Stacy reared back in horror. “No. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to….”
He moved his head side to side. “Kill me. You must. Before I go rogue.”
“But you can’t. You need to stay alive. You need to stay here. Protect me.”
His gaze told her the terrible truth. The blood fever was already trying to engulf him.
“I can cure you. I just need time.”
“No more time. You need to kill me.” He pointed to the rake on the ground. “I can break the wood and use it as a stake. I will help you.”
“Aidan, no. Oh, God. No. Don’t ask me to do this. Please. I can’t.”
As his throat healed, he was able to speak in full sentences. “You’re a very strong, very brave woman, Stacy Morgan. At first, I wanted to guard you because I wanted to understand why you offered your blood to me. As I grew to know you in that short time, I’ve found you to be a very unique soul. You carry within you a generosity of spirit, something my kind needs very badly. I thank you for sharing that spirit with me. At times, you made me remember what it was like to be human.”
Tears filled her eyes. They slipped down her cheeks even as she smiled. “That’s because you’ve all forgotten where you really come from.”
He shook his head, his gaze wry and sad all at the same time. “Perhaps you’re right.”
She held out her wrist again. She hadn’t been there when Pitch died, at least she could be here now. “Please, Aidan.”
His eyes closed, and he swallowed hard. When he opened them again, he said, “I was not a very noble being in life. At least let me be a noble being in death.”
“But I’m a police officer. I protect people. I’ve never killed anyone before.”
“This isn’t exactly murder. You must save my soul now. Please,” he begged. “I would be honored.”
Oh God, how could she say no to that?
Stacy rose, her heart breaking, and went to get the rake as he’d requested. As she returned, he swallowed again, and she saw that the pink salivate was coming from his incisors. He snapped the wood in half, already regaining his strength. Time was running out. She took the rake handle and positioned it over his heart. He lifted his hand and gripped the wood.
“There is only one true death for us, Stacy. You must make sure someone takes my head. Otherwise, I’ll wake up, and be a rogue.”
Stacy nodded, and he pulled down on the rake handle as hard as he could, grimacing with the pain. Stacy made sure the wood went all the way through his body. His breath came in short gasps as he continued.
“Thank you.”
Tears dripped down her cheeks as his blood ran out onto the pavement.
“Don’t grieve. Please. I’m happy.”
She nodded and watched Aidan close his eyes, never to open them again. His chest stopped moving, and she felt a sigh, a rustle along the wind, the same as she had the night Pitch was killed. She hoped it was his soul parting this world and going on to the next.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chaz
Chaz found Stacy kneeling beside Aidan. He took in the scene and in seconds, realized what had happened. He sent up a prayer of heartfelt gratitude that Stacy was still alive.
“Stacy.” He bent down next to her. “Stacy.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “You have to let me finish.”
“He died trying to protect me,” she told him, her grief evident in her tone.
“I know.”
“He wouldn’t let me try to heal him. Why?”
“We all have our reasons. I guess he decided it was his time.”
“He was so decent, so gallant,” she whispered, her indrawn breath suspended for a moment then releasing in a pent-up rush. “He wanted to die a noble death. With someone who cared at his side.”
Her shoulder started shaking beneath his fingers, and Chaz lifted her up and into his arms. She simply stood there without moving. But when she lifted her face to his, the tracks of her tears tore at his heart.
“Go inside. I’ll follow in a few moments.”
“No. He deserves an honor guard and medals and accolades. But most of all, he deserves respect. Do what you have to do.”
“No. You had trouble handling the last one, remember?”
“I’ll be all right,” she insisted.
Chaz frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Just do it!” she cried.
Chaz wanted to keep on arguing, but time was of the essence. He drew out a very wicked looking dagger from his coat and knelt by Aidan’s head. The smell of the vampire’s blood licked like liquid flames at his intentions. He drove the need back with an iron will.
He looked up to see Stacy kneel beside the body and reach out. Her tender touch against Aidan’s cheek tore through him. He caught her gaze, letting her see how conflicted he was. Jealousy had no place in this moment, yet he couldn’t help himself. In the end, he knew Aidan would have appreciated the gesture. Because he’d learned. From Stacy.
She stood and stepped back. Then she closed her eyes and nodded. Chaz severed Aidan’s head from his body. By the time Stacy opened her eyes again, Aidan was gone. There was only fire.
She turned from the flames without a second glance at him and started walking towards her house. “I want to be alone. No guards, no vampires, just alone.”
He ran to catch up with her. He knew she was hurting. The question became, was there such a thing as too much reality? “I can’t let you do that.”
“Damn you, I can take care of myself.”
“No, you can’t. Especially now. “
Stacy whirled and started pounding on his chest with her fists. Then she groaned and buckled her arm, clutching her shoulder.
“What happened?”
“The rogue dislocated my shoulder. It’s all right now. I’m just sore.”
Chaz wanted to wrap his arms around her and draw her close, comfort her, get her to snuggle her head right in that special place in his chest, and never let go. Then he wanted to punch holes in walls, tear down trees, and break anything he could get his hands on. He drew in a shuddered breath.
