Adam needed to think. “Shh, shh, Anna, I will keep you safe. He won’t get you.”
“How can we stop him?”
“We can hide.”
“He will find us. He’s coming. You don’t know how determined he was. He won’t give up until he has me!”
“There is one way he can’t hurt you.”
“How?”
“Bond with me first.”
Chapter 21
Larissa slowly wiped the moisture from a plate as she stared out the window at the falling sun. This was the part of the evening she spent her days dreading. It was as if each day began with a small ball of fire in the pit of her stomach, erupting and spewing bile as it grew with every hour. Silus sat at the table. Even with her back to him she could sense his body winding down. It was the same every night. They worked, supped, tidied up for the next day, and once all preparations were made for the continuum of misery that was her existence she was called to perform her wifely duties.
Her Christian upbringing had ingrained obedience into her at an early age, yet those firm lips that kept her tongue in check were not enough to silence the profane thoughts running through her head.
Movement in the field caught her eye. The sun had said farewell in a flamboyant bow, a ball of orange heat kissing the horizon before abandoning them to the cold, dark night and the shadows that hid secrets. She reached for another dish and wiped it. It was an unnecessary task, drawn out so long that the summer heat had already seen to the dishes and left them dry. Yet she continued to wipe, knowing it was the only suspension of time she could invoke to hold off the inevitable.
“Someone is approaching,” she said quietly as she continued to stack the dishes. Her voice was sometimes so seldom used it sounded foreign to her.
The scraping of the chair along the wood planked floors marked Silus’s interest. She heard the echo of his measured footsteps as he approached the window beside her. She heard his heavy breath as he peered through the glass into the dark field. “It is your brother.”
She squinted and noticed it was in fact Cain. Adam was still tending to business off the farm. She stood holding her breath as her husband placed a cold kiss on her cheek. “Finish your work and then we shall sit and visit with him for a spell. I imagine he has had a rough go of it these past two days.”
As soon as Larissa carried the dishes to the pantry, she went to the front door. The screen squawked and snapped closed behind her. Silus stood at the railing in a cloud of cigarette smoke, smothering the fresher scents of summer. Cain saw her and his strides increased. She matched his welcoming smile and stilled her fingers from ringing the dishcloth still in her hands.
“Hello, my beautiful sister.”
“Hello, Cain.”
He stepped onto the long porch in two quick strides. His vitality unaltered by the recent scuffle between himself and Adam. He braced his hands affectionately on her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “How have you been?”
She shook her head and smiled. “I believe it is I who should be asking you such a question. You had us all worried. Are you hungry?”
“Ah, you know me so well. No, my dear sister, I am fine. I came simply to see you. You do not need to ply me with items from your kitchen.”
“Where have you been staying, Cain?” Silus asked as he flicked the last of his smoke into the gravel path, its cherry-red tip smoldering dully from the ground as a thin banner of gray twisted into nothing.
“I was off the farm, healing. It seems I offended my brother, and he has only made my offense a known crime. I suppose the council wants to string me up by my toes and let the others stone me for my sins before even hearing my side.”
“Do you have a side?” Larissa asked doubtfully. She loved her brother, but what he had done was inexcusable. One did not tamper with another’s called mate.
“There is always more than one side, but I will not bore you with that now. Tell me how you are. Have you finished the quilt you started for the Esch’s new grandchild?”
This was the game they played. Whenever Cain wanted to speak to her privately, he asked about the most mundane things. Larissa answered with as much enthusiasm for her women’s work as she could muster, knowing perfectly well that her brother did not give a fig about the progress being made with her mending.
As she prattled on about fabrics and patterns and an interesting color thread she was considering, she watched Silus become distracted with his own private thoughts. It did not take long for him to announce that he was going to double check something in the barn.
As her husband’s form disappeared into the night, she turned to Cain and smirked. “Now, tell me what’s happened.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to expand on the various girths of thread. I find it fascinating when you tell yarns about string.”
She giggled at his pun and slapped him playfully in the arm. “You know perfectly well I do not care a whit for such topics. It is the only way to make Silus leave us alone.”
“And thank the Lord for that,” he mumbled, looking to where her husband had disappeared into the night. “What have you heard, Larissa?”
“I heard that Adam is furious. He finds your prank unforgivable for the fact that Annalise was still unaware of what would happen to him if someone interfered in their union. I believe he sees it as a cruel trick, one done to make a mockery of his mate’s intelligence and humiliate her for being innocent to such matters as if her naivety could have been helped. You had to have known he would see it that way, Cain. Why did you do it? Annalise is a nice girl. I’ve sat with her and find her kind and interesting. Why play with her as if she is a mouse and you are some greedy barn cat?”
Cain took a deep breath and shifted in the rocking chair he occupied. His eyes were still focused on the dark field ahead of them, anywhere but at her. “Because I am horrible, a blight to the rest of us. That is what they will all say, so why bother arguing anything different?”
“That’s not true. If you admit you were wrong and are truly repentant for your actions you will be forgiven.”
