never cool down love - Chapter Six
"Castle, he turned me into a vampire."
He says nothing at first. Does nothing at first. There's no recoiling in horror, no knee-slapping and congratulating her for pulling one over on him, nothing. He's just blank.
"Castle?" she prompts after giving him a few minutes to absorb her words, to grasp exactly what it is she has just dropped in his lap. "Castle, say something."
"You're," he starts. "Are you–I'm, I-"
To his credit, he doesn't shrink from her touch, doesn't jump away from the hands she wraps around his wrists. He's still too busy staring at her in awe to be scared or concerned or whatever emotions he might be feeling.
"Breathe," she instructs, lifting her chin and demonstrating a slow inhale and exhale. "Breathe, Castle."
"Beckett," he says her name like a man drowning. She squeezes his wrists gently, fingers pressed against the pressure points there. "You're serious. You're not messing with me? You're not going to start laughing or bring out the hidden camera crew?"
She does chuckle a little at that but shakes her head. "I'm telling you the truth, Rick. I – I didn't believe it was real at first, either. I thought Lewis was just some sicko who'd dropped too much acid. I thought he was a liar. I thought so many things, but he'd been telling me the truth. I… I didn't have a real heartbeat anymore, I never had to catch my breath, and no matter what I put in my stomach, I always needed something else."
"Blood?" he asks. She nods.
"I can show you the bottom drawer of my freezer if you're not convinced."
"No, no I believe you. I believe you," he murmurs almost to himself. She can almost feel his mind working. "So, you don't –" he stops himself only to start again, "you don't feed on people?"
"I don't – I, right when I was new," she says, lowering her eyes. "I made mistakes and I hurt someone, two people. A girl not much older than I was and her boyfriend; I had no idea what I was doing, I wanted nothing to do with Lewis, I had no guidance, and I let myself get too close to the edge and I went over. I haven't done that since. I think about that every day."
Castle's eyes soften. "Kate."
She swallows hard. "Don't."
"You keep all of this to yourself?" he asks, ignoring her directive. She nods. "This is a lot to live with, Kate."
He wiggles his arms in her grip, catching her hands with his.
"Who else knows?"
"Nobody. It's just me and now you. Who else could I tell? Anyone else would have me committed. You're the only one crazy enough to believe in this crap," she adds in an attempt to inject some levity into all of this, her voice cracking on the words; tears prick the corners of her eyes as relief starts to creep its way into her chest.
He squeezes her hands, reassuring and easy. God, there's nothing normal about this; she's telling him she's barely a person anymore and he's offering her comfort. She sniffs, letting her head dip, letting the weight of what she's told him sink in.
"When you said something inside you changed after your mom was murdered, you really weren't kidding," he says.
She snorts. Leave it to Castle to boil things down like that. "Yeah, in more ways than one."
He thumbs her knuckles. "I have so many questions, Kate. I don't even know where to start."
"I'd be more worried if you didn't," she says.
"Our case a couple of years ago, Morlock, he –"
"Was not a vampire, Castle."
He nods, considering her words. "Are you sure?"
"Well, I never see him at the meetings, so I think it's safe to say I'm sure."
He chuckles. "Duly noted. And that club, the coven?"
"Just a fetish club," she says. "People playing dress-up and getting off on stereotypes." Her fingers flex in his. "What else?"
"You mentioned your freezer. That's where you keep your food?"
She nods. "On the lower shelf there's a fake bottom, it's all in there. I get my blood supply from a guy who runs a blood bank. It's all above board; I pay him, and he uses my money to buy supplies for the clinic. Everything I don't buy goes to hospitals. I'm not… I need it to survive, too, but I'm not going to survive by brutalizing someone else."
Her partner looks thoughtful. "Have you talked to him lately? Your blood guy, I mean."
"I called the other day after another note showed up," she admits. "He swears he has nothing to do with it."
"Do you believe him?"
She nods, not sure she should elaborate exactly how she knows. Her partner has taken this so well so far, she doesn't want to give him any reason to doubt her or be concerned about her if he's not right now. "I trust his word. If anything, he could end up a casualty in all of this, too."
"Especially if someone is coming after you because of Lewis," Castle muses. Off her look he adds, "Everyone he's ever made, Beckett. He made you, didn't he?"
She licks her lips. "He made me," she confirms.
"Then we need to make sure you're safe, too."
A smile lifts her lips. He's not running; hell, if anything, he's jumping in deeper, positioning himself with her instead of against her.
"We need to get back to the precinct. Ryan and Espo are going to wonder where we went."
Castle squeezes her hand. "We're running down a lead. Grab the notes you've received too; we'll have them analyzed with the one they found on Lewis."
"They'll know – three of the messages have my name on them."
"Right. I'll take them to my guy, then. All of them, if you can get the one from today cleared."
She doesn't know if she can, but it's worth a try to get some information on this person. After so long and handling them, they probably won't get much that's useful DNA-wise, but even if they can confirm a printer or an ink source, that's more to go on than they have now. It'll be a start compared to the endless wheel-spinning she's been doing.
"Okay," she agrees, humming at the flood of warmth in her chest at the absent kiss he drops on her hand. He's, oh, he's defying every last concern she'd had about telling him. If anything, her confession seems to have made him more affectionate, more enthusiastic about getting closer.
"Okay," he echoes. "Let's go then. And later today, I think we need to set up surveillance here, too. Either through the department or just us."
"Just us," she insists quickly. "I can't – bringing anyone else in won't… who's going to believe me when I tell them why this is happening?"
"So don't tell them. You only have to tell what you need to," he suggests. "You're getting threatening notes, you just want to see if they'll send another one tonight."
"And if we have the notes analyzed and they're a match to the one on Lewis? Then we're hindering a police investigation and I'm hiding information about myself from people I call my friends. They might never trust me again if they find out, and they especially won't trust me if I bring them in and don't tell them everything. You know that about them, Castle. Esposito especially."
"Just us, then," he says, bowing his head in concession, "but we're doing this." The conviction in his voice reminds her once again how deeply he loves her. "I don't care if we have two people on this or twenty – though twenty would be nice, if we're being honest – but someone's coming for you, Kate, and we need to know who."
Thank you for reading! Just one more chapter to go.