Firstly, my apologies for the time this has taken; I have had univeristy open days, which took up four days of the weeks, exams, which took up another three, and a bout of illness. Oh, the joys of summer!
So thank you for your patience, and thanks to all of ye fabulous, fantastic people who reviewed last time round :-) You certainly cheered me up!
Thank you: Dead Flower, Cynical Leaf, Danel, Persephone, Starwisher, Myst, Dark Angel, Kitty Katt, Me, Aquilla, Tough Fluff, and the splendid Starseeker,
The lyrics are from OMD's Walking On The Milky Way; absolutely phenomenal song.
Remember Part Eight
I don't believe in destiny, I don't believe in love
I don't believe that anything will ever be enough.
Aspen woke up suddenly and mutely, with a terrible feeling of numb dread knotted in his stomach.
Not again, not again, please oh please not again...
He couldn't stop himself shaking convulsively, his arms locked around his knees. His teeth were chattering, because he thought he could smell them again in the dark, like they had always been there, smelling of expensive clothes and emptiness, shaped like humans. Really monsters.
When someone touched him, he flinched away and tried not to cry out, because if he made a sound they would hurt him more-
"It's me," a voice whispered. "I can feel that something's wrong...Aspen, it's Tam!"
"T-t-tam?" Was it really her? He blinked, and realised that he could see in this darkness, that it was only the light veil of a moth's wing, not the draped shrouded darkness of the bad place. "Where am I?"
"In my room. We brought you here after Ellie shot you." She was warm, and in the thin darkness, he could see the graceful curves of her face, and her skin like velvet. Too good for him, too pure and too whole.
He was a mess, a useless mess, and so afraid that he would hurt her and wouldn't know until it was too late.
"Can you put the light on?" he said timidly.
"Not really. My mom and my sister are only down the hall, and my brother's next door, and they might wake up." The gentleness of her touch was safety. "Aspen...are you afraid of the dark?"
He stopped breathing for a moment.
"Dumb, isn't it?" he said finally, his voice caught between a laugh and a choke. "People like me shouldn't be afraid of the dark - we're supposed to revel in it. But...it was always dark back there. I'd always be waiting, and I'd never see them, but they'd be there all the same. And they'd be quiet. But I felt..."
He stopped. He wouldn't let her hear it. He wouldn't taint her with that. If Tam knew, she would be disgusted, and she would hate him, and then she might leave and he didn't think he could survive that.
"Talk to me," she said. "Tell me."
"You don't want to know," he mumbled.
"I'm asking, aren't I?" She knelt up, looking straight at him, her eyes as clear as glass bowls of water. He wanted to pool into her, to let her wrap him up in the secure strength of her mind and stay there forever.
"You won't want to know if I tell you," he said flatly. His sister hadn't wanted to know.
She had laughed and told him that monsters under the bed didn't exist, and he had told her she had got it wrong. Been called a liar, and a stupid kid, and she hadn't even noticed that he died that day.
It had taken a long, long time before he was alive again. It had taken lives, and lives, so many lives he couldn't count. He couldn't count anyway, that was why he was failing all his courses, but this was just a number so immense that no one could count it.
"Please tell me," Tam beseeched him, young and human in her top and the tattered trousers she slept in. Her hair, her lovely, shimmery iridescent hair fell all around her face with the same hue as her eyes.
He would give in soon. That couldn't be allowed. That was asking too much.
"I don't want to!" he snapped, trying to remember all the anger he had once felt. "Why can't you just leave me alone! You're..." It was hard, but he said it. "-vermin. Just vermin. Okay, I'm f-"
And to his horror, the word caught. It stuck in his throat like a captive, slammed into silence.
"I'm mucked-up," he said finally, "but why do you have to keep digging? I don't want to tell you!"
Yet his voice had lost the bite, and he knew it. Still...he had hurt her. She took her hands away, and dropped her head so he wouldn't see her bite her lip like that, or blink her eyes so frantically.
He saw it all anyway.
Better to hurt her now, he reasoned, than kill her later. It had to be. Then she straightened, and put her hands on the bed so she could lean forward into the little corner where he was still clustered.
Her scent was like a ghost of summer days, reminding him that there had once been something other than waiting in the dark.
