5. Secrecy
Sonja, Esme and Selene –
Sonja's car raced into the garage way after the sun had risen and she had spent the rest of the day in a disturbed, tossing-and-turning mess of a slumber. Even though she had the luxury of the most comfortable bed she'd had in centuries, all because she was an Elder, she couldn't find sleep or put Lucien out of her mind. He was haunting her in the most pleasant of ways. The way he talked about being her pet; it was troubling the level of devotion that lie in his voice. But she couldn't help but feel excited when she thought about him catching her, holding her.
That thought alone, where Lucien was catching her, was almost metaphoric to the point where she imagined him as her savior and that image finally gave her the peace of mind to close her eyes and drift into sub-consciousness.
But her god damned door starting being pounded on and the handle started to turn. Sonja glanced at her bedside clock.
"How is it already 8:26?" She mumbled. Sonja rolled over to see the door start to open.
"Sonja! Rise and Shine!" A woman called. "My dear! Look at you!" She yelled, when she actually saw Sonja, with banter in her voice and started to pull back the shades as the last light of sun dashed behind the horizon line.
"Why thank you…" Sonja retorted.
The woman turned back to Sonja and had a self-satisfied grin on her face.
"Come on Sonja. It's sundown! You're usually up by now. What's wrong?" She asked, all too concerned.
"First of all, I couldn't sleep. Second of all, Caius is being quite annoying and thirdly, you're in too good a mood, Esme." Sonja answered.
"Well, haven't you woken up on the wrong side of the bed." Esme retorted.
"I haven't fallen asleep yet. Be grateful this isn't the third time in a row I've been deprived of such sleep."
Esme pretended like she hadn't heard that. She remembered the time when she had been a bit too forceful being a surrogate mom and ended up without a head; for a while.
Sonja noticed Esme's ignorant attitude toward that remark and also remembered that time. She sat up, stretched, and was very grateful that Esme was a diamond vampire. Dusks would not be the same without her.
Esme was picking up Sonja's discarded Death Dealer suit and hanging it up in Sonja's weapons/overall Death Dealer wardrobe.
"Esme, stop," Sonja started as she actually got out of bed. She hated when Esme started doing menial tasks that only made Sonja feel like a child again. But as soon as her feet hit the cold floor, immediately, something inside her felt horribly wrong. Her legs gave way and she felt herself faint for the second time in forty-eight hours.
A pair of strong hands caught her before she could land on the cold ground. She reveled in the feeling of being saved from oblivion. Sonja could only think of one person who'd done that for her.
"Lucien…" she breathed, almost relieved to be held by him once again.
As she opened her eyes, she saw Esme staring with her liquid honey orbs, wide with shock.
Sonja realized her mistake and was just as appalled by it as much as Esme was.
How could you say that? She scolded herself internally. She narrowed her thoughts,
How could you even think of a dog saving you? Sonja was disgusted with herself, even without Esme's burning stare.
Sonja leapt to her feet. The cold ground reminding her of the din from her "meeting" with him. She still felt a little light-headed but it wasn't nearly bad enough to cause her to faint for a second time.
Esme just stared at her. A torrent of emotions spread across her face. It was like a slideshow, sped up fifteen times faster.
Sonja could identify disbelief, anger, curiosity, concern, joy?, confusion, and fear. But the rest were lost to Sonja because of her own revulsion.
Sonja waited, haughtily, for Esme's judgment. She held her head up high in arrogance. Esme adjusted her own body posture accordingly.
"Why would one utter such a ghastly name?" Esme spat.
Sonja disagreed; it was quite an elegant name. But she said nothing; she couldn't or Esme would certainly alert the council about her behavior that not even Sonja really understood. She would have to lie, mostly.
Her head reached for its highest peak before saying,
"I met with him last night."
Esme's eyes nearly burst. She opened her mouth and nearly started chastising Sonja if she was not so stunned. So Sonja continued.
