MADE

~ Forgiven ~

I wavered in and out of consciousness. 

Many hours were wasted in an involuntary shiver from the dried cold sweat that had come just a few minutes before. 

The faces I saw at the party kept flashing across my closed eyes but no matter how hard I looked I still couldn't see who they were. They were just eyes and no face.

When I finally did wake up, it was to hushed whispers and bright light that stung my still closed eyes. My eyes felt like they had sand in them. 

I blinked at the light coming in from my window. My head throbbed with every heartbeat. For a while, all I could see was white, white from the brightness of the room. 

Slowly things came into view.

Clair sat in the chair in the corner and her face held a terrified blank expression. Her reddish brown hair was pulled up into a bun on the top of her head. Elijah was moving, moving to the edge of my bed. Alaric stood in the door way, arms crossed over his chest and staring at the carpet of my bedroom floor.

I wanted to talk but my voice was nowhere to be found. I wanted to ask what happened. What was going on, who were those people... with the eyes.

"How are you?" Clair asked coming to sit on the end of my bed like Elijah had.

"Fine," I lied but my voice came out hoarse, almost like I had spent my night screaming.

Elijah noticed my tone, disappearing out of the room in a flash. He was back a moment later with a glass of water, his hand on the rim so he didn't spill it as he ran at that inhuman speed. 

I grabbed it from him and downed the whole glass.

"What happened?" I asked cautiously. Elijah and Clair both paled. 

Clair looked at Elijah, "We were going to ask you the same thing."

Confusion hit me like a truck. 

"What do you remember?" Elijah urged. 

"I remember getting there," I said, "and Clair and I drinking." 

Elijah glanced at Clair for one fleeting moment. "Do you remember how much you drank?" Elijah asked.

"She had the same amount as me," Clair told him, "and I was fine."

"Oh yeah," Elijah said, "You were totally fine." Sarcasm seemed to bounce off the walls. 

For the first time Alaric moved, it was just a shift in his posture but it was something. 

"You know what I mean," Clair replied her cheeks reddening with a glare.

"What happened?" I asked again, something had happened with Clair too. My eyes landed on Clair and she shifted position uncomfortably.

"I will tell you after," she said under her breath in a mumble.

"What about after that," Elijah continued. 

"We danced," I looked at Clair hoping I was getting it right. "I saw something strange."

"That's when she started to shake," Clair said quietly.

"Do you remember that?" Elijah asked.

Shaking? I thought. "No." 

"Mare what did you see?"

Things. "People," I started. Not people.

"What did they look like?" Elijah leaned closer. 

"I don't know," I said, "They didn't really look like anything. They were just staring. There eyes had gone black."

Elijah looked back at the non-moving Alaric and then back to me. "How many?" Elijah urged quickly. The panic suddenly was visible on his face.