Chapter Five
Iris was at Hex' house half an hour later and she was contemplating whether she should stay or not. If she were truthful, she would admit that she should probably go because if Hex didn't rise out of his well of despair she would probably rise to kill him with any means neccesary.
He was not in a good mood. In fact, the minute he had walked out of the Cave he had had a little boy lost thing going for him. The eyes were dark and full of something that Iris couldn't identify and his face was tight and drawn and weary.
Iris coughed into the silence and managed to get his attention.
Hex jumped in his seat and turned his slightly out of focus eyes to her. "What? Oh, yeah, I agree totally," he agreed, panicked.
Iris refrained from rolling her eyes but she did bite down on her lip to stop some vile and evil words popping out. "I think I might go," she said stiffly. She pulled herself off the couch with predatory grace and walked to the door.
It was a few moments before Hex's footsteps could be heard behind her but she refused to stop. He had been a complete bore not to mention a completely rude bore. She opened the door and went to walk through it when a hand that undoubtedly belonged to Hex snapped past her and knocked it closed with a loud bang.
Iris spun around, surprised. "What are you doing?"
Hex's hand reached up slowly to touch her cheek. It was a soft gesture filled with intent. His eyes were unreadable as he stared into hers.
"Hex?" she asked again. "What are you doing?"
His eyes were soft and so easy to fall into. His lips were slightly parted and he leaned forward. She knew what would happen next.
His mouth moved across hers searchingly with a kind of determined hunger. His arms around her back were tight and strong as he held her. Finally, and a little breathlessly, she pulled back to look into his face.
There was a silence as they stared at each other.
Hex looked down at her, Iris Auroch, with a knowing remorse tinged with tenderness and love. Her face, tipped upwards to look at him, had her personality written across it. Determination in her eyes, stubbornness in the curve of her lip and of course, her pride, in the way she held her head up high.
All this and an aching beauty that never failed to catch his breath. He traced the rise of her cheekbone with a finger and stroked the soft, pale, petal soft skin. His hand ran behind her neck where he lifted the cloak of her hair with a careless hand.
He wrapped his arms around her suddenly, crushing her lithe body to him. His arms trapped her own against her and he leaned down her shoulder to bury his face in her hair.
"Hex?" she sounded worried now, concerned even. It had taken him so long to make her care. So much time and effort and a sword of iron trust before she permitted him entrance inside her mind, her body and her soul.
"Hex? Is something wrong?"
He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, blocking out the pain that wrenched his heart. His arms tightened even more around her. He breathed in her hair, inhaled her warmth and memorized the sound of her heart beating next to his.
Then he pulled back slightly but he wouldn't release her completely. She searched his face and his eyes for some expression, an indication of his sudden change of behavior.
"Do you feel anything?" he asked softly, pleadingly.
She looked confused. "What do you mean? Of course I can feel you."
He shook his head, exasperated and exhausted at the same time. "Not me," he urged. "*Me* The real me."
A smile tugged at her lips and his heart grew warm at the sight. "You don't mean to tell me that after all these years I find out now that you're not real?"
Hex looked at her hard and long and the smile was wiped from her face. He brought his hands up and cupped her face in their hold. Then that was all. There was no other movement, no more words or smiles. Just silence that stretched further than tomorrow.
"Do you love me?" he asked.
Iris face twisted in pain and her eyes closed. Her lips parted then closed again. She inhaled a long, deep breath of air. "Don't ask me that," she said flatly, emotionlessly.
"Do you love me?" he repeated softly, waiting.
"Hex," she warned meaningfully. "Why are you saying all this? What's wrong?" Her voice was filled with a sense that something was very, very wrong.
"Do you love me, Iris?" His voice was harsher now, demanding. Whatever happened, he intended to pull an answer from her lips.
She tried to pull away from him but his hands held her fast in an iron grip. She struggled half-heartedly but didn't really try. He couldn't see that she was cracking, that her emotional front was crumbling in front of him because he was blind to it. He was intent on finding on answer, a reply, anything, that he didn't see her struggles were made in a desperate need to escape such a confrontation.
"*Do you love me, Iris? *" He was yelling. He was aware in some distant part of his mind that he was yelling at her. At her, Iris Auroch, the girl that had held his heart for so long and had never really seen it as valuable.
He shook her. Hard.
Her face was filled with shock, pain and an unearthly light. Then she began to fight back. She wrenched out of his grasp roughly and stepped backward. Her eyes raged at him. Eyes that were shiny with some alien material that he had never seen in their depths before. Tears. Tears that he'd never thought to see.
Then he knew that he had taken it too far. He had lost control and he had lost himself. He stepped toward her. "Iris," he whispered. "Gods, Iris, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I don't know…" He looked away. "I'm sorry."
There was a tense silence and when he looked back at her he saw her in her glory. She stood tall, straight and proud. Her face was stripped of emotion and her voice was flat when she finally spoke.
"I'm going to go now, Redfern."
