Blanket of Fear

The morning after Zack’s nightmare, everyone was very quiet. Even Sparrow and Harlow were being silent, which was very unusual. It was almost like everyone could feel the tension that had been built up the night before, and no one was comfortable with it. Each of the vampires knew about the nightmare—after all, it had been so briefly terrifying for Zack that he hadn’t been able to block it from being seen by others who could see his thoughts. But no one said a word to him about it, almost as if it was an unspoken rule.

Eliza, for the most part, seemed to be more distraught about the nightmare than he was. The only way Zacky could explain it was that she was under a blanket of fear.While Zack had gotten over it, Eliza couldn’t stop thinking of the way he’d thrashed around on the mattress, his body covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he relived his family’s death. Zack had tried to talk to her, to calm her down, but nothing had worked. She had stayed locked in their bedroom for the majority of the day, leaving only once to get some food from the kitchen.

Everyone could see that something had changed within the redhead’s personality. She almost seemed broken. None of them had realized how much she needed Zacky, and it was a stark realization indeed. Of course, while they could see that she needed him, they also knew just by the way that their friend was acting that he needed her just as much. Zack wouldn’t leave her alone at all, staying with her wherever she went, trying to calm her down.

“I’ve never seen Eliza act like this since I’ve known her,” Val murmured to Matt as she leaned her head against his chest as she watched the two of them talking in quiet voices in their bedroom, the door opened just enough so that they could see inside.

“She’s scared,” Matt told her. “She’s afraid that the nightmare meant that something’s going to happen to him; that his brother wants to kill him.”

“But if Matthew wanted to kill Zack, why would he have waited that night?” Val looked up at him with a frown. “Why not just kill him with the rest of his family if that’s what he wanted?”

Matt sighed, shrugging. He’d never met the older Baker brother, and had never wanted to. The man was all sorts of fucked up from the few bits of information Zack had shared with them, and even though it was obvious that Zack wasn’t afraid of his older brother, there was a sort of hatred that could weaken him if he were ever confronted by his sibling. He wrapped his arms around Val’s waist, thankful that they weren’t having the complex relationship problems that Zack and Eliza always seemed to face.

“I have no clue,” he whispered honestly. It was one of those times when being a vampire tired him to the point that he wished to be human again. At least then he wouldn’t constantly be in some sort of fight for humanity. And the worst part was that he had chosen this life for himself. He’d had a choice, and he’d decided eternal life over humanity.

“She’s still not talking,” Zack muttered under his breath as he walked into the kitchen and began pulling items out of the cupboards, sighing impatiently as he tried to find what he was looking for. “Fuck! Where’s the goddamned chocolate?”

“What do you need that for?” Val asked him softly as she walked over to the fridge and pulled a chocolate bar, handing it over to Zack when he reached for it. He looked at the floor before meeting the blonde woman’s gaze, and she was surprised by the amount of pain that she saw lingering in the green orbs.

“Chocolate is supposed to make girls feel better, right?” He asked Val, pleading for that to be the answer he was looking for. He didn’t know how to make Eliza feel better; didn’t know how to make her realize that he wasn’t going anywhere, and that he was safe. None of his brothers would let anything happen to him, just the same as he wouldn’t let anything happen to them. Val sighed and looked at the floor, not wanting to disappoint Zack.

“It might,” she gave him a weak smile. “But it’s not the kind of damage a bar of chocolate and hugs is going to fix, Z. You need to stay with her, you need to make her feel strong again. This might help, but it’s not the band aid to her problems.”

Zack nodded, glad for the woman’s honesty as he headed out of the kitchen to return to Eliza, not wanting her to be in their bedroom alone for too long. When he got inside the room and had the door shut and locked, he saw that she was still sitting in the same place, having not moved at all.

“Baby, I brought something for you,” he murmured, putting his masquerade mask back on and pretending to be much stronger than he felt. The way Val had phrased it, he felt the need to be Eliza’s rock.

The redhead looked up from her spot on the floor and gave him a hopeful smile as he sat beside her, handing her the chocolate. Instead of opening it and eating it like Zack had thought she would, she instead put it on the nightstand and scooted closer to him, pushing her head into his chest and clutching to his shirt like he was the only thing keeping her alive. He tentatively wrapped his arms around her waist, not wanting to let her down as he hugged her tighter against his body.

“You came back,” she whispered into his chest, just as she had said every time he’d gotten up to leave the bedroom since the nightmare. He shushed her and pressed his pierced lips to her forehead as he held her, not wanting her to feel afraid any longer.

“Of course I did,” he smiled as he lifted her chin so that she was meeting his gaze. “I told you, nothing is going to happen. I promised, didn’t I?”

She nodded as she hugged him again. Zack could tell that she needed sleep, and he moved one of his arms underneath her legs so that he could stand and move her to the bed, where he laid her down carefully before moving over her body to lay down next to her, pulling one of the loose blankets up around them as he hugged her to his chest.

“What were they like?” She whimpered quietly as she turned just enough so that his eyes could see hers in the darkened bedroom. He was caught off guard by her sentence and he thought about it for a minute.

What had his parents and sister been like? He couldn’t really recall. He knew that he’d loved them very much—he still loved them to this day. But as to their personalities, the way they’d acted…he couldn’t remember anything. He knew their faces in his mind; he knew their names, but…he didn’t know them anymore. They were a distant memory in his mind, though it didn’t scare or bother him. You didn’t need to know someone or remember everything about them to still love them, in his belief.

“I can’t remember,” he answered the girl honestly. “But I know they were good people. Matthew was a good person once, too.”

“Then why did he do it?” Eliza pressed, more tears filling her eyes as flashbacks of this morning came back to her. “Why would he murder his family and turn you into a vampire if he was a good person?”

It didn’t take a genius to hear the anger and desperation in her voice as she turned to fully face him, clutching tightly to him once again. He pushed some hair out of her face and leaned down to press some hair against her cheek before pulled back to meet her gaze. “I don’t know the answer to that either, Eliza,” he answered her softly. Before she could ask him another question, he continued speaking. “Sometimes being a vampire means being just as clueless as you would be if you were human. We don’t have all the answers. We can’t solve all of the world’s problems, we can just try to help balance it out. We’re really not that different from you,” he murmured as he met her gaze, a small smile on his face.

“Do you think he really will kill you? That that’s what he wants to do?” She whispered, her heart beat the only sound that could be heard in the bedroom. It was the question that had been bothering her all day, and she was both afraid of the answer, and desperately needing to know it.

Zacky sighed as he shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he muttered, closing his eyes and starting to slow down his breathing, hinting that they should get some sleep.

It was then that he realized he didn’t know nearly as much as he used to think he did. He couldn’t help but thank Eliza for showing him that.