Chapter 41

Planning to post one more chapter after this.  After that there's not too many left!!

Chapter 41

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Miriam didn’t waste any time.  Immediately after lunch, she ditched Sidney with an excuse about being late for gym and rushed to her locker.  There she pretended to fish her gym bag from the bottom shelf, every muscle tensed on high alert.

She waited.  If one thing had stuck in her mind from Eliot's predator vs prey lesson it was that most so called 'hunters' couldn't resist an easy mark.

Here she was alone...vulnerable.  She just hoped the 'wounded bird routine' would work this time.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for a shadow to fall across her as someone crept up from behind.

Right on cue.

“Hey.”

She flinched, hunching her shoulders.  The voice wasn’t familiar, but somehow she could instantly put a face to it; a tan one with bright green eyes.

“It’s Miriam, isn’t it?”  He asked innocently.  “I’m Devlin...”

Taking a deep breath, Miriam slammed her locker shut and turned to face him.

“You know my name,” she snapped.  She wasn’t sure how, but something about him reminded her of Eliot—that same knowing glint in the eye.

She had a feeling that he knew a lot more than just her name.

The corner of his mouth twitched.  “I know a lot about you, Miriam,” he admitted, lowering his voice.   “Good and…bad.”

“Like what?”  Casually, she scanned the hall for Sidney, or anyone or anything, she could use as an excuse to leave if he decided to skip the small talk and start...

Howling.

He was one of the things from last night—the fact that he had taken to bait to talk to her alone proved it. But she wasn’t sure if he was one of the shadowy whats-its or the furry werewolf.  So she deiced to play it safe and just assume the worst, scary-sounding option.

"What do I know about you?"  Devlin seemed to think it over for a moment.  “I know that you are a very unique girl.”  His mouth formed a smile that could have been charming, if it reached his eyes.  “I also know that you also like to keep…strange company.”

Alarm bells went off.

Nervously Miriam stumbled back, clutching her gym back so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

“I-I have to go.”  She turned—only to find Devlin behind her, but that crooked smile had vanished.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said softly.  “But we really need to talk.”

“About what?”

It was just them left in the hall now, she realized—everyone else had already rushed to the next period.

“About you,” he said simply.  “And your…friend.”

Eliot.

Miriam tried her hardest to keep her face blank.  Poker straight, she told herself.  Don’t give anything away.

“W-what about him?”

Devlin raised a brown eyebrow and moved to lean back against the row of lockers.  “He, my friend, is bad news.”  He whistled under his breath.  “Very bad.”

He knows, she realized.  Though, to be fair, anyone with eyes could see that there was something off about Eliot—his weird habit of not wearing a coat in the middle of winter aside.

But she wasn’t very stupid herself.

“You’re not…normal, either,” she blurted, hoping to catch him off guard.  "Are you?"

Devlin just smiled.  “Define ‘normal.’”

“Like me,” Miriam snapped.  “Human.”

“You sure about that?”  He shrugged, but there was an unnatural gleam in his eye that made her suspect her suspicion was right.

“Are you a werewolf?”  She guessed, when he didn’t answer.

"No!"  Devlin grimaced as if she’d insulted him.  “I’m…something a little...different.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t, so she changed tact.

“What do you want with me?  Why are you here?”

Devlin shrugged.  “We wanted to talk to you—I wanted to talk to you.  Alone.”

“Why?”

Suddenly he leaned close, almost pinning her back against the wall even though he didn’t touch her.  Warm breath ghosted her neck as he spoke low against her ear.

“Because those ‘people’ you hang around with are bad news, kid.  Very bad.”

Miriam gritted her teeth and pushed her way past him.  “I don’t like to be threatened,” she hissed over her shoulder.

“Wait!”

Warm fingers snagged her wrist.

Angrily, she whirled around, wrenching her arm away.  “Don’t touch me!”

“Hey, easy!”  Devlin took a step back, hands held out in front of him.  “Easy.  I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“What do you want?”

He flinched at her tone and glanced around the hallway to see if anyone had heard and come running.

“Alright...okay, listen; how about we make a deal?”

Miriam tilted her head, keeping her gym bag firmly between them.  “Like what?”

“A truth for a truth.”  Carefully he let his arms fall to his side.  “You ask me a question and I’ll answer it.  Then you get to answer something for me—deal?”

“What are you?” She demanded, cutting to the chase.

Devlin sent another weary glance around the hallway.  “I’m called…a shadowhunter,” he said softly.   “I pretty much the same as you.  Minus a few...differences.”

“A shadowhunter?”  Miriam repeated.  She didn’t recognize the word, but what smart enough not to show it.  Instead, she made a mental note to ask Eliot about it later.  “Why are you here?”  She demanded, instead.  "What do you want with me?"

