The Vampire Queen's Resurrection

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: GOOD OR BAD?

Aaliyah jerked back to the present with a shocked gasp, and her eyes focusing back to the Manhattan apartment she was living in. It took her a long time to remember that she’d just come back from the dead without her powers. Now she understood Emir’s despair to hide her vulnerable self from the world.

She didn’t know how much time had passed since her last memory jog – it could have been days or even weeks. It didn’t matter. What was important was that the intense hate and resentment that Emir seemed to bore towards her was making sense. She’d slaughtered people without remorse.

“What’s wrong with you?” Emir asked with a frown, then took one look at her before his newspaper flew all across the living room. “Hey, hun. What’s going on?” he asked, kneeling down in front of her with a concerned frown.

She was hyperventilating now as the scene replayed in her head repeatedly. “I…I... k…killed her?” she stammered incoherently, hugging herself to rid of the pain which had suddenly gripped her.

Emir shrunk back from her like she’d slapped him, but she was too engrossed in her own distress to take any notice. When she focused back on him, his face was derived of any color, his eyes sunken at the back of his sockets like those of a junkie. “Y…you remember?” he staggered over the words, for once poise and elegance failing him.

“I killed Jadeite? I killed my best friend?” Aaliyah repeated with tears streaming down her cheeks as the memories haunted her.

Emir fell back on him bum on the hard floor, his head leaning against the chair’s leg as he took a moment to gather himself. Why the hell was he so emotional about Jadeite’s death? He wouldn’t even know her best friend since the latter would have died before they’d actually started dating.

“You knew her?” she felt compelled to ask, as she was still coming to terms with the sordid fact that she’d killed her best friend.

“Not personally,” he shook his head in denial. “Everything I knew about her was what I heard from you. And you’ve never stopped to sing your friend’s praise, always insisting that Jadeite Meyer had been a wonderful friend.”

Her lips felt parched, and her tongue darted out to moisten them with several sweeps. “I…I don’t understand. I murdered her for betraying me? How could I have let Matzah survive in this case? Why did I spare his life? Is it because she was a vampire? I could have punished her by…I don’t know…”

“Being the queen was never easy for you, Al. You had so many difficult choices to make that didn’t all make sense. But this one…you told me why you did it. Why you had no other choice.”

There was a moment of silence during which Aaliyah waited for him to say something, anything that would ease the gnawing ache inside her chest. She still couldn’t believe that she’d been such a ruthless vampire.

She scoffed at herself. “No choice, you said? Why because I was enraged with the fact that she wanted revenge from me for holding Matzah as a prisoner? Or because she stole the Sun elixir formula?”

Emir was shaking his head as she enumerated the plausible reasons why she would have felt it necessary to kill one of her peers. “No. No. None of the above. You didn’t care that much about the pills except what it would bring to your friends. And you really thought that Matzah was happy with you. You never suspected that they viewed you as a tyrant who were oppressing them.”

She closed her eyes in dismay. “I never knew about their love affair. I swear. I suspected that Matzah had feelings for her, but I thought they were unrequited. I had no idea that Jade was also in love with him. If I’d known, I would have…”

Again, there was that resigned shake of Emir’s head as he refuted her claim. “You wouldn’t have been able to do anything.” He raised his eyes upwards in tormented agony to stare right ahead with a bank expression. “Breeding among species is not allowed.”

“Why not?” she protested hotly. Whose rules were they anyway? Who had created those stupid baseless rubrics?

“You,” Emir said in a calm voice. “It was you who prevented crossbreeding among species. You religiously forbade it. And to answer your question, that was why it was important to kill Jade. If you’d left her alive, she would have mated with the demon. And that was inconceivable.”

She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “Why is it so inconceivable? Why did I forbid it?” she asked with a frown, trying to figure out the reason behind the barricade. A moan escaped her lips when her mind blocked and came up with a headache so excruciating that she had to clutch her head.

“Hey, hey,” Emir sat up with his knees on the floor to bring her face against his. She resisted for a while but relented when he kept on going. She was not in the correct frame of mind to put up a fight against him for the moment. It was too disheartening to have remembered the past. And that was only one snippet.

God knew what laid in store for her. As realization hit her, she whirled back so swiftly that her head swam with dizziness. It took her a moment to get back her bearings before she accused.

“Is that why you’re so reluctant to speak about the past? There’s more?” she asked in a horrified voice.

He massaged the area between his eyes before measuring his answer carefully. “Let’s just say I want you to remember things your own way. I don’t want to give my insight on certain things.”

She moistened her lips again, unable to keep the worry from her voice when she asked. “Is it really that bad?” It was a vulnerable moment where she forgot that he’d been ignoring her for the past weeks. It was so impolite of him to behave so irrationally after having slept with her.

