“You really think I’ll rest easier?”
He shakes his head. “No.” He gets up. “Do you want a drink?”
“What time is it?”
“Time is a construct,” he says, going over to a table with a bottle of Scotch on it, along with two glasses.
I sigh. “I guess.”
I watch him as he pours the drinks, admiring the size of his biceps in that shirt, his ass in those pants. Marveling at how I had him naked, all to myself, deep inside me. There is so much I want to talk to him about, so much I want to do with him. But there’s a little bit of distance between us today, like we’ve taken a step backward, and I’m not sure how to navigate it. I guess I can just pretend we never had sex, but that’s not going to be easy. Not even a little.
He comes over to me and hands me my drink.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice coming out small.
But instead of sitting down beside me, like I hoped he would, he goes back to his chair and settles in, cool, calm, collected as ever.
I have a taste of my drink, enjoying the burn. I lick my lips and look at him. “Do you feel any different?”
“Hmm?” he asks, mid-sip. “What?”
“From my blood. You drank quite a bit of it, from what I remember.”
If it’s possible for him to look chagrined, he does. “Sorry about that.”
“I don’t want you to apologize,” I tell him adamantly. “I’m just curious. Did it affect you in anyway?”
He rubs his lips together, looking down into his glass. “A little.”
“In what way?”
He keeps his eyes averted. “I have…cravings.” He clears his throat, finally meets my eyes. “But I can keep them in check.”
“What kind of cravings?” I ask, taking another gulp of my drink before setting it down beside me. “Do you want my blood? Or do you want me?”
He stares at me steadily, his gaze growing hot. “Both.”
I get up and cross over to him. His eyes don’t leave mine as I climb onto his chair, straddling him, putting my hands around his neck, his skin cool against my palms.
“You can have both,” I tell him, meaning it.
His gaze grows smokier.
“Lenore…”
“Solon.” I adjust myself on him, feeling his cock harden beneath me.
“You’re certainly a wicked little creature, aren’t you?” he murmurs, placing his hand on the back of my bare thigh, sliding it up until it reaches my ass.
“I have a good teacher,” I reply, leaning in to kiss his neck. The feel of his skin against my lips makes my eyelids shutter closed.
Solon lets out a low groan, his grip tight on my ass. “You’re not going to bite me, are you?” he asks, breath heavy. “Because I rather like this shirt.”
I smile against his skin, breathing him in, letting it wash over me. I bring my mouth up below his ear, lick the edge of his lobe.
“Christ,” he swears, stiffening beneath me, inhaling sharply.
I pull back and then run my thumb over his lip for a moment, taking in his beautiful face before I lower my face and kiss him.
He moans against my mouth, lips opening to mine, soft, sweet, seductive.
Jesus, this is good.
My tongue slides in, meeting his, seeking intimacy between us. It’s kindling the heat that’s already rushing through my veins, that feeling of needing to connect to him in every way possible.
He bites my bottom lip, giving it a little tug, followed by a throaty growl that makes my body feel like a fireworks display.
Then he takes his hand and wraps my hair around it, pulling my face away from his neck, making me meet his eyes. “We got lucky last time. No one got hurt.”
“What are you so afraid of?” I ask, trying to calm a racing heart that feels too big for my chest. “I told you, I can handle you.”
“You won’t be able to handle me, moonshine,” he says, brows knitting together. “I can’t even handle myself.”
“Tell me what happened,” I say, leaning in to kiss him, but he keeps his hand around my hair, holding me back.
“You’ll not look at me the same way again,” he says gruffly, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “More than that, you might see it for yourself.”
I’m puzzled for a moment until I remember what he said about drinking his blood and sharing his memories. Also makes me wonder if he has my memories since he drank from me. I hope not, though none are very exciting.
“Amethyst told me already,” I admit.
His nostrils flare with anger, pupils turning to black pin pricks. “What the fuck did she tell you?” The darkness coming off of him is palpable.
I try to sit up straighter, placing my hands on his shoulders, determined to not let his rage scare me off. “She told me that you were in love once. And that you killed her. And her boy.” His eyes close, forehead furrowed. “But I want to hear it from you. I want to know what happened.”
He shakes his head, swallowing audibly. “No.”
“Why did you kill her?”
He remains silent, breathing in and out through his nose, his chest rising and falling. I can feel his heartbeat through his skin, it’s climbing.
I put my hand at his cool cheek. “Solon. Why did you kill her? If I’m going to be living in this house with you, I need to know.” I pause. “Did she deserve it?” I ask quietly.
“No,” he blurts out. “She didn’t deserve it.”
I run my fingers under his chin, tipping it up until he meets my eyes. Just like when I did the same the other day, I’m met with a snarl, but I don’t back down, I don’t look away. “Please, tell me what happened.”
His eyes blaze, fighting it, searching my face for a way out.
I don’t give him a way.
“Tell me,” I say, staring at him so deeply that I feel like the room fades to black. A blankness comes across his face for a moment, a sense of surrender.
Holy shit. Am I compelling him?
