FASTER WHEN YOU FALL

Part VI

CAT'S STORY,

Continued

One rainy evening, there had been a knock on the door. Dorean answered it, and by the look on his face, he had not been pleased. He had gone over to Selena and mumbled something. She had gotten up quickly, and walked into the front hall. A moment later, she came back, followed by a man Catrina did not know.

"Catrina, this is Demetrius. An....old friend of mine. Demetrius, if you'd go into the parlor, I'll be with you shortly."

" Of course." His tone was icy. "A pleasure to meet you Catrina." She disliked him on first sight. There was something about him that radiated evil.

"Dorean, take Catrina out. I'll deal with *him*." Selena's voice was bitter.

"Your sure?"

"Yes, just go." They had gone out and caught a late play, but neither of their minds were on the performance.

"Dorean, let's leave. It's obvious that neither of us are enjoying this."

"Fine. We'll go to a hotel. We can talk there." They had left the theater, and gone into the dinning room of a near-by hotel. "Would you like something to eat?"

"No, I don't want bother you. Let's just talk. Who was that man?"

"Demetrius? An old friend." She didn't miss the barley concealed anger behind his eyes.

"He didn't seem too friendly."

"No, I suppose not. They didn't part on good terms."

"I guessed that. Things will be okay, right?"

"I don't know. I really don't"

Cat paused in her story for a moment, and glanced at Selena. Selena nodded.

"Go on."

"When we went back to the house, we could here yelling." She remembered the angry words echoing out onto the dark street.

"Get out, Demetrius. I'm not your puppet. I have my own life!"

"You need me, and you know it. If it wasn't for me, you'd still be that quivering little girl I took under my wing all those years ago.!"

"NO! Now, get out!"

The front door opened and slammed shut as Demetrius came out onto the street. "A pleasure to see you again, Dorean." He sneered.

"Get out of here, Demetrius."

They went back into the house. "Selena, is everything okay?"

"Yes, yes. Katya, if you please, I have to speak with Dorean alone." They departed into the next room, and closed the door. This didn't stop me from listening in. For awhile, no sound came from the adjacent room. Then a heavy sigh."

"He's forced my hand, Dorean."

"I know."

"Do you, I wonder? Can you possibly know how hard it was for me to come to this decision? She must be protected." There was a rustle of clothing. "No, leave me be." Silence again.

"Do you want me to do it?"

Another sigh. "Yes. I am stronger, I know, but I have my vow."

"Of course. But who are you trying to convince? Me, or yourself?"

"What?" Her voice filled with rage. "What are you suggesting?"

"Only that you do not want the silence between you. That is why you ask this of me." She said nothing, and I walked away from the door, not wishing to here more. I don't think I need to describe my transformation. Each of you know it, though it is unique for us all. What happened after is much more important. Selena would say nothing of what had happened. I knew she was afraid of Demetrius, else she would never have allowed me the dark gift. But she made no future mention of it, and I almost forgot about it completely. I'm sorry to say Dorean and I ignored her terribly. I was adjusting to the new wonders around me, and Dorean was taking delight in my wonderment. It was only in retrospect that we noticed her becoming more and more withdrawn." During Cat's speech, Selena had gotten up quietly and left the room. Cat noticed this, and glancing towards the door through which she had departed, said "I don't think she's ready to deal with this. Let her be."

"Of course, continue."

"Yes. As I was saying, she became more and more withdrawn..." Cat and Dorean returned home from a play one night to find the house in flames. Nothing could be done to extinguish the inferno, so all efforts were being put towards halting it's spread to other buildings. The pair stared in mute horror for a long moment before a bedraggled neighbor came up to them.

"Monsieur, Madam, I am so sorry. The fire spread so fast, we could do nothing to save her."

"Her?" Cat asked in a daze.

