13

Jay's POV

"Awkward..." Glenn said, glancing back and for between me Kay's room.

"Did she... Just walk?" Sadie said, dumbfounded. "I thought her leg was broken? I literally saw it all twisted up. Sure, it looked normal when I was getting her dressed, but I didn't really think about it with everything going on... Is her leg actually fine? What's going on?" Sadie mumbled, clearly dumbfounded by the situation.

I ignored Sadie's question, concentrating on my own thoughts.

I could feel a vague ache in my heart, coming from the promise mark. It felt vague and distant, probably due to both of our energies being depleted. Honestly, I was afraid to give her blood to fuel her back up, especially with how unstable she is currently. After that strong display of power, even though it was a short while, I feared getting on her bad side. It was clear as day that if she had succeeded in hitting David in the head, she would have killed him instantly.

There was another thing on my mind, as well. Kay mentioned things about my personal life that she shouldn't have known about. She must have had another vision from my memories, but when? Not only that, but what did she see, and how much? How would she react to finding out the whole truth?

I couldn't even look at her properly after that incident. At first, I stayed by her side to make sure that both of our marks were normal. On top of that, I wanted to make sure she was still alive. After ensuring everything was safe, I allowed Sadie to dress her in different clothes. Glenn and I had to leave the room to ensure her privacy, something we all agreed on.

We all took turns watching over her until she woke up. I explained to everyone that we had to stay put and lay low for a while. Since humans had been brought into the matter, it was too dangerous to leave them to their own devices. I had come up with a cover story of dangerous people being after me, and unfortunately Kay got dragged into the mess. This was a half truth, since Kay technically did get dragged into a mess of some sort, and it was my own fault at that.

Eventually, Kay had woken up, and we are now in the current situation. I could hear Kay sobbing through the door, and I felt incredibly guilty. Everything that had happened was my fault.

I walked over to Kay's bedroom door and softly knocked on it. "Kay, I just wanted to say I'm sorry for getting you wrapped up in all of this. I'm leaving now, I'll be back soon."

I turned to walk towards the front door, but Glenn blocked my way, crossing his arms. "Hey, aren't you the one who said we should stay put? Why do you get to leave and now us? Besides, we have nothing to do with your shit. You're staying here where we can keep an eye on you."

I sighed and continued to walk passed him. I need to gather blood to get my energy back up, and Kay needs some as well. It's time for me to swallow my fears about her power. She was right, I'm being ridiculous right now. After all, how am I stopped to train her if she has no energy?

"Jay, wait!" Sadie said. "I kind of agree with Glenn. And I'd hate to say it, but Kay kind of had a point there as well. You're definitely hiding something. We can't just trust you to be by yourself, especially with everything that has happened. If you want to go somewhere, Glenn will go with you. I'm going to stay here and look after Kay."

I decided to turn around and sat down on the couch. I needed to come up with a plan to get blood while also being discreet about it. As I pondered my thoughts, Glenn glared at me, keeping a close eye. He clearly didn't trust me, and only did what Sadie asked of him. It was obvious to me, this man was in love.

----

Kay's POV

I woke up and it was dark outside. I don't know how much time had passed, but I did know one thing; I remembered all of the events leading up to this point.

I opened and close my hand a few times, making a fist. My grip felt weak, but from my memory, I knew I was strong. The sudden burst of power I felt was amazing, but I had no idea how to control it.

I looked at the mark on my wrist. The energy coming through it felt incredibly weak, but the connection was still there. Sighing, I decided to leave my room. It was time to face Jay and apologize. I did feel nervous, but it must be nothing compared to how Jay felt. Of course he would be concerned after seeing me lose my temper in such an explosive way, and I mean literally explosive. I exploded all the windows in his house.

I creaked the door open and peaked out. Sadie and Glenn were nowhere to be seen, and Jay was tip toeing his way to the front door.

"Wait! Where are you going?" I said softly, knowing there must be a reason for him sneaking around. Sadie and Glenn must be sleeping, so it's probably best not to wake them.

