Chapter 18

The Ugly Truth

Kathrine met with Davina every day to help process with what I’d done to her. After the first week of sessions, Kathrine returned to her daily life at Darksmith and began catching up with old friends. After the second week, she’d gone to town with Luke. During the third week, she’d kicked Luke out of her dorm, because she needed her space. During the fourth week, Riza told me Kathrine had started acting like her old self.

My daughter wasn’t ready to see me, though.

Kathrine skipped my classes the first five times she was supposed to come, but she attended the sixth. At the end of lesson, she stopped in front of my desk as the other students hurried out for their next class.

She took a deep breath and glanced around making sure other people were nearby. “When are you free to talk?”

It had taken two months of patiently waiting, and keeping myself occupied, but she was finally willing to speak to me.

I swallowed my excitement. “Would tonight work for you?”

She paused and then nodded. “I can do tonight.”

“Then I’ll see you when the dinner bell rings.”

I watched her leave, feeling quite excited.

I sent Luke to town for supplies and started cooking the moment the school day ended. In my excitement, I went a little overboard, filling the dining room with everything Kathrine might be interested in, along with the best of the new dishes I’d learned how to cook.

As the dinner bell rang, I stood at my front door waiting for her to arrive.

For the next two hours, I listened to her in her dorm, on the other side of the school, as she tried psyching herself up to come here and see me. She was still scared of me. I frightened her. But she wanted to see me, so I waited at the door, keeping the food warm, hoping she would come, and hating myself for being the cause of her fear.

Time means little to vampires and I was still standing at my door when she cried herself to sleep. I waited there all night, unable to move, unable to think about anything other than wanting to set this right, but then the need to maintain my cover as a teacher forced me start my day.

Kathrine didn’t come to her seventh lesson, but she kept talking with Davina, and making progress. She came to her eighth lesson, and we arranged to have dinner again.

That night, I listened as Kathrine walked through my workshop and climbed the staircase. This time she froze when she reached the doors to my apartment, heart racing. I could tell that she was about to run, so I reached for the handle and open the door.

She stood there, staring at me and frozen in place. I could smell her fear. It was heavy and present. It was instinctual. I’d hurt her so bad that it was a reaction, not a choice.

I smiled at her. “Would you like me to show you that you’re safe?”

She gave a small nod, unable to speak.

The healing palm technique wasn’t the only soul technique I could do. Ever since Kathrine woke, I’d been practicing the open heart technique. It let me share my feelings with others and it wasn’t something you could lie with. You could only use it to show others how you truly felt.

I processed a small amount of lifeforce into soul energy and projected my intent to protect her and not cause her harm. That all I wanted to do was make a place that was safe for her.

She relaxed but didn’t return my smile. “Can I come in?”

“Always.”

She took a tentative step inside and then sniffed. “Did you cook dinner for me?”

“I’ve cooked dinner for your brother quite a lot over the last few months and it’s only fair I do the same for you.”

I turned around and walked to the dining room. The table was just as overloaded as the last time Kathrine said she was coming over to talk. I waved my hand and used a little magic to pull her seat out as I sat in mine.

She stood in the doorway for several seconds, before walking inside to sit across from me. She stared at the buffet and frowned. “Do you even eat food anymore?”

“When I want to. It’s not a necessity.”

“So, you only drink blood.”

“No. I don’t need to drink blood to survive. I just need lifeforce and all that requires is a touch.”

Kathrine paused. “Why did you go for my blood then?”

I didn’t want to lie to her. She didn’t trust me, and I wanted her to trust me. To know she could depend on me. That meant, I had to tell her the truth, unfiltered and whole.

“Blood has restorative properties for vampires that lifeforce doesn’t. I can live without it, but doing so makes it harder for me to recover. Familial blood is better for healing and strengthening vampires than the blood of strangers. It’s similar to the blood of extremely high-level people. Hero’s blood is better than both. You are both my child and a hero. So, yours and Luke’s blood is the greatest healing elixir that exists for me. When you summoned me, I was asleep. When I arrive only the vampire woke, and it woke to the knowledge it was dying. Your blood was an oasis in the desert, and it was dying from thirst.”

“If blood is so helpful, why don’t you drink it?”

“I was trying not to tempt myself. Controlling my hunger was hard enough without knowing the taste of blood matched the most exquisite smell I have ever experience.”

“Then I’m the only person you’ve ever fed on?”

“No. I’ve eaten other vampires.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Why?”

“I wanted to survive, vampires contain lifeforce they take from others, so we can share or steal that lifeforce through blood.”

“Vampires aren’t people.”

“Is that how you feel about me?”

She briefly looked at my face and then dropped her gaze back to the table. “I’m not sure. I know I’m scared of you. I know I don’t trust you. But I also know you spent months helping me recover from what you did to me, proving that my fear isn’t rational.”

“I’m still your dad...but I’m also a demon. Trusting me completely isn’t something you should do.”

“Luke said the same thing. I just wish I knew where you ended, and the demon began.”

“You’ve got it wrong, Sweetheart. It’s where the demon and I end, and I carry on.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are lines I won’t cross. When I don’t cross those lines, you’re dealing with me and only me. There are lines the demon won’t cross. When I cross those lines, you are also dealing with me and only me. The rest of the time there are the things me and the demon do together.”

“What sort of lines will you cross that the demon won’t?”

“Helping people. Giving money to the poor. Protecting people. Saving people. Encouraging people.”

“Those are good things though.”

“And the demon in me wants no part of that. Are you hungry?”

Kathrine glanced at the food and her stomach gurgled. “I could eat.”

“Help yourself. There is plenty of everything.”

