J Duncan - Deadworld

Shit. The woman had keener senses than a bloodhound. “What look are you referring to?”

“Relief,” she replied, turning now to face him, her mouth drawn into a hard line. “You don’t want to tell her. Funny thing is, you never really explained that to me either.”

Damn the woman! “If it’s all the same, I’d rather not. It’s really not that important in the scheme of things.”

“Nicholas Anderson! You’d better fucking tell me.”

Jackie shifted up against the arm of the couch, trying to back away. “It’s okay,” she said. “Really. It’s not important.”

Shelby turned and patted her leg. “Yes. It is. Hon, you don’t know Nick. He wanted to tell you, but he won’t if he thinks it’s too painful for you… or him.” She glared back at Nick now, eyes alight with anger. “He won’t hardly lie about anything, but he’ll certainly refrain from telling you the truth. So spit it out, Mr. Anderson. I don’t give a shit how much the truth makes you squirm.”

“Now you’re just being a…” He stopped himself. She was right, of course, damn her, but could he tell them? Some things were rightfully kept in the dark.

“Bitch? You can say it. I’m going to be a bitch until you can stop being a prick by continuing to hide the truth.”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“Bullshit, Nick!”

He wanted to slap her now, make her shut up, but then all that would have done was give him a bloodied nose or lip in response. There would be no denying her, now that she had sniffed out something suspicious.

Jackie began to uncurl her legs. “You know, I can just step out for a minute.”

“No.” Shelby reached back and pushed Jackie back to the cushions. “Don’t you move an inch. You deserve to know every goddamn thing, and so you will.”

Nick slowly exhaled, trying to let the tension roll out of him, but it did no good. Instead he began to pace across the living room behind the sofa instead, needing to move. He could not stand still and say the words. “All right. Drake showed me what to do, what I had to do to become this… what I am, but I didn’t drink his blood to turn. He merely gave me a taste. No. That would have been far too easy for him.”

Shelby leaned on the back of the couch, watching Nick, thinking and remembering. He realized she would put the pieces together quickly enough. Jackie might not-she wasn’t familiar enough with the story-but he was wrong. Jackie opened her mouth to speak even as Shelby’s eyes grew wide with shock.

“It was Gwendolyn,” Jackie said matter-of-factly, as though it was just another point of interest in the case. “You said she was the last one to die.”

Shelby’s mouth was open, but it took her a moment to form any words. “Fuck, Nick. You drank Gwen’s blood to turn yourself?” Her cheeks were flushing red, and Nick couldn’t tell if it was anger for what he had done or the fact he had never told her.

But it was out there now. The grand albatross of shame had flown and landed in the middle of Jackie’s living room. Nick turned away, unable to look at them any longer. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I drank her blood.” He suddenly felt weak in the knees and light-headed and had to sit himself down on the piano bench.

Shelby was up and moving around, stopping every couple seconds to stare at him. “This! This… this is the thing, the ‘something I will never tell anyone.’” Nick nodded, and she rolled her head in dismay. “God, Nick. What gave you the right to keep that a secret from me? How could you?”

He tried to speak, but his heart had lodged somewhere up in his throat. He should have told her. She should have been the one person he could trust with the horrible deed, but in the end, he had been unable to let go of it, shackled as it was to his soul. He swallowed several times, trying to get some amount of moisture back in his mouth.

“Gwen did,” he answered.

She stopped, throwing up her hands. “What?

“Gwen gave me the right. She told me to do it.” The image regurgitated itself from the bowels of his brain, fresh as the day it had happened on that day, 144 years ago. Nick clenched his hands into fists to try to keep them from trembling.

“‘Do it,’ she said. I refused at first. I thought it better to die with her there, but she wouldn’t let me.” He looked up at Shelby now, his voice loud and shaky. “She said, ‘You will do it.’ Her voice was so strong for someone with her blood running out onto the floor. She held my hand so hard it actually hurt.” He smiled at the memory. Yes, Gwen had been strong, the strongest women he had ever known. “She said, ‘You will do this thing and get him for us, Nicholas.’” His voice began to falter now, the words coming out one at a time. “‘Get him for everyone he’s killed, because…’” He stopped for moment, wiping at the tear that finally spilled, a single drop filled with more than a century’s worth of sorrow and suffering. “‘Because you’re the goddamn sheriff.’”

He said the last word, stabbing his finger out at Shelby, much like Gwendolyn had done then, and got up off the bench, feeling the need to move then, before he completely broke down. He walked over to the sliding glass door, looking up at the dark skies that spit rain down on the window, thinking of all the times he had wanted to shed tears for that moment but had refused himself the right.

“Nick…” Shelby said, her tone consolatory.

He raised a hand to silence her. “She said… ‘If you love me, you will do it.’” Nick reached out and touched the drops running down the outside of the window, feeling the tears that now burned down his cheeks.

A moment later, Shelby’s hand was on his shoulder. “Goddamnit, babe. You should’ve told me this a long time ago. You didn’t need to carry that around all this time.”

He nodded, unable to speak for a moment. Finally, he said, “Sorry.”

She slugged him in the shoulder. “If that’s for refusing to tell me all these years, then fine, I’ll accept. Otherwise, you have nothing to be sorry for, hon.” She reached up and turned Nick’s face toward hers, and there was a tear running down her cheek as well. “Even the sheriff can be human.”

If you love me. Jackie watched them in silence, Shelby’s hand caressing the square line of Nick’s jaw, wiping at the tears on his face. The image was hard to comprehend, but she understood. If Carl had been there with a knife in her back, telling her that if she drank her mother’s blood, she would have the chance at revenge, she would not have thought twice about it. The thought made her stomach squirm. Maybe she would have chickened out in the end. Watching Nick now had her wondering if she could have stomached the consequences of such an act.

Nick looked different to her now. Everything about him and how he had been made some kind of sense. He wanted justice, even if he had to sacrifice everything to get it, but now she realized just how difficult that was. How could he have known what would happen once that decision was made? Would it have mattered? No, Jackie figured, it would not. He would endure until justice was achieved or die trying. She appreciated that and realized maybe they were more alike than she had thought. Laurel had been right. Jackie sighed and sipped more of her cold coffee.

Shelby stepped away from Nick and pointed at the piano. “Play something, babe. Don’t argue with me, just do it.”

He glanced over at Jackie, but she could not tell what the look meant, and he gave a helpless shrug and walked back over to the piano bench. Suddenly, Jackie felt self-conscious, remembering the perfect, beautiful baby grand he had sitting in his loft. Hers was likely horribly out of tune in comparison.