Now that’s just wonderful. “You went after the rogue? Without Aidan’s help?”
“Yes. Was I just supposed to let him lie there and get drained dry?”
“Damn you, Stacy. You can’t go up against a rogue!” he roared.
“I can’t? Well, I just did. Again.” She whirled away and started marching up the sidewalk, but then she stopped and faced him again. “When are you going to trust me? When are you going to believe in me? When are you going to have faith in me?”
He didn’t know how to answer that question. “You’re not the problem. I am.”
“When are you going to trust yourself? When are you going to believe in yourself? When are you going to have faith in yourself?”
“Never,” he said. “I told you, I am what I am.”
“No, you’re not!” she yelled back, running towards her home. She stopped when she reached her porch, her chest heaving as if she were trying to outrun her own pain. “You’re what you let yourself believe you are. There’s a difference.”
Agony raced across his features. “I know.” He sighed, following her up the steps to the porch. “Let me in, Stacy. I have a story to tell you. Maybe then you’ll understand.”
She threw him a look. “I’ll let you in, and I’ll listen to you, but you’re never going to understand until you realize that you don’t have to explain.”
He shrugged. “I’ve denied the truth for far too long now. I’ve wanted to believe that because I chose to die that I deserved redemption. I don’t. Because I can’t deny what I am. I’m a vampire.”
“Remember you said that word, Charles Tower,” Stacy replied, throwing his words back at him. “Not monster. Got that?”
“Once you hear what I have to tell you, I think you’ll revise your opinion.”
“I doubt that very much.”
Interlude
Blood fever.
Charles, First Guard of the Tower of London, didn’t understand what had happened to him. One moment he was staring at the stone wall of the prison waiting for death to overtake him, the next he’d awakened in the stable under a pile of hay mixed with manure.
Night had fallen, and as he staggered to his feet, Charles felt a strange strength flowing through his veins. He could hear people talking across the courtyard. He could see well beyond them, even through the darkness. The scent of manure, usually not at all bothersome to his nose, nearly gagged him.
As he emerged from the stable, he realized he wasn’t far from home. He walked to a trough and sluiced water over his face and hands. Shaking off the excess, he wondered why he wasn’t home, and as soon as he thought about being there, he was.
Was this a dream? Or a nightmare?
Charles opened the door to his home, afraid of the answer.
Mary was bending over the hearth, stirring a pot of stew. The stew smelled better than the air inside this tiny hovel, and he wrinkled his nose at the assault on his senses. Still, he’d been a soldier once, and nothing stuck with a body more than the stench of a battlefield.
Mary straightened and gaped as he stepped inside. “Charles?”
At first, he was certain he saw joy on her face. Then her gaze raked him, and her mouth narrowed, her features turning stern.
“It’s been three days, Charles. Where have you been?”
Three days?
Charles shook his head. Nothing made sense.
Tears filled her eyes as she whispered, “Did it matter to ye that I have been out of my mind wit worry?”
Three days?
She started towards him and stopped. Her arm lifted, in greeting, he assumed, but fell to her side as if something inside her didn’t want to touch him. The thought amused him. He wouldn’t want to touch these clothes either.
They stared at each other for a long time. Hurt replaced the anger in her gaze, and the resignation in her posture tried to cut him. But he felt as if he were living outside his body now. Nothing meant anything. As if he was dead inside.
“Was the drink so important to ye then”?
A roar built inside his head. It sounded like the ocean. He’d seen the ocean once. When he was young, he used to marvel at its enormous power, the water’s sheer expanse stretched as far as his eyes could see.
Charles didn’t know what to say. He looked down at his hands as if they belonged to another man. He shook his head. Suddenly he realized everything was off-kilter, out of sorts, just plain wrong. He stared down at the rushes on the floor, his insides empty—dead almost, when he should have felt remorse. Should have felt something. Anything.
“So, ye refuse to deny it.”
The roar continued to build like water flowing fast downstream. At first, Charles ignored it.
He choked and coughed as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time. “I don’t remember takin’ one drop.”
She nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Ye wouldna, now would ye?” Her shoulders slumped, and she turned away from him to stare into the hearth. “Was she very pretty then?”
The next thing he knew, Charles was standing behind her. “Mary, luv.” And yet, as the word left his lips, the truth crashed down upon him. He didn’t love her. In fact, she meant no more to him than a favored horse or dog, and that made no sense at all.
“I would never betray ye. Ye know that.”
“Do I?” Her tone was filled with bitterness. She lifted the strands of her hair from her shoulder. “I have eyes, ye know. I see that I am getting old.” Charles remembered their wedding day. How beautiful she looked in the spring sunshine with flowers in her hair.
“Ye know that I dinna drink like other men and ye know that ye’re not old. Stop this nonsense this instant.”
She turned back to him with a gaze filled with hope. His face softened, and he knew he eased her fears. Then the roar in his ears exploded. Charles lifted his hands to cover them. He doubled over, not in pain, but because of a terrible knowledge invading his soul—the one he no longer had.
