Today, Tomorrow and Always

by Bailey, Tessa

  “There is nothing for you to hit, so just enjoy yourself, okay?” Tucker’s hand coasted down the back of her hair, brushing a thumb down the back of her neck.

  “Okay.” Mary’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “Let me know when I’ve hit a hundred miles per hour.”

  Tucker’s leather seat creaked. “Whoa whoa—”

  “Only kidding.” She grinned at him. “Lighten up, Dad.”

  A hoot came from the backseat. “My my, how the tables have turned.”

  “That’s about enough out of you, old man,” Tucker called back, but there was a definite smile in his voice. “Besides, if I recall correctly, it was Mom who had to deal with my constant begging to test drive her station wagon. She finally gave in when I was…”

  Tucker’s voice trailed off and he was silent for so long that Mary reached over, tracing his facial features with the pads of her fingers. “When you were what?”

  He cleared his throat. “It’s the oddest thing,” he said quietly. “I forgot all about this memory until right now, but this is how she taught me. Just like this, in the open field. Only, this is back when we had the cows. And I just remember…one of them ran in front of the station wagon my very first time driving. I didn’t see it coming. I slammed on the brakes.” Silence ticked by. “One second the cow was there, the next…we were on the other side of the field and Mom was telling me to turn the car around. I asked her about the cow and she had no idea what I was talking about. Why am I only remembering this now?”

  “You’re in a similar situation,” Mary said. “Maybe it shook the memory loose.”

  Carl shifted in the backseat, creaking the leather.

  “Yeah.” Tucker squeezed her thigh. “Yeah, that’s probably it. You ready to rock?”

  Mary licked her lips, gripped the steering wheel until it creaked. “Ready!”

  “All right, honey, just ease down on the gas pedal. It’s okay if it leaps forward a little. This thing is a hungry beast and we don’t try to tame it, will we? Just remember to keep the wheel straight.”

  “Got it.” Mary blew out a breath and sat up straighter.

  Tucker took her hand off the wheel and settled it on the gear shift. “Hold down the brake like I showed you. Until it’s in drive.”

  Mary nodded, her pulse tripping over itself when Tucker guided the shift downward. She counted four clicks. “Should I let go of the brake now?”

  “Yup. Nice and easy. The car will start to roll—good. Good, honey. Now—”

  Black.

  Silence.

  A weightless, soundless void.

  Tucker’s voice cut out and then there was nothing. None of her senses were working. There was no way to touch or call out. It was as if she’d floated free of her body into an endless blank space. She bobbed in some foreign atmosphere for an unknown amount of time, fear holding her hostage, until finally two voices reached her ears.

  One belonged to her mother, another was new. A man.

  Something about the sound of his voice made her heart sprint, her pulse firing on all cylinders. As the voices grew louder, she started to experience feeling in her limbs again. As if her body had been taken away, but it was now forming around her again.

  Cold. She was so cold.

  Shivering.

  Where was Tucker?

  Had she been removed from the car?

  She wanted to go back. Please let me go back.

  With the reanimation of her form in the darkness, there came a terrible foreboding in her stomach. Acid climbed up her esophagus and filled her mouth…

  But she forgot all about it when the blackness started to fade.

  And a world formed in front of her…eyes.

  Her eyes.

  Mary made a choked noise that seemed to echo in the dome of her skull.

  Were these…colors?

  There was one that was slightly different than the usual darkness she lived with. Lighter. It formed a wall. Yes, a wall. She reached out and touched it, determining what it was by the texture and sturdiness. Eagerly, her gaze traveled upward and saw something hanging on the wall and a huge, gulping sob broke from her lips. This hanging cloth was a different color. A color so bold and striking, it was a wonder it didn’t make a sound. Was it red? Was it blue?

  Mary’s heart boomed like tiny explosions in her chest, her fingers reaching up to touch the bright hanging cloth, tracing the outline of something black on the soft surface.

  And then she spun around she gasped, falling to her knees.

  She could see.

  There was too much to look at, so much her stomach almost emptied, body trembling with enough force to challenge her balance.

  The voices were still there, too. Tilda and an unknown man, his timbre somehow bored and sinister at the same time. Where were they coming from?

  Did she have to investigate now?

  She needed years to marvel at everything in front of her. Her hands flew to her dress, gathering the hem in a shaking grip and lifting the series of shapes and colors high so she could devour them all. Flowers? The dress had flowers on it? And her skin. Her hair. She’d been told what she looked like before, but the descriptions hadn’t registered until now. Hadn’t made sense. Her hair was the color of the wall hanging, though a slightly different shade.

  When moisture dripped onto the hem of her dress, she realized she was crying.

  No. Sobbing.

  Every breath was wrenched from her throat.

  Pinpricks harassed her nerve endings.

  She turned in a circle and saw an open door, the sky beyond and she walked toward it in a trance. The sun had set…just like back in Buckhannon…but these things hovered, all different patterns. Clouds. They had to be clouds. And their backdrop was glowing in such a magnificent way, she slapped a hand over her mouth and wailed into her palm.

