by A. M. Hudson
“No!” I grabbed Mike by the sleeve, but he yanked loose, folding over to scrunch his probably broken hand against his chest.
“Get back here, you little shit,” Mike yelled. “I’m not finished with you.”
“What is your problem, man?” Eric held his arms out widely.
“You are my problem.”
“Mike!” I yelled, grabbing his arm as he stomped toward Eric again. “Mike stop.”
“No, it’s all right, Amara.” Eric stood tall. “Let him go. Let him get it all out.”
“No!” I rushed between them.
“Leave. Now,” Mike growled through his teeth, removing me, by the arm, from between them.
Eric looked at me and exhaled loudly. “Okay, I’ll leave, but only because I know it’ll kill her if I hurt you. Amara?” He took a step closer to me; Mike moved sideways to block his path. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
I went to say okay, but he turned and headed out the front door before I had the chance. “Mike, how could you?” I moved away from him. “Eric’s my friend.”
“Friends don’t force themselves on each other, Ara.” He pointed to the bench, where I’d been standing with Eric.
My world stopped, but everything around me moved, rolling forward, as if I’d jumped on an invisible conveyer belt. “You saw that?” I knew it.
Mike simply stood taller and dropped his hands to his side.
The movement of my rocking world felt like a hot room—a sauna left on high with the door closed—making my cheeks tingle, my lips numb, until it dissolved with a rush of cold.
Mike’s frown loosened and shock washed over his eyes as the sound rang out around me...
...coming back in like heavy breathing and a constantly beating heart. My eyes inched open to a stream of daylight, while the firm pillow beneath held me down.
No, wait, not held me down—held me.
Looking around, I aimed my eyes to the yellow wall beside my bed—to my photos and the rainbows shining through my crystals. But as I focused properly, my heart sunk, and the dream of my dad’s house, of Mike and David, slipped away to the bright white walls and strong embrace of my best friend. “Mike?”
“I called work for you—you passed out,” he said in a stern, emotionless tone. “You’re not eating, are you?”
“What? Why would you say that?” I sat up from his chest and looked down when I felt the brush of sheets on my bare skin. “You undressed me?”
“You had coffee all over your clothes. I only took your shoes and jeans off—and your shirt.” He shrugged, but the normal glint of mischief in his eyes was gone.
“You’re mad at me,” I stated, sitting up properly.
“Yes.” He bit his teeth together and looked away.
“I don’t like it when you’re mad with me.”
“Ara, are you starving yourself because you miss him?” he asked, anger gripping his usually gentle tone.
Is he mad at me because he thinks I’m starving myself, or because of Eric? “What makes you think I’m not eating?”
“You passed out, and you’re very, very thin.” His head shook as he exhaled the words. “I nearly fell over when I saw your bones, Ara. You’ve done well to hide it from me, but I’ve seen it now. So tell me the truth.”
“I’m not starving myself, Mike. I don’t really get hungry anymore—and, yes, it’s because I miss him. But it’s not intentional.”
He let out a breath. “So, if I cook for you every day, you’ll eat it?”
“Yes.” I looked down.
“Now—” He took my hand and waited until I looked into his eyes. “We need to talk about this.”
I cringed at the touch of his finger over the scar on my wrist—the one David left. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I snatched my hand back defensively.
“I don’t care!” He pulled me back to the bed as I tried to stand up. “Now. Talk.”
“Why did you look at Eric’s arm?” I asked, spinning around to look at his face. “When you shook his hand? Why did you do that?”
“I know what he is.”
I doubled back, then folded my arms defiantly. “Oh yeah, then what is he?”
“Ara, stop it. You know that I know—you’ve known for a while. I was just waiting for you to tell me—to give me one shred of honesty—but you didn’t.” He pressed his lips into a stern line.
Oh, crap. I slowly unfolded my arms. “I—”
“You what? Don’t stop talking, Ara. It’s time for the truth to come out—the whole truth.”
“I didn’t want you to be mad with me.”
“But I am mad. Furious, to be exact. How could you hang out with that guy—knowing what he could do to you?”
“David never did anyt—”
“Not David. Eric. David would never do that to you. But you don’t know what Eric’s capable of, Ara. He could’ve bitten you. You could’ve ended up in a coma again.”
“Whoa, hold on, hold on. Exactly how much do you know?”
“I know what they are; David and Eric.” Mike ran his finger over my scar again. “Does David know that guy’s hanging around you?”
“David’s gone, Mike. Eric says no one can find him.”
“How does Eric know?”
“He was in the same Set as David. Mike—” I looked at the narrowed squint of his eye, and sighed. “I’m sorry I never told you, but I didn’t really know anything. David kept that part of his world to himself. Eric told me most of what I know about the Set; Eric told me about David, how he left and—”
“Is that why you’re hanging out with him? He’s your link to that world—to David?” Mike asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh, thank God.” He ran the hand of relief through his hair. “I was afraid you might be in love with him or something—you know, or maybe you had a fetish for guys that can kill you.”
“Mike! What a horrid thing to say.” I drew back.
