Shattered Skies: Beginning's End (7 page)

“Where do you think you are going? You are not well enough to leave yet.” Akia truly sounded worried and for just a brief second I wanted to tell him he was right and let him take care of me while the rest of the world happened around us, but the smart part of me knew that he wasn’t a dumb creature, and all too soon he would start putting the pieces of the puzzle together and realize there was something a little off about me. 

“You have no right nosing around in my personal business and I am not going to sit here and listen to you belittle my friends.”  Every time I bent over to retrieve another piece of clothing my head threatened to explode. It was so hard to maintain my pissed off momentum
that I thought I was going to burst.

“Kitten, what kind of friend, let alone boyfriend, mourns the death of the woman that he is supposed to love by trying to get under the sheets with some random whore?”  His voice was so calm and cold that it was nerve racking.

I was so pissed now that if I thought I would get away with it, I would have killed him with my bare hands, but his death wasn’t worth endangering my family. “I told you not to call me kitten. It is sexist and degrading. Not that it is any of your concern and or business, but Darien is not my boyfriend. He is my best friend that just happens to have a penis. Here’s a little news flash for you; males and females can have relationships that do not revolve around sex.” 

“Well,
if he hasn’t got into your panties yet, he must not be doing something right.”  

That was just what I needed. Akia was arrogant. He was a monster and he had just been kind enough to remind me of that. I let my anger feed off his words. I had only been this angry one other time in my life. I knew that if looks could kill Akia would be dead in his tracks. “You are an arrogant self-righteous asshole your majesty and I would rather d
rop over dead where I stand than spend another second in here with you!” With that, I threw the door open so hard that it hit the wall with a bang. I never realized before that I had that kind of strength; anger does that to you, I guess. 

“Cool it with the majesty crap. You can call me Akia. And I am sorry, but you are not leaving until I know that you are OK. Get in here and get back into bed or I will have you arrested and locked up, so that I can keep an eye on you.”  It was the voice of a man that had never been tol
d “no” to anything in his life. I was not naive, I knew for a fact that more than him wanting to take care of me, he wanted to throw his power at me and to let me see that he was used to getting everything that he wanted; well not this time. 

“Try and stop me.” I was really hoping the last was just an idle threat because I knew he was right. As much as I hated to admit it, I was smart enough to know that I was in no condition to be leaving, let alone leaving as mad and stressed out as I was.  Whatever happened in that room had
drained me completely. Still, part of me was secretly wishing that getting me arrested and locked up was exactly what he would do just so I could rest. But the other part of me was determined to walk out and find Darien. I guess it was really up to Akia and his ego as to which part of me won.

“Ok go, but what about these marks? How can you just walk out the door without knowing what happened to us? There had to be something, or someone messing with us. Why did we pass out like that? How is this not getting to you like it is getting to me?”

Had I seriously just won, was he going to let me walk out willingly without a fit, did I just beat the King? “I don’t know YOUR MAJESTY. Why don’t you have your people look into that for you?” I threw the last comment back at him, in a tone that could cut before slamming the door behind me. I half expected him to come after me and try and keep me there. It really couldn’t have been that simple, could it? I was relieved when he didn’t come after me because I wasn’t sure how much longer I could act like I felt fine.

I wasn’t sure if I was being followed, but I have a great imagination that was telling me I was. Every time I rounded a corner, I tried to get a glimpse over my shoulder to see who was lurking in the shadows. I had no idea what I was going to do. If I went back to my apartment, then they might find out who I really was. I was pretty sure that I had no incriminating items lying around, but since I had no plans for anyone to accompany me home the morning after the ball, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain. I started to second guess myself; was it possible that Doctor Walker was right, that I wasn’t capable of this job, that maybe I was better off underground constantly with the other females? I mean, seriously, how much trouble could I get in if I was twenty feet below the surface? I hated when I questioned myself; it pissed me off. I had to figure out what to do soon because when I get piss
ed I tend to try to pick fights. Usually Darien is the victim of this very unfortunate character trait of mine but since he was nowhere to be found I knew I would lash out at someone else in due time, and when that someone else was capable of throwing me a good 2000 feet probably it wasn’t a bright idea.

I had nowhere to go and no money to kill time with. I was going to have to go back to Akia’s to get my wallet which I had left behind in my haste to leave; this day was just getting better and better. For the rest of the day I wandered around aimlessly from point to point trying to throw off people that maybe were following me. After five hours of roaming, I knew I had to stop. I was drained of life and there was no way I could go any further. Five hours was long enough to bore people that may or may not be following you, right?

 
              When I walked into the underground shelter, I was shocked by the fact that Dr. Walker grabbed me and hugged me so hard that it took my breath away. It was times like this that I realized just how lucky we all were to have this man. It would have been so much easier for him to have just gone into hiding alone. Yet, he didn’t. He chose to take us all in and he loved us just like a father would. He didn’t treat us like a burden; instead, he had provided everything we needed to grow and thrive as individuals in the messed up situation that we were in. I would have to remember to be nicer to him; the hug showed me that no matter how many times I had disappointed him he was always going to be there for me. I needed him in my life way more than he needed me, and I hoped that when I hugged him back he could feel just a little bit of my appreciation toward him.

“We thought we lost you, and I know we don’t see eye to eye on everything but I would have never forgiven myself if something had happened to you. Where have you been? My God! You look like you are going to fall over. What happened to you?” 

When he finally released me and took a step back, his face was so full of worry he looked ten years older. I could tell that he hadn’t slept at all and I had literally made him sick with worry. At that moment, I felt a pang of guilt for every time that I had caused that sweet old man to worry. 

