I'm Fine in the Fire, Don't Try and Fix Me

"Liam, Liam, darling, wake up," my mother coaxed me awake. I groaned looking around for a second. It's weird waking up on the coach when you have a perfectly functioning room. It's even weirder when you wake up on top of a dom.

"Yeah, mom?" I asked her. She felt off. Something was a little different about her today. It wasn't unusual for other members of my family to have a different feeling to them every day, but she never really changed that much. It was odd.

She sighed. "I'm taking you somewhere this morning. Be ready in ten minutes, okay?" I nodded, and she left the room. This wasn't like her. She didn't suggest going somewhere and then just not telling me where we were going. I shook it off though. It was my mother. She knew what she was doing. Right? Right, sorry, you wouldn't know either.

I tried to sit up only to get pulled back down. Great, a dom seemed to be attached to me. "Vlad, wake up." I shook him a couple of times. God, he could sleep. Though, I'm sure he was a little drained from the other day. "Vlad," I said a little louder. He mumbled something, but didn't get up. "Come on, let me up," I told him.

"Where ya goin'?" He muttered. He seemed to no want to let me go, which was understandable. But, I had a real excuse to leave, and I stayed the entire night, like I told him I would. I actually slept quite well surprisingly. But, I suppose finding your soul mate does that to you. And, no, I'm not jumping on that whole band wagon, and no again, this will probably not happen again for quite a while, much to your disappointment.

"My mom wants me to go with her somewhere. You can stay here if you want." I suggested. He mumbled something I couldn't here, but let me up regardless. I checked the time. Of course he was confused waking up. It's barely past six in the morning. I still had no idea what this woman wanted to do, but whatever it is, I'm sure will not end well.

I got dressed quickly. Only looking around my room when completely necessary, I ended up finding some things on the floor that weren't too far from the door. Mom was waiting by the car when I was done. She didn't say anything as we both slipped in and essentially slipped away. "Does dad know we left?" I asked. She nodded. "Does he know where we are going?" She shook her head. Okay, someone is being a little mysterious this morning. I didn't dare pry into her mind though. She taught me that early.

"If someone wants you to know, they will tell you. Never use your powers for something that isn't important." She would always tell me. That, and well, she's a witch as you know. She would be able to tell if I was messing with her mind. And, as you always may know, she could do much worse than I can.

I didn't question anything until we past city lines about an hour into the drive. I still didn't say anything ten minutes later when we started going to the woods. I did however ask after the tree line stopped, and we were left with flat plains. All she did was tell me I would figure it out soon. Which I did, much to my distaste. We were headed to the Valley of the Tormented.

The Valley of the Tormented was a place I only ever went to once, but we didn't stay long. It was for a school field trip. We weren't even going there. The bus ran out of gas, and we ended up waiting here for a half an hour. The kids were curious to what was out there, and the teacher replied with something quick and simple. "Those who wronged us in the past and face a punishment worse than death." We didn't question it after that.

Supposedly, there were lines of coffins for miles and miles. Each was filled with a body of someone that did something horrible to the vampire race. It would be the same as a human facing death for genocide. You might know something about that. But, vampires were a little more creative. They just put these people through agony for all of eternity, never finding but always seeking death.

That wasn't what I saw though, when we finally arrived, I mean. It wasn't miles and miles. If I could guess, there were less than a hundred. Each was raised off the ground. They were all glass. I could see the bodies of those going through internal torture. Their faces were stuck in silent screams, terrifying expression. They were scrunched up in pain, and horror, and disgust, and sadness.

My mom took a deep breathe looking briefly at each person before going to the next. She didn't move though. Her body seemed paralyzed, like the criminals stuck inside. "Why did you bring me here?" I finally managed to ask. She looked over at me quickly. "Follow me." She commanded.

We walked through a few rows, going slowly. The torture filled her soul as much as it did mine. Even if we wanted to get out of there faster, our bodies could only go so quick. There was a path, I noticed, that we were walking on. It was straight, and led to one single case in the dead center of the valley. It was a little higher than the other, and from what I could see the person inside wasn't thrashing around like some of the others were. They seemed still.

I asked my mother why this person was in the center. What they did to possible be higher than the rest of the people here. She didn't answer me. All she said was a simple, "It's time I told you just where you came from, Liam."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. While I wanted to know the answer, it seemed kind of sudden, you know? It came out of nowhere.

"The incident yesterday reminded me that even though you have control over the magic inside you, you're still young. You're still trying to find yourself. I was like that once, and I remember what it felt like. It was horrible, but I didn't have the opportunity to know what was happening. You do, and I don't want to hold it back from you anymore." She explained.

"So," I said. "You're telling me about the magic side of the family."

She nodded sharply, seeming to walk even slower than the further we got to the center. "Grandpa is full vampire, as you know. He came from a complete line of vampires and only vampires, good blood or something like that. My mother, on the other hand, was full witch. There was some human blood, but my mother herself was one hundred percent witch.

They met in high school. They were mated, actually, like me and your dad, and you and Vlad. It was normal, well, not for her, but normal anyways. It took her a while to come around, but eventually, she did fall in love with grandpa."

