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Chapter Twenty Two
"Something rather difficult to understand happened to Anna over the past week," Austin began, then with sudden inspiration he leaned down and whispered, "Leap up on the house, jump to the garage and then land right in front of them smiling like you were at me this morning. We'll go from there."
She laughed shakily. "It sounds like I'm performing a circus act,” she whispered back.
"Exactly. You don't want them to be scared of you, so awe them instead."
She nodded and stepped away from him. She took two running steps and lunged, landing perfectly on the peak of her house, then ran forward and leapt onto the garage. She could hear the girls’ exclamations as she turned and leapt down, landing right in front of Jenna who was gaping at her.
"Whoa," Jess gasped, "How are you doing that?"
She smiled widely. "As it turns out, after a horrifying ordeal, I am now super human."
She waited for the questions, concentrating on Jenna who was searching her expression. She moved closer to her. "Remember what I saw," she said quietly, "Jake was one of them."
Her eyes widened into saucers.
"Hey what are you saying to Jenna, we want to know too," Jess demanded.
Macey and Marina were staring at her wide-eyed and Jenna looked over at Austin. He smiled reassuringly, putting his hands on Anna's shoulders.
"Look girls, there are things we’ve read about and seen in movies that we’ve been led to believe were fiction, but as it turns out there is a whole lot more to this world and life then we understand. More than most people will ever know about. I know some of us were skeptical about the whole shadow men thing," he looked specifically at Marina who nodded. "But we were wrong.”
He paused to search for the right words.
"The little we do know of the supernatural world is completely skewed, by Hollywood especially. Vampires, for example, are portrayed as evil monsters that prey on people and sleep in coffins during the day. Of course they’re also portrayed as fiction, but it turns out they do exist. Just not the way we imagined them." He looked at each one of them meaningfully.
Jenna stared at Anna who nodded slightly. The others still had no idea what he was getting at and were waiting for the punch line. She decided to take over.
"Thanks Austin, for that enthusiastic speech."
He laughed. "Yeah, I guess that was a speech."
"Uh huh." Anna smiled at him affectionately. She focused on her friends who were still waiting, with the exception of Jenna whose face had gone pale. She might need to hear the confirmation, but she knew what this was wrapping around to.
She sighed, turning serious. "Look guys, what I went through this past week …changed me. You saw what I did and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I can also hear....." She cocked her head and concentrated on Macey's parent down the street. "Right now Macey, your mom and dad are talking about your older brother Tony and his fiancee, and whether or not Ally's parents will have a formal engagement dinner. Your mom thinks they will and in that case they need to start making plans to go to California."
Macey's eyes widened as she spoke.
"If you don't believe me you can call and ask…
"No, I was just there and they were talking about the wedding. I didn't tell you they were getting married!"
She smiled, but her gaze landed on Jenna and her smile slipped. Unlike the others, she wasn’t excited. There was fear and denial in her dark blue eyes. Anna looked down at her hands which were suddenly fidgeting. It was all well and good to tell them about her “super powers”, but fangs and blood drinking?
She sucked in a breath.
“Anna?” Jenna prompted softly.
She looked up. “I’m sorry Jenna,” she whispered. “I lied to you.” Tears filled her eyes and Austin wrapped his arm around her shoulders, giving her a comforting squeeze.
“You knew what Jake was.” Jenna’s voice held reproach.
She nodded.
“What was Jake?” Jess asked, looking back and forth between them.
Anna looked at the four of them and swallowed hard. “A vampire,” she said quietly. “Jake was a vampire.”
Marina’s brows shot off her head and Macey took an unconscious step backwards.
“But…” Jess frowned, “are you saying that he…you…” She shook her head.
Jenna moved forward until she was directly in front of her. “Why did you stay?”
“He said vampires were created to fight demons,” she whispered. “He said he would answer my questions.” She bit her lip, knowing how lame and foolish that sounded.
“But he lied?”
Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. Probably. He didn’t fight them, I know that much.”
Jenna looked away.
“Hey,” Austin touched Jenna’s arm. “She made a mistake, and yes she lied to us. But trust me when I say she paid for it.”
Jenna stared at him, her expression unreadable.
“You’re not going to try and bite any of us, are you?” Jess piped in.
Her abruptness startled a laugh from Anna. “No.”
“But you are a vampire?” Macey asked. “You have fangs?”
She nodded.
