Between Darkness & Light

by Theresa Van Spankeren

  “No,” I said. “However, I can probably use some sharp sticks as stakes.”

  “That won’t do much good against humans,” he said and looked at the weapons again. “You need something small, that will fit well into your hands . . . here,” he said gruffly and handed me a long dagger and a small crossbow. He handed me sheaths and arrows next.

  I stared at him in disbelief and sudden suspicion. There was a reason why I was unarmed tonight, just as I had been the night I had encountered the Hunters. Why I hid the piece of wood I used to cut myself. I’m not allowed to have weapons. It had been a condition of living with Samuel and the others and one they still enforced.

  I was pretty sure Matthew knew that. I wondered if he was setting me up so he would have an excuse to kill me. He could claim it was self-defense and no one would know, except maybe Kali. A fine tremor went through me, one I desperately tried to control. I made no move to equip myself with the handed weapons.

  He gave me a derisive look. “Don’t look so surprised. You wouldn’t do much good if you have nothing to fight with. Go ahead, put them on.”

  Shaking my head, I whispered, “Why? So you have a reason to murder me?”

  Matthew smiled, seemingly amused at my sudden fear. “Julia, if I wanted to assassinate you, I would have done it as soon as you followed me through the door uninvited. It would have been a more plausible scenario. Anyway, you would be a hindrance if we come across Hunters unarmed. And as I stated before, if you attack me, I’ll kill you.”

  I stared at him again, trying to process this new unfamiliar territory I found myself in. I never would have guessed Matthew would willingly give me weapons. He held my gaze without flinching. Slowly, I strapped the dagger to my right hip and slung the bow and arrows across my back. At that moment, I would have given anything to know what he was thinking.

  Unfortunately, he did not grant that wish, instead turning and packing the clothes in one bag and the blankets in another. Watching him, I nervously started, “I should explain –”

  “Not now.” He threw one of the bags at me. I barely caught it by the strap.

  “Really, Matthew, could your aim be any farther off?”

  He shrugged. “You caught it; couldn’t have been that bad of a throw.” He glanced around one last time. “I guess that is everything.”

  We left Florence in silence, heading south. This uneasy quiet lasted at least three hours. Matthew eventually broke it by saying, “This is your fault.”

  “My fault?” I questioned, although I had a good idea what he meant.

  “You were the one who betrayed him. Why do you care what happens to him?”

  “As incredible as this sounds to you, I still love him.”

  Matthew stopped and stared at me. He laughed. “Love? With ‘love’ such as yours, who need enemies?”

  “I am sorry.”

  “Yes, sure you are. I believe you. Sorry until you want another cheap lay.”

  Scowling at him, I said, “That is not why I did what I did. I wish you would let me explain what happened.”

  “Honestly, I do not care. Your pathetic story will simply be a distraction. It is hard enough to sense Samuel without having to listen to your rubbish.”

  My hands shook as I glowered at him. Why had I believed Kali? “You won’t even hear me out. You are such an arrogant bastard,” I retorted.

  A bitter smile touched his lips. “Well, I’m still alive so that’s good I guess.”

  “She must have been delusional,” I grumbled and stormed past him. I could not figure him out. He acted as if I were the last person he wanted to be around; yet he agreed to travel with me and even provide me with weapons.

  We set up camp a couple hours later, a safe distance off the road. Matthew took one of the blankets and spread it out. He dropped the sheath that held his crossbow down on it and lay back next to it.

  I did my own arrangements across from him and sat on my blanket. My concentration was on the ka-tet and the realization that Samuel did not seem any closer despite our hours of traveling. “Where do you think he went?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

  Matthew lifted his head and looked at me. “My guess? Probably Rome.”

  I blinked in surprise as I realized he had responded to me. “Rome?” I repeated. “That’s pretty far.”

  “He’s desperate. He presumably rented a carriage and left soon after. I would not be surprised if he actually left last night a little before dawn, giving him quite the head start.”

  “But why Rome?”

