Dawn's Path: Completed Work

Anna had been inexorably drawn further down the rabbit hole and as much as she'd resisted in the beginning, she'd become a part of that world too. She'd gotten to choose to live or to die, and in death she'd chosen to live. Amongst the technically dead, she had a life and she'd never been happier. And she'd never looked back.

When the waitress arrived to take their order, Anna automatically recited her request without bothering to glance at the menu. It didn't matter how juicy the steak was. She couldn't eat it anyway. Her likes and dislikes in regards to food and what she'd selected were out of human habit, habits that no longer served a purpose. But, were as comfortable and familiar as a soft woolen blanket on a cold winter's night. On paper, she was technically dead. Hopefully, the strangers that had recognized her in the pub didn't realize it. She certainly didn't think about it often. She was very much alive and kicking. And despite how very unhuman she was. She refused to see herself as otherwise.

The waitress was too busy to bat an eye at Anna's order. She jotted down Leigh's order and glared at Janine. Her pen poised on her pad as she tapped a foot impatiently waiting for her to decide. "Could you give us a few minutes?" Anna asked. The waitress shuffled off in a huff and went to an adjacent table to check on her customers and no doubt, to ensure a big tip, as she sashayed across the room, jiggling her assets at the male patrons gawking after her.

Anna had a few well-learned tricks up her sleeve to aid the illusion that she was human and actually ate the food. She'd cut a few bites off the steak and slip them into a napkin and then excuse herself to go to the ladies room to hide the evidence. Shuffle around a few vegetables on the plate. Claim to be stuffed. And ask for a to go box for the leftovers. Easy.

The crowd in the pub was gradually dwindling. And Janine had yet to decide on her meal. Anna needed the bustle of the crowd and the busyness of the waitresses to hide her little stunt. If business slowed, the waitress would check on them more often and the remaining patrons wouldn't be as distracted. Somebody might see. Of course, they'd probably assume she was an anorexic. But, Anna wasn't willing to take the chance that someone would think otherwise. "Janine, you can't go wrong. The food is good. Anything you order will be fantastic."

Janine tried to ignore the nagging feeling that something other than her inability to decide had Anna on edge. Janine scanned the menu for the millionth time and couldn't seem to settle on one thing. Sure, food sounded good. The menu had plenty of items to choose from. But, maybe she wasn't as hungry as she'd thought. Nothing sounded good. She'd have a passing interest in one dinner selection. But, something else would draw her attention. She just couldn't make up her mind. When the waitress returned, glaring down at her unhappily. Janine did the only thing a hungry girl without an appetite could do. She decided to drink her supper. "Margarita on the rocks, extra salt on the rim," she said, slamming her menu closed with a determined nod.

If she wanted something to eat, she'd order it later or just sample Anna's plate. It wasn't like Anna was going to eat it. But, Janine doubted she would. Steak extra rare...ugh! She was going to be on a blood diet for a long time and the thought of getting a head start on it did not appeal to her in the least. Alcohol was comfort food, right? Margaritas were nutritious. Lime juice had plenty of vitamin C. And the body needed salt. Right?

Ignoring Anna's scowl and Leigh's concerned sigh, she picked at the appetizer Leigh had ordered with her meal and watched the queso cheese drip from the chip onto the plate. But, she couldn't muster the enthusiasm to put it into her mouth. She'd rather be drunk than spend her last few hours as a human in indecision. Everything was so important. Every bite of food she hadn't been able to decide on and sip of the drink the waitress had set in front of her was critical because it was her last. Feeling the pressure to accomplish something memorable on her last night, she licked the salt that had fallen from the rim of her glass off her fingertips. Drunk was good. Drunk would mask the feelings she didn't have the courage to confront. Drowning in optimism was a better way to go out than cowering in fear.

Leigh had been through this before. Alex hadn't been much different than Janine on her last night as a human. Trying to cram one lifetime into one night was an impossible undertaking. She supposed, if she'd been younger and was about to embark on the life Janine and Alex had chosen, she might feel the urgency to do the same. Janine was her daughter's best friend. They were more like sisters than best friends, actually. And the two of them were more alike than they'd ever willingly admit.

