Bat Country

Alexis’s head stayed back as she held Brian’s hand. She had her eyes closed.
“Do you remember your human life, Brian?”
“Yes.” he said quietly. “I do.”
“Would you tell me about it?”
“It was a long time ago, Alexis.”
“Are you scared I’m going to start snoring or some shit?” Alexis asked, rolling her head over to look at Brian.
He laughed and a smile took over his face. “Kind of.” his eyebrows shrugged.
“Okay, then just fucking tell me about the night you were made.” She said, shrugging out her free hand.
Brian’s eyes widened but his face dropped and he turned to Alexis, his hair following him as if it were his crown. He fell back and threw his head back with Alexis, but didn’t let her hand go.
“When you were made, before you had gone to ground…I came to see you. You were so scared of me. You knew who I was and what I had done. Yet here you are…holding my hand.” Brian squeezed Alexis’s hand in his. “You were able to move on…but I still…haven’t. I don’t know how. It’s kind of ridiculous, Alexis. I haven’t forgiven Matt.”
“’Stop feeling fucking sorry for yourself.’” Alexis mocked. “Shit happens, Brian. What the fuck are you gonna do?”
Brian looked over at Alexis, and the serious expression on his face almost worried her. “It’s not like I simply bit you. You almost had no neck. You could see bone, and muscle and it was the ugliest fucking thing I could have done. No wait…the ugliest thing I could have done was rape you while you were dying. Oh yeah…I tried to.”
Brian’s face was full of disgust. He was expecting to get some sort of negative reaction out of Alexis. A reaction that told him she hadn’t forgiven him and truly hated him. He was looking for justification for hating Matt.
“I’unno, looks alright to me.” Alexis said smiling, dragging a hand lightly over her neck.
“Why aren’t you angry?” Brian was confused. Surely she resented him. She wanted to be human, and he was the reason she wasn’t.
“What good would being angry do? To spend forever pissed off over something I had no control over? Over something you didn’t even have control over? Why should I hold that over your head? Isabel doesn’t. You actually made her.”
“After I made Jimmy…I released him from our bond. I didn’t want to control him like that. I knew he would be in good hands with Matt, so I left Jimmy with him. I felt so guilty about that…that when I made Isabel, I promised myself I wouldn’t release her until we had a solid bond and she could trust in me…but she doesn’t. She’s scared I hate her. It’s the opposite of that. I’m scared she hates me. I am so proud of her, and she’s the nicest person. I don’t regret making her at all. Just the way that it happened.”
Alexis’s eyes were now focused on Brian. “She doesn’t hate you. She loves you very much, actually, but she’s lonely. You both are.”
Brian’s halo of dark spikes moved with him as he nodded. “When I was younger I had traveled a lot with my family a lot. We went so many places and saw so fucking much that I lost track of what we had seen where. We’d even fucking visited royalty. So when I settled in Spain, I had no real skill. I’d been a decent builder, but in Spain that didn’t mean much. Dime a dozen. So you can imagine how disappointed I was with how my life had turned out when I compared it to my past. The best part of my life in Spain was when I met the girl I wanted to marry. I had to try hard to convince her family to let her marry me, but I--”
“You had a fiancé?” Alexis interrupted. It was just so human…
“Wait.” Brian answered her. “I wasn’t successful. I could have just married her,” he shrugged. “But that would get you in some shit in those times. So she ended up marrying someone else.”
Sadness crossed over Alexis’s face for a moment, but she didn’t interrupt.
“Life went on, of course. But as you can guess, it was a huge disappointment and my self esteem crumbled after that. I kind of stayed away from people. Work, home. That was about it. The night Matt came to me, I had decided to go to the beach. I had been there for hours, just sitting there watching those fucking waves come in. It was dark, and the only lights were the twinkling of a few candles and the moon and stars, so I didn’t see Matt come up beside me.
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The only sound that filled Brian’s ears was the sound of the waves coming in. It was dark, and Brian watched the moonlight bounce off the sea. He was lost in thought now as the breeze came in and waltzed through his long hair.
“I thought I was the only one who came here this late.” A voice shook Brian from his thoughts.
“Oh…I am usually in my home at this time of night, but something called me here earlier, and I haven‘t wanted to leave.”
“Dreaming of the world across the sea?” Matt’s voice flowed through Brian easily and it relaxed him.
Brian’s eyebrows raised as he looked over the vast expanse. “I believe so.”
“What troubles you?”
As Brian looked over, he could see the large shape of a man. He then looked away, his arms crossed. “What does not?” Sighing, Brian looked back at the man who was slowly coming into focus in the dark. “I’m used to seeing other things. The same thing every day is becoming a bore. There has to be more out there, something unexpected.”
“Would you believe me if I told you there was?”
A smile graced Brian’s mouth. “Probably not. Nothing is waiting for me.”
“Ahhh,” Matt said, stepping forward. “That’s a pity.”
“How so?”
“How many people go through life never seeing even half of what’s out there?”
“Too many. Myself included.”
“You want the world. You want to see everything it can offer you, do you not?”
“I do.” Brian suddenly shook his head. “Who are you?” He asked, confused.
Matt shrugged, his pale skin catching the light from the moon. “Do you care?”
The man was right, Brian thought. He didn’t care. “Not particularly.”
“If you want to see the world, I will help you.”
“How could you possibly help me?” Brian asked. He was starting to get nervous, but refrained from running.
“Do you want to see for yourself or do you want to question me until the sun rises?”
Brian thought it over for a moment. He wanted out of here more than he was worried about this guy.
“Why don’t we meet another time so we can discuss it further? I am not entirely sure what it is you are offering me and I am afraid my mind is elsewhere. A clear head will do us both a favor.”
Matt smiled and stuck out a hand. “A deal.”
As Brian slowly stuck his hand out, a look of caution plastered to his face.
With good reason. Matt was a large man, but this speed and strength was inhuman.
Terror flooded Brian as Matt’s large hand clamped his mouth shut. Matt’s face was buried in the crook of Brian’s neck and he could feel the cool breath on his neck. Soon the pain took hold over his body.
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“His teeth were like hot knives and pretty quickly shit started going black. It was harder to breathe and…Alexis, please don’t make me talk about this anymore…I‘ll finish telling you some day, but I can‘t right now.” Brian sighed.
Disbelief and curiosity filling her face, Alexis didn’t say anything, instead she pulled Brian in by the shirt and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him to her with her cheek on his forehead. Brian, unsure how to react, slowly raised his arms and solidified the lock of their embrace.