Feed the Flames

-celine’s pov-

The room was calm. The one light that illuminated the small space was more than enough to read by. I could feel his hands running through my hair, his fingertips gracing my neck occasionally. I knew he was listening as I read but…I knew he was occupied with other endeavors. Like how he struggled to get me to miss a word or skip a beat in reading. Tracing a line down my arm, his touch was delicate and soft, but with purpose. We were alone, Toby was off feeding somewhere. Hadn’t said when he’d be back but I supposed it’d be soon.

As I began to grip the corner of the page to turn it, the page was stuck slightly with the next page. When my eyes got to the bottom of the page, reading the last few words, I still hadn’t managed to subtly separate the pages. I turned to Mason, placing my fingers into the book to keep my place as Mason withdrew his hand from my hair, a smug smirk of triumph on his lips.

‘You are…very distracting.’ I thought silently, and reached up, tracing my thumb across his lips, only bringing a sort of light to his eyes. But that quickly disappeared as I took my thumb away from his lips, licked it, and finally managed to turn the page as I went back to my book.

Suddenly and loudly, Mason groaned, and threw his head back against the back of the couch, putting his hands over his face. I couldn’t help but snicker at his expression. Like a kid who’d been denied something for far too long. Mason was…impatient, to say the least.

‘Always with the books… I don’t see how you don’t fall asleep.’ Mason took his hands away from his face, putting an arm around my shoulder, shaking his head.

I looked at him, raising my eyebrows. ‘I could get back to The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams, if that would be better than monsters and wizards?’ I suggested, and just as fast, Mason shook his head.

He chuckled in between his words. “No, no, god no, that book disturbs me. Wizards and monsters are just fine.” He kissed the side of my head as if to thank me for no longer reading what I had been reading last night and I turned my attention back to The Final Demand. Hopefully I would finish it by the end of the week.

As I felt someone stalking down the long tunnel that led to Mason’s room, I was sure it was Toby, returning from feeding. I was almost looking forward to him getting back. I’d talked with him a bit this morning. When I woke up, Mason hadn’t been in bed and so I came down to the tunnels to see if he was here. I’d found Toby, telling me Mason had gone off to find breakfast. We’d talked for a long while before Mason returned, still wiping blood from his lips.

Much to my surprise, however, it wasn’t Toby. It was Ronan stalking into the room, a bag on her shoulder, a distressed look masking her features. What was she doing here? What was wrong?

“I need you to send me somewhere.” Her words were fast, but there was something almost dark to her voice.

Mason stood up, taking a step towards her. “Where?”

Ronan seemed as if she didn’t even know herself. “Anywhere.” The word was spoken lowly, and as I put my book down and stood up, Mason seemed slightly conflicted.

‘Mason don’t-’

Before I could even finish the damn thought Mason shrugged slightly, as if he wasn’t sure about what he was doing, but also wasn’t sure if he wanted to deny her. He stepped up to Ronan and as he placed his hand to her shoulder she disappeared.

Standing up and walking over to Mason I stared at the place where Ronan had been. “Where is she?” I asked quietly, looking up at Mason and he sighed.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t send her to hell, if that’s what you’re assuming.” At his slightly joking words I pursed my lips, not quite approving of his random teleportation of my seemingly distressed friend.

Hm. Friend. Never really used that word before.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Mason questioned me through a thought, and I shook my head, wanting to roll my eyes at him attempting to change the subject like that. I wouldn’t have it.

I stepped up to him, almost right against him as I looked up into his mismatched eyes. “Where-”

“Am I interrupting?” Quickly my attention was pulled away from Mason and towards the voice at the entrance of the room. It was Toby coming back from feeding, those green orbs in his eye sockets a bit brighter now.

Mason let out a sigh as he looked over to Toby. “No, sadly you just missed the most interesting thing to happen in this room all day.” Punching Mason in the arm was an impulsive action. He laughed slightly, though whether it was from my weak punch or his own joke, I wasn’t sure. Most probably both.

With a slight shake of his head, Toby stepped forward to me. “Cell I was wondering if I could talk with you for a bit.”

