sakura angel90, you have no idea how much those words warms my heart. Thanks a lot :)
crystleflys21, thanks a lot, I try my best to keep my English studies in a good manner.
Thade182, I'm the author. I can do whatever I want *mwahahahahahahaha* None of you silly mortals stand a chance for my evil persona!
Just kidding you ;)
And now, the continue:
Chapter 11
Bonnie lay on the bed, completely motionless. She had layed like that since the moment he had left, and she just felt as if she didn't belong to the world anymore. Everything was in a blurr, she couldn't see what was reality and what was imagination.
"B", a voice called, shaking her gently. "B, wake up."
She slowly opened her eyes, seeing that a worried Angel looked into her eyes, checking her all out.
"Hey," she whispered.
"How are you?" He wondered.
Bonnie smiled sadly.
"Weak," she mumbled. "So terribly weak… if only I had lasted…" Her words died out and she sighed deeply, closing her eyes again, feeling how tears started to well up in her eyes.
"Shhh…" Angel whispered as he held her in his arms, leaning over and kissing her forehead, carefully stroking hair away from her face. "It's over now:"
Though inside he wasn't as calm as it seemed on the outside. What he really felt like, was to scream and shout at her. How could she have been so stupid that she had challenged him? And now, when she was so weak of all times!
When he had found her, laying pale and motionless with two small marks on her neck, he had almost decided to take the evil identity up, just to haunt Damon down, to give him a long, painful death. Though the next moment, he had noticed how her chest rose and then sunk, and he had exhaled with relief, forgetting all those thoughts about vengence.
"Do you feel like having something to eat?" He asked. "The others are already up, waiting for you."
She shook her head slowly, feeling more like sleeping than eating.
"You need to get your strength back, B," he insisted. "You'll have to eat something."
Giving him a pouting look, she told him exactly what she thought about breakfast, but then nodded, sitting up by herself. Rising slowly, she lost foothold and fell back, but Angel caught her in the blink of an eye.
"Thanks," she said and gained strength to stand up by herself, some of it coming from him as he gave it to her even though she didn't know, and she walked to the closet to get some clean clothes.
"I'll wait downstairs," he said to give her some privacy, shutting the door behind him.
As he walked downstairs, he saw a young woman he had never seen before walk out the door and sit down on the porch and light a cigarette, and he went out and had a seat a few steps away from her, just looking straight ahead, even though he was going to take a closer look at her later.
He saw from the corner of his eye how she eyed him, and then exhaled of the cigarette.
"I guess you're Angel?" The woman asked.
Angel threw her a look, memorizing her waist-long mahogany-coloured hair and dark green eyes, the thin lips and pale skin, the small nose and high cheek-bones and her tall body – structure, doing it so unconsciously that it almost passed him by. Then he laughed a short, sarcastic laughter and nodded.
"I guess everyone knows who I am," he said slowly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"When BonBon disappeared to LA, my dad traced her down, we couldn't exactly let her slip out of our hands," she said and then sucked on the cigarette. "We have known of you since you were a newborn."
"BonBon?" He said, tasting the words on his lips. "Now that was a new nickname."
"Have you ever seen her eat BonBon's?" The woman asked, smiling as she talked.
"No. By the way, what did you mean by 'slip out of your hands?'" Angel asked, knowing that he might have asked the wrong question as her slanting green eyes darted towards him in an suspicious look.
"Exactly what I'm saying. She's a part of the McCullough family, and we have a tight bond, we know one another very well."
He raised an eyebrow but didn't continue on the same line. She seemed unwilling to continue on the subject.
"So who are you then?" He asked.
"Nyx. My father – your great grandmothers cousins grandson – died in a car-crash five years ago, and since then your grandparents have been taking care of me, though I left them a year ago to go to college. I got back this morning," she said and nodded towards a motorcycle that stood next to their car.
"Is that your real name? Nyx, I mean?" He asked, then added, "just out of curiosity. It's not that normal."
"No, Nyx it not the name I was given when my mother gave birth to me. My real name is Nicci – Nicci Xentaz."
The bitterness in which she uttered her name, told him that there was something more that lay behind that name, but he dropped the subject out of decency. There was something about this woman that he liked, she was the kind of woman he liked to spend time with, hanging around just talking about everything with. Well, not everything, he could never tell her about what he really was, but a strange impulse made him search her mind as he found a strange aura around her, though he didn't find anything specific. He assumed that it was the psychic gift, that lay latent with all the members of the family, except for a few of them, who really knew what they could do.