"That's why I was so tired. He is a most beguiling fiend and he too, held my shoulders when I was powerless beneath his charm."
Esme was listening, which implied that she was believing Sonja's half-truth. But Sonja herself was faltering in her stoic performance.
Oh, god. I can hardly keep up my own lines. What is happening to me? She thought.
Esme saw Sonja wince under the mental anguish, and knew what had happened to Sonja. But it was so strange and humorous to Esme so that she herself was having trouble with her stoic composure too. But still, Sonja went on,
"I was startled by that contact and immediately broke out of his grasp. When you took my shoulders, I was merely reacting, groggily - for I haven't slept - to his vile touch."
The two women stood absolutely still for a generation to mortal men before even breathing once again. Not that Esme really needed to, but she could sense so much more when she did. Sonja was only thirty-eight percent sure that Esme had bought her story; for some of it was true.
But as she looked upon the parts that weren't; anyone could see that they held no weight to them. So Esme would definitely realize the lie within her words. Sonja gave up to what was budding inside her.
She fainted for the third time in a short forty-eight hour period. Out of the millennia she'd lived, these were the only times she'd ever fainted. Sonja dreaded the reason for her sudden taking to blacking out.
Again, a pair of strong arms caught her. But these arms were cold as stone and Sonja fully realized that it was Esme saving her this time.
Esme smiled at Sonja's ignorance towards her own emotions. She brought her to the bed and laid the exhausted Elder upon the mass of blankets that served as her bed. Esme laid her hand on Sonja's brow and let a smile grace her cold lips.
"My dear, tell me everything…"
Esme's voice was open and even supporting. Sonja couldn't take it anymore. There was too much emotion that she had carried with her; let it burden her down for so long. All for trying to keep up a strong appearance, because you can't cry when you're an Elder. But in reality, Sonja wasn't that strong.
Sonja could hardly hold on to any reality anymore because of the shear amount of tears that cascaded from her eyes. She cried silently onto her bed until Esme picked her up and laid Sonja's head against her own shoulder.
"There, there, let it all out. Don't bottle things up so tightly, or this'll happen again." Esme encouraged.
Sonja gratefully, started pouring everything inside her out.
"What the hell am I suppose to do I lov…" Sonja paused. "I feel for a Lycan, I'm an Elder for god's sake and I'm crying my eyes out! Caius is starting the first full-scale immortal war since William and god knows what the hell Aro is up to." She cried.
Esme just listened while Sonja bared her soul to her. She would occasionally run her fingers through Sonja's hair, or kiss her forehead, and soon Sonja stopped crying and her breathing returned to normal.
Meanwhile, a Death Dealer was walking past Sonja's great room, on her way to the armory, but stopped outside the door as soon as she heard Sonja's strained voice.
"I don't know, Esme, he said that we grew up together. And a part of me remembers that, and even likes that." Sonja said, ashamed. "Something makes me…happier when I think of the times when he was just my "pet"; when it was just he and I. No war or hate or even Father."
The woman outside the door's breathing hitched.
"Viktor…" She breathed.
Sonja looked into Esme's eyes; they were so loving, almost the color of melting caramel, and breathed quietly her, and unbeknownst to Sonja or Esme, the other woman's ears,
"I think I love him…" She said quickly before slamming her head back onto Esme's shoulder. Esme held her as Sonja's tears wet her own shirt.
"A sinner rapes a thousand saints, sharing the same hell with me." Sonja cried.
Esme held the tired vampire and rocked her back and forth to near-sleep, lulling a gentle melody to her.
But before Sonja was completely asleep, Esme whispered back,
"My child, it's okay. Love is so blind."
Sonja responded with a gentle smile across her face.
Outside the Elder's door, the woman was frozen in utter disbelief. She knew of only one "pet" that Sonja had grown up with.
"Lucien…" She growled.