The mom in Leigh reached out to Janine, wanting to comfort her in that special way only a mother could. The supper she'd chosen wasn't one she would have ordered for herself. She was more of a meat and potatoes girl. After over twenty years of cooking for her husband, accommodating his stubborn refusal to try anything new. She'd adapted. Alexander ate fresh fruits and vegetables. Apples plucked right off the tree and tomatoes straight from the vine. But, put a salad in front of him at suppertime instead of his usual meals and she'd never hear the end of it.

The salad looked pretty enough. The plate overflowed with colorful vegetables and strips of blackened chicken. And Leigh was certain the greens were crisp and fresh and the chicken flavorful and tender. Salad simply wasn't her thing. She'd suffered through that final night with Alex and had spent hours preparing all of Alex's favorite dishes only to have her wrinkle her nose at them and in a way so much like her father, stubbornly refuse to try a single taste. The meal she'd ordered wasn't for her. She'd chosen with Janine in mind in the hopes that she could coax a few bites down her.

Leigh considered Janine a daughter. And they'd seen one another through many sleepless nights. She wished she'd had the forethought to bring a few skeins of yarn along for the trip or maybe, a word search puzzle book. Anything to preoccupy Janine's mind and make these last few agonizing hours bearable.

A mom to her core, she frowned as Janine lapped the salt off the rim of her glass and sampled the drink. She was nervous too, afraid for Janine and the unforeseeable future that hinged on the outcome of tomorrow night. She tried not to show it though. And after scooping half of her salad onto a plate she set in front of Janine. She bravely dug into the salad. Making over the burst of flavor on her tongue and perhaps, overdoing it just a bit, just as she'd done every time Alexander refused to sample a new recipe, and Alex as a little girl, pouting at the dinner table, hid her vegetables in her napkin. Worked like a charm. And she smiled in encouragement as Janine took her first reluctant nibble at the salad.

Picking at the salad Leigh had all but fed to her. Janine forced the mouthful she'd taken to make the woman happy and nodded in approval. The salad might have been good, if she actually had an appetite and wanted to eat. Spearing another forkful off the plate she shoved it into her mouth and chewed. Leigh was the mom her mother had never been. Leigh was the mom of every kid's dreams. Freshly baked cookies cooling on a rack after school, kissing booboos better, lots of hugs, and plenty of love, that was the mom Alex had grown up with.

Oh, Janine wasn't discounting Alex's dad. Alexander was great, a father of legendary proportions and larger than life. He was the Mr. Fix It around the farm. Stern and protective of his 'girls', sometimes overly so, he was not one of those dads easily fooled by batting eyelashes and a coy smile. He doted on Alex, no doubt about that. And as a kid, there was little doubt that Alex had played one parent against the other to see which one of them would cave first to her little girl demands. The ploy hadn't worked. Leigh and Alexander loved their daughter too much for such tricks to have any effect. Any discipline they dolled out, any time they'd told her 'no' and stuck to their word was done so out of love.

Janine had thought about contacting her mom. And then rethought the idea. Her mother had shipped her to boarding schools to be raised by strangers rather than take the task herself. There had been holidays and vacations from the year round school schedule. Cold, awkward affairs Janine skipped more often than she showed up for. Her mother hadn't seemed to mind though. The only motherly function her parent had performed was to dole out plenty of cool, bitter, criticisms for the only daughter she had. Janine liked to think that her mother hadn't always been that way. That somewhere inside that bony, runway fashion model façade of superficial, designer clothing and magazine perfection was a woman whose beat a heart with at least some small measure of love for her.

Her father wasn't any better. For whatever reason, her parents had never bothered to get a divorce. And it really didn't matter as to why. Her parents simply tolerated one another and took careful measures to avoid each other as much as possible. He, as her mother liked to refer to him, was the sperm donor that had impregnated her and left her to raise his offspring. Her father signed the checks and that was the full measure of his duty to his only daughter.