“Was it an accident?” I ask, prompting him, trying to see.
He sets his teeth together, taking in a deep breath.
Then closes his eyes.
“Her name was Esmerelda,” he says, his voice quiet, heavy. “And I was in love with her before I was ready to be in love with anyone.”
I’m about to ask what that means, but I decide to wait and hope he continues. The fact that he just told me he was in love with someone else already makes my heart feel heavy, no matter how long ago it was and that it ended in death.
He exhales loudly, liquor on his breath. Still, his eyes are closed.
“She didn’t belong to me. She was married to another man, they had a little boy, Thomas. The man she married…was a bastard. Abusive. Beat her. The son too. She fell for me and I for her and we both thought I could take her away from all of it, as if I wasn’t just as bad as he was. But we were wrong.”
And just like that, I can see the images in my head, coming alive like a movie. A man with a long mustache, coal black eyes, a collar with exaggerated frills, and a woman, dark hair parted tightly in the middle, a dark green dress with a wide square neckline, voluminous half-sleeves. They stand on the side of a city street, cobblestone, people passing, centuries ago.
A little boy runs to them, throwing his arms around the woman’s legs, and she smiles at him, her whole face lighting up.
“Where were you?” I ask in a hush, afraid to break the spell of what I’m seeing.
“London,” he says, his voice monotone. “Just outside the city.”
“What happened?”
He lets out a soft exhale. “I…I was with her. In the stable. I had avoided temptation with her so far, and I knew, I knew that there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to control myself. That I would become something else. I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t…strong enough. But I had loved her so much, nothing else seemed to matter.”
My own heart starts to break, feeling the love he had for her, feeling the pain he knows is comin
g.
He doesn’t even have to tell me what happens.
I smell the stable, hear the snuffle of the horses restless in their stalls. There’s Solon, I can’t see him, but I feel him, feel his confusion, his lust, desire and madness. Because there’s madness here, darkness. Something evil and awful lurking beneath his surface, trying to break through his skin.
And then it happens. I see the two of them together, the back of him fucking her up against the wall, their muffled cries which then turn to screams. Blackness blots out my view, like clouds over the sun, and then what I see is blood spilled across the straw floor, and the woman’s body torn into many pieces.
I close my eyes, trying to make the image go away, all that blood and gore, the violence.
But the images don’t go away. They change.
I’m looking through Solon’s eyes now.
Look down at bloodied hands in disbelief.
And when he throws his head back and roars with so much pain and rage, that same power feels caught in my chest, like he’s screaming through me.
“I killed her,” he whispers to me. “On purpose.”
But the image changes again and suddenly he’s running into the woods, screaming at the moon, fighting against a monster deep inside him, claws reaching up through his chest and trying to pull him under into his own madness and insanity, looping around and around and I feel it all, I feel it all.
“Lenore,” he says sharply, grabbing my face between his hands.
It’s enough to make the images dissolve, but the feelings remain.
I open my eyes and stare deep into his. I see his remorse and shame and guilt and pain in his blue depths. But I also feel what it was like to be him, the memories clinging to my soul.
“You felt so alone,” I say in a hush. “You felt so damn alone.”
Alone, empty, mad. His life was a horror show, and he was the horror.
It breaks me in two.
He swallows, his jaw tightening, eyes surveying mine in a frantic, wild way.
“If only you were there, my dear,” he says to me, his voice ragged. “You are the balm to my monstrous heart.”
I press my hand against his chest, to feel his heartbeat, to know that this man isn’t the same one I saw, and yet I know they are one and the same. “Please tell me what it all means. Tell me what I saw, what I felt.”
“It means I was the monster under your bed, the villain from your nightmares, the darkness at your back. I was everything the fairy tales warned young girls about. And now I’m here. With you.” He reaches out, tucking my hair behind my ear, eyes pining me in place. “I bet you’re having second thoughts about everything now. You should be.”
I shake my head. “I’m not going anywhere, Solon. I just want to understand.”
He exhales, pressing his lips together. “I loved Esmerelda, but I wasn’t ready to love anything or anyone. I had just spent three hundred years running around mad. A monster. No conscious. No guide. No hope. I was bloodthirsty, I was full of rage over what I was. Killing for fun, out of anger. Just…darkness.”
Three hundred years? I can’t even imagine. I had only a taste of it.
“But over time, things change,” he goes on. “Over time, you evolve. I started to evolve into my madness. I made peace with the beast. The monster inside me. I started to find a moral compass, I did what I could to be a good…person. I hated that I was a vampire, but it was impossible to separate that from myself because it is who I am. And I was the monster too, but I could get it to behave. I had been doing so well until I met her. My desire, my feelings for her, unleashed the darkness inside me. I killed her because I couldn’t control myself.”
“And the boy?”
“The father went mad himself. With grief, I suppose. He killed his own son. I had a feeling she was the only thing that kept him alive.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say softly, running my fingers over his brow, brushing his hair to the side. “I can’t imagine…”
“You don’t have to imagine,” he says tightly. “You saw it. You know what I am. And that’s why I can’t…I just can’t risk that with you.”
