by K. M. Raya
”They do their best—”
“Sure, Harlow, keep telling yourself that. I don’t know why you defend them. They've been lax and you know it. I’ve dusted over a hundred vamps just this year and, where were they? Oh, right—tucked away in their little secret society and only looking out for themselves.” Even to her own ears she sounded bitter, but it couldn’t be helped.
Over the last three years they’d seen more and more vamp activity, especially in the lower income sections of the city. Slayers were growing more and more reclusive as the years passed and Blue was getting sick of doing their jobs for them. Being at Arcane right now almost made her feel like a fraud. It made her feel like she was trying too hard to be something she wasn’t. The Conclave kicked the Graves girls to the curb and threw them away like trash, so why was she there?
“You know I love you, right?” Harlow whispered sadly. Her voice sounded tired and it made Blue’s heart clench painfully.
“I love you too. Just be safe, okay? I won’t be able to study if you're throwing yourself into a vamp nest every night…”
“I make no promises,” she teased, but her voice held a hollow note to it. “I have to go, but I’ll call next week?”
‘Okay…” They said their goodbyes, but just before she hung up, she felt a sharp pang of what could only be described as homesickness in her belly. The feeling was cold and hard to describe, but it was like an empty yearning for something unidentifiable.
After sitting there for a few long moments, daydreaming of home, her attention drifted to the mist. Behind the school there wasn’t much to see except for a vast sea of tall pine trees. Arcane was surrounded on all sides by a thick forest, hiding it away from the world in a place that humans tended to leave alone and untouched. It wasn’t a particularly chilly night, so she decided to take a walk through the woods that circled the school. She needed some air. The forest was quiet, save for the melodic chirping of crickets, reassuring her that she was alone for the moment. There was an old cobblestone path that wound through the trees and she suspected it was used for jogging or old carriages that used to roll through there..
Her mind used the free time and the quiet to drift into unwanted territory. Thoughts she refused to let control her. In her mind's eye she always saw herself at the top of every class—creating alliances and growing into the strongest and most skilled Slayer there ever was. Just like her dad always wanted for her. Thinking of him made her heart physically squeeze in her chest. Bernard Graves was an amazing dad. He’d loved his girls more than anything in the universe and he’d made it his life's mission to train them into strong women. She was only nine when he and her mom were ripped away from her in the most brutal way possible, but she would never let herself forget years of their love and devotion.
Tears pricked her eyes but she blinked them away rapidly. She didn’t cry. One of the many lessons she took to heart, though maybe not in the way her dad had intended, was about emotions and when to hold them back. Her dad taught her that crying was like strapping on armor. Crying wasn’t a show of weakness, but of strength. He told her to let her emotions run freely and it would make her a stronger person, and that crying was cleansing, allowing for the negativity to seep from her body so that she could start anew.
But she never gave in. It was her truest and ever-lingering weakness. She let her emotions bottle up inside of her—piling higher and higher until the anger, sadness and fucking bone deep betrayal threatened to burst out of her skin. Betrayal because her people abandoned her when she needed them the most. When the tears tried to fall, it just served to make her skin itch, like she had no right to cleanse her body of that grief. And so she never cried on the outside. Not one single time in ten years.
*
Up ahead and through the trees, she could see the dark outline of pointed shapes and shadows. Night hovered around the forest, but shafts of moonlight filtered in from above, lighting up the pathway easily.
She found herself standing in front of the small wrought iron gates of a graveyard, snugly nestled out in the deep forest, looking wild and ancient as if it grew from the ground itself. Bats flew overhead, soaring through the sky and the flap of their wings was the only noise for miles. Her eyes widened as she gazed out over the blanket of stone graves and mausoleums that dotted the rolling, mossy ground.
The forest trees were thinned, creating the illusion of a valley surrounded by a wall of dark woods. Fog undulated between every headstone. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was sure she’d seen this place before. Something tickled her memory. Vaguely, she could remember visiting the resting place of her ancestors with her mom and dad, but childhood memories were fuzzy like that. She could usually remember prominent moments, but not how she got there or where exactly in the world she was.
Standing there now with her fingers wrapped around the dusty, swirling black gates that closed in the entrance, she had the strangest feeling she was in the right place. The gate opened easily with no lock and no warning for trespassers, so she concluded that she was free to wander. Some of the headstones looked brand new, while some of them were clearly ancient. The flowers laid over the tops of the stones looked days old and would need to be changed out soon, but others further back were obviously years, decades and maybe centuries old. She wondered for a moment, how much time had to pass before people started to forget about you. When the flowers wilted for that last time and the sound of your name on the lips of your loved ones faded… that’s the coldest thing she could imagine.
She strolled further in, feeling at home among the dead things. For some reason, a feeling of peace and contentment settled over her like a thick woolen blanket. Maybe it was because there was nobody around to cast judgement or blame her for things she couldn’t control. In the graveyard there were only ghosts. Literally.
