Night's Omen

He wanted to just stare at her, maybe give her a dirty look, but his head was positively pounding.  It only seemed to get worse as she explained, which made him feel kind of bad.  She was finally being honest and sounded like she was upset, but all he could think about was the headache.  It was almost all-consuming.

"You---" 

Somewhere in there, he'd had something to say, and it might have even been somewhat intelligent even through the headache, but that vanished in an instant as she grabbed his arm.  There was that hissed intake of breath again as he tried to pull away, tried to get out of her grip, but she wasn't letting go.  It wasn't like with his wrist (which had still hurt up until he'd been completely distracted by her grabbing him), and it felt almost like her hand was burning right through his arm, it hurt so bad.  Metal poker against the skin bad.  He made an attempt to grab her wrist, not even noticing how quickly he moved because he was just beyond caring about that, but the instant his palm touched her skin, it felt like grabbing a hot skillet.  He released her just as quickly as he'd grabbed her.

"LET GO!  IT FUCKING BURNS, LET GO!" he screamed, finally just digging his free hand into the ground and grass beside him, just for something to squeeze, and completely not caring about badassery or anything of the like.  It fucking hurt.

Reilly didn't bother responding to Jared, despite the fact that he was starting to obtain a tick in his left eye.  He understood Jared's confusion, naturally, but damn.  It wasn't until he opened his mouth that Reilly really remembered how much he disliked him.

He felt completely out of place.  Angela didn't have to explain anything regarding her personal life to Jared right now, but she had chosen to, which was fine.  Of course, in actuality, Reilly really shouldn't have had anything to do with this and that fact was becoming more and more apparent every second that he stayed.

Jared reacted to Angela's touch as if she were torturing him.  Reilly frowned.  That wasn't supposed to happen.  Mentally, he flipped through all of the information he knew about vampires to try and figure out just what was going on.  He had woken up in pain, had seemed like he had been hurting this whole time, and now Angela was creating an even worse effect.

It didn't take longer than three seconds before it hit him.

"Angela, he's an Akka," he warned.  Wow, Jared was possibly the unluckiest guy in the world right now.  It must have been karma working its magic.

"Jesus CHRIST!" she screamed as Jared began freaking out on her. She let go of him sharply, and skipped backwards a few feet from the grip she'd had on him. "Jared, what is your pr-"

"Angela, he's an Akka."

She couldn't decide what she wanted to say. She inhaled sharply, finally, tilting her head a little, and then shook it. "No," she said. "No. No, it's not possible. Akkas don't come to bashes, he can't.."

The expression on Reilly's face was deadpan as usual, but there was something different, something in his eyes, something that was more wary than it had been before. If what he said was true, her mere presence was going to drive Jared over the edge. She looked at her cousin helplessly, and balled her fists up so tightly she dug her nails into her palms.

"This isn't fair," she whimpered. "This isn't FAIR." Jared may not have known what it meant, but Angela knew well that this would be the last time they ever saw eachother. Even as a Kendra, or a Silver, or God, a Mira, she could have dealt with it, could have... but this didn't even give her a CHANCE to.

He looked from one to the other from where he was sitting in the dirt, one hand clutching at the burn on his arm from Angela's grabbing him, and just enduring his headache while Angela went on emotional overload and made his head hurt worse, and Reilly acted all monotone on them.  He was obviously starting to figure out that Angela was the reason he was hurting, but he didn't understand WHY.  It was also mildly worthy of concern that Reilly was being so...detached.  The guy was usually a lot more enthusiastic in his reactions.

Perhaps that was the reason why Jared looked at Reilly first.  "What's an Akka?" he asked, almost starting to believe that they might be right after all this.  Angela killed vampires.  One had bitten and apppar----oh.  Right, now he remembered.  "And does it have anything to do with that crazy bitch feeding me her blood?"

He'd forgotten that, in the excitement of everything else.  Was he really a vampire?  Ugh, that sounded so insane.