“Solon,” I say, my tone firm. “I already slept with you. You bit me and you stopped. You are not the monster you were. That was hundreds and hundreds of years ago. You said you were evolving, well, you’ve evolved.”
“You don’t understand. I will always be that monster. It’s the way I was made.”
“Made?” I ask, stumbling over the word.
He gives me a sad smile. “I’m not like the rest of them, Lenore.”
I blink at him, straightening up. “You said vampires weren’t made anymore.”
“They aren’t,” he says with a sigh. “Because of what happened to me. And others. I was considered a lucky one. There are very few of us left. The rest of them, they all died from their own inner demons, their own monsters and madness. We are a scourge on this earth.”
Oh my god. No wonder he was so adamant about me not turning Elle into a vampire.
“So you were a human once?” I ask incredulously.
He nods. “Yes. I was.”
“Oh my god. Do you…do you remember anything about that life?”
He sucks his lower lip in for a moment, looking away in thought. “Just bits and pieces. Sometimes I dream about it, but I can’t really fit it all together. All those centuries of madness drove my past life away, buried it in the tar.”
“So you were a human once. That means there is human still in you.”
“The human in me died when I was thirty-eight years old. There is nothing of him left.”
“Then that means there’s nothing of the human in me left.”
“Moonshine,” he says to me, placing his hands around my waist. “You were born to a human father. A witch is still a human. And even if you were full vampire, being a human doesn’t make you better. It’s not something to aspire to. What you want, what you’re really after, is humanity.” He tilts his head as his eyes coast over me. “And that, my dear, is something you have in spades. Yet another reason that you shouldn’t be so close to someone like me.”
I shake my head. “You’re the only one who understands me.”
I’m meant for you.
“There are others,” he says. “Wolf, even Amethyst understands a little, when she’s not spilling your secrets. There are other vampires out there, ones newly turned just like you. They come to this place. You’ll find them. And you’ll be happy.”
“I don’t want others,” I tell him, pressing my fingers on his cheekbone. “I only want you.”
“Even after you’ve seen what I’ve done?” His brow raises.
“Even then. You’ve seen me become a monster for a moment,” I tell him, thinking of how I was in the bathtub. “I know what it’s like to lose control. I know the shame.”
He observes me for a moment, frowning. Then he shakes his head. Strong hands around my waist lift me out of the chair, and then he’s getting to his feet.
“Come, I want to show you something,” he says, taking my hand in his. His palm against mine creates a flutter up my arm, straight to my heart.
He leads me out of the cigar lounge and through the doors of the club, then down another flight of stairs, leading to another underground level. He opens the door with a skeleton key, and we walk inside.
It’s the room where I was held hostage, though it’s completely empty now, no mattress, no chairs. It’s weird to be back here, knowing it wasn’t that long ago but so much has changed since then. I’m a different person altogether…half a person, really.
He takes me toward the section at the back, with the long floor to ceiling wood slats, the darkness behind it, a cold breeze creeping out through the narrow slits. The smell is strong, something I wouldn’t have noticed before. It smells like old paper and brimstone and…the dead. I don’t even know how to describe the smell, because it’s not the rotting dead, but the ancient dead. Dust and bones.
My stomach twists with unease.
He flicks another skeleton key out and opens the door into the room. There are no lights on in here, just the light from the other room coming in through the slats, but since both of us can see well in the dark, there is no need.
What I’m staring at is a bunch of old chests piled high, crates of jewels and gemstones and priceless treasures, stacks of folded fabric or clothes, and…
Skulls.
Lots and lots of skulls.
Human skulls, completely surrounding us. There must be hundreds in here.
“What is this place?” I whisper, afraid to breathe in. “Catacombs?”
“It’s where I keep those I’ve killed,” he says simply.
I can’t help but gasp, staring around me. “You…killed all these people? Why?”
He makes a sucking sound at his teeth. “I’m a vampire, Lenore. It’s what we do. It’s what we had to do until we found another way. This isn’t even the half of it.”
“No,” I tell him, putting my hand on his arm. “I mean, why keep them?”
He gives me a ghost of a smile. “Because I too am looking for humanity.” He gestures to the skulls with his keys. “This lets me remember what I am, what I’ve done. It reminds me to never do it again. Ball and chain. I kill, I take their skull because I deserve to remember what I did. We all have to pay a penance here.”
I let his words sink over me. He keeps their skulls to remind him of his sins.
“I didn’t think vampires were religious,” I say, thinking of how priests use crosses and holy water to keep them at bay.
“We can be,” he says. “I was one of God’s creatures once, but not anymore. He looks the other way when it comes to me.” He exhales, looking around. “Sometimes I think maybe I was a clergyman when I was a human. I have flashes of being in a church, praying, being at peace. I remember the Nordic runes tattooed on my skin. But it never lingers long enough to capture.”
I close my eyes for a moment, wondering if I can bring up that memory too. It seems that when he talks about his past is when I see it. But I only see skulls, even behind my eyes. Better to keep them open.
Black Sunshine Page 26