Every now and then, a head would peek over a headstone, or the tail end of a long dress would flit around the corner. Blue knew they were watching her, but they would never cause harm to the living. Spirits had no hold over the physical world. They couldn’t touch you or hurt you like they did in movies, but they could observe you. Spirits tended to be endlessly curious, but also shy. She tried not to bother the ones she saw in public because she knew from experience that the second you gave them any attention, they were almost impossible to get rid of. She did pity them sometimes—trapped forever in their ghostly state simply because of the circumstances of their death.
When a Slayer, werewolf or other magical non-human passed on in a violent and untimely way, they would never move on if their body was buried in the earth without consecration. If their physical selves were tied to the dirt, their spirits would be also until they were able to find peace… which almost never happened after the fact. It was the main reason why Slayers were cremated or lit on a pyre immediately after death, though their ashes were then placed in an urn and buried under their own headstone. If the physical selves were burned properly, their spirits could release and rest. Too bad some bodies could never be found or identified. Some spirits were forever lost, doomed to wander endlessly. They ended up congregating in places like this. Blue’s theory was that they found comfort amongst their own kind, even though they had no real ability to communicate in any way.
Spotting a building off to the edge of the graveyard that seems achingly familiar, she moved towards it without a second thought. It looked like it was made of onyx, with veins of white running through the dark rock. The mausoleum was two stories tall with massive stone ravens perched on the corners of the rooftop where a gargoyle might usually be. She knew without a doubt that she’d definitely seen this building before. Sure enough, as she approached the entrance that faced some of the older headstones, she could just barely make out the last name carved into the stone over the doorway. ‘Graves’
The name stood out beneath the twisting vines that wound their way up the dark walls and beneath the heavy covering of cobwebs. The muscles around Blue’s heart clenched. Just being in the pre
sence of so much family history was almost overwhelming. After ten years of being alone with nobody but Harlow by her side, her sense of family was severely lacking.
To her astonishment, the door swung open with only the lightest of touches. Her hands were shaking as she opened it wider to reveal a dark room of cold stone and dust. It was more spacious inside than she remembered from her childhood—probably because she was alone this time. Gently, she caressed the plaques that adorned the walls of the mausoleum, behind which, the urns of her ancestors remained tucked away. Her fingers drifted over the fine lines of each name and date, leading all the way back to the early 1600’s. The Graves family line was a long one—a legacy of Slayers who were always at the very height of society. Until now.
Finally, she reached the back wall where two unmarked plaques sat empty, covered in dust and cobwebs. There were no carvings or dates, no names to immortalize its inhabitants, though there were no inhabitants left to be honest. No, Blue’s parents hadn’t been buried with the rest of the Graves. Their bodies had turned to dust in an entirely different way. Tears pricked behind her eyes once more but again, she shoved that feeling down and swallowed thickly. She had years and years to mourn them—more than enough time to grieve and move on. Though their deaths still felt like a vice grip around her heart; she no longer felt like she was suffocating without them.
A gust of wind blew her long black hair from her shoulders. She tensed, pulling her stakes from their holsters. She gripped them tightly and turned to face whoever decided to intrude on her quiet moment. A dark figure stood in the doorway, illuminated by the moonlight. She relaxed her shoulders. It obviously wasn’t a vamp; the moonlight would have turned it to dust already. Fun fact: Vampires burned in the moonlight too. Since moonlight was only created by the Sun’s rays that bounced off its surface, those UV rays would still harm a bloodsucker—only at a much slower rate. While sunlight meant instant death, moonlight was just more of a process. There was a reason the vermin tended to live underground, only surfacing when the cloud cover was nice and thick.
“This is a private space,” she warned the intruder. Her voice was hard and unwelcoming. She didn’t like being snuck up on.
“Graveyards are public property in this city,” he quipped. The tall, handsome guy with the short brown hair and strangely colored eyes from her standoff with Jewel stepped into the moonlight.
Narrowing her eyes on the annoying man, Blue straightened her spine and shoved her weapons back into their holsters. “What are you doing out here, did you follow me?”
He laughed, leaning against the entrance wall with his hands in his pockets. “Don’t flatter yourself, Graves. I saw you come through the gates an hour ago. I’ve been out here for a while and didn’t want to bother you, but when you didn’t come back out, I figured I’d make sure you were still alive in here,” he teased crudely. “It's Jasper, in case you forgot already—Jasper Knightley.” He crossed his thick, tattooed arms, broadening his already wide stance. Still, Blue said nothing, only raising a single black brow, waiting for him to continue. He did. “What are you doing out here so late, you're missing the only dinner slot, you know.”
She sighed. “Not that it's any of your business, but I just needed some space to think. That place is too crowded.”
Jasper nodded. “I come out here a lot too when I want to get away from the noise.” He unfolded his arms, proceeding to walk around—eyes tracing over the names of her ancestors. For some reason his presence had her on edge. “Damn, you have a huge family,” he whistled, his eyes never leaving the wall.
Her stomach dipped and her mouth soured. “Not anymore I don't, there’s exactly two of us left.”
Jasper turned to her then with something like regret in his bright orange-green eyes. “I’m an ass, right?” His full lips twisted into a small smirk that only pulled up on one side. It was incredibly charming, but she couldn’t let him know that.
