This Is Why I'm Not A Writer
May. 8th, 2012 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mythicalgirlThat's how I found this jem. I must have been extremely bored on October 21, 2005 when I wrote this (at 4:30 PM if anyone cares). I was still reading a lot of paranormal romance at that time and I think it was before I stopped reading Laurell K Hamilton completely. It comes off as really bad fan fic complete with Mary Sue. Thankfully it isn't long.
Behind the cut to spare the refined sensibilites of my readers!
Now including typos!
A rumble of thunder caught my attention, forcing my eyes to the window. I thought of the famous first line from a novel, “It was a dark and stormy night”. It was appropriate. The rain had been falling gently for most of the day but as soon as the sun had set it was like the heavens had broken loose. Gran used to say storms like this were the angels having a hissy fit. I thought it was more like a psychotic breakdown. The lightning was nearly nonstop and the thunder cracked and rolled with increasing power. Not only were the windows rattling but the floor and walls of my apartment had a nearly constant vibration to them. The picture of Gran had fallen off the mantle twice, luckily not breaking the glass, before I finally gave up and set it flat on the coffee table.
I thought about turning on the weather channel to see what the latest on the storm was but decided not to. If a tornado was coming the siren would go off and I’d jump into the tub and cover myself with a blanket. Being in an apartment meant there weren’t many other places to go, no basement or cellar. At least I was on the first floor. The apartment above was currently empty and I spared a thought to whether anyone would realize if there was a leak before it was too late and the ceiling caved in on me. Morbid thought, I said out loud. Oh great, now I was talking to myself again?
My eyes drifted back to the window and watched the lightning flash through the sky. Rain was coming down and lashing against the glass but I thought it was probably more the wind that was making it seem so heavy rather than that there was so much water. As long as the roof didn’t blow off it would be OK. I wasn’t about to open the door and go outside unless there was a fear of the building caving in so as long as the roof held I didn’t have to worry about anything getting in.
And just why was I worried? Well, despite all the weathermen saying earlier how it was unusual but not unheard of for freak storms like this to pop up I knew this wasn’t a natural storm. Hell, I could feel the spell in the air that was powering it. Whoever had cooked this sucker up was very powerful and their magic had a bitter smell. It wasn’t one I recognized and there was nothing to indicate that it was meant for me in any way but there was too much going on to take chances.
How long had it been since I’d died and everything in my life had changed? Two weeks. Just two weeks ago my life had been normal. Ok, relatively normal. Sure I knew vampires and weres and several kinds of fey. I had always been a witch but magic was a normal part of life for a lot of people. Not all of them had a half-human, half sidhe for a mother and a were-panther for a father but it was still pretty normal as things went. The thought of my parents made me glance at the other picture on the mantel, the one that it seemed no amount of vibration could shake off. The heavy silver frame held the only photo I had of my parents together. My dad had died before I was born, trying to protect my mother from a vampire attack. He’d failed. My mother, being fey, wasn’t turned but it left her…damaged. Oh, she was still the wonderful caring woman she’d always been, according to friends who had known her before. But she refused to leave the sithen for any reason. It meant that talking to my mother was done by magic (cell phones didn’t always in the sithen and the only land-line belonged to the Queen) and if we wanted to see each other I had to go to her.
It was the Queen who had convinced my mother that I needed to leave the fairie lands and be raised at least part of the time by my grandparents. Being only a quarter fey and very human made staying in fairie a bad idea, as I would never have the magic to be able to live there safely. In short I would never belong. Which I had to admit was true, I had never belonged. After my mother was bitten there had been talk of aborting me. They hadn’t forced her but they had taken me almost as soon as I cleared my mother’s womb to do “tests” to make sure I wasn’t infected with the vampire virus. The test consisted of leaving me outside as the sun rose to see if I burst into flames. It was only after the Queen and all her nobles were convinced that I was human that they let my mother have me back. Being declared clean of vampire taint hadn’t made life any easier for me though. I was human and the rest of my playmates were not. I was often teased, called fang-face despite the fact that I had neither vamp nor panther fangs.
