When Night Falls

xi

She didn't know what she expected from him. But it certainly didn't surprise her.

They were both sitting in the living room alone, the tension palpable enough to cut with a knife. Ten minutes later and they were still both staring into nothing as the silence cocooned them with cold hands.

Callista noticed how he kept closing and opening his mouth, dragging his tongue across his lips. It was the only sign of discomfort he showed. Other than that, he was completely and utterly still with his blank eyes staring at the wall.

She wonders what excuses he would give her, if he'd say sorry for lying, for pretending, for practically poisoning her.

After he'd asked her how she was, she'd resorted to silently staring at him until Cliff and Richard had left the room. The awkwardness was intensifying that Laura had come in with a metal tray in hand. She placed what looked and smelled like iced tea on the glass table before eyeing Callista with her look; the look that said 'sit your ass down and don't be weird'.

She internally scoffed. None of it made any sense to her whatsoever. But the truth didn't have to make sense.

Like how her uncle married his dead brothers' wife. Who does that? Lucius Desiderio. Who hunts and kills people who have the ability to tear into someone's skin and completely bite their heads off? Lucius Desiderio. Who was sitting in this suffocating room with her with nothing to say and was fidgeting? Lucius Desiderio.

See? No sense at all.

"Well then," Callista loudly claps her hands before standing up from her seat. "This was fun. We should do it again some time. Probably in the next fifty years or so. When even my hearing aids can't aid me into hearing what you have to say." She could feel his eyes boring into her skin but she kept on darting her eyes everywhere he wasn't.

He stands from the one seater slowly. Cali crosses her arms and watches as he stalks toward her with a grace that she could now see belongs to a hunter used to catching his prey.

Cali refuses to be his prey.

"Leave." She pushes back her shoulders and stares straight at his chest.

Lucius sees her keeping a defensive position and he didn't know he'd say it until the words were out of his mouth.

"That was your mothers." He nods toward the silver pendant hanging in front of her sweater.

Without her permission, her hand grasps the wolf head and almost immediately, warmth flowed from her cold fingertips and spread itself across her chest until her body was relaxing like a cat lazily stretched across a warm fire.

Still gripping the pendant, she looks up until those all too familiar eyes meet her own. Staring at those gunmetal gray pair, she could feel as though she was staring at the mirror contemplating why her life revolved around a lie.

"Why did you lie to me?" The words were whispered into the wind but somehow felt as though the entire house could hear her broken plea.

"Believe me when I tell you, child that it was to protect you and your mother." He raises his hand as if to comfort her but drops it before he could touch her. She looked so much like Cara, his chest seized at the thought.

"But she died. In your home. Where you weren't. Because you were out murdering someone of her kind!" Her voice trembled with emotion and Lucius only barely flinched at the accusing tone.

She spoke of the days he was always gone, too busy to notice her mother slowly sinking into herself. Too busy to notice she was always staring at walls becoming as blank as he was.