Call them? No. To them she'd never existed, never mattered. Any burden associated with raising her had ended long ago. Maybe, it was a passive way of getting her revenge on them for not being the parents they should have been. She'd enrolled at one of the most expensive colleges in the country and milked every cent of the bill out of them. And maybe that was why instead of moving to the east coast where they lived their cold, practical, dysfunctional lives. She'd chosen to live over a thousand miles away and work for a fraction of what she could have been earning. If she died tomorrow night, they'd never know the difference. To them, she'd died a long time ago.

Once she died on paper, the life insurance policy, no doubt a very big one, her parents undoubtedly carried on her, would compensate the old bat for the inconvenience of raising a child she didn't want. And repay her father every dime he'd ever spent providing for a child he couldn't take the time to be bothered with. That was a fair or as caring as Janine could be. Someone might as well get some benefit out of her death. And it might as well be the parents that for all their flaws had somehow managed to endure one another long enough to make her.

She ate the salad, because it made Leigh happy. Because, Leigh cared that she ate. She chewed the tasteless greens and forced the dried, leathery strips of chicken down. The margarita, heavy on the salt, and thank God, the tequila, at least made the food tolerable. And before too long, Janine felt the effects of the alcohol go straight to her head. Usually, she was a happy drunk. Tonight all she could do was feel the pressure of the world weighing on her shoulders. Pushing the half-eaten plate to the side, promising Leigh that she was stuffed and couldn't take another bite, she finished her drink in one gulp and flagged the waitress over for a second round.

Janine didn't want to think about the endless years stretching out before her. Blank, like pages in a book yet to be written. Leigh and Alexander had plenty of time to change their minds. They were determined to see their lives to the bitter and way too soon end. Leigh looked good for her age, just a hair past middle aged. Classically beautiful with her blonde hair laced with hints of silver, twisted up into a tight chignon at the base of her neck. There was something to be said for the country life and there was hardly a wrinkle on her skin. Laugh lines feathering out from the corners of her mouth and eyes, of course. But, the deep frown lines associated with stress, not a trace.

Alexander had been intensely carrot-top redheaded in his youth, his hair just a shade copperier than Alex's. The shade had been faded by time and bleached by decades in the sun to a color not quite blond. The sun had permanently tanned his skin and carved deep grooves into his brow. Hard work on the farm kept him strong and fit. He was a good looking man in his younger days and time had not changed that one bit.

Janine wondered if Alex had the power of a daughter to convince them to choose a different path, if she could manage to talk them into deceiving time and stopping the clock from ticking forever. Humans had the right to grow old and to die. And Leigh and Alexander held stubbornly to their convictions to do just that. Janine didn't want to ever say goodbye to the only real parents she'd ever known. She couldn't bear to watch them fade and wither. But, there really wasn't any other choice but to do just that. She knew far too well that being a vampire didn't guarantee happiness and it sure as hell didn't guarantee a long life.

Janine sipped the second margarita as soon as the waitress set it on the table and collected the empty glass. She was going to get shit-faced drunk. And damn it, she was going to be a happy drunk. Smile and make stupid meaningless conversation about nothing in particular. Ease the worried frown on Leigh's face. And make the best of what time they had left together. And she might have been able to pull it off if not for Anna's expression. Eyes wary and posture tensed, fingers clenching and unclenching around the napkin clutched in her fist. Something was off and had been since the parking lot. Anna tried to hide a lot of things. But, she could not mask the concern clouding her pretty face. Janine knew her too well for that. "Anna, what's going on?"

Anna sniffed the margarita Janine had downed almost in one gulp and wrinkled her nose. Forcing a smile, determined not to ruin Janine's last night out. She said, "I think there's too much tequila in the drink. You're going to end up drunk off your ass." She was not going to tell Janine about the rogue they'd scented in the parking lot. And she was not going to mention that she could feel the faint tingle of his power on her skin. He had followed them. And he was somewhere out there hiding in the shadows, perhaps in the pub itself, watching them.

Janine licked at the salt around the rim of her empty glass. "Yup, you're right. That's the plan." She clumsily leaned over the table, balancing precariously between her half-eaten plate of salad and the empty drink glass, whispering as she giggled in Anna's ear. "I'm going to spend my last night as a human getting drunk." She flopped back into her seat and flagged down the waitress, dangling the empty glass from her fingers. "But, I disagree, there is no such thing as too much where tequila is concerned."

