his revenge.
Kennedy felt the warm path of a tear run down her face. It was quickly followed by another. She didn't move to wipe them away. If he for some reason couldn't cry for the tragic loss of his mother, then she would do it for him.
She sniffled, it was an absentminded reflect. He looked at her then. Damien saw her tear stained face and was lost to the world.
She cried for him, for his pain.
That was something that no one, save his deceased mother, had ever done. He saw as his hand moved by its own traitorous will to wipe away a stray tear that made its way down her cheek.
"I'm sorry." She whispered sadly.
Damien came back to reality, he finally understandood what Buer had meant the many times that he had warned him about being carried away by his human emotions.
"There is no need, it all happened long before you were born." He said in a bitter tone as he removed his hand from her face none the gentler.
It hurt her to see that he would react that way to a few kind words. She wanted to be in his arms so badly that she felt the need to run away, jump into the water or just do anything else to stop herself from pushing him too far.
"It's different with my mother." She said just as bitterly as he had. He shifted, moving a little farther away from her on the rock. The skin of her arms broke out in goosebumps. She felt cold.
It was dark now and the little flying bugs that pinched harder than mosquitoes began nipping at her legs. She doubted that they added those in the informational brochures that they gave out to the unsuspecting tourits when they arrived on the island. She swatted them away with one hand.
"Even so – Damien followed her conversational path – she is your mother and you should be spending your horrible birthday being comforted by her with a real cake instead of sitting here getting brilliantly crafted knives from me." There was the brave mask again.
"I thought you said it was an athame." She tried to be funny, more for his benefit than her own. His unfeeling act made her understand that the Damien that she knew was just a filtered version of the real man that hid behind those stormy blue eyes.
"Whatever." A version filtered thinner by the second.
"Well, look who's catching up on his slang!" She played along, hoping to find another way to get closer to him.
"I can be vulgar when I want to be." She didn't doubt it.
"Don't, I've gotten kind of fond of your proper way of speaking and my world has been shaken enough for one day." What she really meant to say was that she had gotten fond of him and she wasn't prepared to have that taken away just yet.
“What about your big bald colleague?” She asked, seeing as he was in a sharing mood.
“Tyler is my shadow, that is what we call the possessed humans that work for us.” Damien explained. Perfect, because using humans as slaves was way better than doing the dirty work themselves. The whole thing still felt a little unreal to her.
"Kennedy, go home and make up with your mother or at least call her and let her know that you are safe. She sounded pretty upset when you left." On any different occasion she would've been angered or hurt by his insistence for her to leave, but this time she knew that it was really because he wanted her to get along with her mother.
She reached into her own pockets looking for her phone to call her mother. She did it to appease him, rather than to make up. Both of her hands came out holding nothing but lint. She must have left it on the night stand besides her bed.
“Can I use your phone? I left mine at home.” She asked.
“No.”
“But–”
“It would be better if you did it in person.” It looked like she was going home after all.
The ride back took less time that she had expected. Damien pulled the Charger to a stop on his driveway and left her to walk the few remaining feet to her own house.
The door to the car creaked loudly as he got out. She grasped the handle of her own door, but stopped herself from opening it as she saw him go around the car to get it for her.
How could he not expect her to develop fluffy feelings for him when he kept doing stuff like that?
"I will be right here if you need me." He told her as he moved to the side when she rose from the passenger seat.
For all his gentlemanly ways, he did seem a bit skittish around her ever since that awkward moment after he'd confided in her at the beach. Kennedy cursed her tears. They wouldn't come out when she needed them and they would spill over for no apparent reason at the worst possible moments.
An epiphany struck her, she was such a girl! Who knew? There may have been hope for her yet.
"Thank you for the – she said as she held up her burgundy clad athame into his line of vision – and the birthday cake was pretty awesome too." He chuckled slightly.
"Good night, Miss Riser." He was always the first one to say good night.
There was nothing wrong with saying good night. Only that when Damien said it, it sounded too much like a good bye. Like if every time that he said good night to her he wasn't sure if it would be the last.
"Night." She replied as she battled with her feet. They appeared to be cemented onto his driveway and she had to force them to start moving towards her house, where her mother was probably up waiting for her.
It must have been pretty late, everything was so peaceful and quiet that it bordered on eerie. But, she was used to everything going quiet whenever Damien was around.
“Go on.” The half demon in question urged her, nodding with his head in the general direction of her house.
“Yeah.” She chuckled nervously as she took a step backwards, before ineptly waving at him and practically power walking the rest of the way.
"I'm home!" She called out as she opened the front door to her house and looked around wearily.
Kennedy half expected to find her mother camped out on the sofa waiting for her. Teresa's car was parked in the driveway, but every light in the place was off. Taking a tentative step inside without closing the door, she tried the light switch on the wall besides it and flicked it twice. Nothing happened. The power must have been out.
She looked back and saw that there were a few houses on the block still had their lights on. Had their economic situation really reached a level so low that it would end on their electricity service being suspended? Even the lamp post in front of their house was working.
“Mama?” She received no reply.
She thought of going back to Damien's, but that would only make things worse. Teresa must have been sleeping and even if Kennedy was pissed at her, she still felt bad about disrespecting her mother's rules.
A senseless notion, considering how many of them she had been bending over backwards lately. Nevertheless, she closed the door behind herself. The click as it shut was quickly followed by the loud sound of glass breaking. It came from inside Steven's study.
A knot formed in her stomach and her knees turned to jelly at the noise. She was starting to abhor that room. If she went in then and everything was okay, she was definitely talking Teresa into closing it off for good.
The house was pretty dark, but she could still distinguish a few shadows and shapes. Besides, she knew the way around her own house by heart.
When she got to it and reached for the handle, she noticed that the door to Steven's hideout had been left ajar. Swallowing big, she pushed the door open and went into the room. She didn't make it far.
As soon as she'd taken two steps inside, she slipped in some kind of puddle
Her knees were the first thing to to touch the ground after her athame fell with a clang. It was quickly followed by both of her hands, palms down, bracing her against the hard surface. A sharp pain traveled through her knees to the small of her back, it hurt, but she tried to get up.
The gooey substance that she had slipped on made a funny squishy noise as she stood. It smelled kind of funky too, but she couldn't make out what it was in the dark. Kennedy cursed h
er stupidity at rushing thoughtlessly out of the house without her phone. If she had the damned thing she would’ve at least been able to shine a little light on whatever it was.
'Eureka!' She thought as she remembered the battery operated push lights that her mom had saved in one of the kitchen drawers for such an occasion.
She went to get one and came back to stand in front of the despised room's open door. Counting to three, including the odd two and a half number, she closed her eyes and pushed the center of the round light thingy.
The light that glowed from the contraption that she held made her eyelids seem red. She held her free hand up to her face and slowly opened her eyes. Red was still all she saw, but that shade was a deeper, almost burgundy color. Realization hit hard as she identified the coppery smell that filled her nostrils.
Blood, it was blood.
Breathless, she looked down and saw a pale hand laying limply on the floor. Horror-struck, she followed the hand down it's arm and found the body of her mother attached to it.
There was blood everywhere, the sticky substance that she had slipped on was her mother's life force. It pooled on the floor, undoubtedly from some horrible fatal wound that she was thankful that she wasn't able to see.
Her head moved with robotic pause as she scanned the area for something, anything that would give a reason to what was happening. For once, no clouds of black smoke could be spotted anywhere.
She wanted to scream. But, when her mouth opened, no sound came out. Her mother's eyes were closed and it was