“How’s he here if you killed him?”

“I didn’t say we killed him,” he said with a mirthless grin. “I said we buried him.”

He rose from the bed and began to pace, his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he considered his words. I didn’t speak or offer any distraction since I really wanted to know what the hell was going on.

“Twenty-five years ago,” he began. “I was a young father. Handsome, some would say, and lucky enough to be married to the most beautiful and intelligent woman I had ever had the privilege of knowing.”

His smile, was gentle and his eyes distant as though he were looking back over the years and seeing the life he had. It made me want to weep for his loss.

“My best friend was her brother, Peter,” he said and nodded as my eyes widened. “He was married to Marie then, though none of us knew how she spent her time on those little trips away she took ‘for work.’ We were happy.”

“We owned our own business. Peter handled the money and the clients, I did the work designing buildings and the like.”

“You were an architect?” I asked and he smiled softly.

“Once upon a time.”

For a moment, he appeared about to say something and then seemingly changed his mind and continued instead with his story.

“We were happy,” he repeated and my heart ached for the pain in his words. “I had two young children at home, Micah and Sarah. Everything I did, all that I was building, was for them. Then Sephtis came.”

I didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know but as his smile faltered and he bowed his head, unshed tears in his eyes even after all this time. I felt that I needed to know. To understand the depths of his grief, to be able to connect with him over our shared tragedy and help him through it.

“What happened?”

“It was before mobile phones,” he said. “So I got the call at the office but I wasn’t there. It was recorded on the answering machine instead for me to listen to, again and again.”

“What was?”

“He made her call me,” he said and wiped at his eyes with a shaking hand. “Made her tell me exactly what he’d done to my beautiful children as she wept, words pulled from her, full of pain and unimaginable grief at what she’d witnessed.”

For a moment he paused, unable to continue and he turned from me as his shoulders shook. I didn’t speak, didn’t interrupt his grief and waited as patiently as I could for him to continue, all while feeling the churning in my guts at what I was hearing.

“Her voice cut off, fading as though she was being dragged away from the phone,” he said without looking at me. “It still was able to record the grunts and the laughter as he took everything from her and her screams as he fed.”

“For a minute after, there was silence and then his voice. He told me exactly what he’d done, taunting me, determined to do as much damage to me as he could.”

“Why?” I asked. Surely there’d been a reason.

“Because he could,” Abe said simply. “It amused him to let me know, to let me hear what happened to my family. His voice was full of glee, knowing that he had destroyed me. A vampire is the worst of human nature with anything good boiled away leaving nothing, no hold on their actions. They do as they please and delight in cruelty.”

“I’m so sorry.” What else could I say? There were no words to comfort him, no words that would give him any way of forgetting the evil that had been done. He waved away my words and continued.

“Peter was devastated and as shocked as I. Marie hugged me and then went missing for three days. When she returned, she had a name. Sephtis.”

“How did she find it?”

“Her contacts amongst the hunters,” he said with a shrug. “That’s my best guess. She never told me exactly how she found out. She did tell us about the Supernatural world and the monsters it contained. About what Sephtis was.”

“What then?”

“It took us five years all told,” Abe said and finally turned to me. His eyes were red and his expression raw, as though his soul were laid out before me. I could see all of his anguish there. “Five years and two continents, but we caught him.”

“Caught him?”

“A vampire regenerates. Did you know that?” I shook my head and his face twisted, hatred flashing across it. “With enough blood you can spend days, weeks even, tormenting them and then with a bit of blood they will heal and you can start again.”

“You tortured him.” It wasn’t a question, I could see already his answer. It was writ plain on his face. In the gleam of his eyes.

“Yes,” he hissed. “For months we cut and we burned. I wanted him to feel the pain that I did every time I thought of my lost family.”

For a moment his voice faltered and he looked me straight in the eye. “For a time I became a monster and I revelled in what I did to him.”

“What made you stop?”

“Marie. She grew weary with it and suggested a new torment, one that would last an eternity.”

“What?” I asked, breathless with a need to know.

“It takes a great deal of blood for them to regrow body parts,” he said and I blanched at his words. “I took his arms and his legs. His cock and his balls that I’d have made him eat if they hadn’t turned to ash in my hand. I peeled his skin and took his ears and nose.”

“Then what?”

“I placed him in a box made of iron and wrapped it securely with chains, then buried him ten feet beneath the earth to rot for an eternity. Unable to move, to free himself or to heal without blood. Or so I thought.”

“But he did escape.” I felt cold, numb all of a sudden as what he’d just told me finally registered and realisation came. “Within seven years, because that’s when he killed my parents.”

“Yes,” the older man said and his shoulders sagged as he suddenly looked older and wearier than ever before. “That is a burden I will have to live with.”