“Actually,” Mason interjected before Toby could continue, and I saw annoyance flash across Toby’s face. “I have somewhere I need to take her.” Before I could protest Mason grabbed my arm and in a blink, we were no longer in the cramped little room under the football field.

The wind was blowing, but not hard. The air was cool, but not cold. It was nighttime. A change from the 12 PM it had been only moments before. Whatever I was going to say to Mason was lost in the transition.

“The Russky Bridge.” Mason’s voice brought me from my state of awe. “A cable-stayed bridge crossing the Bosphorus Strait, it goes from Vladivostok to Russky Island.” He stood next to me at the top of one of the two pylons of the bridge.

I let out a breath, my eyes going to the lights of the cables dancing across the water over a thousand feet below us. “Russia.” I stated, and Mason put a hand on the small of my back, nodding.

“Russia.” He confirmed, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Longest cable stayed bridge, but it’s just right behind the Millau Viaduct in pylon height.” It was bright as hell all around us, but I didn’t have to squint against the light. “I told you I’d bring you here, remember?” I did remember, in fact. How could I forget that night? When bliss turned to horror in mere seconds when he was suddenly taken by Mr. Way.

‘So why did you whisk me away from Toby, who apparently needs to speak with me?’ I looked over at Mason and he sighed, glancing at me before walking over and sitting down on the edge of the pylon, his legs dangling off the edge. I followed suit after a moment, sitting down next to him.

“He’s going to tell you something you won’t like, and I need to say something first.” There was a moment of silence. I stared at Mason, my eyes glued to the side of his face. I wanted to question him. Ask him what he meant, ask him what Toby was going to say, but I didn’t have the chance. ‘This could all be ours, Celine.’ The thought was quiet, even in my head, but I looked over at him. Not understanding at all what he meant. He noticed my confusion and looked over at me. “You read a lot, yeah? Book after book, consuming the words on each page but they’re never quite enough, are they? That’s why you start a new book after each one. That’s why you keep reading.”

I wanted to ask if he was okay. I wanted to ask that he was doing, but…he was exactly right. ‘I hunger for an amount of knowledge I will never be able to obtain.’

“You know what I do, right? I hunt normals, killing as many of them as I can; eradicating their kind from the earth.” Mason’s tone began taking a turn for the dark, but not necessarily the worst. I tilted my head slightly, curious as to where he was taking the conversation.

‘What does this have to do with anything? What does it have to do with Toby?’ I questioned silently, and Mason smiled, the lights shining upwards on the pylon glimmering in his eyes.

He didn’t answer me directly. ‘One day, I’m gonna succeed. One day –and I don’t know when- there will be no normals left. There will be humans and rogues. Even on the board, nothing but rogues. Soon after that, the world will be run by rogues. No more of these…soft, weak things in charge. We cannot simply eradicate humans, no, we need them, as much as I hate that. They’ll be no more than slaves to us, however. A food source.’ I was speechless as Mason turned to me. “Can you imagine it, though? A world of rogues, building up this earth to its fullest glory?” Mason brought his legs up, crossing them Indian-style as he turned his body towards me. “We can rule the world, Celine.”

Rule the world? Rule the world? “Mason, we-” I cut myself off, not sure what to say, exactly. I should tell him that we’re just two people- two vampires. I should ask him what he was thinking; I should tell him he was crazy.

“Silence…that’s a good thing; that’s an answer I can work with.” He had a smile in his voice. There was a hope in his voice. A kind of hope I…I couldn’t help but I admit I liked hearing.

‘Mason…do you really think that’s a plan that will ever work?’ The simple answer was no. How could that ever work? Even if we got a hundred more rogues, it would never work. It was an unrealistic plan and I didn’t even see the logic behind it. Why do such a thing? Superiority?

Mason’s voice became tired then, like he’d explained this plan to many others and they’d reacted in the same way. “This was my plan for three hundred years before I met you and it will be my plan three hundred years from now. The problem is I can’t turn people. With my connection ability, I just can’t do it.” As fast as the words registered my head snapped to him, almost shocked at what I was hearing.

