“And?”
Alex’s voice grows quiet. “I sought out the tallest tree I could find. Which meant, naturally, that I ended up here. I fashioned a sharp stake made of ash and shoved it into the ground, pointing up. Then I started climbing.”
“Oh, Alex.”
“I climbed to the top,” Alex continues. “And I prepared to jump and leave this world for good. But when I was up here, I caught a scent of something, something fragrant. It was coming from the trunk. And I was hungry again, so hungry—so I sank my teeth into the bark, like you’d bite into an apple. And then I drank.”
“What was it like?” I am still stunned, thinking of Alex’s fangs. Thinking of him drinking sap from a tree. Thinking of how he would rather have died than hurt another living creature.
“At first, the sap made me ill. Or so I thought—it was so different. I felt very hazy, very strange. I leaned against the trunk of this tree, four hundred feet in the air, and felt myself swaying, dizzy. I fell asleep—or I thought I did. I was dreaming, or maybe hallucinating, but all I could see were images of the world covered in green, this beautiful mossy green. Just like what you see on all these trees.” He shakes his head. “I thought I was dead. But then I recovered, and when I came to my senses, I realized I was stronger than before. That I actually felt better. So I took another drink. Then another. And I felt my strength returning.”
“How did you know you would survive?”
“I didn’t. That is, I didn’t have any proof. Deep down, though, I knew. There is a life force all around us. In trees, plants, animals—anywhere in nature. I just tap into it.”
“But doesn’t this harm the trees?”
“It doesn’t have to. This was the first tree I ever drank from, and look how strong it is. You remember Roman calling me a sapsucker, don’t you?”
“Who could forget?”
“He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I actually take it as one. A sapsucker is a small bird that also lives off the trees. If you look closely at certain trees, you can see the tiny holes the sapsucker drills with its beak. What sapsuckers know—and what we know, too—is that if a tree dies, we lose a source of food. So the sapsucker feeds off of a number of different trees. We do the same thing. We have learned to take as little as necessary from a tree, and to drink from many trees, always alternating, the way a farmer alternates crops.”
“Symbiosis,” I say. “That’s smart.”
“Nature is smart,” he says. “In nature, there’s no such thing as overconsumption. No such thing as waste. Everything in nature takes what it needs and nothing more.”
“So you don’t kill the trees that feed you?”
“No, we don’t. Fortunately, in Lithia, we are next to a million acres of forest, a virtual smorgasbord. For all my long life, I assumed that not having blood meant certain death, that no vampire could survive without it. But I did. Not only that—I thrived. Just as I thought my life was over, it actually began. Now I’m free of the guilt, of the cycle of death.” He smiles. “And, if I do say so myself, this diet has done wonders for my skin. You’ve seen how pale Roman is.”
“Why hasn’t Roman converted?”
“Roman doesn’t see any reason to change his ways. If anything, seeing me go through this transformation only gives him more reason to cling to his ways. I called him an old-school vampire once, and he nearly fought me to the death. He talks of tradition and instinct and fate, like we are all frozen in amber. But we’re not. If humans can change their diets, why can’t we?”
“Do you still crave blood?”
“I used to, for the first few years. Any new habit requires letting go of an old habit. But since that day up here, I’ve never killed another human or animal. I’m proud of that.”
“Roman has killed people, hasn’t he?”
“What do you think?”
I know the answer, but I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe that someone I once liked so much could be responsible for the deaths of others. Probably a great many deaths, which I don’t want to think about either.
“Wait,” I say. “He could have killed me weeks ago. Why didn’t he? When I first got here, no one knew who I was. Nobody even would have noticed.”
“I can think of two reasons why he didn’t,” Alex says.
“What are they?”
“For one, you’re a vegan.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“To a vampire, the blood of a human vegan is no different than that of a deer. The blood will keep you alive, sure, but it won’t taste the same, and it won’t offer the same energy. I think it’s because you don’t eat meat that Roman doesn’t crave your blood as much as others. It wouldn’t satisfy him.”
I think back to that first date with Roman, at the steakhouse. Roman had pushed me to eat steak; he wanted me to change. Was he setting me up for the kill?
“That’s why you made me promise to stay vegan.”
“Right,” Alex says. “I’m pretty sure he’ll leave you alone as long as you are.”
“But what if he changes his mind?” I ask with a shudder. “Or what if he gets so hungry that he can’t help it?”
“That brings me to the second reason.”
“Which is?”
“Roman seems to like you right where you are,” Alex says. “He doesn’t want to kill you.”
“But shouldn’t it be the opposite? I mean, if he does like me so much, wouldn’t he want me to become a vampire like him? Eternal life and all that?”
“There are no guarantees,” Alex says. “You might become a vampire, but you might also simply die, depending on your body’s reaction. There are some antidotes, too. Roman probably wasn’t ready to take that risk.”
“But he might. Someday.”
“Not on my watch,” Alex says.
My heart does a little flip-flop in my chest. “I shouldn’t have gone running last night without you,” I confess. “I wish I hadn’t. I just—I wanted to see if I could find Stacey up there. On the trail. I know it sounds silly.”
