A week passes uneventfully, and Azalea sits in a park she stumbled upon. Some days she’s there, some days she’s inside from the December frost, warming from herself by a heater or getting someone to fight her, trying to improve her skills against a vampire.
“Azalea! What are you doing here?” A familiar voice calls, and Azalea turns her head, looking at Jordan, coming over to her.
“Jordan!” She cries, getting up from the bench to give him a hug. “I got here sometimes.”
“So do I. This park is so tiny, but it’s so restful,” Jordan says, kissing her cheek with cold lips. “This is one of my favorite spots to be. Walk with me?” She nods and they start to walk.
“Sometimes I got out here to watch it snow. The snow you get in the city seems more tainted than in the suburbs,” Azalea says, watching it fall.
“Ah-ha! A clue to your former life,” Jordan says with a smirk. “You lived in the suburbs.” He holds her hand, warmly, and she smiles at him, looking up at him shyly.
“Yes, I know,” Azalea says with a laugh.
“But no details?” Jordan asks, and she shakes her head.
“No details,” Azalea says.
“Too bad. I was looking forward to the juicy details,” Jordan says. “How’s the gang?”
“Alright. They’re…renovating their kitchen, and I’m not very good at that sort of thing,” Azalea says.
“That’s cool,” Jordan says. “What colors?”
“Oranges and reds,” Azalea replies. “It’s actually a very cool effect.”
“I’ll bet,” Jordan comments. He releases her hand, and shakes his head to get rid of the snowflakes that have fallen on him. “Now, I’ve been wanting to do this since I saw you again at the restaurant. So don’t move.” He lowers his face down and he kisses her.
She responds almost immediately by holding his face in her hands, keeping him to her. He wraps his arms around her waist, and then he continues to kiss her.
“Ahem,” a voice coughs, and they break apart. It’s Orion, and he’s looking them. “We gotta show you something.”
“What’s up?” Azalea asks, concerned.
“It’s nothing big, Mercury just honed in on something—pardon, I’m Orion,” he says, holding out his hand to Jordan.
“Hello,” Jordan says, wrapping his arm around Azalea, shaking Orion’s hand. “I’m Jordan.”
“Ah, and here, a rule,” Orion says, moving his shirt to reveal his own scar, the exact shade as Azalea’s eyes.
“It’s the same as Azalea’s,” Jordan says. “She showed me hers.”
“I see. Well, if you excuse us, Azalea and I must get going back to our place. It was nice meeting you,” Orion says, grabbing Azalea’s hand.
“Orion! What’s going on?” Azalea asks as he drags her away.
“We’re done,” Orion mutters, letting go of her hand. “We finished, and we’re getting some real groceries to celebrate.”
“What? That’s excellent!” Azalea says. “I didn’t think you’d be this quick!”
“Really? Vampires can be pretty speedy,” Orion mutters.
“What’s wrong Orion?” Azalea asks him, poking him in the arm. “You seem grumpy.”
“It’s nothing, really, Azalea, I’m fine,” Orion says as they reach the theatre. “Don’t worry about it.” She hears him mutter something under his breath, but she ignores it. Mercury flits into the room, and hits Orion on the arm before coming over to Azalea.
“Come on! The things you picked all look really nice together!” Mercury says, taking Azalea’s hand and leading her to the kitchen. She opens the door and Weiss and Luc are sitting at bar stools, smiling when they see Azalea’s reaction.
The countertops are sparkly, with shiny smooth finish and equipped with a microwave, blender and a coffee maker. The island is to Azalea’s left from her spot at the door, and it has a sink. On the wall, to the right of where the island ends is the fridge and to the right of that is the stove. The tile and the paint look good together, but Azalea squints at the staining.
“This isn’t what I chose…” Azalea says, running a finger over the sandy colored cabinets. “But don’t worry, I like this one better.” She walks across the room, stopping to admire the lighting fixtures and the cream ceiling before her feet hit the shaggy gold carpet, with a table with seating for six, also in the same sandy tone of wood. She turns around and smiles. It’s the modern warmth she always desired in a kitchen, and to Azalea it’s perfect.
“Thank you so much!” Azalea says. “I don’t know what I did to deserve all of this. You’re all so nice to me, I just don’t know what to do to thank you.”
“Get us some groceries! We can drive the van,” Luc says. He hands her white credit card. “This is our debit card…use grocery money with that. Mercury and Orion will go into the store with you, Weiss and I will get a parking space and then join all of you.”