“Charles?”
Her voice sounded far away. He heard the concern, but the emotion never reached him. He lifted back up to hear her swift, harsh, indrawn breath. All that mattered was the pulse throbbing in her neck. His gaze fixed on it as the pumping of her heart throbbed in his ears.
Hot juice filled his mouth, and something strange happened—his teeth. Two of them grew. Long and sharp. His tongue explored, and he winced at the sharpness of one.
Blood.
His insides clenched with need. This was far worse than hunger, and he knew hunger. Had lived most of his life in hunger, but this need, this need was different. This was one hundred times worse than anything he’d ever experienced before.
He couldn’t answer her. Better yet, he didn’t dare.
Bits and pieces of a terrible dream-like reality passed before his waking gaze: a guard with his throat torn to shreds; watching a man break in half with a single blow.
No. This was witchcraft. That’s what this was. He’d been bewitched. These nightmarish pictures came from one of the damned. Charles closed his eyes trying to convince himself of the truth. But the terrible truth was he’d become one of the damned.
When he opened them, Mary stared at him as if he’d grown hoofs and horns. He didn’t care. He reached out to draw her to him.
“Charles. No. Do not do this.”
Blood. He could see right through her skin.
“I am a good wife to ye. And yer not yerself. I can see that now.”
His hands wrapped around her shoulders. They tightened as they would around a hare before he broke its neck.
Fear filled her voice. “Yer hurtin’ me, Charles.”
But still, she trusted him. Her mistake.
Charles felt as though he’d stepped outside his body. He could see the pinch of pain on her face, knew he was the cause, yet he didn’t stop. Not until her body was touching his. His shaft grew in response to her, but even that held no meaning for him.
There was nothing but blood.
“Charles. Yer face. Oh, God. Yer face.”
What of it? What did this insignificant little human mean to him?
Charles shook his head again. He nodded as a truth wound its way into his non-existent heart. A final truth. The one he had refused to accept until now.
He was dead. Yet not dead. And there was nothing left except the blood.
Mary stilled in horror as he turned into his true nature. A part of him didn’t care. A part of him cared too much. His incisors grew until they could grow no longer, and he welcomed them. He ran his face up and down her neck, catching the delectable scent of her blood through her skin. His tongue snuck out once or twice to taste the salt on her, but salt was not what Charles was after.
He knew that now.
One arm banded about her shoulders to keep her still.
“Dear God, help me. He’s gone mad. This is not my husband,” she cried.
Too late, Mary must have realized her danger. She began to fight him, to struggle for her life. The hunter in him responded, delighting in the challenge of submission. He wanted her to know his power. He wanted her to know she could never escape.
He bit down into her soft flesh, and blood swirled inside his mouth as she screamed. His hand covered her mouth so no one would hear. Which opened her neck even wider and allowed him better access.
His incisors drew in deep draughts of sweetness. Her fists pounded on his back, her body flailed from side to side. He lost his grip and had to release her, her blood squirting all over his face.
He lapped his tongue out against each drop.
Sharp and rich with metal, his nostrils widened to breathe in the luscious scent of her blood. He sank his incisors back into her neck.
“Oh, God, Charles. You are hurtin’ me. Do not do this. Please stop.”
Her pleading became weaker, her struggles slowed, and he shifted her in his arms to
get a better angle. He drank and kept on drinking. Power swelled inside his body, his muscles quivered with the strength flowing through them, his fingertips tingled with heat. He wanted to run ten miles, jump over walls, and race with the wind.
With a jolt, Charles realized Mary had stopped moving.
A last sliver of humanity invaded. There was blood and nothing but blood, and from now on, there would only be blood. But that did not mean he had to kill. From somewhere deep inside, Charles found a will to resist the evil he’d become. The need to drain her body dry welled from the very depths of his being. He wanted to keep going. He wanted more.
There was blood and nothing but blood.
This was a fight he would have to win every day for the rest of his existence.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Stacy
Stacy stared at him. She didn’t judge. Just gave him the space to continue. “Mary died a few months later, broken in body and spirit. At first, I ran, not knowing where to go. But I knew I had to watch over her, so I kept going back every so often to check. I watched her die knowing I was the cause.”
“I thought time healed old wounds,” she said, trying to comfort him.
“Didn’t you hear a word I said? I tried to drain my wife dry! Because of that, she succumbed to the fever and died.”
His outburst made her shiver, but not from disgust, from fear. Stacy worried he’d never forgiven himself. What he refused to understand was that he had no way to prevent what happened.
“From the way you’re telling me the story, you didn’t even know you were a vampire.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“Whatever.”
“Stacy, even if you don’t want to understand, you have to listen,” he said. “Even if I’m able to destroy the rogue, even if you’re able to help figure out what’s causing these young vampires to eventually go rogue, even if we get the entire leadership of the vampire world to accept you as you are and not make you forget, we’re still an unmatched pair. We can never be together. Because the day will come when I’m faced with a choice—to give in to my nature or not. I won’t put you in that kind of jeopardy.”
Blood Rogue, #1 Page 19
