“Putting it off isn’t going to make it any easier,” Ben says, reluctantly. He’s still distracted by something. I can tell he’s watching up and down the road.
“I know.”
“Go. We’ll see each other again soon.” He reaches across me to open my door, giving me a nice, deep kiss as he settles back down in the driver’s seat.
“Soon,” I say, giving him one more quick peck before I get out of the car.
As I expected, Grandma is extremely unhappy with me. I can’t stand seeing how disappointed she is in me. The worst part being that I don’t deserve it. Just because she doesn’t like Ben doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to fall in love with him or make love with him.
“Ivy,” Grandma says.
I take a deep breath. I’m suddenly angry that somehow I’ve ended up in a position where two of the three most important people in my life hate the third. “Yes, I spent the night with Ben.”
“Where?”
“In his arms,” I snap.
Grandma seems taken aback by me fighting her on this.
I push into the opening that leaves me. “I’m a big girl now, and I’ve been halfway taking care of myself for the past few years anyway, with you being on the road a few days every month.”
“That boy is no good for you. You need to stop seeing him, now, not get closer to him! There’s a lot about him you don’t know.”
“We’ve been over this already, Grandma. I’m grown up now. This is my body,” I say, bringing one of my hands up to chin level, and sweeping it downwards in front of me. “My heart, my decision, my life.”
“This isn’t just a simple matter of me disapproving of a sketchy boyfriend. Ben is something different.”
“Yes, he is. And we all know how nice little Stokers Mill feels about anything that’s different. I can’t wait to get out of this tiny cage of a town.”
“It’s not that, Ivy.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I say, and I stomp up to my room, slamming the door behind me.
I pull out my phone to see a text from Ben: ‘You forgot your bag. Sneak out and meet me at Fordham?’
Oh, dear Ben. Always proper English, even in a text message. Seeing him again sounds so good right now that even without needing to pick up my overnight bag, I’d jump at the invitation. I text him that I’ll see him in a few minutes.
I was always a good kid when I was younger, so I don’t have much practice sneaking beyond what I’ve done very recently, and we do have that squeaky step. “Time to go all out,” I tell myself, and open up my window. I find a quarter in my purse and use that to open the clips that hold the storm window in. I carefully lean the pane of glass up against my bedroom wall and crawl out the window. Gently, I lower myself down so I’m holding onto the sill. It should only be four feet of drop, but it still takes me a second of steeling my nerve to let go.
I hit the ground and fall into an undignified heap. My phone is still upstairs in my purse, but there’s nothing in it I need to spend a little bit of time with Ben. I assume Grandma is in the den, so I pick a route to the road that keeps me out of sight of those windows, and walk down to Fordham Avenue.
I hop into Ben’s car and go straight for a kiss. He returns it quickly, puts the car into gear, and starts driving.
“What’s going on?” I ask. This is very unlike him.
“I need to get us both out of town, now.”
“Why” I ask.
“After I dropped you off, I took another circle around the neighborhood. They’ve almost found you. Your grandmother can’t protect you, Carl can’t protect you. I can, but only if we stay together and stay hidden.”
“What are you talking about, Ben? You’re scaring me!”
“You should be scared,” is all he says, his eyes twitching constantly between the road in front of him, and his mirrors.
“Ben. Tell me what this is about.”
“I was going to tell you this today, anyways. I promised myself I had to tell you once we became lovers.”
“What, Ben?” I shout. I am terrified of him and so angry right now. If he weren’t speeding down the highway, I’d get out of the car.
Ben turns to me, and opens his mouth.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It looks like the most perfect set of costume vampire fangs I’ve ever seen in my life, and I never saw him put them in.
“Touch them. They’re the real thing,” he says, facing front to watch the road and his mirrors again.
I reach between his parted lips and touch one of the fangs. I press on it, and it doesn’t move like a prop would. He slips off his sunglasses and looks at me. The whites of his eyes are now blood red, his glacier-blue irises have turned black and glassy, a frightening rattle escapes from his throat.
