The Awakening: 17

Keya felt that a smile was forming on her lips. She tried to hide it from Francine, as she came back into her line of sight but slowly. "Free spirited much?" Francine asked.

"Mark said I could do it," Keya said, "If I wanted to."

"Naturally," Francine said, "Mr. Fancy pants gets what he wants. He keeps undermining my authority and we'll see who makes him tea from now on."

"I will," Keya said, tipping a stack of books over on her way to the vending machine.

"Where did you put all those chocolates?"

Keya stopped herself. She had seen the chocolates? "In the library. Not at home."

Keya knew this was Francine's concern. At home, the rooms were so neat and in order. Even in the refrigerator, all the vegetables were standing just so and inches from each other just so and alphabetically, Keya thought. Apples next to celery next to cucumbers. Keya guessed that because she couldn't have order at work, Francine might as well have it at home. But she couldn't have order in Keya's life. Mark had told her that. After a few days of following rule after rule, Keya had simply decided to stop following Francine's rules and make up her own. This was also part of what Mark had said to her. He had explained, "Well, it's all well and good to follow some rules but to follow rules for the sake of following them, well, that's controversial to thinking and most people are used to thinking for themselves. What's the point of being free of danger, if only to be tied to safety?"

Keya had got really stuck to this point. She didn't want to be tied to safety. She had been tied to safety all her life in the palace and it had led her to act scared and insecure around people. She had been led to weakness, is what Mark said but she could be strong if she chose to. Then, Mark had somewhat idly pointed to a section of the library that held self-defense books. She was currently studying Mr. Lee's Philosophy of the Inner Chi. The inner chi parts kept referring back to personal freedom, to be free of oppressive forces. Keya had taken so much reading lessons from Francine before learning how to do the reading herself. She was a quick learner with the ta's and sh's and ch's and differences in consonants and verbs and nouns but she had spent a lot of time deciphering her book. It seemed that the other Mark, her other savior, wasn't concerned with teaching her how to be rude to Francine or how to disobey elders but rather how to become a better person. The other Mark, time-travel Mark as she'd come to call him, had a deep sense of honor and respect for people of all periods in time. Time-travel Mark told her to keep her senses in all situations, even when captive, which she'd not done at the time of her capture by the evil men. Now that she knew they were an experiment of man, she no longer referred to them as vampires. It made them seem less threatening to her.

Time-travel Mark reminded her of Billy, who in a sense treated people kindly, even when he himself got treated badly. She found Mark engrossed in a book about roaches and their habits.

"Fascinating," Mark said as she approached him. How could he even see her without turning his back? "The boy gone?"

"Well, yea. You kind-a kicked him out."

"Good," Mark said, "I never liked bullies."

Keya regarded Mark, frowning. She crossed her hands. "You will be nicer to him tomorrow."

"I think," Mark said, "I shall act toward the boy as I wish. You think that guy is the fated one, don't you? Him? A bully? Please, Keya, I thought you were smarter than this."

"It's not his weight or his face that speaks of what he is, you told me that yourself."

"Ha," Mark said, "And since when do you listen to me? Did you listen to me when I told you Francine was the cause of all this, this torment? No. You keep trusting that woman."

"She saved me from a hell unknown to me before but now I understand that the only break and difference between the two of you is that you love nothing and she loves me."

"I only try to help you, Keya and her, at all times, imposes rules on you."

"Well, that's where your wrong. She tries to protect me like maybe no one protected you. Why are you the guardian of this gate, anyway? You like to talk about everyone else but never mention your own situation. Why are you here, huh? Is it to manipulate me into hurting people I care about?"
"You care about the boy?"

Keya blushed, "I was talking about Francine," she said quietly.