  “Why not Rome? It’s really the last place he has left. The entire story started there for him anyway. It makes perfect sense for him to go there now.”

  I looked at him and thought of the necklace I was now wearing. “True.”

  Matthew rolled over and seemed to drift to sleep. I watched him for a while, before going to sleep myself.

  ***

  It was night in my old neighborhood. Samuel was leaning against a tree, watching two humans walk down the street. He pushed away from it to follow when there was the sound of pounding footsteps.

  Samuel spun around with a snarl. After a moment, he visibly relaxed. “Do not do that, Damien!”

  Damien held his hands up. “Sorry. Look, I’m glad I found you. There’s trouble.” His dark green eyes were filled with worry.

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?” Samuel asked as he glanced in the direction the two humans had gone.

  “I do not know . . . it’s at my sister-in-law’s. I swore I heard someone screaming.”

  Samuel cursed and spun around.

  ‘What the hell kind of dream is this?’ I thought in fuzzy bewilderment.

  “I’ll make sure everything is all right,” Samuel said to Damien and took off in the direction of my mansion. He only stopped when he reached the house, sizing things up. A bloodcurdling shriek perforated the air. Samuel reacted to the sound, circling to the side of the house.

  I watched everything in curious detachment. I didn’t seem to be an active participant in this dream; instead I was an unseen observer.

  “Julia?” Samuel asked as he moved toward the window. “Julia?” he questioned again in a louder voice when there was no reply.

  Confusion filled me as I realized how unnatural this dream seemed. The events were unfolding from the wrong perspective. If I were dreaming this, why am I seeing everything through Samuel’s eyes? For that matter, how am I thinking so clearly if I’m asleep?

  I tried to pinch myself. I seemed unable to move. Another thought crossed my mind. Shouldn’t there have been an answer to his question by now? I had noticed him then.

  Samuel ran over and vaulted through the window, and found me lying in a pool of blood. He lifted me to him. “Julia?” he whispered as he cradled me against him.

  Wait a minute. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t want to see this. Wake up. Damnit, wake up! Despite my now panicked attempts to rouse myself from this bizarre dream, I was unable.

  A flood of emotion engulfed me: fear, guilt, anger, desperation. The dream version of me opened her eyes and abruptly it felt as if I were in two places. I closed my eyes against the disorientated sensation. When I opened them again, I was staring up at him. “Who are you?” I asked, as I began coughing up blood.

  Unexpectedly, the blood, the stab wounds, and the pain all seemed very real. My ability to move and speak, however, still seemed out of my control.

  “A friend. I know your brother-in-law,” he replied and tried to feed me his blood right then. I took one swallow but blacked out and started choking instead. Samuel gently shook me. “Wake up, Julia, please!”

  After a long moment, I shuddered and opened my eyes again. “Your name? What is your name?” I whispered.

  “Samuel.”

  I smiled faintly. “You were here to help me?”

  He nodded. “Try to drink this again,” he said and dripped more blood down my throat.

  I began choking again. “I’m tir
ed.”

  “Don’t fall asleep. Stay awake, Julia.”

  I reached over and caught his hand. It felt so warm. “Samuel, can you please do something for me?” I rasped.

  “Of course, Julia,” he murmured as he stroked my hair.

  “Kill my husband. Kill him for me . . . and my daughter. Please Samuel!”

  “Shh. I’ll take care of him. Do not worry.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered and shut my eyes. My breathing slowed and became uneven.

  “Julia, please do not die!” Samuel pleaded. He buried his face against me and began crying inconsolably. Anger, bitterness, and despair. Fear. Guilt, pain, and sadness. I was drowning in the overwhelming sensations, but whose emotions were they? Mine or Samuel’s?

  ***

  I awoke, gasping for air, to find myself staring at a clear sky. I rolled off the blanket and shakily stood up. I glanced toward Matthew and saw he was still fast asleep, one arm thrown over his head. I turned away and stared into the trees. “What kind of dream was that? Why would I be a prisoner in my own dream?” I whispered with a shudder. The dream was unlike any I’d ever had. It had been so vivid, real, and utterly out of my control.