She shook her head with a small, reluctant smile. “Don’t sweat it, Knightley. My feelings aren’t made of glass.” She waved him off despite turmoil unfolding in her stomach. She really was one of the last, and that scared the hell out of her.
She was so lost in her head that she hadn’t realized Jasper moved in closer than before. Only about a foot of space separated their bodies in the dark, confined space. He had the audacity to bring his hand to her face, lifting her chin ever so slightly until her eyes meet his. He was incredibly tall, even while she was wearing her heeled boots.
“Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “Why do you look so lost?”
Batting his hand away from the intimate touch, she cleared her throat awkwardly. “I’m fine. I told you, I just came out here to get away. Things were going just fine before you barged your way in here.”
His eyes flashed and he stepped back with a frown. “Alright, sorry I bothered you. I’ll just—”
“No—” She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder as he turned to leave. For some reason she didn’t want to analyze, she didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t want him delving into her soul and getting her to spill all her deepest secrets or anything, but she really didn’t hate his company. He seemed nice enough, and he was hot as shit too, so that was a plus. “Stay, I’d actually prefer the company.”
He raised an eyebrow and she just chuckled. “I’m really not trying to be a bitch. I’m just not used to being around people.”
He faced her fully, stepping closer again. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m not exactly the nicest guy around, but I still recognize when I crossed a line. I was insensitive and I apologize.”
Blue cracked a small smile. At least he was trying to be polite. He got major points for that, especially when it seemed like everyone else around her was raised in a fucking cave. “You never told me what you were doing out here in the first place. Do you make a habit of hanging out in graveyards at night?”
The glimmer in his eyes dimmed just a little and Blue’s stomach clenched. She hoped she didn’t ruin things already. He sighed heavily, shaking his head and rolling his broad shoulders. “My family goes back a ways too—not as far as the infamous Graves… but I still try to pay my respects when I have the time. I like to come out here when everyone else is busy.” There was something he wasn’t saying… some other reason he came out here, but she wasn’t about to press him about private stuff, she just didn’t know him like that.
“I’ve been here before, but it’s been years. I don’t remember it looking quite so run down, though.” She gazed around the room, taking stock of the chipped stone and dust. She was pretty sure there were bats nesting in the walls.
“The Conclave didn’t let you visit, did they?” he asked softly.
Blue shook her head. “Honestly we didn’t even try. After everything, I think we just wanted to start fresh, you know?” As much as they would have loved to surround themselves with their ancestors during those dark days, she and Harlow knew they wouldn't have been welcome.
“I wasn’t around when all that shit went down. We just moved back here, but I’ve heard the stories,” he admitted. She snapped her eyes up to his with a frown—ready to go on the defensive. He raised his hands up, palms facing forward. “I’m not trying to judge, but you’ve been the talk of the town since you got here. People hate you. Not me, of course.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know, man.” She breathed, shoulders dropping. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to learn how to be a better Slayer. I’ve seen what those monsters can really do out there and how they can destroy lives. I don’t need the opinions of uninformed sheep to tell me what I already know about myself, and I sure as shit don’t need them to validate me.”
There was glimmer in Jasper’s eyes—eyes that were currently locked on her mouth for some reason. She raised an eyebrow and he just smirked. “Watching you make speeches is hot.” She smacked his shoulder playfully, pretending not to feel the coiled muscles under her fingertips. He clutched his a
rm with a deep laugh. “I’m being honest.” His eyes flit between hers more seriously than before. A strange sort of heat filled them. “I like a woman who knows what she wants.”
“Are you seriously hitting on me right now?” She tried not to feel flattered and preen.
“What, is a graveyard not romantic enough for you?” He stepped in closer.
She placed her open palm on his broad chest as he brought his body flush with hers. “Listen,” she whispered. “You don’t want to get tangled up with someone like me. I’m not the kind of girl who can commit or have a relationship. I have things to do that don’t involve getting… well, involved.”
His right, ring covered hand came up, gripping the side of her face gently. His fingers were calloused, making her shiver as his thumb grazed her cheekbone. “I’m not asking you to marry me, Blue.” Her name on his lips made her thighs clench. “I’m not asking to be your boyfriend, or for any kind of commitment. Maybe I just want a little fun with someone who gets it.”
“Gets what?”
Leaning in, he placed a small, barely there kiss on the edge of Blue’s lips, right at the corner. His breath was warm, and his skin felt deliciously hot. She didn’t know why she was letting this happen. Something inside of her wanted to be close to Jasper. “You’ll figure it out sooner or later.”
“That’s so fucking cryptic,” she whispered against his lips.
“Well, this is a crypt—Ouch!” He gripped his arm after she punched it and laughed through the pain. “You’ve got to stop hitting me, babe, you’re fucking stronger than I am, I think.”
“Would you shut up—” His lips crashed into hers, knocking her into the wall. She let him take control. Running her fingers through his buzzed hair, he moaned into her mouth. Though his hair wasn’t long enough to grip, she couldn’t say the same for hers. Jasper pulled on her dark strands, coaxing a whimper from her lips that caught her off guard. Her reaction to him was primal and wild.