Azalea sighs again. “If you insist.” She pockets the card, and Mercury tugs her to another door in the blue hallway, one she didn’t notice. She stops and raises her eyebrows at them. It’s a tye-dye colored van with sliding doors. Luc presses a button and the car beeps, the door sliding out to reveal more carpeting and some bean bag chairs, complete with love beads hanging by a small window.
“What? We all really liked the seventies. Climb aboard!” Azalea climbs on, and then Luc, Weiss, Mercury, and Orion get on too. Luc puts the keys in the ignition, and it purrs. “We also jazzed up the engine.” He winks at Azalea. They drive to a more modern grocery store and Luc stops at the doors to let off Azalea, Mercury and Orion before driving off. They walk inside and Azalea grabs a cart.
“Come on…produce first. I wish you all could eat!” Azalea says wistfully.
“Well, we can taste the food…but it’s like eating mud for humans. Redundant,” Mercury explains. “And since our taste is heighten by a lot we dislike human food. It tastes bland.”
“Here, let me try making food for you all. Just once!” Azalea says. Mercury looks at Orion, who shrugs.
“Sure, Azalea. Just don’t be disappointed when we break out the wine, alright?” Mercury says with a trilling laugh.
“Whatever,” Azalea says, picking out some oranges and apples. She also gets some celery, fresh garlic, potatoes, peaches and a box of strawberries and raspberries, some of her favorites. Then she goes to the meat and gets six steaks, along with small portions of chicken, pork, and ham before turning into the spice aisle, and seeing a package of a starter set of spices, putting that into her cart as well. She gets some olive oil and some cooking spray, then she gets some more chips and she finds some cake and muffin mixes before getting soda, milk, eggs, and yogurt. Mercury and Orion look on with interest as she gets some more cookies and some frozen pizzas. Then she goes to the check-out.
“Hello, miss, is this all yours today?” The checkout man says. She smiles and nods. “Wow, you got pretty much everything for a starter kitchen!” He looks up and sees Orion. “Newlyweds?” She looks at Orion again, and he microscopically shrugs. She pastes on an excited smile.
“Not yet!” She says. “In a couple weeks though! I’m leaving my parent’s flat and Orion’s leaving his dorm. We found just the cutest apartment we couldn’t pass up.”
“Oh, that’s so nice,” he says. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you!” She gushes, and when the man looks down she rolls her eyes at Orion, who merely grins in response. She hands him the card, and he swipes it, and she signs it with a flourish.
“You have a nice afternoon, miss. And congratulations again!” The man waves and they leave, rejoined by the others as soon as they get outside.
“Thanks for leaving us, guys,” Azalea says sourly. “The guy at the counter thought we were a couple!” She pauses. “Now that I think about it, we have been mistaken for that a lot of times.” She turns to Orion. “Why do you think that?”
He shrugs, but Mercury butts in. “Because you’re in love,” she croons ecstatically.
“What are you talking about, Mercury?” Orion says, heading towards the car. “Besides, she’s got Jordan to keep her bed warm.”
“Hey!” Azalea says, her face getting red. “He’s no bed warmer!”
“Oh really now,” Mercury says. She stares at Azalea, but then she shrugs, a perfect face of indifference. “If you think that.” With that the groceries are packed and they climb back on to go back to the Palace.
“Now, I hope you all like it…but since your tastes are heightened, I’m sure it will taste a little bland to you all, stupid vampires,” Azalea says, pouting slightly as she takes her spot at the head of the table. They look at their food, rare steaks with garlic applied right on top, sautéed slightly but otherwise raw. She looks at them, her much more cooked meat halfway up to her mouth. “Well? What are you waiting for?”
“Um, okay,” Mercury says first, clumsily taking up a bite to her mouth. She swallows it. “Shouldn’t you be able to taste it?”
Azalea laughs. “You chew it!”
They look at her quizzically.
“Can’t you lot remember how to eat?” Azalea says. They shake their heads.
“I haven’t eaten in more than fifty years, and we really haven’t been around humans…and the humans we have been around are usually dead or dying,” Weiss says. Azalea sighs, and points to the fork.
“Hold it like this,” she instructs, and they do so. “Now, hold the knife like this, and now you make a gentle sawing motion. We don’t want broken plates.” She watches them as they softly cut the meat. “Now, spear one piece of the meat, and put it in your mouth and chew it up until you can swallow it. This allows you to taste it. Like this.” She cuts and chews a piece of her meat, and then swallows it. “Now you try.” Obediently, they all put their forks in their mouths and chew the meat, then swallow it.
“Weird…” Luc says, looking at the meat. “I haven’t eaten a real meal in about seventy years, Azalea. It tastes…so bland. Blood is so much better, now.” He gets up, looking at her. “Now that you didn’t try hard. It’s just, vampires are a whole new world.”