Tam watched him, and he couldn't shield himself from her. It wasn't like with them. He couldn't switch off, and send himself into imaginary places which were bright and beautiful, and where the sun never ever set. She was in his head, running in him like a fever, and he was trapped.
"Aspen," she asked quietly. "Why can't you say it?"
X - X - X - X - X
They both knew what she meant.
She tried to see his face, and could make out only the odd shape that the light threw at her. The sharp cheekbones, a silver light embedded in his hair. She let her mind furl open, like a lotus flower in the dawn.
"I hate the word," he said dully. As though feeling was beyond him now. "I hate how people throw it about, not understanding what it means. I hate what it stands for. It's empty and violent and mindless."
She hated the numb suffering she heard, and could feel only pity. "You know what you remind me of?"
"No," he said sharply. But this time, she felt the lie, a little lump of wrongness in the word. He was trying to be cruel. Deliberately. Why? Before, he had only embraced her help. "And I don't want to know either."
"What's wrong with you?" She leaned in angrily, not understanding why he was shoving her away like this when it was so clear that he needed her. "I'm sorry if I'm not worthy enough to be told what's wrong because I'm vermin. I'm sorry that you're being such a goddamn jerk. You're like a kid, Aspen, A kid. But you're not a kid, and the monsters under the bed don't exist."
"The monsters in the bed are worse," he said so softly, Tam wasn't sure if she heard him right.
It took a moment for it to sink in. Just what he meant. Emotions swamped her, knocking her perception of the world - of him - sideways. Disbelief, then with one brief look at his mind, that swum in solitary darkness surrounded by sharp shoals and deadly shadows, she understood the harsh truth of it.
"Oh god..." Tam said in a thin, odd little voice that couldn't be hers.
He shrugged, and drew in on himself even more. "It's okay. I get it. You don't want me anymore. Damaged goods and all. Don't worry about it." The worst thing was the way his voice was so tired and flat.
That was why he was so innocent with her, yet so unexpectedly violent. Why he flinched so often, and was afraid of the dark, and couldn't trust anyone even if he wanted to.
She felt his mind close off from her, sealing him into the stinking, filthy horror of his memories.
No one should live through that alone.
"No," she said, and reached out to him. she pulled herself up into the bed, and knelt in front of him, trying to make him look up at her. "No, don't do that! Don't make yourself alone."
He had just curled up into himself, small in the corner of the room, head buried in his knees. She pulled frantically at his locked hands, screamed and shouted and hammered on the fortress of his mind.
"Let me in," she said, not wanting the despair that was hurting her throat. "I want to know. I want to help."
His head snapped up furiously, and those eyes were the curious cold colour of liquid diamonds, sparkling and shifting. "You want to know?" he hissed, reminding her of nothing so much as a wounded wildcat, fierce and afraid. "You can't help me. No one can, and you don't want to know. You couldn't handle it."
"How do you know?" she challenged recklessly. Yes, she would have said, he was a monster then.
"Fine!" he almost screamed, and then he moved so fast she didn't see him
All she knew was that he was suddenly kneeling right by her, his face contorted in terrible, inhuman anger, and that he put one hand over her heart, with his teeth bared and harsh, broken breaths ringing in her ears.
He opened his mind.
She was launched into darkness, true darkness, not the midnight hush that she slept in each night. This was a place where the black was like liquid, drowning her and flowing over her.
The room was cold stone, and she was shivering in a corner of the room. Always shivering, always waiting for the first rush of air into the room, the first wispy hints of the smell that was all the warning there was.
Her heart hammered in her chest, despite being in this body that was more powerful than her own. Because she might be a vampire here, but she was still a kid and kids were always the ones who got hurt.
It curled into her nose, and she was scrabbling back into the corner as if she would sink into the stone, thinking nopleasenonono, and biting her tongue to keep from screaming or sobbing while the hot and silent tears slipped from her eyes, as they always did.
And then that first spidery touch-
"No!"
It wasn't her, it was Aspen, and she was launched back into the comfort of her familiar, simple room.
He had let go of her and had his hands over his face. She was puzzled, then she realised he was crying in the same quiet, heartbroken way, and there was nothing she could do to take away what she had just seen.
She felt sick. Physically sick. And so, so angry at whoever it was. God, how could anyone do that to a kid?
She didn't know how long she sat there, wanting to say something, finding that the words simply were not there. Being a moderately good person did not give her the ability to wave the problem away.
