Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 41
I’d barely gotten inside the door when Kaitlyn launched herself off her bed and grabbed onto me in a hug. A really tight one. Probably best I didn’t need to actually breathe, but I was pretty sure I heard my ribs creaking like the steering wheel had before.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Kaitlyn said right in my ear. “You stopped texting me!”
“Sorry,” I said, trying to push the door closed with my foot. “Stuff started happenin’ and I ended up not havin’ any time to get back on my phone.”
Kaitlyn shifted her grip so she could close the door behind me, and I took the chance to arrange things so I wasn’t going to be quite as crushed by her hugging me. I mean, it’s not like Kaitlyn is the Hulk or anything but… when she’s upset, she doesn’t really think about how forceful she’s being unless she’s reminded not to overdo it. And she was definitely upset. She sort of looked like she’d been crying or something but had calmed down at least a little before I came in. She also smelled like vodka, so she’d been drinking. Didn’t blame her, I felt like I could have used a drink. Um… in the human sense, not the vampire sense. Last thing I wanted right then was to be a vampire.
“I was worried I wouldn’t see you again,” Kaitlyn said. She was kind of muffled because she had her face pressed into my shoulder. I just held onto her for a while, and after a bit I could sort of feel my shoulder getting damp, so she was crying. Yeah, she was kind of upset.
“Shh,” I said. “It’s okay, I’m back. I’m here.”
Kaitlyn just sort of sobbed in response. We stood there a little longer, with Kaitlyn crying into my shoulder, until I shifted how I was standing a little and her gun poked me in the back. Which reminded me I was still standing there with all the stuff I had on when I left.
Kaitlyn sniffed loudly, which probably meant I was getting snot on my shoulder too. “You smell like smoke,” she said, squeezing me tightly again.
“Their fault,” I said. “I stayed in the van. They brought it with ‘em.”
Kaitlyn sniffed again, then let go of her hug. Then she stepped back and unzipped my hoodie. Her eyes and nose were red and watery and puffy and everything. I actually felt kind of bad about that. Kaitlyn wasn’t really much of a crier, usually. But she was crying because of me. And not the pretty kind of tears you see in movies and soap operas and stuff. The real kind. She pulled off my hoodie, then wadded it up and used it to wipe off her face before tossing it sort of towards the hamper. Then she grabbed me in another tight hug. For like a second, I felt sort of self-conscious about just being in a sports bra and jeans, but that was just my brain being my brain.
“Hey,” I said. “Mind if I ditch the gun too? It’s sorta buggin’ me.”
Instead of answering, Kaitlyn just let go of the hug and started undoing my belt. Her belt, which I was wearing. Whatever. She didn’t raise her head from my shoulder, though. Then she reached around to grab the holster behind me while she pulled the belt out of the loops in my jeans. I had another moment of feeling kind of awkward, but I decided it was just my emotions being stupid and ignored it. There really wasn’t any reason to be reading shit into stuff that wasn’t there.
Then Kaitlyn scared the shit out of me by tossing the pistol aside like she’d tossed my hoodie. I was only half aware she’d done that, but I still basically picked her up and turned us both so I was between her and where the pistol was going to land. I didn’t even think about it. I don’t know, maybe I was still kind of… freaked out from everything that’d happened earlier. But it didn’t go off, and I remembered that I hadn’t actually taken the thing out, so it didn’t have a bullet in the… chamber or whatever it’s called. Still scared the shit out of me, though. I turned my head back around to look at Kaitlyn, and I guess I was glaring or something because she was staring at me and her eyes had gotten really big. “Don’t do that,” I told her. “Jesus. Don’t just throw guns around.”
Kaitlyn just stared at me. Up at me, actually. I blinked at her, then looked up in the mirror on the closet door, and… picking her up and moving her around away from the pistol had also sort of put us into that pose you see in romantic movies and whatever where the guy’s got the girl sort of bent backwards and is looking down at her face. Only I was the guy. And seriously, I didn’t need that going on with everything else, too. I glared at myself in the mirror, then down at Kaitlyn. Then I half dropped, half tossed her onto the bed and stomped into the bathroom. I could sort of feel my vampire side waking up a little, probably because of all the stupid romantic shit. So I spend a few minutes gripping the sink with my hands and glaring at myself in the mirror. Trying to get my vampire side to settle down again.
