“Don’t do this,” he said in a wavering voice. “Don’t push me away.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer. Everything within her wanted to hold him just one more time – one more time before she had to kill him. Fate was indeed a cruel bitch, much crueler than Adele had ever thought possible. How could love demand so much? She sobbed softly.
“Don’t you know how long I’ve waited for you?” he cried through the door. She shook her head, forcing away the memories, forcing away the feelings. “You’ve waited for me too. You know it.”
Just as she started to walk away he said, “You love me. Remember.”
In that moment she was swept away into a memory she never would have believed belonged to her. She was wrapped in Nicholas’s arms in an ornate four poster bed, her leg was draped over his barely clad hip and he kissed her along her neck and over her bare breasts. His kiss consumed her, his eyes dark with passion. Her voice was husky with desire as she begged him to make love to her. Her nails raked down his back, on her left hand a ruby ring that he had given her because she had promised herself to him, till death do they part.
She watched in her mind’s eye how his strong hands spread across her soft, ivory flesh, branding her with his touch, setting her soul on fire with each kiss she could feel on her cold, cracked lips hundreds of years later.
And now here they stood again, their love defying death itself. Time rearranged so they could be together once more. Adele pulled open the door and rushed out to feel him alive in her arms again, screaming, “I remember!” into the shrieking wind of the night.
But Nicholas was gone. She had to wonder for a moment if he had ever been there at all. Just like a dream he had come into her life, and just like her nightmares he would vanish. She returned to her safe four walls, feeling completely and utterly hollow inside.
The next day Michael returned to Adele’s, once again to implore to her the imperative nature of their dilemma. Only this time she didn’t answer the door no matter how much he pounded. He finally decided to use the spare she kept under her window box of dead plants and let himself into her apartment.
His echoed hello was met with silence. She was gone. His stomach twisted into a knot with one guess where she was. With him, no doubt.
How could she be so foolish, he questioned. How could she proclaim to love someone who was a cold-blooded killer? He couldn’t understand it. Vincent had told her that she was born to kill him, but something in his gut suspected she would turn into one of them before she could ever pierce the heart of the first man she’d ever truly loved.
He couldn’t stomach knowing that after all these years, after all they’d been through, she had given her love to another… to a monster.
His mind returned for the thousandth time to the kiss from the night before. He had dreamt of that moment for as long as he was aware he had hormones, and the moment finally came when he was angry. Instead of the passionate embrace he’d fantasized about for so long, it had been a hard, punishing kiss that crushed her lips against her teeth as he took advantage of her shocked compliance.
He had never wanted to hurt her. Never. He was willing to die for her. More than that, he was willing to kill for her. She may not know right from wrong or up from down at this moment, but he sure did. And it was high time he stopped letting her mess up her life. He had a long history of standing by and letting it happen. There was no way he would let her go now, especially to someone like Nicholas Sterling.
Michael went immediately to her desk and started looting through the notes, the papers, the photos, the clippings, trying to find something anything to help him save her. He found the red case with the diamond tiara, and tossed it aside contemptuously to keep looking. Finally he came to a small plastic bag containing a bloody handkerchief with an ornate family crest. He tucked it quickly in his pocket and rushed out the door.
Meanwhile Adele stepped off the elevator to the top floor of the Grand Royale. She pocketed the key card after letting herself into Nicholas’s penthouse, never knowing that at the same moment Michael was hitting the entrance of the local museum and summoning the curator to investigate the crest stitched onto the corner of the handkerchief.
As the curator's face lit up with delight at the rare find and escorted Michael to a back room filled with musty dusty books of records, Adele made her way slowly to the mysterious room in Nicholas’s suite.
The entire penthouse was closed up tight like a tomb; each step she took felt like she was walking over a grave. Again the room was ice cold and quiet, but she did not let that stop her. Her hand grasped the cold golden door knob just as the curator threw open a large book and showed Michael a photo that made him turn white.
It was a photo of Adele, only it wasn’t Adele. It was Princess Natasha Siminov, with the same long black hair, the same bold white streak down her scalp, adorned by a familiar diamond tiara. She stood with the other members of the royal family from a small country in the Balkans, who were slain during a revolt in the early 1800s. Below their picture was the same family crest that adorned the handkerchief.
That meant the handkerchief wasn’t Nicholas’ at all. It had belonged to Adele in another life. Michael knew that it was in that life they could discover how to save her and all the people she loved in the present.
He bolted out of the museum and into the bright sunlight at the same time the latch on the door gave way and Adele pushed open the door to the hotel room that doubled as a tomb. It flung wide open as she turned on the light, revealing the coffins that lined each wall. They were old and new, fancy and plain, and they all had bodies inside. Dead bodies. Corpses just waiting for the sun to sink in the horizon and night to reanimate them.
Her skin crawled as she walked through the room, waiting at any moment for the bodies to leap from their unholy rest and grab her, pulling her back down to hell with them.