  There were trees below—she identified them by the whooshing sound they made in the breeze—and the ground was down there, too. Was she on a balcony? Or a roof?

  For the first time in her life, Mary turned and walked back into the stone structure, putting one foot in front of the other without worrying about what lay ten feet ahead. Or even fifty. She could see. I can see. Fire flickered on the walls and even those flames were glorious in a way that defied explanation.

  The rug beneath her feet was a riot of colors and patterns and she ached to get down on her haunches and study it for hours. To sit there until she could name every stroke of beauty, every shade, every design. But there was a lead weight forming in her stomach. Dread. Having her sight was more incredible than she could have fathomed. The freedom and confidence it gave her to move around was like an aphrodisiac, making her lightheaded and giddy.

  She was supposed to be in the Impala with Tucker, though.

  She’d been taken. Brought here, either mentally or physically, and she would never get answers if she got lost in the ability to see. So she followed the voices, her hands rubbing up and down her arms to alleviate the cold. Her steps faltered when something appeared in front of her face, moving and rolling and changing shape, but after a moment she realized it was her own breath pluming in the air and kept going.

  The voices grew in volume as she navigated a series of hallways until they were right on the other side of a door. Just muffled enough that she missed every third or fourth word—but why was she hesitating to go inside when Tilda was there? Her own mother?

  Squaring her shoulders, Mary opened the door and stepped into a room.

  A large fire licked out of a hearth on one side. And were those…animals? Maybe even dogs lying curled up in front? They had fur, unlike the two humans in front of her.

  Tilda was one of them, but she didn’t even glance in Mary’s direction when she walked into the room, continuing to speak in that aloof way of hers. How odd that Mary could hear her mother talking, but the meaning of her words didn’t register. They were just disjointed sounds that floated in one ear and out the other, the delivery of her mother’
s words growing more and more unnatural by the moment. Loud, then soft. Then fast, as though she was being fast forwarded.

  “This is a dream,” Mary whispered.

  “Yes.”

  The direct response to Mary’s statement had her sucking in a breath, her attention drifting to the man her mother conversed with. Tall. He must be very tall. She could tell by the way his long, slender legs hung over the arm of his chair. If he stood, her nose would probably be level with the center of his chest. With Tucker, her nose usually landed in his throat and her vampire was tall, as well. So this man must be even more so.

  Black hair. She knew that color, because it was all that had existed to her until now.

  He stared back at her, amused.

  Hadrian.

  Mary wasn’t sure where her certainty came from. Maybe there was something about the cold power in his eyes. Or the fact that he was in her dream—perhaps even causing it?—that made her limbs lock down with fear.

  “What is this?” she whispered, her voice echoing in her head. “Am I dreaming?”

  Tilda turned abruptly and walked to the fireplace, facing it unmoving.

  “Let’s not put the cart before the horse,” said the man smoothly. “Are you enjoying your new pair of eyes?”

  The way the question was posed made her skin crawl. “Are you Hadrian?”

  “Why yes. It is I. Your fiancé.” That last word was said mockingly. He rose to his feet and took a long drink from something on the table, scrutinizing her closely over the rim. “You don’t seem very impressed.”

  If he only knew how much willpower it was taking not to stare at the dogs. At the fire. At the painting behind him that depicted a large group of men sitting at a table, some of them focused on the man in the middle, others seemingly arguing. There was something ominous and arresting about the scene and she ached to examine it closer, but she didn’t want to give this man the satisfaction, because it was obvious he’d brought her here. If this was Hadrian, if everything she’d heard about him was true, he certainly had the power. Not only to give her sight, but to transport her to this place.

  Away from Tucker.

  Oh God, he had to be losing his mind out of worry.

  More than anything, she wanted to tell her vampire that she could see. It was physically painful to her that he wasn’t present for this moment in her life so she could share it with him. She wanted him there to identify colors and objects in that Tucker way. The way that never made her feel left out or burdensome. The way that made her feel like she could already see and his descriptions of their surroundings were just for their own personal fun.

  “Shall I make more of an effort to impress you, Mary?”

  His silky voice shook her from her thoughts. “No, thank you.”

  “No?” He leaned back against the table, swirling the contents of his drink. “I know we are not to be partners in the traditional sense and this is more of a…” Air quotes. “Business arrangement. But it behooves a man to woo his intended, does it not?”

  Was it getting colder in here?

  She wrapped her arms around herself more securely and clamped her back teeth together, trying to make them stop chattering. “Please end this dream. I’ve seen enough.”

  Without taking his eyes off her, he set down his drink carefully. “So eager to return to your lover?”

  Mary said nothing, though her blood had turned to pure ice. What could she say? If she told Hadrian she wouldn’t be helping him form the alliance after all, he might never release her from this dream. Might not allow her to return to Tucker.

  Every fiber of her being demanded she protect Tucker at all costs.

  “He’s not my lover.”

  Hadrian tipped his head back and laughed. “Now there’s no need for lies. Intimate congress was not a part of our deal. After all, I have no plans to partake of only one female for the rest of my life, because hell, it is a long. Life.” His gaze started at her neck, traveling slowly to her thighs and back up. “Though I might be open to negotiations.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Now, now.” He smiled, showing off the tips of his fangs, the black of his eyes bleeding out slowly to eclipse the white. “Don’t anger me, Mary.”