"Hello, Nyx," Bonnie's voice came from the door and towards them. "Angelo."
Her hand sweeped over his shoulder, and he felt the shiver that went through her body. She was so frail, and he wished that he could build her a castle and hide her from all the pain in the world.
"Hey, BonBon," Nyx smiled. "I heard you had a long and tiring journey?"
"Endless," Bonnie sighed. "And I'm surprised you can sit at all, after spending several days on that bike," she continued while looking sceptically at the motorcycle.
A mix of a laugh and a snort came from Nyx.
"It's not that bad. The guys that followed me from Dallas gave up by Little Rock. They were the worse diva's I've ever seen. Couldn't even last a day."
She shook her head in an complaining way. Just as if men weren't as good as they used to be.
Angel arched an eye-brow at this, Nyx couldn't possibly be older than 20, though she acted as if she was so much older and wiser.
Bonnie just laughed, a warm laughter that Angel hadn't heard in many years. He felt more and more left out for every moment that passed, but understood that this was good for his mother, she needed her family, because only they could meand her broken heart and soul.
"So how is the world spinning around back in LA?" Nyx asked.
"Too fast, just as normal in other words," Bonnie answered with a short laughter. "And how are things with Thomas?"
Nyx smile was abruptly removed and her face grew cold and bitter.
"He is out of the picture. Completely."
Bonnie placed a hand on her shoulder.
"He wasn't worthy you. He should have treated you the way you treat a queen."
Nyx just shook her head.
"No. It was I who broke it off."
The other woman nodded, truly concerned about the younger woman, and Angel watched with a mix of jealousy and fascination, he had never seen his mother act like this before, concerning over someone else than himself. He broke off his stare, and rose.
"I'm going in to have some breakfast," he said, and only Bonnie heard the sarcasm in his voice.
* * *
The funeral for Mary was held at 12 AM that day, and an endless horde of people was in the church to grieve her. Almost everyone from the town were there, it was so jammed that people even had to stand up in the back of the building. In the front row sat the closest relatives, including Bonnie and himself, and Mary's own family, her husband and eight year old son, Sam.
Mary had, compared to Bonnie, stayed in Fell's Church, and had married a five year older doctor, who had wanted to move away from the town, but Mary had refused, saying that if he truly loved her, he'd let her stay, and so they had.
Angel could feel his father's presense as well as the his uncle's and aunt's up on the choir's gallery, and he could also sense other creatures of darkness in the building, though he couldn't point them out exactly – none of them radiated evil as strongly as his father. He knew from his own experience that vampires weren't the only children of darkness, and that they weren't as unusual as you could think.
He listened to the reverend and to those who spoke about his aunt, but didn't really care about it. He felt a distance to it all, that he didn't belong to them. As an immortal, a killer and all that it meant, he'd rather be sleeping than being there, but went, just to be a support to his mother. She was more important than anything else, he'd pick down the stars for her if she wanted them. He felt how she shivered, where she sat next to him, and he squeezed her hand as if to say that he was there for her, that he'd never leave. Looking at her, he saw that tears ran down her cheeks, and he picked up a tissue from his pocket and gave it to her. She smiled sadly in reply, and took it, wiping away the tears, but more of them fell down her cheeks that neither one of them tried to wipe away.
Mary's husband rose, he held a long speach about how wonderful and loveable she had been, and Angel grew more and more sick of it for every person that stept forth and spoke. Bonnie didn't speak, she didn't have the strength to do so, and after the last speach everyone builded a long que to get to the white casket and take a last goodbye, but Angel didn't join Bonnie and the others. He had already said farewell to his aunt earlier that day when the body had laid on lit the parade, and made his way out by one of the side-walks, and went outside to get some fresh air. Spending nearly two hours in the church, his body felt stiff from sitting on the hard wooden bench, and it was with a relief that he felt the cold wind against his face. Walking on and off outside the main entrance, he thought over a million things, and suddenly his head jerked up as he understood something.
'Of course. How could I have been such an idiot not seeing it earlier?'
His aunt had died because of him. Someone wanted him to get to Fell's Church, so that his powers would awaken. He only knew one person who would do that.
Damon.