Well, it's been three weeks. As I promised, here's a new chapter! Not much Abraham in there, I'm afraid, but the next two chapters will more than make up for it ;) Oh and, unfortunately, this chapter hasn't been edited either. Still no news from FateMagician...
Thanks for the rewiews, the favs, and the follows! Never thought I'd have so many...
Leaning against Archon's side, Enola dialled Abbie's number. Fortunately, the Witness quickly picked up her phone and the vampire explained the situation as concisely and precisely as she could.
"Are you okay?" Abbie asked, her voice clearly worried. "It's the first time you kill someone, right ?"
"Yes, it is, and no, I'm not okay," Enola sighed as she stroked Archon distractedly. "But I don't have the luxury to dwell over that yet."
"We'll talk about it later," the Witness promised. "Take Katrina to Westchester General, Crane and I will join you there."
"Will do."
She hung up her phone and stuffed it into the pocket of her coat, which she had put back on. After a last pat on the horse's neck, she made her way back to the dining room and forced herself to search the bodies for the car key, carefully avoiding to look at their faces. Having Katrina sit behind her on her bike seemed like a spectacularly bad idea given the witch's state—if she fainted... well. As luck would have it, she found the key inside the second coat pocket she checked. She tried not to think about the puddles of drying blood she had to sidestep as she headed for the parlour where Katrina sat in an armchair, her eyes closed and her heartbeat too quick. Abraham was pacing with a troubled frown on his face and Parrish was lying on one of the sofas, still unconscious. When Enola's eyes fell on him, hatred bubbled up inside her ribcage but she pushed it away and brought her attention back to the matter at hand.
"Katrina ?" she called out from the doorway.
The witch opened her eyes and turned her head in the vampire's direction, and Abraham stopped pacing.
"I'll take you to a hospital," Enola went on once she had the witch's attention. "We'll, um, borrow your son's car. I wish you could change into less conspicuous clothes but I guess I'll just have to find a credible explanation."
"Doctors won't do any good if the illness has supernatural origins," Abraham pointed out.
The only thing that kept the vampire from snapping at him was the concern in his tone.
"I know," she said a little testily. "But they can at least tell us where the problem is and maybe bring the fever down. Come on, Katrina, let's go."
As they walked past the dinner table, Katrina paused for a moment to pick up the leather-bound notebook that laid there.
"It belonged to the doctor," she explained when she met Enola's questioning look. "It could be useful."
"Good thinking," the vampire replied with a nod.
A sleek black car was parked on the dirt road, some fifty feet away from the house. Enola pointed at it the small remote control attached to the key and pressed the button, unlocking the doors with a low-pitched beep. She opened the passenger door for Katrina and closed it behind her before going round the car and settling at the wheel. She started the car, turned it around and followed the road out of the forest.
In the end, Enola simply told the hospital staff that she had found Katrina unconscious on the side of the road and that she had no idea who she was. Otherwise, she would have had to fill out paperwork that requested information that she didn't have, like Katrina's address and insurance stuff. She also had to hypnotize the doctor in charge of the witch's care so he'd allow her to stay with his new patient but, apart from that, she didn't get any trouble.
The young woman stepped out of Katrina's room when she heard the hasty footsteps, hoping that it wasn't another doctor or nurse, and sighed in relief when she saw Ichabod and Abbie hurrying along the white corridor.
"Thank God you're here!" she exclaimed when they reached her.
"How is Katrina?" Ichabod asked urgently, leaning to look past the vampire and into the room.
"Not very well," Enola told him, shaking her head. "She has a high fever and an infection in her, um, abdominal wall, to quote the doctor who examined her. But they don't know what caused it. She's sleeping now. I don't like the idea of waking her up, but we've got to figure out what's wrong with her. Besides, I'm ready to bet Parrish's men are going to search the hospitals to find her, so we can't stay here much longer."
"I agree," Abbie chimed in. "Crane, go wake her up, please."
"Right away."
Ichabod walked in while Abbie turned her eyes to Enola again, a concerned look on her face.
"Are you okay?" she asked, placing a friendly hand on Enola's shoulder. "I know how your first kill can be tough to handle."
Enola allowed a faint smile to drift on her lips and folded her arms.
"No, I'm… really not okay," she confessed. "But I'd prefer not to talk about that right now. We've got a lot of things to do."
The Witness smiled and squeezed her friend's shoulder lightly.
"Okay. Hey, look, I know this won't make you feel better, but… you did nothing wrong. These men, they were working for Moloch. You did what you had to do."