“I am OK; I promise. As for where I have been you are not going to be at all pleased.” I didn’t want to tell him that I had spent the last eight days in the bed of the Regent himself. I was sure his reaction wasn’t going to be pretty at all.  I guess Dr. Walker believed me when I said he wasn’t going to like it because he made me wait until he was safely seated
in his desk chair before he would let me tell him my story. 

Once I made sure he was good and sturdy I jumped right in so that I could get this fight over with. I started with the confusion in the identities, briefly threw in the part about the claw marks and finished up with the fact that I spent the last eight days comat
ose in the bed of a very angry King Dominus. I had purposely left out a few things like the making out and the blood swapping; there was no reason to worry him with every little detail. There was also no reason to go into great detail about any of the time that I spent with Akia either. When I was satisfied that he knew enough but not too much I let the story finally end.  It was time to face the music. I slowly lifted my head so that I could look the Doc in the eyes. The look on his face scared me to death. In all honesty I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure he was still breathing. Damn it! I knew this was bad but I was expecting yelling and a good lecture and not a look that made me pale.

“Dr. Walker, what is wrong? Please calm down. I know I have to be extra careful from now on, but I am OK. I will do whatever it takes to fix this. You don’t have to get yourself all worked up over this. I am home and I won’t be stupid again, I promise.”

             He jumped so quickly that the desk chair hit the floor with a heavy thud. He mumbled something about not even thinking about moving and calling a meeting, and then he left the room without even as much as a look back to make sure I was going to follow directions. 

This was bad. I had seen him angry before; I had even seen him scared before, but this was something different, something almost desperate and unreal. When the one rock solid person in your life leaves the room like he did, it is scary. I hadn’t even told him all of the bad parts. I would have sent him to an early grave if I had told him about the feelings and the kissing, not to mention the blood sharing. I was smart enough to know that something drastic was about to happen, but I wasn’t brave enough to want to face the consequences of what I had unintentionally done with Akia.

I had nothing better to do but wait. I was petrified at the thought of what was about to happen, but I was even more shaken by imagining what would happen if I disobeyed him again and left. Facing the music was going to be bad, but I am the kind of girl that likes to face her punishment sooner and get it over with, instead of sitting around and worrying about what it might be. 

I sat down at Dr. Walker’s desk and started to thumb through one of his notebooks that we were allowed to access. These notebooks were meant to give us ideas as to how to better conduct ourselves in the field. Sometimes they helped and sometimes they were so impractical that I wondered what the Doc was thinking when he wrote them. There were also his secret notes, the ones that as a child I use to just sit and think of ways to get my hands on. You know that saying, curiosity killed the cat? Well, I lived up to the namesake. I eventually got tired of trying and gave up. Doctor Walker was always one step ahead of me and for that reason his secrets remained his. The notebook that was out for us to access was full of drawings and theories that I didn’t understand. Trying to make sense of them would never do me any good. Dr. Walker’s mind worked differently than everyone else’s. It was almost like he knew how the minds of the monsters worked and as fascinating as that was, it was also a little frightening to think that the man that I loved, and the only father that I would ever know, spent so much time in the darkness that he could think like them. 

As I turned through a few more pages something grabbed my attention. It appeared to be a gun, but it was slightly different. I carried a gun around because it made me feel better. I knew that it wouldn’t save my life and that it wouldn’t even faze one of the Dominus if I pointed it at them, but it made me feel better. Just feeling the weight of it in my hands gave me the extra confidence that I needed now and then. A normal bullet more than likely wouldn’t even slow down a Dominus if one decided it wanted to kill me. This gun, however, didn’t have bullets in the compartment; it had what appeared to be a place in the barrel that was filled with tiny little needles. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I knew that Dr. Walker was not the type of man to doodle. If this was important enough to be in this notebook, it had to be something that he was working on or trying to get a hold of. 

Flipping to the next page confused me even more. It was a drawing of one of the tiny little needles. This one was also drawn by the Doc. He had made the picture bigger so it was easier to examine. I was truly astonished by just how complicated the drawing was. The needle was knife shaped and had a tiny little capsule attached to it. In the capsule, there was a liquid. The next page told me what I had already figured out. The tiny little needle was full of Vamp blood. The gun looked like it was designed to hold about one hundred of the little needles in the compartment, so the blood would be a pinpoint at most.

I knew that it didn’t take much Vampire blood to kill a Dominus, but he had to be wrong about the amount. There was barely enough in the capsule to even see. There was no way in the messed up world that just that little drop would be enough to destroy the most powerful creature on the planet.

What was the point of this drawing besides of course, being completely absurd? Was this something that the Doc was truly working on? He was too smart to think that any of us would ever be able to get close enough to a real Vamp to retrieve blood from them, right? Part of me shuddered at the thought that he had this plan in motion. I couldn’t imagine that he would put any of us in that much danger just to see if his plan would work. The other part felt a surge of energy. For whatever reason, due to whatever chemicals were messed up in my head, part of me craved danger. Luckily for me, I got away with it because it was my job to risk my life every day. 

Along with the adrenaline rush of just being that close to one of the Elders, the thought of having that much power over the monsters truly excited me. How many monsters would you be able to take down if you had access to Vamp blood? It was the deadliest thing to the Dominus on the planet; with access to it, the humans would be able to get control back as soon as the numbers evened out a little more. I am sure I won’t see it in my lifetime, but by the next century, if we all kept up with the Doc’s plan, then our great great grandchildren would really have the upper hand. Is it possible that Dr. Walker’s plan revolved around this drawing? With a gun like this, you wouldn’t even have to get that close to them. Just lure them away from the crowd, somewhere where you wouldn’t be seen, pull the trigger, and bam; it was done. While that might not be as fun as the other way to kill them, turning them into sexual dust, it sure would be a lot faster.