56
Time to Fight the War
“Draven, I can explain.” I said quickly, trying to defuse the situation. But it didn’t even come close to helping as I knew when he lost it.
“Get out!” he shouted making me gasp at the order.
“Draven, please listen to me, just hear me out and…”
“I SAID GET OUT!” he roared at me this time, leaning his upper body towards me, as his arms went behind him, making me fall back a few steps in fear. And when I finally steadied myself, I turned and was starting to run from the room when I stopped myself. I took a deep breath and asked myself, what was I doing? Had I really come this far, to what, give up now? Just because he told me to. Just because he thought to scare me into doing as I was told. Was that what love was? Something you gave up on when things got hard or you let fear start ruling over your heart? Had I really come all this way just to turn my back on him now? Had I fought through years of struggle, all to keep the love I felt for him alive, just to see it now be thrown away at the last hurdle.
So, I stopped running and refused to do it ever again.
“No!” I said firmly, after swallowing the lump I had lodged in my throat, one made of pain.
“Keira.” he said my name in warning as if this would push me, but I just shook my head telling him,
“I said no, Draven.” I said this after turning around and walking back towards him. I saw him shake his head as if he couldn’t deal with this anymore. Then he motioned with his head for Zagan and Ragnar to take control before issuing his next demand.
“Take her away.” Those words sounded as if ripped from him and I winced more at the pain I saw it caused him, than what his words had caused me. Zagan and Ragnar both looked at each other before back at me, no longer feeling as if that was an easy command to obey.
“Now!” Draven snapped and because of it, they took a step closer to me and I held up a hand to stop them.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warned, looking to each of them.
“Please Keira, don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” Zagan said trying to reason with me and pulling back his hood so that I could see the pleading in his pale eyes. But he wasn’t the only one with big guns.
“And what if it was Sophia in there?” I asked him, making him flinch and I knew I had hit my mark.
“And you Ragnar, what if it had been one you cared for, your wife or…or your daughter?” I said, knowing I was going too far bringing up a family he no longer had. But I had a point to prove and I knew it was one made when he paused to look back at the cell. It was now as if he was seeing it for himself and Draven knew it too when he let his arms fall to his sides from having them crossed against his chest. It was the first sight of admitting his defeat.
“I am your King,” Draven said, trying one more time to get them to do as he demanded. But I turned back to him and said,
“Yes, but I am your wife and your heart.” He heard this and took a shuddering breath this time as I knew my words affected him.
“You know this as do they. So, I refuse to leave and if you think that I don’t have the strength in me to fight for what I know is right, to fight for what I love, then you don’t fucking know me!” I snapped, swiping angrily at the tears that fell. Hearing this Draven clenched his fists and lowered his head as if he had already lost.
“Now, I know I have done things. I know I am far from fucking perfect here and you are angry with me…furious even. I get that, and you have every right to be. So, shout at me, scream at me and curse every single lie I told you, but do all those things with me stood right here…right here! Stood in the only place I belong. Because I am telling you, Dominic Draven, I am not fucking running this time, do you hear me?” I told him, finally making him look up at me as if my words were burning themselves to his very soul. And when he didn’t get angry against any of it, I turned toward Ragnar and Zagan and told them both,
“So, you can go, but there is no way in Hell you are taking me with you, not without finding my blood on your hands, for I will fight you,” I warned, allowing my voice to take on a scary calm that was coming mainly from my own demon side, from the Vampire in me.
“And she will have us fighting right alongside her.”
“Sophia!” Zagan shouted in surprise and I turned to see all three of my girls there, Sophia with her arms folded, Pip popping some bubble gum stood with her hand on her hip and Pythia looking slightly uncomfortable, but still having my back all the same.
I heard Draven snarl at them and snap,
“I might have fucking known my own sister would be involved in this!” To which she growled back at him, quickly transforming into her Demon, one far scarier to look at than her brother’s. Her smoky wings floated around her body, as if helping with the transformation, shifting up and around her front before revealing a face of harsh, grey desert skin, sadistic lips and cold white eyes with black tears running down her face, ones there not through sorrow but through anger.
“And I might have known your actions would be ones against your wife, rather than who is really at fault here!” she snapped back.
“You think I did this?” he shouted gesturing to himself and as his biceps bulged his t-shirt actually tore at the sleeves.