"Yeah, it doesn't make me feel any better," the vampire replied dryly. "I mean, I know you're right but–"
They were startled by a scream of pain that came from the bedroom. The two women dashed inside and came to a shocked halt at the sight of Katrina writhing on her bed, her head thrown back against her pillow, and her eyes screwed shut as she screamed. Ichabod was leaning over her and had lifted the shirt of her hospital pajamas, revealing the black veins that had appeared under her ribs. They were converging to her navel, like black worms squirming underneath her skin.
"The hell is that?!" Enola spat.
Katrina fell back on the bed, visibly exhausted by the seizure. She was breathing heavily and, in the dim halogen light, her face looked an unhealthy yellow. Abbie, Ichabod, and Enola exchanged alarmed glances.
"Parrish did this," the vampire huffed as she closed the door of the room so they could talk without worrying about being overheard. "He said Moloch had a new purpose for Katrina but he didn't elaborate. Mind you, that's when I cut in."
"I have tried various healing incantations but this is unlike any sickness I have ever seen," the witch supplied, her voice faint with exhaustion.
"We will find a cure," Ichabod promised, taking his wife's hand in both of his.
"Well, we won't find one here," Abbie intervened. "The Horseman may be benched 'cause the sun's out but Henry's gonna come looking for you, so we gotta get going."
"I'll try to find clothes," Enola said, a hand already on the door handle.
"And I'll get you some medicine," the lieutenant added.
About fifteen minutes later, they were hurrying along the hospital corridors, Enola and Abbie at the head of the group. The vampire only half-listened to the short conversation about Katrina's new clothes as she searched the groups of humans for any hint of black, though she smirked when Ichabod mentioned their tightness. She had given up on breathing some time ago, finding the combination of cleaning agents, illness , and hospital food scarcely bearable. Now, however, she felt off-kilter like a chair missing a leg.
"Here they come," she suddenly hissed. "Right ahead."
Two black-clad men had just pushed the double door at the end of the corridor and were heading straight at them. Thanks to the few people between them and their enemies, they weren't spotted immediately and they turned back before they could be.
"Crane, Katrina, you go your way," Abbie quickly decided as they approached an intersection. "Enola, you come with me, we're gonna trail them."
"Very well", Ichabod approved. "We shall rendezvous at the archives."
He and the witch veered into the right-hand corridor while Abbie and Enola waited for Parrish's minions to disappear into the passage they themselves had come from only a few moments before.
What's shorter than the nick of time? Enola wondered. At this point, she'd be better off coining a phrase just for their use.
She blamed herself, really. If she'd only had the good sense to hypnotize one of Parrish's minions to make him reveal their plans before she slaughtered them, they would have known from the start what they were up against. But nooo—she'd gone all 'kill first and ask questions never'. How very intelligent. She had to do better, damn it! Because of her rashness, they had almost lost both Katrina and the war. God, as if I needed another reason to feel bad, she sighed internally. Katrina's screams of agony were still ringing in her ears.
After baby Moloch—ew—had dissolved into the air, Ichabod, Abbie and Enola had brought Katrina to the late Sheriff Corbin's cabin, and the witch was now sleeping in the bedroom. The two humans and the vampire were sitting at the dining table, drinking coffee for Abbie, and tea for Ichabod and Enola. The sun, half-hidden behind clouds like long shreds of grey-bruised cotton, was little more than a hand's breadth above the horizon, and they had turned on the lights.
Enola's face was sullen: she couldn't believe Parrish had made Katrina pregnant with Moloch. She couldn't believe he had been more than ready to inflict such pain on his own mother, to condemn her to death. She couldn't believe Katrina still hoped there was some good left in him. How naive! It had taken all her will not to yell at her how utterly foolish she was to think he could change. He wouldn't change! It was far too late for that. Yes, Parrish was her son but, damn it, he had been willing to sacrifice her to fulfil his master's plans! How could she not resent him for that? Enola would never understand and never agree. She hated Parrish with every fibre of her being and she would kill him. Sooner or later. Katrina's feelings be damned. Their friendship was already pretty much shot to hell, anyway, each wary glance the witch had cast her hacking at their bond until only a few strands were left. Enola doubted that she would ever forgive the witch for sending Abraham to check up on her instead of going herself. And she doubted that Katrina would ever stop seeing her as the vampire who had butchered three men where they stood.
