20. Silas

"She had an accident.She slipped and hit her head, and fell into the water."

Anderson regards me critically from behind his ridiculously large desk. "What the hell was she doing out there in a storm?"

I shrug, determined to keep my face neutral. "I don't know. I know she was a swimmer. With everything that happened she probably just wanted to have a moment to herself. Do something that made her happy."

"With everything that happened I think it's more likely she did this to herself." Anderson sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. "Poor kid. I had a daughter her age once, a long time ago."

"Right." My fingers are clenched together so hard they hurt. "And I doubt you'd want anyone to assume your daughter tried to end her own life just because she'd had a hard time recently."

Anderson exhales heavily. "Now come on, I know you have a bit of a jones for this girl, but King, you can't let that cloud your judgment."

"My judgment?" I scoff. "My judgment that tells me you'll take her off if there's even a hint of a mental health issue?"

"I never said I'd do that."

My shoulders jerk up in a defiant shrug. "So tell me you won't do that then."

He exhales heavily, caging his fingers in front of him. "King, we're not equipped to-"

"You know what this looks like to me?" I cut him off, leaning on the table, sneering down at him. "It looks to me like you just want to eliminate a problem. Girl gets raped on your watch and suddenly you have to take her off because she's mentally ill."

Anderson bares his fangs at me. "How fucking dare you."

"How fucking dare I? How fucking dare you hire officers with a known history of sexual assault."

"How the hell do you know about that?" He rises to his feet. "Those files aren't meant to be for you."

"The files you asked me to dig into? Those files?"

Anderson jerks an accusatory finger in my direction. "You were given strict instructions on what to look for, and staff history was not on that list."

"So you knew what our friend Braun had been up to then?" My vision starts to seep red. "You knew he'd spent 15 years in prison for raping three sixteen year old girls all the way back in the 50s?" I point a finger at the door. "You put all these people in danger having someone like that work for you."

Anderson's nostrils flare, the muscles in his jaw feathering wildly. But I'm not done. No one is taking Juliet off. No one's touching a hair on my girl's head.

"Now, if you think you're going to cover this up, you are sorely fucking mistaken. And don't think taking me out is going to end your problems either."

"You think I'm just going to kill anyone who opposes me?"

"Considering you'll kill off a human who simply slipped and fell in a fucking pond, I wouldn't put it past you." I throw a thumb drive on the desk. "I sent one just like that to Boston, minus the proof you knew about Braun. But there's one with that information in a safe place." I point my finger at him. "You threaten to end any more humans because of your sloppy morals, I'll send that one as well."

"This is blackmail, King."

I slam my fist into his ridiculous cherrywood desk. "This is ensuring we do everything we can to protect the people we're tasked with protecting."

I turn and storm from the office. I'm still in shock, I'm floating through clouds of misery and overwhelming rage. I'm furious with myself. I should have seen the signs. I lost my best friend this way, all those years ago. And I didn't see it in this girl I tell myself I care about. A laugh and pretty flushed cheeks made me think everything was fine. I left her sitting in the rain, and she went off to drown herself.

I growl out a breath through gritted teeth, raking my hand through my hair. How do I protect her? How do I bring her back from this awful precipice she's teetering on?

If they find out it was a suicide attempt, they'll take her off. They'll shoot her like an old dog. The thought has me stumbling, my hand slamming into the wall of the building beside me as I try to steady myself.

I won't let anyone hurt her. No one.

The rain is still falling as I make my way to the clinic, hurrying down the long hallway to her room. She's lying there, asleep, tubes in her nose. Her hands are curled slightly at her sides.

I sit beside her and hold her hand. I have to stop myself from clutching it to my chest.

She's been unconscious since I pulled her mostly-dead body from the water. I clench my eyes shut as I remember running back with her in my arms, screaming at her to stay alive. I wasn't going to let her die. I was so overcome I nearly forced my blood down her throat to turn her.

Because there's no fucking way I'm living without her.

But they found a pulse at the clinic. They brought her back from the cold brink of death, dragging her back into this hell she found herself in. Her skin went from dull grey to pale pink again, her body slowly taking in oxygen that she so desperately wanted to force out of it.

I told anyone who would listen that it had been an accident. If I said it often enough, I'd convince myself of it. Admitting to myself that she wanted to die, that her life was so hollow and barren that she no longer saw any value in it, was too much to bear.

"You'd better wake up, Jules," I whisper, brushing the backs of my fingers along her motionless hand. "I'm not losing you too."

There's movement behind me, footsteps in the hallway. Someone stops in the doorway, and sighs.

"I gotta stop catching the two of you like this," Sam says.

I don't turn around and look at her, I just keep holding Juliet's hand.

Sam walks into the room and sits down on the other side of Juliet's bed. She casts a cursory glance at the monitors telling me Juliet's heart is beating, that oxygen is flowing through her body.

