Chapter 20

For four days all Mary-Lynnette did was watch, and for four days all she did was listen. The times were always precise and always at an exact time. They came in five times a day, three times a day for a meal consisting only of bread with butter and a cup of water and once had been lucky for some microwavable food. Twice for her to be leashed like a dog and led to the bathroom at the end of the hall.

On the second day she had found a small nail in the medicine cabinet and on the third day she had only got through a quarter of a weak chain link before it broke from so much use. Her fingers had so many small cuts and bruises it had started to become hard to hide them. At one point Mary-Lynnette had become so desperate she dropped her glass and picked up the pieces hoping to hide her hands a bit longer.

Belladonna had come sauntering into the room, " Glass won't help you fight your way out of here little mouse. Now don't make any more of a mess then is necessary. Now behave." She had left without realizing anything and Mare had been grateful. But the female wasn't the one that she was on the fence about. It was the boy that kept standing in the doorway, his eyes picking at the pieces of glass.

"It's gotten glass all over the place, pick up the pieces so she doesn't get any stupid ideas."

Balthazar had given a curt nod and had left the room only to return, not with a broom but with tweezers and a first aid kit. When Mary-Lynnette tried to pull her hands away, his hand snakes out and pulls her left hand toward him. "It hides the smell." Was what he said before he began with the grizzly task.

Mare tried to keep from flinching as small glass shards were taken out of her hand, but she couldn't hide it well enough.

"You keep up with these stunts and you'll get yourself killed whether Hunter Redfern says so or not."

She refused to meet his eyes, "It was an accident."

"I wasn't talking about that." He pulled at her chain and her head wiped up trying and failing to hide the fear in her eyes.

"This is the second warning. There won't be a third time. Remember that." He plucked a third piece of glass from her pointer finger and tossed it into a small tin that contained the other.

None of this made any sense to her, "But why the two warnings? Why save me from her twice. You know what I am, where I come from. So why help someone on the opposite side?"

Then the corners of him mouth turned upward and for a brief moment she almost wished that she could take back what she had said. His smile was—unnerving. "Things aren't always black and white. Even human history can show that in evidence. Sometimes the side you are part of isn't by choice."

"Everything is by choice." Her words were instantaneous and sure.

He paused after placing another shard in the tin," Really? Everything is by choice, are you sure about that?" Balthazar stared at her, " Did you chose to join the nightworld? Did you choose to fall into the world of Circle Daybreak?"

There was no real answer that she could give him, "What was it that forced you to take this side then?"

"Belladonna is fascinated by what she can't have. She can spend as long as she needs to in order to get what she wants. Perhaps the chase is more fun then the actual reward for her." There was a way with his eyes. The calm before the storm raged to such an extent that there someone who be lost in the winds.

"You were a prize."

The chuckle that came out was bitter and cruel, "I wasn't even what she was truly after. I was in love with someone, a human in the 190's—we were both human. She was beautiful," He paused a moment not sure why he was even talking to her.

Mary-Lynnette sat on the bed, careful of her hands as she sat down, "I met Ash after his sister's moved in to my neighbor's house. I thought that something was fishy about the fact that my neighbor's granddaughters had showed up out of the blew and she was nowhere to be found. I was snooping in the woods when I found out what they were. Ash never told me about the nightworld his sister's did. Turns out that their family member had been killed and they weren't sure who was behind it." She laughed at the memory, "We all thought that it was Ash. His reputation at the time—well I'm sure you heard about it. We ended up solving the mystery with my old childhood friend being a werewolf. I ended up killing him his name was Jeremy. I killed him because I didn't know what else to do."

"Why did you tell me that?" The young vampire inquired.

"My story is how I became part of this. Your right I didn't chose to have this knowledge. But I did have the choice of walking away from it. And I did, for a year; I ignored the feeling in my gut and the fact that there were people that I cared about in a world that I pushed away. Ash let me because he cared about me. But I made the choice to throw myself into this mess because I thought that I could help, or at least me of some support to the person I care about."

There was a long pause, only the sound of Belladonna outside, a sport's car in the driveway humming a sweet tune as she sped off in the distance. The noise of the car broke through the stupor that the two had put themselves in.

It seemed like hours before he finally spoke. "Her name was Amelia. She gave me thoughts that things, our lives could have been better. I wanted so much for us, she saw things differently from the other girls who thought only about being a house wife and raising a family. She wanted those things, but after she had lived a life that she could one day tell the kids she'd have. I met Amelia at speakeasies, dressed to explore the world and live without care. Those dreams attracted Belladonna, because for ounce she wasn't the center of attention. Belladonna ruled the night at those clubs, but Amelia was alive, carefree. Belladonna always wanted the eye of someone she couldn't have. Belladonna played a game with her, a game that Amelia never knew about."

Balthazar paused at the window, glaring into the road as if he could still see Belladonna. "She won over al the suitors for Amelia eventually. Played off his strings in front of her until someone else came along; until I came along. I was head over heels for her. My parents, European, had been so religious that this was the name the gave me was, being my age, embarrassing. Amelia called me Bal and I loved it—I loved her. No matter what Belladonna did I was never swayed from her…." But then his voice trailed off.

He looked over at Mary-Lynnette then, the storm raging at the memoires; the sea of blue came in tidal waves that crashed with a roar. "You said that we can chose where we stand. If I was given that choice—if I had that option—I couldn't live with myself!" The words bellowed out of him.

He stormed out of the room, the door slamming shut before him, he had forgotten the first aid kit and the small trauma shears that were left behind.

Just like Hunter Redfern had said, there is more then one-way to skin a cat.