She didn't know if he wanted touch right now, but it was all the solace she could offer. She just put her arms around him and when he fought her, let go, but then he held on for a moment, and she saw the bleak drifts of his eyes, shellshocked and pleading.
"You were right," she said, gathering all the courage she had ever believed that she had. "I don't want to know, but you have to tell someone, Aspen, because you can't deal with that on your own. You can't."
He stared at her, not seeming to notice the tears that wove silvery mazes across his face. So wide, his eyes, so horribly young and trapped. "You won't leave me?"
"I won't leave you."
For a long time, he just clung to her and said nothing. And when he did speak, it was in broken sentences that sometimes trailed off in flashes of emotions that lit her head like the battlefield skies of the First World War. She only listened, because there was nothing she could offer to change what he said.
Sometimes, you could only be there.
His voice was her world in that gloomy night, her only entrance to a past that was long gone, yet still more real to him than the present. And when he stopped, and told her that that was it, that was all of it, she thought how little time it took to tell something so immensely destructive.
He fell asleep finally, the wall at his back, while Tam lay looking at his face in the growing light. There was no sign of the anguish she had seen, only smooth flawless beauty. How many people hid their own dark places under the clever masks, how many people were in truth crouched in a dark corner, waiting?
She prayed she would never know.
X - X - X - X - X
Light chiselled into her eyes slowly. Another day-hang on. The memories of the night filled her.
Somehow she knew the events of that night would remain there. The knowledge would be between them, but not as a gulf. As a bridge. It would be their knowledge, something that evaporated with the light.
For now, while the sun shone, she had other problems. The crashed party. Ellie. Rob and the fondue fun.
"Oh, god," Tam groaned. "I've walked into the season special of Dawson's Creek."
She turned on her side to look at Aspen. He looked strangely peaceful in sleep, with his vulnerability hidden, and his shoulder swathed in bandages, sighing softly as he exhaled.
"You are way too cute when you're asleep," she muttered.
"Thanks."
She squawked and fell off the bed with a resounding thump. "You might have said you were awake!"
"I didn't want to spoil the moment," he said shyly as Tam picked herself up. His smile was tentative, but grew as she met his eyes and held them. As the tide of night swept out, it had dragged with it his fractured fear. "But I think you managed that one okay yourself. And...thanks. For listening."
A rap at the door, and they both froze. "Tam?" her mother called. The door opened.
Tam's mother was an elegant divorcee, not at all pretty, but Tam had always loyally thought that her mother didn't need looks, not with her exuberant energy that touched everything. She fiercely believed in protecting wildlife, in a good Christian upbringing, in helping others and keeping well clear of vice.
She should have been lining up a firing squad the moment she saw Aspen.
"Morning," she said cautiously, preparing for Jodie Slone's inevitable screaming tirade.
Her mother's eyes fixed on Tam, and then slid to Aspen, causing fear to seize her heart tightly. Then they glazed over, and her mother said dreamily, "Morning, dear. Who's that nice young man?"
Nice young man. Tam checked that it was still Aspen sitting there. "That's Aspen Martin, Mom."
"Oh," she said brightly. "What's he doing here?"
It sounded rational, but there was a strange expression on her mother's face. She was being nice.
"We spent the night making mad, passionate love," Tam said curiously, still waiting for the explosion.
"That's nice, dear," her mother said. Where was the glare that could maim at a hundred paces and kill at ten? Last time Tam had brought a boy home, her mother's opening remark had been that he'd better respect her daughter because that the flowerbed was ripe for expansion, and wasn't the new meat cleaver nice?
"He's a pathological liar," Tam prompted. "He gambles at casinos all night and robs the elderly of their pension books. He shoots small squirrels with a water gun and runs a local mafia, whilst paying devout tribute to the devil and holding nude jazz parties in his hot tub."
"That's interesting, dear," her mother murmured. There should have been nuclear fallout by now. "And does he have any hobbies?"
"Debauchery, robbery and loan-sharking."
"Well, he seems a well-rounded young man." Obviously she was hearing something different. She picked up an ornament. "You need to dust your room," she chided gently. "Honestly, it's as bad as Celia's."
"Mother, he's a vampire," Tam said, trying the ultimate test. If this was Chatoya's spell...wow.
Her mother stilled, and met Tam's eyes. The odd glaze seemed to roll away like clearing mists. Oops...