Honestly, I can’t say if that kind of shit is normal or not. I’d seen it a bunch in movies, where the guy and the girl have to deal with dangerous shit, and then there’s this chemistry, and that starts up the stupid romantic subplot. But I didn’t need that bullshit to happen for real, because I knew what it was. My vampire side had been sort of active all night, with the fire and the shooting and everything, and now it was fucking with my brain so it could feed on Kaitlyn. Take advantage of her being sort of drunk and whatever weird attraction she thought she had for me, get her to… I don’t know, think me biting her was romantic or something stupid like that. And I wasn’t going to let that happen. Took a few minutes, but that part of me went back to sleep or whatever, and I felt like I could be sort of normal. For a vampire, anyway.
When I went back out into the main room, Kaitlyn was sitting on the bed with her blanket wrapped around her. She didn’t look afraid or anything, and she’d stopped crying. I couldn’t really tell what she was thinking. Wasn’t showing on her face. I… didn’t exactly glare at her, but I don’t think I had a nice face on, either way. I went and sat down on the corner of the bed furthest from her and started taking off my boots. Pretty sure I was glaring at my boots, too. Not that they’d done anything to deserve it, but I was just kind of in a glaring mood right then. Better to be angry than… hungry. Or scared. I’d have to calm down at some point, but just not right then.
Right about when I had both boots off, Kaitlyn moved across the bed behind me. I almost got up to move away, but she slipped her arms around my waist from behind and… I didn’t want to move. I was still kind of angry, but I also needed the contact, you know? I’m a hugger. And sitting like that with her behind me would probably be safe enough, I figured. So I stayed. Kaitlyn squeezed me, then pulled her blanket around both of us and rested her cheek against the back of my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “About the gun. And… everything else.”
I sighed and rested my hands on her arms around my waist. “I’m kinda… weird right now,” I said. “Tonight’s been a lotta shit to deal with, even with me just stayin’ in the van.”
“I understand,” Kaitlyn said, squeezing me. “The vampire, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been payin’ attention, so… don’t push things, okay?”
“I won’t.”
We sat like that for a bit, and it felt good. She was warm, and I needed the hug. After a few minutes, I felt better. More in control, like the vampire had finally gone back to sleep.
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Welcome,” Kaitlyn said. “You wanna talk?”
“No,” I said. “But… think I should, y’know?”
“I think so.”
“Yeah. Well… alright. I’m just gonna start by sayin’ I was just the driver. I… didn’t really see most of what happened. But I could hear it. And it sounded bad.”
Kaitlyn just squeezed me again, and I started talking. Went through the whole thing starting from when I left, and it took a while. The weapons, the shooting and explosions, seeing the Baron there, all of it. Kaitlyn didn’t say anything, she just squeezed me when I had a hard time saying some part of what happened. I kept talking until I got to the part with the guy that ran in front of the van, and then… I couldn’t keep going. That part was just… too much. I think Kaitlyn could tell because she didn’t say anything, she just held me. I felt like I had to tell her, but… the words just weren’t coming.
“Sorry,” I told her. “This part’s… really hard.”
“It’s okay,” Kaitlyn said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, I…” I paused, then squeezed her arms. “I gotta tell you this, too.”
“You worried I’ll hate you for it?”
Where’d that come from? But Kaitlyn was right, more or less. It wasn’t just the memory of hitting someone with the van. It was… I was afraid she’d think I’d started turning into a monster.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, sittin’ in the van is one thing, but…”
“I won’t hate you for it.”
“Don’t say that before you know what it was.”
Kaitlyn squeezed me again. “Okay,” she said. “How about I promise you I’ll listen and think about it before I decide if I’m gonna hate you? That work?”
“You’re just gonna…” I started.
“Shh,” Kaitlyn interrupted me. “Let me decide if I think you’re a monster. Please?”
