Chapter Four:
Violet's conscience weighed heavy on her heart. She had always been accused of being soft hearted but now the organ was ruptured and weeping red sympathy for the human stranger who was dead and scattered to the four winds.
She often felt a strange sensation when her thoughts turned to him and it had taken her a long time to identify what that was. I was shame. She was ashamed. It was this shame that kept her sealed in Parkland as if it were her tomb.
She lay her head down, eyes flickering closed for an instant as if she could sleep. All she saw were flashes, the sights and sounds of the last rattling breath of the human boy, the wet sucking of a mouth at his wounded throat. Sometimes she fantasized it was her mouth wrapped around his neck, slithers of human skin wet on her lips…
She opened her eyes to be greeted by her own reflection. Her lips parted to speak but an icy hand covered her mouth.
"What have you done with him?"
Rose. Violet's senses were overwhelmed with the presence of her sister and her eyes flooded with tears of both relief and anger. Rose was here.
"What have you done?" Rose's voice was low, angry. Her eyes a dangerous shade of silver.
Violet's thoughts raced to the kiss with Calder, shivering at the memory of their lips, their tongues…She shivered. Her body liquefying at the memory.
"What did you do? What did you do to him?"
What had she done? What had Calder told her? "It's not what you think. Calder-"
Rose was implacable, now screaming and crying looking completely wild and wretched. She threw herself around the room tearing at her hair that looked tangled and matted from months of not washing. "Where is he? What the fuck did you do you with him? Is he dead? Is he? Answer me."
Dead? Violet fought to grasp her sister, she had always been stronger than Rose but her manic mood made her strong and they toppled to the floor. They fought for a several minutes until Rose exhausted herself and Violet ended up straddling her sister, pinning her wrists to the ground.
"What are you talking about?" Violet asked, teeth clenched with the effort of holding her sister down.
"What did you do with Nicky?" Her sister spat, raging hot saliva decorated Violet's cheeks.
"Nicky?"
It seemed for a moment that all the life went out of Rose and Violet slowly climbed off of her sister and backed away to stare at her from a distance, ready to defend herself if Rose attacked.
"What's going on?" Violet asked softly, half of her barely convinced Rose was there at all and the other slowly filling with dread.
Rose sat up and put her head in her hands, holding her face as if she was in terrible pain. Violet's heart was racing, the awful thumping was consuming her body until she felt as if her whole body was throbbing.
"What happened, Rose?" It dawned on her, the terrible beating of her heart stopped. "Nicky was your lover...your human lover."
Rose sobbed out loud.
"Goddess." She whispered mind racing at the implications. "You said you'd give that up, Rose. You said it was a one time thing. You couldn't really be in love with a…human."
Rose sprang up and approached in a flurry of fury, she pushed Violet hard against the wall. "I will never forgive you, you murdering bitch."
She left the room as quietly as she had entered. Like a shadow she simply slipped into the dark and disappeared.
Violet was frightened for her sister. She let out a shaky breath and sagged against the wall until she sat on the ground.
Nicky. That was his name. That scrap of knowledge made the memory of his death more poignant, the shame deepened, the sinking feeling returned.
She held out her hands and watched them tremble, they shook with adrenaline. She decided she couldn't be there a moment longer so she picked up her boots and headed out of Parkland.
*
The Black Iris was packed. There was no band on the stage just a DJ hidden in the back and some slow soft doom music that suited Violet's mood. She ordered doubles at the bar and gulped then down intending to get very very drunk.
People steered clear from her sensing her black mood but they all looked, eyes rolled to count the number of glasses spread before her, the careless way she knocked back one drink after another. Eyes flicked once and twice to figure out which twin she was. Half way through the night someone slid into a stool next to her.
"Drink?" She offered Ash Redfern her half finished whisky to which he declined. "Did I ever thank you?"
"For what?" He asked, sitting with his back against the bar, his eyes set on the crowd.
"For getting rid of the body."
"Don't mention it."
She hid her smile with a swig of whisky.
They sat in companionable silence until Violet blurted, "Rose came back."
"I heard." It made her wonder who else had heard and she ordered another double with a flick of her fingers toward the barman.
"You shouldn't mix your drinks." He advised softly.
"That's precisely why I am."
"What's wrong, Violet?"
"I can't tell you because it's a secret." She spoke holding a finger to her lips.
"Secrets are dangerous things."