“Such faith you have in me.”
“You are not all evil, Cain. You are one of the few people I can actually consider a friend. That would not be if you were a dark soul.”
“So if I am persecuted and sent to rot among the English, does that mean you will no longer call me friend? Will you no longer feed me?”
She laughed. “That will not happen. And you will always be my brother, therefore you will always have a place in my life. We are friends, Cain, nothing anyone else says changes that.”
Without looking at her he reached for her hand and gave it a slight squeeze. It was so infrequent that her skin felt the welcomed contact of another breathing being. She relaxed and let the warmth of his hand flood her. It was so contrary to the shrinking feeling that crawled over her flesh when her husband touched her. They rocked in silence for a few moments.
“Tell me something, Larissa.”
“Anything.”
“If you were called, would you leave Silus?”
An unattractive snort left her throat. “You know I would. I pray for it every day.”
“And what if you had children?”
“I don’t know. I suppose that would complicate things, but I still would follow my fate. Women go feeish, too. If I stayed I would be a danger to others, even my loved ones, and I would never endanger a child.”
“What if you could control it? What if your children wanted to stay as one with you and their father and you had control over your emotions and instincts?”
“You know that isn’t the way it works, Cain. What are you getting at?”
He sighed. “I’m dreaming.”
“What? Does anyone else know?”
He finally faced her. His eyes seemed strained with tension that normally was not there. “My mate.”
“Is she one of us?”
“No. She is human.”
“Cain, you have to go get her—”<
br />
“She will be here tonight.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know. She is currently gathering her belongings and boxing up any part of her life that does not belong here.”
“So you have met her.”
“I have.”
There was something in his expression that told her it had not been a pleasant meeting. “Has she agreed to the bonding?”
“I believe she will, but that is not going to save me.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand. What aren’t you telling me, Cain?”
“You say you met Adam’s mate. Did she seem eager to bond with him?”
“She seemed…interested. When we met, she had yet to have many things explained to her. However, Mother tells me she has since been informed and intends to give her situation fair consideration. Gracie believes she will agree.”
“I’m going to leave The Order.”
She gasped. “What? Why?”
“Adam and I have always been different. He is patient and calm where I am stingy and intolerant. Mother has never looked at me the way she looks at him. We are the same in so many ways, yet so entirely different. He will someday be an elder on the council because he has a moral compass I do not possess.”
“That’s not all true. You are still young. You can be anything you want. These ridiculous standards you’ve set yourself in are as breakable as webbings of a spider and you know it. Face the council, confess that you were wrong to touch Adam’s mate, and all will be forgiven. Especially once your mate arrives and they see that you have your own affairs to attend to. You are his brother. He will remember that.”
He released her hand and pressed his palms into his eyes, his fingers tugging painfully at his hair. “Damn this eternal sentence we have been cursed with! An eternity of struggles.”
“Don’t say such things.”
He silenced her with a look so enveloped in pain, a suffering she could not comprehend. “He has always been first. First to breathe the air on this retched earth, first to speak, first to stand. It seems from the moment he held himself up, he has always stood just a bit taller than me. I have grown up in his shadow and accepted it as my due, never once resenting the position I hold in this world, but now I resent it. I resent him.”
Her heart was breaking to hear her brother speak so cruelly of his twin. “Why, Cain? What has made you so angry with Adam?”
“The first time I dreamt of my mate, she was making love to me in a field. Only I could not feel her.”
“Is there sensation in dreams?”
“Yes, at least I am told so by the elders. I could see her touching me, yet I felt nothing. It was as if I were an outsider looking in. I figured it was because dreaming was new, fresh, and I had yet to fully submerge myself into that side of my subconscious. But as the dreams went on, I continued to feel nothing. I was a bystander with no control. When I willed myself to reach out and touch her, my arms did nothing. Yet in the next moment, I would see myself move in a way I had not considered moving. It was as if my body was not my own. She would speak to me, and her voice always sounded a little too far away. The words I said back were not my own. The replies I conjured in my head sat isolated and invisible, never amounting to more than a thought.
“Time after time, nothing I thought mattered. It was as if I were watching a play I had no part of. I wondered why she wouldn’t recognize me in a way that I knew she should. I asked questions to other mated couples without giving myself away and only discovered my assumptions were correct. Something was very, very wrong.
“I became angry, angry at God for making things so difficult, angry with myself for being so unfeeling. Angry with her for ignoring me even when I watched her caress me, a numb torment I could not even sense the weight of.
“Then one time I found her in my dream all alone. She was so beautiful. I knew she wouldn’t acknowledge me if I spoke to her, so I remained quiet. I watched as she wondered through a world I created for her, her beauty amplified by the awe in her expression. I filled my mind with gifts for her, attractive creatures I thought she would appreciate. It was the only way I could reach her after so many failed attempts. I was starved for her touch. Anything, something, some proof that she was real.