Esme's head shot up when she heard that name being spoken, hissed rather, outside Sonja's very door. Esme looked down at Sonja, who was finally sleeping with a pristine look of peace on her face, and laid her down on her bed and covered her before even looking back at the door. A look of the utmost motherly protection was carved onto her stone face when she finally did.
How can she love a Lycan! Sonja and…Lucien. What has become of the Death Dealer in her?! The woman screeched in her mind.
She rushed away to find someone to expose the traitor that Sonja was. But she had not taken four steps from her hidden corner when a very dangerous looking Esme appeared not six centimeters from her face.
"You will say nothing, Selene. Sonja trusts you like a sister. Do you know what it would it mean for you to betray that trust?" Esme's voice was disturbingly hard and callous. But Selene was having none of it. She had thought Sonja a sister as well, they had become like family. Sonja was the sister that Selene had lost and Selene was the sister Sonja never had. But that hardly mattered; this was intolerable.
"He is a Lycan! More than that, he it the Lycan! How can we just sit back and watch both the Coven and Sonja burn because of this, this… lie?" She countered. "Besides, your stone heart can't even feel love! So why should you tell me how to handle someone drowning in a false manipulation of it?"
Esme was destroyed. Selene had said the worst things pulled exactly the right strings needed to cripple the invincible Coven Mother. Selene regretted the words as soon as she'd said them, and immediately tried to apologize.
"Esme, that came out completely wrong. I mean, he's a Lycan, you know about them… and me." Selene ended, slightly uncomfortable.
"Yes I do, but, you said what you did, and let me ask you this, how can one with so much hate in their own heart consul those who have actually let someone into theirs?" Esme retorted before storming off down the hall. Anger and pain rolled off her very being.
Selene stood there, shattered as well. The night the Lycans had come was the turning point in her life. That was the night she had forsaken her own heart, she knew that only pain would come from having one. But to have someone point out the emptiness she felt inside was a completely different thing. She looked back to Sonja's door and stared at it for a while, wondering how Sonja could love Lucien and more importantly, how she could love at all. She then turned to float down the hallway, going the opposite way that Esme had.
Sonja awoke to a gentle moonrise. The closest thing she had to a sunrise. She looked at her clock.
It read in gently illuminated blue lines,
"9:56." Sonja's voice was surprisingly harsh for only an hour long nap. She slowly stepped out of bed and dressed herself in one of her Death Dealer suits. As she slid from the confines of her room, Sonja was met with a perplexing situation. She was alone in the hallway.
Surely, Sonja thought, Esme would have waited an hour for her.
Esme was not only like a mother to Sonja, but also to most of the female, and even some of the male, vampires that resided within these hallowed halls.
And such a mother would wait a mere hour for one of her children.
Distraught, Sonja wandered the halls of the massive castle that had been her home for so many years, looking for the mother that had filled in the hole created by the death of her biological one so long ago. She almost flew around the building looking for her latest confidant.
Confidant… The word echoed in her mind. It brought to mind the last person she had named by that title.
SHIT! She nearly yelled. But the words caught in her throat. Sonja might trust Selene but Selene was a purest just as Sonja had taught her to become – Death Dealers are supreme and that gives us the responsibility to protect our own Coven and the privilege to kill the other immortal races and those interacting with them. If Selene ever found out about her feelings toward Lucien, there would be hell to pay. Hell in the form of a burning sun.
God damn you Sonja! She screamed in her own mind. Why did you have to sow the seeds of your own demise?
She sped up searching every nook and cranny of the mansion, looking for Selene, or Esme.
Sonja eventually found Selene; in the place she should have been looking all the time. The armory.
Selene was currently shooting the eyes out of the practice mannequins. Every single one of them was going to need a seeing-eye dog.
So, Sonja thought, she likes to squeeze off a few. She's good at it too.