She tried not to look into their faces, their gray, gaunt faces, their eyelids sunken so far into their skulls she was uncertain they had eyes at all. She tried, but could not resist. Her eyes traveled over all of them, her stomach curled into a tightening knot. Their skin was as thin as paper, their nails were long and curled into claws. The further down the rows she walked, the longer their fangs were.
She finally reached a platform where the most ornate of all coffins sat elevated from the rest. This was their master, she surmised. This was her Nicholas.
She stepped up onto the platform. As she drew closer she recognized the face she’d seen in the alley, in the forest and in her nightmares. His eyes were closed, his fangs pierced into the gray skin of a man hundreds of years dead. His hair was long, white and wild. Even in the darkened room where no sunlight dared to tread, his skin seemed to have a glow of its own.
His hands were crossed on his chest, his fingers curved into claws, his nails long and sharp. These were the hands that had held her, that had touched her body and had made her long for pleasure she’d never known.
His lips were thin and black. She had kissed those lips with hunger. She had touched this body with fevered desire, wanting to be possessed totally and completely by him.
And there he lay, dead. Cold. Evil. It was a man she had loved, so why, at this moment, was her skin crawling? Why, at this moment, did she think she could kill him?
Was she still dangling precipitously in between her two realities?
She knew she had to touch him. That would be her true test. Maybe the love she felt had all been an illusion he created. Maybe all she had to do was feel his touch one more time and she’d know the truth, whatever it was.
Her hand hovered just over the skin. She wanted to feel the warmth that she felt before, but there was nothing but ice cold air. The hair on her arm stood on end and she shook as she drew closer, her fingers just precious inches from his ancient face.
Mere seconds before she could make contact, a hand grabbed her from behind, clasped over her mouth and drowned her scream deep in her throat. She was whirled i
nto the arms of a very young, very alive –
“Nicholas!” she breathed.
Nicholas glanced back at the Creature, who rested undisturbed. He ushered her by the elbow and shut the tomb room behind them.
She stared at him in disbelief. Wonderful, ecstatic, jubilant disbelief. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, unable to take her hands from his beautiful face that was reassuringly warm to her touch.
He dismissed her easily as he ushered her from the door. He seemed very eager to get them as far away from the secret room as possible. “I wanted you to remember on your own,” he said as they rushed through the darkness. “But time's grown short and he is restless.”
She didn’t understand. She tried to stop him when they finally reached the door. “He? Who’s he?”
Nicholas met her eyes then after he closed the door behind them. “Thaddeus Dragomir,” he said finally. “Your father.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nicholas refused to answer her questions as he rushed her to the safety of her own home. How could he condense more than two hundred years into the short minutes, days or weeks they had been reunited? Time had not been enough to ease his pain, but it had been worth it to see her again. Would she feel the same thing? Or would she still be angry? Would the love he defied God and Death for still be there for her? There was only one way to know. She needed to remember in her own way, to know what it was he knew, to feel what it was he felt. Their lives depended on it.
And for the first time since 1804, that was something worth fighting for.
For once in two centuries his immortality was a blessing rather than a curse. He could forget the things he’d seen and done – the wars, the plagues, those he’d loved and then ultimately lost to his truest enemy of all. Time itself.
It was time that haunted him after his dearest love Adele, then Natasha, had died. He was single-minded in his focus to get her back; the pain of losing her was almost more than he could bear. He would have sold his soul to the devil himself, and had, just for one more night wrapped in her arms. Each moment of every day for two hundred years he had lived for it, and now the moment was here.
Only now the Devil was expecting his due payment: Nicholas’s soul.
More so, The Monster wanted Adele as well. He had always wanted Adele. And this is what she had to remember. This is why the time was now for her to be taken back to that fateful night centuries ago when she’d made a decision that reverberated through the chambers of time. He did not envy her the task of this discovery, for her past was a gruesome one. If he could take it upon himself he would have, but this was a journey she’d have to make alone.
If he was lucky, she’d return to him at its end. Then perhaps they would find a way to be together again, and this time forever.
He still wasn’t sure exactly what it would take. The sacrifices they would have to make would surely be great. But he knew he could not lose her again. Once in a million lifetimes was enough.
He clutched her tightly to him to erase an age of longing. She was here with him now, and that’s all that mattered. For a day, for an hour, even for a moment. This was why his heart had kept beating. She had been his world, and was once again in his arms, warm and real and alive.
Adele she could barely take her eyes off of him. The sun danced along his hair dark, casting gold highlights in the sun. In the sun, she thought to herself. Her heart rejoiced that this man who had come to mean so much to her in such a short amount of time was not the killer after all. Unless they had changed the rules, and Vincent’s books had lied. Vampires lay sleeping during the daytime hours. No, she thought suddenly. They were not asleep. They were dead.
The man molded to her side was very much alive. She felt the heat of his body, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, the sound of his breathing. Such simple things all, but she couldn’t have been happier... as if each breath was a miracle.
If only she knew.