"Yeah, it does," Reilly answered Jared.  Angela was upset and he wanted to comfort her, but he wasn't entirely sure how.  He also wasn't so sure that now was the right time.  So rather than say anything to her, he could only frown apologetically.

"Akka's just a line of vampires.  The problem is, anything that holds great emotional value hurts them.  Like, for instance," he straightened himself, gesturing offhandedly to Angela, "Angela.  She's your girlfriend.  The fact that she cares about you and that you care about her is gonna keep on hurting you, which'd be your problem right now."  He really couldn't explain it any better than that, and he definitely wasn't going to tell Jared the advantages of being an Akka, like the fact that they were all strong.  He wouldn't hesitate to tell him how quickly they usually ended up dying, though.

Jared really wasn't having a good day, was he?

"I don't know all the details, but I've seen Akka vampires start hurting around art and shit like that.  Crosses, churches; that kinda stuff too."

Angela sat down on the closest thing she could find, feeling her knees suddenly get weak. There was that old familiar pit in her stomach, the one that she'd had since childhood. The one that separated her from the rest of the world. Did every Arun Witch just get some predetermined fuck? Even her mother'd had a shit childhood; it probably explained why her uncle was such a dick. Some of them dealt, some of them didn't. Which would Angela be, she wondered? The line was damned, cursed, 'tainted', and now she was getting it up the ass for it, that's what.

"Of all the fucking things to bite him," she hissed to herself. She was alternating between vast heatwaves of anger and heavy, solid lines of heartache. She couldn't figure out what she wanted to feel, or how she wanted to feel it. She wanted to go home, and crawl into bed, and wake up tomorrow and have this be a bad dream. But it wasn't. She looked back at Jared, and then away again.

She needed to just get up, and go. Just get up and go, and never look back. She couldn't guarantee his safety at all, or her own, but she could stop hurting him by simply being in his presence. She'd never seen an Akkan first had; she'd never seen it this bad. She knew why they didn't live long, though, now. What do you do when the mere thought of enjoyment burns your mind?

"Reilly. I think we need to go," she said in a low voice. She was trying to put her teenage self out of her mind, pull the Witch in. It was incredibly hard.

He just STARED at Reilly as the guy spoke, then glanced very briefly at Angela.  If he was quick about it, it was relatively okay.  He still had that headache, but maybe he could work through that.  He was still hoping this was some crazy nightmare, but it was no dream he'd ever felt before, and he didn't think his own mind was creative enough to come up with this shit. 

The fact that Angela and Reilly both knew so much about this, when he was totally clueless, wasn't quite so nice.

"Go where?" he asked, thinking again of that place they'd mentioned at first.  He didn't remember the name, but it didn't occur to him that Angela might be trying to leave without him.  Somehow, their earlier fight seemed stupid in comparison, and there was too much going on right that second for him to worry about the fact that she'd been lying to him and keeping things from him for so long.  Right then, more immediate matters were important, and it seemed almost impossible to him that she'd just abandon him like that. 

He pulled himself up, using the car to steady himself, and just...waited.  He didn't know what was supposed to happen next, he hadn't really even had a chance with that headache and hearing all this crazy talk to even just look around as a vampire yet, and none of that mattered just yet.  Where were they going?

Angela was not reacting well.

Reilly understood, one-hundred percent, why Angela would want to leave.  This was her boyfriend.  She was causing him pain.  Not emotional pain, but the physical pain that only an Akka had to go through.  That made complete sense, and yet, at the same time, he didn't feel that it was the brightest idea.  She was leaving Jared, a new vampire, all alone without any direction, and while Reilly felt no obligation towards Jared or any other vampire, he did think that it was still cold on her part.  It was irrational and she was working entirely off of her emotions.  She needed to stop doing that; Reilly worried about what else it could lead to.  Aside from that, he wasn't so sure about leaving Jared to his own devices.  He could do something incredibly stupid with no one there to stop him.

"You really want to leave?" Reilly asked her.  He was so tired of being serious, but this situation wasn't over yet.  "I know you're hurting him, but really, he can take it.  Just don't touch him."