“Not-uh.”  Devlin wagged a finger, back to being playful.  “You had your turn.  Now it’s mine.”

“What do you want to know?”  She asked, feeling her eyes narrow.

He cocked his head to the side and seemed to think for a minute, but she could tell in his gaze that he already knew exactly what he wanted to say.  “Tell me, how much do you know about your little friend...Eliot?”

Miriam tossed her hair over her shoulder as if his question didn’t faze her, when really it felt as though the ground had just been swept from beneath her feet.

“Like what?”

"The Dark Midnight?"  He added.

"The...what?"

Devlin’s smile was swift and devastating.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured.  “You just answered my question; not very much.  Because if you did know the truth, you wouldn’t be just standing her, kid—you’d be running away from him, far and fast in the opposite direction.”

“Why?”  She tried to act nonchalant—pretend his words didn’t affect her.

But they did.

He seemed too serious, even with that cheerful gleam in his eye.

“What about him?”

Devlin shrugged.  “Ask him yourself.”

Before she could react, he reached into a messenger bag hanging from his shoulder and pulled out a pen and a black notebook.

“Give him this,” he said, scribbling something onto the page.  “Let’s see how close you stay to him then.”

He folded the page and held it out to her.  Reluctantly she took it, shoving it into her pocket.

“Whatever,” she muttered, returning her gaze back to him.  “Now leave me alone—”

He was already gone.

“I’ll be watching, Miriam.”  The parting whisper was like an icy finger running along the back of her neck.

Trembling, she shrugged her gym bag onto her shoulder and rushed to class, where she was already ten minutes late.

Earning yet another detention.

______________________

Hazel’s words played through Eliot’s mind like a distorted lullaby; if you’re just going to let her break anyway, then why play with her at all?

Morbid imagery aside, she was right.  He hated to admit it—a few days ago, he would have that such a thing wasn't even possible.

But, Hazel was right.

In a sense, he had already doomed Miriam to die.

So, why wait patiently for her every day as if nothing was wrong?

Why give her hope when her time was already running out?

Her plan had been right before, he realized; hide in fear and keep herself away.  What was the point of her getting close to anyone?

What was the point in her getting close to him?

You could fix it, a cruel part of him whispered.  Even Sage and Hazel agreed—change her.

As a vampire, she would never have to worry about something like a seizure again.  She would never have to worry about being weak, or fearful, or alone...

But can you really make that choice for her, he wondered?

Was a chance at any life at all better than what faced her if she succumbed to the Danva curse?

Shaking his head he tried to remember what it had been like for him; to wake up without a say in the matter as something else.

Something evil.

Something…dead.

Vaddrian’s torment of him and Alazzdria hadn’t just ended at the market place.  He’d taken them both back to his fortress; a cold place near the heart of the city that the locals only referred to as, ‘Domus Mortus.’

The house of death.

There, Eliot had woken up injured and dazed on the stone floor of a dungeon.  He could still remember the ice cold of the flagstones beneath his back, and his shock to realize that he had stopped bleeding; all because of one girl’s blood.

He could remember the fear too.  The terror when Vaddrian, flanked by two other men, had entered his cell and proclaimed that there was only one way for him to escape his fate.

He had attacked a nobleman—the facts didn’t matter.  In the eyes of the law, he would be condemned to death.

But, Vaddrian explained that his dumb show of bravery had earned an ounce of respect.

After all, ‘it wasn’t every day that a man would be willing to defend a crippled stranger with his own life.’

A person like that could be useful...

So Vaddrian had proposed what he seemed to think was a generous offer.  One that had made Eliot’s blood run cold.

Become like him.

Become fearless and stronger than a thousand men.

Become a monster.

Bravely, nobly—stupidly—he had refused.  He would rather die than become that which could only be feared and hunted by good, God-fearing people.

He had bared his freshly healed chest and dared the man to run him through.

He wanted to die.

But then Vaddrian surprised him by stepping back to reveal a trembling, pale Alazzdria behind him.

“How far does your nobleness extend?”  The man had wondered as he drew his blade and pressed it against the blind girl’s throat.  “Are you willing to let her die to just save your own soul?”

Eliot gave in.

The thought of having the girl’s blood on his soul had scared him more than the threat of becoming a beast.

He didn’t fight as Vaddrian’s men came to hold him steady on either side.

He didn’t react as the man himself came forward and opened his mouth to reveal teeth as sharp as razors.

He accepted his fate.

To save someone else, he would have gladly scarified himself.

He had expected the man to bite him.  Gore the flesh of his neck in order to impart his deadly curse.  But the man surprised him by slicing the skin of his pale wrist instead and bringing the bleeding edge down to his mouth.