“Of course not, but I know Keira obviously didn’t, considering she has done nothing but try and solve this fucking problem before you could act this way!” I took a deep breath knowing that at this rate, I wouldn’t need to tell Draven why I had done what I had, as Sophia was going to do it for me.
“Act this way?! You think I wanted it to come to this?!” he argued.
“And you think she did…? Ask yourself, Dom, why exactly do you think she kept any of this from you…uh? Taking our current situation into consideration here, that being me looking at you from where I am standing of course…in a fucking cage!” Sophia said trying to get her point across and I knew it did when he looked taken aback as if, until now, he hadn’t even considered why. No, he had only focused on the betrayal.
“Her lies run too deep this time and so do yours, sister!” he snapped after a moment and a shake of his head, meaning he couldn’t get past it. Sophia shook her head, only hers was done in obvious disappointment.
“Have you ever asked yourself why that is? Why my shift in loyalty over the years?” Sophia asked, now sounding calm despite her brother’s rumble of anger.
“Understanding all you do, Sophia, is a fucking eternal job I have had no choice but to endure!” Draven snapped making me gasp. His eyes cut to me but softened slightly when he saw how shocked I was to hear him say such a thing. But Sophia merely laughed and mocked back,
“As my eternal job has been nothing but helping you search for your happiness and now, you blame me for aiding not you but her in keeping it!? As for you…well, it seems that her heart is forever stronger than yours, for she seems to be the only one left who is willing to fight for it…where are you fighting, Draven…? In a fucking cage that’s where!” Sophia said delivering the final blow and I knew this when he took a step back, shock clear to see for all of us.
“That’s enough, Sophia.” Sophia turned to Zagan and hissed at him, making her wings flick out to the sides in her anger.
“I think you made your point, sweetheart,” he added no doubt trying to calm her down.
“One can only hope…but if not, then consider this before I go…” she paused storming passed us all and coming within inches of the bars to tell him.
“Love is a war, Brother…one she is fighting alone…fighting, because of you.” Then she turned her back on him, leaving him standing there looking hard, cold and indifferent, but I knew inside he was burning.
“If you need us, you know where we are,” she whispered to me after placing a hand to my shoulder.
“Thank you, my sister,” I told her back, making her nod to me. Then she decided to do what she did best in her world and that was rule, now in place of her brother.
“Help pick him up, Pip,” Sophia said nodding to her when no one was looking, making me wonder what she was up to. Whatever it was Pip obviously knew because she gave her a salute before helping Zagan where he didn’t need it. She helped lift the unconscious Takeshi up enough for Zagan to swing him onto his shoulders. Then she backed up to me and pulled me into her for a hug.
“I am sorry about Adam,” I told her, and she shrugged her shoulders and said,
“Ah don’t worry honey, he’s sleeping like a baby.” Then she held me tighter and whispered in my ear,
“Got your back, my sister britches.” Then she pulled back and winked after I felt her dropping something in my back pocket. I mouthed the word ‘thank you’ this time and she nodded before leaving with the rest of them. Ragnar looked torn as he lingered, and I knew it wasn’t because of Draven’s order, it was solely for my safety. I gave him a nod, telling him without words that I would be alright.
Then after a nod in return, he left, and I finally found myself alone with Draven.
And he looked as broken as I felt.
“Nothing I say right now will get you to leave, will it?” he finally asked, and it was the first time I heard him say anything since being down here, without it having a hard edge to it. He also let his muscles relax enough to sit down on the stone bench that he brought sliding to the centre of the room with a mere thought.
“You know the answer to that,” I told him and unlike his, my voice didn’t sound even and steady, but instead, small and fragile.
“Then I guess we had better talk,” he said, and I heard the same sound of stone grinding against stone before I looked behind me to see where it was coming from, only to find a similar bench coming from the wall towards me.
“Sit,” he said nodding to the bench that now mirrored his, with only the bars between us. So, I did and feeling better for it as all the energy seemed to zap out of me at once.
“How did we ever come to this point, Draven?” I asked sounding as deflated as I felt. At first it looked as though he didn’t know how to answer me, but then motioned with his hands that he didn’t know before saying,
“Because lies always get in the way.”
“That’s not fair, Draven,” I told him, sounding as pained as I was.
“No, what’s not fair, Keira, is you putting the two Beings I love most in this world in danger and not giving me a single say about it!” he snapped back, and I knew he was right, but that didn’t mean I had to agree with him on everything.
