The Heart's Ashes

by A. M. Hudson

  I loved how he could let all his predatory instincts go, and just rest, as peaceful and relaxed as any human—beside me, with me. I wanted to wake him, but also wanted to watch him sleep.

  Emily and Mike were already up. I could hear them talking in the kitchen, quiet, but in the still of the morning, it sounded like they were standing right in my room.

  Another wave of morning sleepiness swept over me. I rolled back from David, and as I wiped a hand across my mouth, stopped dead with a feeling of dread when the tiny hairs on my lip pulled against the dried, crusted blood there.

  I felt around my sheets, lifting them off my body, gasping at the sight. Nothing had escaped the vestiges of our shared feast last night—not my brand new, favourite sheets, not my chest, my arms, even the ends of my hair were all stuck together. I gently lifted the sheet away from David’s chest and covered my mouth immediately, trying not to laugh. My lips and face, where I slept against him all morning, had left a wide smear across his chest; his shoulder was bloodied and even his hair was red-tipped.

  My grandmother’s mirror across the room did not spare me from the sight of myself. I reached up and instantly started trying to rub away the leftovers on my face. It was hard to tell whose blood was whose, but I knew, as I looked down at my other hand on the mattress, that the pink, airbrushed look around the dark brown stain at my fingertips, was mine. I remember that one.

  In the mirror, looking at the long brown hair framing the pale, blood-covered face of the girl sitting next to the ultimately still guy in her bed, it looked like the set of a badly done, over-dramatised horror film. I guess those blood-bath scenes really do look that overdone.

  The chuckle of my self-amusement stopped short at the sound of my doorhandle, grating in a turn; I clutched the red and white sheet to my chest, holding a hand out as my eyes met with the whitewash fear in Emily’s. “Shh. Em—” I pleaded, but she fell against the wall, screaming.

  David jolted upright, and with wide eyes, turned his head slowly to look at me. “Shit.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” Mike called, his voice moving with the speed of his feet, down the hall.

  Oh no. This is bad.

  Emily clutched the hair by her temples, confusion wailing out through her gaping mouth.

  Mike charged in and scooped the screaming ball into his arms, folding her face into his chest. He took one look at David, then at my mask of mortification, and burst out laughing. “Well, looks like you’ve let the bloody cat out of the bag now.”

  “No pun intended?” David said with a grin.

  “Mike?” Emily looked up at him and then at me. “Why are you laughing?”

  A smile twitched the corners of my lips. Okay, it is kind of funny.

  “This is a joke?” Emily pushed out from Mike’s hold and walked over to me. “You guys are punking me. I knew it! I knew—Ah!” She recoiled, dropping the sheet she tore from my almost completely naked, blood-covered body. The bite marks were near healed, but still there, and very bruised.

  I looked like an escaped sample product from a giant-mosquito convention.

  Mike raised his brows at my bare skin; David grabbed the sheet, covering me over again. “Eyes off, brother.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to look.” He shook his head, scratching his hairline. “Are you sure you did enough damage there, mate? You’re supposed to protect her—not eat her.”

  “Shut up.” David threw a pillow at him.

  Mike studied me a little closer, his eyes narrowed, pinpointing my neck. “Did you bite her?”

  David looked too, and smiled, his eyes becoming small. “Yes.”

  A ferocity that came from deep within Mike rose to his call of guard. “You promised. No biting.”

  “Relax.” David laid back with his arms crossed behind his head. “I didn’t use my fangs.”

  “What’d you mean you didn’t use your fangs, how can you not? Look at those things.”

  David smiled sheepishly, touching his thumb to one. “Same way you bite an ice-cream that’s too cold for your teeth. Delicately.”

  “That—” Mike pointed to me, “is not delicately.”

  “Will you two shut up!” I said. “Can’t you see Emily’s freaking out?”

  “Sorry,” they both said.

  “Em?” I reached out with one hand, holding my shame-covering sheet with the other. “Come sit with me. We need to talk.”

  She looked at Mike; he nodded then sat on the end of the bed, folding his arms, looking a little smug—obviously curious as to how we were going to lie our way out of this one.

  I took a breath. “Emily, please.”

  Her head moved in a tight, jerking gesture—a no, I think.

  “Emily, there’s a reason for all of this.” I just have to figure it out as I go along. “David’s—”

  “David’s a vampire,” Mike interjected.

  Emily’s head whipped around so fast to look at David that I thought it might come off. She studied him, then dropped her arms and sat between Mike and I, but said nothing. David just smiled softly, watching Emily’s face, obviously reading her thought process. Mike watched her too—his arms still folded.

  “Well,” Emily said, finally, “that makes sense, I suppose. So—” She looked at me, then David. “So you’re not really married?”

  “No.” David shook his head, smiling.

  She nodded, breathing out. “I knew it. I just knew it.”

  David sat up a little and touched my hand, linking his fingers through mine, obviously sensing the ache I felt when Mike wrapped his arms over Em’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Emily?” David said, and she looked at him. “It’s okay. You know that.”

  She nodded. “Ara, I thought you were dead. And you!” She turned and slapped Mike on the chest. “You lied to me. You said you didn’t know the truth.”

