MERARI:
My brain was on overload as I dashed through forest as fast as my dead feet could allow.
He had taken my powers.away from me! Nullified them; to the point where I couldn’t even communicate with my
I could hardly run from the injection that he forced into me when he snuck up behind me as I was on patrol.
How could I do this? How could I be so reckless? Not pay attention! Even with everything on my mind-with all that was going on.
My baby girl.
Alastair.
I was distracted. And now…now I was about to die. Or worse.
“Why do you insist on running away from me, my love?” that calm voice said from behind.
I was fast but I knew that I wasn’t fast enough to escape him. I also knew that even in him nullifying my powers, I was still far ahead of him. I wasn’t hearing his words physically. I was hearing him mentally.
He was in my head.
“What do you want from me?!” I screamed as I stumbled through the forest, my legs turning weak from whatever it was that flushing through my system.
I could hear him laughing in my head before he spoke again, “Is that just…the default question that people ask in a chase? When they are powerless against their predator?” he continued to laugh.
My foot was suddenly clipped by a branch and I lost my footing, hitting the ground hard. I forced myself back up but then immediately felt my ankles weakening. I stumbled to the ground again.
“You know exactly what I want.”
The voice that once intruded my thoughts was suddenly surrounding me . I didn’t know where the voice was originating, but I knew now that it was far closer than it once was.
He was right though. I did.
I knew exactly what he wanted.
There was no more point in even attempting to run. He was already near and he could stop with ease at this point.
“Why…then? Why are you doing this?”
He chuckled, and when he did, this time, I knew exactly where he was.
“You know….why, Merari, my love.”
He surfaced before me from the forest. It was only then that I realized that I had fell into a clearing adjacent to an oddly constructed rock formation. One that looked like a cave.
I knew…exactly where I was now. I just hadn’t realized that I’d run this far. I glared at him, realizing that this was his plan all along.
“So, this? This was your plan? To chase me here? Right back to where this all started.”
“Not…where it all started, honey. Just…mainly where we started.”
“Dronnigan, this…what you’re doing is-”
“Not the way, yes, baby. You’ve said that quite enough times for me to consider it.” He approached me. Then squatted to my level. I was completely weakened by this point. He knew that I couldn’t do anything against him. Not like this.
I knew that there was no changing his mind. I was only trying to stall him. I knew that whatever he was going to do with me…it wasn’t going to be good for anyone involved.
“Baby, you know that this is for the good of all of us-”
“No, it’s not! Dronnigan, you know that it’s not-”
“Well, of course it’s not going to be good for them,” he laughed. “That’s the whole point of this-”
“And what about the ones who are a part of their world? Dronnigan, my daughter is a part of that world…your son!”
He didn’t seem to know that I knew. I could tell from his expression. He seemed almost ashamed of it.
Ironic.
“You really thought I wouldn’t find out?” He sighed, and pulled away from me. “You…talk so condescendingly about the children of the night. And yet you continuously forget about your slip-up with one. You…going through with this is going to-”
“Say it,” he said with a grin. “Say what it is that I’m going to do. What you helped me do.”
“I didn’t help you with-”
“Oh, please, Merari!” He exclaimed impatiently. “You! You had your hand deep into what I have been planning. Now all of a sudden because your bum of a mate has decided to choose you-only after his spouse has died, that you want to have a conscience!”
He laughed and admittedly, I began to feel ashamed. Was that really what I had done? Run back to the one who hurt me the most? Because there was finally no choice?
“I…I didn’t do-”
“Oh, but yes you did,” he retorted. “You ran away-”
“I didn’t run away! I was only looking for my daughter-”
“Ah, yes, your daughter! Your baby girl,” he cackled. “Please, Merari, tell me, does she know?”
I fell silent. “She knows my mistakes.”
“Yeah, but does she know the depth of your mistakes? Does she know how far the rabbit hole goes?”
“Dronnigan.”