“And what would you have done, uh? Would you have simply taken me to one side and said, ‘don’t worry about it honey, we will figure this out together’…I don’t think so?”
“I think you will find I did say something along those lines, sweetheart,” he retorted, but there was no tenderness in my nickname now.
“Oh yeah, when you barely knew what was going on, you said that. But now… you think you can say the same to me after all you know…no I didn’t think so.” I added once he looked away and I had made my point.
“At least I would have been given the opportunity to choose, but you took that away from me, just as you did when you risked your life and went back in time.” I swallowed hard as once again he was right.
“And what was the alternative to that Draven, because correct me if I am wrong, but your idea to winning against the impending apocalypse was to fight and hope for the best?” I snapped.
“Now who is being the unfair one?” he replied making me feel guilty, but not enough to stop yet.
“And what of my choices, you haven’t exactly been forthcoming with me in the past here, Draven?”
“Everything I have done was to keep you safe, despite the challenges you put in front of me to prevent that from ever happening!” he growled looking at me in anger.
“Yeah, well you weren’t the only making decisions based on what was best for another. You think it was easy for me? To know that I was possibly walking into my death by going back in time, you think it was fun for me, to get beaten up only to find your blade at my neck? To get kidnapped yet a-fucking-gain! Fight a demonic God for you and to end up in Rome about to be forced to marry a Vampire because he was confused and thought I was his Chosen One!” I said it all, no longer caring about his mounting rage with every word I said but needing to get it all out. No more lies between us, this was it.
The point of no return.
“Stop Keira, I fucking beg of you, stop now before you go too far!”
“No, Draven, you wanted this! You wanted everything, no more lies! You want to know what I have gone through and all for you! You want to know the pain endured and the lies of it I kept in order to save your own pain from knowing. Then so be it.” At this point I stood up and told him,
“Lucius wanted to marry me because he was confused that I was his Chosen One and that only ended one way. I had to watch as you both fought to the death and one that nearly ended with my own. All that way travelled back in time, trying to save the fucking world, only to have you two fighting against me!” I said throwing my hands up like I had hit my mental limit on all that had happened to me. This wasn’t just like opening the flood gates, this was blowing the bastards up!
“And all of this, only to find that bitch Layla pop up again like a demonic bad penny, trying to kill me …yet a-fucking-gain! And all for what? So that I could get back to you and live out what I was led to believe were my last days on Earth, just so that you may continue to live in a world with a piece of me in it… a piece of me in our child! So, don’t you dare speak to me about making decisions based on what is best for others…what is best for the man I love and…” I started to stutter as the tears came again, until finally I finished my speech through a watery vision of Draven in front of me.
“…doing everything in my power to keep him by my side.”
Once I was finished it looked as though he didn’t know what to do with half of it, let alone the entirety of what I had been through and all for him.
“Gods, Keira…” he muttered as if he could barely believe it.
“So, you can’t tell me Draven, that my love and protection is any different to yours, because all I can see is that yours means me being forced far from it, whereas mine means fighting for it.”
“Yes, and that idea of fighting is always to do so by yourself, not by my side!” he snapped.
“Oh, I would be fighting by your side Draven, if I had a side to fight next to, before it decides what’s best is to put distance between us,” I said making him growl.
“And here it is! My life’s colossal fuck up being thrown in my face yet again, I did wonder when you would bring it up,” Draven replied sarcastically now making me angry.
“Well, this is coming from the man who just ordered his men to physically remove me because I refused to leave on my own accord, so excuse me for bringing up what would have been yet another of your colossal fuck ups, I just decided to prevent it from happening this time!” After this he knew I had made my point and silence descended between us again. He ran both his hands through his hair as he bent over holding his head there with his elbows rested at his knees as he studied the floor.
“How did this start?” he asked me, breaking the silence first.
“I am not sure, that’s what we were trying to figure out,” I told him, deciding it was best to get it all out in one hit. So, I took a deep breath and said,
“But it looks as if it might have something to do with Cronus,” I said and this was when his head snapped up to look at me.
“What?!” he shouted as I knew he would.
“Explain!” he said one word and my shoulders slumped and I knew that everything I was about to tell him wasn’t going to be easy, but it was the right thing to do. For it wasn’t like our situation could get any worse and with him being locked in a cell, then it wasn’t like he was going anywhere. So that at least took my biggest fear out of it.