I figured that the Queen had ordered my mother to send me to my were-panther grandparents when I was grade-school age more because she didn’t want to be bothered with a frail human than that she cared what happened to me. I had secretly hoped that by living with my grandparents I would become more than I was, maybe even turn into a panther myself on the first full moon after puberty. I didn’t, of course. Only about half of the children born to only one were parent ever experience the change. If both parents are weres it a guarantee but with only one, well, more like a crap shoot. And unfortunately I crapped out. I’d had an affinity for magic though so Gran had asked her clans witch to teach me. She figured even if her granddaughter would never be strong enough to do the big magics that at least she could learn the right way of doing the smaller, natural magics she seemed to have. Mother had agreed so I had spent much of my youth being tutored by a human witch and sidhe healer in the ways of the Goddess.
Of course things were different now. Two weeks ago the new vamp girlfriend of my ex-boyfriend had cast a spell on me, one that was so subtle, so finely woven that I hadn’t even noticed it until it was too late. I’d been in the kitchen, chopping vegetables to make stir-fry for dinner. Somewhere between slicing the green pepper and the bamboo I’d suddenly looked at my left wrist and used the knife to slice a long, deep cut halfway up my forearm. Before I could even think about it I’d switched the knife to my left had and done the same to my right wrist. It shouldn’t have been possible what with all the wards I had on the apartment but somehow the spell had gotten in and I was lying on the kitchen floor, bleeding my life away on the cool gray tile.
I remembered coming my senses just before I lost enough blood to pass out completely. I didn’t think that was part of the spell but more my own natural will to live burning enough of the it away to make me coherent. I’d already lost too much blood to get to the phone to dial 911 and I couldn’t concentrate enough to slow down the bleeding, let alone heal myself so I’d done the only other thing I could think of. I had mentally called the vampire I worked for and begged for help. I worked as an appraiser and evaluator for the local Vampire Master’s art gallery and there were times when I had to consult with him while with a client or customer, so Sebastian had allowed shared mental communication between us. I had never, ever used it when I wasn’t on the job. I think it was more that than whatever I said to him that got his attention.
Even now, two weeks later, I couldn’t remember what I’d said to him but I knew I must have gotten through because he had burst through my door with the paramedics right on his tail. Yes, he could enter my apartment. I’d invited him in only the evening before the “accident” in order to go over some gallery business and I hadn’t rescinded the invitation. Normally it would have been sloppy and just begging to get munched on some night but looking back I felt it was probably the Goddess’s way of helping me out a little bit.
The paramedics had gotten me to the hospital but it was too late. I died on the gurney in the ER. I remember seeing my body lying there, doctors working franticly to close the wounds, transfuse blood, and trying to get my heart started all at the same time. I remember looking over my shoulder and seeing Sebastian staring at my body, his skin flushed from the nearness of all that good blood but his eyes devoid of the hunger I expected to see. Instead he looked almost in shock, as if he couldn’t believe that I was dead. I remember hearing his voice saying “no, no” as if from far away.
I’d been clinically dead for two minutes when something sparked deep inside my body, forcing me to look back. Hovering over my lifeless body next to me were three other ghostly figures. One looked a great deal like my mother and I realized it was what I would look like if my sidhe blood had been stronger. The second switched between a mirror image of myself and a large phantom panther. The third was also a mirror image but this phantom didn’t shift. It looked like me but somehow different and I knew even before the ghost smiled that it would have fangs, vampire fangs. I had a moment to look down at my own ghostly self, the one I knew as a human witch before I felt my spirit and the others yanked back into fleshy shell of my body. Even as my heart started to beat and I gasped for breath I knew this body was now different. Despite being near death I felt somehow stronger, more powerful than I had ever felt before. I was no longer just a human witch but sidhe, were and vampire as well.
From the reactions on the doctor’s faces they were surprised I was back but didn’t know anything otherworldly had happened. One look at Sebastian told me that he knew. He might not know exactly how I was different but he knew. He told me later that my scent had changed when my heart had started beating again. He still smelled the light scent of flowers and herbs that he always associated with me but he had also smelled another vamp and the dark, bitter earth smell of the panther and the sweet honey smell of the sidhe. It had intrigued him but had also concerned him because if I really was all four of those things in one body then I was unique in the world and there was no telling who or what I would draw to me. There are many creatures on this earth that are drawn to power and what he felt from me now was a power unlike any other. Not necessarily the strongest power he had ever tasted but the most unique and that would draw attention.
Hence the fact that the storm worried me.
