Chapter Three

A first disagreement.

            In the dark, peace gripped me.  The darkness was familiar, friendly�"I’d lived my entire childhood in darkness.  Enveloped in it, I had danced at prom, stomping all over my date’s toes.  And in the stifling darkness, to the quiet rhythms of a violinist plucking his strings, my boyfriend became my fiancé over a special celebration dinner, in front of my parents and all of the family.

            “He looks just like you.”  Shaun’s voice crowded me comfortably, and I could hear the cooing of my mother over the bundle in my arms.  I shifted it carefully to trace the perfect lines of my new son’s face.  His little hand caught mine and held it for a moment, but his grip felt cold.  His skin hardened to the touch, as if turning to stone.  My baby was turning to ice, and his presence felt poisoning.  I pushed him away, reaching out a hand, stretching it as far before me as I could, seeking the warmth of Shaun’s touch.

            I was surrounded by silence, as cold and dead as the child that was crawling back toward me across the crisp sheets of the hospital bed.  “Mommy!”  It cried in a shrill, rasping voice, seeking comfort in the arms of a mother who didn’t want it.

            I pulled back the sheets, but they felt heavy, wet with something warm�"it smelled like blood.  I planted a foot on the floor, still reaching out, but found nothing.  I slipped.  “Shaun!”  I called, able to feel the cold fingers of the child pressing into my arm.  “Shaun, baby?  Where are you?”

            Fear crawled up my spine in icy tendrils, wrapping around it and filling me with an icy dread.  I bit my lip and tried to be strong against it, hold out, until the terror exploded from me in a single, piercing cry.

            “Lux?”  A hand clasped my shoulder, shaking me lightly�"but I awoke a monster, a red flash glancing across my vision before I reached out in violence, aiming for a throat with nothing but brute force and a thirst for blood.  For a moment a heard nothing, and could only see a wall of numbers, and a thousand little circles targeting weak points, when my senses cleared, it was like breaking the surface of a pool of water, and I was overwhelmed by my own senses.  I was met by Jay, his good arm holding me back, and his hand on his own throat.  Blood leaked from between his fingers.

            “I have to find Shaun, and my baby.”  I told him, even as I pushed what felt like a dishtowel into his hands.  It ate at me, that I’d waited this long.  Almost three days, simply trying to lay low and figure things out.

            “You need to forget them.”  Jay responded calmly.  “You’ll be doing them a favor to stay away.”  The towel, dotted in tiny spots of blood, was crumpled in his fist.

            “I can’t abandon my family!”  I snapped, unsure of how he could even ask.  For whatever reason, it didn’t actually occur to me to leave, to abandon Jay’s leadership.  It didn’t seem doable, like our escape together had staunched any possibility that we could be anything but a group.

            Jay’s voice was calm, as if he hadn’t heard me yelling.  In his hands, he turned the towel, and I got a better look at the cut.  It was a scratch, but deeper than I should’ve been able to give him with only my nails.  “You don’t have a family anymore.”

            My response held little more weight than a whimper, and that was what it felt like.  “You can’t ask me to do this.”  For so long, I had dreamed of having someone to take care of, and was so sick of being someone to be looked after.

            Jay turned on me, and even in the dark his stare was daggers.  “I’m not asking you to do anything.”  His voice was even, but there was a threat he’d only hardly bothered to veil.  “Don’t act like you’re the only one that’s had to sacrifice something.”  Though after the first day, Jay only ever wore long sleeves, I was reminded of the scars.  I couldn’t help but think that maybe he knew about sacrifice.  He looked like he had something more to say, but he turned to leave, and I was too stunned to retort.

            In the dim light of the lamp, this place felt like a prison.  I laid back into the pillow pushed into the shallow arm of the cheap sofa.  I could hear Jay mucking about in the kitchen, but knew I was too proud to apologize, and he was too angry to accept.  Instead, I let my eyes rest on the ceiling, and my mind wandered back toward my fiancé, and my parents�"no, the parents of someone dead, long lost to polite, normal society.