“Whoa, wait a minute, this is a joke right?” Marina looked around. “Come on, this has to be a joke! Anna can’t be…”she blinked and shook her head.
Anna looked at the willowy blonde, realizing she was going to be her hardest sell. Not about what she was, that would just take showing her concrete evidence. But accepting it, accepting her?
She didn’t pause to think, just ran at Mari and grabbed her. When she was securely in her arms she jumped, barely acknowledging her startled cry. She bounded straight off the roof onto a tree branch, then another and another until they were at the highest point around for miles.
It was full dark by then and the sky was glittering with stars. She set her friend down on a thick branch which she immediately clutched, her expression conveying a mixture of fear and awe.
Anna looked up. "I've often stared at the sky at night wondering if there was more to this life than what we’ve been taught or what we can see," she said softly. "So many stars, so many possibilities. We are a tiny planet within a small galaxy within a vast universe. To me it always stood to reason that there was something else out there, I just didn't know until three years ago that there was something more right here. And even then it was just a small glimpse. Now, standing here on a tree branch that I just leapt onto like a mountain lion, I am certain that what I do know is nothing compared to what I don't."
At this point her friend was staring up at her, struggling to bend her mind. Out of all of Anna’s friends, Marina was definitely the most tied to the earth. An animal lover, someone most at home in the middle of the woods, she had this way about her that made Anna think she’d been born in the wrong century. It seemed she would have been happiest and most comfortable during the little house on the prairie era. And there was absolutely nothing wrong with that. In an age where people had long forgotten about the simple pleasures in life, like the first scent of flowers in spring or the beauty of the first snowfall, Marina was a breath of fresh air. She did see and glory in those things.
"You’re really a vampire?" she finally asked, looking up at Anna with eyes that...well once they accepted what they saw there would be no shaking it.
"I have fangs and today I bit Austin..." she swallowed, looking away, and forced herself to say the rest, "...and drank his blood." When there was no immediate response she looked down to gauge her reaction.
Marina was studying here. "Did it hurt him?" She asked finally.
"No. I guess it felt good."
"Is he a vampire now too?"
Anna smiled. "No. It doesn't work that way."
"Oh."
They lapsed into silence looking at the glittering expanse of sky for a long while.
"You're still you, right?" she finally asked.
Anna nodded, "Still me."
"Then I'm okay with it."
Anna let out the breath she'd been holding. "You have no idea what that means to me."
"Yeah I do. If it were me, I'd hope my friends would feel that way."
"You know they would," Anna smiled.
"Does this mean you'll live forever?"
Anna’s stomach clenched and she opened her mouth to answer then shut it again. "Wanna go back?" she finally managed.
"Okay."
She put her arm around her friend's waist and they jumped together, retracing her steps until they were back on the patio. When she let go Marina was grinning.
"That was fun, a little like flying!"
Jess’s brows winged into the air. "Can you fly?"
"I don't think so."
"Austin told us a little of what you went through," Jenna interjected, giving Anna a look that said she wanted more details.
“Yeah, we should go inside so you can tell us the whole story,” Macey stated.
“You’re not afraid to be around me?” Anna asked.
All of them shook their heads in unison.
“We love you Anna, and we trust you,” Jess told her.
Anna smiled at her gratefully before her expression clouded again. "The problem is, I don't know very much about…what I am. I'm sort of on my own in this since I don't have a clue how to find out, and there's no way I'd try and ask any of the sociopaths from London."
"Not on your own," Marina stated. "We'll help you, right guys?"
They emphatically agreed and Anna couldn’t believe how lucky she was.
Jenna fell to her knees, suffocating in sorrow. It was as if the innermost part of her was being compacted and crushed together, the smoke so thick in the air it seemed to have texture, choking her.
Oh God, she cried silently, don't let this happen. She tried to block out the sound of the screams as she pulled herself to her feet.
This time it would be different. This time she would change the outcome. But her hand passed through the axe and a feeling of hopelessness brought her back to her knees. She fell forward and put her head in her hands.
She couldn't help them, she never could. The screams began to ebb, until finally there was only silence.
Jenna sat straight up in bed, sweat pouring down her face, her heart pounding.