“If you’d just killed him, my parents would be alive,” I said and he flinched. “There’d have been none of the miserable life I’ve had. The endless nightmares, the abuse, the time lost in the asylums. I’d have grown up with parents who loved me.”

“Yes,” he repeated, almost a whisper.

“Get out,” I told him as those cursed tears threatened to fall. Stay strong! I urged myself.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes as he quietly left the room, the door closing behind him with a soft click.

A part of me was trying to say that it was irrational. He had no idea what would happen and the only one to blame for my parent's deaths was Sephtis. But I didn’t want to listen to that. I wanted someone to blame, someone close I could hate and direct all my impotent rage. Anything other than worrying over my friend.

My eyes fell on the sparkling silver dress she’d discarded on the bed when she’d changed just hours earlier. I gathered it up, feeling the material in my hands, smooth and cool as I inhaled the faint odour of her perfume and then the tears fell.

For the first time in so very long, I wept. For my parents, for my life so far but most of all, for the friend who I dared to hope might be more than just friend. With great heaving sobs, I wept until sleep dragged me down.

****

After far too little sleep and aching pretty much everywhere, I awoke to bright sunlight as Patrik pulled open the curtains.

“What’re you doing? G’way!”

“Huh?”

“I said go away!”

“Well aren’t you little miss sunshine this morning,” he said with a strained attempt at a smile.

My reply was short and foul which just made him laugh heartily. It really didn’t help the banging headache I seemed to have developed.

“Time is it?”

“Ten.”

“In the morning?”

“Obviously. Time to get up, the others are here,” he said. “There’s half a dozen breakfast bars on the bedside table. You’ll still be hungry after eating them all. Get cleaned up and come downstairs.”

“The others?”

“Ja, the other teams. We got word from Jonah.” His smile, when I looked up at him with one hand over my eyes to shade them from the too bright light, was entirely natural. “He saw someone matching Evie’s description taken inside. She was fighting them all the way.”

“She’s alive!”

“As far as we know, yes.”

“Thank you,” I said simply and he flashed his teeth as he waved to the table and I nodded.

He left the room and I pushed myself up. Still wearing the fouled clothing of the day before and my healing abilities had kicked in enough to ensure my nose hurt, but not as badly as I’d expected. But who cared? Evie was alive!

I’d eaten the third bar by the time I mustered up the energy to get out of bed and all six were gone by the time I entered the bathroom and pulled off my soiled clothing. My gaze dropped as I passed the mirror and I stopped, forcing my eyes to focus on my reflected image.

For years I’d avoided anything but a perfunctory look in a mirror. As a teen, I’d been told so often that I was worthless that it’d become just a part of who I was. When I’d looked into the mirror, the person I’d seen looking back hadn’t seemed real.

As the years passed by and I alternated between group homes, foster care and Asylums, that feeling of separation had grown stronger. The girl in the mirror wasn’t me, couldn’t be me since I was without worth. An orphan, alone and miserable in the world. To acknowledge, she was me, was to acknowledge my pain and I’d been in no way ready to do that.

Instead, I’d avoided looking at myself. Avoided seeing the person I was becoming and instead, hidden away. It had become a part of who I was. A person with no real reflection, empty inside.

That had to change. If not for me, then for Evie. How could I accept whatever feelings she had for me, if I couldn’t share them? How could I be someone she could love if I couldn’t see what she did when she looked at me?

My eyes met those of my mirror image and held steady… for a moment before I looked away. I wasn’t ready to see what others saw when they looked at me. What she saw. Not that day anyway, perhaps later, when she was back with me. With a sigh, I stepped into the shower.

A hot shower, change of clothes and a couple more of the pain pills and I felt ready to start the day. I could even make it down the stairs without help and had a smile for Patrik who was waiting at the bottom.

“Kitchen first,” he said. “You need more food, ja?”

“Ja,” I said as my belly grumbled. “Definitely Ja.”

He gestured for me to follow him and led me through to the kitchen. My mouth began to water immediately as the rich aromas came to my poor damaged nose. I looked at Patrik and he just winked.

“We need food for healing, so we made plenty.”

“Great,” I said as I followed him into the kitchen.

A bald headed man with a pot belly and round face was pulling a tray from the oven as we entered. He glanced up and smiled warmly, revealing crooked teeth. He hastily put the tray onto the top of the oven and pulled off the oven mitts before holding out his hand to me.

“Alright love,” he said as I gingerly took his hand. He had ‘HATE’ spelled out over the knuckles in faded blue ink and beneath the sleeves of his shirt, more amateur artwork was visible including a swastika in the centre of a flaming skull. “You must be Lena.”

“Erm, yeah. Hi.”

