I hope for her
Never to return
This verse alarms me more so than the first. Two lines in particular, the second, “and makes me forget sometimes” and the sixth, “of bleeding and of biting”. These are things that vampires do to humans, they use their compulsion to make them forget, and they bite them and make them bleed. Suddenly feeling distinctly sick, I push the notebook away from me harshly and it tips over onto the floor. I instantly regret this and crouch down to retrieve it, hoping I didn’t damage it.
One loose page has fallen from the book, a piece of sketching paper. The side facing up is blank, but I can see the outline of a picture drawn in pencil on the other side. For some reason my hands go all shaky as I pick it up and I’m reluctant to turn it over. I place it on the duvet, still blank side up, and fold my hands beneath my arms. Why on earth am I so frightened to look at this sketch? The pit of my stomach goes all strange and fizzy as I raise my left hand above it, tip my fingers over its surface.
Slowly I turn it over and find that a close up of a woman’s face has been drawn onto the page in dark pencil. Had Matthew drawn this? Every feature is drawn in such detail, but that’s not what immediately catches my attention. What holds my attention are the two fangs sticking out of the woman’s mouth. I shift back on the bed, my heart beating a mile a minute. It is only after several seconds tick by that I recognise the face staring out at me. Antonia.
Then I remember something that Delilah mentioned casually that first time I’d met Antonia. That she liked to take her blood from young men who were unwilling to be donors. That she would use her compulsion to force them to allow her to feed on them. And Matthew had been one of her victims. Oh God.
Rage fills me to my very core. If Antonia hadn’t preyed on Matthew then he would surely not have taken his own life. He would not have lost his mind the way that he did. I lie back on my bed and cry for a while, the salty tears stinging my cheeks. Then I begin to carry out an inner dialogue about how I am going to kill Antonia very slowly and very painfully the first chance I get.
But when will I ever get a chance like that? Firstly I would have to get past her bodyguards, one of whom has sort of become my friend. But then what would I do? I will never be strong enough to take on a vampire like her.
I feel like bashing my head against the wall in frustration. It seems that the vampires had been a part of my life long before I even knew they existed. Antonia is going to pay for what she did. I’m just going to have to get over my anger and hate and notions of revenge and bide my time. My phone begins to ring and it snaps me out of my inner turmoil.
“Hello Rita,” I answer, a little too harshly, the build-up of my anger coming out in my words.
“Jesus, someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning,” she replies in a snooty voice, though behind that she seems amused.
“Actually I got out of bed on the right side, it’s what followed getting out of bed that pissed me off.”
“Sounds bad, you want to talk about it?”
“No. That’s okay, I’ll be fine. What were you calling me about?”
A long sigh seems to escape her before she answers, “I’ve been at Gabriel’s all morning working on that thing you asked me to do.”
“Yeah and…” I prompt, wondering why she’s being so cryptic. Perhaps she suspects Theodore of tapping the phone lines.
“Sorry. Marcel just showed up a couple minutes ago so I’m hiding in the bathroom. He’s already suspicious of Gabriel’s allegiances, so we can’t afford him finding out what we’re up to.”
“Okay, well maybe you should whisper then, just in case he hears you.” I tell her.
“All right then,” Rita replies, whispering now. “Anyway, I’m calling you because I think I know a spell that will get rid of Theodore, well, it won’t exactly kill him but it will banish him into a hell dimension for a couple of decades. It’s just, I haven’t told Ga
briel about it yet.”
“Why not?” I ask, rubbing the palm of my hand over my forehead. I’m going to end up with a whole bunch of new wrinkles by the time I’m finished with this mess.
“Because one of the ingredients I need is sort of impossible to get. Well not impossible, I could get it, it’s just that Gabriel will want to know how I got it, and that’s something I can’t tell him.”
“Well what is it?”
A long stretch of silence drags out before she answers, “I need a vial of your blood, Tegan.”
“Right,” I reply, sucking in my breath.
“I’m sorry. I should never have asked. We’ll just have to find another way,” says Rita, rambling nervously.
“No don’t do that. Just – give me a couple of hours to think about this.”
“Okay. We’ll talk later,” she says quietly before hanging up the phone.
Just when I thought I was getting used to the drama it goes and gets ten times worse. If I give Rita my blood to use in her spell, then Gabriel is going to begin asking questions as to how she came across such a rare ingredient, who the source of it was. If she tells him it was me, that I am die Äußerste Macht, then my secret is out and every vampire and slayer in the city is going to want to capture me. But perhaps Gabriel will agree to keep my secret too, perhaps I can trust him with it in the same way I trust Rita and Alvie.
Gabriel is just too difficult to read. Sometimes it feels like he’s on my side and then other times it feels like he isn’t. How do I know he’ll keep my secret? That’s just it, I don’t. What I need to do, in order to keep the peace in this city and get rid of Theodore, is to give Rita the blood she needs, and then let her tell Gabriel what I am. After that I will disappear somewhere nobody will think to find me. I’ll cut my hair, change my appearance, even change my name, so that when the vampires and slayers decide to come for me, it will be like searching for a needle in a hay stack.