The waitress, Jenny, Janine thought was her name was, had just earned herself a big, fat assed tip courtesy of the brotherhood. She didn't bother asking what Janine wanted and simply went to the bar to order the drink. She returned to the table with the drink in her hand and a smile on her face as Janine slipped a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse and laid it face up on the table. Buzzed and quite content from the numbing affects of the tequila flowing through her bloodstream, she sipped her third margarita and let the alcohol whisk her mind away to happier places.

Anna asked the waitress for a to go box and the bill. Janine was a big enough liability without being drunk off her ass. Anything beyond three drinks and the woman would need a babysitter to keep her out of trouble. She'd be just as likely to crawl up in the rogues lap and offer herself up as an appetizer than to actually grasp the fact that she was in danger. Deciding to bypass the strippers on Janine's itinerary, she texted Toby to let him know of the change of plans. Janine could drink at home. And Anna was cutting the night short.

Chapter 36

Carter kept his distance, watching the band of Sons from the darkened alleyway adjacent to the bar. The brothers were legendary for their notorious decapitate first ask questions later reputation. But, he hadn't seen evidence of it, at least not recently. When Roark's infamous Calling drew hundreds of his rogue protégés to the woods, the Sons could have slaughtered the whole lot of them then and there and saved him the trouble of cleaning up his city after them.

This was the age of negotiation and live and let live. And it was a royal pain in his ass. The brotherhood was soft and had somehow managed to develop a conscience. Too bad the Rogue Masters hadn't followed suit. While the brothers wasted their efforts protecting two human females, he was busting ass, protecting his city from the threat of a Rogue Master worse than Roark ending up in control.

Carter was there and he saw it all. He wasn't born of Roark's bloodline and was blessedly unaffected by the Calling. But, he'd followed the mass exodus out of the city and into the woods. And the things he'd seen there defied explanation. He supposed it was poetic justice things had gone down the way they had. Roark was just as much a slave to his master as his pitiable offspring had been to him. And in the end, he'd bravely chosen death over a life he knew he could never live. Who knew Roark had a shred of honor or of honesty in him? Not even Carter had seen that coming.

There were others in the city like Carter, anonymous and in hiding. Preferring to take their chances alone rather than grovel at a Rogue Master's feet and die for the privilege of licking his boots. That wasn't a life. At least not one he wanted to live. He'd fought too hard and too long for his independence and he'd rather die than serve a Master. The rogues Roark had left behind found themselves without a Master. And they'd returned to the city. The only home most of them had known in as long as they cared to remember.

Carter wasn't a Brother. He did not believe in dispatching justice. He actually wanted nothing to do with policing any sentient living being. He only did what needed doing. He took out the trash. He mopped up the mess. And in the process of being a model citizen of this great metropolis, he had broken his own cardinal law. He'd gotten in over his head. Gotten involved in matters that were none of his business. And he'd done it as much to save his own skin as to protect the strays and the rogues from a fate far worse than Roark's blackest nightmare. The city had to stay off the grid. It had to remain a quiet and peaceful place. Because if it didn't the vultures would start circling, picking at her bones until there was nothing left of her.

It was odd how a vampire, such as himself, with a rootless existence had come to consider this place home. He held no allegiance to not one particular place or person. And in fact, he was in hiding. Running from his past. Sheltering in the throng of humanity, shielded by the very rogues he dispatched to Hell with the swiftness of his blade. Cursing them, himself, and the Sons every time he was forced to do the dirty work that not even the Brotherhood had stepped up to do.

He feared the day was coming. Eventually, some ambitious vampire would notice Roark's absence. The rogues did nothing to keep Roark's death quiet. They killed with wild abandon. Feasted on death. And Carter couldn't keep Roark's reputation alive forever. He was only one man- a random element. He was no vigilante bent on justice. Death happened to the living. Everybody died. He simply had no tolerance for stupidity. And draining a victim in a dark alley in virtually plain sight then leaving the drained corpse for some unsuspecting human to stumble upon was stupid. It was suicide. And for all the bullshit he'd managed to endure in his very long life. He rather liked living. As long as he could do it on his terms and not some damned Rogue Master's.