It was at this moment that Enola realized she had completely forgotten to take the vial of blood away from Parrish. Bordel de putain de merde! she cursed in her mind. How much stupider can you be?! All her anger turned against herself and she had to put her mug on the table and let go of it before she broke it. Had she been alone, she'd have screamed in frustration and rage but as it was, she had to content herself with gritting her teeth so hard they almost turned into powder. By all the old gods of this world—mais quelle conne!Maybe she should've let Abraham chop her head off since, apparently, she didn't use it anyway. The one thing Parrish could use to make her worst fear—namely, becoming a monster—come true, and she had forgotten about it!
"Enola?"
Abbie's voice startled the vampires from her grim thoughts and she looked up at her friends who were gazing at her gravely.
"I think we need to talk about those three men," Ichabod said in a gentle voice.
At these words, Enola immediately forgot her anger. Instead, a bubble of sickly unease swelled in her chest, pushing her heart up her throat. All afternoon, she had fought off memories of the men's faces, the phantom feeling of her hand tearing through flesh and bone, and the taste of the third one's blood in her mouth. The worst part was that she oh so vividly remembered the sultry content she'd felt upon taking their lives, right before she had realized what she'd done. She had been trying for hours both not to think about it and not to hate herself too much for it when every fibre of her being screamed that it was wrong—she felt as though she were walking a tightrope, and it was exhausting.
"Yes, we do," she sighed, staring at the tiny fragments of tea leaves scattered at the bottom of her mug.
She opened her mouth but nothing came out because she had no idea where to start or how to put what she felt into words. She let out a frustrated huff as she reclined in her chair.
"You know, I'd like to tell you that you won't have to do that again," Abbie said, her tone laced with regret. "But we're at war and there's no war without killing. The only thing any of us can do is to never take innocent lives."
"Well, those onesdefinitely weren't innocent," Enola remarked dryly. "And yet, I still feel bad. I mean, I know they chose to serve Moloch, I know that what we're fighting is truly evil, and I know we're doing it to protect people, but I still feel... I don't know. It's cold and heavy, like guilt, except I don't regret killing them—not after what Abbie and I saw in that warehouse."
She still remembered the thick stench of decay and death that had caught at her throat and almost made her gag, the rows of instruments glinting coldly on their tray, and the black-veined corpse of the poor woman who had been experimented on—one of many, she was ready to bet. Men capable of doing such things to another living being deserved death, and so she had stopped imagining herself hypnotizing them instead of killing them.
"Killing for the first time, whether or not your cause is just," Ichabod put in slowly, each word carefully chosen, "creates a... darkness around your heart. Permanent, like a scar. You will feel it every day. Now, you have a choice: you can either let it swallow you whole, or you can carry on, though without ever becoming indifferent to its presence—because that is when you become indifferent to the lives you take."
"And that's when you really turn into a killer," Abbie chimed in.
"Indeed."
Enola's lips thinned thoughtfully. Her friend's words weren't comforting, but then again, what could comfort her? Hearing that, the more she killed, the easier she'd find it? That she'd soon forget her victims' faces? Sure, at first, that sounded like what she wanted to hear. But she didn't need much thinking to realize how wrong it would be. Killing wasn't supposed to be easy, and as for the faces, it would take a conscious effort on her part to forget them as vampires were gifted—or cursed—with near-perfect memory. She wouldn't make that effort, however; she felt that it would be like cutting one more of the tethers that held what was left of her humanity together.
Abbie and Ichabod were right. She would undoubtedly have to kill again before this was over, so she could either quit and go home, or suck it up and keep on fighting. She scoffed internally: to her, that wasn't even a real choice—no way she'd ditch her friends and sit on her hands while the war raged on. Sucking it up, it is, then. Easier said than done, of course, but she wasn't one to back away from a challenge.
There was only one issue left to address, perhaps the hardest one. The look on Katrina's face was still fresh in Enola's mind and she worried that Abbie and Ichabod would react the same way. But this was something she needed to talk about with people who, unlike Abraham, were actually her friends. Not that she could ignore his input; as a matter of fact, her thoughts kept coming back to his words.
"What if I told you," she began in a soft voice, forcing herself to look at her friends, "that I put my fist through the chest of the first one? That I ripped the second one's throat open with my claws and I drained the last one of his blood?"
"You lost your temper," Ichabod deduced, his voice mercifully devoid of judgment, while Abbie gave her a piercing, 'you can't hide anything from me' look.
"You're worried about what we'll think of you," the lieutenant said, gesturing at her friend with her coffee mug. "Well, don't be. As long as they died quickly, I can't say I care about your method. Besides, we've already seen you go half-berserk on the root creature back in Fredericks Manor."