She paused, her feet barely lifting off the ground now. She turned to look at me, looking for a reaction, before she looked back ahead. I tried to reassure her, but a smile didn't seem appropriate at the time.

"My mother's coven was killed when I was young, Liam. They were killed by vampires. The war between witches and vampires was going on for so long at the point. It didn't seem unusual, but it snapped something in her, reminded her what she was. She left, and everything was a mess for a very long time after that.

Your grandfather never talked to me growing up. I spent most time at your uncle's. I knew I was half witch, though. I always knew, but knowing what I was is different than knowing how to control it. I couldn't get very close to anyone because my powers were out of control for most of my life. Anything could set me off, and it was terrifying. I was afraid that one day, I was going to hurt someone important to me, my friends, my family, everyone."

She let out a bitter laugh, looking down at the ground.

"It was after I met your father that things started to go right again. Well, it was a while after. We never told you this, but he loved me long before I loved him. Years, really. I didn't want him controlling my life because I wasn't a normal fertile, but I still wanted the stability because even thought I wasn't all vampire, I was still some.

That's why he worries about you so much, darling. He remembers how it felt for me to keep him away, to lock him out, and it hurt him. It hurt him a lot, and even though I knew what I was doing, I couldn't get close to him. I hated myself, and I didn't think I deserved love back then. But, you see, you are different from me. Only select people knew what I was, and I know that if they did, I wouldn't have the friends I did.

I suppose it's my fault that you're treated the way you are. I could've been quiet about the whole thing, not opened the school and everything. People wouldn't really know about your blood then."

"I don't blame you." I interrupted quickly.

She smiled. "I know, honey, I know. That not the point though. The point is that people didn't know, and those who did cared about me as much as I cared about them."

"What does that have to do with this place though?" I asked. As much as I loved hearing about all of this, really, it was more than I ever heard about her past. I just didn't seem the point of all the . . . death.

"The first time I saw my mother after she left before I knew who she was really was a couple weeks after your father and I were mated. She just showed up on the door step one day. No one knew she was coming, of course. It was a total shock. I was furious. Your father was furious. The only reason we let her stay was because I was on the brink of a total break down with the magic, and if I didn't find control fast, it would't have ended well at all. But, she came through, and she taught me. That should have been the end of it really, but it wasn't.

My mother had a plan all along, when she came to help me. It was a plan to get rid of a large chunk of vampires over here, including the people I called my family. And, she tried to blackmail me into helping her."

She had to stop to take a deep breathe, and she wiped at her face. I had never seen her cry before, and while she wasn't exactly sobbing, this was pretty close to as much emotion besides happiness or anger my mother had ever shown me.

"Um . . . she took Max, kidnapped him, I mean. She just took him, and told me if I didn't help her, I would never see him again. Of course I didn't want either outcome, but I couldn't let him get hurt. He was all I had for a very, very long time, and he was one of the only people I ever trusted and loved up until your father. In the beginning of our relationship, Max was still my best friend. He still is, but your father is as well. That's not the point. The point is I had to do everything I could to get him back.

That led to a fight between many of my dom friends versus some of the most powerful, and most ruthless witches in the world, including my mother. We won, of course, but Max was in the hospital. You might notice it, but Ronnie to this day is still very protective of him. He's afraid that it will happen again.

Anyways, most of these coffins are filled with those witches, the ones we stopped that day. Your father and Ronnie don't know about this place. Well, they know, they just don't know where it is. The council thought it was best. I never told your grandfather is because I was scared he would try to get my mother out." She explained.

We reached the center now. It was a woman, lying flat on the back. Her arms were placed on her stomach, and it looked as if she was sleeping. She wasn't though. Her eyes would scrunch up in pain every once and while, and her body was littered with hundreds of wounds. The black hair on her head was half shaven off, well, pulled off. They're different looking. And the pars that remained were dirty and tangled. She was peaceful, but at the same time, she wasn't.

"Who is this?" I asked quietly.

My mother just stared at the woman. There was so much in her eyes, and from the way the wind was picking up around us, I knew she was trying hard, too hard, to stop a reaction of magnitudes to come out.

"This is a woman named Lindsey Covil," she stated. "She was the worst of the worst, the master mind behind the entire plan. She killed thousands of vampires single handily, and under her command, it was in the millions of how many she slaughtered. There were humans, too, but she preferred to keep the killings to us. She's the one who made sure you will never know your father's family, made it so that he will never see any of his friends and family from Britain ever again. And, she came back here years later; to kill him off after it didn't work the first two times.

Most people knew her name, humans and vampires alike. She was feared. No one had seen power like hers, and her only goal was to kill and kill and kill. She never cared about those around her. She never cared about her family. She never cared about . . . never cared about me."

Tears fell down her face now, and she wiped them away quickly. She stared at the woman, and everything stared to make sense in my head. Things started to click; the reason she never talked about her past, the reason people were so scared of her, the reason she never mentioned her mother, how she never seemed to know her father, all of it.

"This, Liam, is Midnight prowls. She's-" She sighed, looking over at me. "She's my mother."