Sonja had an idea. She walked over to the weapon's technician, Khan, she believed it was. As she approached his "office" (it was basically a chain-link box with lots of heavy artillery within those chains) Khan looked up from his work bench, shocked to see the lady of the Coven walking toward him. It was common knowledge around the Coven that Sonja had once been a fearless warrior in the days when William was a constant threat to the Coven, but just in the last century she had given into her more administrative duties.
Kahn nearly stuttered when he opened his mouth.
"Milady, what can I do for you?"
Sonja chuckled at his uneasiness.
"Relax, Kahn, I know my way around a trigger." She smiled, to which he calmed down quite a bit. The uneasiness returned when she picked up a fully loaded semi-automatic Magnum from his work bench. He had been working on a silver-nitrate bullet but was no where near done and was about to lift it from her hand but the look she shot at him was warning enough not to mess with her firearms.
In the blink of an eye, Sonja whirled around, pointed the gun straight at his face, and pulled the trigger. Kahn was frozen as the bullet almost grazed his cheek, went straight through one of the chain links and landed quite neatly into the Selene's new mannequin's left eye. Selene was almost too surprised from the sudden hole in her mannequin to turn around and see the current Elder, smiling broadly at Kahn and Selene.
Haughtily, Sonja set the gun back onto the still stunned vampire's worktable and walked over to the other end of his table.
"That was nice, but I was wondering though; if you had some older weapons." She said with an apparent dislike for guns.
Kahn was still frozen with shock to even ask what she meant and just waited for her to explain.
"Maybe a broadsword or even a claymore?" She dutifully continued.
Kahn just stared at her.
"You want a sword?" He wondered if she had lost her mind. Swords were hardly effective weapons in this century. But she was the Elder, he couldn't disobey her. And with Viktor as her father and the over-protective uncle Caius, to do so would be suicide. So he made his way to the seldom used sword case and picked out Sonja's initialed longsword. Kahn had thought that the beautifully crafted weapon would only be a reminder to a distant memory of primitive warfare. Apparently Sonja thought otherwise.
When she saw Kahn only bring out her own sword she spoke up, "Bring out two…"
Selene wiped around. Fear burned into her eyes. But Sonja's told a completely different story. She knew Selene had heard her confession because of that fear, and a look of smug superiority appeared onto Sonja's face.
She won't say a word after I show her what I still am. Sonja thought. But the uneasy feeling came back. Like she was lying to herself. She was so tired of having to keep up this stoic, strong appearance. The extended sleep was so peaceful, but it passed too quickly. And she wouldn't be able to dream. She vaguely remembered her dream from last night; it was so far away now. Sonja didn't even try to fully remember it. She hated her powerlessness.
But that , Sonja thought, will stop as soon as I have my blade in my hand.
She stepped up to Kahn and took her blade and the other one he had picked out, a simple broadsword. It was simple buy it was sharp and superbly strong. She weighed the blades in her hands; already the powerlessness was fading away.
This will be a good duel, Sonja thought.
Selene was watching her Elder with wide eyes. The graceful woman nearly danced over to her; glee marking every step. Selene didn't realize that Sonja was already in front of her, handing her the broadsword, hilt first.
She understood what was happening.
Why, she thought, did I have to have a sister such as Sonja?
Sonja smiled fiendishly, "How would you fancy some traditional dueling?"
Selene's face glazed over, emptying any emotion she might reveal. She took the blade and weighed it for herself. It was a strong blade that could probably cut through bone.
Selene turned back to Sonja, face as placid as a blank slate, "I'd like that."
Sonja appeared unmoved but the blade in her own hand was burning. She didn't want to do this. She didn't know what she wanted anymore. She wondered if she ever wanted to be an Elder. But Sonja shoved those thoughts from her mind and focused on the task at hand.
"Shall we begin?" Sonja asked, already moving towards the training arena, constructed for martial arts, but it would do. Selene followed instead of answering.
As they entered the small circle, a group of Death Dealers was congregating around them. Sonja raised her sword into an offensive stance, while Selene held hers perpendicular to her leg.