  “No, I said if I knew the truth, I most likely would definitely not be inclined to inform you.” He grinned with that cheeky smile that always got him out of trouble with me. Emily didn’t find it so charming.

  “So, you drink each other’s blood?” she asked, pointing to her own lip, studying mine.

  “Yes,” I said in short, fighting the urge to wipe my embarrassingly dirty face.

  “My God. Why?” Her lip turned up; Mike laughed aloud.

  “It’s better than you think,” I said; David added nothing. He didn’t need to defend what we did. Neither did I, but at the same time, I also did. In the daylight, I couldn’t see any sense in it either.

  “So, if you’re a vampire—” she pointed to David, “does that mean Ja—”

  “Yes,” David said, keeping his serious eyes on her.

  “Jason was a vampire, too?” she confirmed.

  “Yes,” I said as well.

  “How come you’re not then, Ara?”

  Everyone went quiet.

  “She can’t be changed.” Mike finally said it for me.

  “Why?”

  “You have to have a specific gene.”

  Her face folded in confusion. “Is that why you left her, David? Because she doesn’t have the gene?”

  He nodded.

  She sighed, rolling back into Mike’s arms. “That makes so much more sense—all those things you told me, Ara, about it not being your choice to be apart.” She considered then, for a second. “Wait, how do you know you don’t have the right gene?”

  “It’s not why he left you, Emily.” David answered the question she obviously truly wanted to ask.

  “Who?” Mike asked.

  “Jason,” I said, more familiar with the way David would start conversations not usually based on spoken words.

  Emily looked down. “Then, why did he leave?”

  “I couldn’t say,” David lied, and it was so obvious he was lying that even Emily frowned, but she clearly chose to accept that for now and turned to me.

  “Ara, did you know Jason was a vampire—when we talked in your room that day—when I told you about him le
aving me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have told me.” She folded her arms.

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not allowed to tell anyone. I almost did.” David looked up at me quickly; I took his hand, reassuring him. “But I couldn’t.”

  Emily nodded and looked more closely at my face, then my neck—both sides.

  David stiffened. “Yes,” he said unexpectedly.

  She glared at him. “What’s yes?”

  “Yes, a vampire attacked Ara last year.”

  She covered her mouth, her eyes tearing. “Oh, Ara. I’m so sorry. Wait—how did you know what I was thinking, David?”

  His crooked smile gave him away; Emily’s face went blank and pale before crimson rose up in her cheeks. “Have you always been able to do that?”

  His smile became wider, his head moving in a yes.

  “Oh, God.” We all heard the shame she tried to hide behind her hands. “Oh, my God!”

  David and Mike both laughed.

  I didn’t, because I knew exactly how she felt.

  “And—can he read your thoughts too, Ara?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God! How embarrassing.”

  “Trust me, I know.”

  “So, you’re not like Bella then? You know, you don’t, like, have a shield?”

  We all laughed, well, except Mike, who never read Twilight. “Um, no.”

  I think David was rather amused at the fact that Emily could no longer look at him; I wondered exactly what she’d been thinking about him in the past that would mortify her that much. And I think Mike wondered the same thing, but didn’t make it obvious.

  Then Emily asked the question we had all asked once, the question no one wanted to answer. “So, where were you, David, while Ara was being tortured?”

  He nodded to himself. “I...was at a meeting.”

  “A meeting?” her voice almost made her head fly off with incredulity. “A meeting! While my best friend was being—”

  “Em.” Mike wrapped her tighter. “Stop.”

  “But. But that isn’t fair. What good is a vampire boyfriend if he can’t protect you?”

  “Em,” Mike said again.

  I felt her small sliver of hatred for David pass over the room then.

  David looked down.

  “It’s not his fault.” I said, defensive. “He had no idea Jason was capable of tha—” I gasped my words to a stop.

  Emily looked up, eyes wide, lips open. “Jason? My Jason?”

  A great hole tore into Mike’s world; he covered his mouth, wiping a hand over his chin as he closed his eyes and turned his face away.

  The heat of rage boiled through him, floating easily past Emily, wrapping my shoulders with a sudden rush of dread, fear and regret.

  This was not the way I wanted him to find that out.

  I pulled the bloodstained sheet closer and sat with my legs crossed under me. “Yes, Em—the same Jason.”

  “You knew? All this time—” She stared at me, heartache behind her tear-filled eyes. “You knew who it was, and you never told me?” She looked at David then. “What happened to him? What made him hurt so bad that he’d do that?”

  “Em?” Mike tried to turn her around.

  “No!” She shoved him off. “You don’t know him. He’s not capable of that. He would never—”

  “He did, Em.” David nodded, his voice flooding with sympathy.

  “But...no. No, you got it wrong, he isn’t like that.”

  “I know, Emily. Okay, I know it’s hard to understand, but he did, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “But, I—” She touched her cheek with the very tips of her fingers. “I can see his face so clearly; see how he looked at me, held me. He’d never, never do something as horrific as what was done to you.”

  I felt David cringe beside me.

  “He snapped.” I shook my head to myself, going a little numb, struggling to understand the two versions I knew of this guy. “When he did that to me, Emily, it wasn’t the Jason you knew.”

