Chapter 10 - Inner Demons

5pm Sunday

Katie chatted on the phone for a few moments with her friend Katrina or Kat, as she preferred to be called, while Callen drove back to her house.

"Maybe some other time, I'm with him."

Callen's ears perked up and he couldn't help but comment, "Him has a name."

"Just a sec Kat." She turned to Callen, "My friends, Kat and Jess want me to join them for dinner at Oliver's."

"Do you want to get your car or I should I drop you off?"

"They invited you as well."

"Oh, okay. You sure I won't be intruding?"

"No." She gave him one of her sweet smiles and put the phone back to her ear to let Kat know they would be there in about twenty minutes.

Dinner turned out to be quite entertaining for Callen as he sat with three beautiful, intelligent women on the outdoor patio of Oliver's, a place known for its young twenty-something customers. Their intelligence, however, diminished with each drink consumed. Katie only had two but that didn't keep her from participating in what he considered juvenile behaviour. Loud, borderline-vulgar language, suggestive remarks to men of similar age and the entitlement, Kat and Jess thought that they had somehow earned, to fondle him.

He shrugged it off when Kat playfully smacked his ass after he sank a difficult shot during a game of pool. And when Jess gave him a hug after they won the game, drink in one hand, his ass cheek in the other. When Jess dared Kat to kiss him while Katie was in the washroom, he was no longer 'amused'. Katie returned just after Kat had climbed on his lap and looped her arms around his neck. Callen followed Katie's movements with his eyes and was dumbfounded when she sat down and took a sip of her drink ignoring the fact that one of her friends was on his lap trying to stick her tongue in his mouth.

Pushing Kat off in one movement, he turned to Katie and gave her an "Are you fucking kidding me?" look.

"You're to serious," she grumbled at him as he got in the car and slammed the door shut. "She was only joking around." If it hadn't been for his ominous look she would have stayed with her friends.

Callen kept silent, as he hadn't anything nice to say. The wise words of Sam's daughter were appropriate at this particular moment - 'If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.'

Katie didn't like the eerie silence that was filling Callen's car. The rigidness of his shoulders and what appeared to be a death-like grip on the steering wheel that was causing his knuckles to whiten scared her. He barely had the car in park before he opened his door and slammed it shut (again). Not even glancing in her direction, he climbed the few steps to her front door.

"I need to get my bag," he said without looking at her.

Katie opened the door and stepped aside to let him in. He left his shoes on, walked quickly to the bedroom, grabbed his bag and attempted to make his way to the front door. Just before reaching the couch, the fucking couch that he loathed at that moment in time, and the front door that he suddenly had an abhorrent dislike for, he cracked. Teetering on the edge since Friday night, masking the imminent fall with façades, he was unsuccessful at willing his feet to take him all the way to the door.

Katie shut the door when she realized he wasn't leaving.

"What are you looking at? You waiting for me come over there and tell you that I actually liked being groped by people you call friends?" He dropped the bag at his feet. Katie was now standing in front of the kitchen table.

"I'm sorry, Callen. I didn't know…." He obviously didn't see the humour or fun in what happened, unlike how her and her friends did.

He cut her off, "You didn't know? You didn't know that I wouldn't like being touched by a woman that wasn't you?"

"I just thought..."

"Well your thoughts are fucking disgusting." He suddenly felt his stomach tighten. "Tell me something, is that one of your fantasies, watching me with another woman?" His heart was now pounding to the point he could feel it in his ears. "Did you think I would be turned on by that bitch and I would finally take you to bed and fuck your tight little pussy until you screamed my name?" His glare burned through her as harshly as his words did, "Is that what you thought?"

Katie's mouth gaped open unable to say anything to the man before her.

"That's right, looked shocked." A wave a cold chills ran through his body and then the feeling he was being stuck with pins and needles sheathed him.

Despite being somewhat mindful of his strange behaviour, Callen was literally unable to control himself, and the words kept flowing. Words he wasn't accustomed to saying aloud. He took several steps towards her; both of them now in the kitchen, he lowered his voice and spoke profanity that would later make him shudder, "I can be just as crude as your cock-sucking-whore friends."

Katie's body froze, only her mind working. For a split second she thought his derogatory comment was directed at her. She took the image she had stored of him looking down at her while she took him fully in her mouth, and that wasn't the look of someone who would speak, let alone, think such a thing of her.

"Callen, stop. Please." Despite it feeling like someone had stuffed cotton in his ears, he could read the words on her lips. They weren't difficult to decipher. Callen. Stop. Please.

"Stop?" He stepped towards her, his impending presence causing her to step backwards, bumping the table with the backs of her legs. He was now only a few feet from her, "That's not what you said to Kat when you came back to the table and saw her trying to stick her tongue in my mouth." He shook his head, "Nothing to say then, nothing to say now."

"You're scaring me." Katie was trying to figure out what was going on with Callen mentally, while keeping focused on his close physical presence.

He wasn't thrilled with what her friends had done or Katie's refusal to say or do anything, but he could have, should have stopped the first unwanted advance.

"Good." He took one more step towards her, bridging the gap between them to such a close proximity that she could see the sweat forming over his brow. "That's my intention. You have no clue what evil awaits you out there." He pointed to the door, and while bearing his full concentration on her eyes; he saw the fear in them. "The unseen evil that's hidden within people."

Callen was now in a full state of confusion and despite whatever it was that was happening to him, he knew his outburst was no longer about Katie and her friends.

While Katie stood and watched Callen literally reveal a side of him she would rather not see, his mind was going into overload.

Maybe I can seduce you into it. I blame you. This is all your doing. I still only live for one thing. To kill what you love. To kill what you love. To kill what you love.

Callen could no longer hear anything except his pounding heart and the words of Marcel Janvier that had fully consumed his current thoughts. His own words, "As much as I would like to, I don't do that," mingled in with Janvier's creating an unprecedented feeling of panic within him.

A tightening sensation in his throat had him grabbing his neck, then his head as it felt like someone had let go of his neck and was tightening something around his head. Although he had experienced dark moments in his life where he was convinced his time on Earth was up, this was different. A healthy dose of paranoia, he felt, had kept him alive all these years but this impending doom he was foreseeing was most certainly going to be the one that would have him take his last breath.

Katie started to speak but her words weren't meeting his ears. "Callen, are you okay?" Katie asked, before repeating it after it was clear he hadn't heard her the first time. Just as the words left her mouth the second time, the almost certain reason for his tirade came to her.

Dizziness had him turning and looking for something to hold on to. He foggily saw the couch and lunged towards it, somehow grabbing it with both hands before slumping to the floor.

Katie leapt towards him and caught his head before it hit the wood floor. Slouching down with him, she was now convinced she knew what was happening. Holding him steady with a hand on each of his shoulders, she waited a few minutes to make sure he was balanced and alert. She sat back on the floor, still staying close to him; he was told what had just happened. "You had an anxiety attack."

Callen wasn't sure he heard her right, "An anxiety attack?"

"My mom had them."

Trying to mask his embarrassment he stood without allowing Katie to assist him, grabbed his bag, tossed it over his shoulder and made haste to the door.

"Callen, where are you going?" Katie asked certain he should not be driving.

He didn't answer her as he pulled the door open, and leaving it that way, got into his car and drove into the night.