Taking a deep breath, I told him everything, including the parts he most likely knew, and the parts that I knew he definitely didn’t. And every single second of it was painful and made me feel like the worst person in the world.
“Oh Keira, by Gods woman why would you ever keep all this from me?” he said, sounding so disappointed it was making his voice thick and hoarse.
“Have you not been listening, you know why?” I said rubbing the few tears off my cheeks with the side of my hand. I watched him take a deep breath and say the words we had both been avoiding.
“Because you thought I would leave you again.” I sniffed a few times holding the sob back and nodded without speaking.
“Why?” he asked, making me frown and shake my head like I wasn’t sure I had heard him right.
“Why?”
“Yes, why did you think I would leave you?” he asked more clearly, and I coughed back my surprise and said without thinking,
“Because it’s what you do.” And the second I said it I wished I hadn’t for it looked as though I had slapped him.
“Did.,” he said and when he saw my face he elaborated,
“It was what I did Keira, not what I ever intended on doing again.” And the second he said this I couldn’t hold back the flood any longer. I burst into tears and started body shaking sobs that echoed in this dark cold place.
“Sweetheart, you’re killing me here,” he told me softly and I held up a hand asking him silently to give me a minute.
“Ssshh, please, just calm yourself, for seeing you this way and knowing I can’t touch you, that I can’t comfort you is like fucking torture,” he told me, making me bite my lip as I finally looked up at him, with bloodshot eyes still filled with tears. He winced as if the sight caused him physical pain. But then again, seeing the one you loved the most in the world suffering this much, was never something that was going to be easy to witness. And Draven loved me. I knew that with every heartbeat and every stupid decision we equally made together or apart.
“Did you really mean that?” I asked after finally being able to get a hold on my crying.
“I made you a promise,” he said, so I got up and walked closer to his cell bars. He flinched back, and I didn’t take it as a good sign, but still I continued on with my decision. Because even though he was here right now, that didn’t mean it would stay that way and having him behind bars meant that he couldn’t run from me. But I was willing to risk that, for Draven to prove it all to me.
“Then prove it,” I told him, walking closer to the door and pulling out the key from my back pocket to show him. He stood quickly, now looking shocked at what I had in my hand.
“Keira, I…” he started to speak, but knowing it was the wrong type of tone, being one of doubt, I shook my head and said,
“Prove my greatest fear wrong, Draven.” Then I raised the key and put it in the lock ready to turn. This was his one shot, to erase the past and prove to me once and for all that all my lies were said in vain. Because he would never leave me like he promised not to. I kept eye contact with him and he knew this was his one chance to show me, but the battle I saw there was easy to see and, in the end…
He proved my lies right.
His hand shot out and the second I started to turn it, he snapped the lock back and took the key from me, keeping himself locked inside. I let the devastation wave over me and I lowered my head so that he wouldn’t see how much that action killed me.
“I thought so,” I muttered and turned ready to go back to my seat when suddenly he grabbed me by the sweater and pulled me up against the bars, then he took my face in his hands and said fervently,
“Don’t give up on me.” Then he kissed me through the gap and gripped my sides, holding me there as if he was afraid if he let me go it wouldn’t just be for a moment in time, no this time it would be for good.
“Just give me time, that’s all I ask of you,” he whispered, putting his forehead to the bars as he couldn’t reach my own. His eyes were closed, and his voice was pleading.
“Time is something we don’t have much of, Draven,” I told him softly looking down at my belly that I had cradled in my hands for he knew then what I meant.
“I would never forgive myself if something were to happen…can’t you understand that?” he told me, and I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me go, not yet. So, to prove my point I reached through the bars and cupped his cheek, telling him.
“You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t want to ever hurt you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t,” he told me in return, making me close my eyes against the painful truth.
“You won’t hurt me,” I repeated, closing my eyes this time and when I felt him let me go I knew I had lost him and with it our moment.
“I think you’re forgetting, Keira, I already did.” he said painfully before turning his back to me and I watched as his muscles tensed as the stolen memory came back to him, one taken from Takeshi.
“Draven I…”
“And once again it was Lucius who came to the rescue,” he said bitterly, and I winced when he said it, knowing how much that must have hurt him.
“Please don’t be angry, I just…I didn’t want anyone to know and he was the…”
“The first person you thought of that could beat me...Yeah, I get it, Keira!” he snapped and again I hated the sound of his pain.
