38
Blamed
I screamed the second I felt as if I’d landed and I fell forward over the table in front of me to the sound of plates and goblets clattering to the floor.
“Keira?!” I heard Draven’s panicked voice next to me and I jumped near out of my skin. I scrabbled backwards and almost ended up in Sophia’s lap as I tried to get away from him. His eyes widened in shock at seeing me now terrified of him and the second they turned pained and devastated, I hated myself for being the one to put that look on his face. It didn’t take me long to realise that I was back to the time before we danced, and I wondered for a fleeting moment if everything that had just happened to me was because he had touched my birthmark? Had it gone back to that time?
I was about to try and explain myself the second Draven reached for me, but stopped when Zagan called his name in an alarmed tone,
“Dom! Takeshi.” Upon hearing this he snapped his head around to see for himself what was wrong with his council member and the second he did, he growled. Takeshi was currently slumped back in his seat with eyes of milky white crying contrasting black tears. No sound came from his lips, but they moved like he was silently speaking in a trance.
“Oh, God no!” I whispered just before my hand covered my mouth. But it was too late. It was already out and in doing so I had implicated myself just with my guilty tone alone. Because I knew, the very second I saw Takeshi in that state, that this was my fault. I didn’t know how or why, I just knew that I was the cause.
And now Draven knew it too.
He looked back at me and pinned me with a knowing frown as now he had a pair of guilty eyes staring back at him to add to the hushed regret in my whispered cry.
“Ragnar, take him to his chambers, I will join you in a moment.” Draven issued his order and I looked up in time to see my old friend and bodyguard emerge from behind a screen of tight latticed woodwork. It was almost as though he had been positioned there to watch the room unseen, which had me now questioning Draven’s motives for doing so?
I knew what I was hiding from him, but the question was, what was he hiding from me?
I watched as Ragnar stepped up to the platform and with Zagan’s help, started to move Takeshi so he could be lifted from his chair. But Draven wanted my attention and made this known when I felt my chair suddenly slide along the floor, as he yanked it closer to his.
“Draven I…” I started to say something but what, I wasn’t really sure. However, I was interrupted when suddenly a hand slapped down on the back of my chair, making me jump and this time it didn’t belong to Draven.
Ragnar had just walked behind us with Takeshi in his arms, and at first it had looked as if he been doing this whilst his burden was unconscious. But now I cried out in shock as I looked into a pair of haunting eyes of cloudy milk, that were solely focused on me. Then his lips started to move, and it was as if there was a time delay as foreign words followed the action seconds after spoken. Only the words that were heard might have come from his lips, but it wasn’t his voice.
No, it was the voice of…
Draven’s demon.
“Amaru za-e Esharra, Wardum àm Kad nga Shi” Draven’s face turned to steel the moment the words were heard, and I flinched back when I saw his accusing eyes shift sharply to me.
“Take him and inform me the moment he has seen it through!” Draven demanded, his voice hard and unmoveable. I gulped back a choked breath at the tone and just as Ragnar pried Takeshi’s death grip from the back of my chair, he had one more message for me.
Only this time, it was one I could understand all too well.
“That’s what happens when you try and run from me, little slave…”
“Now Ragnar!” Draven snapped, ripping Takeshi’s hand from my chair himself. Ragnar started moving again, now he was free to do so but the second he did, Takeshi started laughing. He threw his head back over Ragnar’s arm, eyes bleeding with black tears now streaming down his forehead and to his hairline. His laughter a disturbing sound, and that of a demon taking possession of another. A laughter that only stopped to add a single threat…
“…Soon my white Rabbit.”
I shivered and closed my eyes against the sound, knowing now that I couldn’t get away with it. My biggest fear was about to come true as Draven knew there was something I was keeping from him. Okay, so he didn’t know what it was yet, but for Draven, well he only needed to know that it was something to do with me lying to him and that was enough for the rest of my cards to come tumbling down around me.