He seemed loath to talk about anything until after they had shut the outside world behind them and retreated into the safety of her home. The minute they shut the door she took him into her arms for a long, long moment. She felt his body against hers, molded so perfectly, created for just her. His breath was warm against her neck and she clutched tighter to him for all that she was worth.
“I thought…” She didn’t finish what she thought. She didn’t have to.
“I’m so sorry,” he said then, his voice husky with emotion. “I never meant to mislead you.”
“Tell me now,” she whispered.
“I cannot,” he replied, pulling away. “You have to remember.”
He pulled a package from his pocket. It was the herbal tea he’d given her before. “This will make you go to sleep,” he said. “In your dreams, all will be revealed.”
She balked instantly. “I want you to tell me. I will believe you,” she implored, but he shook his head.
“I know you’re afraid,” he said. “But I will be here. These are just memories. They cannot hurt you.” She looked doubtful. “Please. Will you trust me?”
Her heart answered him with a resounding, “I will.” He took his time to prepare the psychic blend of tea, telling her what each ingredient was supposed to enhance. She was still leery as she took the cup into her hands, but finally she sipped the pungent liquid while he set the mood in the room. He closed the drapes and turned on the radio to a classical music station, which played soothing instrumentals to help her relax. He finally joined her on the sofa and said nothing as she finished her tea. She felt the sedative effect almost immediately, and he opened his arms so that she could rest against his chest. She listened to his strong heart beat as she closed her eyes, still uncertain but no longer afraid. Nicholas was with her now, and she knew he would not leave her.
She drifted to sleep and found herself once again in the hallway that stretched on either side with the same locked doors. Only this time the hallway wasn’t endless, and where it did end there was a frame with no door at all. She drifted toward it purposefully and when she emerged the other side, she immediately knew she was someone else. She was now Natasha Simonov, a royal, daughter of the King and his Queen, and older sister to three younger daughters and a son. They lived in a Gothic castle nestled amidst the hills with a dark forest as a backdrop, and they were on the eve of their finest celebration – her engagement ceremony to Nicholai Soika, another royal and her dearest love.
They had always run in the same circles and known each other since they were children. He used to tease her mercilessly, and was secretly impressed when she’d tease him in return. She’d never allow him to bully her as some boys tended to do. She was, after all, destined to be Queen. She let him know from early on that she was her own person with her own mind.
Had her father let her, she’d have worked in the house, in their vineyard, on their land. She was unafraid to take on any task. Her father finally decided to marry her to the only man within a hundred miles who had the history of taming his impetuous child, and that was Nicholai.
He was a good man, strong with honor and respected throughout the land. But most importantly to the King Nicholai treated Natasha with respect, and the King knew beyond all else that this was the man who would lay down his very life to see Natasha happy. These were the things important to a romantic sort who still wrote poetry to his own wife of twenty years.
This was far more persuasive than the offers he got from other would-be suitors, like Count Thaddeus Dragomir. His persistent requests to woo Natasha had put the King on edge. There was something decidedly suspect about the strange man with no country of origin or family history to offer, and the King was loath to tolerate it.
His one and only priority was the happiness of his daughter. One look at Nicholai and Natasha together was all the proof he needed that theirs was a love of a lifetime.
But what they hadn’t counted on was the revolt of their countrymen who were tired of living in poverty while the royal family enjoyed their decadence in
the shadow of the waning Ottoman empire. These countrymen were organizing armies while Nicholai and Natasha dreamed of a grand wedding and a glorious future full of love and children and happiness.
Worse, in the last few weeks Thaddeus called on the King more and more, making it very clear that he was the leader of the revolt and would attack the family if his compromise was not considered.
Thaddeus wanted Natasha for his bride or else the family would be overrun and their blood would be spilled. Thaddeus would have Natasha with or without the King’s blessing. Only if the King consented would the Royal Family be allowed to stay on their land and in good graces of the new monarchy, with Natasha as his queen.
Finally the King, who had conferred with his generals, decided to placate the strange Count by saying he needed time to convince his headstrong daughter to marry at all. In the meantime the King’s own army would prepare to fight and in the end, Nicholai and Natasha would marry as planned.
Nicholai had already sworn to do battle to the death to protect the family he loved like his own. The King had attempted to dissuade him but Nicholai was a proud man who would not be deterred from doing what he believed was right, good and noble.
Natasha knew none of it; the King and Nicholai decided it best not to tell her. She’d have taken to the sword herself and battled Thaddeus, and neither the King nor Nicholai could tolerate the thought of losing her.
Tensions stretched to a breaking point as Thaddeus’s threats grew more serious. People in town were being murdered in the street; their bloody, rotting corpses left taunt the other townspeople with their own bleak future. The King was now known as the King of Sorrows, and people far and wide were clamoring for recompense.
Finally the King made the heart wrenching decision to allow his daughter to be bait. She would marry Thaddeus and buy them all time. In order to do that, Natasha had to turn her heart from Nicholai. She had to believe she was being committed in marriage to Thaddeus out of her father's wishes alone, otherwise she’d have murdered Thaddeus in his sleep. Then their fate would be sealed.
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