“Watch,” he says, making a quick check of the road. His fangs retract, looking like his teeth have always looked. His eyes go back to normal. “I’m a vampire, Ivy. I’m a rebel against the most powerful and evil clan of my kind, and for some reason, they are drawn to you. I was hoping they weren’t as close as they are, but one of them is definitely narrowing in on your house. She’s close enough that she’ll find it tonight after the sun sets.”
I have no idea what to say to any of this, no idea what to think. “Call your grandmother, tell her to get out of the house, preferably out of town entirely for a few days,” Ben says. “Tell her, ‘Negre hunters’ and she’ll know how important it is.”
“My phone is at home,” I say.
Ben fishes his phone out of a pocket and hands it to me. “Here. Be quick, and then throw the phone into the river as we cross the bridge up there.”
I still can’t process any of this. I can’t figure out where to even start. Ben puts his phone in my hand. “Please, Ivy. Trust me and do as I say. I don’t want to make you do it.”
I have no idea what Ben is talking about.
“Please, Ivy. Call her and throw the phone in the river. You’ve got less than a minute.”
I stare at the phone, dumbfounded.
Ben turns to me. He puts a hand on my cheek. “Ivy,” he says.
I look up into his eyes of blood and obsidian, see his fangs are out again. “Call, now. Destroy phone,” he says in a voice that is pitched unnaturally deep. It seems to echo inside of my head.
I can’t stop myself from dialing Grandma’s number. I put the phone to my cheek and listen to it ring and ring and ring until I get her voicemail. She never picks up on numbers she doesn’t recognize.
“Grandma. Ben says you need to get out of town right now, and stay away for a few days. Something about Negre hunters. It seems important to him, and I believe him. I love you.” I hit the End button, roll down the window, and as we’re at the peak of a bridge over the river, I throw the phone out.
“Please don’t ever make me do that to you again,” Ben says. He’s back to the Ben I’d slept with last night. There is so much pain in his eyes now, in every glance he dares make at me that I at least believe he did not want to do whatever it was he did that made me obey him. He certainly didn’t do it last night. I never felt the same pull when he kissed me or undressed me that I just felt when I made the call and threw the phone away. He takes his right hand off of the steering wheel and sets it between us, palm up. An invitation.
I cannot deny that he is what he claims to be. I’ve seen him change twice now, I felt the force with which he made me obey his commands. I also cannot deny that up until he did that, I never once felt unsafe with him, threatened, manipulated, controlled. Just that one time he scared me driving like a madman on the highway, but I think that was him not knowing how stunting in traffic affects me. It was bad judgement on his part, not bad faith. I now know my lover’s secret. I have to decide if I can still love him despite it. I have to decide if I can trust that I am in danger, and that it’s not because I fell in love with him. There is a lot I need to figure out. Fast.
I think back to every time Ben has touched me or kissed me. Never before h
ave I felt as safe and protected as I did when I fell asleep in his arms last night.
I place my hand in his, and we both hold onto each other tightly.
Chapter Fourteen
Ben Wake
Out at the cabin, I find myself missing my warm days more and more. I was born and raised in upstate New York, up in the mountains. The Adirondacks are not as grand as the Rockies when seen from a distance, but up close both places are very similar. In the woods you can walk all day and not find as much as ten square feet of level ground. The trees are tough old things. Only the strong ones thrive on the thin soil of the slopes, the brutal, bitter cold winters.
Walking through the woods in the early morning was always one of my most precious simple joys in those days. The sunlight in the morning was brighter in some ways than at sunset. It always felt fresher, more filled with hope and promise. I miss looking forward to the dawn, to greeting the light, always optimistic that I was standing on the cusp of a good day. I can bundle up and wear dark glasses to go out and watch the first rays of light break over the mountains, but it’s not the same as feeling it on my skin.
