The worst of which was Cassie and Devon. Cassie remained immobile beside him; her head held high, her chin tilted slightly up. The large, dark sunglasses she had taken to wearing were firmly in place. He would like to think that they were hiding her tears, but he knew better. She had not cried yet. Not in front of them, and he was fairly certain not at all.
The solid wall of anger and hate she had erected around herself did not allow room for tears. It did not allow room for anything else. Especially not grief. He turned his head slightly toward her. He wanted desperately to reach out to her, but knew that he would be rebuked again, just like he had been a hundred times over the past few days.
She didn’t want comfort, she didn’t want love. She simply wanted revenge. And she wanted not to feel, not to care anymore. Fortunately, at heart, Cassie was a caring, giving person. And that was part of what was destroying her now. She didn’t know how to deal with her anger, her hatred. It was eating away at her, driving her deeper into her hole, making her hide from the world once more.
And it was destroying Chris that he could do nothing to help her. This was not the Cassie who had hidden from the world before, trying to keep her heart safe from hurt and pain. That Cassie may have kept people at arm’s length, but she had never radiated this fury. This hate. Chris couldn’t even tune out her emotions, he had tried, but the force of her rage broke through all of his barriers, beating against him. Beating him down.
Chris shuddered. He was losing his best friend, and there was nothing that he could do about it. She didn’t want his help, she didn’t want anybody. And it was killing him.
Devon wasn’t helping him either. He could feel Devon, somewhere nearby, probably in the woods, watching. Chris could feel his sorrow, his pain, his heartbreak. He was also impossible to block out. Between Devon and Cassie they were killing him, and there was nothing that he could do to stop it. With everyone else he had always been able to keep their emotions, and inner personality blocked out if he didn’t want to feel them. But not these two. Not right now anyway. He didn’t know what he was going to do if something didn’t change soon. Hell, he couldn’t even sleep at night anymore.
He shuddered again, his hands tightened to the point that it was painful. His grief over the loss of Lily was being weighted down by their emotions. He had loved Lily; she had been like a grandmother to him. She had raised him when his own mother had retreated into an alcohol induced stupor, unable to handle the life that had been handed to her. Unable to handle the truth of what her husband and son were. Unable to love her son anymore.
Lily had been his surrogate parent; she had fed him, sheltered him, and loved him. A tear slid down his face as his own pain momentarily became more overwhelming then Cassie and Devon’s, allowing him a brief reprieve from them. He lifted his head as the minister’s prayer ended. His attention immediately focused upon the gleaming mahogany casket draped with wreaths of flowers. It hovered above the hole, Lily’s permanent resting place.
He shuddered again at the harsh reminder that Lily would never again walk amongst them, loving them, caring for them. A sob choked his throat; he could hardly breathe through the constriction in his chest.
It was chilly for November, but he could not feel the cold through the emotions swamping him. Grief enshrouded the people surrounding him, some were openly crying, others stood silently, stoically. Even his mother had come, and though her breath reeked of booze and cigarettes, she appeared to be only hung over and not intoxicated. Not yet anyway. She stood on the other side of the coffin, her head bowed, and her sandy blond hair spilling across her shoulders. At one time she had been a beautiful woman, but years of hard living had aged her far too early.
Seeming to feel his gaze, she lifted her head. Sapphire eyes, identical to his, momentarily met his. Though there was loss in her gaze, there was little else. She had checked out of the hard reality of their lives years ago. She was not capable of handling much anymore; she sure as hell wasn’t capable of dealing with what her son was, or handling the loss of his life.
Chris swallowed heavily, knowing that not only had Cassie been completely orphaned by Lily’s death, so had he. He had not been close to his mother in years, and he had always known that he never would be again. But now he truly realized that in his mother’s eyes, he was already dead. To her, he was simply still breathing for a little longer; still walking for a brief period of time, but it would not be much longer. She had already dealt with the loss of her son, and was simply just waiting for it to come true.
Chris tore his gaze away from her, unable to handle the look in her eyes. Unable to handle the fact that she already thought him dead when he was still very much alive, and intended to stay that way for a lot longer. Dani and Melissa sniffled beside him; Cassie stiffened, her head turning slightly to look at them. Though her eyes were completely hidden, he could feel the full force of her gaze on him.
Her jaw was clenched, her face hard. God, he missed his Cassie. This girl sitting beside him was a stranger, someone that he didn’t recognize. This girl was so very hard, unyielding, unforgiving, and furious. All things that Cassie had never been. It was as if the real Cassie had been abducted by aliens, and this was the thing they had replaced her with. He hated to think of her as a thing, but that was what she was now. There was no trace of humanity in her anymore, no love.
His hands tightened even more as he fought desperately against the urge to reach out and comfort her. If she would just let someone touch her, someone comfort her and hold her, he knew that she could come back. But she would not allow such a thing. She wanted nothing to do with any of them anymore and it shattered him to realize that she was just waiting to die. That all she wanted was her revenge, and death. He wanted to bring her back, but he desperately feared that it was too late. Desperately feared she had been lost to him forever.
Hell, she didn’t even want Devon, the one person (well vampire) that had been able to bring her to life before. If she had shut Devon out, when Chris knew exactly how much she loved and needed him, then what hope did he have of reaching her? He had thought that Cassie and Devon’s love could survive anything. He hated being wrong.
Though, he still held out hope that Devon would finally be able to reach her. The only problem was that she would not let him get close enough to do so.
Cassie stood suddenly, drawing Chris’s attention sharply back to her. He was shocked to realize that the funeral was over. Cassie moved stiffly forward, dropping a single red rose on the coffin as it began to lower slowly into the ground. He followed swiftly behind her, dropping another rose down as the first shovel of dirt was tossed on.