  “How can you say that! How can you sit there, next to him—” she stood, pointing at David, “and excuse this? Any of this. He needs to leave. He needs to go and never come back!”

  “Emily, stop it, okay.”

  “No! You can’t just forgive him, Ara. He let you get hurt. Don’t you see? Am I the only one that sees?”

  I looked at Mike, who had not made eye contact with me since the truth about Jason slipped out. He sat tall, his arms crossed, his lips thin over a tight jaw. The last time I saw him look that mad was the night I showed up drunk at his house when I was seventeen.

  “It is what it is,” I finally said, aiming that at both of them. “I love David, and you don’t have to want him here.”

  “Fine.” She thrust her arms to her sides. “Then don’t ever talk to me again. Any of you!”

  “Emily.” Mike chased her, stopping by my door to look at me. “Ara. How could you keep this from me?”

  “I didn’t keep it from you, Mike. I just couldn’t tell you.”

  “How does that make any sense? How does any of this—” He paused when a shadow flashed past my door and bright, white light filled the entranceway. “Emily, wait?”

  She didn’t, and an internal battle began to rage within Mike, his steps edging between the two choices; scold his best friend, or chase after the girl he loves. He breathed out hard and bolted from the room—slamming the front door behind him.

  David and I looked at each other; he nodded. “She’ll be fine. She’s just in shock. Mike will bring her back.”

  “Why didn’t you stop me? You must’ve known it was going to slip out—about Jason?”

  “Yes. But she needed to know. Emily’s had Jason on her mind all night.”

  “What? Why?”

  David hesitated, then slid closer to me. “She can’t understand why I came back—but Jason never did.”

  I looked at my door. “Are you mad at Mike—” David’s eyes met mine when I turned around, “—for telling her the truth about you?”

  “No.”

  “Why? He broke the rules, and look what’s happened because of it.”

  “Technically, Ara, we broke the rules by being careless.” He smirked, nodding at our bloody movie set. “Mike told her the truth because, in his mind, secrets nearly destroyed you. He won’t let that happen again. So I let him say it.”

  Which I guess is fair enough. I rubbed my face, releasing all the tension with a quick huff. “I can’t believe she walked in on us.”

  David laughed and, sliding one hand around my back and the other under my legs, swept me back into his arms. “Well, it could have been worse.”

  “How? How can it possibly have been worse?”

  “She could have seen me naked.”

  “Funny.”

  As David’s face hovered above mine, all his thoughts flooded his eyes—filling them with an emerald-green stare of intense love and desire, mixed with a glint of mischief. He shook his head.

  “What?” I asked, my cheeks turning hot with the thought of what might be behind that smile.

  “I just can’t believe how beautiful you are. I’m so lucky that you love me.”

  I smiled and took a shaky breath, blowing away the embarrassment of my wake-up-call. “I enjoyed last night.”

  “Yeah? You didn’t last long after, though.”

  “I know.” I sat up and stuck my leg out from under the sheet, rolling my thigh to look at the bite. “But look—I’m healing fast.”

  “I know.” David sat up too and ran his finger over my small bruise. “And your teeth, they—”

  “Broke the skin.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “Magical.”

  “Told ya vampirism isn’t all bad.” The sideways smirk he gave made me want to bite him again.

  “Yeah, I kinda see what you mean now.”

  “I’ve never been
bitten by a human before,” he said, thoughtful. “I’ve heard of other vampires doing it; they starve themselves for a few weeks, then take a victim, making it bite them before they feed off then kill them. It’s called a Bane Tryst.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, it’s like a sport—to see how long you can resist before killing the human.”

  “Disturbing.”

  He smiled at that. “It’s not for everyone. Nobody told me how much it hurt though.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Yeah.” He cupped his palm over his neck. “You may have a soft, sexy little bite, but boy does it sting.”

  “So, you won’t let me do it again?”

  His hand dropped with his smile. “No, my love. It’s not safe for me to be that hungry around you.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Uh, I kill you.”

  I nearly burst out laughing at the sarcasm in his tone. “You’d be doing me a favour.”

  “Stop saying things like that.”

  “Why? Look at my life, David.” I motioned an open palm to the end of my bed where, minutes ago, I destroyed my two best friends. “Mike’s moved on, Emily hates me.”

  “Emily doesn’t hate you, and, I thought you wanted Mike to move on.”

  I swallowed my own stupidity, then shrugged in response. He wouldn’t understand the truth.

  “Ara, are you saying you haven’t moved past Mike—even though I’m here?”

  “But you’re not back, are you?” I sat up, folding my arms across my body to hold the sheet in place. “You’re leaving again, David. You can’t expect me to just change my heart overnight because you fly in for a few days. I love Mike. I’ve always loved him.” I stopped when David’s soul seemed to slip out the proverbial back door of his heart. His face actually even went a little white. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to hear that.”

  Silence hovered between us for a while.

  “But you do love me, right?” he said.

  I scoffed loudly, looking at him with utter disbelief. “Of course I do. But I’m not going to give my heart to you fully just so you can snap it in two again when you leave.”