House of Syn Ch. 03

Like mother like daughter?

Baethny looks out through my eyes as the bike roars to live under me.

"She didn't mention me though did she?"

He gives a shake of his head.

The dark bike a mixture of silver and black leaves a round smoking circle of rubber next to Todd as I hold the front break and throttle up.

"Beth?" he asks confused.

"No!" is the answer.

I hold the front tire down out of pure strength as I bark a wheel leaving the parking lot of my home, my Sanctuary. My dark metal lover is purring to me all the way to the hospital but I ignore his whispers of pleasure.

The air has me cool by the time I get there.

The cold of a sharp blade. The cold of the grave maybe. Both chills hang close as I go past the security guard. He goes to stand in my way. I look at him with a sweet smile.

"I like handcuffs. Do you like using them off work as well?"

He stops about to wave the wand across me and just blinks.

"I find that rope works better. The metal cuts the skin where as rope leaves the hot little burns. They ache so very nicely. Do you like to be tied up? I love to be tied up." My breathing is a pant. "Do you enjoy tying someone down to a bed?"

"Yea." He says in a soft whisper.

The little black card appears in my hand like a magic trick. It's the only one I know.

"I don't have time to play find the metal with you. Come by the club. I might let you hunt to your hearts content. I'm not carrying anything more lethal than myself."

I slowly slide the edge of my skirt up to show the lack of panties under it.

"Where would I keep it?"

I try not to slip in the drool as I walk past.

The elevators give me their banshee's wail as I ride up. I like to think that they are calling out a warning to the other ghost in the building.

The Daughter of Syn is here!

And I'm no Angel.

The nurse's station is empty, but I do not need their help. Todd told me the number of the new room they moved her to. I do not need their help.

Not here. Not this place.

Room 275, my mother. Room 290. Father and brother shot in a drive by. Told they would recover...neither did.

Room 295.... my wrists ache at old memories.

I do not need their help... not here.

Room 245 opposite side of the hall. Good, bad memories on the other.

The door opens under my hand, my ring leaving a faint scratch across the wood. I look at it then at the blade on my finger. When did I put that on? And Why?

I pull the ring off and put it into my purse as I step inside.

"What are you doing here?"

Her voice has a lot more strength now. Good I hate the invalid; they are no fun at all.

"What are you doing here? She asks again when I ignore the question and move to the chair. I pull it up next to the bed a bit and sit down. She sits back a bit when I look up.

"Visiting." I say softly.

It takes her a moment to find her voice again.

"I told the doctor I didn't want to see you."

"Did you? Or did you tell him you didn't want to see your father? I'm not your father little girl or were you hit in the head harder than I think?"

"Well I meant my step mother as well."

"Child." The word carries a lot for something so simple. "I told you, I'm your wicked step mother. If you intend to break my husbands heart you better learn to listen to what people say ...just a bit better."

My words carry a cold tone that is icy even to myself.

"I want..."

"I really don't care." I tell her without pause before she can even get the rest out. "Reality time little infant. Your mother is up in the intensive care ward with her brain trying to swell out of her head. The parts that make her the woman you know may be damaged beyond all recovery. You have no other family that cares even a wisp for you." I look around the room at the lack of flowers and cards. "Not a lot of visitors."

She sits back and swallows.

"Let me guess ...home schooled?" I smile at the blink. "I knew without even asking of course. You see I know your mother very well."

"You don't know my Mother at all!" the words carry some heat to them.

"Of course I do. Do you know how they judge how powerful a tornado was? By how much it damages things. They can tell you everything there was to know about it by how much it tore things apart."

"What has that to do with anything?" she asks me her snide voice coming back.

"I know your mother the same way. By how much she tore your father apart. She damaged him in so many ways ... it took years of work to get him repaired. Then she damaged him again. Oh I know her well indeed, little child."

"I'm not a child! I'm seventeen!"

"Oh but you are a child. In the eyes of the world you are. In the eyes of the law and the courts you are. Your mother could pass at anytime." I see the terror spring to her eyes. Beth would comfort her but Baethny drives on, hammering deeper. "When she does there will be two options, and the court will decide. You will come to live with us. Or you will spend the last year before you become an adult in the foster care system. I don't think you would like it there very much. They don't really care about someone your age. You see by your age they figure there nothing they can do to teach you a thing so why bother trying. They will house you and feed you and dump you out in a year their money paid for a job ...well done."

"You don' know anything!"

I slowly smile.