"Your daughter, Madam. You must be grief stricken, so horrible. She was still inside. We saw her in the parlor with a young gentleman, moments before the fire broke out." Cat blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what the woman was saying. Daughter? She meant Selena. She would have laughed at that. Was that how they saw their little coven? Cat and Dorean as the parents, Selena their child?" It *was* funny. But she couldn't move, couldn't do anything but whisper "Still inside." She was vaguely aware of Dorean speaking to the neighbor, than a soft reassurance. "She got out. I'm sure she did." But he was trying to convince himself more than anything. They were taken to a house a few houses down. She remembered sitting in the parlor silently, staring dumbly at the fireplace, thinking only of what the neighbor had said. Of course they had never spoken to Selena, had probably only seen her going to and from the house. She supposed it was feasible that they thought her much younger than she appeared to be. The owners of the house busied about, and if they noticed anything unusual about their guests; their pale skin, their wild eyes; they most likely attributed it to the loss of home and child. Dorean sat at her side, saying nothing. It was strange; the two of them, playing the parts of grieving parents when they were more like orphaned children. A single thought broke his reverie. "What was it the neighbor said about a 'young man'?"

"A gentleman. They saw him in the parlor with her. Oh God, you don't think..."

"It was Demetrius. It had to be. Selena never brings victims home."

"What does he want, Dorean, tell me!"

"He hates Selena. He always has. Even when they ruled over the great coven in Rome, or the one they started in Russia, he hated her."

"Then she's dead. He killed her."

"We don't know that, Catrina. She could have won."

"No. She'd be here, if she was okay. He killed her, than set the house alight to cover it up!" She was quickly growing hysterical.

"Shhh. Quiet, now. She could be somewhere, injured, but still alive. I won't believe she's gone until I have proof. We have to go now; it's not safe for us here. The sun will rise in a few hours, and we must find a place to sleep." They thanked their hosts and headed to the countryside. There they found safety in an old church, in the shulphers beneath the alter. They rose the next night, and cleaning themselves of grave-dust, headed back to the scene of the previous night's disaster. The fire had long since burned itself out, leaving only dark, smoldering ruins. They searched for hours among the soot and rubble, till they were black from head to foot, but found no sign of their companion or her attacker, save for a single scrap of blood-stained carpet that had somehow survived intact, and a twisted fire poker. "We began to assume the worst. What Dorean thought, but did not say, though I'm sure he knew I thought it too, was that she would have called out to us were she alive. That, or she had been hurt beyond help, and the rising sun had been her end. We hadn't seen her, and no longer expected to find her alive. Those first few days were the worst. I think the death of a loved one, for us, is so much worse, because it is never anticipated. Yes, we can be destroyed, but we expect to go on, forever. So even though we are nightly the cause of it, death strikes a sickening blow to our faculties. Dorean and I were both staggered. We didn't know what to do, or how to morn. We were trapped in our own anguish. Then we heard the roumors....." A wrath of a creature had been seen stalking the alleyways of Paris, and there had been several attacks. Some of the victims had survived, saying it was a horrible thing that had lept upon them in the darkness, like a burnt up corps with fangs and yellow eyes. There was no true way of knowing weather it was Selena, Demetrius, or if it was even a vampire. Neither of them had ever seen one of their kind burned to such an extent. They tried to track it, but as quickly as the attacks had begun, they stopped again.

"If it was her, Dorean, than she's surly dead now. She never even came to us. We could have helped her somehow..."

"If, as you say, it was Selena, she might not be dead. It is not uncommon for a vampire to go underground, to bury themselves deep within the earth. Perhaps she gathered her strength, then went below to heal."

"That's exactly what she'd done, of course, though we didn't know it until years later. There isn't much more to the story, really. Dorean and I traveled; we kept one ear tuned for any talk of her resurfacing. She did, finally, and sought me out. I was living in America by this time. It was the middle of the roaring twenties. I was quite happy, living on and off with Dorean, and there was certainly no end to the excitement to be had. Then she came. I don't know how long she had searched for me, but she found me at last. She wasn't the same person I had known all those years ago. It's hard to explain. She had always been aloof, cool, but not like this. It was as if the fire had burned her all away, and left this hard, dead person behind. She was so spiteful, so angry. She cursed the fact the fire had not destroyed her, and would speak nothing of that night. I know that to live through such a thing must be truly horrible, but I couldn't understand her. The fire had left it's mark on her as well. Though you could no longer tell how badly she had been injured, all the scars from the torments she had ever received were now plane on her. They stood out so lividly, made such a road map of her pain, that one could barely stand to look at her. She shut herself away from everyone. I was there, but she didn't really notice. I think the only reason she had sought me out in the first place, was so that she did not have to be alone. She flat out refused to see Dorean. He stopped coming, eventually, and disappeared." Finally, I could stand it no longer. The times had changed. The depression had set in, a fitting back-drop to her misery. Oh, how we argued those last few months."