He sighed in response to her question. “Let’s just forget about the past for a while. I’m sorry I have been such a jerk to you lately.”

Aaliyah didn’t even react to his words – she was so done with his apologies. If he meant it the first time, he wouldn’t have behaved so badly with her right after sleeping with her. Irrespective of what had transpired between them.

What really worried her was that she wasn’t sure that she was ready to discover what lay behind the closet. The things she’d done in the past must have been so terrible for her husband to hate her so much.

“I don’t hate you, Al,” he replied, reading her mind yet again without her permission. And she didn’t even have the strength to be outraged. “I’m just super conflicted right now. Things are difficult for me too.”

“They can’t be more difficult than they actually are for me, Emir! I mean, I am not even aware of the things that I’m being condemned for. But, you know what? Let’s skip this conversation. You’re right. Let’s not do this right now.”

All those days of pent-up bitterness had welled up inside her, coupled with the memory that she was a ruthless evil vampire must be taking a toll on her.

“Let’s not do this at all. Let’s forget that I exist. That we slept together. Let’s run away from everything. Let’s not talk about the past. About how I kill people. Let’s not talk about how I lost my powers. Of course, let’s definitely not talk about what we have in store for the future!!!” She was practically screaming with rage, and he let her go to stand near the window with his hands buried deep in his pocket.

“Aaliyah, I think you’re pretty emotional after having remembered a few snippets of the past. The doctor said that you’re not supposed to stress yourself too much. Let’s take things in stride, shall we?”

Aaliyah sighed dejectedly – nothing got to that man. Nothing she did would never be enough, she would be judged by her past character.

“What else do you remember?”

There was no way talking to a wall, so she simply complied. “Nothing more. Just the first day we met and worked together until…until…”

“Right,” he nodded towards her with that ever-present enigmatic expression still in his eyes. Then it clicked. He wasn’t being deliberately obtuse or a jerk – he was downright terrified. Terrified that she remembered something in the past that he didn’t want her to remember.

She sucked in an audible breath at the raw anguish that she could somehow perceive in his dead topaz eyes. A deep gut feeling instinct warned her that she would like it, and suddenly she wasn’t so keen on rehashing the past. Life had given her a second chance which she would grab with both hands.

He placed his hands on her cheeks, and she basked in his touch despite everything. She was so emotionally distraught that a human touch, well a vampire touch was enough to soothe her.

“I took you on a date after that, it was supposed to be a normal diner date,” he commented with that crooked smile which turned the corner of his lip. “It was nothing normal.”

“Why? What happened?” she questioned curiously despite herself, her eyes wide with speculation.

“Well, you didn’t want to dine with me, and I had to practically force you. I had absolutely no idea that you were a vampire, silly me,” he shrugged comically. “Here I was assuming that you were using me to upgrade your career, when you didn’t seem to give a damn about me.”

“I was grieving?” she asked almost hopefully. What kind of friend would go out on a date and enjoy herself? After killing her best friend. She presumed Emir hadn’t said anything horrendous about her, and that was a good sign.

“You bet you were. I didn’t know about your ongoing problems. I was so wrapped in myself, thinking that you were after my money. Arrogant bastard that I was,” he stated in self-deprecatory manner.

“What happened then? Did I tell you that I was a vampire?” she felt some of the tension leave her body.

“Oh you. I didn’t get to know about your powers that early. No, ma’am. You hid it from me for a veeeeeeeeery long time. But on that day, you were so preoccupied that you snapped. You told me in clear terms that I was nothing but an arrogant bastard who thought too highly of himself. That I wasn’t necessarily the person whom every woman was out to get. And that you wouldn’t want me even if I were the last man of earth!”

“I did not!” she replied indignantly.

He flashed a wolfish grin. “I probably deserved it. Our first job together you earned my respect, our first date together you earned much more than that.”

She moaned in self-conscious shame. “You don’t say! That was what earned me more? Being rude to you?” she was bemused.

“Well, I didn’t see it that way. For me, you were the first woman who wasn’t interested in me. Sorry, if I sound conceited again, but I did have lots of women falling for me, or for my billions.” He produced a wry grimace. “Plus, you didn’t hesitate to speak the truth right to my face. I’ve been living with so many fake people around me that your presence was refreshing.”

“That was hundred years ago?”

“One hundred and seven years ago to be more precise. We’ve known each other for more than a century. When you died, a piece of me went along with you, a part which I never thought I would recover. Now that you’re back, I mean the real you is back, I’m having a tough time dealing with it.”

Aaliyah frowned at the slight metaphor. “What do you mean by the real me?”