Weiss leaves with Luc, and Azalea eats, shrugging good-naturedly. “I can’t have it all, I suppose,” she says. She looks at them, only Orion still eating. “If you guys don’t like it you don’t have to eat it. Oliver was the pickiest person in the world when it came to that.” Mercury gets up with a gentle smile.
“Sorry Azalea!” She says. “I can’t. It feels weird in my stomach.” She leaves, then, and it’s only Azalea and Orion at opposite ends of the table. Azalea looks at Orion pointedly.
“Well? Aren’t you going to leave me, too?” She asks, taking another bite. He looks at her, his black eyes full of warmth.
“I like it,” Orion says. “I can taste the blood on mine.” She smiles.
“Typical vampire statement, I suppose,” Azalea says.
“Haven’t you read the books?” Orion says. “Dracula and them?”
“Nope,” Azalea says with a shrug. “They never interested me.”
“Why not? What kinds of books did you read?” Orion says, taking a bite of his food.
“Mostly textbooks. But sometimes I would go stir-crazy for a few weeks and just read out loud to anyone and everything,” Azalea says, embarrassed.
“So you’re smart,” Orion says, appraising her. She half nods, half shrugs. “What kind of reaction is that?”
“I’m smart, but I don’t really like being smart, if you know what I’m saying. Like, if I was just a little less smart and a little more pretty I get the feeling my parents would like me more. Or if I was more athletic, or artistic, or musical. I just don’t have those traits,” Azalea confesses, looking down at her dinner.
“Well, you seem pretty great to me,” Orion says with a shrug. “And think about it, Martial Arts is very athletic to do, and difficult to master. Some poets have called it poetic and very balletic, in the way your body move to the rhythm all your own,” Orion points out, brandishing his fork at her. She looks up and smiles, before narrowing her eyes at the fork.
“What on earth have you done to that poor fork?” She demands, getting up to examine it further. She takes it from him and it’s steaming gently, with mangled bits and even one prong missing. “How did you do that?”
“Um…” he eyes the fork. “We have venom in our teeth.” He bares them, exposing the pure whiteness of them. “And even still, I don’t taste very well. Although this is quite good for human food.”
“…Oh. I see,” Azalea says very carefully. “I think I’ve had enough to eat. Help me clear this away.” They throw it all in the fridge and then leave. She turns to him as they enter the butter colored balcony hallway, looking at him enquiringly. “Is there anything else I need to know about vampires? Do you run though walls, walk on ceilings, that sort of thing?”
He laughs, and his baritone voice is a pleasant buzz in her ears. “Of course not. Although…” He flits away from her, only a blur as goes up the hallway wall, obscuring the butter color of the hallway and coming up next to her. “Interesting. Didn’t know I could do that.”
“Are you kidding? You just defied gravity by using the speed of light as an excuse,” Azalea says with a huff. “No fair.”
“I could take you up with me…” Orion says. “But I doubt your human eyes could see the way it looked from the ceiling…”
“Well excuse me for being human,” Azalea says, hands on her hips. She goes to her door, a smile on her lips. “Go to your balcony, I want to see something.” He obliges, and they wave to each other from their balcony rooms. “Now,” she calls. “Can you jump over?” He smiles.
“You shouldn’t have asked that,” Orion says. He jumps onto his ledge too easily, gracefully making the six foot width from her balcony, overshooting and sailing above her, landing on the opposite edge of her walls, adding another eight feet to his amazing leap.
“I hate you,” she grumbles. “Make me a vampire.” He cautiously laughs.
“Oh trust me, I would love that,” Orion says. “Super fast, less to carry on long journeys without the van…” He laughs again, looking at her face. “Kidding!”
“Jerk,” she mutters, sitting down on her chair, raking the tips of her fingers over the soft material of the chair. “Did I ever thank you for the amazing balcony?”
“I think so,” Orion says, perching himself precariously on the ledge, rocking back and forth. “But you’re welcome.”
“You guy are just so nice to me, I can’t believe it,” Azalea says. She glances over to Orion and sighs. “Get down from there!”
“Well, even if I fell it would be like this…” Orion says, tipping back to far, letting himself fall spread-eagle down to the ground floor below. At the last possible split second he twists himself, falling flat on his feet. “See?”
“You nearly gave me a heart attack!” She calls with a glare. He merely grins, and she huffily slams the curtain door shut and sprits to her down and locks it.
