“‘Apples and oranges,’ my mom always told me when I did something that made no sense at all. She didn’t even try to make sense of me sometimes. She said it was part of my charm.”
I laugh like a lunatic again, even as the tears continue to fall, but he stares ahead, his entire body visibly drenched by the weight of guilt now.
“Apples and oranges bears a much larger meaning at this moment right now, doesn’t it? It’s not a simple idiom. She was telling me something without telling me. It means she knew what I was, and she never told me.”
I keep trying to clear my throat of emotion, but I can’t really get rid of it. It wobbles every third or fourth word I say, as the barrage of unprocessed things keep hitting me from the left and right, not giving me a moment to breathe between punches.
“Everything I know is changing very abruptly, which has happened too much without a big enough gap between. You’re unfortunately the one stuck in the car with me as it happens,” I decide to point out when the tears just won’t stop.
He rifles around in Damien’s console between us, until he pulls out a soft handkerchief. Sort of gross—cloth things one blows their nose on.
I still use the hell out of it.
His hand reaches over before I can see it, and just the small, comforting touch at my cheek has me leaning toward him like a weak pole stuck in loose soil during a hurricane and searching for a sturdier crutch.
I end up with my damn head on his shoulder, and somehow that turns into me in his lap, as he pulls over and parks, shutting off the vehicle as his arms come around me.
He sighs so hard that I feel his warm breath through my hair, and holds me to him.
“I have no idea if I’m right or wrong. If you’re all right or wrong. If the ones rebelling are right or wrong. I don’t know what Idun is capable of or what raising her will inevitably bring. That’s your problem, because the only thing I do know is that I’ve searched for my purpose my entire life, thinking I’d finally found it. Thinking I was to be the savior of the Portocale gypsies. I’m not. I am, however, in Vancetto Van Helsing’s lap by some divine guidance. And if anyone can raise them, it’s you,” I say as I lean back.
His expression changes, as though he realizes just how cosmic this sign from the universe is.
“I’m apples and oranges. I’m the cosmic hiccup. I have one purpose, and it’s to end a sentence that’s already over. Arion’s confused me for being meant for all of you, and he wanted me to care enough about you to get this curse lifted, while also subbing in for Idun,” I go on, gluing more of the pieces together the best I can.
As if I’d given a little more of my heart than I realized to all four of them, the big picture settles in and shatters before my eyes.
“I’m not meant for you at all. I’m the damn, fucking girl who has to get her out of the ground,” I go on a little bitterly.
I never really even wanted to hope for all of them—it seemed selfish and vain. But hell, it felt good to have their attention and privately entertain the thought.
It was the one good thing to almost happen in a while.
“Anna was right all along,” I go on a little soberly as I take a deep breath. “I wasn’t ever meant to be the leading character in such a story.” I feel pathetic right now.
“I’m the silly monster from the embarrassing side of the family that even humans mock and torment with pitchforks and fire, while they run in terror of the fanged bloodsucker, the merciless werewolf, and often forget about the debauched illusionists. Van Helsing only chases after that one Frankenstein’s monster. They’re apparently more forgettable than even Damien, even though they have no curse extracting them from memories. Yet I have the attention of four of the strongest alphas my mother could guide me to. Depending on her intentions, you’re either supposed to kill me or help me, because I’m clearly supposed to raise them. And now it’s the only thing I know for sure I will get done.”
I abruptly push the door open and hop out the vehicle, walking off, as I furiously bat away the relentless tears.
I hear him bailing out behind me, likely to chase, and I turn around and face him, even as my chest hurts with the weight on it. Every emotion is like a brick landing on top of me, one right after another.
Anger. Relief. Disgust. Dread. Fear. Excitement.
All at once.
If only it wasn’t right when I’m slightly broken without all those layers of defense I had before tonight, when I let Arion get into my head and let me consider this ridiculous fantasy once again.
I fought the idea. I should have fought it a little harder than I apparently did, considering how heavy the disappointment is.
“This is her story. I’m just meant to restart it. Either learn to handle your girlfriend,” I say, trying not to sound overly bothered, since I have no right. “Or learn how to get your psychotic ex under control.”
Taking a calming breath, I tack on, “She’ll be one or the other, so just apply whichever is applicable.”
“Violet,” he calls with some strain, as though he wants to say a thousand things but can’t even begin to figure out where to start.
I keep walking.
“Idun’s your problem, Vance. A problem for the four of you. Surely you can all get your shit together long enough to deal with one powerful bitch,” I tell him before breaking out into a sprint.
My chest feels seconds away from caving in on itself.
As the snow falls harder, the cold slowly begins to numb the pain.