  “It was not your dream,” a soft, almost musical voice said. The mysterious young woman I had seen before glided out of the woods and stood in front of me. Her long black hair flowed freely around her shoulders and her eyes shone with kindness and affection. “It was Samuel’s dream.”

  Surprise filled me as I realized the voice was hers. She hadn’t spoken the other times she had appeared. So why did the voice seem vaguely familiar?

  I studied her as I realized I recognized the voice. I had heard it once before, five years ago, as I teetered on the brink of a madness I still didn’t understand. At the time, I had thought it had been my conscience unlocking memories that had become strangely inaccessible, memories whose return had brought me back to myself.

  “It was you?” I mumbled, dazed.

  A faint glow – an aura, Valerie would have said – seemed to surround her. She nodded.

  “If it was Samuel’s dream, why did I dream it?” I blurted out.

  A gentle smile touched her lips. “The bond between vampires and the fledglings they make is very strong. You shared the dream. It was why you could not do anything but observe.”

  I looked at her in confusion. “But why would he dream about that? He hates me.”

  She shook her head. “He does not hate you. He wishes he did. However, no matter how much he wants to hate you, he’s found he cannot. If he had stopped caring for you, things would not be this hard. Then again, things are never easy, are they?”

  “No. I still do not understand what happened in the dream. Why did I die in it?”

  Sadness darkened her aquamarine eyes. “Your nightmares are of what have occurred. Samuel’s nightmares are of what might have happened.” She paused. “If he hadn’t gotten there in time.”

  I sighed and turned away. “How can he have nightmares about that? He did well. It was I who botched it up.”

  “Lately, some of it has been guilt.”

  “Guilt?” I echoed. “You are silly, girl. What on earth can Samuel possibly be feeling guilty about, concerning me?”

  “He thinks that if he and Damien had acted sooner – years sooner – you would not be having the problems you’re having. You would not feel this conflict between who you want to be and what your husband wanted you to become.”

  “How could Samuel possibly think he was responsible for that? He didn’t even know of me until the last year of my marriage.” I looked at her with a small frown. “Do you know of me?”

  “Yes, Julia. Of course I do.”

  I gazed at her in confusion. “How? Who are you?”

  “I am someone who cares about you. My name isn’t important now. Give your friends time to trust you again. Do not back away from them now. You’ll need them.”

  I stared at this transparent young woman and tried to place her. She definitely seemed around Kali’s age, but I couldn’t think of anyone I had known who matched her description and age. “Why are you helping me?” I whispered.

  “Julia, who the hell are you talking to?” Matthew snapped.

  When I looked back at where the girl had stood, I was not surprised to see she had disappeared. “No one, Matthew,” I sighed and turned back to him.

  He was rearranging the weapons he was carrying. He got up and put both our blankets back into the bag. “So you’re talking to yourself again?”

  I glared at him. “No, actually, I’m talking to Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child.”

  Matthew snorted contemptuously. “I always knew you were insane, Julia.”

  I smiled coldly and picked up one of the bags. “Now that that’s established, can we go?”

  “If you are done talking to yourself, sure.”

  I walked away, fuming at his remarks. Kali had wanted me to talk to him, but he shut me down every time I tried. How could I possibly explain anything when all he did was insult me?

  We hadn’t been traveling long when Matthew suddenly stopped. “Do you still sense Samuel?” he asked. His stance did not betray panic, but concern not there before.

  It took a moment for me to answer, since my thoughts had been on other things. “Yes. His presence seems a little fainter, but I can still sense him.” I tilted my head inquisitively. “Why? Do you not?”

  He looked back at me and frowned. “No. I’m wondering if he headed in a different direction than Rome.”

  I pursed my lips and concentrated again on the ka-tet. I still felt Samuel to the south, in the direction where we were headed. “No; he is still in this direction. His guard is tighter. Mayhap he senses us and is trying to hide better?” I asked.

