Déjà vu

Compassion is a wonderful mortal trait, but for our kind it’s often a liability…to have it ourselves or for any of you to harbor such a delicate emotion for our kind. I reminded myself of this as Winston moved further from the man I knew. But I was several lifetimes away from the man I was as well. He had to change, he lost everything including his own life in the bargain and now he was without the short lived revenge that had driven him to this point. Maybe the newfound power was enough or perhaps he was still motivated by revenge, revenge for what he now was.

           Katherine’s absence was the beginning of an awkward time for us. Winston said she had to attend to business matters for the coven overseas. It was mostly true, part of our ‘legitimate’ inheritance from the previous leadership. Had I followed my misgivings some of what followed may have been prevented, but lives would have always been lost.

           It was at this time to that Ngozi became bewitched by Winston. She had never been taken in by my kind. Still, she bonded with Winston in a way that she couldn’t with me. She had seen his pain, empathized with him, known him before he became a vampire, a soucouyant leader. So when he asked her to move in with him, to allow him to look after her, she conceded. He understood in ways I couldn’t he was native to the island like she was, they shared the same skin, the same struggle and she was tired of feeling like she could no longer be a part of her own world and unable to live in mine.

           By the time news of the death in Ngozi’s family reached our shores the split in the coven was more than philosophical. I could no longer resist leadership and Winston even consented to almost half the coven who decided they wanted to follow Louis and I. “We want the same things Nicholas.” He had said before we left. “We just differ ever so slightly on how we should go about achieving it.” Maybe he was right. We could co-exist. But really, who was I trying to fool. I had seen this movie more than once and was all too familiar with the ending…