“I’m sorry, baby, but what’d you expect? You don’t talk to me about it.” He pulled me back into his firm, almost inhuman-sized chest, and squeezed me. “All I’ve had are my own conclusions.”
His white shirt smelled so strongly of him—the scent of a man mixed with heat and sweat and powdery cologne. But it smelled so good, so human. “Well, how long have you known—about David?” I asked.
“Since the day I met him.”
I tried not to let my shock out verbally. “Oh. Really?”
“Yeah, I mean, I started piecing things together beforehand. I suspected something, but I was just really far off-the-mark.” Mike’s eyes widened. “When you were attacked, and I saw the bite marks—I put it all together. How could I not? Plus, I saw that guy lift you like a feather and fly off. He moved faster than humanly possible, Ara. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”
“I guess I just forgot about the finer details.” I sat up and swiped my hair from my cheeks, still tasting the sweet liquor of Eric on my lips.
“Well, I remember everything. It’s all very clear to me.” The stern, protective tone hovered long after he spoke, his eyes staying focused on the wall above my dresser. “I thought David had done that to you,” he continued, “so I called him to tell him you were in surgery, that you’d been attacked. He arrived within the minute, like he was already in the vicinity—except he told me he was across town. I waited ‘til we got word that you were gonna survive before I approached him about it; all the while, I wanted to strangle him.
“But when he saw you—when they brought you back to intensive care—he fell apart. I started to doubt if it was him. So, I followed him to the car park; found him leaning against a wall, hardly able breathe.” Mike’s fists clenched. “I grabbed him by the collar and spun him into the wall.”
“Mike, how could you?” I couldn’t help but picture it. “He didn’t do that—he’d never do something like to me.”
“I didn’t know that then, Ar. All I’d seen so far was a cut on your wrist and bruises on your neck.
What was I supposed to think?”
“Did—did he hurt you—when you tried to attack him?”
Mike’s gaze dropped onto mine, his face alight with humour. “Course not. But—”
“But?”
“But, I never meant to hurt him like that.”
“You hurt him?”
Mike sighed through his nose, looking away. “He just—he said Kill me. Just kill me, I did this to her, and I snapped. I threw him to the floor—smashed my fists into his face so many times that he should’ve died then and there.” Mike looked at his knuckles, at the tiny white dots littering the tops of his hands, then flexed his fists.
“These were from David—you hurt David?” I ran my fingers over the scars as if maybe some small piece of David might still be in there. “You tried to kill him? You can’t hurt a vampire, Mike—they don’t die.”
“He was already dead,” Mike stated factually. “He died inside the minute he saw you. I only broke his body, and believe me, Ara, you can hurt a vampire. They feel pain and they bleed. Granted—” he squeezed his fists tighter, looking off into the corner of my room, “—it takes a hell of a lot more to break their skin, but they do break.”
“How could you hurt him like that, Mike?” I couldn’t even imagine him hurting David. “Don’t you know—he could’ve killed you?”
“I know. But he let me do it. Do you really think I could’ve done that if he didn’t want me to? He nearly broke my arm when he stopped me for a second to tell me—” Mike stopped as if he’d swallowed a golf ball.
I looked at his autumn eyes, waiting. “Tell you what?”
“That I was wrong,” he said to his lap. “I said he didn’t love you because he let you into his life, and he said it was because he loved you that he left you—so you could live.”
“So he says.”
Mike turned to face me then. “You don’t believe that?”
I shrugged. “Not sure what to believe. Mostly, these days, I just wish I’d never met him.”
Mike looked forward again, making a tight fist. “Then I’m glad I hurt him. I wish I’d killed him.”
“Are you enjoying that memory?” I huffed, folding my arms as a wave of nausea flooded through me.
“Yes. He put you in that place, Ara—he did that to you. Whether it was by his hand, or not.”
A flash of Jason’s face and his cold, unwanted hands, intruded my thoughts. “It hurts, you know,” I said. “It hurts as much as if it were actually him.”
“Why? What do you mean, Ara?”
“He never came for me.” I started crying then, for things I thought I’d moved on from. “He always said he’d catch me whenever I fell. I thought he’d come. I thought he’d save me, but he didn’t.”
“Oh, baby.” Mike pulled me against his chest. “I shouldn’t tell you this—I’d rather you hated him—but he couldn’t save you. He didn’t know you were being hurt, and it killed him.”
I looked up into Mike’s eyes. “But he was supposed to know. He was supposed to be like the knight in a book—he was supposed to be my hero, and he wasn’t.”
“Aw, Ar—don’t place clichés on the poor guy. Do you want to know what he was doing while you were being hurt?”
I nodded, wiping away a line of tears and snot.
“He got very sudden approval for a meeting with the World Council—to request an eighty year leave of absence, to be with you, baby.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and stroked his thumb down the bridge of my nose. “Okay, he didn’t know you were being hurt. Do you really think he’d have just sat back and let that happen to you?”
“No. Not the David I know, but—” I stared into nothing, weighted down by this new information—information Mike had had all along. I tried not to cry again. I needed to know everything Mike knew, so crying just wouldn’t be productive. “So you talked to him for a while then? To talk that way about the World Council.”
