“Jax loves you, and so do I. And kiddo, I can’t watch you continue on like this. It’s breaking my heart. Besides, you have to know that Quinten would never want you to be like this. He’d want you to move on and be happy.”
“How?” I cried. “I don’t know how to live without him. He’s always been in my life, dad! Ever since we were little. Ever since before I could remember. How do I keep moving forward when everything I’ve ever done with my life was done with him by my side?”
Ray sighed, and rubbed his face tiredly. “I don’t know, but you have to try. You can’t just sit here and cry until you starve yourself to death. I won’t let you. You have to get up and give this life all that you can.”
“I have nothing left to give,” I muttered stubbornly.
He smiled sadly. “I think, in a little while, you’ll find that you do.”
He hugged me tightly and got up. He was at the door before I thought of something.
“Dad?”
He looked at me again. “Yeah?”
“How will I know, when I find him again? How do you even know that I will?”
“You know, when your mother died, I felt our bond break, and I knew that she was dead before they even told me. But, after a few days, the barest remnants of our bond came back, and I realized that what everyone told me was true. Some part of her was still out there, and I just had to be patient and wait for her to find me again.”
“You still have that bond?”
“Only a little bit of it. It tells me to never give up hope.”
Ray still had a part of her. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I didn’t even have that yet. There was no small bond to remind me to keep believing. There was nothing but lonely emptiness.
“I love you, kiddo.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
*****
On the third night, I decided to get up and shower. I should have done it when we got home, but I’d been too depressed to even consider doing anything but cry. Now, I was disgusted with the layer of dirt and dried blood that covered parts of my body.
I was almost done when I realized what I was actually washing from my body.
Blood.
How much of it was Quinten’s? That fragment of our bond had yet to return to me, and I wondered briefly if this was all I’d ever have of him. And here I was, washing it down the drain.
The thought caused me to burst into uncontrollable tears again. I was glad that the sound of the shower covered the sound of my sobbing.
The shower took longer than I thought it would, and when I got out, I noticed Jax and Ray cooking in the kitchen. It was my favorite: chicken, cheesy broccoli rice, green beans, and freshly made rolls. It was my favorite mostly because it was pretty much all that I could cook for myself. They were making an effort to cheer me up.
I was starving, but I refused to eat. At least until that bond came back. I was going to wait and pray and hope that some part of Quinten would come back to me. Until it did, I wouldn’t be doing anything. If the world wasn’t going to be fair to me, I didn’t see the need to try.
It was there, sitting on my bed, that I first felt it.
It was a flutter; soft, light, and barely noticeable. It grew and grew, until the force of the bond returning to life nearly drove me to my knees. It grew stronger and stronger as the minutes wore on, repairing some of the damage that had been done to my heart when Quinten died.
This bond was similar to what we’d had, but different from the first one. It took me only a minute to realize what was happening. There was a reason this bond was different, and I knew what that reason was.
The new bond must have been different from the remnants of the one Ray had. If I was right about what this bond was telling me, my future might not be as horrible as I previously thought.
If I acted fast, this was just barely possible.
I forced myself to eat at dinner, much to Ray and Jax’s pleasure. I needed a full stomach for what I was about to do. If they knew what I was planning they’d stop me for sure.
I knew that this would be forbidden, not to mention dangerous. I packed silently: food, water, a change of clothes, all the money I had, a lighter, and a map. It would have to do for such short notice.
If I went through with this, I’d be an outcast. Nobody of my own kind would shelter me ever again. I’d make an enemy out of my people, and Roger Mason would finally be able to destroy me.
But that didn’t matter right now. I wrote a short note of explanation to Ray, hoping that some day he would be able to forgive me. Maybe Ray was right. Maybe someday he would happen to come back to me.
But I couldn’t wait around and hope that it happened.
As I dropped to the ground beneath my window and shouldered my backpack, I heard my soul mate’s final words echoing in my head, and all I could do was hope and pray that he was right.
I made my way to the road as fast as I possibly could. I wasn’t sure how much time I’d have before Ray and Jax found out what I was doing. Would they try and stop me? Or would they just accept what I was doing and let me go?
I wasn’t sure how I knew which direction to head in, but I did. I just wasn’t sure what I’d find when I got there. But I knew in my gut that I had to do this.
My heart was telling me that I’d regret it if I went back now.
I walked until it was dark, and then camped out in a ditch on the side of the road. I didn’t want to be spotted from the road or the forest, in case Ray and Jax had decided to come after me. Not that I thought they would, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
Would Ray understand? Or would he be angry that I’d gotten his hopes up with showering and eating, only to run away like this? Could he ever forgive me? If I found what I thought I would, what did that mean for him?
I tried not to think about Ray as I closed my eyes for the night. I needed to be fully rested for tomorrow so I could get as far away from here as possible. My car would have been nice to have, but Ray would have most definitely heard it start.
No, silence trumped speed right now. I’d get where I was going eventually, but Ray couldn’t be around to stop me. Not if I was going to succeed.