“Are you suggesting I-”

“Turn people?” He cut me off before I could continue, and nodded, his face completely serious. “Yes. Not kill, no. Turn.”

“I-I can’t do that.” I was honest, even as I tried to hide the fear and confusion his words had inflicted.

Mason smiled slightly with a scoff. “I’m not making you. I’m only asking that you consider it. Consider the future.” As Mason leaned towards me, I turned my eyes back to the Bosphorus Strait. “There’s gonna be a fire soon, and I plan on starting it. For decades, even longer, vampires have gone from scary to romantic, to a goddamn joke. We used to be feared, then we were romanticized, and now due to the romantics, we’re nothing more than a gag. A picture of some fanged fuck with a cape on the side of a cereal box or some melodramatic moody bitch who refuses to kill humans, either way we are not the creatures we used to be. I want to change that. We are monsters. We are predators. We are abominations, and I want people to know it.” There it was again. That damned hope in his voice, making him sound like a little kid looking at the world with big fresh eyes. “Humans…they don’t have a clue. So fragile and squishy; air and skin, guts and blood, and nothing more. The future…it belongs to the strong, to the immortal, to us. This fire that’s been lit, it will decide the future; our future. If someone doesn’t take hold and fan the fire, it will go out, and take all the rogues with it.” I looked back at Mason, with that glint in his eyes and a smile on his face… He really meant what he was saying. “I don’t ask you to follow me, and I won’t make you, but…you need to know my side of things. I know he’s going to try and wrench you away, and that’s why you need to know where I’m going. What I plan for my future because he’s going to try his damnedest to get you to see me in another light and-”

“Wait,” I held up my hand, stopping him from speaking anymore. “He?” I questioned, and Mason took a deep breath, pursing his lips. I could tell he hadn’t meant for that to slip out. He didn’t speak for another moment, diverting his eyes from me as he looked down, picking at the skin around his thumb.

“What do you remember about your brother?” The question was sudden and off-track, and it didn’t help with the confusion already shrouding my mind. “Besides his voice through a shitty phone call, what do you remember?”

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ I narrowed my eyes, suddenly suspicious. Something was wrong.

“It won’t upset you to think about it because it’s not there anymore, is it?” Mason took a deep breath before slowly letting it out. “You blocked out your memories of your brother. I had to dig and dig and drive out the memory of your last phone call. Even that I didn’t piece together from your memories, I pieced them together from my backlog of your memories.” What the fuck was he doing? “I’m wondering how much you know, and how much you think you know.”

I gritted my teeth, about to stand up, but Mason grabbed my hand, keeping me from standing. “Let go.” I growled, but his grip didn’t release me. He sighed and shook his head.

“I’m not trying to upset you.” His voice was calm, and his eyes were…they were fucking difficult to read. “Something’s been done to you.” Relaxing in Mason’s grip, I stopped trying to pull my arm from his grasp. “You don’t know about it, but I know. I have known. I need you to think about your brother.” This wasn’t an order, this was almost a plea.

Pressing my lips together, I did think about my brother. I thought about his voice, his words –his last words, and I thought about the gunshot that ended his life. Mason was quick to shake his head, moving closer to me, desperate now. “No, no, no, think about his face. The way he looked. Think about is voice without the sound of that phone crackling. Think about him, Celine.”

The fastest way to get him to stop pestering me was to simply do it but…I really did not want to. I didn’t want to think about him. I had blocked out those memories for a reason. The pain of thinking about him was…too great to bear. But I relented. I thought hard. Thought about his face. Thought about his voice as if he was standing in front of me.

But none of it was there.

Where was it? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t…I couldn’t picture him. Why couldn’t I picture his face? His face…what did he look like? My brother, my…my own brother and I…I didn’t remember his face. ‘Why don’t I remember his face? Why don’t I remember?’ Panic was spreading through me like wildfire, and Mason leaned back slightly realization on his face as he shook his head. The place where those memories should’ve been…they were nothing but a white, searing pain in my head. I stood up quickly, without Mason stopping me this time. I walked to the opposite end of the pylon and after a silent moment I felt Mason behind me, no more than a foot away.

