Chapter 8

    “You know when you're dreaming, you can't tell you're dreaming? Well, most of us can't. That's what it was like. We were already living a good life, we didn't have to work if we didn't have to. We had our own cars, nothing like this one, but they were new. You know what that's like? To own a brand new car? There I was, not long before that, I was bumming rides in a rusty van. Six months later, I was handed the keys to a new car. We were drunk on it all. Forgetting all that, forgetting family and where we were from. If we could only, just, wake up or something, we might've been too far in already, but at least we could have tried to get out. I think we could have taken what we had and just went back to the rez and it still would have been good enough for a long time. I guess it's different things for a lot of people, so that's why they brought us in as a group. We were all in the same boat.” Katrina rubbed her eyes, her voice cracked when she mentioned going back to the rez, but she kept going on with the story. It must have felt like a good burn.
    What it felt like to have that kind of life just handed to you? Jeremy tried to imagine what it was like. He didn't have long enough to weigh the whole thing in his mind, but he found that he would have been tempted too. His imagination had a hell of a lot more fuel to travel those long dreamed roads of freedom; the reality of his life only felt like an anchor, but there was family. There was a place that he could call home. Still, to be able to travel some of those lines on a map, what that must be like. A summer of feeling the wind blowing across your elbow as you headed out into the great beyond, somewhere that wasn't the rez.
    “Jeremy. You promised me, right?”
    “Yeah.” Jeremy nodded. “Yes, I did.”
    “Here, turn on the light, you need to see something.” Katrina pulled her feet out from underneath and then knelt in the passenger's seat.
    The light came on after Jeremy fiddled with it for a few seconds. When he looked, Katrina wore the deepest look of worry. He did promise though so he was going to look at whatever it was she wanted to show him. He raised his eye brows, she just closed her eyes and sighed. She pulled her hair over her shoulder and leaned forward.
    “On my neck, on the back.” Katrina leaned forward a little more.
    Jeremy sat up and looked, there was a tattoo. A small red outline of a rain drop. He wanted to touch it, it looked like it was surrounding a scar.
    “Touch it.” Katrina took Jeremy's hand and pulled it.
    It did have the feel of a scar. “What's it mean?” Jeremy wanted to ask why, how, and who.
    “It's the third degree mark. First is just a small, tear drop shape tattoo. It's the one we got that night. After a short while, after meeting,” Katrina seemed to get stuck finding the right word, “certain kinds of people, we were 'progressed' to the next degree. I don't know how they decided, the guy we met only examined us. He only told us that he was happy that we were in. After he left, we had to get our brand. Another teardrop shape, it went over the first tattoo.   Between then and the tattoo you see, those were the really good times. We were told that they were the most dangerous too, especially when we started to leave the country. We spent a month in Italy, the next in France, just, “Katrina made a motion like she was dealing cards, “just spending money. This summer, we were going to Japan, you know, decide where to go after that while we were there.” Katrina sat back again, but Jeremy stopped her from pushing her feet under his leg.
    He took off his coat and wrapped it around her feet, then lifted them to his lap. Katrina took hold of her coat and wrapped it around her and crossed her arms, Jeremy started the car and turned on the heat.
    “We got back in the fall and something had changed. The parties for the new people, we liked to go to those because we would meet ourselves. They stopped happening. We thought we would be one of the first people to hear about it, but they were still people above us who knew something and wouldn't tell us. So, we went and they just gave us our tattoos. We were Kin. This is where I really test your promise.”
    Jeremy only nodded and gave her foot a little squeeze, trying to warm them as he rubbed one then the other.
    “Okay. We knew since the brand that we were on the other side of a line that you can't go back across. First it was just rumors, then stories, them we knew, but didn't care because we belonged. We were family. They protected us and we protected them.” Katrina didn't seem to want to meet Jeremy's eyes.
    “Who?” Jeremy's hands stopped and he stared.
    “The vampires.”
    It was quiet for the longest minute, Jeremy didn't know what to say. Katrina let him have that time, after all, she came across that information over a year.