“-And Juliet is the sun!” He calls, and she smiles despite herself at the flimsy Romeo and Juliet reference. It was and still is her favorite book, and she’s memorized parts. When she was fourteen, she was struck by love, and read this particular part so many times she memorized it. Bet the vampire only had to look at it once! She thinks to herself wryly, sitting back down. She turns on the light with a long cord, and her makeshift room in bathed in a soft glow. There’s a tap on the curtain and she looks up, startled, as she hears a tap again. Cautiously she opens the curtain to see Orion jumping up and tapping before gravity takes over and he goes back to the ground.
“Oh Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo?” She calls comically, her hands at her forehead and over her heart in a dramatic manner. “Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, but be sworn by my love, and I’ll no longer be a…” she almost goes with the original wording of Capulet, but at the last minute she twists it. “…human.” She whispers it, but he hears it, his eyes flickering up to her. He looks around, and seeing the rest of his gang below Azalea’s balcony, he smiles. In a stage whisper, her looks at them, amusement rippling his features. Luc hears it in his mind and he smiles.
“Shall I hear more or shall I speak at this?” He says to them, but Azalea continues, paraphrasing to modern-day English.
“And so it is my name that is my enemy, though it is me, though not a Montague, but what is a Montague? Not hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor any other part belonging to man, oh but what a name! What’s in a name? That if we call a rose by any other name would it smell so sweet? So if he were not called Romeo would he retain that dear perfection, and then, let him take all of me!” She winces at the bad translation, but Orion simply smiles, paraphrasing himself.
“I’ll take you for your word, call me love and I’ll be love, and no longer be Romeo,” Orion says to her, smiling up at her. She looks around in false surprise.
“What man, clothed in night, should stumble upon me?” She asks the air. Mercury and Weiss start to snigger.
“How can I want the light? Love goes towards love, as children to their parents, but love from love, and from to school to waiting parents,” Orion laments.
“Come, Romeo, come!” She says quietly, skipping ahead in her mind to the part Orion has arrived at. “Oh, for a master’s voice to call back love and lure the man back to me!”
He cuts in as she fumbles for words to match the rest of her monologue. “It is her! The one who is my soul call my name! How sweet the sound of lovers calling in the night, like the sweetest bells of finest music!” He looks up at her. “At what time tomorrow should I summon thee?”
She raises her eyebrows, but uses Romeo’s line. “At the hour of nine.”
“I will not fail, for it is as though twenty years will pass before I see you once more,” Orion says, looking into her eyes. Mercury softly coos at them, and Weiss sniggers even more, though Luc watches Orion attentively, looking at Orion’s eyes very closely.
“I have forgotten why I called you back,” she says.
“It is of minor importance, I shall stand and wait until you remember!” Orion says.
“I shall forget. Oh, to have you in my company, it is that of which I wish to remember,” Azalea says with a sigh, leaning over the railing and looking down at him with love.
“And still I’ll stay, and this will be where I shall call home,” Orion says.
“It is of late hour,” Azalea murmurs, not finding the right words for the next couple lines. “Good night, good night! Parting is so bittersweet in sorrow, that I shall say good night until morrow.” She leaves the balcony and shuts the curtain, and though his words are muffled, she can still hear him.
“Sleep well, then, my dear, peace within your heart, and were I to sleep, I would sleep in sweetest rest knowing of you tomorrow, hence I will go and serve my family, and see you tomorrow.” With that she smiles, and feels guilty. I just recited the most romantic part of Romeo and Juliet, probably the most romantic play in history, to Orion. And what about Jordan! She thinks to herself. Although… she muses. Most critics today hail it as a play mocking love and what it does to naïve fools…
“I think I’m fine. Maybe I can talk to Jordan tomorrow, I’m sure we won’t have another fight for a while…” Azalea says to herself, sitting back down on her chair. Luc had loaned her an action James Bond-like action, and she wasn’t far, and she was really interested in it.
“Come on! Azalea, get up. We have to go. Quickly!” Orion says, shaking her. She sits up straighter in her chair, the book falling to the ground. “We have to go!”
“Where are we going?” Azalea says, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. I must have fallen asleep reading! She thinks. “What’s happening?”
“Kreios. He’s attacking the Southside amusement park. At the pier. We have to go now!” Orion says. “It’s worse than before. They’re playing with them, toying with them. It’s like they’re waiting for us!”
“How do you know about these attacks?” Azalea asks, coming downstairs. Mercury, Weiss and Luc, are standing the lobby, looking worried.
“We have runners. Stationed at every major point on the borders, not to mention the major spots they’re likely to hit,” Orion explains hurriedly. He opens his arms. “Come!” She goes over to him, and hops into his arms, and they’re away in less than a second.