“Drink,” he ordered.

And, stomach churning, Eliot did, sparing the blind girl one last look.

I can do this, he remembered thinking at that very moment.  To save someone else—even someone I don’t know—I can make the ultimate sacrifice.

I can sacrifice myself...

But the moment a drop of Vaddrian’s pure blood had fallen on his tongue that person faded, washed away by the madness.

And the hunger…

It was only later, consumed by darkness that he had learned that his brave and noble sacrifice had been in vain.

Alazzdria had already accepted an offer of her own…

He blinked, clenching his fists to tie himself back to the present.  Something was in his hand, he realized glancing down.  Something he had reached for without even thinking.

That little blue stone, knotted in the middle of a pink shoe string.

He felt his mouth curl into a painful smile at the sight of it.  She still wore hers—he knew because his eyes searched for it at her throat every single day.

The necklace reminded him of his purpose; the reason why he was parked in his car on the curve of a deserted road near the mouth of an alley in the heart of the city.

Right on cue, he caught sight of a pale figure walking past, long brown hair tucked beneath a red hat as she hurried across the street.  Quietly, Eliot got out of his car and followed.

She didn’t go very far.  Barely a block and a half down, she paused beside a small shop where a green hand painted sign simply read; ‘Rare herbs and Exotic Teas.’

There, the woman paused to fish something from the bottom of a brown handbag.  She didn’t even notice Eliot as he crept up beside her.

“Hello,” he murmured near the back of her throat.

She jumped and whirled around to face him.  Fear flashed over her pretty face but her pale hand never left her handbag.

Mace, he could imagine her reaching for.

“Who are you?”  She stammered.  “What do you want?”

Then she saw his face--the pale skin and red eyes.  Her hand flew to her throat.

"V-vampire."

Eliot leaned closer, staring deep into eyes that were a startlingly familiar shade of brown.

“I just want to talk to you, Allwyn,” he said, watching as she flinched at the sound of her name.  “About...Miriam.”

“Miriam?”  In an instant the woman’s face changed.  Anger filled her brown eyes as she moved forward suddenly to jab a pale hand at the center of his chest.

“If you so much as touch her, vampire,” she snarled.  “I’ll—”

“I don’t want to hurt her,” he snapped.  “I just want answers.  Answers that only you can give me.”

The woman watched him for a long moment, and Eliot was blown away by the similarities between mother and daughter.  They both had the same dark, haunting brown eyes and the same brown hair with the soft tendency to curl.  Their jaws even clenched the same way when they were afraid and trying hard not to let it show.

In the end, Miriam’s mother sighed and pulled a silver key from her bag to unlock the shop’s door.

“Come inside,” she said, giving him a wary glance from over her shoulder.

The shop’s interior was simple, with a swept wooden floor and mustard yellow walls lined with rows of shelves.  Piles and bottles and bunches of dried herbs covered almost every surface.

“We can talk in here,” Allwyn explained, shrugging off her red coat.  “I don’t own the place, but I’m in charge while the owner is away...”

She moved behind a counter where an ancient register sat and placed her coat underneath it.

“Now,” she began on a heavy sigh.  “What is this about Miriam?”

Eliot watched her, once again thrown off by the resemblance.  The woman could have been Miriam, only she was a little taller and soft lines of age etched the skin around her eyes and mouth.

“Is she in trouble?”  The woman asked anxiously when he didn’t answer.

“No.”  Eliot shook his head, before he realized belatedly that she was in danger.  “At least…not from me.”

Allwyn raised a brown eyebrow and watched him carefully from across the countertop.  “Then why?  Why are you here?”  She broke off suddenly, hand flying to her mouth.  “Is she—”

“Tell me about your bloodline,” Eliot said.  “I know you’re a witch.”

Unlike Miriam she didn’t smell like roses and spring.  Her scent was sharper and more pungent like pine needles with the spicy scent of magic lurking underneath.

If there was any doubt before, then meeting her mother face to face had proved it; Allwyn Dava was a witch.

“You know?”  She asked nervously, placing her hands flat on the counter.  “How much do you know?”

”I know that you’re a Danva,” Eliot said tiredly.  “And that Miriam—”

He broke off as the woman suddenly collapsed against the counter, face in her hands.  “It’s all my fault,” she wailed.  “I didn’t listen.  I thought the curse was just a rumor—I didn’t listen!”

Her grief proved more than anything that Alazzdria’s wild hunch had been as accurate as a bullseye.

“I didn’t think anything of the seizures at first,” Allwyn went on, shoulders heaving.  “Even mortal children get them.  I thought that…maybe she’d grow out of them?”