"Aren't they?" She said with false enthusiasm. "We all have our secrets." She cast an intense eye on him and felt him shift uncomfortably in his seat.
"Let me take you home."
"I don't want to go home."
"So what's next?"
She lifted her glass. "Another one of these."
"And after that, Violet?"
"Anything is possible, Ash."
Ash mutter 'shit' beneath his breath. Violet glanced behind her to see a dark haired vampire glaring suspiciously at them. She remembered his face in a vague sort of way, there were many soirees and many vampires of note but of course some would sake Quinn the Snake was unforgettable. After all he was Hunter Redfern's heir.
"Thought you were friends." She murmured to Ash who forced a lazy smile to his lips as Quinn approached.
"Just smile." Was his reply.
Quinn was shorter than Violet by a head, his face sharp angled under the dull club lights. Coldness seemed to seep from his pores and envelop their immediate vicinity, she suppressed a shiver as he greeted them both with an insincere smile and ordered another drink.
"What are you doing here?" Quinn asked Ash with a note in his voice that made it seem as if Ash's presence was inappropriate. "And you, princess, long time no see."
His eyes lingered on Violet and her lip curled in discuss as he allowed his thoughts to slip into her mind. "You're mistaking me for someone else."
"I couldn't mistake you for anyone." He gave a boorish wink and she grit her teeth. He was one of Rose's none to discreet flings. There were many of her ex-lovers dotted throughout the echelons of the Night and to think she had been reduced to bedding a human… To let it touch her, taste her, use her…
She grasped him by his shirt collar. "You don't fucking know me, got it?"
Ash's mouth hung wide open in shock, no one just grasped the Snake, no one who wanted to see the light of another day.
She released him, her hands still trembling and she strode out of the bar. When the night air hit her she felt nausea rise in a powerful wave. There had been too many nights walking out of the Black Iris, throwing up on the side walks, sleeping in strange People's crummy apartments.
She wrapped her jacket closer around herself, as if she could keep the inner chill at bay and began the long walk home. It was a two hour walk and she needed the headspace to think or forget, she couldn't decide and the world was still spinning.
She walked through Nestor Park. The streetlamps set a romantic mood against the gentle sway of the verdant landscape and a gang of leather wearing punks were lounging on a cluster of benches nearby. There were five of them she could see from the periphery of her vision but continued to walk nonetheless. She hadn't noticed until then the park was empty save for them.
One of the men whistled, others tried to lure her over with crude words but she was deaf to it all. She kept walking.
Someone ran to catch up with her and laid a callused hand on her shoulder. She turned around, too fast for the human eye, and snapped the wrist that hand was attached too. By the time the others caught up the young man was on the floor, sobbing over his limp hand.
"What the fuck?" He blubbered.
They began screaming all at once, too many voices filled her mind and her flesh sang with fury, the same manic feeling that had possessed her with she had grasped the Snake.
"We're going to fuck you up." A chorus of switchblades, the wink of cold steel in the night and there was some part of her wished it could be that easy.
A girl approached her with a hunting knife on one side and an older gruff man had a switchblade approaching her from the other. They danced forward together, she jumped out of the way in time as their knives connected with one another.
Blood sprayed half across her face as the man's blade plunged into the girl and girl sliced into the man.
The scent of blood brought her eyes to bright shiny saucers and needle sharp fangs to reveal themselves. One of the gang began screaming at the sight of her as a sudden breeze lifted her hair and she must have looked like an elemental goddess decorated in their friends' blood.
"What the hell are you?" One of them stammered.
The question speared her. She thought of her sister I'll never forgive you, you murdering bitch.
The humans didn't turn to run and her resolve wavered, the anger seeping from her as the feeling of shame consumed her from the inside out. Her face burnt with it, her impossibly pale skin turning a shade of pink.
She turned her back on the remaining punks and ran toward home.
*
Violet woke with her face pressed to the earth. Grains of soil clung to her cheek as she raised her face to the morning sky. She must have fallen and passed out on the way home. She remembered stopping to wretch as she entered the border of Parkland estate.
She was close enough to home she could see the towers pierce the night sky. She rolled onto her back staring at the dull sky, clouds gathered to shield her from the worst of the morning light. There was blood on her clothes.
A shadow fell on her face. She closed her eyes and a memory sprang to her, it was the lips of a young Calder Marwood-Thorn. It was light playing through a canopy of trees, the leaves of the willow tree brushing the earth and the thin trickle of water.
When she opened them again she was alone. Totally alone.