“Does she know that you’ve been playing the long game with her? That this whole entire time, you have been helping me with my entail? That you were so racked with hatred and revenge that you have been plotting her father’s death this entire time? Or at least up until recently.” He scoffed.
Hearing his words…the truth in them…it shocked me. It shocked me to realize how cold and enraged I truly was. How bitter I had become in doing what I had done.
“Y-you can’t tel-tell, Dronniga-”
“Oh? Why is that?” he hissed. He stood to his feet and turned his back on me, his large hands rustling through his wavy dark hair. “You have a change of heart now, huh? You see your lover, his bastard daughter, and your little girl again, and now you want to be a big happy family?”
“Dronnigan-”
“I mean really!” he whirled around irately. “What kind of hold does he have on you?” Dronnigan looked down on me with what I knew was repulsion. “The jerk completely wrote you off and then allowed his whore of a wife to murder you-or at least attempt to! Then…leave you for dead! Yet, here you are, willing to sacrifice everything to save him! He is not worth it! He’s not worth all of this love and sacrifice! How-”
“It doesn’t matter! None of that matters! What happened between us! He is not the end all be all of their race! You-”
“Wrong!” he snarled. “You. Are dead wrong!” His eyes lit up with anger.
I was weak now, and more anxious around Dronnigan than I had ever been. He seemed to notice it too as I reflexively flinched at his anger.
He took a deep breath and averted his gaze. “I’m sorry, I jus…” Dronnigan exhaled. “They’re all the same, Merari. You know they are. They…they always take, use and destroy! They’ve been doing it for centuries. How can you really say that even one of them are worthy of life?”
“How can you say that none of them are, Dronnigan? It is not your right to play judge, jury, and executioner to a whole race of people.”
“But they have a right?”
“No, they don’t!” I countered. “But it is up to those who are repressed to reprimand them for it! Not you.” He didn’t have a response to that because he knew that I was right, but still, I wasn’t done. “How…how can you be so dismissive when the mother of your child…was the exact creature that you are trying to eradicate!?”
I could tell that he was getting impatient with my constant mentioning of his personal life.
“Doesn’t feel good, does it?” I asked. “Having your past thrown in your face all the time?”
Again, he didn’t have a response, but I knew that he was angry now.
The corner of his upper lip began to twitch, and then he said. “You know the difference between my transgressions and yours? I don’t have any regrets about the past. I screwed moon child. She’s dead, and now I get a remarkable son out of the deal. You though? Nah, nah, you are trying to live in the past. Trying to reclaim something has long been lost for you, Merari,” he scoffed. “You can’t start over. You can’t marry Alastair Wade and make a life with your daughter. You can’t raise her because her life is already well on its way without you. You…you are useless to them.”
His words hurt. They more than hurt. It was devastating. Because he was right. And it angered me.
“You’re angry because even despite my messed up life, and what Alastair did to me…what his wife did to me,” I shook my head in disgust. “I still don’t want you anymore. That’s why you’re angry-”
Dronnigan snatched me up by the back of my head and pulled me closer to him. “We’ll see what you choose,” he growled. “When everything that you know and love is destroyed.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Merari! I Will snatch that pretty little girl away from you…you will never see her again. And I’ll use her…like the pretty little toy that she is-”
“No!” I screamed as I tried to fight him off of me. “You leave her alone!”
“I love those beautiful crystalline tears running down that beautiful and perfect face of yours. It’s sexy…when you’re powerless…and weak.”
“Weak,” I snarled. “You feeling like a big man because you’ve taken my powers?”
“Not necessarily. More or less the same man,” He grinned. “Listen, I’m not above admitting that I wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable being in this position with you if you were powered up.”
“Let. Me. Go.” I croaked angrily.
“Oh, baby…I am never going to let you go. And soon enough…I’m going to have Valene too.”
What have I done? Everything was going to be stripped and taken away from me. Alastair and the whole of his race was at risk of extinction. My little girl’s wellbeing was in danger, again.
And…it was all because of me.