"Come out of this dark, wretched place. I'm going crazy just watching you. You sit at that window, night after night, staring out at all those miserable people. Does it make you happy, to see that they are as pitiful as yourself? I wonder if you see anything at all."

"Do not speak to me in that tone."

"And why not? I speak common sense. Go out there, walk beneath those stars you gaze constantly at."

"And watch as those around me shrike in horror? Look at me! I'm a monster!"

"You've always been one. So have I. You can't hide behind it. Face the world, Selena."

"My world's been torn apart. My world went up in flames a hundred years ago! There's nothing here but ashes. Ashes and pain." She looked away.

"I can't stay here any longer. It's no use. You've kept me here so you don't have to be alone. Too bad. We all have pain, Selena. Deal with it."

"I left her. What I didn't realize was that I was abandoning her, just like everyone else had." Cat sighed a weary sigh. "Well, that's it. I guess she either got better, or she's a very good actress. I'm afraid it might be the latter. We met up again only a few years ago. She started the bar on a whim, to, as she put it, 'walk on the edge, tempt the dagger.' Once again, she'd completely changed." This was why she claimed not to know anything of Selena. Oh, she knew some of her tragedy, but of the woman herself, she still knew nothing. She didn't think anyone did. "I don't know that I'll ever be able to reach her." She whispered. =========

A fierce wind had come up, whipping the waves into a frenzy as they pounded the beach. Time seemed almost to stand still as she stared forward, but not seeing. Tears stung her eyes, but were whisked away by the harsh hand of the wind that seared her skin. She took refuge in the pain it brought. Pain was the one true thing in her life, her constant, her one eternal friend. The pain would never leave her. She stared with her unseeing eyes deep within herself, into a darker cavity. An abysmal pit into which she had flung all those grating memories. But they had clawed their way out again, leaving her torn and bleeding. This time she had no outward symptoms to blame, no raw lesion. There was only her ragged heart. "Out, out brief candle, life's but a walking shadow..." Where had that come from? Ahh, Macbeth. There was the hint of danger on the wind. She turned back to the villa. It was late, she was hungry, the pulsing vein of Miami was just a short flight away...she denied it. Denied the gnawing at her insides, the fire she stoked, taking pleasure in the pain it gave her. She walked along the beach instead, warm water lapping at her bare legs, though the wind that whipped her hair around her face made her shiver. Were they still discussing her life up in that building of concrete and glass, like the audience to some horrific spectacle? Or had they moved off one by one, with the images churning in their minds? "It doesn't matter." But who was she trying to convince? She walked back into the villa, leaving wet foot prints on the carpet behind her. Everyone was still in the main sitting room, a fire in the fire place. They said nothing as she came in and sat in a leather wing-chair near the hearth.

"Well?" She said rather coldly.

"We had no idea." Lestat offered.

She laughed. "Of course not. Do you think I'm proud of a past like that? I'd rather've died." She smiled viciously. "No, no, don't look at me like that. I didn't mean it. It's been a...taxing night. Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive." Came Marius' voice, soft with concern. He stood and walked to her, placing his hand on his shoulder. "I wish I could have spared you some of that torment. I would have, had I known."

"There was no reason to pull anyone else down with me. You had worries of you own." She stood and hugged him. "Good night...Lord."

He chuckled and made to pat her head, but stopped short. "Now then, I can't very well go on treating you like a child can I?"

"I suppose not. Good night."

"Good night, Selena."

End Part VI