‘I told him not to, Celine, I swear. I told him not to. I told him to leave, that he would just complicate things, but he told me he could make it work. I had no idea he was going to do this to you. I had no idea he was going to do this.’ These thoughts…they were filled with a sympathy I did not want from him. I didn’t want sympathy, I didn’t want anger, I only wanted answers. ‘But the important thing is, he doesn’t like me. He wants to take you away from me. He’s going to tell you about my plan and he’s going to twist it up so it makes me look like the bad guy, but you have no idea of the blood on his hands, you have no goddamn clue. These things he’ll tell you…they’re lies, and you can’t believe them.’

I swiftly turned to face Mason, closing the gap between us with one long stride as I gripped his shirt in my tiny fists, eyes pleading, knuckles white. “Who is he? Who?” My voice was shaking. Mason opened his mouth like he was going to speak, the corners of his lips pulling down into a frown as he furrowed his brows.

“Please don’t go with him. Please don’t leave.” Without another word, Mason brought his arms up to my elbows, and suddenly we were back in the room under the football field.

“Hey, you guys are back. Have fun?” Slowly, I moved my eyes from Mason’s and down to his chest, staring at my own hands as they loosened their grip on his shirt. “What’s wrong?” I ignored his slightly worried voice, not even wanting to look at him. I could feel his blood, so well I could almost see him. I felt him move his hand over to place something on the couch –the book I’d been reading- and then stand, taking a step towards us. I felt as if I couldn’t move. I may not remember him, but I remember the pain. The pain he left in me when he died…it was still with me. “Mason, what did you-”

“I told her.” A confession. Telling me about my brother wasn’t something he was supposed to do. But he did it anyways.

He was silent. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to face him. Just the thought made my chest feel all heavy. Like someone had filled my chest cavity with weights.

How do you reconcile with someone like that after putting them to rest? The police found his body at the subway station. They told us that it was a drug deal gone wrong. I remember my mother crying in the kitchen, sobbing…crying because her little boy was dead. I remember when my father came home the next day. He didn’t cry. Not at first. I woke up one night to this sound coming from down the hall. When I walked into my brother’s room my father was sitting in his computer chair, and I remember that his sobs sounded like a wounded, dying animal. My mother and father lost their son, and I lost my best friend. But all of the details about my brother were all muddied. I remembered his crackled voice through his shitty cellphone, I remember his broken attempts at foreign languages, and I remembered how he loved Asunder and used to read it to me over the phone. I didn’t remember anything about him from before he left for Beijing. I did not remember his voice clearly, I did not remember his face, and I did not remember his name. He was a stranger to me. A painful stranger.

“We buried you.” The words hurt to say. But we did. And while I remember his funeral, I can’t picture his features relaxed with death. I can’t picture his face.

“Technically, you buried the man who mugged me.” His voice was soft, and I still didn’t want to think of his name. “I was shot, and bleeding out. My heart had stopped but my body was still warm, my soul was still intact when a man found me, and turned me. He had this ability to change people. Make them clones of other people. I didn’t know he did it. He shot the mugger, changed the mugger into a clone of me, and took me to his home. I didn’t wake up for two weeks. When I did wake up, I was in the woods on a funeral pyre. The man had just about given up hope and was about to burn my body. Well, he had already started, actually. I woke up to flames licking at my feet.” His voice was…so goddamn familiar. How did I not hear it before? How did I not see it? See him?

I scrunched my face up, fighting my emotions as I shook my head. Mason still held onto my arms, keeping me on my feet. My fingers still clutched his shirt. “I don’t remember you.”

This, this struck something in him, and he paused for a moment, still standing less than a foot away. “I got Rhys to wipe the details of me from your memory the first day you were in camp after Mason took you. You weren’t one of us and I didn’t want you to be. I didn’t want you to know of the monster I’d become.” His voice became gruff as he spoke through gritted teeth. “And damn you, Mason, I was going to keep it that way.”