“Sophia, take Keira back to our room, I will be there shortly.” He snapped out the order and at the same time my eyes snapped open. But seeing the way he was now looking at me, then I kind of wished I hadn’t. He looked so disappointed and angry. An anger I could tell he was barely keeping a lid on.
Seeing him like this and having the other extreme to compare him to and I could now see how much of his Angel side held him back. How much it ruled over his emotions so that he could continue on with life without exploding into the rage, one I knew bubbled so close to the surface. And now, because of me, that surface was even closer.
“Dom, I don’t think…” Sophia started to say but was quickly shut down when he snapped,
“Now, Sophia!” I bit my lip and flinched, tearing my gaze from his and hating that all of this night had been ruined. All the effort made in gifting me the perfect medieval banquet and in the end, I had never even danced with my king. No instead, I had been lured and then forced into dancing straight into my nightmares, only to fall. And when granting one last look at Draven, it was true what his demon had said to me that night…
I had fallen and for once, Draven… well…
He hadn’t caught me this time.
I could hear the argument ready to lash out from Sophia’s lips, so instead I placed a hand over hers as I turned to her.
“It’s alright Sophia, let’s just go,” I said in a deflated tone, making her first look surprised by my easy acceptance, then she looked angered by it.
“Fine! But Dom, I am warning you now, that you’d better turn up with a damn good excuse as to why you’re treating her like this, or so help me, I will be the one who forces you to sleep on the couch!” she snapped making him growl. But she didn’t care, no, she looked too furious for that. Instead she stood, slapping her napkin to the table before turning to Pip and demanding,
“Let’s go, Squeak.” Pip who had been watching this whole scene play out like she was watching some dramatic soap on telly, looked up with a lollypop still sticking out of one side of her mouth.
“Uh…oh, right, that would be me then, laters my favourite man meat provider!” she said, giving her husband a little tap on his cheek before standing.
“Come on honey, let’s go bitch about the opposite sex and their clueless and insensitive overreactions,” Sophia said which was also my cue to leave. And hearing this from his sister prompted only another growl from him. But I decided not to look because really, what good would come if I did? He was angry and to be honest, the only reason I could see why was because now he knew that I had been keeping something from him. What else could the reason for his cutting behaviour towards me be? No, it had to be that, it had to be because of lies. A river of lies, I felt in this moment, I was drowning in.
“Keira…” The sound of my name coming this time from a more tender place, I couldn’t help but turn to look back at him. He was stood also and for a second it looked as if he wanted to reach out to me, to pull me to him for an embrace. However, he didn’t do any of these things and the second his features turned serious again, I knew both he and I had lost the moment.
“Yes, Draven?” I asked in a deadpan tone at the sight of his cold manner.
“You are not to leave the room…Understood?” I closed my eyes a second as I took a deep calming breath so as not to make a scene and my answer came in the form of a nod before I opened my eyes again.
“Sophia?” He said his sister’s name as a one worded question, demanding the same answer from her. She however, unlike me, didn’t answer calmly but instead snapped,
“I’m not her fucking jailer Dom, she is free to do as she pleases, you don’t like it, then I suggest you fucking hurry!” Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me with her, ignoring the warning snarl coming from her angry brother.
The three of us quickly made our way around the raised dais and crossed the centre of the room towards the staircase. I was half way up it when I had the urge to look back, no longer caring who saw me or was staring our way. No doubt they had all witnessed what had happened at the table anyway, so what was one more thing to gossip about.
So, I gave into my urge and looked back at the only man I cared to see. But I was surprised that I had to look for him, as he was no longer sat were we had been. No, instead I found him stood by the screen that Ragnar had been behind. I frowned, squinting my eyes trying to see why he would now be there when he stepped to the side and I got my answer. That and the glimpse of a cloaked figure he was looking down at.
He looked angry as he scanned the room behind him, looking over his shoulder with a glare. I saw the way his hand gripped the wooden screen as it started to splinter under the pressure of his wrath and the hooded figured took a step back, clearly afraid.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Sophia said, pausing to find me staring at Draven and the second she said this, it was as if he heard her because his eyes quickly found mine. For a moment we seemed locked in a soundless gaze, as if we were both trying to read each other’s thoughts.