“Had three months.”
Why would David tell him more than he told me? “How much did he tell you?”
“Everything, baby—he told me everything.”
“He told you about their society?”
“Yes.”
“And about...about us as well?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you about the Sets and the Council?”
“All of it. I waited for you to tell me. I hoped you would.”
I didn’t know all that.
“But, then you started getting better, and I thought you were moving on, so I didn’t wanna bring it up.” He placed each hand carefully over my arms. “Just tell me one thing though, Ara. Did you want to drink Eric’s blood?”
“Yes.” My eyelids fluttered. “I wanted it. But I didn’t want his.”
Mike nodded. “So what is that? Is it like a drug? Or did you get some freaky blood-thirst when you were bitten?”
“No.” I laughed the word out. “I’ve had this craving for it ever since I tried it; it’s addictive, like a drug. It makes you feel really good, kind of—energetic.”
“And David knew that would happen? The addiction?”
“Yes.” My breath became deeper as the memory of David and I by the lake flushed cold through my veins.
“Are you really in love with him? Or is he a drug, too?”
“Who?”
“David. Is he just an addiction?”
“N—Mike. I’m in love with him.”
“Okay.” He huffed loudly. “Then, I guess we need to try to find him—convince him to come back.”
“You’d do that?” I sat up taller, looking into Mike’s warm, maple eyes. “For me?”
“Ara, I would cut out my heart for you.”
I looked away instantly from the fading smirk he always wore as it turned to a teary-eyed frown. “That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“It’s the way I feel.”
“Well, I don’t want you to feel that way, Mike. I want you move on—find love.”
“You never moved on from David; maybe I’ll never move on from you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I refuse to believe that. I believe we have soul mates, Mike. I know yours is out there—just waiting for you to find her.”
“I hope you’re right, ‘cause my heart just hurts every time I have to look at you.”
“I want to love you. I do love you. But I love you enough to let you go—for your own good.”
Mike’s eyes focused on nothing for a moment, then he looked back at me. “If I ever see that little shit Eric again—I’ll kill him. He should not have forced you to drink his blood.”
“No, he shouldn’t have. He knows that.” I nodded, then smiled. “He’ll be feeling pretty bad right now. They get overtaken by their vampire nature, Mike, they lose control. He wasn’t thinking about me when he did that—he was thinking about the blood, the lust—” my voice lowered, “the desire.”
“Does it taste bad?”
“No. You should try it,” I said with a smirk.
“Yeah, I’ll pass. Now, come here and give your best friend a hug.” He kissed the top of my head as I fell onto his chest.
“Thanks for calling work for me. I really hate that job.”
“So quit.”
“I can’t quit. I need the money.”
“Take mine—I’ve got plenty.”
“Mike, stop it.”
“I’m serious.”
“Mike. I’m not taking your money—you know me better than that.”
“Fine. Then what do I have to do to get you happy with your life?”
“Give my students the will to learn.”
“Your wish is my command.”
I laughed. “Yeah, if only. They’re all just snobby rich kids with no talent. Except one—Aaron. When I eventually run classes from home, I’m taking him with me.”
Mike wrapped his arms tighter around me. “Two more years then, and you can afford that piano.”
I nodded, smiling, letting m
yself enjoy the comfort of touch for a while since Mike seemed to be in no rush to move away from me. After a few minutes, I said, “Was David okay—after you beat him up? I mean, I know he heals but—”
“No. He wasn’t.” His throat made a noise as he swallowed. “We talked for hours after. He’s a good guy, Ara, and he really needed to talk; I don’t think he has anyone that listens to him.”
So, he’s all alone, too.
Mike ran his finger over my frown to flatten it out. “We formed a bond over you, you know. We were like brothers in that time we waited for you to wake up.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He really was—is a good guy.” Mike chuckled once, shaking his head. “Took him a few days to heal properly from the injuries, though. I do feel a little bad about it.”
“Did he ever tell you if he knew who did it—who attacked me?” I asked carefully.
“No, but he said he wouldn’t rest until justice had been served.”
So, he never told Mike that it was Jason. I wonder if I should let the truth out now. “Mike?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Eric’s my friend,” I said instead. “I’ll talk to him about the blood thing. But, please don’t hurt him. He never meant any harm by it—it’s just his nature. He doesn’t see it the way you do.”
“Look, I get that, Ar. But don’t expect me to be civil to him.”
“Okay, I wouldn’t.”
Chapter 5
The wild dance of branches gave warning that autumn was on its way, while the night sky outlined the trees in dark blue, completely hiding the lake across the road. I slipped my car into gear, hopped out and shut my door quietly, feeling an eerie chill on my skin, not incited by the wind. I tucked my hands under my arms and glanced over my shoulder, the muscles tightening in my neck. “Hello?”
The silhouette across the road stood motionless, silent. There was nothing threatening about the height or general size of the, what I assumed to be a man, but in comparison to me, small and slight, standing on the driveway outside my house, with nothing but the moonlight to show the rows of fences along the footpath, his mere presence made me feel suddenly uneasy. Or maybe it was that he seemed to be...watching me.