  Fear pulsed wildly in her neck.

  It didn’t help to tell herself this was a dream.

  Not when it felt so real.

  Were parts of it imagined and others genuine? She could feel the ground beneath her feet, had the ability to register the temperature. What if she’d actually been transported from the Impala to Hadrian’s manor? Was there a way out?

  “Where is my mother?” She pushed the question through lips numb from the cold. “Is she with you? Or is she just a part of the dream?”

  Hadrian’s mouth spread into a grin. “I can’t give away all my secrets, can I?” He pushed off the table and sauntered in her direction. “Mary, you will arrive here tomorrow and cement this alliance with the fae or I will personally slaughter your lover. I’ll take great pleasure in it and there will be nothing left of him when I’m done. And if you need any more convincing…” Hadrian snapped his fingers and there were no longer in the fire-lit room. They were on a cliff, so close to the edge that she screamed in her throat and fell backwards, scuttling away.

  But then she stopped, because she could only gape at the magnificence spread out in front of her. The ocean. Her mind struggled to comprehend something so vast when her world had been whittled down to darkness since birth. The great body of water roiled and pitched, bubbling foam riding on its edges, the whole of it stretching toward the horizon.

  “This color must be blue,” she breathed, because she’d read descriptions of the ocean and knew. Knew the creatures that hovered over its beauty were birds. The wealth of the sight sprung tears to her eyes and she lay down sideways, curling her knees to her chest, struggling to breath.

  Hadrian laughed and snapped his fingers again.

  Chapter 20

  Tucker voiced cracked under the strain of shouting Mary’s name.

  How long had she been out?

  Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

  He shook her still form where he’d laid her in the grass, his hands planted on either side of her head ripping out fistfuls of earth, the blood vessels straining behind his eyes and on the verge of rupturing. She’s so limp. Why is she so limp?

  “Mary! Wake up!”

  Oh God, had he taken too much of her blood earlier? Is that what was wrong?

  If he’d done something to cause this, he would never forgive himself.

  What if her fae blood was driving him mad? Didn’t Jonas warn him about this? When there were no ill effects after drinking from her twice, he thought the king had exaggerated. He could have been wrong, though. Maybe he was hallucinating and Mary was fine?

  Please let that be the case. Please let her be fine.

  For now, he had to trust what he could see. What was right in front of him.

  His vision reminded him of a video game. Bursts of speed and sound, followed by nothing but the intense rapping of his heartbeat. The world didn’t look natural. Just fits of color and undiluted terror.

  “What can I do, son?”

  That was his father’s anxious voice, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to respond. Couldn’t think of or see anything but his mate’s lifeless body in front of him. Could only replay the moment she’d slumped forward onto the wheel over and over until he was physically ill.

  “Honey,” he said through his stiff lips, his hands roving over her body to find the invisible injury. “Come on. Come on. What’s wrong?”

  There was only one person he could think of that had an encyclopedic brain when it came to underworld lore. Jonas. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he ripped the phone out of his pocket and tossed it at his father’s feet.

  “Call Jonas. Tell him what’s going on.”

  Having his father call the vampire king would get him into trouble. By showing up in Buckhannon, he’d
exposed their kind to his father. A human. None of that mattered right now, though. If something serious was wrong with Mary, he wouldn’t live long enough to see the consequences anyway. Maybe he should have made the phone call himself, but he physically couldn’t remove focus from his mate for as long as it took to dial.

  His father knelt down beside him and engaged the call—

  Mary’s eyes opened.

  They were full of tears.

  But Tucker was so fucking relieved to have her conscious, he draped himself over her body and whispered fervent prayers, one tripping over the next.

  “Oh my God, it’s so beautiful,” she whispered, her voice sounding odd.

  Tucker lifted his head to find Mary’s eyes fixed on the sky above. It wasn’t unusual to not have her look at him directly, but there was something different about her expression, though, the gravity in her eyes.

  She was seeing something.

  Seeing.

  “Mary…”

  “It’s even better than the ocean, I…” Her breath caught, so much happiness and wonder on her face, he couldn’t look away. “This is only one city? It’s so large. And there are so many people. Are those children?”

  The last word turned into a sob, her hand lifting to cover her mouth.

  Wherever Mary was seeing these things, it wasn’t here in the pitch-black field. She was as far away as her voice sounded and there was only one person who could show her these things. The ocean, cities. A sorcerer, rather. The one who’d promised her sight. Hadrian.

  Was he delivering on his promise to her early?

  Was she with him inside of her head?

  Was he showing her what she had to look forward to?

  Tucker fell back in the grass, his heart missing several beats in his chest. His head shrank around his skull, throbbing, sending pain shooting to his eye sockets, his teeth.

  Never had a greater conflict been waged in a being, human or vampire.

  His greatest wish was to see Mary happy and the sight of it gave him a sense of completion. Yet knowing it came from someone else was his life’s greatest agony.