He nodded helplessly, understandingly. He heard a tone of finality in her voice, a hidden depth of a good bye even. When the door clicked shut, his eyes closed of his own accord and despair and sorrow engulfed him in a dark cloud of misery.
He turned to look out his window and into the street below. He saw a single solitary finger get into a shiny, new car without even a backward glance. Iris stubbornly refused to look back at him.
It was then that he knew it was over.
.~*~.~*~.~*~.~*~.~*~.
"Iris! Are you running on Eastern Standard Time or what? Do you know that it's four in the morning?"
Iris pushed past her brother's sleep ridden figure and walked into his apartment. She went to the kitchen where she predictably found a bottle of scotch. "Call yourself a vampire, Colt," she called over her shoulder, frowning intently at the amber liquid. "We're meant to live in the night."
Colt yawned tiredly. His hair was ruffled and mussed, his eyes were bleary. "What are you doing?" he asked absently.
"Having a night cap," she answered, promptly downing a shot of scotch. It burned her throat and warmed her. She was feeling better already.
"Pour me one then," Colt said, sitting down beside her at the bench. She obeyed. One for him and for her. Colt raised his glass to her. "So, what are we drinking to?"
Iris took another shot and winced. When she looked up, Colt was gazing at her curiously. "What?" she snapped.
"'what'?" he mocked. "What happened to good old fashioned manners?"
She didn't answer. He watched silently as she poured yet another drink. He downed his at the same time and shook his head slightly at the taste. Her silence was unusual and Colt knew that something was up because his sister looked decidedly down.
"What is it, sister dearest? The hair dryer broke again? You didn't follow the Jenny Craig points plan properly?"
"He's found her."
Colt stilled. "Hex? How do you know?"
Iris pushed back her stool violently and the scraping of it against the floor was piercing. She went to the sink and poured a glass of water. "I know, okay?" she snapped. "I could tell."
Colt for once was at a loss for words. Finally, he managed, "Do you know who she is?"
Iris shook her head dismally. "No. I'm not sure if I want to. I might get tempted to tar and feather her."
Colt almost smiled but he stopped. He knew this was serious. Although, it had been a blatant fact that Iris had never * loved * Hex, he knew that she cared about him. A lot. You couldn't not with a history as long as theirs.
"Are you going to kill yourself in the name of love?" he inquired softly. "Or are you going to move on and let it be." He sung the last three words and flung his arms out wide to the old tune. "You knew it would happen. Hex' line are 'partial' to soulmate crap so to speak. Look at their bloody history."
Iris sniffed. She shook her hair back and rubbed her hand into her eye in a childlike gesture. Colt softened. His sister was the most annoying person he knew, the most stubborn with the worst attitude to nearly everything but she was tough. If she had to drink to make herself feel better at the moment, then she'd been hit hard.
"Hex was just a passing kinda guy anyway," Colt continued, rambling in an attempt at reassurance. "He's not the reliable sort for sure and the way he dresses? It's a crime. He deserves a bullet for that alone."
"Is that an offer?" Iris asked, almost smiling.
Colt grinned. "You call it." Iris smiled then. She knew that Colt was being only half-serious. Hex and him were still good friends and he wasn't going to shoot the guy for finding his soulmate.
"I wonder who she is," Iris mused absently. "I wonder if she's prettier than me."
Colt rolled his eyes. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. It doesn't matter who she is okay? She's nothing. She's an insignificant particle that we would probably breathe in and choke out. She's a waste of perfectly good oxygen, an airborne toxic event even. Forget her."
"Yeah, okay," Iris rolled her eyes. "Sure thing boss."
Colt smiled coolly. "That's got a nice ring to it doesn't it?"
"Don't get used to it."
Colt reached an arm out to wrap around her slim shoulders and squeezed reassuringly. With the other hand he offered another shot glass. "You want?"
She stared at it for a moment then shook her head. She reached out and tipped it back in the bottle before leaning back again to snuggle into Colt's shoulder.
Her brother looked down at the top of her head and felt a tug on his heart. Sometimes he had to remind himself that his little sister wasn't as invincible as she made out. He wrapped another arm around her and then stood, looping a hand under her knees and picking her up.
"You need to eat some pies, sis," he advised after noticing her weight. "You're all bones and no meat."
"Thanks," was the dry, sleepy response.
Colt looked down again and saw her eyes were shut, her eyes lashes dark crescents against her perfect marble skin. He sighed and kicked the door open to the room he kept for her at his apartment. He pulled the covers back and placed her down gently underneath them before tucking her in.
She was allowed her moments of weakness occasionally. He knew that the Hex situation would have hit her hard and would have hurt, but he knew that tomorrow, she would have pushed it from her mind and moved on.
Tomorrow, she'd be back to normal because it took more than Hex Redfern to ruin his sister.
And tomorrow, they would start the search for the Book of Vlath and maybe she'd forget about that little drug-dealing bastard that he had once called a friend.
