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Before he can thank me, I turn on my heel and walk swiftly down the street, letting the adrenaline carry me along.
You see, you’re breathing, I remind myself, going over what the panic attack app mantras normally tell me. Trust your body to do the breathing for you. Your body is keeping you alive. Also, you’re really hard to kill.
Okay, so it doesn’t say that last one. But it’s because I’m so hard to kill that I’m having these panic attacks in the first place.
I make it to Market Street and block out the lights and sounds and crowds until I find myself beside the ferry building, leaning over the railing and watching the dark waves lap the wharf, the night sky stretching above. Even though it’s chilly out and the water is choppy, there’s something soothing about it, like the water is taking my bad energy and mixing it up, leveling me out a little.
The adrenaline starts to leave my body, like a balloon slowly deflating. Soon, I’ll be hit with so much exhaustion that I’ll need to take an Uber home. Except the idea of being alone in a car with a stranger also feels panic-inducing.
A month ago I was abducted by a vampire. Believe it or not, that was the second time I’ve been abducted by a vampire this year. His name was Yanik and he attacked me in broad daylight, as my father was driving me through Hayes Valley. We were only a few blocks from my parent’s house, stuck in traffic when it happened, and I can’t stop seeing his face. Can’t stop seeing the way that Yanik walked over to the car, and my father, my good-natured father, asked him what all the traffic was for, and then Yanik lowered his head so I could see him and…
His eyes…his black, fathomless eyes, eyes that held only evil behind them.
It’s all I keep seeing in my head, then my father being attacked, then Yanik coming for me and I’m trying to escape and I can’t and I lose all consciousness. The world slips and spins and goes black, goes to that place of pure evil.
Later, I would kill Yanik by setting him on fire with a power that I still don’t understand (and haven’t been able to conjure up since), but it’s that early moment when I was afraid that my father was dead, when I felt so hopeless and powerless and lost, that’s one reason I keep having panic attacks over.
I was doing fine, too. I spent two weeks with Solon at Shelter Cove, his remote and very private beachside estate north of the city, bringing myself back to life, letting the slow life and the ocean waves and Solon’s arms heal me. Then we came back here and I officially moved into Solon’s room and…
The panic attacks started. At first I was having nightmares, the kind where you wake up soaked in sweat, and then they started to morph into day terrors, like I was experiencing it all again, while awake.
Suffice to say, things haven’t been all rosy for me. Not only am I trying to deal with what happened to me, but I’m also trying to deal with all the other shit that’s happened in the last few months. Trauma upon trauma. First, being taken by Solon and Ezra and held prisoner in their basement, then discovering I was a vampire, then going through The Becoming. That was all a piece of cake compared to my tussle with vampire slayer Atlas Poe, who then killed my best friend Elle. Then I found out that I’m the daughter of a famous evil warlock called Jeremias. Then there was my ex, Matt, whom I attacked in a fit of bloodlust and Solon had to kill him. Finally, Yanik kidnapped me on the behest of Skarde, the dark King of the Vampires, Solon’s father and sworn enemy, and I made him and the cloaked servants of the Dark Order go up in flames, murdering them all.
So, yeah I’ve been processing a lot of shit, on top of the fact that my entire life has been a lie and everything I knew about my future has been forever altered. You don’t just discover you’re both a vampire and a witch and expect everything to go back to normal.
It’s just…I want things to go back to normal. Badly. I love Solon, I really do, and I like Wolf and Amethyst and Yvonne (still not sold on Ezra). I love the feeling of found family in that house, as spooky as it can be at times. But I miss my parents, the parents that I knew them as, not actual witches, not people who murdered my birth parents. I miss living below them, I miss coming up to use their coffee, miss listening to my dad yammer on about his beard. I miss spending my weeknights studying about the art of ancient Mesopotamia, spending my weekends with Elle at The Cloister and getting shit-faced. I want to wake up with a hangover and head to Salt and Straw around the corner to get some strawberry and balsamic ice cream. I miss my damn tattoos. I miss being a normal human fucking being.