"Your mother is a controlling bitch. She always has been. She tried to control your father and when she found out she couldn't she took you and left him. Then she went to the courts and had them declare my husband an unfit father for so young a girl. They denied him custody rights to even see you. She told him to his face that she was going to change your last name and never let him know where you where growing up. She wanted total control over you as well. Well he turn control over but saw to it under court order that she couldn't change your name. I bet it must goad her every time she had to write it down. I would make another bet as well."

I lean forward a bit.

"Your boyfriends. Does she think any are good enough? If she does I bet you she has been pressuring you to marry him as quickly as you can. Yes?"

I see her eyes shift. She might as well be screaming it.

"She want's the name Mercer out of her life so badly she would even give you up. You see in your father she met the one thing she couldn't stand. A man that would tell her no. One that would do what he wanted when it was needed. He had a thing to do and she forbid him to do it. All she did was awaken the demon that told her no."

I watch Angel sit back on her bed her thoughts must be going a mile a second behind those beautiful eyes.

Those eyes. They come to rest on me after a second. Taking in the way I look. The black lace the dark kola around my eyes the red in my black hair.

"What's with the way you and him dress?" she asks after a minute of studying me.

I smile sweetly and sit back. My rings make pleasant sounds across the fake leather on the armrest of the chair. Real leather sounds so much better.

"Surely you know what a Goth is my dear."

"Aren't the two of you a bit old to be playing dress up?"

"I could stand bare to the world and be a Goth. The clothes are simply the reflection of the inside." I steeple my fingers a little over my belt.

"Then your insides must be pretty fucked up." She says with that snide tone coming back.

I slowly smile and lean back in.

"You have no idea. Would you care to learn?"

She looks at my face for a second then slowly shakes her head.

"Smart as well as beautiful. A good combination. If you can hang on to that it will help you in life." She flinches when I lay my hand on he rail around her bed. The black nails click on the plastic. "Now lets talk about your father. He loves you."

She snorts. So very unladylike like a gesture. I can see training is in order.

"We have a night club, it takes a lot to run it well yet he has been here by your side since he found out you were hurt. Here till you ordered him away." I curl my hand around the rail the tendons pop the fine lines that cover my right hand and arm come into better definition. The black swirls of tattooing so faint stand out on the whitening skin. "Why did you do that?"

She looks away from my face and down at her coverlet. Her fingers start to play with a lose thread.

"I didn't want him here."

"Why not?" I ask after a second.

"Because I didn't!" she answers with some heat.

"That's' a child's answer. If you are not one as you claim find a better." I sit back giving her time to reflect on her own thoughts.

"He... doesn't know me. He's like some weird strange guy that wants to be around me."

"Weird and strange don't even begin to do him justice my dear. Try fierce, loving, loyal, and compassionate to a fault. Try a man with a sense of family protectiveness that made him give up everything to see one he loves cared for."

"What are you talking about."

I see it then. She doesn't know. I begin to cuss her mother in the depths of my heart with every curse I know.

"You don't know about your grandmother do you?" she shakes her head. "Or your uncle?"

I take a deep breath.

"You have a living breathing grandmother. One who asks about you every time I talk to her even though she knows I knew nothing about you. She would ask with the hope that I might have heard even a little about how you were doing."

I watch her hand go to her mouth.

"Why didn't she come see me? The court order couldn't keep her from doing that it's only against my father."

I swallow. I should not be the one telling her this. But then I wonder who could. Todd can't rally speak of it without tears.

"She lives at Briarthorn Mental Hospital. She helps with the most deranged patients. Helps them find some peace with their madness."

"She's a Doctor?"

"No my dear she is a patient."

"My grandmother is insane?" she asks after a second.

"Your Father's mother is ...damaged. She was damaged and it broke something within her. She has fits. She can hurt herself and others when she has them."

Angel sits quiet for a second.

"What kind of fits?"

I sigh. My eyes come to rest on he pulled tread. Tattered and torn from the weave a ragged individual now standing tall but not part of the pattern any longer.

"Ever seen someone that you though was someone else? You may have had to even cross the street and get almost into their face before you know that the person wasn't someone you know. For her those can be deadly...both to herself and others. When she was ...damaged... a face burned its way into her brain. Now when ever she see that face it triggers an attack. She nearly killed a man simple because of mistaken identity."

"What face?"

"Your uncles. And your fathers since they have a resemblance."

"She can't see my father's face without going nuts?"

I swallow past a bit of anger.

"I don't care for that word. Try living in a psyche ward for a few weeks you will feel the same way I'm sure. But yes. She can't see your father's face without having her heart become filled with terror."

"Why?"