Jay jumped at the sound of my voice, startled, and turned to me with a finger over his lips in a "shush" position. He motioned for me to join him, so I did.

I followed Jay, leaving our apartment. Once outside, Jay began to speak. "I'm sorry for being so weird towards you."

"What? No fair! I wanted to apologize to you! I shouldn't have yelled at you like that. I don't even know why I got so mad. I think maybe I just took my anger out on you because I had no control over anything at the time."

We stared at each other in silence for a moment, both of us glad that neither one held a grudge.

"So, we're good now, right?" I finally asked.

"Yeah, we're good. As long as you're fine, so am I." Jay responded.

"Cool, because I have so many questions. I remember everything by the way. Well, except not the part about how we got back to my house. I do remember kicking that guy's ass though. I'm pretty badass now, huh?" I smirked.

"I have questions too. Right now I'd not the time, though. We need to raise our energy by consuming blood, and my influence won't last long on Glenn. He has a strong will." Jay said, quickening his pace as we left the apartment building.

"Wait. Why do we have to sneak out? Also, why is that guy staying with us? What does he have to do with anything?" I asked, still not understanding the current situation.

"Sadie invited him over when we arrived. Your energy depleted after your sudden burst of power, but I'm sure you're somewhat aware of that yourself. To get out of there, I used everything I had to hide our trail and in a last ditch effort we teleported to your place. My energy depleted soon after, and Sadie found me sprawled out on the floor. The event frightened her, so she asked the neighbor for help. I woke up soon, and we decided together to stay inside until you woke up, and then from there we would make a new plan. Well, you're awake now, and the plan is to get blood to restore our energy." Jay explained. "Don't worry, I gave a convincing cover story. I told them dangerous people were after me and you just got caught in the crossfire. The reason for you being unconscious is because, supposedly, they injected you with a strange drug that puts people to sleep and makes them delirious when they wake up. Your actions were normal. You were suffering from a blood withdrawal, which can enhance mood swings, cause memory loss, and sometimes people act like vicious beasts, attacking any human they see in order to consume their blood. You surprisingly didn't have strong symptoms, which worked out in our favor. I'm assuming it's because you were starved for the majority of your life, so you've grown a sort of tolerance to it, not to mention you hadn't consumed much blood in the first place."

"If that's the case, why was I asleep longer than you? Also, you clearly didn't act crazy since Sadie and Glenn were somewhat okay with you being there." As soon as I said those words, I remembered the visions I had of Jay's memories. "Oh, that's right. You have a tolerance, too, don't you? From when they locked you up in that cave prison place."

Jay stopped walking. "That's actually something I wanted to talk to you about. How many visions have you had? How much have you seen?" He turned to look directly into my eyes with a serious expression on his face.

"Well, I've only had two, I think. The first one was when I was in the hospital, which you were there for. The second one was the other night. I had a weird dream while I was sleeping. That dream felt strangely real, and it was too similar to the first vision I had, which turned out to be real. I actually wanted to talk to you about it before, but I never got the chance because that asshole was at your house.

"In the dreams- er, I guess visions- I was seeing everything from your perspective. I was in your body like it was my own, but I had no control over anything and it felt more like I was watching a movie from a first person point of view.

"In the first vision, you were being whipped by that guy, and then you shouted at him as he left. There wasn't really much to it other than that. Actually, it was terrifying, honestly. And it hurt really bad. I could still feel it on my back when I woke up.

"The second time, I was you again, but this time, everyrhing was much clearer. I could feel and hear what you were thinking, and I knew about the way things worked and stuff. I knew where we were, and I could sense a sort of barrier around us. I could also sense the magic energy coming off the tungsten bars, and it was the same for the ugly guy's armor. Seriously, that guy is so ugly. He looks like a rat reincarnated as a human.