*****
In the morning, I ate a cold breakfast of bread and an apple that I’d managed to pack. It did little to fill me, but it would have to do until I could shift and hunt later tonight.
After I packed up my backpack, I set off, walking along the side of the road with my thumb stuck out. Hopefully someone would take pity on my disheveled appearance and offer to give me a lift.
Not that I knew where I needed to get dropped off, but still, anything was better than walking.
Around noon, someone finally stopped. It was a truck driver. I tried not to flinch as I hopped into the cab. The driver was in his late thirties, balding, and he was getting quite a gut.
I didn’t like his eyes the most. They constantly shifted over to me, inviting me to make small talk. I refused. There was nothing this man could say to me that would make me want to actually engage in conversation with him.
He was creepy through and through. The truck driver was the total cliché of a man that attacked little girls when they were alone and in private. I’d have to keep my eyes on him the whole way.
When we finally reached our destination, he gave me an expectant look. Ignoring this, I turned, to find the door locked.
His hand went around my waist, dragging me back against him. “Hold on a second there sweetheart.”
His voice made my stomach turn, and I pushed him away from me. “Open the door or I’ll kick out the window.”
He chuckled, revealing yellow-stained teeth. Hadn’t this guy ever heard of a toothbrush?
“I drove you all day. I think a little payment is in order.”
Of course, I would be right about him.
He reached for me. I grabbed his wrist and dug my nails into the tender flesh on the inside, and twisted sharply. He winced, and tried to pull free. “I am not some helpless
little girl that you can prey on. Remember that not all girls are victims.”
I shoved back with all my strength and he hit the window behind him. The glass cracked, and he moaned pitifully.
I unlocked the door and jumped out of the cab of the truck, not bothering to even look back. Hopefully that creep would realize how lucky he was that I hadn’t harmed him more than I had. For a minute, I thought about going back and making sure he remembered how to actually treat a woman, but something pulled me from the opposite direction, and I let it go.
I just hoped he didn’t try that with another girl less capable of defending herself.
I hoisted my backpack up on my shoulders, and began jogging through the trees. I was almost there, I could feel it. The feeling was getting stronger and stronger, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was in the right place.
The clearing came into view and, as I took in the scene before me, my heart stopped.
Quinten was right.
Love never dies.
Epilogue
I crept slowly through the trees, trying not to stop and whip my head around every time something bright caught my attention. Everything was so beautiful and clear, much sharper than when I’d been human. Colors were more crisp, odors were more noticeable, and everything was more wonderful than I could have ever dreamed.
My body was stronger, harder, more resilient, and for the first time in my life, I was powerful. I was a dangerous, and a threat.
I was a predator.
That thought still made me a little squeamish, but my maker promised that it would fade with time. After all, I’d only been awake for about twenty-four hours. I’d have centuries to learn the ropes and, as long as I had my maker to teach me everything, it would be alright.
I could feel her nearby now; my maker had a very recognizable presence firmly in my mind. I was sure that I could locate her even in my sleep; I couldn’t escape her watchful eyes. Even now, on my first hunt, she was nearby, watching to make sure everything went according to plan.
I could see her flitting in and out through the trees with a well-practiced grace that I envied. Since awakening, I had discovered the ability to take in a person’s appearance in just on swift glance, coming away with every little detail about themselves from their height to the exact shade of their eyes. My maker looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, and she stood at five feet eight inches tall, a few inches taller than the average woman. Her face was oval-shaped and her wavy waist-length hair was a medium auburn color. Her eyes were dark blue, and she had an appealing hourglass shape.
But for some strange reason, she didn’t appeal to me. When I first woke up, she had hinted at the possibility of there being something between the two of us later, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want her. What I wanted was missing and, even though I didn’t know what it was that was missing, I knew it was important to me.
She just wasn’t the one for me. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I just did. She watched me though, waiting to intervene if things went wrong.
The wind blew through the trees, carrying with it the mouth-watering scent of something I was just getting used to: blood. It spread through my senses, burning its way through my nose, searing its memory into my brain, driving me crazy.
I picked up my run, putting on a burst of speed that was much too fast for the human eye to catch. My nose followed the scent of the woman’s blood through the woods, all the way to a small, secluded clearing. She was hiking by the looks of the backpack on the ground beside her. She was wearing boots and shorts, and I could see the thin line of blood that ran down the front of her leg; she’d fallen and scraped herself.
My mouth began to water at the hint of blood, and I waited impatiently for my maker’s usual words of advice. She’d told me exactly how to do it several times in the last day and, when her words didn’t come this time, I looked around, confused. This was to be my first solo feeding, but I still expected something from her.
She was there, behind me, standing as still as a beautiful, marble statue. Her head was raised, and she sniffed the air cautiously, as if she was testing the wind.
A terrified look passed over her face, and when she looked at me, I was instantly unnerved. There was very little that could scare my maker. She was fierce, strong, and perfectly capable of defending herself when it came to fighting. I had only known her for a day or so, but I knew she was a shrewd, heartless creature incapable of love or warmth, unless it benefited her in some way. Nothing should have scared her.