She finally smiled. “I can see that.”

She didn’t load anything onto her plate. Instead, she took her fork and started tasting the different dishes. When she found something, she liked, she added it to her plate. She’d done the same as a child and it brought back fond memories for me.

I took note of the things she liked as I loaded my plate.

She finished making her choices and then took a single bite and put down her fork. “What did my blood taste like?”

I finished chewing on a piece of fried chicken. “It tasted like joy. Like the happiest moment of my life.”

“That’s not a flavour.”

“Then blood doesn’t have a flavour. It has an emotional profile.”

“Drinking my blood brought you joy.”

“It’s more like a reaction to a drug. The moment I drank your blood the demonic parasites within me probably flooded the parts of my brain that feels joy with happy chemicals.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how you turn a man into a monster. You reward him every time he does something horrible, and you punish him every time he does something good. Eventually, he’s so twisted up he doesn’t know what he is. He just knows how to react to what makes him feel good.”

She picked up her fork and continued eating. “Was attacking me the worst thing you’ve done, since coming here?”

“I feel worse about it than anything else I’ve done, but it’s not the worst thing I’ve done. It’s the second worst.”

“Will you tell me about what you did?”

“Do you need to know?”

“I do. The person I thought you were and the person that you are, aren’t the same. You’re almost stranger to me. I need to know who you are, so I can decide if you are worth getting to know.”

“Do you know who Angelica is?”

“Davina told me about her, and I’ve seen her around the academy. She’s your other familiar, right?”

“She is. The worst thing I’ve done since I arrived was make Angelica worthy of being my familiar.”

“Why is that the worst thing you’ve done?”

“Because the night I met her, I forgotten one of the fundamental parts of being human.”

“And that is?”

“The worst human behaviours are often learned.”

This was not a good story to start rebuilding our relationship with. But Kathrine wanted to hear it and I wanted to be honest with her.

“When I first came across Angelica, all I saw was a young lady participating in a sacrificial ritual in a room filled with Unseen cultists. I let the demon slid her into the mental box conveniently marked bad guys, because it was easier than taking the time needed to get to know her. After sliding her into that box, the demon showed me a way to use her, and I saw value in its idea. She was a bad guy. She didn’t deserve mercy. So, doing what it suggested was acceptable.”

Kathrine frowned. “What did you do to her?”

“I turned her into a weapon. Her cult had a ritual that was triggered by runic magic. It allowed them to steal the attributes from the people they sacrificed. I knew the part of the ritual, called the reaping, that would allow me to sacrifice them and give their attributes to Angelica. So, I sacrificed the Unseen, including her parents, to make her stronger and then forced her to sacrifice the rest.”

Kathrine’s expression turned grim. “You made her murder people she knew.”

“I actually don’t regret making her do that and I know for a fact that it didn’t bother her.”

“You’re not painting a pretty picture.”

“This isn’t a pretty story, Sweetheart, and it gets much worse. The reaping ritual comes with side-effects. These side-effects turn those who undergo the ritual into a homicidal maniac and a magnet for evil. This isn’t a problem if your Unseen, but it is if you’re a normal young lady. When I dragged Angelica into the adventurer’s guild in Tobil the following morning to make her my familiar, I knew I’d made a mistake. We had spent the night clearing her cult from the town, so I had a chance to watch her and learning who she really was, and she was not the person I had assumed she was. I was completely wrong about her.”

“She wasn’t a bad guy.”

“No. When I walked through the guild’s doors, all I saw was a scared little girl that had been taught to be a monster. To be selfish and self-centred because it was the only way to survive her parents.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Angelica has experienced every form of abuse you can imagine. And I mean every form of abuse. Everything that is bad about her, was beaten or tormented into her. And because of my short-sightedness, she is too dangerous to be left alone. She is a living weapon of my own creation. A danger to everyone around her.”

“She was a victim of circumstance.”

“Yes. And I discovered this too late. If I hadn’t turned her into a weapon, I could have left her with people who might have been able to help her. But I had already made her too dangerous to be around normal people. I had already cut her off from having a chance at a normal life.”

“You didn’t want to make her your familiar, did you?”

I shook my head. “Following me around would only lead to a harsh life. And a harsh life is all she has experienced since we met. But I had to take her. Making her my familiar meant I could compel her not to harm people. It meant I could keep the worst of what I did to her at bay. And for the most part, I’ve been successful. Angelica isn’t aware of how monstrous she truly is.”

If I could go back to the basement and kill her parents all over again, I would. It would not we swift this time. It would not be merciful. The things they had done to that girl were beyond forgivable. She was kind and sweet natured, but they had twisted that nature into a monster.

So, I had taken their monster and made her my own.

My monster.

My sad little monster who can’t think for herself because her parents beat it out of her. Who only acts her in own self-interest because life taught her that it’s the only way that you can survive this horrible world she was born into.

The only justification I had from the life I had forced upon her was that it was not a cruel life. It was not a limited life. She could grow into whoever she wanted to be, and I would make sure she could, so long as it wasn’t the monster her parents wanted to her be.

She was my monster.

And my monster would be better than them.

Even if the only way I could show interest in her was to think of her and treat as a tool.

“Do you feel bad about what you did to her?”

“I only feel bad about the harm I cause if it effects the people I love. But I know what I did was wrong. I know what I did was terrible. I know that I screwed up and that she has to pay the cost. I know that’s not right.”

Kathrine placed her knife and fork on her empty plate. “What you did to her was worse than what you did to me. But it also sounds like a mistake. A mistake that you’ve learned from and trying to make right. That is someone I might want to know. Would you like to have dinner together tomorrow night?”

“I would like that.”