But then the inevitable happened and as we both came up empty, all I received was a nod from him, giving me that silent order to go. I gave him one last look that screamed out what my lips wouldn’t allow and that was my utter disappointment. One directed at both him and myself. Not that he would know that because the second he gave me his unspoken order, he turned his back on me and directed his attention to the small cloaked figure. His actions just made my curiosity grow tenfold as he pushed the person further behind the screen, no doubt because he now knew I was watching.
Yep, so it was now confirmed. I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets, that much was obvious.
Surprisingly, we all remained silent as we walked through the halls and back to where Draven had demanded me to be. Even Pip had made it all the way back without speaking but this was most likely down to Sophia. Every time Pip looked as though she was about to ask something, Sophia would just pull something sweet off her dress and hand it to her, telling her without words not to speak, just to suck.
However, the second we made it back to the room, she calmly closed the door and with her hands still holding it behind her, she said,
“Right, now why don’t you tell us what has been going on.” To which I took a deep breath, faced Sophia and couldn’t help but blurt out,
“I am being terrorised and stalked by Draven’s Demon.” To which they both replied at the same time in an echoing surround sound shriek.
“WHAT!”
“HOLY SHIT BALLS, WHAT YOU SAY!?”
“Ssshh, wanna say it any louder as I don’t think the ballroom full of supernatural people and their amazing hearing abilities, quite heard you both freaking out, along with my husband who I really, really don’t want to find out.”
“You mean he doesn’t know!?” Sophia shrieked bracing her hands at the door in her surprise.
“Holy haberdashery, Batman!” Pip said slumping down into the winged back chesterfield in the corner, losing a few fizzy cola bottles along the way. Was it wrong that in that moment and height of my mental turmoil I wanted to pick them all up and stuff them into my mouth, hoping somehow the sugar rush would help?
“Not now, Pip,” Sophia said making her pout.
“Why not, trust me if there was ever a time for an awesome Robin quote it’s when he says something like that and blows up the ‘oh my fucking goblin’ meter!” I looked at Sophia, cocked my head to the side and shrugged my shoulder, agreeing with Pip,
“She has a point.” But I don’t think Sophia agreed at all, when all she did was release a growly breath of frustration. Then she held the bridge of her nose with two fingers and closed her eyes, reminding me of her brother when he too was frustrated with me. In fact, I was starting to think I made a lot of people do that around me. I think if I hadn’t already had a mind full of ‘Holy shits’ right then I would have questioned how much of an annoyance I really was for the Supernatural world and its big players. Lucius alone had said it enough times.
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning, should we?” she said after a moment of calm, although I wasn’t sure how long that would last after I had finished telling them everything. I released a sigh and, like Pip had, deflated down to sitting on the bed. Sophia took one look at me and knew that right now I needed support if I was ever to get this all out. So, she pushed off the door and came to sit down next to me. Then she put an arm around me and pulled me to her side for a hug. Pip, seeing this, jumped up and said,
“Hey, don’t leave me out, I want to get in on some girl on girl action.” Then she raced over to us, surprising me by how nimble she could be in that dress, however she did lose more sweets along the way, gobstoppers and cherry lips this time.
“You do know that means lesbian sex, right?” I informed her making her wink at me.
“Well, if I had a dangly piece of man meat to swing that way and my love rug ever fancied a cleaning lady, then you Biaches would totally get the job!” Sophia and I looked at each other and gave the same questioning looks, trying to gauge if either of us knew what she meant.
“Oh, for the love of Rasputin, I mean that if I ever turn sexy lesbo, then I would totally do you both, but as it turns out I like meat to go with my pale gravy… Capisce?” Pip said holding the tips of her fingers to the tip of her thumb, as she waved her hand in the air like an Italian mobster when saying this last word.