She'd been plagued with vivid dreams ever since the “Goddess” meeting in London. Most of her nightly visions involved people she knew and by the time she wiped sleep from her eyes they would fade and fragment, leaving her with a sense of urgency to recall them. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were real somehow, showing her things to come. This last one, however, was not a premonition. It was a scene from a long ago past and she remembered every detail with vivid clarity. It was a continuation of another dream she’d had on several other occasions, one in which the people were still alive and well. Men, women, and children joyfully interacting in this small village of the past. Except they weren't exactly human, in fact she was fairly certain they were vampires.
The females had a gift. A few nights ago she had watched from a hillside as an entourage came through the gates of their little community carrying sick and injured humans and the “women” of the village had laid hands on them and healed them.
In every one of the dreams there was a little boy that caught her eye. He was about ten years old with light blonde hair and bright green eyes. He was constantly pretending to fight, using sticks to stab invisible fiends, whirling and jumping until a woman, presumably his mother, came and hugged her to him. She would then take his hand and lead him into one of the small wooden houses.
The dreams would start out so picturesque and then the scenery would swirl and change, darkness closing in, and that's when she would see the fire and run down the hillside to help them. Which of course she couldn't. Sometimes, right before she woke up, she would catch a glimpse of a terrifying male landing on one of the houses next to the burning structure. Whether he was the cause of the mayhem or someone trying to help she didn’t know because she always woke up at that point.
She shook her head and frowned, wondering why she would dream these things. For Anna? Was there a message in there for her? Perhaps that vampires were not evil? It was irritating to be given just a tiny piece of something important and not know what it was.
The past several weeks had been the most interesting of her entire life. Anna had developed her abilities at an amazing rate. She really was like a super hero. All of the girls watched in awe as she leapt into trees or raced across the field and back in seconds flat. They had also entertained themselves with Anna's ability to eavesdrop on all the neighbors, Macey stating that she wished she'd had the ability in high school.
Macey. She would be leaving for college in two weeks. It was only three hours away, but it would change things. Initially she and Marina had intended to go as well, not to the university, but the community college in the area. They were supposed to have gone there to search for jobs and an apartment, but Anna had changed things. Not intentionally of course, she tried to insist they go not wanting to hold up their lives, but at this point it seemed a hell of a lot more important to help her figure things out. They could always go for the spring semester instead.
She, Austin, and Marina practically lived with Anna these days, going home only occasionally. It was as if they felt they needed to cocoon her with normality. She rarely left her street, sticking to the beach and the woods and her house. At first Jenna had thought it was so she could get a handle on the changes in her body, but now she'd begun to wonder if it had something to do with the shadow men. Anna had mentioned in passing that she wondered if they would sense she was different now. Since Jake had told Anna that vampires were created to destroy them (although he was a liar so chances are he had made it up) she knew it was in the back of Anna’s mind and she probably feared they could interact with her now.
Jenna had spent the previous night at her own house. Her parents were out of town so she'd come the day before for some much needed alone time. Jess had stayed at Nate's, as usual, though she was under strict instructions not to tell him about Anna. She'd tried to argue the point, but Austin had been firm in his resolve. "No one besides us, Jess, so don't do it because you'll look like a fool when the rest of us deny it," he’d warned. Jenna had adamantly agreed. Most people were far too narrow-minded. Anna would become a freak show and have to move away.
She pulled herself out of bed and wandered into the den, flipping the switch on the computer and watching it load. She started to click on the email icon, but a news headline caught her eye and she froze when she noticed the pictures beneath the story. They were of two guys in their early to mid twenties…and she'd dreamt of them a couple of nights ago.
They were both good-looking, one blonde and smirking at the camera, the other-brown haired with a serious and pained expression. She racked her brains to remember what the dream had been about, but it wasn't forthcoming, all she knew was that they were definitely in it.
She read the story and her eyes widened. Apparently they were being tried for a murder they'd committed in New York City and were suspected of several more. They were currently being held in Schenectady county jail outside Albany. William and Joshua McClaron. They were brothers. She googled their names to find out more, and found another story that had labeled them vigilantes.
They were caught stabbing a man through his heart in a darkened corner of Central Park, and the police believed they were responsible for several more unsolved murders in the past several years. All of their alleged victims had been taken out in the exact same fashion and each of them was linked with heinous crimes ranging from rape to torture and murder.
She sat back and stared at their pictures, wondering why she would have dreamt of them. She had a vague sense that they were not villains but heroes and thought of Anna, though it was highly doubtful they were vampires or they wouldn't have been caught by mere human cops.
She gathered a few things and headed back to Anna's, her mind spinning with possibilities.
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