"Okay. I will tell you why I am the stupid one involved in this dimensional stability thing. However, the three curses, that's a topic you're still too young to hear about. I'll have none of that nonsense. Me? You want to know how I came here? Well, it's a love story, that's why I despise telling it. A long time ago, let's say ten years or so, I was younger at the time, not like I am now, and gullible. I had a set of friends that went and fought vampires in raids, or what some would call in a group. We had different types of specialty fighters. Me and Leroy fought with Katanas. Leroy was a young man, about my age, with about the same build but think of a large nose and a sense of humor. He also had this rugged nose and a frown on his face, a worried look on him always. Another, you met her twice, her name was Teresa, a witch. She could make magic happen with a wave of her hand but there was restrictions to her magic. You see in those days, magic was split into two groups. Those that could cast it by saying a word and those who could use what was around them to create it. The healers and others came later, because of parental seeds being passed from one child to another. Dimensional breaches weren't yet real in those times but me and my team knew about them. The fourth one in the group was named Michael and you, of course, just imagine your beauty and anger and spirit all put into a white girl with blue eyes, same hair. Michael was an expert in most types of armor, and he fought with guns and bows and crossbows. You fought with a slingshot, a bag of marbles hanging by your neck."

"I was your sister, you said," Keya reminded him.

"We found you deserted in alleyway crying over the loss of your parents. The, then, me thought to train in you in the art of fighting, a mistake I later found. It got you into a lot of trouble. Anyway, at the time, we were fighting in alliance with a very unique individual named Arthur Lacroise and his wife Karla. He was a detective and she was a retired New York City police officer. He dressed up in an overcoat and black suit while she wore a police officer's uniform, badge and all.

"During the time of when we broke the first curse, and got rid of the vampires in my world, you see, not yours or others, in order to save his wife from a much more evil enchantress in our world, who had sided with the head of the vampires, Dracula, as he liked to call himself for obvious reasons, Teresa made a void. You see Teresa knew about voids but not where they led. Arthur knew about voids, too, as the evil enchantress happened to be his sister."

"His own sister was evil?"

"You play the cards your dealt, Keya," Mark said.

"But how did you guys not get at her sooner if she was the sister of one of your own?"

"Arthur was hard to change to our side. He wasn't really a bad guy to us. He was just doing his job as a cop, investigating on us and all that. When he found that we were doing something good, fighting against the vampires and not just upsetting things as newspapers and political groups liked to advertise, he joined our cause. Well, there was that and his sister had somehow had his wife enchanted by a trance or a spell. The deal was that Arthur was to retrieve a book that would have prevented me from breaking the curse and thus undoing the reality of our world, and by that same token, destroying it. The love story here being that I was to save a marriage by saving Arthur's wife and the world a the same time. Me and Teresa arrived at Dracula's castle too late. Arthur and his sister were already fighting it out. He had some kind of orb that prevented her from hurting him with her magic and she was pouring fourth magic from the ground, making things come to life to attack him, not that she had to, vampires were surrounding him from all sides.

This was a fight that was had in the gates of a big castle. When we arrived, we blew up the gates, causing vampires to scatter through the gardens and hide underneath the shadow of violet flowers and other weird vines that had sprouted in the place. It was definitely a place of evil. In order to save his wife, who Arthur's sister had underneath her blade flying eight feet above the ground, Teresa decided to create a void and let it slip over Karla. Well, what happened then, was a tragedy.

You showed up and took your shot, killing the witch."

"That doesn't sound like a tragedy."

"Your shot went through her body, striking Karla dead as she disappeared into the void. Arthur saw this and bowed revenge. Little did we know that he was a dimensional traveler. He killed you in my dimension, creating a side ways void that split your body down the middle, the void absorbing you from the belly up but the rest of you remaining in my earth, a horrible death. I could not have been more upset by what happened. For days, you could not get me to fess up to what happened. I'd erased it from my mind. Arthur escaped to another dimension, a fact we later learned from books and reading but by then it was too late, Arthur had gone from one dimension to another, killing your parents. He didn't want to kill you in just one earth, you see. And killing your parents? He wanted you to suffer first."

"Is that why my parents in all dimensions are dead?"

"I'm sorry," Mark said, "It's all my fault."

"According to you, it's all my fault," Keya said.

"Your fault?" Mark asked, blinking, "Please, don't." He looked sad and shaken.

She touched his hand, "Does it help you to think it was your fault?"

"I said don't!"

Keya fell back a little. It was weird to talk to him. Still, he hadn't told her how he had gotten into this dimension, this weird wonderful earth with chocolate everywhere. She stepped away, afraid. She'd talk to him when he was calm. As Keya walked away she thought she heard him whimpering and, at last, as though by magic he vanished.