“Yeah, you like men, we got it, now can we please move away from Pip’s vagina and its sexual preferences and on to more pressing matters, please,” Sophia said turning to look at me once more, after first aiming most of this sentence looking around me at Pip. Someone who, at this moment in time, just held up their hands in defence and said,
“Yeah, I’m game for info upload to begin.”
“Okay so on that note, where to begin?” I asked myself, only getting an answer from Pip anyway,
“Well duh, at the beginning silly…I mean jeez, she just said it.” This last part was said to Sophia behind my back and also in a comical way by using only one side of her mouth. She also did this behind her hand in a not so secretive tone. I ignored her and so did Sophia after only rolling her eyes before coming back to me.
“Right well, I guess it started right after the battle…” I began, knowing that it was best not to leave anything out. Which meant that ten minutes later I was done, having included everything from me and Draven on the couch acting strange when he first touched my birthmark. To the most recent events that happened not even half an hour ago. By the time I had finished Sophia looked as though she had swallowed a bug and Pip looked like she was getting ready to swallow a whole swarm of them.
“Oh, come on guys, say something!” I said pretty much pleading and throwing my arms down as if this would help with trying to extract information out of them.
“Uh…I don’t know what to say.” Sophia replied first, and Pip snorted and said,
“I think the words you’re looking for are Holy Tintinnabulation!”
“No, no, I think you’ll find the word I am looking for is a lot stronger than that,” Sophia corrected dryly.
“Holy fuck a duck hole?” Pip asked, this time making me snort but that was mainly at the disgusted look Sophia now gave her when moving slightly away as she said,
“Eww, no!”
“And Tintinnabulation is any better?” I asked wondering what the hell it meant.
“Well, considering it means the sound of ringing bells and not entering the realms of bestiality, then yes, I would say it’s better. Right, well now we have wrapped that up, can we please get back to trying not to freak out about the fact my brother’s fucking demon is trying to take over his body and in doing so, making you his fucking slave!” Sophia snapped, clearly losing it towards the end and to be honest, when put like that, then I couldn’t say I really blamed her. Pip’s solution to this was to simply pull a red twizzler off her dress and hand it to Sophia.
“Here, eat this, you clearly need it.” Surprisingly, Sophia just took it and tore a big bite off the end, pulling at the bottom so it stretched, reminding me of an angry child that needed the sugar rush.
“It tastes like vodka!” she shouted after swallowing.
“Yeah, I know, I told you that you needed it! Besides, I soaked most of my sweets in vodka first before I put them on, see how big my gummy bears and babies go?” Yeah, now that she mentioned it, there was a strong aroma of alcohol drifting my way and she was right, those were big gummy bears.
“So, the Lucius thing, seriously Keira what were you thinking?” Sophia said, determined to get back on track. This was when I stood up and threw my hands up in the air dramatically saying,
“I don’t know! I panicked okay!”
“Well yeah, I am not surprised.” Sophia agreed before continuing.
“But why Lucius, why not call me or Vincent, someone that didn’t include…”
“Who, the only person I knew that had the power to control Draven?” I threw back making Pip pop her lolly from her mouth, point it my way and say,
“Baby mamma’s got a point.” Sophia shot her a look telling her ‘not now’ and carried on.
“Okay, but you do realise that when Dom knows about this, then that just made it and the shit street you’re now living in, about ten time worse!”
“Ha, yeah but I think you can add on a couple of million shit fits to that ten times worse bit!” Pip added, now making me frown at her and give her my own ‘not now’ look.
“Of course, but I am not going to tell him!” I said dropping the mega bombshell that Pip would no doubt have named something like the megalodon shark of all bombs dropped.
“WHAT?!” Again, this came from Sophia.
“What else do you expect me to do here?” I asked shaking my head a little.
“Uh, tell him the truth, I know it’s a foreign concept for you both, but you could at least try it sometime, for all our sakes.” I gave her a pissed off glare and snapped,
“That isn’t funny!”
“No, and it wasn’t supposed to be,” she replied calmly.