“I kept quiet for as long as I could, but you don’t have root access into her emotions.” Mason’s voice was pained, and I could feel his eyes on me. “She suffers every goddamn day with every word she speaks out loud because of your death. Not to mention your threats to me. Telling her I’m somehow worse than you…” Mason scoffed and let go of me, gently taking my hands in his, though they kept a hold of his shirt. “You have the same blood on your hands, if not thicker at this point. I was going to let you stay around her, let you keep close, but…you took things too far and if I didn’t act you’d just fill her head with lies.”

He didn’t waste a second in snapping back. “They’re not fucking lies, you prick. You plan on murdering the world just to plant some kind of throne on a pile of bodies. She deserves to know the man she loves is a fucking murderer.”

Mason pried my hands from his shirt finally, quickly, roughly. He stepped towards him, anger in his voice. “If I’m a murderer then what are you? Hm? Some goddamn saint? Some fucking savior? What about the people you’ve killed, huh? What about the corpses your fucking path is strewn with? You’re the murderer.” Mason’s temper was flaring with each word he spoke.

“If you’re calling me a murderer, I don’t think you understand the definition of the word, Donald was right, you fucking vagrant. I do what’s necessary, you do what you want.” I didn’t speak a word, just listened to the two men fighting.

“No, what I’ve done, I’ve done in the name of survival. There are so many sins behind me that it’ll kill me to turn around now. I have to move forward with my plan, no matter what happens.” Mason’s voice calmed down, but his tone was…conflicted, to say the least.

“So what is she?” His voice was condescending towards Mason. “What is my baby sis to you now? Just another sin?”

Mason’s voice was stronger now, almost forceful. “No. If anything she is the best goddamn thing I’ve done in my life yet. She’s the one thing I don’t and never will regret.”

“You know what, I don’t care. You’re a fucking psychopath and she’s not staying here with you. She won’t be a part of your suicidal mission.” His voice cracked midway through the last sentence and I heard Mason scoff.

“Really? A month ago you were fine with me and my ‘suicidal’ mission!” Anger was growing, a heat almost palpable through Mason’s words.

His tone was almost disbelieving. As if he couldn’t see how Mason didn’t understand him. “Yeah, well that was before my sister was involved! That was before I had someone to protect!”

There was a scoff from Mason, whose words held nothing but resentment. “Protect? She doesn’t need your protection, Toby!”

At that, I turned slowly to face them. As I did, their words faded, my ears ringing as I watched them. Mason’s face contorted in anger, Toby’s twisted up in pain, the two of them stepping up almost into each other’s faces. Mouths screaming words I couldn’t hear. Nor did I want to, frankly.

On the left was the man I loved. Mason had…reintroduced me to emotion and all the doors they opened. On the right was the brother I lost. Toby had been buried. He was my best friend and it hurt to think about him. One loved me, the other cared for me.

As I watched them scream at one another, not hearing their words, but feeling the anger they carried just through expression…I realized this was it. This was the fire Mason talked about. The fire that he said was starting had begun. It was burning in a blaze in front of me. Toby was trying to put it out, but Mason was feeding it.

Suddenly both men calmed down, their livid words stopping abruptly as they backed off from one another, turning to me instead.

Mason’s mismatched eyes were on me; boring holes through me as Toby’s green one’s didn’t even scratch the surface. Mason was the first to speak, his words registering now, making the ringing stop. “Who’s it gonna be?”

“He is going to lead you to your death, Celine.” Toby’s voice was pleading, his big green eyes distressed. I had been put on the spot, and I took a shaky step back from both of them, looking between the two men who stood in front of me.

Mason loved me, and I couldn’t fathom saying the words to anyone else but him. Toby cared about me, even though I had let go of him long ago. Two separate emotions represented by two opposites; emotions that I couldn’t even discern a month ago. Two temperatures represented two paths. Toby was cold as ice, happy with dissolving into time as long as it meant the safety of those he cared about. Mason was a red hot coal, willing to set the world on fire to outrun death.

Toby’s voice broke my thoughts. “Who’s it going to be?”

Mason had lit a match.

Started a fire.

“Mason.”

It was time to feed the flames.