Essence (Nectar 3)

“What if he doesn’t want to stay here? What if he wants to go and you can’t feed any longer?” Kyla asked.

“That’s his choice.”

“Is he in a trance?”

“He was. Before. With others. But with me, before I was vamp we spent a lot of time together so we had a lot of conversations, lucid ones. He remembered you. He worried about you. He wanted you to be okay. He was hoping you were far away, away from anything to do with this life and that somehow you’d be able to live a normal existence with no exposure to vampires.”

“Why can’t I remember him? I remember my parents a little but I don’t remember him.”

“I don’t know why,” Sasha answered, “Perhaps due to being traumatized with being taken? I’m not sure.”

“She might’ve been wiped,” Sam said.

“She’s immune to programming,” Tristan reminded him.

“But she’s not immune to wiping. I’ve done it myself.”

Kyla stared at Sam, “You have?”

A dangerous vibe was coming off Tristan.

She didn’t remember being taken. Her earliest memory was sitting on a park bench with an older lady who told her that she’d be found new parents.

Kyla looked at Tristan. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms folded across his chest, watching her.

And she could feel him. She gave him a sad smile. She felt pain sweep through the room coming from him. He regretted all she’d been through so far. He was deeply affected by all of it. Kyla looked deep into his beautiful blue eyes and smiled. She loved him so much.

“I’ll explain,” Sam said, after you’ve finished talking to Sasha.”

She ate the last bite of the first half of that delicious sandwich he’d made and got up, wiping the corner of her mouth and dropping a serviette on the table and moved to him and he enveloped her into his arms. She tipped her chin up to look at him. He was looking down at her, arms tight around her.

She kissed the cleft on his chin and turned back to Sasha,

“Can I meet him?”

Sasha got to her feet, “Give me ten minutes and then come down?”

“See you in ten,” Tristan replied and motioned back to the table, “Gonna finish your breakfast, baby? Sam?”

“Mmm hmmm. This is delicious.” She sat down and lifted the remaining half and took a bite. Sam was still seated on the other end of the table and his eyes were on her.

Sam winced and looked to Tristan. Tristan jerked his chin, urging Sam to answer.

“Why did you save Jax?” she asked point blank after swallowing, “And what do you mean you’ve wiped me?”

“I told myself I thought maybe we could use him. If we couldn’t use him, he could be used to lure you somehow, perhaps. I was having trouble getting you to Toronto. You weren’t following my directions. The only thing I was capable of with you was wiping your memory of me after each attempt. So I’d try to influence you but it wouldn’t work and then I’d wipe your memory. But I, uh, had an attack of conscience after his accident, which occasionally happens to me where things with you are concerned, and then thought I’d just bring him to Adrian and put him there temporarily in case we needed him. Adrian found use for him.”

“An attack of conscience?” Tristan asked.

Sam nodded, “I felt responsible for the death of his brain. It was odd. I shouldn’t have felt bad after what he’d done but after I saw how Kyla reacted, I did.”

“How were you responsible for his death? He jumped off a bridge.”

Because I told him to take a flying fuck.

“Because I told him to do as the lady said. You being that lady.”

“Wh-what?”

“I heard the argument. Heard why you were pissed and I was pissed for you. I was tasked with looking after you until you could be delivered to Tristan and he’d put you in danger. You stormed out and then he went to follow you and he was tweaked and I didn’t want him getting near you in that state so I stopped him. I caught him in the hallway and encouraged him to do what you’d said.”

The bridge was a two-minute walk from their apartment. Jackson must’ve left the apartment and went straight to the bridge.

“Oh my god,” Kyla’s hand covered her mouth.

“I, uh,” Sam looked down, “I regret the pain that caused you. When I saw your emotion, read it from you at that hospital, that’s when I had a conscience attack and after you left, I dealt with things, revived him, brought him to Adrian’s.”

“The emotion that caused me?”

Tristan straightened up

“Yeah,” Sam winced.

Kyla felt a laugh bubble up from her gut. It turned to pain and then she shrieked, “Do you have any motherfucking idea how it felt to tell a guy to kill himself and then he goes and kills himself? I thought he did! I thought they pulled the plug and that he was dead because I destroyed him. Oh my fucking…”