I felt bad about that, too. I was kind of deciding she was going to hate me without asking her again. “Okay,” I said. “Well… um… I turned the wrong way as we left and drove in front of the place instead of away. And, um… someone ran out of the buildin’ and… I hit him with the van.”
Kaitlyn didn’t say anything in response, so I started feeling uncomfortable.
“I didn’t mean to,” I went on. I could hear my voice getting faster and… more desperate, really. “He kinda jumped in front of the van, and I stomped on the brakes only it was the gas not the brakes and I hit him and it turned out he was one of the guys Pops and Ferret were after and he just… felt nasty and not human and even sorta rotten, and…”
Kaitlyn squeezed me tightly, and I stopped talking. We just sat there for a moment or two. I figured either Kaitlyn was thinking about it, or at least making it seem like she was. Which isn’t the nicest thing to think, but… even while I was afraid she’d start hating me for being a monster, I was also kind of frustrated with her for being so… accepting of what I was. The things I had to do. She’d get scared in the moment sometimes, but mostly she… seemed to roll with whatever. So I kind of felt like she didn’t really understand everything. Which then made me feel like I was thinking she was dumb. And that was the kind of stuff going around in my head right then. Nasty little circles.
“Well, I don’t hate you,” Kaitlyn finally said.
“But…” I started.
“Shh,” Kaitlyn said, squeezing me. “I don’t hate you.”
“Okay. But I don’t think you get everythin’ about all this.”
“So tell me the rest.”
Took a little while, but I did. The army guy… chopping off the guy’s head, what they said about the guys in the warehouse, the firebombs or whatever, all of it. Up to when I let myself back in. Then I just kind of sat there for a while. It’s sick, but I actually sort of wanted Kaitlyn to… I don’t know, yell at me or something. At least have some kind of reaction to all this, you know? But she just sat there, leaning against my back and squeezing me sometimes, like when I stopped because it was hard to know what to say. Yelling would have at least been a reaction, you know?
“I told you my family’s from Russia, right?” Kaitlyn asked me eventually.
What did that have to do with this? “Um… yeah,” I said. “So?”
“So, my babushka would…”
“Your what?” I interrupted.
“Babushka. Means grandmother.”
“Really? I thought it meant… I dunno, baby or somethin’.”
“Nope. Detka is baby. Vnuchka is granddaughter,” Kaitlyn said. At least, I thought that was what she said. That’s what it sounded like, anyway. “That’s, like, all the Russian I know besides da and nyet and mudak, which means asshole, and I only know that one because my babushka would call my dad that when she felt he wasn’t taking good enough care of her dear daughter.”
“What’s daughter in Russian?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Kaitlyn said. “Babushka called my mom printsessa.”
“Princess?”
“Yep. Anyway, my babushka was actually from Russia,” Kaitlyn went on. “Sometimes she’d tell me old Russian folk tales, until my mom made her stop because they made me cry.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re fucking depressing. Everyone dies, or just barely gets away.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sounds wonderful.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what’s going on here,” Kaitlyn said, squeezing me again. “You’re a vampire, which is pretty shitty, and you were up against even shittier vampires, right?”
“Um… they were,” I said. “I just drove the van. But yeah.”
“Whatever. You fought even worse things and survived and came home again. Compared to some of the old stories my babushka would tell, that’s a win.”
I wasn’t so sure it was that simple. I mean, going by what Victoria and the others had told me, being a vampire was one nasty thing after another, until you got used to it, and getting used to it meant you were probably losing what it meant to be human. And yeah, I got through it and made it home, but… I wasn’t going to forget hitting that guy with the van, even if he was a bad guy. And I was just the driver. What if I’d been one of the ones who’d gone inside? What kind of state would’ve I come out in? Would I have made it out? I couldn’t be sure, and I felt like… thinking just making it out was a win would mean I’d end up getting… used to horrible stuff. And start losing myself. You know? So, yeah, Kaitlyn was trying to help me feel better, but… it wasn’t really helping.
