Tainted Crimson (10 page)

Exhausted, I don’t argue. I take a little tour of the house and then pick the room that’s attached to the bathroom. I assume it’s the master. It looks the girliest as it has pink walls and a vanity.

I plunk down on the bed, not bothering to pull back the covers. I know I should shower but I just can’t bring myself to get back up.

Now that I have some alone time I let all the emotions that I’ve been trying so hard to push back, invade my reality. Then I find myself crying myself to sleep.

I wake up with damp cheeks. Have I been crying in my sleep? I feel almost like I haven’t slept at all. My limbs are stiff and my mind is foggy. It takes me a minute to wake up enough to remember my situation.

“It’s about time you woke up,” a deep, male voice teases from across the room. “You only slept for ten hours.” His voice sounds serious but by Jacob’s expression I know he’s only bugging me.

“I was tired,” I mumble and wipe my eyes and cheeks with my blanket.

“How are you doing? I mean how are you
really
doing?” he asks with concern in his eyes.

“I’ll be fine. I mean you don’t have to take me to a mental ward or anything. It’s just a lot to take in.” I sigh and anxiously run my fingers through my long hair. I really need to shower.

“I understand. If you need anything you can always talk to me or your dad,” he promises with a curt nod. “You can try talking to D but he’s kind of a jackass if you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed. I have a question...why do you refer to
our
dad as if he’s only mine? You just said ‘your dad’,” I ask curiously.

“For the last eighteen years I’ve been playing the part of his best friend, not his son. It’s not something that I can just switch off in my head overnight,” he explains with a shrug. “It’ll take time to get used to calling him dad again.”

“Why didn’t you guys just tell me the truth? Like why didn’t you just tell me that you’re my brother?” I wonder out loud while combing my locks with my fingers nervously.

“Because he’s only at the physical age of a mid-twenty year old man. I am physically basically the same age as he is. People would notice and ask questions. They were already asking questions about dad nearly a decade ago. It’s not like we could’ve stayed in the neighborhood much longer anyways. Eventually we would have had to start over somewhere else. It’s not like we were planning on never telling you about all
this
. We knew we’d have to eventually. He was supposed to tell you shortly after your eighteenth birthday but that obviously didn’t work out the way he had planned. He definitely didn’t expect Marco to come searching for you on the day of your birthday if he was going to come at all. We doubted he would even know the exact date of your birthday, that is if he even knew you existed. We weren’t even sure of that much. Dad just wanted you to have few years of normal life, Ariella, you can’t be mad at him for that. I wish I’d gotten as much. You don’t realize how lucky you really are.”

“Ariella! Time to get up and come down stairs!” my father’s voice bellows from downstairs.

I groan.

“You know him, it’s training time.” Jacob smiles sympathetically at me. “You’ve missed too many days for him to let you miss anymore.”

Today is the first day in a long time that I actually understand why I need to train and learnt to fight. There’s an evil witch after me and there are other
beings
out there that could try and kill me at any moment. I need to be able to defend myself as much as possible. Okay makes sense, but can’t I just have a
day
to take this all in and digest it?

Jacob gets up and leaves the room so I can get ready to train with my dad. I wonder if he has all the equipment set up somewhere or if we are just going to spar. Although I’ve trained with my father more times than I can count, this time feels so much different. I’m
nervous
.

I jump out of bed still feeling groggy as hell and run a brush through my hair. There’s no point in showering before I train because I’m going to have to shower afterwards anyhow. I throw my hair up in a tight bun. I notice a few shopping bags at the end of my bed and wonder if Jacob brought them in when he came in. I pull out a pair of shorts and a bright pink tank top. Whoever picked these out had training in mind.

I rip the tags off carelessly and throw the clothing on before splashing cold water over my face hoping that it will wake me up. It doesn’t.

I sprint down the stairs before my dad has the chance to yell at me to hurry up.

When I get downstairs I smell bacon cooking and am immediately jealous. I realize I’m starving but know that I can’t eat before I work out or I’ll puke.

“Hungry?” D asks from the kitchen table, the kitchen table that wasn’t there when we got here yesterday. He’s chowing down on the bacon that I smell. I scowl at him.

“No. I have to work out with dad,” I answer realizing that I sound extremely annoyed by this fact.

“With your dad? I think you’re mistaken. Your dad just left to go finish up his work on getting us some new identification. Jacob just left to well...I don’t quite remember,” D says scratching his head and shoving more bacon into his mouth with the other.

Just when I’m about to jump for joy thinking that I’m getting away without training this morning D says, “So I’ll be helping you train this morning. You better have something to eat before we get at this though.”

My heart drops into my stomach, all hopes smashed.

“I’ll get sick if I eat first,” I admit sheepishly. “Trust me you don’t want to see that.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He chuckles. “Let’s get at this then.”

I follow D down into the basement which I’m surprised to find completely empty besides an ancient looking gymnastic mat that covers the majority of the floor.

“What’s the plan?” I ask him as I make the final step down to the floor.

“Your dad wanted me to help you train today because you have all his and Jacob’s moves memorized. You’ve never fought me so it’ll be like going up against a stranger. Just come at me as if I’m about to kill you. Fight to kill,” he suggests with a shrug.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” I giggle.

“Good luck. You’ll be lucky to last two seconds.” He smirks. “I’ve been doing this a bit longer than you.”

“You come at me if you’re the one supposedly trying to kill me.” I smile and begin stretching.

Suddenly I’m staring up at the roof.

“What the hell! I was stretching you could’ve seriously hurt me!” I scold him while jumping up.

“A ravenous vampire isn’t going to give you time to
stretch
, Ariella. A vampire also isn’t going to give a crap if he
hurts
you.”