“Not at all,” he says. “But I’m glad you understand now.”
“I miss her.”
“I do, too.” Alex reaches out and pulls me close to him, and we sit down in the tree, letting our legs dangle from the branch. I swing my legs back and forth, feeling free, knowing that Alex won’t let me fall.
“Do you always come here to eat?” I ask him.
“Not always,” he says. “It’s fun for Thanksgiving. A good place for a feast.”
I laugh, and he laughs, too. I look up at him, at his happy face, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m reaching up to kiss him. He kisses me back.
I turn to move a little closer, and then I feel myself slipping, slipping off the rough bark of this tree, hundreds of feet in the air.
Then Alex is lifting me, pulling me back up with a preternatural strength I’d never have imagined.
“I won’t let you fall,” he promises again.
I lean my body against his. “Can we stay here forever?” I ask.
“We can try,” he says, a smile in his voice, “except we both have to be at work tomorrow.”
I sigh. “I guess you’re right.”
“But we’ll stay here for a while,” he says. “I want you to see this place after dark. From here, the stars are so much closer, you won’t believe it. You feel like you can reach out and grab them.”
He wraps his arms around me, and I lean back to look up at the sky. It’s still early, and I’m glad. It means I have hours and hours, alone up here in this tree with Alex, before he’ll want to show me the stars.
Twenty
When I open the store the next morning, I go in through the back, as usual. When I’m ready to open the front doors, who do I find waiting for me but Roman, standing outside on the sidewalk. I’m tempted to ignore him and leave the CLOSED sign up, but David will be in later, and I don’t think he will approve.
Still, I do try to igno
re him as I unlock the doors and flip the sign. Roman sticks a toe in the door, wedging it open.
“Katherine,” he says, “can we talk?”
I step outside onto the sidewalk, looking up and down the street to make sure there are witnesses. There aren’t a lot of people out and about, but two homeless men are seated on a bench down the street, watching us. That’s something, at least.
“Go ahead, talk,” I say, standing in front of the door. I’m not about to let him inside.
“Victor is gone. And he’s not coming back.”
“Is that it? That’s all you have to say?”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you. It’s not exactly something you mention on a first date.”
“I see. So when were you planning to tell me you’re a blood-sucking vampire? After our second date? Third? After we got married?”
“Married?”
Oops. I shouldn’t have said that. He’s flashing that gorgeous smile of his. The smile I was first attracted to.
“You know what I mean,” I say.
“I know,” he says, his smile fading, erased by a serious, apologetic look. Roman the actor—he is even better than I thought.
“Katherine, all I can tell you is that I’m sorry. I deceived you, and that wasn’t fair. But sometimes I lose track of where the truth ends and the lies begin. Living here, among humans—everything I do is a lie, a deception.”
“Yes,” I say. “You live and breathe your work. It’s all an act.”
“When I’m on stage, that’s the easy part. It’s when the lights go back on that I struggle so.”
“I’m sorry for your struggle, Roman,” I say, “but the fact remains that you are no more than a serial killer.”
This time, even the actor in him can’t cover up the look on his face. It makes me feel sorry for him. Almost.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” I say. “The other night—why did you defend me?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m falling in love with you.”
“But how can you be any different from Victor?” I say. “You’re both vampires. You need to eat as much as he does, right?”
“I do. But you do me a disservice when you compare me to Victor. I would never hurt you.”
“If you don’t want to hurt me, how do you find it okay to hurt anyone else? Why not stop killing people altogether?”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Alex did that.”
His eyes grow dark and angry, and I feel like ducking into the store and locking the door. But it wouldn’t do any good. I know his strength too well. So I hold my ground.
“What has Alex told you?” Roman asks.
“Everything. He told me you could change, if you wanted to.”
“Alex is a freak of nature. He’s not one of us.”
“Not anymore, he’s not. He’s better than you. More important, he’s more like me.”
“Katherine, you have no idea what you are asking of me.”
“I’m asking you to change.”
“You’re asking me to give up who I am.”
“I’m asking you to let people have an opportunity to run on that trail without getting attacked.”
He lets out a scornful laugh. “Do you really think that vampires are the only things in those hills you have to worry about?”
“I’m not worried about the bears.”
“Bears are not what I’m referring to,” he says.
“Then what?”
“Let us just agree that Lithia is filled with—shall we say—spirits.”
I shake my head. “Whatever, Roman. The fact remains that you have the power to change. To start over. To manifest a better world.”
“Alex has brainwashed you, I see,” Roman says. “With all his new-age proclamations about the environment.”
“No. That’s all mine.”
“Alex is no saint. If only you knew…” Roman’s voice trails off, and he turns his back to me.
“Knew what?”
He turns back.
“Do you think this is easy, Katherine—my life? I live among humans and yet I am not human. I will never be human, no matter how hard I try, no matter how many trees I hug. I’m destined to be an outsider, to live in darkness. I will always live in darkness. And for you to judge me by the standards of your life is not fair. If you compare me to most of the other humans you know, to most of the carnivorous people in this world, there is not such a void. They eat meat; they eat blood. I drink blood.”
