then Caretaker #3 would just give me a new one.

"Eve" Sebastian would always say. "Talk to me when it gets to crowded in there, too painful"

Sebastian would always get new books for me. He encouraged me in reading, even though the other vampires would give me looks. They could not understand why I would waste my time on human things, when there was so much more power from vampire abilities. Sebastian knew that happy stores would be useless, like Caretaker #2 removing a pimple before Caretaker #4 had healed my broken nose -so he got me the emotional ones that I needed. Reading them, I almost thought that being a human would be just as painful as being a vampire-lycan. I was most intrigued with stories about outcasts at what human's called "school". The cut off feeling they had, was the only thing comparable to the way I felt. Most of them also had unreachable parents, whether physically or emotionally. I was still unsure of what my personality was, so I tried to copy the characters in the novels, the way they would draw images, write dramatic poetry…cutting. Cutting was easier for me because I had almost no danger of dying, but for that same reason it was harder, there was less risk to it, so it felt like less of a sacrifice.

Being in my room for so long made me feel restless. I forced myself to be alone, but I still hated it, unlike a small population of lucky people who could cherish their independence. I felt confident in mine, but I resented my independence. I asked Sebastian if I could join the next raid on a lycan camp. "No Eve." He said firmly. "What would your mother say?"

"She wouldn't say a thing"

"You know what, it doesn't even matter what your mother would say, you're a daughter to me Eve, and it's my job to protect you"

I scoffed, but decided I had a better way to join the raid than argue with him.

I knew when the raiders were leaving. I left preciously five minutes after them. I stalked the group for a half an hour, before finally sliding in behind some of the newer members of the coven, in a back patrol.

"We're going to enter the left side of the coven up hear" I heard the group leader saying. I was short enough to not be noticed behind the taller bodies. We entered through the dark tunnel, and the pounding of my heart built in strength, until I heard the snarl of a lycan as it attacked the group leader. I smiled as I changed form. No one would have time to worry about going back now, even if I was seen.

I grabbed his back, and pulled myself on top of him. I was ready to bury my sharp, vampire teeth into his neck, but before I could he threw me off, and pinned me underneath him. I was surprised, but also interested by the challenge. I kicked at his stomach and rolled on top of him. I took a second too much thinking about whether or not I should kill him, a question I had never asked myself before. He was the first worthy opponent I had met in so long. But then he was on top of me, caressing his claws into my neck. I stared into his brown eyes, and watched as the hair receded into his head. It turned ginger as it did, and his eyes turned green.

He smiled at me. "I won't kill you this time coldheart, you're a little young to be fighting"

I flipped him underneath me and snarled. "And what makes you think I won't kill you?"

He chuckled. "Oh wow" He said sarcastically. "I never saw that one coming" He slipped into his form again, and then slipped out of it, back to a human. "Kill me if you want, I couldn't care less"

His words echoed my thoughts over the last year so precisely. "You're no older than I am" I felt my claws start to recede and quickly made an effort to consciously force them out, I wasn't going to be fooled so easily.

"Smart one"

"Why are you fighting?"

"Could ask you the same thing"

"But I'm on top of you, and I asked first"

"Good point" He laughed. "It's a suicide mission, which I think is quite obvious, or else you would be dead…but it's different for you? Isn't it Eve"

He said my name like it was such a divine insult. Good one I thought. I would so totally be offended…except I DIDN"T CHOOSE MY NAME!

"You were pretty dumb for coming out here" He said. "Everyone knows who you are…don't you get that we both want to own you Eve? And the lycans might not be so happy with you for being the vampire's property for so long"

I stood, letting him up. "Let yourself die if you want" I said. "I don't care, but I'm leaving, and if you want to come…come with me…"

The idea just came to me, but once I had it I knew it was what I was going to do. I strode past him, hitting him on the shoulder as I passed, not looking back. I started at the tunnel I had entered in, knowing it would be faster than searching for a new one.

"Wait" He was at my side. "That's the wrong tunnel coldheart, I don't give a lycan's shit about you, but since I'm so bored, I'll come with you…you'll die without me anyway"

I scoffed, but I allowed him to lead me out of the lycan's cave, me and him both fighting lycans and vampires alike along the way. I noticed he couldn't bring himself to kill the lycans, and I couldn't bring myself to kill either one. I felt lame knowing that my mom could kill all of the people in this cave right now without even giving it a second thought. I was just grateful that Sebastian didn't see me leaving.

Author's Note: Review!