Except it wasn’t just about me, was it? Took me a second because I was so busy feeling sorry for myself, but I did get around to thinking about how she was also trying to explain how she felt about everything too. Sort of… why she didn’t freak out too much about the vampire stuff, right? Because she was used to the idea that sometimes just surviving was the only win you could get. Which I still thought was pretty fucking depressing but… I don’t know, maybe it was the best I could do for now. I mean, I didn’t have a handle on the whole vampire thing yet, and… she had to deal with me. And like Pops said, she had to deal with being afraid of me, and afraid for me, too. Because she was my best friend, and she could see how this shit affected me, but she could also see what that mean for her. The more… vampire I got, the more she’d be in danger. And the closer she’d get to losing her best friend. And I thought she might also have figured out that my going too monster and just… leaving because I might hurt her would mean the same thing. I’d just end up feeling like shit and that’d make me turn into a monster faster and… she’d feel like it was her fault, probably. It wouldn’t be, but still.
I don’t know where in there I started crying but I did. First noticed when I felt a drop of blood fall off my face onto my collarbone. I looked down, which of course made another drop fall onto Kaitlyn’s blanket where it was wrapped around me.
“Shit,” I said. “Um, your blanket…” I unwrapped it from around me as best I could, then pulled it off both of us and tossed it away. Kaitlyn didn’t move while I was doing that, but she did squeeze me again. I wasn’t as warm as before, but at least I wasn’t going to stain her blanket. Then I just sat there with my hands on Kaitlyn’s arms, trying to calm down. Tears are bad enough when they aren’t blood.
“Hey,” Kaitlyn said. I felt her raise her head off my shoulder. “You okay?”
“I…” I sighed. “Not really. I just… I get so focused on my own shit that I forget what you’re goin’ through ’cause of all this. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Kaitlyn said, squeezing me.
“Yeah, well… I’m still sorry.”
“I’m not mad at you,” Kaitlyn said.
“But…” I started. And then it was like something broke open inside me. I didn’t really think I’d been keeping a lot of stuff inside, but… everything came out at once. All the stress from that night, having to hunt for blood, dealing with other vampires, dealing with myself, everything. I started sobbing and crying like Kaitlyn had been earlier Except harder. When Kaitlyn moved around to sit next to me with her arms around my waist it only got stronger, and I ended up wrapping my own arms around her with my face pressed up against her shoulder. And I kept crying for a long time. I was shaking and sobbing and… just letting it all out at once. Like the last time I really cried about everything. It hurt, but… I also needed to just cry it out, you know? Being a vampire didn’t change that about me.
It did change other things, though. Like how I wasn’t crying tears. I was crying blood, which I’ve talked about. And blood doesn’t act like tears. It doesn’t evaporate, for one, even the… sort of thin watery blood vampires cry. So after crying for, I don’t know, half an hour maybe, I finally calmed down enough to sit back and sniffle and… look at Kaitlyn.
That was when the vampire hit me. Hard. Like it’d been waiting to jump out at me. because Kaitlyn had been wearing a tank top, to sleep in, I guess, with nothing under it, and now it was soaked in blood and clinging to her skin like a wet t-shirt contest. Yeah, it was the blood I’d been crying, but it was still blood and… I couldn’t look away. It was like everything else just went away. I could feel my body tensing up like I was going to jump on her, could even feel my fangs starting to grow all by themselves. I wanted Kaitlyn. To drink her and to have her and… yeah. But I forced myself to pull back. Don’t know how exactly, but somehow, I managed to pull back, just a little. because I wasn’t going to do that to her.
Kaitlyn must have sensed what was happening because she froze for a moment. She pulled back as well, then grabbed my face in both hands and lifted my head so she could look into my eyes. She held me there for a moment while I fought the Savage. I couldn’t tell her what was happening, to get away from me before I freaked out and drank her. The vampire wouldn’t let me, and it was taking everything I had to keep from grabbing Kaitlyn right there. I could smell her, smell the blood, and her heartbeat was filling my ears like when the DJ has the music up too loud. Then, of all the things she could’ve done right then, she grabbed the back of my head and forced it down so my mouth was against her neck.
That was almost it right there. I could feel her pulse on my lips, that big vein or whatever in her neck. My mouth opened against her skin, and I felt my fangs just lightly brush her neck. All I had to do was bite down, let my teeth sink in, and I’d have her. All of me wanted her. Craved her.