  Matthew shrugged and resumed walking. After traveling for several hours in silence, I spoke again. “You are partly to blame for Samuel leaving as well.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You did not go see him the other night. That’s why he left . . . he was lonely. You should have visited him.”

  Matthew scowled at me. “I have better things to do than to sit around and look after Samuel every day.” He made a face. “Besides, you are the one living with him. It was your job to watch over him. It’s not my fault you let him leave. It’s yours.”

  “Like hell it is! I could not keep an eye on him; you know he doesn’t want me around!”

  “That’s your problem, not mine.”

  “You saw him only a few days ago. Surely, you must have known he was struggling. Why didn’t you offer him a place to stay?”

  Matthew stopped and turned to me, furious. “Yes, I knew. And I offered to have him stay with me. He turned the offer down, saying something about not wanting to be a burden to me. So I suggested he take a trip.”

  “This isn’t an innocent trip.”

  “I know that. The second you showed me the necklace I knew he was not simply taking a respite. It’s why I agreed that he was contemplating doing something stupid.”

  We resumed walking. There was no more talking, the only sounds were of twigs snapping underfoot. As we neared the town of Sienna, I found it more prudent to sound human as I walked. Matthew’s steps mirrored my change, without him uttering a word. Mortals generally do not notice such things, but we were trying not to draw undue attention to ourselves.

  A couple hours before dawn, we set up camp just outside the town. As I unrolled my blanket, I felt warmth suffuse the small of my back. It was not a very cold night, but there had been a chill in the air. One that Matthew had beat back with a record-setting fire.

  “That was fast,” I commented as I sat down beside him in front of the fire. I expected him to insult me or walk away, but he merely nodded. Surprised, I turned to study him in the orange flickering light. He was staring into the fire, forlorn. “Matthew? What’s wrong?” I questioned hesitantly.

  He frowned. “It’s May.”

  I grimaced. Here we go. It’
s the anniversary of what I did. Initiate my condemnation in the next three seconds. “Get on with it,” I snapped.

  The fire danced wildly for a moment. “I lost track of . . . I did not realize. I should have pushed harder for him to stay with me,” Matthew whispered.

  I stared at him in confusion. He sounded upset and for once it didn’t seem directed at me. I’m not even sure if he realized I had spoken. For a few moments I sat quietly, unsure if I wanted to alert him to the fact that I was still here. When I do that, I seem to incur greater wrath upon myself so I waited for him to speak again. The silence stretched on, so long that I whispered, “I do not understand.”

  Matthew finally looked at me. I cringed, waiting for the screaming to start. It never did. Instead, he turned his gaze back to the dancing flames. There was something different about him tonight. I didn’t doubt that his anger was still present, but something had overshadowed it. It dawned on me that I had been pushing so hard for him to listen to me that I had forgotten that I needed to hear him out as well.

  Before I could speak again, the unexpected happened. Matthew’s mental wall lowered enough for me to sense emotions. As I let them wash over me, I realized almost all of them had to do with Samuel. Worry, concern, guilt, and a growing sense of fear . . . panic?

  “Julia,” Matthew whispered, “Did Samuel ever tell you about how he had become a vampire?”

  “He did.” The question confused me. I had thought he was going to talk about how I had hurt him, how he felt, not about Samuel.

  “Did he tell you when it happened?”

  I pondered for a few minutes, thinking back over seventy years to that conversation. “One night in May a group of about ten male vampires forced their way into the house . . .” My mouth abruptly felt dry and a slightly nauseated feeling filled my stomach. “I remember now. It was this month,” I mumbled.

  Matthew’s voice did not change its soft tone. “If he told you what had occurred, then you know the events five years ago coincided with the anniversary of the murders of most of his family, including the sister whose necklace you now wear around your neck.”

  Horrified pain lanced through me and I hunched forward. The metal of the necklace suddenly seemed uncomfortably hot. I tasted bile at the back of my throat. I had not recalled that fact, probably because it was not my cross to bear. We aren’t terribly sentimental, but there are certain dates or times of the year that mean a great deal to us.