“I created a world of floating flora and butterflies for her and rained them upon her perfect lily-white skin. She opened herself like a flower for my gifts, spreading herself wide before me. That was when I felt it. Upon the soles of my feet, the finest tickling, as if through the butterflies’ legs I could feel her flesh. I began to caress her flesh with their wings, as gentle as the petals of a rose, and I felt that as well. A tingle of sensation tickled over my palms. It was more than I had ever felt from her, yet still not enough. It was almost worse than never knowing how warm and soft she felt in those subtle touches, like breathing in the space of breath between the kiss your life depends on yet never getting any closer.
“I needed to feel her. She was my mate and a baser part of me refused to be denied. It occurred to me that if the butterflies could share their sensations of touch they could share their sense of taste. I had them bite her. Just a nip, but the second the tiny trickle of blood fell upon my tongue I knew I needed more. I wrapped her in the fluttery creatures, created thousands out of hundreds. It didn’t occur to me to stop until I had felt every part of her through them, tasted my fill. It was my right.”
He let out a pained sigh. “And then I heard her scream. She had become terrified. She flung the creatures away, her rejection of them cutting all the way to myself.”
Larissa waited, as he seemed to be remembering parts of the dream too painful to share. None of this made any sense. A mate was supposed to gain pleasure from the dreams as much as her counterpart. There should have been nothing sad or frightening about them.
“I did not try to participate in the next dream,” Cain said dejectedly. “I only watched her with me. I began to develop an unnatural jealousy for myself. After sitting back and watching for a while, I tried to shout at her to see me, but no words came out. It is a helpless feeling I never hope you need to experience, being so close to your mate, yet forbidden by some higher power to have her.
“Before long I had given up to what I knew would only frighten her again. I was beginning to forget her taste, that small sample of her beauty I was allowed to experience. I was afraid if I lost the memory of her flavor I would somehow lose her forever. So I sacrificed my call to put her always ahead of myself and did the undignified self-serving thing and bit her again. I found many ways to do it, none of them nice, all of them terrifying to her. And then the oddest thing happened. When she reached a point of true hysteria, I began to laugh in hysterics myself, as if to call God a bastard for driving me to such evils. I hated myself but accepted it all the same. The temptation was too much for me. So I laughed like a loon, and do you know what, Larissa?”
“What?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“She heard me. She heard me, and I felt the fear in her double. My reward in torturing her was tainted. I had gotten what I begged for, prayed for, but at the cost of being the one thing she feared. And then something happened that made things become even worse if you could imagine.”
Larissa simply shook her head. How could any of this become any more awful?
“She called me Adam.”
The blood rushed from her limbs and chills prickled her body from scalp to toes. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it? We have always been a little bit more in tune with each other than most. I figured it right that our mates should call us each at the same time. When Adam admitted he was dreaming, I was happy for him. Our women would have each other as we have always had one another. His symptoms seemed to be progressing faster than my own. The sun has yet to bother me, and I am as keen as ever on my feet. When Adam left, I figured I would not be that far behind, but he returned only a few days later with his mate in tow. I envied his good luck, I admit, but I was still happy for
him.
“Imagine my surprise however, when I saw him with Annalise. Of course I still did not know her name, but I knew her face. I knew that shade of hair that no one else could ever lay claim to. Her lashes that swept out brown from the root and appeared the color of sunlight at the tips, as if she hid a pot of powdered gold by her bed to dust them each morning. I could never touch her, but I always watched her, like a blind man whose senses become heightened to a point of giftedness. I knew every curve, every hue, and every sound that made up who she was. Yet all she knew was my brother.”
“It’s impossible,” Larissa whispered. “Our called mates are chosen for us alone. There can be no confusion, no mix up. Destiny could not be so cruel.”
“Oh, I assure you, she can. Who do you think teaches unkindness to us? We learn from the best.”
“Oh, Cain—”
“Do not hold sympathy for me just yet, sister. I have yet to confess the extent of my crimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the more I frightened her, the more I was able to speak to her. However, once I realized it was not myself that I was watching in my dreams, but my brother, I had nothing nice to say to her. She was falling for him. Letting him touch her intimately right before my eyes. And Adam took each dream as his entitlement. To hear her call his name and laugh at his jokes, smile at him as if he hung the moon. Well, I am afraid I could not take anymore. I decided to let Adam have her. To the better man go the spoils and all that, but Destiny is a shrew. No matter how resigned I became to allowing my brother the salvation that was Annalise, I was still forced to witness their dreams, each one growing more and more familiar and intense. They never saw me, but I was there, seeing them every time.
“The day I saw her at the big house, I snapped. I could not help but toy with her. She had no hand in my pain, but a small part of me blamed her all the same. I let Adam see what it feels like to watch another man’s hands on his mate. She was as much mine as she was his anyway. Only the moment I didn’t act like pure and perfect Adam, I saw her retreat into herself. I didn’t have long to think about it. Adam attacked me, and I left, again a failure in regards to my mate.
Called to Order [The Order of Vampyres 1] (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 25
