Intoxicated

Five

San Francisco, California~

Life's dark chapters. Tee hadn't been able to drive the phrase from her mind since she'd heard it the day before. She had said her goodbyes to Steve and Denise Brassels early that morning before she'd headed off to make the flight back home. The words kept popping up in her head all during the flight and had remained during the drive from the airport to her office.

Now, she sat behind the wheel of her Crossover and studied the attractive but unassuming brick building that bore her name. The phrase hung there in her mind like a dark cloud- ominous and ready to make good on a promised storm. The accomplishment before her eyes would not have been possible were it not for the thing that defined her.

The thing- that one thing- had come from the darkest chapter of her life. Not until Denise Brassels' words touched her ears, had she given them any real credence. Sure, she knew what happened that night had changed her, but that it had... defined her... that was a whole other thing entirely.

Defined... by that horror, by that one thing- that one night she'd become someone, something utterly different. Perhaps Denise Brassels' words hadn't set off such an epiphany. Perhaps she'd known that truth long ago. Perhaps she'd known it, but hadn't recognized the true scope of what it'd meant for her.

She eyed her building again. ͤShaw had been her dream and she'd made it real despite the fact that none of her original plans for making it so had been realized. She'd used the change that night had brought in her- it hadn't used her- it hadn't... defined her. Had it?

How could it not, Tee? The query, unspoken, blared like a cacophony of sound inside her head. Yes, she answered. How could it not? It had defined her. That night she'd become someone unrecognizable, someone capable of killing without hesitation or nerves. She lived everyday with the knowledge that she'd do it again if she had to. She could take another life without hesitation to save her friends.

That knowledge kept her awake many nights. It wasn't that she knew she would spill blood again to keep herself or her friends safe. It was knowing that a part of her could-would spill blood for the sheer pleasure of watching it flow. She had heard of bloodlust and had always considered it some fantastical, mythical thing. It was certainly not something that a little black girl from a small town outside Philadelphia would ever experience in her lifetime, but there she was.

That dark chapter. That, as yet unrealized dark chapter. She knew it would be more terrifying than any that had come before it. What would happen when that new chapter began and the opportunity to spill blood (or not to spill it) was in her grasp? Would she go against who- what she had become that night six years ago? After six years, was she now too far gone to be anything other than what she was? A monster.

Her stomach muscles clenched then and Tee recognized the churning in her belly as the onset of nausea. Quickly, she gathered her things and made the escape from her car. The street, beautifully shaded by Red Flowering Gum Trees, was quiet at mid-morning. Crossing wasn't the chore it often was.

Tee was grateful. Such was not the day for a battle with streetcars and other forms of traffic. The nausea had yet to begin a steady, bile-bearing climb along the back of her esophagus. Perhaps no one would notice she was dog sick when she arrived.

She breezed through tinted double doors and into the inviting lobby of her office building. Despite the nausea, her proprietor's sixth sense kicked in and she paused mid-stride. Though hers wasn't a business to have customers steadily filing in and out of its doors, the place rarely appeared quite so abandoned at that time of day.

Her receptionist Moira Kent was usually chatting with other members of the crew. Moira however, usually did her socializing there at her cream colored console desk or on the matching midnight blue sofa and armchairs furnishing a lobby that always tended to carry the wondrous aroma of brewing coffee.