Anyways, he brought some nasty looking food but I was so hungry that I didn't care, all I wanted to do was eat. But I didn't want ugly man to have the satisfaction of having the upper hand, so I stayed calm. There was an awkward staring contest between the two of us, and I remember thinking about how I didn't have the answers he was looking for. After that, he told me- well, it's you, but it felt like it was me so I'm just gonna keep saying me in order to not get confused. He told me how I was wrongly accused for the murder of the King and Queen, but he was so cold in the way he said it. Then, he explained what the mission was, but he kept talking about me- actual me, referring tk me as 'the Princess' or whatever. He said to find my body and to figure out what happened with my parents' deaths. Then he brought you to a truck and I woke up. Also, he talked about the cabin and stuff too, the way it was set up just for you and about the barrier around the forest. And at some point- I don't remember if this was before or after the conversation- but you ate that food like a vicious dog, making a big mess. I had secondhand embarrassment for you, actually." I explained, probably putting too much detail into things that didn't matter.

"Oh yeah, I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I woke up super early after that. It was like the dream was over and my body was just ready to be awake. Honestly, it was such a great night's sleep, one of the best I've had in a while. I felt so refreshed and alive like I had extra energy or something. The only problem was that my mark-" I lifted my hand up to show what I was talking about, even though it was obvious. "-was super itchy, like bugs crawling under my skin. Honestly, I forgot I even had the mark and I kept scratching it like crazy until you telepathically spoke to me. Sorry about that, by the way."

"I see, so that's what happened. I was going to ask you about that last part next, but you gave such a wonderful explanation.

"The clarity of your visions is impressive. I've never heard of a unique ability quite like this before." Jay expressed his thoughts out loud.

"My unique ability? So this isn't something related to the mark?" I asked.

"It can't be related to the mark, otherwise you wouldn't have had that first vision in the hospital. No, Kay, this is all you. Have you ever experienced anything similar before?"

"I mean, I don't think so? I guess I've always had super clear dreams and can remember them fairly easily, even til this day. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I have experienced something similar.

"One time, while I was still in foster care, I was put in a group home with 4 other kids my age. I was 12 years old at the time, and I was put in a high security home for troubled kids. I got along really well with this boy named Jerry and we would tell each other about the crazy stuff we went through. He told me about the reason why he was put into foster care in the first place. His little sister was badly beaten by his birth parents and ended up dying in front of him. When he tried to protect her, they beat him as well. He only managed to survive because the neighbors called the cops about a noise complaint. That night, I had a dream about the event. At the time, I figured it was just my brain trying to put the pieces together to fill in the gaps, but now that I'm talking about it with you, it does feel similar to our situation.

"It's happened more times than that, too. The only difference between those times and now is that I would only have the dream after the event was described to me, so I'm not sure if that counts. With you, I knew absolutely nothing about you, but I still got those dreams. Even now, I still don't really know anything about you, other than what I've seen in the visions. It doesn't bother me, though, because you don't know about my past either. I feel like we're pretty even on things we know about each other now, actually. At first, it felt like you knew all this crazy secret vampire stuff about me that I didn't know about, but after everything I've seen and what we've been through the past few days, I can tell you're winging it just like I am. If anything, I might know a bit more about you than you do about me. Well, there's things I don't even know about myself that you do know."

I stopped talking at that point because I noticed I was getting off topic, and I had been rambling for a very long time.

At that moment, we had approached a dark alley. We had been walking and talking on our way to somewhere, and I never asked Jay where we were going. All I knew is we were on a quest to find blood. Now that we've gotten to this dark alley, I started to feel nervous.

"Wait, what are we doing here?" I asked cautiously.

"We're hunting," Jay replied.

"Hunting? You mean we're gonna attack people and suck their blood?" I asked, still cautious.

"Well, yeah. What else would the word 'hunting' imply? We are vampires, after all." Jay said sarcastically. "Besides, it's part of your training. You need to work on your influence skill, and this is exactly the type of situation to use it. If you mess up, I'll be here to help you. Don't worry, this won't be a regular thing. It's just something we need to do in a desperate situation, and this is definitely that."