“I’m Darren but you can call me Daz,” he said cheerily. “Fancy a bacon buttie?”

“Sure,” I said with a glance to Patrik who seemed to be enjoying immensely my reaction to the strange man.

He looked, for all the world, like a skinhead thug who would kick the living daylights out of you if you were the wrong colour. But as soon as he opened his mouth, that was dispelled in a wave of cheery good-naturedness.

“Here you go,” he said as he handed me a buttered t-cake with a good half dozen rashers of bacon stuffed into it, along with lettuce and sliced tomato. “Get that down yer.”

“Thanks,” I said and took a large bite. It seemed the best thing to do since I had no idea what to say to him. He smiled his crooked-toothed smile and nodded.

“Good?”

“Yeah, great. Thanks.”

“Are you making more bacon?” a sweet-sounding, almost musical voice asked from the doorway and I turned to see a striking woman with cinnamon skin and warm dark eyes. She smiled as she crossed to Daz and paused briefly to kiss him before pulling a face. “You smell of red meat.”

“Sorry my love,” he said with a grin that indicated he was anything but sorry. “Gotta feed the troops.”

“Feed them some turkey bacon and then at least I can have some.”

“Next batch,” he said. “Promise.”

“You’d better,” she said before turning to me with a bright smile. “Hi, I’m Nazia.”

“Oh, hi,” I said and held out a hand that I realised immediately was likely covered with grease from the bacon buttie. I quickly wiped the offending hand against my jeans as she laughed charmingly and held it out again.

“A pleasure to meet you,” she said. “I understand it’s your partner we’re going to rescue?”

“Is that Partner,” Daz said. “Like life partner, or team partner?”

“Not sure,” I said as my cheeks heated.

“Darren James Andrews, that’s none of our business,” Nazia scolded in a tone that she had obviously used often with him. He just grinned and shrugged.

“Starting to look like this is the LGBTQ-whatever other letter they want to add, alliance HQ with Jo and that mean, pouty little lass of hers. Not to mention Barry being here too.”

“Barry?”

“Yes love,” Daz said. “He got married to Jonah not six months ago.”

“It was a lovely ceremony,” Nazia said and flashed a stern look to the unrepentant man. “Daz cried.”

“He did?” I asked with a wide smile.

“Oh aye,” he said. “Always cry at weddings I do.”

“Blubbered like a child at ours,” Nazia said fondly.

“You two are together then?” I asked and Patrik burst into laughter behind me.

“Ja,” he said. “An odd couple to be sure.”

“I was a stupid child,” Daz said with a rueful shake of his head at my curious expression. He scrubbed at the empty tray in the sink. “Got in with the wrong crowd and lost my way.”

“Is that where…” I nodded to the tattoo showing just below his sleeve and he nodded.

“Spent four years in prison not long after I got that,” he said. “Only made me worse.”

“We all have a past,” Nazia said gently and sorrow briefly touched her eyes. “But that is why we’re here is it not. Because of our pasts?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Can you see which is the Shadowborn?” Patrik asked and I frowned his way.

“What? No?”

“Look at each in turn,” the big man said. “What does your gut feeling say about them?”

My frown deepened as I turned back to the smiling couple. How the hell would I know which was half-demon or not? I had a fifty-fifty chance to be right I supposed, but still.

Nazia, tall and willowy. I had a feeling of strength, unshakeable will, and a deep, pure purpose. Her husband Daz, short and wide. For all his good cheer, I sensed there was something beneath that, a furious anger that would never be quenched.

“Daz…” I said.

“Well done,” Nazia said with a wide smile.

“What type do you think?” Patrik asked.

“Something to do with fire… maybe.”

His brows lifted in surprise as he nodded. “Right on the mark. His gift is fire and it’s a powerful one.”

“Well it’s why I have no hair anyway,” Daz said. “Burns right off if I let it grow out.”

“Stinks to high heaven too,” Patrik said with a grin.

Laughter followed and I finished off the last of my sandwich. It was an easy kind of familiarity they had and I could tell they were friends or at least close enough to be a kind of family. Once again, I felt apart.

They’d obviously known each other for some time and were reasonably close. I was an interloper, a newbie to the group who had brought chaos and problems down on them. There was a sort of disconnect between them and me, a feeling of belonging that I lacked, that set me apart as an outsider.

A loud call came from the living room and Patrik sighed softly. “Looks like they’re ready for us,” he said.

“Ready?”

“They have a plan of what we’re going to do,” Nazia said with a gentle smile for me, at once reassuring and full of care.

“A plan to get Evie back?” I asked and a chill ran up my spine at their shared glances. “We are getting her back aren’t we?”

“I hope so,” Patrik said.