Enola pursed her lips, unconvinced. One root creature and three humans were, after all, hardly the same things, even though the former had bled and screeched in pain as Enola's claws tore through its wooden body as through paper. The men she had killed had been just as monstrous as the creature, if in a different way, but she couldn't place the same value on their lives. The creature had been... mindless in its evil, worse than an animal because no animal had that inherent drive to destroy any person unfortunate enough to cross its path. Those men, however, had had feelings, emotions, a will of their own—souls. And no matter how black these souls had been, snuffing them out had scarred hers.
"What I mean," Abbie, seeing her friend's skepticism, elaborated, "is that we already know what you're like when you flip out, so what you just said doesn't really come as a shock."
"I could not have said it better," Ichabod approved with a lopsided smile at Enola. "I fear it will take more than that for us to consider you a monster. We are very much aware that vampires are not gentle creatures by nature but you, my friend, are neither cruel nor gratuitously violent—and, in the end, that is what matters."
With these words, a great weight was lifted off Enola's shoulders and tension ebbed from her muscles. She wouldn't have been able to bear it if they had reacted like Katrina. Maybe their reaction shouldn't have surprised her—they were used to her vampiric behaviour in a way that Katrina just wasn't. How many times had they seen her sipping on a blood bag while poring over the old books of the Archives? How many times had they witnessed her incredible speed or her inhumanly superior senses ? How many times had they seen her eyes fill with red and her canines lengthen into fangs ? They had grown accustomed to her being a vampire while Katrina hadn't. Still, even with this explanation, the witch's behaviour hurt. But it was a matter Enola would deal with later, if at all.
"I guess I needed to hear that," she said, a wry smile on her lips, before raising her cup in a toast. "So thanks, and cheers!"
The Witnesses imitated her gesture with amused smiles.
"To another victory against evil!" Abbie replied.
"May there be many more in the future," Ichabod added.
It was at this moment that Katrina emerged from the bedroom, still a little pale but no longer looking like a freshly dug-out corpse. Enola immediately noticed that she was no longer wearing her necklace.
"My love, are you certain that you should be out of bed?" Ichabod asked in a tone full of concern, leaping to her side and placing a protective hand on her back.
"Please, Ichabod, do not worry," Katrina bade as her husband guided her to an empty chair. "I feel better. I think I will practice my magic for a while—it has been too long since I was able to use it freely."
"Would you like some tea?" Enola inquired after downing what was left of hers.
"Yes, please."
The young woman rose from her chair to fetch a mug from one of the cupboards; there was only one left, cornflower blue with a small chip in its rim. She checked that the tea left in the teapot was still warm enough—it was—before filling it and setting it before Katrina.
"Thank you," the witch said, looking up at Enola with a wan smile.
Her eyes were free of wariness but the vampire suspected that it was because she was too tired for that.
"You're welcome. Say, might I borrow your necklace? I need to go back to the estate and since neither I nor Abraham is familiar with sign language..."
"Why the hell would you need to do that?" Abbie asked in a tone that implied that she was starting to doubt Enola's sanity.
"Because I left three corpses behind me and I'm not in the habit of letting other people clean up my messes. And my bike's still there."
"Are you sure that you wish to bury the bodies of the men you killed?" Ichabod queried, giving Enola a concerned look.
The vampire's lips twisted in a reluctant grimace.
"Not really, but I guess it's just another form of closure."
"I left the necklace on the bedside table," Katrina put in. "Please, feel free to take it."
"Thanks. I'll bring it back as soon as I'm done."
"What will you tell him when he inquires about my absence?"
Enola halted in her progress towards the bedroom and turned to the witch with raised eyebrows.
"I'll tell him that you're resting after almost getting ripped open from the inside by Moloch," she declared bluntly.
Suddenly, her eyes glinted with mockery and she had to suppress a caustic smile. I wonder how he'll react when he learns that his Horseman buddy intended to sacrifice Katrina to the cause, she thought with no small amount of glee. Well, I'll know soon enough.
"Do you need a ride?" Abbie inquired.
"No, I'll fly. Thanks, though."
"Fly?" Katrina repeated with a confused look on her face.
Oh, right, I didn't tell her about that. Wasn't sure how she'd react. Well, I've got some idea, now. Enola gave the witch a tight smile.
"Yeah. Fly."
The explanation for the flying is coming at the end of the next chapter. Patience!
Translation:
- Bordel de putain de merde = Fucking hell (it's much less foul than the French version, in which all the words are really vulgar)
- Mais quelle conne = What a fucking idiot I am OR I'm such a fucking idiot
I'll update in about three weeks, I think. Hopefully, my computer will still be working by then (the screen's been acting up). And to think I've only had it for, what? Two years? It's planned obsolescence, I'm telling you.