He has a point. I take a deep breath and then nod at him to signify that I’m ready.

He comes at me and I feel a hand on my elbow before I’m on the ground again. How did he even do that?

“Are you using voodoo?” I demand angrily.

“No, I’m just not going easy on you,” he scoffs.

“Dad and Jacob don’t go easy on me!” I shout, a little too much menace in my voice.

“Uh-huh. Either of them can kick my ass in a heartbeat and you have nothing on me,” he taunts with humour in his voice..

Could he be right? Those few times I beat my father and Jacob were they going easy on me? Had every fight we ever had only lasted as long as they’d wanted it to? Suddenly I’m angry.

I attack D swinging one arm around his side and using a foot as leverage around his leg only instead of making the contact I was trying to, I end up on the floor once again.

This time furious, I jump up again and immediately lunge at him again. Then I’m on the floor.

“You’ve only had eighteen years to practice. Eighteen years with the strength of a mere human. It’s not expected for you to be able to be some pro fighter.”

“Why would they go easy on me?” I ask him.

“Well probably so you didn’t get discouraged. Plus if they’d moved as fast as they can in front of you, you’d think they were supernatural or something,” he says jokingly with a half smile.

I roll my eyes.

Suddenly D’s smile fades from his face and he is scowling at me.

“What?” I ask, confused.

“You’re bleeding,” he assesses flatly.

I look down at my stinging elbow. He’s right, a thin line of blood is descending to the gym mat down my arm. I wipe it on my black tank top.

“It’s just a little nick.” I shrug, but when I look back up at D he is gone. Does blood make him queasy? Somehow I doubt it. Maybe he went to get me a band aid. I wait a few minutes and when he finally returns he has a piece of bacon in his hand and is shoving it into his mouth.

“You left to get more bacon?” I ask him dubiously.

“You cut my breakfast short.” He smiles halfheartedly. “Get that scrape taken care of?” he asks looking to my elbow.

“Yeah, it’s not bleeding anymore.”

“Then let’s get on with this training. I want to try something. Sit down,” he instructs and takes a seat cross-legged on the mat.

I follow his lead.

“Come closer,” he says motioning me closer with his index finger.

“Is this some sort of trick? Are you going to knock me on my ass again?” I wonder skeptically.

“No and by the way you’re already technically on your ass,” he points out as if I’m stupid or something.

“Yeah.” I agree exasperatedly and scooch closer to him so only about six inches separate our knee caps from meeting.

“Hold your hands out in front of you with your palms up,” he instructs next.

I do as he says and hope we’re not about to play the slap game, the oh so dreaded game we used to play in middle school on the bus and at recess.

After a moment he hovers his own hands a couple inches over top of mine and closes his eyes as if he’s concentrating.

“What are you doing?” I ask him after a moment. “Meditating?”

He scoffs and opens his eyes. “Give me a minute. Shut up for a couple minutes,” he says before closing his eyes again.

I do as he says and sit there like an idiot with my palms up.

Finally he opens his eyes again.

“Well on the plus side I can feel your power. It’s in there. On the negative side it isn’t showing any signs of emerging. It’s like it’s trapped inside of you. Usually when I do this with young witches I can make an assumption as to when they might be able to start using their power. I can’t even get a read on you which is kind of weird.”

“So I’m a dud?” I sigh. I have to admit that I was a little excited that I might be able to do some witchy-voodoo tricks.

“I don’t think so. We just have to find a way to get it to come to the surface. I have a few ideas. Some kids are slow in the progression of being able to use their power. There’s a few remedies we use to speed up the process.” He looks as though he’s deep in thought for a moment before he speaks again. “Have you ever been seriously injured?”

“Uh no, not really,” I answer, confused by the question.

“Sometimes injury can speed up the process because your body will try and heal itself. Witches heal unnaturally fast. It comes as second nature. Sometimes we break kids’ limbs to help speed it all up.”

“You what?! That’s terrible! That’s absolutely inhumane!” I cry.

He chuckles. “Hey, it’s better than not being able to defend yourself because you have no power and so a vampire comes and sucks the life out of you, killing you. You must remember that vampires were created to kill witches. We have to do what we have to do to save the lives of our young. We’re not privileged enough to live freely.”

Even though I’m still absolutely disgusted, I try to understand where he’s coming from but personally I can’t imagine it. Then I understand what he’s
really
saying. He wants to break my limbs, oh my god.

“No, no way!” I cry out and jump up. “You’re not breaking anything of mine!”

“Come on.” He laughs.

“My father will kill you.".

He rolls his eyes. “Can’t I just like break a couple fingers and see if it’s at least going to do anything?”

“Absolutely not!” I argue.

He laughs again and I find myself scowling at him.

“Fine, there is something else we could try but you probably won’t like that either.”

“What?” I ask curiously.

“I could inject a disease into you and hopefully your body will fight it rather than let it kill you.” He laughs smugly.

I continue scowling.

“No.”

“Okay what if I healed you if your body didn’t react right away. No harm would be done to you. I promise,” he encourages and I can tell that he’s hopeful that I’ll agree to this method of his.

“Where would you get a
disease
? You can’t just go buy them from a store.”

“I have my ways. Diseases are used by some witches who practice black magic. I know a few dark witches who owe me a favor. One more thing, we can’t tell your dad about this because he really will kill me.” D chuckles excitedly.

“I never said I’d try it,” I correct him seriously as I debate the situation. I can’t pretend that I’m not tempted but I also can’t pretend that I’m totally fine with someone injecting a disease inside of me.

“Well, will you?” he asks eagerly.

“Why do you want to do this so badly?” I ask him, genuinely wondering.