Sonja smiled, forcing it now, "Ready?"
Selene nodded. Then…
No one moved for quite a while. Selene was waiting for Sonja and Sonja was waiting for herself to catch up. This fight didn't seem right. Selene had been so kind to her. They had laughed and cried together. And now it seemed that they were going to fight each other. She waited, but no one moved.
Then Selene rushed to Sonja, swiping her blade upwards from Sonja's hip to her shoulder. But Sonja dodged that by slapping Selene's sword away. Then Sonja lunged directly for Selene's abdomen. Bad mistake.
Selene bent Sonja's elbow back and used her other hand to punch her right in the face. Selene's blank face allowed no one a glimpse into her thoughts. She was actually thinking about how crushed Lucien would be find out his love was dead.
A smile broke through the mask of nothing she wore. She hated all Lycans with a devastating passion. To be able to wound the Alpha Lycan's soul was quite an acomplishment. Selene basked in the moment for a while and when she came out of it Sonja had recovered and used her free hand to grasp her sword from her other hand and she bashed Selene's own face with it. But that smack across Sonja's face had reawakened her dream from last night.
Lucien was much, much younger in it. So was she. She knew it was when Lucien and she had only been in this world for a very short time. They were standing in the old Coven's training arena and he was training dutifully, for her father wanted him to be captain of the day guard. Sonja had been watching Lucien practice barrel-rolling and she wanted to learn, so he offered to teach her. She was very bad at it so Lucien offered give her a little kiss on the cheek every time she finally was able to coordinate herself. One time she did it three times in a row and Lucien rushed over to her and grasped her into a tight hug in congratulations. Sonja and Lucien were both overjoyed to have each other in their arms. But her father had come to check on Lucien at the worst time, and saw them in their embrace. He lashed out at Lucien and Lucien was so hurt, he wasn't able to move for three hours afterwards his beating. Sonja was also chastised and was told never to mingle with such beasts. She listened to her father and they gradually she and Lucien grew apart, but those feelings they both had had never gone away. No matter how much Sonja wanted to deny it.
She snapped back the present, barely a second had pasted and everything had changed. Sonja knew exactly what she had to do. Selene still had the ignorant smile plastered on her face. But Sonja smashed the hilt of her sword directly into her arrogant nose and blood spattered everywhere. Now it was Sonja smiling, as she tripped Selene and laid the blade of her sword across her throat.
"Surrender, please, sister." She pleaded, still with the smile on her face.
Selene could hardly bring the words to her tongue but she found the will to.
"Yes, milady." Dejection echoed within her words.
How could the battle have turned so quickly? She thought. She didn't get much time to think because Tanis suddenly burst through the mass of equally stunned Death Dealers.
"Milady! The council has called an emergency session! Your presence is necessary." He spoke quickly and urgently.
Sonja turned to Selene, who was still on her back and held out her hand to help her up. Selene agreed and took Sonja's hand.
Sonja felt so much better. But she still needed to give a warning to Selene. She didn't want to but there were facades to hold together. As she picked Selene up she thrust her mouth right over Selene's ear and whispered, "You have seen what I can do. Don't make me do what I might have to."
Selene's blood ran even colder. She realized that even after all that they'd been though; she wasn't even safe from Sonja's wrath. Selene got to her feet and felt the broadsword being taken out of her hand and she saw Sonja give her sword and the one she had been using to a subdued Kahn. Sonja walked upstairs to the great hall to attend this council meeting. Selene continued to watch Sonja walk away, growing colder every second.
Little did Selene know that she was safer than ever from Sonja's wrath. For Sonja had burned that all away, she was emptied from it and she knew exactly what to fill it with.
The love she had and finally admitted to herself. The forbidden love she couldn't have.
Been listening to LOTS of Nightwish, bound to pop up in here somewhere. Like "sinner rapes a thousand saints, sharing the same hell with me"... their lyrics are pure genius.
