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As the blood cleared away, I could see the wound clearly. The gashes were deep, as if claws had torn into his flesh. I remembered those horrible claws the darklings had; I didn't want to think about the pain he’d endured. I sprayed the wound with antiseptic before placing a gauze over it securing it with medical tape.
I sighed as I walked over to wash my hands, preparing myself for what I was about to be told. No matter what he was going to tell me, the thought of him fighting those monsters had me struggling. I switched off the faucet off and turned back to him, bracing myself on the edge of the countertop. “So… Tell me more.”
He stared at me from across the room and patted the bed beside him. I drew a deep breath, knowing the moment I sat down, my entire world was going to change. Nothing would be the same. There would be no option of a normal life after this. I dug into myself to find some semblance of courage and walked toward him.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked. I lifted my eyes to him. “There will be no turning back once I tell you everything.” His eyes burned into me, the silence dragging on for a moment.
“Tell me to erase your memory, Cas. Tell me you'd rather go back to your normal life.” His voice was like gravel, the words clinging, begging not to leave his lips. “I'll take it all away. You won't remember anything of the darklings. You can go back to living a normal life. I'll stay away, make sure you're safe from a distance.”
Agony. Agony filled his eyes as he stared into mine, like a part of him wanted me to tell him yes, to tell him to erase my memory so that I might live a normal life. My memories of everything. Of him. Of our time together. At the same time, there was hope. Hope that I might tell him no. As if he hoped and prayed that I might say I was with him, that I would accept everything he told me. I wanted it; wanted to remain at his side.
The same conflict rose in me. This was a chance I’d tell him to do it, to spare him from a relationship with me that would only end the way he feared. Still, there was a tiny flicker in the back of my mind that begged me to say no, begged me to tell him that I would remain at his side.
No matter what...
“I don't want to forget,” I finally decided. “I... I don't want to forget you, even if it means that I'll have to accept whatever you tell me.” I laughed at the crazy words coming out of my mouth, eyes faltering. “You probably think I'm insane for saying it.”
A warm smile curved the corners of his lips, and the glow of it reached his ambered-ashen eyes, like embers glowing in ashes. “Not at all.”
While it didn't seem fully rational for me to turn down his offer of a normal life, the past few weeks I’d spent with him had been the most colorful days I’d ever experienced. If this was the world that I lived in for what remained of my life, I was ok with that.
His body eased, a breath rushing from him as if he’d held everything in, waiting for my answer. “I'm sorry. I owe you an apology for keeping you in the dark.”
His hands gripped the edge of the bed, and a muscle feathered in his jaw. I reached out, almost involuntarily, to hold his hand closest to me, lacing my fingers with his. “I'm sure you had your reasons.”
“I hate that I couldn't better protect you.”
I squeezed his fingers. “I’m alive, Damien. If you hadn’t found me, I wouldn’t be here right now. I couldn’t ask for more, knowing what I know now.” My gaze drifted, imagining the darklings. “It's still difficult to believe that those creatures are out there. How you fight those things, I can’t even imagine it.”
He was quiet for a moment. “We’re only able to fight them, because we’re not exactly humans ourselves.”
I lifted my gaze to him, blinking as I processed what he was trying to tell me. “I was a bit confused when Barrett called me a human.”
“Sorry about him. There are laws we must abide by, consequences for sharing our existence with humans.”
I cocked my head, a morbid sense of humor lacing my tongue as I spoke. “So, if you're not human, what are you? Some sort of werewolf? An Atlantean God?”
He chuckled. “Neither. You’re not far off the mark, though.” It eased my heart to hear him relax, even a little. He’d been so tense from the moment I’d woken up, and the guilt stung. I was the reason for his stress and worry. “I guess we’d be as close to what you humans call vampires as you can get.”
I frowned. “But you can go out in the sun. Aren’t vampires supposed to, you know, turn to dust in the sun or something?” The fact that I was making lighthearted jokes at this point had me questioning my sanity, but I’d seen enough by this point to know that creatures that I once believed to be myth, were very much real.
Damien practically snorted a laugh. “We prefer the term Immortals. The majority of things humans believe about us are just myths conjured by fearful mortals. We can go out in the sun, I can see myself in the mirror, I appear in photos, and we are very much alive.” He sat there a moment, as if going through the list in his head. “Yeah, I think the only thing that humans got right is that we need blood to survive.”
My skepticism spilled out of my mouth, and I leaned forward to look at his face better. “You’ve smiled at me countless times and I’ve never seen fangs.”
He fought back a smile before he opened his mouth, revealing his perfect white teeth, no fangs in sight. While his canines were slightly longer they weren’t by any means fangs. I gasped as his canines lengthened, as if they’d only been sheathed. They retracted again, perfectly hidden. “Easier to stay hidden amongst humans if we don’t have obvious fangs.”
A part of me felt enticed by the idea, to know what it would feel like for him to bite me. Another part of me felt scared at the thought of him drinking blood. I sat there a moment, just looking at him, mulling things over in my head, struggling to absorb what he was telling me. He needed blood to survive.
“Before you ask, no, I don’t really drink human blood. There are those of our kind that do, and while human blood can sustain us, it isn’t as potent as the blood of our kind. Those of us who do feed off humans have to do it more frequently. I assure you, we aren’t the blood thirsty monsters Hollywood made us out to be. There’s no murder involved.” He offered me a smile. “We’re actually more like protectors.”
They protected humans, protected us from the darklings. There was so much to ask, so many questions. I needed to know everything.
Whether I liked it or not, I was a part of this hidden world now.
12
We sat in silence, the cold medical room chilling me to the bone. I’d hated this room from the moment we entered it. It felt all too much like the icy doctor’s offices I’d seen far too many of in my lifetime. I wanted to go elsewhere, anywhere but here, but I had so many questions and we’d only scratched the surface of Damien's reality.