Well, almost all of me. There was one part, the… human, I guess. Something that fought against the vampire, that made me do what I did to stay human. That part gave me just a moment of control, right at what seemed like the last second. I used it to throw myself backwards, off the bed and onto the floor and away. I think I screamed, too. Or maybe my vampire side did. Left my throat raw, like after a long party when I’d been dancing all night. Actually, that was sort of how I felt all over… sore and wired at the same time, like I was pushing myself past being tired. And I wanted Kaitlyn bad. But I couldn’t take her because… then I wouldn’t be human. It hurt, but I had to fight it. I felt a weight on my legs, and it took me a moment to realize Kaitlyn had moved off the bed and was now sitting on my legs, straddling my thighs and looking down at me.
“Hey,” she said, looking into my eyes, then louder: “HEY!”
I just stared at her like an idiot. I couldn’t think straight right then.
“I knew you wouldn’t bite me,” Kaitlyn said. She looked totally serious.
I blinked at her a couple times while the vampire tried to take control again.
“You know why I knew?” Kaitlyn asked me. I still couldn’t respond, so she went on. “You know how I’ve been waking you up? Just like that.”
“What?” I was finally able to say.
“First couple of times, I used my wrist,” Kaitlyn said. She grinned at me, but it was more… fierce? Not a funny grin, anyway. “Pressed my wrist against your lips and held it there.”
“That’s…” I started, but she interrupted me.
“That worked,” Kaitlyn went on. “But when you started sleeping in your bed again, I tried putting my neck against your mouth. Like I just did on the bed.”
“That’s…” I said again.
“Stupid?” Kaitlyn grinned at me again. “Maybe. But it’s you in there.” Kaitlyn reached out and ruffled my hair. “You have a vampire body, but you’ve still got a Misty brain.”
That didn’t make any sense. Okay, yeah, I was pretty fucked in the head by being a vampire, but I still didn’t get what she was meaning. So, yeah, probably dumb face despite everything else.
“Every time,” Kaitlyn said. “Every single time I woke you up, you’d start to move like you were gonna bite me. Lips, fangs, whatever. But you’d stop. Something would come on in your brain and you’d pull your head back away from me. Then after a few seconds, you’d wake up. Even when I started using my neck. You’d actually move away more if it was my neck.”
I stared at her for a moment or two, and she ruffled my hair again.
“So that’s how I knew it was you in there,” Kaitlyn said. “Like when you start crying, or when you can’t make up your mind about something, or when you twist yourself around trying to find reasons for me to hate you. The vampire might wanna bite me, but Misty would never do that.”
Okay, she was probably right. I wouldn’t ever want to hurt her. But she was still taking a really stupid risk. What if I couldn’t control my vampire side? I almost lost it like five minutes before. I’d managed to pull away, but it wasn’t easy, and… I might not always manage it.
“That’s…” I started, then cleared my throat and glared at her. “That was way too dangerous.”
Kaitlyn grinned at me and shrugged. “Maybe. But you wouldn’t listen if I just told you.”
Probably also right. I could be pretty stubborn about feeling bad about myself. I still glared at her, though, then sighed and laid back with my hands over my face. “Fine, alright,” I said. “Just… don’t make that kinda point like you did anymore, okay?”
“Don’t be so stubborn,” Kaitlyn said, poking me in the stomach.
“Fine. You gonna get off me now?”
“Uh huh,” Kaitlyn said. “But only because I need to shower. Your vampire part might like seeing me covered in blood like this, but honestly, it’s fucking disgusting.”
And that was another point. I peeked through my hands down at myself, and yeah, I’d soaked my sports bra too, so… laundromat tomorrow, because it’d start to stink if I left it longer. May as well just get it over with so Kaitlyn didn’t start bugging me about it.
Kaitlyn poked me in the stomach again, then got up off my legs. I heard her pick up a few things, then walk over to the bathroom door. “You’re gonna shower after me,” she said. “Unless you want to share.” I looked over at Kaitlyn, and she was grinning, so she probably wasn’t serious. But I felt I may as well bring it up anyway, if only to keep her on her own toes.