His eyes slid to Jared, then back to Angela as he sighed.  "I think you should really try to help him out.  If we go, what's he gonna do?  Didn't you want to take him to Single Earth?"

He wasn't going to argue with her, so if she just wanted to leave, he would leave with her.  This was her problem, not his, so however she chose to handle it was up solely up to her.  Reilly could only offer her his honest opinion.

Single Earth. That's right. Angela looked up and sighed. She was so... so mixed up! She looked at Reilly now, cutting Jared and what he wanted completely out of the conversation for the moment. She wanted to just ask Reilly to take him, but she felt like that would get Jared dumped into the wood somewhere. She frowned. Again.

"I don't know. I don't know," she said again, more softly. She really didn't. This was just going completely wrong. "I don't know what to do."

At one time in her life, Angela remembered she could make any decision on a dime, but it was never because she severed her emotions out of it. A lot of those had gotten her into trouble, in retrospect. Now wasn't the time to just make a decision on the fly - the problem was that she didn't have TIME to sit and weigh her options. There was never any time.

"I guess we can get him to Single Earth and go from there," she said finally. But she somehow didn't want to be in the car with him. She wanted to be... as far away as possible.

He was being ignored.  Great.  Just what he wanted, after all this.  It made him mad, but even more, it made him want to get a drink.  Getting absolutely shit-faced had NEVER looked so good.

"Hey, in case you two forgot, I'm still fucking here.  Why don't you ask me what I want to do and tell me what the fuck Single Earth is?" he demanded.  It was really nice of them to worry so much about what was going to happen to him in the next ten minutes, but he'd have liked a little input, and maybe some more information about just how messed up his life had gotten.  That was need-to-know information, and since they seemed to know so much, he wanted to hear it.

He still couldn't believe Angela had kept all this from him.

Reilly, who had been about to answer Angela, turned his head and gave Jared a sharp stare.  "Chill."  Jared didn't know enough to have an opinion and if he wanted to know anything in particular, nothing was stopping him from asking.

Looking back to his cousin, Reilly crossed his arms over his chest and relaxed his weight on one leg.  "Don't feel pressured.  Anything that's decided will work out.  We'll make it work.

"And we're not going to keep you in the dark, you know," he continued then, focusing back on Jared.  "You'll get all your questions answered at Single Earth, that's what they're there for."

He had so many comments he wanted to make.  So many unspoken taunts and moronic, yet somehow entirely effective one liners, but he kept them all in.  He was amazed that he had gotten this far without saying something stupid.  He was notorious for that, especially with Jared.  Maybe subconsciously he knew that this was too big of a problem for him to be playing it off as nothing.

Still.

"Bunch'a fucking fakes."

She shrugged finally, throwing up her hands to convey how useless she felt her ideas were going to be at this point. "Fine. Single Earth."

She twirled her car keys around her finger, waiting for Jared to decide not to comply. She wouldn't bank on it, but she hoped for it. She just wanted to leave, to leave him there, to cut this off now before it got worse. And it would, she knew. Once they got to Single Earth she'd need to make a few phone calls.

Being told to 'chill' nearly got a nasty remark out of him, but then Reilly was back to talking about that Single Earth place again, and despite his usual bad attitude, he wasn't going to be dumb and not listen to information that might really help him out in the near future.  That didn't mean he had to be nice about it all, though.

"What.  Is.  Single Earth?" he finally asked, nice and slow.  He'd already tried to get that answer, and all Reilly had said was 'bunch of fakes'.  That was both encouraging and informative.  Right.  Fucking Reilly.

He was tempted to be a pain in the ass just because he could, and because that constant headache was starting to make him seriously cranky.  That was because Angela was there, according to Reilly, and Angela had sounded as though she believed it.  It made him want to take off, just put some distance between them so that he could actually think, but for some reason, he stayed.  Maybe to prove that he could, or that he would?  He had a habit of doing the exact opposite of what he really should do, so it really wasn't too surprising that he decided to stay.  And who knew?  Maybe staying and getting some actual help was for the best.  It wasn't helping his mood any, though.