"Don't be silly, dear, vampires don't exist," her mother said firmly. "Now do come down to breakfast."
X - X - X - X - X
Tam ended up wrestling her little brother - as always - for the sports section of the newspaper.
"Hey!" Billy protested, his face screwed up. He slapped Tam.
Did he just hit you? an enraged Aspen said. I'll-
The words trailed off as Tam hit him back and neatly arm-locked him. The vampire gawked as Tam's mother stepped gracefully over her children, swiped the newspaper and swatted the pair of them with it.
"Enough," her mother said firmly as Tam and Billy, glaring, sat down. "You can have the newspaper when I'm finished reading. Tam, is your boyfriend going to eat breakfast or just hover in the doorway?"
Boyfriend? As far as her mother was concerned, it was usually said in the same way most people said 'flesh-eating bacteria'. And she had that glassy, unseeing look whenever she glanced in his direction.
Are you all right? Aspen asked, sounding appalled. That was brutal!
Tam hid her smile. Fine. Look, if you don't come and sit down, Mom's going to notice something.
He moved forward uneasily, slinking into a seat at the table. His eyes flicked over the toast and cereal with slight confusion, as though he'd never seen them. Nose wrinkling as he took in the steaming coffee.
Does everyone do this? he asked, looking like Christmas had just come. Yet he didn't touch anything.
Yeah. Don't you? He was hiding something from her, and it was fiendishly easy to dip into his mind and pluck it out. Tam flourished the evidence in from of him as it were a gauntlet. You don't eat?
He was starving, she realised. Absolutely starving. Not for blood, but for simple human nourishment. And he liked it that way because...
I'm in control, he said flatly, reading her mind. I eat when I have to. And you can stop thinking I'm screwed up. I know it, okay, but this is how I am. And I am not anorexic. Guys do not get anorexia.
Fine, if you're not anorexic, eat something.
He glared.
"Cool eyes," Celia said. She had the same dark hair and deep bronze skin as the rest of them, but her eyes were a pale, hawkish amber. She stared hard at Aspen. "I like you better than the last one. You're cuter."
Tam pulled a face. "For all you know, he could be a vampire." Aspen's mental splutter sounded in her ears.
"Ooh, he can suck my blood any time," Celia said, grinning. "Is that why he's not eating anything?"
Are all your family this naggy? an irritated Aspen demanded. Why don't you just hammer in a big sign saying 'how do you like your stake'?
"Is something wrong with the food?" her mother said in the faintly deadly tone that Tam was surprised to find she had missed. The tone that meant 'I am not accepting such bad manners'.
Oh come on, Aspen said in disbelief. Your mom can't be that bad.
"Young man," her mother said, holding her fork in a way that suggested it might soon be aimed at Aspen's eye at high velocity, "do you know how rude it is to refuse food offered by your hostess?"
She bent the skunk-eye stare his way, and turned it up from Mildly Peeved to Crash Helmets On.
Aspen gulped and muttered an apology before taking some toast. Tam smiled behind her hand.
Oh, stop being so smug, Aspen said sulkily.
X - X - X - X - X
"Ow."
Chatoya Irkil prodded the angry red wound with one finger. "That's why you aren't going anywhere," she said exasperatedly. "It's not healed yet. You're staying here today."
"Ow," Aspen said as she carried on poking him, emphasising each word with a jab. "I'm fi-Ow..."
"He seemed okay this morning," Tam said ruefully, looking at the nasty mess that was his shoulder minus the bandages as he sat on her bed wincing. "Thanks for those spells by the way. They're working a charm."
"They are a charm," Chatoya said dryly, a brief grin lighting her. "And that's beside the point. He-"
"Ow."
"-is not-"
"Ow."
"-going anywhere."
"All right!" Aspen yelped, leaping off the chair and grimacing. "Can you please stop using my shoulder to demonstrate your point? Jeez, just because you're missing breakfast."
"You obviously know it's not healed," the witch berated. "Honestly, Aspen, you've been shot-"
"Fine! I'll stay. Unless you want me to go with you..." he said to Tam, tilting his head charmingly.
"I'd feel better if you were home," Tam said. "Now that Mom's seeing you as one of the family, even if it is that nasty cousin she doesn't like much, she'll fight off the four horsemen if needs be."