Sadly, the woman shook her head, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.  “They only got worse.  Soon she started getting them every month.  Every week.  But it was only when I saw her in the middle of one that I realized they weren't...normal.”

Eliot nodded, remembering how she’d gone eerie still.  How those brown eyes had stared unseeingly at nothing.

How her heart had stopped beating.

“Then, I knew,” Allwyn said thickly.  “I knew that something was wrong with her…my silly little Miri…”

“Why did you leave?”  Eliot asked, remembering Miriam’s tearful confession; because of me...

Allwyn sighed, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand.  “How much do you know about the Danva curse?”

Eliot shrugged.  “Just...that witches from that bloodline don’t tend to live very long.”

“It’s because of the vampiric blood mingled in our veins,” Allwyn explained.  “The curse only affects some of us—only the girls, skipping through generations like a twisted version of the plague.  It’s inherited,” she went on.  “Passed from mother to daughter.  It didn’t matter that Miriam’s father is a human…the curse still took root in her.”

Her words sunk through Eliot like wooden stakes, echoing Alazzdria’s grim premonition; as long as she remains human, she’ll die.

“I didn’t believe it,” Allwyn admitted sadly.  “I thought that it was just some rumor passed around by the elders to make sure that we married a pure blood.”  She glanced up, bracing herself against the counter’s surface.  “A witch has a better chance of surviving the strength of the curse with fully magic blood.”

Eliot nodded, remembering what Alazzdria had said.

“But I was rebellious back then,” Allwyn added on a cold laugh.  “I didn’t listen to the rumors.  The last witch to be affected by the tainted blood had lived almost a hundred years earlier; I was convinced the curse had run its course, and I resented the elders for watching me like a hawk until I passed my sixteenth birthday...with nothing more than a bad case of acne, I might add.”

She turned away and ran her finger along the length of a nearby shelf stuffed the brim with something a handwritten label proclaimed was ‘dried jasmine.'

“So, I left the enclave.  I never looked back, and I married the first person I happened to fall in love with; a mortal,” she added, glancing back with a painful smile.  “When Miriam was born I thought that everything was finally falling into place.  She could grow up without having to worry about the stigma that came with being born a Danva—she could be normal, and one day when she was old enough I would tell her the truth about what she was…”

“But then?”  Eliot prompted when she trailed off.

“She turned sixteen,” Allwyn said, horror filling her gaze.  “And everything that I had always feared came true.”

Her shoulders shook and she stumbled back onto a nearby stool.

“She was affected by the curse,” she went on, almost in a whisper.  “I think I knew the moment the first seizure happened but…I was afraid.   Frantic, I went back to the enclave and everyone I had left behind.  I demanded a cure—anything.  I begged them to help me, but…”

She closed her eyes, sending more silent tears rolling down her cheeks.

“They said there was nothing I could do.  Even worse—they said that because Miriam was part mortal, she didn’t have enough magic in her blood to balance the curse."

The woman sat as limply as a broken doll, eyes wide.  "They told me she would die before she even turned eighteen..."

“So you left,” Eliot guessed, voice hard.

“Oh no you don’t,” Allwyn said hoarsely, turning to glare at him.  “Don’t you dare judge me!  What else was I supposed to do?  Stay and watch my little girl die because I was too stupid to listen?  Miriam doesn’t even know the whole truth!”

“She blames herself,” Eliot said softly.  “She knows you left because of her, but she doesn’t know why—”

“How was I supposed to tell her that she was dying because her mother was a stupid fool who thought she knew it all?”

“She thinks that it’s her fault.”

Allwyn glanced at him sharply.  “You’ve talked to her.  How—”

“That’s not important,” Eliot said, cutting over her.  “The only thing that is that Miriam needs her mother.  Now more than ever.”

Allwyn hugged herself, slipping from the stool.  “I thought that if would just be easier if I left—though I didn’t even have the guts to go too far,” she added on a shaky laugh.  “I only managed to find a job in this place because the owner is some poor girl, barely older than Miri is, whose great aunt left her this place.  She was desperate enough even to hire someone like me who hasn’t worked a steady job in fifteen years."  She sighed, pulling at her long hair.  "I know that Miriam and Mathew left the city, but I don’t even where they moved to.”

Something she said caught Eliot’s attention, but he ignored it and focused on the whole reason he’d tracked the woman in the first place.

“Miriam is in Wafter’s Point,” he told her, turning for the door.  “She needs you, whether you think you she can handle the truth or not.  It’s not your choice to make…”

Or mine, a part of him added grudgingly.

He didn’t receive and answer.  Not a word at all, but when he glanced back he saw that the witch was staring into space, holding herself with trembling arms.