“Look, I get it okay, so much shit has happened between me and Draven and yes, I agree, most of it because we have kept stuff from each other or worse, lied to one another, but this time it’s different!”
“How…just how is this time any different, Keira?” she pressed, and I could understand why she did but right in that moment, I really didn’t have it in me to explain my reasons…or so I thought.
“It just is, okay?”
“Yeah, but how?!” she asked again, this time losing her patience and in turn I lost mine.
“Because I don’t want to give him another excuse to leave me again, okay! Because I don’t want another one of his lackies turning up outside my door telling me he’s gone or that he’s dead to me! And I don’t want another string of letters telling me goodbye and how he is sorry, but I should just move on with my life…that’s why, Sophia.” I told her and the second I did her face softened with her understanding.
“Oh, Honey.”
“Oh, Tootie Cakes.” They both said at the same time and my shoulders slumped as I now took the place Pip had used, falling back into the corner chair.
“Sweetheart, do you really think that will happen again, that my brother could do that, put either of you through that?” she asked, nodding to my belly after I raised my head up from the hand it had been resting on.
“All I know is that Draven will only see this as one thing, that he is a danger to not only me this time, but us both…” I said pausing to cradle my stomach and the precious life now growing inside, telling them without words the severity of it all.
“Think about it Sophia, and look back at what I have to go on here…” I said pausing to take a breath.
“Think about what happened in the past when Draven believed that he could be a danger to me, he went as far as forgoing the bloody prophecy for Christ sake, he turned his back on saving the whole world Sophia, just so that he could save my life! So yeah, hearing this, it’s not a massive stretch of the imagination to believe he will just leave again.” Finally, explained like this, I could see her coming around to my way of thinking, as come on, it wasn’t exactly as if she could deny it. This time it was her own shoulders that slumped in defeat for we both knew she couldn’t deny it anymore.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, she makes a good point,” Sophia said before Pip could say it again and now I wanted to kiss them both as Pip winked at me and Sophia finally admitted that I was right.
“So, does this mean you’re not going to tell him?” I asked in that hopeful tone, one that turned out to be rewarded when she said,
“No, I am not going to tell him.”
“But he’s your brother!” This surprisingly came from Pip, making me frown at her.
“Sorry, my bad Toots but come on, I thought that being blood and all, meant that she would want to give him the ‘hell Bro, what’s wrong with your demon ass’ low down…but Yey, for team Keira that she doesn’t… eh?” she said waving an imaginary flag at me.
“He may be my brother but that doesn’t mean he is always right and I learnt not long ago that sometimes my brother’s choices aren’t always what’s best for others, despite what he thinks. Besides, I have been more loyal to you and your choices for a while, so why break tradition now,” Sophia said standing up as if it was all decided. I walked over to her and pulled her in for an embrace and hugged her to me.
“Oooh, do me, do me! I wanna get in on the action!” Pip said jumping up off the bed and coming over to us and then trying to wrap her arms around us both to give us a squeeze.
“This still doesn’t mean I’m a chick muncher,” she said eyeing us both one after the other. We both groaned at the same time saying a joint,
“Yeah Pip, we know.”
“We know.”
“Anyway, getting back to the problem at hand, you do realise that I am the least of your problems, right?” Sophia said after we had all hugged it out.
“What do you mean?” I asked, looking back up at her as I was currently sat down trying to take my shoes off, as my feet were killing me.
“Are you forgetting something, because I am pretty sure it wasn’t coincidence that Takeshi had a vision the second Dom’s demon tapped into your mind?” she told me, and I already knew this was true. Of course, the biggest question of all was…why?
“Yeah, it must have something to do with that doohicky on your neck, like a demonic switch or even better, like a TV remote for Hell…I wonder if you could pause or fast forward…what?” Pip said stopping mid flow when she saw our ‘not impressed’ faces.
