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I STOOD FROZEN AND stared and Drax with a blank look on my face. My heart raced and my palms were sweaty. There were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of women who would have killed to be in my position. Locked in a room alone with the infamous Drax, in a sexy red dress with no one else to pull his attention but me.
But I hated it. It was the last place I wanted to be.
"I- I don't know what you mean." I tried to play stupid but the look on his face told me he wasn't falling for it. Something told me that Drax, son of the most ruthless and maniacal triad governor, wasn't exactly what everyone thought.
Drax sighed and unbuttoned the top button of his blood red blazer. "I didn't want to resort to this, but it looks like I have to.
"Uhm, what are you doing?"
With each button he unfastened a little more of his chiseled chest came to light. A suit with no shirt underneath, classic playboy fashion. I averted my eyes and awkwardly found a spot on the ceiling to stare at.
"What's the matter? Are you shy?" He ripped his coat off and it crumpled in a pile in the corner. He slowly moved closer, inch by inch, and I didn't know how to feel. I hated to admit that part of me was attracted to him, just like every other girl that was forced to watch him grow up in the spotlight of the media in triad three. I hated that inside of me seeing his body did something for me. I was turned on by a vampire. A monster.
The other part of me knew that no matter how attractive he was it didn't make up for the fact that he was a killer, probably a cold blooded one at that.
"Don't you want to have fun?" Drax was so close now that I could smell whatever delicious designer cologne he'd lathered himself in. His breath was warm against my skin. An electricity hung in the air, it was a magnetic feeling that pulled me to him and I hated it. It had to be a vampire power, some way of him obliging me to feel this way. It couldn't be real.
I remembered what Vinny said. I had to make it real, believable. I couldn't let anyone catch on to the game that I was playing, otherwise it could mean game over for me when the trials started.
That meant I had to make sacrifices. I pulled Drax in for a kiss and a wave of electricity flowed through me. It wasn't in the metaphorical sense, either. It was an actual electric shock that sent shivers down my spine and pulsated through my veins. I pulled away in looked into Drax's eyes.
He smirked.
"So that's it. Your trainer told you to play the part of the dumb sexy chick to throw everybody off your trail. Smart." "Wait what? What just happened?"
"Drax made his way to his blazer in the corner and slid it back on and I stood in the doorway as confused as I'd ever been.
"You obviously don't know very much about Vampires, or you'd know we each have a special ability. A power, if you will. And mine is being able to extract information about people through touch, and you just gave me everything that I need."
My fists balled up. "That's a little bit of an invasion of privacy don't you think?" A slow burning anger bubbled up in my chest. Just another thing that the vampires thought they could take from me freely without my consent.
"Eh." Drax shrugged and flopped himself onto my bed. "If you got it use it, right? Isn't that what you're doing with your body? It puts you at an advantage. So why not use it?"
I stared at him blankly unsure if I was offended or if it made sense. Either way the dress I was in was strangling me and my makeup was stinging my eyes. The ruse was up with him anyway so I went to the sink and washed my face.
"You can leave now." I dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
"Actually I'd like to stay. I've never met a girl before who wasn't very obviously throwing herself at me. You truly want nothing from me, and nothing to do with me. You're like a Unicorn. A mythical creature."
"What exactly is it that you want from me, again?" I rolled my eyes at his poor attempt of flattery. It probably did sting to be coddled for your whole life and finally meet someone who didn't bow to kiss your feet when you walked. "Don't you have any other girls that you can harass? It looked like there were plenty waiting for your beckon call. Why don't you go bother one of them while I work on trying to survive?"
"Join the club." He mumbled as he watched me wipe the mask of makeup from my face.
"Excuse me?" I spun around. The anger that was once slowly burning inside my chest nearly erupted into a wild blaze that threatened to engulf anything it touched in its burning touch. "What's wrong? Is your crown of vampire privilege too heavy for your little head? Are the shoes you're set to fill too big for your feet? I'm so sorry. You poor thing, why don't you go buy another luxury car, or sleep with a few women. I'm sure that will heal your fragile ego." I was seething just at his comment. How dare he even compare his proposed suffering to mine? He was on the top of the food chain, living in a pool of wealth and luxury. I was fighting just to survive.
I stood so close to him now that I could see the glimmer of sadness in his eyes. Before I knew what was happening he pulled me in for another kiss. Instead of the electric sting I'd felt earlier this time I felt a rush of warm energy seep into my body.
I closed my eyes and a wave of images flooded my mind. I saw Drax as a kid. I knew it was him because he'd been plastered in the media since the moment he was born. He was sad, and he was scared cowering in a dark room. He still had the same warm chocolate eyes that he did now. I didn't know where he was, but wherever it was he was terrified. I knew because his emotions swept through my body like they were my own. Suddenly a door creeped open and a small sliver of light flooded the dark closet that Drax sat in. When the light illuminated his face I noticed the rapidly healing black eye and cut that sliced across his cheek.