"Because he looks like your uncle. The resemblance is close. They have different colored hair now, my husband has a few bones in different places now. But it's close."

"I don't understood. Why does the fact that my father looks like my uncle cause her to go Nu...have a fit?" Angel really shouldn't narrow her eyes like that. It will cause wrinkles when she is older.

"Because your uncle raped her and then tried to murder her, my dear."

Maybe I should go find a doctor to put her jaw back shut. It looks like it will never close on it's own.

"He then nearly killed your father. Beat him in the head with a trophy. A baseball trophy of all things."

"When did this happen?" she asks after a second.

"Right before you were conceived as I understand it. Your uncle was caught and went to prison. Your father spent a year in and out of hospitals having to learn to do things over again. Little things...like walking, talking. You know common stuff. Then he met your mother."

I give my head a little tilt.

"By then your grandmother was already having trouble. She attacked a man when she got some terrible news. He kind of looked like your father and uncle."

"What was the news?" Angel asks when I grow quiet.

"That you uncle was going to be release on a technicality. Some little slip in the paper work was going to set him free. This is where your mother comes in. You see when you father learned about this he wanted to go confront his brother. Your mother forbids it. She also forbids him to go anywhere near his own mother."

"Why?" I'm asked after a second.

"For two years your mother had been the only person in your father's life. His mother couldn't bear to see him. He could talk to her on the phone but not go see her without her becoming frightened. Terrified. Then came that news and she decide that anyone that kind of looked like your father must be your uncle coming to rape her again. Coming to finish trying to kill her."

I take a long slow breath to settle my nerves. Your father disobeyed here. He went to the prison; he confronted your uncle. Your uncle bragged about what he was going to do, bragged about what he was capable of when he felt like making some one beg." Your father screamed at him... told him that if he came near their mother he would kill him."

My hands go t the coverlet myself. I notice my ring sparkles as it slices a line across the coverlet. I don't remember putting it back on.

"They hauled your father away from the prison in a police car. He wasn't charged but they kept him till it was almost to late. Till your uncle was almost released. It's lucky they didn't let him go."

"Lucky? How, why?" she asks. My finger starts to dig into the mattress padding. I make myself stop and take off the ring. My eyes must be cold when I look up she flinches back. I hear Beth asking me to calm down.

"If they had I wouldn't have met him. You see I was being brought in when they were releasing him. I saw him and I lost it far worse than your grandmother did I'm afraid. I was handcuffed and I still managed to get to him. I was bond and I still managed to put him on the ground. It took three grown men to pull me off him!"

"Why?"

"Because he looked like your uncle. My rapist."

The room goes infinitely quiet.

"My...My uncle raped you?" She just looks at me "And you married the man that looks like him?"

"I told you that you had no idea." I sit back slowly. "I testified against you uncle and with your father's testimony about what he had bragged about the bodies began to turn up. Your uncle was convicted of multiple murder and rape. He's sitting on death row. Been there for nearly fifteen years now. I would think he's got to be getting due any day now. I wait for the call to go witness that. I wait for it with a hunger."

She looks at me and I since unease about her. Not quite fear of me more wariness.

"Why did I never hear about any of this?" she ask me after a few minutes.

"Control. You mother used all of this to get control over your life. Your father defied her when he went to confront his brother. When he testified at my side. When he went and told his mother threw a two-way mirror so she couldn't see him that his brother was going away for life. Because of that she filed for divorce. That shattered your father. Then when the lawyer she hired got involved it got worse. He filed for full custody, no visitation. He used all that I have just told you to get your father out of your life. Suddenly your father wasn't a caring man he was the son of a lunatic. On that had violent outburst. Whose brother was a mass murdering rapist on death row? By then your father and I were together ...friends only... but my past came into play showing the kind of people your father associated with."

"Your past?"

I twitch my finger at her.

"You've learned enough for one day my dear. That is a tale infinitely darker. The divorce was finalized; your father was a broken man owing a ton of child support every month for a daughter he couldn't see. His only bit of hope to cling to was tat she would carry his name. That maybe one day she would use that name to come find her father... that loved her. Loved her more than life."

I all but snarl.

"And you told him you don't want to see him."

I look away from her face when the doctor comes into the room. He looks at me and is about to say something when he sees my eyes. They stare cold and hard into his.

"Ah...Ah Angel... Um... your mother is awake. She's asking for you." He looks away from me and focuses on her.

A mistake prey should never make around a predator.

"I want to see my father."

Her words are firm. They carry the sound of command well. I know where she gets it from.

Beth starts to cry.

The Daughter in Syn just smiles.