I don’t know whether taking that joy vicariously through Ivy makes it any better or worse for me. A little bit of both, perhaps. I miss it in a very visceral way every time I see her eyes light up and she throws her head back and smiles. It is hard to not be happy when she is happy. It’s like her mood infects me, colors how I see everything around me. I know that the last day has been hard on her, having been completely uprooted and taken on the run, but the simple fact that she can step out of the cabin into the light and smile because it’s a beautiful world and she is alive reminds me of just how wonderful and pure her spirit is.
I sit down next to her and put my hand on her shoulder. She leans her head over so her cheek rests on my fingers. She doesn’t say anything, but I can see by the set of her shoulders that she still has a thousand questions for me. We didn’t talk much yesterday. I showed her around the cabin, let her know where all of the supplies were, our escape routes if we needed to make a desperate run for it. She took her time familiarizing herself with everything. At one point, she asked, “Do you ever eat real food?”
When I told her I didn’t, she took that as permission to completely rearrange the kitchen to her liking. “Since I’ll be the only one using, it…” she said. “Why do you even have all this stuff you’re never going to use,” she asked, as she moved all of the pots and pans to a different cabinet.
“To make the place look normal,” I said. “To keep up my cover as a mortal, in case I ever had to have somebody out here.”
She looked at me, studying my face for a while.
“Not because you were expecting to have to run out here with me?” she asked. “I mean, you’ve actually got a decent setup here. This is a functional kitchen and you’ve got enough staples laid up that I could actually survive here without setting foot outside for weeks. This doesn’t look like something you just threw together for show.”
“Not for you, specifically. I set this up well before I fell in love with you,” I told her. “Well before the thought that you and I would ever need to go on the run together.”
“But you were prepared to go one the run with a regular human?”
“I’ve lived among you for a long time. Even before I was hiding out from my clan, there were times when it was best for me to just live out with you, look like one of you, act like one of you. I do form connections with you, and sometimes, things happen and I have to go into hiding with one of you.”
Ivy finished stacking the pots, and went for the utensil drawers. She didn’t speak for a long time. When she finally did, she carefully shut the drawers and turned to face me. “I’m not the first girl you’ve seduced and taken out to the woods, am I?”
“Actually, you are,” I said. “What I told you on the night we first kissed, that I spend more time with places than people now, which was the truth. It has been a very, very long time since I’ve opened myself up to somebody the way I have with you.”
“How long?” she asks.
“Your grandmother was probably a young woman.”
“My grandmother was never a young woman. She was born an old curmudgeon.” Just a hint of a smile broke across Ivy’s face when she said that.
“Like I said. It’s been a very long time since I’ve let myself know love.”
She still looked uncertain.
“The last time I had to go on the run with somebody was about eight years ago. He had something the Negre desperately wanted, and was in an extremely precarious position — literally minutes from being caught when I found him. I saved his life by having a hideout stocked just like this where I could take him and lay low for a few weeks.”
“Was he kind of like me?” Ivy asked. “There was something special about him your clan wanted?”
“No. He got himself caught up in the Great War. He had information.”
“Great War?” Ivy asked.
I opened my mouth to say something.
“No,” she said. “Let me try to take in what you’ve told me already. There’s only so much I can handle in one day.”
That was yesterday. Sitting on the front porch of the cabin with her now, her cheek still resting on my hand, I don’t want to ask her yet if she’s ready to hear about the Great War. It’s not a pleasant tale, and she looks so content right now.
Ivy looks at me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” I tell her.
“Do you know how to make coffee? I mean, I do. I make it for myself all the time, but when Grandma’s home, she always makes it for us in the morning. It makes me feel safe, like I’m in the right place and everything is fine in the world to have it ready and waiting for me in the morning. If I weren’t here with you, right now, I’d be home in bed smelling it brewing downstairs.” She reaches a hand up and wipes a tear from her eye.