    “Hm.” Jeremy nodded.
    “That's it?” Katrina felt a tinge of anger.
    “What am I supposed to say?”
    “Anything. Just ask anything that comes to mind.” Katrina said then had to endue another minute of sitting in the darkness.
    “Anything?” Jeremy looked over.
    “Anything.”
    “What happened next?” Jeremy took one of Katrina's feet and held her toes in his palms.
    Katrina burst out laughing. She wiped at her cheeks, tears had welled up and rolled down as she waited. She expected to finally reach the end of this kind man's patience with her insanity, there he was asking to follow her down the rabbit hole.
    “I know you were expecting me to think you're crazy, or worse, but there's no reason to lie to somebody like me. Come to think of it, there's no reason to be honest with somebody like me either. Not going to lie to you though, but vampires? Could just be the name of a gang or something.” Jeremy took Katrina's other foot in his hands.
    “I know. But the ones in Alberta have different names, just where they're from.” There was a smile in her voice.
    It was good to hear Jeremy laugh, it made Katrina laugh and she gave him a little kick.
    “You know, ever since we ran away from there, the whole thing was a dream. Instead of forgetting, it was just hard to believe. I mean, we knew, we all did. What we got ourselves into. Still, the good times over there weren't exactly over, we just had to be careful about where we were meeting. Just the Kin though, there weren't any vampires that regularly came to where we were. We didn't really meet many of them, even when we did, we really couldn't tell. They are like the rest of us, just older. You can feel it when you're near th-,” Katrina stopped when he noticed that Jeremy had the look she'd been dreading. He might not have known it, but he was looking at her like she was crazy. Or a liar who should know that what she was saying was so far out there that she should just stop while she was ahead.
    She brought her feet back and kicked him, hard. “You promised!”
    Jeremy had his arm down by his ribs to protect them and his other hand up to protect his face. He saw that she was pulling her feet back to kick him again.
    “Whoa! Wait!” Pain shot into his bicep where she kicked with her heels first.
    “F**k you! You f*****g promised!” Katrina's voice was broken with sobs.
    Jeremy half jumped on top of her legs and held on. She was still trying to pull her legs free when her fists began beating his back and his head.
    “Get out!” Katrina stopped trying to beat him, she took fists of his shirt and started to push, pushed his shoulders, his head.
    “No!” Jeremy sat up. “I promised!”
    Katrina pulled her legs back and wrapped her arms around them, she buried her face in her lap.
    “I promised.” Jeremy's voice cracked.
    They sat in the quiet for a long time.
    “What did you expect?” Jeremy was mad, mostly at himself.
    “I know. I'm sorry.” Katrina's voice was muffled, she still sat with her knees drawn up so she could hide her face.
    “Me too. It's just, you know.” He didn't want to question anything she said, but couldn't help reacting the way he did.
    “I do know, that's why I made you promise. If you can stick around and hear the rest of it, you'll know why I can't go anywhere. Why I can't go back home. That's all that matters now.” Her voice cleared and she reached out to touch his shoulder.
    He took her hand and pressed it between his palms. “Okay, but no more kicking my a*s. Even if I am stupid enough to make you mad again.”
    Katrina only smiled. “I promise.”
    “Can I ask something?” Jeremy sounded hesitant.
    “Yes.”
    “Vampires?”
    “Yes.”
    Jeremy knew he was standing on shaky ground. He knew she didn't want to be telling him any of this, but if she didn't, she wouldn't have anywhere else to go. It would mean abandoning her when she was totally alone by the sounds of it. He only nodded.
    “Remember when we were walking along the street to go get my car? There were those two guys?” Katrina put her feet out and Jeremy took them.
    “Yeah.” He picked his coat up from between the seats and wrapped her feet in it again.
    “Well, I recognized them and they should have known who I was because a 'friend' of mine threatened them if they didn't leave me alone. I hoped they knew my face, glad they did.” Katrina sniffled and laughed.
    “I am too, things can get kind of rough in town. So, they're in town?” Jeremy couldn't make himself say 'vampire'.
    “No, not in BC.”