"Lucky you found her, again." Sam's eyes narrow a little as she looks at me. "You OK?"

"I'm fine. Just brought back some memories."

"You wanna talk about it?"

"No," I say, shaking my head.

"OK, then I'll talk about it." Sam leans back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. "I remember reading about an attack, back when vamps first became public knowledge. It was all over the news, back in, what '96?"

My stomach twists, and uneasiness snakes down my back.

"An attack in London," Sam goes on. "Four friends, high school buddies, meeting up for a reunion. They were murdered right out the front of the pub as they left."

"People get murdered every day," I mutter. "It's a big city, it happens."

"They sure do, most of them don't have their heads torn off though. Most of them don't have their guts spilled all over the street while black cabs drive past." Sam crosses one leg over the other. "It stirred up a whole lot of fear. Humans had just found out that we existed, and then this attack happened."

"Bad timing I guess."

Sam snorts. "You can say that again. The media used it as a reason not to trust us. All the covens were furious."

I huff out a breath and meet her eyes. "What does this have to do with her?"

Sam raises her eyebrows. "I don't know, what does it have to do with her?" She taps a finger on her arm as she waits for me to respond. When all I do is glare at her, she goes on. "I had a look at your file."

"Good for you."

"Silas," she snaps. "I'm here as your friend. I'm here because I care about you. I know what it is to try and make the past right, trust me. My parents fucking owned people and I grew up thinking that was normal." She takes a deep breath, leaning her elbows on her knees. "What happened to that girl wasn't your fault."

"It was an accident."

"I don't mean her." Sam raises her joined hands to gesture to Juliet, and her eyes soften. "You can talk to me."

Memory crashes over me, and I feel sick. The numbness of those days washes over me, the same helplessness I feel now as I stroke Juliet's hand, trying to anchor myself in her softness and her warmth.

"Harriet," I finally murmur.

"That was her?"

I sigh heavily. "I've never really talked about this. Only to my maker. It's… not easy."

Sam sits and waits patiently. My tongue feels heavy in my mouth, trying to find the words to describe all the pain I've been carrying for all these years. I press the heel of my hand to my eye, and inhale sharply.

"Harriet and I grew up together," I begin. "She was my neighbor, we were like two weeks apart in age. We were both weird kids, she was always dancing with these streamer ribbon things, and I was the awkward arty one. Hands always covered in paint, hiding in oversized jumpers."

Juliet's breathing changes slightly, like she's sighing softly, almost like she's listening, Her eyes remain closed.

I lean on the bed, gazing across at Sam. "We were best friends. All our lives. It was always Si and Harri. Always. We were inseparable."

"That's really sweet," Sam says softly.

I nod, swallowing hard, trying to dislodge the lump that's formed in my throat. "I never saw Harriet as anything but a sister. It was never a romantic thing. But one day she had her swan moment, you know, went from being an awkward gangly teenager to a young woman. And suddenly, all the boys wanted her. She was beautiful. Long coppery hair and big green eyes, they fucking panted after her every chance they got."

"Did that change your friendship?"

I shook my head. "No, she adored me. Nothing changed. It was all fine, until… Until…" I don't know if I can talk about that night. I take a deep breath. "There was a party. One of the snotty boys from the good side of town. She was invited, I wasn't."

"So she went alone?" Sam asks, clasping her hands together.

"She asked me to come with her, but I was a shitty little teenager, took it to offense. Told her to go and have fun with her new friends, like a right little dickhead." I clasp on to Juliet's warm hand, wishing I could somehow wrap it around myself. "So she went alone. Then she showed up to my place at 2am." I clench my eyes shut, remembering the pinging of the pebbles against my window, going downstairs to let her in. Her bruised face, her split lip, her eyes wide with terror. Her torn dress. She'd been so excited about that dress. It was red…

"Silas?" Sam asks after a while.

I clear my throat. "Four of the boys at that party had gotten her drunk. They'd dragged her into the bathroom, and they… They had their way with her. While everyone was just a few feet away, they raped her, for hours. When they finally let her go, she came stumbling down the street to my place. No one helped her along the way. They just let this bleeding, crying little girl run down the street, all on her own, in her torn-up dress."

Sam rubs a hand over her mouth. "Oh my god."

"She was so afraid to tell her mum, she was worried she'd get in trouble for drinking, can you imagine? As though it would somehow be her fault? I told her she hadn't deserved it. But…" Anger creeps into my veins, like acid, like lava. "When we told her mum, that was almost exactly what happened. I was so shocked. Everyone told her she had asked for it. That she'd given those boys the wrong idea."

"Oh my fucking god," Sam spits out. "Unbelievable."

"I was furious. I went to the police, all on my own, tried to make a report. But they did nothing. And those fucking boys, they told everyone in school what a slut Harriet was, how she'd wanted it, taken them all at once, just the most vile fucking lies."