“I don’t have fresh milk or creamer,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says. Of course, she does. She knows everything in the kitchen and pantry.
“When I sneak into town this evening to see if the hunter is still there, I’ll get some.”
“How do you know I take my coffee with milk?” she asks.
“When I brought you breakfast yesterday morning that was the first thing you did.”
“It seems so long ago,” she says.
“It does,” I agree.
“Even for you, who’s lived so long and done this before?”
“Even for me,” I say. “In just a few days we’ve gone from new friends, to a couple, to lovers, to hiding out together. We’ve crammed an awful lot of living into that time.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Ivy says. I look at her, wondering what I’ve missed. “Do you know how to make coffee?”
“Yes,” I say, kissing her cheek as I get up. Not only do I make her coffee, but I break into some of the other foodstuffs to make her a simple breakfast to go with it.
My relationship with food varies a lot. I will actually become violently ill if I ingest anything other than living blood. In fact, even a small amount of blood from a dead creature can kill me. Most of the time, the scent of food and drink is very off-putting to me because of that. It is another reminder of what I’d lost when Sonia Vătafu turned me, another simple pleasure that will forevermore be denied to me.
But when I choose to prepare food for someone else, if it is done from a place of caring, it strikes me very differently. There is a selflessness to creating something that is dangerous to me but nourishing for someone that I care about. I don’t know if Ivy will ever understand the depths of emotion that are opened up in me by breaking the seal on a can of coffee, filling the air with its rich, nutty scent.
When she’d asked me just a few minutes ago to make her coffee, because it would help her feel safe and cared for and like the world was right, I couldn’t think of how sick it would make me to drink it. Instead, I realize that it
is a gift like very few others I could ever give. I give her something that benefits only her and not me. The mug of warm liquid I pour out and hand to her is something we will never be able to share, and that makes it all the more beautiful to me.
I sit next to her while she eats her breakfast on the cabin steps, despite the fact that I desperately want to get inside and out of the morning sun that is shining directly on us. It seems so comforting for her, though.
“Where’s your car?” she suddenly asks me.
“Stolen for a joyride last night, and abandoned miles from here. I don’t even know where it ended up.”
“How?”
“While you were sleeping, I went out, and found some dumb kids looking for trouble. I just nudged them a little bit toward some trouble that would be useful to us.”
“What if we need to go somewhere?” Ivy asks me.
“Remember our escape routes,” I say. “If we take the downhill route, we’ll hit a highway in just under two miles. If we go uphill, it’s a little more than one mile until we hit a road with real traffic. Later this afternoon, I’ll take you to the roads to show you what to do from there if you have to run without me.”
“What are the chances of that happening?”
“At night, it’s not very likely. If the sun is out, the odds of us getting separated are greater. I’ll be less able to defend you, so you might need to go on without me.”
Ivy looks at me, seeing me squinting against the bright light. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, and starts getting up. I put my hand on her arm to stop her. “I can tolerate it until you’re done with breakfast. Please.”
“I just didn’t notice how uncomfortable you are until you mentioned it,” Ivy says, looking down.
We spend the rest of the morning inside. I give Ivy a more thorough tour of the inside of the cabin and where everything is. In every room, underneath a window, there’s a false panel in the wall that conceals a short rifle loaded with silver bullets – valuable for defense against both vampires and thropes. I am relieved the first time I show one to Ivy that she is not immediately afraid of it. Her grandmother keeps guns in the house for hunting, and made sure to teach her from a young age how to respect and handle them. The two women even go out hunting together a few times a year. It is good that she knows how to fire a rifle, but I hope it never comes down to that. Hunting is different than shooting at something that looks human, or that is barreling down on you, teeth out, and howling. I had come back from France pretty jaded about killing, but still, the first time I had a mad thrope charge me, I was more scared than the first time I saw a German tank come over a trench. Machines have nothing on that howl or the look thropes get in their eyes. At least Ivy won’t have to worry about a thrope. Just Negre hunters.
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