“Uh, yeah right, what am I going to do next, pulled DVD’s out my ass and twist my breasts to control Netflix? I don’t think so some…”
“Just wait a minute, she could actually be on to something here,” Sophia piped up, making me drop a shoe and give her my best, ‘what the Hell’ look, one I had practiced to a fine art since meeting these people. And when I say people, what I really meant was the other half of my soul and his family, which just so happened to come with a cruise boat load of Supernatural baggage!
Pip stuck her tongue out at me, giving me an ‘I told you so’ look and making me roll my eyes before saying the obvious,
“I think you need to explain Sophia, before my head explodes or worse, your brother comes back here and his goes off first.”
“Well, think about it, what major event occurred just before this started happening?”
“Oh, I know this one! She died! It’s she died, right?” Pip shouted ending it with a fake stab to the heart and a dramatic death with her falling back onto the bed.
“And she was like…Bluurrraaa brrraaains,” she added now sitting up slowly with her arms out in front of her and pretending to be a zombie. I gave her a death glare making her giggle before covering her little breasts and saying,
“I take it back, please don’t eat me!”
“Yeah right, you’re wearing a dress made of sweets for Gods’ sake, like you don’t plan on getting eaten tonight.,” Sophia said wryly. Pip smirked at me then gave me a wink, replying with,
“You wanna see my underwear, it’s made from candy floss and edible paper.” Then she waggled her eyebrows at me in a cartoon comical way.
“There are just no words, Pip,” I said shaking my head on a chuckle. She bowed at the waist and said,
“Danke schön” which thanks to the ‘leftover school days’ folder in my brain, I knew meant ‘thank you very much’ in German.
“Please, for the love of Harpie blood, can we just stick to a conversation long enough before your private parts have to come into it, or is it time to see Sheila again, Squeak?”
“Nah, I dropped that bitch long ago, get this, she told me to start writing my impulses down first before following through with action,” she said finishing with a snort of disbelief before continuing,
“Shushuh, yeah, like that was ever gonna happen! I told her, I said look honey, there just ain’t enough paper and ink in the world to contain this level of genius in words. Then I walked out, stole a marker and an apple from stuck up bitch on reception and fucked Adam on the way home.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes a second trying to get my head around everything she just said and then did something Sophia was silently telling me not to with a shake of her head.
“I know I am going to regret this, but why the apple and marker, Squeak?”
“Oh well, I went into the bathroom and wrote on myself all the things I wanted him to do to me, with arrows and shit.” She said this by using both her hands to point to her lady parts. As if we needed any help knowing precisely where Pip would draw the sexual aid and where it would point to. Hell, it wasn’t like Adam would have needed a map, not when you know your way home!
“And the apple?” I asked wondering why I felt the need to know.
“Ha! For his mouth of course,” she said in a way where she thought it should have been obvious because she even pointed a thumb over her shoulder at me to Sophia, like I was the biggest joker on the planet.
“But of course,” I muttered dryly before moving on to more practical stuff, like my future in Draven’s world and just how long I was hoping to stay in it without a Hiroshima Hell bomb exploding, namely Draven’s demon.
“Ookay, so anyway back to the important stuff and firmly off the fruit stuffed Adam,” I said trying like Sophia to get back on track.
“Oh, it was firm alright, but I was the one getting stuffed!” she said with a giggle and a slap of her thigh.
“Pip!” I reprimanded.
“Alright banana girl, chill your preggy hot potato, gravy knickers.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked with a shake of my head.
“I don’t think it matters what it means as we have ourselves bigger problems!” Sophia said slowly looking towards the door. Me and Pip then both did the same, as if any minute we were waiting for a purple hulk sized Draven to burst through the entrance.
“Shit, that isn’t good!” Sophia suddenly shouted, and I looked to her and before she said anything, I knew.
I knew because seconds later I heard it.
Seconds later we all heard it.
“Oh no,” Sophia murmured.
“Oh, fuck a doodle!” Pip squealed.
“Oh, Bollocks!” I cried.
Then, as the mighty roar was boomed through the hallway beyond, we all collectively flinched the second we heard it and this time it was an unmistakable sound.
The sound of…
Draven’s rage.