"There you are boy." The governors low snarl of a voice came from the doorway. "Quite bitching, you're supernatural. It's already healing."
Drax eyes filled with tears.
"You need to get up and be a fucking man."
I pulled away from Drax's kiss and stared at him. I didn't notice the tears until they started running down my cheeks in warm streams. Drax stared back at me, his face nonchalant.
"Well I guess you can transfer information through touch too." I mumbled.
"Yeah, I can use any touch. But kissing is so much more fun." Drax smirked. He was slowly going back into his playboy shell. "I just wanted to show you that not everyone's life is as perfect as it seems."
I turned back to the mirror and continued washing my face. I didn't want him to see the change in my eyes.
"Sure, but you're still a vampire. You were born with privilege, and you were born a killer." The words spilled out of my red lips like venom shooting out of a snake’s fangs. They weren't aimed to hurt, they were aimed to kill and once they were out I didn't regret a single syllable.
My eyes flitted to Drax's face in the mirror behind me for a millisecond. The anger in his eyes told me that they had done their job. I got a sick sense of satisfaction from hurting him. In a sick way hurting him was like my revenge for my kind. A little dig for humankind against the vamps.
"Well I'm sorry that I was born a vampire. I didn't ask for this shit." He yelled.
I turned to face him again.
"And I didn't ask to be human, hunted down for sport, and walked all over." I glared at him with fire in my eyes.
"Oh please, humans were doing that to each other long before supernaturals finally came out of hiding. You guys destroyed yourselves centuries ago. You always need someone to hate, someone to blame." The words seeped into my skin. He was right, but that didn't justify anything.
"Well, at least I can walk out in daylight!" I yelled, immediately regretting that I even let the words come out of my mouth.
So much for an intellectual argument.
A laugh erupted from Drax's lips. He laughed so hard that tears ran down his cheeks. He was laughing, the kind of belly laugh you get when you and your friends are together. The kind that you can't stop once it starts. It was infectious laughter and I hated that it spread to me. I held it in for as long as I could, with my lips clamped tightly together. But it was the kind of laughter that couldn't be caged. It exploded out of me in waves that hurt my sides and tickled my stomach.
I couldn't control it, and neither could he. So there we stood, two different species at war with one another, fighting with laughter in an empty room.
"That's your argument?" Drax said between laughs. "That's the argument you're using to defend mankind's superiority?"
"Shut up." I gasped for air and the laughter finally settled. The muscles in my face ached and my sides cramped. I threw myself on the bed and let out a long sigh. Drax laid beside me, but I didn't have the energy to tell him to fuck off anymore.
So we just laid there feeling the after high of our laughter, panting in silence.
Drax turned to me and for the first time since I'd ever seen him in a newspaper there was something different about him. In this light, with a smile on his face, if I hadn't known a single thing about him I would have sworn we were the same. Not vampire, not human, just people.
I was stubborn like my father. I hated to admit that I was wrong, but maybe there was more complexity to the situation. Maybe it wasn't as black and white as I thought.
I lived in a world where you were either vampire or human. Was it possible to just be a person?
"That was an incredible burn, by the way." His eyes locked in on mine. "But for the record I have daylight powers. And I've never killed anyone. But it's nice that you think I'm that bad ass."
I snorted.
"I never wanted this. Any of it. Most of the time I'm like you, playing a part. The Drax Smith you know is nothing but a role on the television show we call life. Girls, sex, drugs, I fucking hate it all. I live in a world where everybody either wants something from me or wants to kill me. I don't want to be the fucking governor. I don't want to promote the trials, and contrary to popular belief I don't want to kill anyone."
I watched the change in his eyes as he confessed to me. I was good at reading people, and my internal meter told me he was telling the truth.
"Huh. Who knew?" I mumbled.
He was charming, I give him that. Even for a vampire he was the type of guy that grew on you, had layers. Maybe he really was just a victim of his circumstances, just like me.
We didn't say another word. We just laid in the bed and wallowed in everything we had said. Turns out life wasn't fair for a lot of people in ways that I didn't even understand. Who was I if I couldn't admit that I was wrong? What kind of activist would I be if I didn't keep my mind open to new possibilities?
It felt weird, opening myself up to new possibilities. And it scared me. I had spent the last five years letting my feelings about my father’s death fester. I needed someone to blame and the vamps were the easy target. They were easy to hate. Easy to paint as monsters, and I was afraid of what life would be like when I could no longer blindly hate them for it.
But if I was going to die soon I was going to die with a clear conscience and no unfinished business. Maybe this was the start.
"That's it." I said breaking the silence. "I've made up my mind. Drax Smith, in Scarlett Johnson's book of life you are no longer a vampire. You're a person."