“I know why you do that,” I told her.
“Do what?” Kaitlyn asked me.
“Make sex jokes at me,” I said.
“Really? Why?”
“Because you’re afraid of me.”
Kaitlyn sort of froze for a moment, not looking at me. Then she did that thing where she gets kind of tense and tries to laugh something off, so I knew I’d at least hit something. “You’re so full of shit sometimes, Misty,” she said, then went into the bathroom and closed the door.
After a few moments, I heard the shower come on. I laid on the floor for a bit longer, then got up and went to the kitchen area. First thing, I got some paper towels and wiped myself off as best I could, because yeah, even if my vampire side liked it, having blood all over me was disgusting. Then I looked around a bit, and yeah, few little spots of vampire blood tears on the bed, nothing major, so I got them with some soap and water. Carpet had a bit more where I’d been laying so same thing. I’d have to actually get some kind of stain remover for the carpet. Especially if me crying on the floor was going to be something regular. I hoped it wouldn’t. And yeah, I knew what I was doing. Keeping busy so I wouldn’t have to think about anything too much.
When Kaitlyn came out of the bathroom, she was wearing some of her more covering things to sleep in, so I went for the same. First thing she did was drop her clothes in the hamper, then make a face and look over at me.
“I know,” I said. “Laundromat.”
“Tomorrow,” Kaitlyn said. “Shower now.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, then went into the bathroom to clean up myself. When that was done, I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t seem especially vampire, and my inner Savage had mostly gone back to sleep, so… I was calming down, which was a good thing. I put on my robe to try to keep some of the heat I’d gotten from the water and went back out into the main room. Kaitlyn was laying on the bed, looking at her phone. She looked up at me, then at the pajamas I was wearing.
“Not going out?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. “Not in the mood.”
Kaitlyn nodded and patted the bed next to her. I tossed my bloody clothes into the hamper as well, then crawled into bed and pulled up the blanket. After a minute or two, Kaitlyn put down her phone and got under the blanket herself. Even with the robe and blanket and stuff, she was still warmer than I was, so I didn’t mind sharing the blanket. Then she scooched over and wound up laying on her side, sort of half on me, with her head on my chest and one arm around my body. Yeah, pretty much that standard girl and guy in bed position, Except I was the guy. Again. Honestly, I had to keep reminding myself that kids sometimes did that too, so it didn’t mean anything that Kaitlyn was doing it, and that my vampire side was looking for excuses. But… I also didn’t feel like telling her to move. I even moved so I could get an arm around her myself. Then I spent the next few minutes thinking about how uncomfortable it must have been for the guy when I’d done what Kaitlyn was doing because she was a lot of weight on my arm and chest, and I was a vampire and didn’t need to breathe or worry about getting blood flow cut off. But it still felt nice to lay like that. Neither of us seemed to want to talk.
After a while, Kaitlyn yawned, then sighed.
“Hmm?” I said and squeezed her.
“Lights,” Kaitlyn said. “Gonna hafta get up.”
I squeezed Kaitlyn again, then looked over at the light switch and concentrated. After a moment, the switch flipped and the lights went out. Not having to get up to turn off the lights was still the best thing I’d found to use that telekinesis thing for, and the headache it gave me was getting less and less painful. Going away fast, anyway. Kaitlyn squeezed me and settled back down again. After a while, she started snoring, but I decided not to record her doing it this time to prove that she actually did snore. But even that wasn’t all that annoying right then.
There was still a lot of shit I’d have to deal with. We’d have to deal with, really. Like, was my life going to be like this forever? Just… sort of hanging on to being human despite the vampire and everything else? Was I just hiding from things before shit really started happening? And what if Kaitlyn got hurt? I wasn’t sure I could handle if I hurt her, you know? Pops and Ferret and Father Riggs seemed to have a handle on things, but I wasn’t them. I’d have to… find my own handle, I guess. And it didn’t seem like it was going to be easy. I wasn’t all that strong of a person. Kind of a wimp. I’d have to find a way.