“We have to get out of here.”
“No,” I snarled. “I’m hungry.”
“It’s not safe here. We’ll find you somewhere else to hunt.”
I laughed once. “I don’t care about safety. We’re scarier and tougher than anything that you’ll find in these woods.”
“Not everything,” she said nervously, taking one more terrified glance around the woods. “Please, let’s go. We’re better off safe than sorry.”
I stared at her for a minute, torn about what to do. The woman’s blood was calling to me; I could feel the urge to attack building up. I’d only had twenty-four hours to get control of my urges, and it wasn’t enough. If I didn’t act soon, I’d most likely end up killing her or someone else on accident, and I didn’t want that.
But my maker’s fear had caught my attention. She was almost a decade old, and nothing should have been able to terrify her like this. I felt a low growl start in my chest at the thought of someone threatening my maker. Nobody would dare hurt her while I was around!
She looked at me, pleading with her eyes. “Please, let’s just go.”
I shook my head; the possibility of having blood was too powerful to give up. Turning, I darted into the clearing. The woman didn’t even have time to scream before I was on her, shoving her forcefully to the ground.
Her soft body was warm beneath mine. My hand was firm at her waist; the other was twisted harshly in the plush grass beside her. The skin of her throat gave way easily beneath my teeth. She gasped at the initial contact, and it turned to a sensual moan as I began to drink from her.
Her body jerked twice and I placed a firm hand on her stomach to keep her in place. I didn’t want to risk ripping her throat open. Then she’d bleed out and I’d have a body to take care of.
Her blood was warm and salty, and it exploded in my mouth the second it touched my tongue. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever tasted, yet it did little to dissuade the ravenous hunger I felt throughout my entire body.
Never before had my body been in such pain as when I went without blood. It was a fierce, ravenous, gnawing hunger that never ended. I was like a junkie, always searching for my next fix, hoping that it would satisfy me for a short time.
But it never did.
The hunger always came back, and it was always as terrible as before. It was enough to cripple someone, to actually stop them in their tracks, and completely dominate them. It turned the most ferocious monster into a tamed, cowardly being.
I’d even begged for blood in the last twenty-four hours, and I wasn’t proud of it. The fact that I was now hunting by myself filled me with a twisted sense of pride. It should have sickened me, but it didn’t; I was beyond caring. Something inside of me blocked all the emotions I should have had.
She gasped one more time, and I felt another presence begin to drink from her. I lifted my head long enough to snarl at the newcomer stupid enough to encroach on my donor. How dare someone else drink from my prey?
Angry dark eyes glared at me from her wrist, and I instinctively shrank back again. It would have been suicide to confront this new, powerful, deadly intruder.
He was my maker’s temporary companion. She would take a new one every so often, or so I’d been told. I hadn’t been with her long enough to really notice.
I didn’t like this man though, with his long greasy black hair and wild, crazy eyes. He seemed constantly unstable and unsafe to be around. I worried that he would d
islike the competition now that I had been added to their group. He must have followed my maker and I through the woods, and waited for her to leave.
Would he try and kill me to secure his own position of power?
No, he wouldn’t dare risk my maker’s wrath. She wasn’t as old as he was, but she was a fierce, vindictive woman, who would stop at nothing to avenge a perceived wrong. He had to know that if he crossed her, he wouldn’t live long afterwards.
The woman groaned, bringing my attention back to her, and I latched onto her neck once more. She wouldn’t be alive for much longer; I needed all that I could take from her now. I didn’t want to have to do this again tonight.
I didn’t mind that she would die, or that my next victim after her would also experience death. I was a killer. This is what I had been created to do. I didn’t, however, enjoy the sunlight. It didn’t burn my skin like it had at first--it had blistered up and scarred–but it still gave me headaches and blurred my vision, and it made my thinking hazy.
The woman whimpered, and I relaxed my hold on her as the fight began to leave her body. She’d finally accepted her cruel fate, and was more than happy to just lie back and let this happen to her. For some reason, the thought of giving her pleasure was uncomfortable to me.
My maker wouldn’t be happy that this woman would be dead when she returned, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. For the time being, my hunger was gone, and I felt better than I had in a while.
A branch snapped in the clearing, and my head shot up. If my mouth hadn’t been filled with warm rich blood, it would have dropped open.
Standing there in the clearing was a young woman, about twenty years old. She was just less than five and a half feet tall, with an athletic build and a pale heart-shaped face. Her hair was a dark auburn color and it hung to her shoulders in beautiful layers.
Her eyes were a brilliant blue color, and were framed by thick dark lashes that cast shadows over her high cheekbones. They were open wide in horror, but beyond that I could see the haunted despair of a recent tragedy that still pained her.
She wasn’t incredibly beautiful by normal standards, but she had a strange unique quality to her features. For some reason I couldn’t place, to me, she was without a doubt the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I couldn’t explain it even if I had wanted to.
Arena Wars Trilogy Page 18
