33. Roadtrip

Waylon sits down at the wheel and beckons Verona, who wisely decides to ignore him and gets in the back. He sighs and waits with the passenger door open for me to get in. "Come on, we have no time to lose!" He calls out to me, growling if I stay too long. On the way, I hear Verona snoring lightly as she has fallen asleep in the day. I myself am still awake and listening to the radio and Waylon humming along to a song. "What are you?" I ask suddenly, it slipped my mind. I knew he wasn't an ordinary vampire, we are alike in so many ways. He doesn't have the aura of a vampire, like me, he doesn't always need blood. He looks at me and then at Verona, who is fast asleep against the window. "I am like you, a hybrid." A what? I continue to stare at him questioningly, causing him to look at the road annoyed and then at me in surprise, "you don't know. What I'm talking about?" He sighs again before continuing, "we're different from regular vampires. We're kind of in between." That's something I had already figured out. "How have you changed?" I ask him, but he seems too caught up in the road before he can answer. "Waylon? Please tell me your story?" He jerks back from his thoughts and looks at me again for a moment before continuing. "Thirty years back in Ohio, I had a happy childhood with my brother at my parents' house as two teenagers ready to go to college, but everything changed when she came along. She was the most beautiful girl and Victor, and I was both in love with her, though she was never really interested. Until Victor suddenly came home that she had kissed him, not kissed her, I found out later. To make my story short, she killed him, and I as an 18-year-old went hunting her down. A few years later at the age of 20, she found me. She used her beauty back on me, and when I felt her teeth in me, I also felt the desire. Not much later, I resumed my power back and took my knife, and made a cut on her neck. She only laughed and pushed my mouth towards her blood. Yes, that disgusting monster who killed my brother made me her slave. For years, she kept me with her until I killed her." I look at him with compassion in my eyes. Never did I think his story was so heartbreaking. He always acts as if no one can touch him, but this clearly touched him. I'm glad he shared this with me and opened up to me vulnerably. Finally, I saw another side of this man that I detested. This side I could tolerate, and hoped he would be kinder to me now. "Why did Xandros even change you and give up everything he fought for?" He asks me now as I felt his hand on mine. I look back at him from the window, "Xandros needs me. I can give him what no vampire can." He looks at me in disgust now, but quickly recovers by opening his mouth, "He drank from you?" What kind of question is that? I was married to him for years, sure he had been drinking from me. "Waylon, he took me as his wife for my blood type. Sure, he drank from me." We both look at each other before he takes hold of my hand again. "Cleo, I mean after your change?" I nod at him in answer. "You are bound to hell, Cleo." What does he mean by this? Connected as in what? "Connected?" I ask him. "Yes, he has been allowed to drink from you willingly, and now he is Bound to You. We're going to have to go faster." Faster have to go, connected? "Xandros can follow us, and we don't want him to ruin this for us, understand?" I nod and look back out the window in silence. A little later, Verona suddenly starts talking with sleep still in her voice, "you guys haven't killed each other, yet, I see." She says with an underlying sneer at Waylon. Those two really don't like each other. Now that she is awake, their bickering begins again. I would almost stick my fingers in my ears to get rid of their bickering. "I had him first and you know it! You always have to take away my targets, find your own!" Here we go again, again the same fight from the beginning of the ride. Their rivalry makes the ride unbearable. And now I'm hungry too. Waylon looks at me and something shows him what I'm trying to hide, my eyes. "Here, take this," Waylon says as he hands me a sandwich from the dashboard. I nod at him and eat the sandwich like my life depended on it. "Wow, you're hungry," Verona says with a laugh in her voice. I give her a sandwich as well, so I have some peace and quiet to think about how I'm going to take out the guard that's standing there. I can hardly just drive into the square and ask them to take us. That would never work, we would have to fight. Although I hope they haven't upped the guard after the last time I was there. The group behind us crosses by, causing Waylon to push his foot harder on the pedal. Verona curses at Waylon as the ham hangs on her cheek, from the impact of the brake she didn't expect. "Imbecile! You can't even drive," Verona begins her hour of scolding him, causing him to make snide remarks at her again. How happy I am to finally see that we are almost at our destination. "Stop you both, we need to start concentrating. We are almost at our destination." A goal they have no idea what awaits us.