“They don’t kill people for their food.”
“But they kill nonetheless. A mere technicality in the greater scheme. Katherine, I was born this way. I will always be this way.”
“I disagree,” I say. “I think you can change. And I—”
Just then I notice a man across the street—it’s that man who was following me the other day. I shake my head, as if to clear my vision, to try to get a better look. I’d been followed so often lately—by Victor, by Roman—that I’d basically forgotten about this guy. Yet there he is, about to cross over to our side of the street.
Roman swivels his head around to follow my gaze. “What is it?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say, but in the brief second it takes me to glance at Roman, the man disappears. I take a few steps away from the door and look up and down the street. He seems to have vanished, and this leaves me with a deep, tangled knot in my stomach.
When I return my attention to Roman, he’s holding out an envelope.
“What’s this?”
“A ticket. Tonight is the last performance of the season. My last evening as Hamlet. I’d be honored if you would attend.”
“Roman, I don’t think—”
“Please come,” he says. “I know you’re upset. I know I am no longer the man you thought I was. The regrets are all mine. I was asking too much of you. But for tonight, for one last night, please come. You know you’ll be safe in the theater, even if you don’t trust me again yet.”
“I will never trust you again.”
He continues to hold out the envelope, so finally I take it. I’ll give it away—a reward for our first customer of the day. Because there’s no way I’m going to spend a whole evening watching Roman on a stage, playing one of his roles.
After I accept his envelope, I wait for Roman to wink at me, or to smile his dangerous smile, but he simply turns and walks away. There is a sorrow to his gait, to the slouch in his shoulders; despite myself, I feel bad. After hearing Alex’s story, I know how hard it must be for Roman to try to change. And now he and I are fighting a battle that neither of us can win.
But Alex has given me hope—he is living proof that change is possible. And I have hope for Roman, too. I have to. If he can’t change, if I can’t help him change, that means that more people will die.
I can’t live with any more death in my life.
I look down at the envelope in my hand and pull out the ticket. It’s a good seat, front-row center. Maybe I won’t give it away to the first customer after all. Maybe I’ll think about it and decide later. I can always give it to the last.
~
With Cloudline only a week away, the store is getting busier, and we are swamped all afternoon. Almost everyone who walks in the door is a new face to me, runners I’ve never seen before, though many seem to know David well. Old running buddies, friends from California and Washington and Idaho. I can see the pain on David’s face as they offer condolences. Even though Cloudline brings in all the good business, I can tell that David is anxious to put the whole thing behind him.
Stacey had finished in the top ten at Cloudline over the past few years, and she made it to number five last year. Soon after we met, she’d told me that she was aiming for the top spot this year, that she was ready to unseat the runner who’d won the women’s division for the past three years. She seemed very determined.
When I finally have a free moment, right around closing, I log on to the Cloudline website a
nd look at last year’s winners. When I see the photo of the women’s division winner, I wince. It’s the rude woman who’d come in a couple of weeks ago. Erica Summers. I remember how she’d bragged about winning.
I decide right then that I want to win this race. In honor of Stacey, I will unseat Erica, as Stacey should have been able to do herself. The thought even makes me smile a little, thinking of how happy Stacey would be if she could see it. And who knows—maybe she will be able to see it, somehow.
David comes over to ring up a customer, and I glance at my watch. It’s a few minutes to closing, and I reach for the theater ticket in my pocket, ready to give it to this last customer.
And then, all of a sudden, I change my mind. Maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking of Stacey, but I realize more than ever that the killings have to end. And this means I need to see Roman. That I need to change his mind. I can’t accomplish anything if I ignore him.
So I leave the ticket in my pocket and look over at David. He seems to be a little better every day. Getting back to work has been good for him. I want to tell him about everything that’s happened. That I know who killed Stacey. That it wasn’t a bear but a vampire.
I feel he deserves to know the truth, but then, who am I really trying to help? Getting it off my chest would help me, but will it help him? How will telling him about Victor make him feel any better? There will be no justice. It won’t bring Stacey back. Even worse, he will know that Victor is still out there somewhere, and many more vampires, too, and that women—and men and children and animals alike—are living in danger every day. And that’s if he even believes me.
No, I can’t say anything. It’s another secret that I need to keep to myself.
I head toward the front doors to turn the sign over to CLOSED when I see Alex on the other side of the glass, reaching for the door handle. I smile at him and step outside. He leans over to give me a kiss.
“Busy day?” he asks.
“You have no idea. I was worried we’d run out of shoes.”
“Do you want to go grab a coffee or something, before our run?”
“Oh,” I say, remembering Roman and the Hamlet ticket, which suddenly feels as though it’s burning a hole in my pocket. “I—I don’t think I’ll be able to run tonight. My muscles are pretty raw, and David’s going to need a lot of help cleaning up. Restocking the shelves. Stuff like that.”
Out of Breath Page 14