Chapter 15
VANCE
I’m going to kill Emit, directly after I kill Damien. Then I’m going to kill them again in twenty-eight years when they come back. Then I’m going to punch both their fucking faces when they return the next time.
I’m undecided if I’ll kill them again or not.
I can’t believe they let me walk into that without any semblance of a warning. That’s not the kind of secrets we keep, even when we hate each other.
It’s a big fucking deal that there’s a Portocale gypsy with Neopry Simpleton blood.
She killed those fucking wolves, and Emit stood up and stared us down like a fucking pro. He sold it.
I can’t remember the last time he successfully fucking lied to me.
And this is when he steps up his bloody game?
I skid sideways, taking a turn too sharply, but quickly steady the vehicle, as I barrel down the road.
I passed Arion halfway back. He flipped me the bird while flipping his body over my moving vehicle. Prick can’t drive yet at least, and now I have some gauge of his speed, since I doubt I had that much of a head-start.
It’s not a fun estimation for me, since he truly has gotten impossibly faster, but it’s manageable if I train really fucking hard. It’s pointless to exercise, so I could just replace that time.
Un-fucking-believable.
My brain is so overwhelmed I can’t even think about all the fucked up ways this night has gone, and my mind is working on fifty or more things at once.
I suppose night is over, since the sun is blaring.
I’m debating which weapon to use when I slide sideways into the cabin’s driveway, using the emergency break to sling it around more effectively and rock to a halt.
I’m out of the vehicle with the urgency of abandoning a house fire, and in the fucking cabin real damn fast.
Emit is sitting in a robe, bottles and bottles of Violet’s little gypsy spice scattered around. Of course he’s blitzed. She’s gone, and he’s himself. Damien looks no better, as his half-lit gaze swings to me.
Now I really want to kill them.
I swing my swords out, and Damien snorts.
“Judging by the shock-infused rage, I’m going to hazard a guess that our Van Helsing now knows,” Emit says as he takes a long swig of whiskey straight from the bottle.
“Does he know what we know?” Damien asks as he lifts a finger and gives me a lazy grin.
“That we’re all bigger monsters than we already recognized and that we’re an insult to the word alpha?” I ask dryly.
“He knows what we know,” Damien says with a satisfied nod, sitting back as he drinks his own bottle of something.
“How could you not fucking tell me that?” I bark.
“How could you believe he really killed all those wolves?” Damien fires back.
“You believed it too,” Emit says dismissively.
“She’s a fucking Neopry Simpleton,” I bite out angrily. “That’s something you tell the Van Helsing alpha.”
“If it were anyone but Violet, we would have told you. But knowing gives you an edge I didn’t have,” Damien says like it makes sense. “And there’s really only one thing we can do to prove to her we’re not really the monsters she’ll think we are if she finds out just how dark monster closets get. It’s called stalling, because we can’t figure out a way around raising Idun,” Damien goes on, as though he and Emit have been discussing this in mine and Arion’s absence.
I grind the hilts of my swords harder.
“You stupid fucking dicks,” I swear under my breath, exhaling a few more idle curses. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have been giving her Neopry family secrets on the way to her house just now,” I add on a tight note.
They both seem to immediately sober.
“You told her what she fucking is?” Damien asks me like this is all my fault.
“She was a C-average student. With all the information she had, she got the motherfucking gist,” I tell him in a chilly tone. “I just didn’t realize what information I was giving her, because no one bothered to tell me!” My temper is finally off the leash, and it takes a damn fine amount of restraint not to remove a limb or two.
Emit scrubs a hand over his beard and groans as his eyes close.
“You’re officially as fucked as I am now,” Damien grumbles. “I just had to go and let her know that I knew too. Thought it’d put us on even playing fields,” he adds around a moan of regret, while massaging his temples.
“Arion is going to look like the damn saint by the time we finish fucking up,” Emit adds as he steeples his hands in front of his face.
“You’re missing the important part,” I tell them both. “She broke tonight. I watched a girl who has taken everything we’ve thrown at her with barely a blink, as she broke, and you two left her feeling like she didn’t even have you. Her mother apparently withheld the same secret, and she doesn’t know which way is up or down.”
They both just silently stare at me as that permeates their intoxicated minds, while I take a seat, angrily stabbing my sword into the floor.
“To be completely fucking honest, I’m struggling at the moment myself,” I concede as I simply deflate, too tired to stay angry right now.
Anger takes too much out of me when I haven’t slept in too many days.
“Empathetic gypsies don’t take emotion in when they’re emotional themselves. It’s like a punch to the stomach when you feel their pain as if it’s your own,” I add. “I’ve never felt like a more wretched person, and that says quite a lot.”