Sam sucks on her teeth and shakes her head. "Poor kid." She sighs. "So what happened then?"

I look up at the ceiling, replaying that night in my head. Replaying every single second, the countdown to Harriet walking out my door into the night, for the very last time.

"It was a few months later," I say quietly. "She seemed to be doing OK. She'd come over for dinner, we'd watched some telly, then went upstairs to listen to the top 40. The number one song was one she loved, and her tape deck was broken. So I said I'd stay up with her and record it." I can't help but smile a little. "The Power of Love, by Huey Lewis and The News. She made me go to the cinema to see Back to The Future four times just so she could listen to that song."

Sam smiles sadly, but says nothing.

"So we stayed up, recorded the song and nearly carked it laughing, because my tape deck didn't have internal recording so we had to be quiet. In the background, you could hear us both giggling and trying to shut up." The lump in my throat is unbearable. "She was happy. She looked so beautiful. And then… Then she took that tape, and she kissed me, just a quick peck on the lips, which she'd never done before." I inhale through my nose. "I should have known, I should have seen the signs. Something was very wrong. But she seemed so happy."

"You were just a kid, you couldn't have known."

"But I should have seen past all the smiles, I should have fucking seen it." I grit my teeth, holding on to Juliet's hand to steady myself. "I went to bed, thinking all was fine. Then I woke up to screaming. My mum, and Harriet's mum, they were screaming and crying in the landing. I ran downstairs, everything was a blur. There was blue and red lights, an ambulance and police, all the neighbors were out gawking. And then there she was. On a fucking stretcher, her hand hanging out from under this horrible blue sheet they'd put over her."

Sam's face is weighed down by sadness. "She killed herself."

I nod, blinking rapidly. "Her mum found her hanging in the bathroom. No note, nothing. She just decided in that moment that she couldn't live with what had happened, and what those boys kept doing." I clear my throat, threading my fingers through Juliet's. "And then, there was a funeral, and flowers at the school, and teachers talking about the importance of asking for help. All those fuckers who'd believed the rumors, they lined up at her fucking funeral and cried, like she'd been their best friend, when she'd been mine." I swallow down the tears and misery on a heavy inhale, steadying myself. "And all I was left with was that tape, with her giggles behind her favorite song."

"I'm so sorry, Silas." Sam chews on her lip for a moment. "Those four men at the pub, all those years later. That was them, wasn't it?"

I run a tongue over the tip of one of my fangs. "About a year after I was turned, I saw one of them in the paper, he was becoming a barrister or something, had defended a big case straight out of college. I started tracking down the others, discovered they were all still friends because scum like to travel in packs apparently." I laugh bitterly. "Then they organized a little get together, sitting in the pub congratulating themselves on their amazing lives, their trophy wives and their mistresses, all while the girl they raped, the girl I fucking loved, was nothing but dust somewhere in a cemetery."

"I can't blame you for what you did." Sam shrugs. "I'd have done the same thing."

"Margot was so proud of me," I say with a laugh. "My maker, she was thrilled. It was all over the news, right when vampires had come out. The perfect introduction, ey?" I scoff cynically. "No one ever knew it was me, but when they brought me down here I disclosed it all. Didn't feel right to be around humans when I'd killed them myself. I was expecting punishment, and all I got was understanding. They said they couldn't blame me for what happened."

"No sane person would. I think it's the power we all wish we had when we're helpless."

I smile at her wearily. "So now you know all about me, Sam."

"Explains why you're so attached to her." Sam's eyebrows twitch together for a second. "But you know that saving her won't change what happened to Harriet."

"Juliet didn't try to kill herself," I say again, seeing instantly in Sam's face that she doesn't believe me. "Juliet slipped and fell."

"Uh-huh." Sam runs a hand through her hair and sighs. "Silas look, you're an intense kinda guy, I can see that. I know that, and now I understand it. But this?" She gestures to my hand that's holding on to Juliet's. "This is going to land you both in trouble."

"I'm caring for someone, that's not going to land me in trouble."

"It will if you don't set yourself a boundary." She rises to her feet. "I get it, she's pretty. She's probably funny and smart and all the other things that have you gagging after her like a dog. But it's not OK. Jerk off, fuck me, do what you need to do. But this can't happen."

I don't say anything, looking back at Juliet. Sam stands there a moment longer, then stalks out of the room with a frustrated groan.

The monitors beep softly. Juliet continues to breathe evenly, her brow twitching every now and then as though she's dreaming.

"You remind me of her, in a way," I say softly. "She always saw the beauty in things, the same way you do." I get to my feet, leaning over her to place a kiss against her forehead. "You have to wake up, Jules. You can only find beauty in things when you're alive." Even if the world's gone to hell.