“That’s not…okay, so yes, I got scared and panicked.”
“Scared of me, which is my point!” he said and damn him, but he was making this harder to argue against.
“I wasn’t scared of you Draven, I was scared for you. Scared for us both. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew one thing and that was Lucius was the only one I knew had the power to make your Demon stop,” I told him, and I knew he hated every word of that sentence.
“Great, then maybe we should ask him to move in with us, there we go, problem solved!” he said sarcastically and unusually for Draven showing me that bite of bitter humour I rarely ever saw.
“That’s not funny,” I told him.
“No, we are in agreement there, that’s for damn sure!”
“Well, if it helps with your ego at all, then I think Lucius has a pretty clear idea of what he considers all the crazy shit I would do because I love you!” I snapped back at him.
“You think this is my ego talking?” I didn’t answer him, but I just folded my arms across my chest hoping my look said it all.
“Fuck my ego and the Vampire who has been in love with you for nearly as long as I have, this is only about keeping you safe for me…not for him, or anyone else for that matter, for the fucking world could crumble for all I care! You are mine and you are not going to get hurt at my hands, I don’t care what I have to do to achieve that!” he threw at me slashing an angry hand through the air.
“So, what about in the meantime, Draven, are you going to live down here in a prison behind a set of bars? And for how long are we talking for here, days, weeks, months or fucking years!? You want me to introduce our child into the world on my own and then bring the baby down here to meet its father for the first time down in this Hell!?” I snapped back, getting angry and making his chest rumble a barely contain growl at the thought.
“What do you want from me Keira, to just walk out of here with your hand in mine and take the chance?” he said after finally letting go of his anger and me now doing the same.
“That’s exactly what I am saying, Draven. Look, I know it won’t be easy, but it will be a damn sight easier if we do this together, not alone. All I am asking for is a chance to prove it to you. To prove that we can do this,” I told him, and he sat back down on his bench giving me his answer right there.
“You know I can’t give you that, Keira.” he said without looking at me and sounding like those words should have been utterly foreign to him, as there was nothing that Draven wouldn’t want to give me…but only if it was in his power to give and it looked like this was the first thing that wasn’t.
“Then I think you will find me unable to give you the same when you ask me to leave your side,” I told him, deciding to sit down and this time doing so on the floor with my back up against the bars facing away from him.
“Keira, please be reasonable here,” he said after releasing an exasperated sigh.
“You have your choices, honey, and I have mine, this being one of them, for I am not ever leaving your side again…that’s a promise I made Draven and one I intend to keep,” I told him hearing his response being another sigh. Then I heard him moving and glanced over my shoulder to see that he too had come to sit on the floor with his back to me with only the bars in between us.
And this was how we remained for some time. Our heads back against the bars with our legs stretched out in front of us, just listening to the sound of hopeless silence and an endless space between us that these few bars held.
“I guess this means the honeymoon is over then,” I commented after a while, making him chuckle and at least break some of the tension between us.
“Yeah, I guess it does,” he agreed.
“Why does this keep happening to us, Draven?” I asked him softly turning my head sideways so that my cheek was against the cold stone and metal. I watched as he did the same and answered me,
“I don’t know, sweetheart…I just don’t know,” he whispered again, and this was the last thing I remembered him saying before I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew I was dreaming. I knew I must have been, because I reached out my hands finding the floor cold beneath my fingertips. And then I felt a hand reaching through the bars I felt at my back. The next thing I knew my hair was being moved out of the way. Then I felt a single touch at my neck where I knew there shouldn’t have been.
I woke up, my eyes wide as I screamed,
“NOO!” But I was too late as I felt the hand at my neck holding me close to the bars and just before I could struggle, I heard his demon say…
“Sittu, Wardum…You will rest, my little Slave…for now it is my turn,” he told me and the second he said the first foreign command, it started to feel as though he had injected me with a drug, as my eyes started to close on their own and my mind’s fog started to cloud my thoughts of anything but sleep. I couldn’t understand how he had this power over me, whereas Draven had lost his long ago.
But as I heard the slide of a lock and felt myself being lifted up in a pair of strong arms, I knew I was helpless to stop it.
Helpless to stop him.
The last thing I heard as he walked away from the cell with me firmly in his grasp, was one thing I knew would stay with me,
For it was my own doing as I heard him say…
“Time to fight the war.”