Aspen half-smiled. "She seemed really nice to me. Just scary." His face was wistful. "Maybe if my mom had lived, she'd have been like that...and by the way, was that the bus that just went past the window?"
She and Chatoya ended up running for the bus, while a leering Celia and Billy laughed themselves stupid and didn't ask the driver to stop. When they finally got on, she found herself talking to Chatoya Irkil and finding out just why it was Rob had so much respect for her.
Perhaps if Tam had known what would happen, she wouldn't have let Aspen out of her sight
X - X - X - X - X
Rob's arm muscles protested as he hit a volley that crept over the net and dribbled to a stop. His back was threatening to sue as he jumped to catch the return lob, and his legs were setting up a formal rally with imminent strikes due as he ran frantically to get the wickedly fast forehand that Ben Skykes smashed straight past him with his usual combination of pent-up hormonal violence and skill.
"What's wrong with you today, Slivan?" an irritated Ben demanded. "We've got a doubles match in two days, and I'm giving up my lunchtime to practise while you're playing like a pensioner."
"That's unfair," Rob muttered fuzzily. He hadn't been feeling at all right since he woke up this morning. The world kept sliding in and out of focus and a heavy, pounding tiredness seemed to have settled under his skin like a layer of metal. Whatever the buzz that had kept him on a fondue-fantasy high was, it had gone.
"Yeah, it is unfair," as a fast-moving projectile whipped by. "Pensioners move faster."
Luminous yellow tennis balls flew past his ears as Rob tried to dredge up the energy to move. The nightmare just seemed to drag on and on-
Until the point when a ninety-mile-an-hour serve hit him in the forehead.
"Oh shit!" The wide azure sky was suddenly blocked out by the other person that Rob couldn't quite place, waving a hand in front of his eyes. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
"That's across," Rob felt the need to point out. Why was he flat on his back? "Who are you?"
"What the hell's wrong with you?" The person kicked him in the leg which wasn't really conducive to helping his recovery. "You're supposed to be Rob Slivan, you know, faster than a speeding bullet?"
"I am?" he said, feeling there had been a rational sentence in there somewhere. "You're blocking my sun."
"I'm what? Okay, that's it, get up. I've given you enough sympathy, you're just being lazy."
"I can't," Rob said peacefully. The sun was simmeringly hot, so hot it reminded him of something (or was it somewhere). It made the pain in his neck fade. "Did you know your nostrils flare when you're annoyed?"
Ben came very close to practicing his backhand on Rob at that moment. And he would have, if someone hadn't moved smoothly past like a feather on the breeze, and knelt down.
"Go away," a voice that sounded like distilled fantasy ordered. There was no disobeying.
Rob blinked. The person seemed to have become thinner. And balder. Or was he imagining things?
"What are you doing?" he asked. He was aware that his inner adult was shrieking that this was someone dangerous, someone very, very dangerous, but he couldn't summon up the energy to care.
"I overdid it," the person muttered. One bony hand hauled him up to a sitting position. He felt like a ragdoll - if she let go, he'd just flop back down again. "Vermin, what's your name?"
He should have known. Like he should have known his age, or the way home, or why he was lying down, but he couldn't quite catch hold of anything. Only her reptilian face had any clarity.
"You're not going to start singing about trusting in you, are you?" he said.
"Great. Just great." He thought a forked tongue flickered briefly. "All right, vermin, it's like this. I'm a vampire. I drank your blood, only I didn't get to finish what I started. I want to change you."
"For what?"
"Not for. Into. I want to make you into a vampire. You can have immortal life, massive powers, the whole shebang." She shook him, the oil wells of her eyes slicking over him. "You'll die if I don't, incidentally."
"Oh." It didn't seem to be too bad to him. "Okay. Do I get a refund if I don't like it?"
"No." He felt a cool hand on the back of his neck, and a burning sensation began near his throat.
The pain was replaced by something else, a feeling, a taste like the stars melted down and combined with the night. He was flying, filled with light and filled with strength, soaring out past the sky and into deep space, spinning past stars and into a source of power that was pure fire, pure blood.
A strange sleepiness came over him. And when he awoke, he would be someone quite different.
Oh, man, you should have seen us on the way to Venus
Walking on the Milky Way - it was quite a day.
X - X - X - X - X
Thanks for reading! I'd adore knowing what you think :-)