“Only when I’m being murdered and have no other means of defense.”
The vampire smiled warmly. “Don’t worry. This isn’t the murder part yet.”
“Oh, good. I can relax then.” I pulled tightly against his touch as he drew my wrist toward his mouth, the point of his fangs showing in his smile, reminding me of what David said about the effects of venom on the human condition.
As the cold of Jason’s lips mopped my flesh, I shut my eyes tight, waiting for the sear of his razor teeth. They popped through the surface like the first cut in the flesh of a peach, and the scream I promised not to release etched its way up my throat. I jammed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, twisting my lips, fighting against all human urges.
His bite eased after the first break, blood drawing past his teeth like string up a straw, the spicy venom rush along my veins pulsing and twisting them like worms under sand.
All sound blotted out around me, leaving only him and me in a world standing excruciatingly still, until the subdued cry in the back of my throat turned to a high shriek. Jason’s fangs tore from my flesh without loosening their hold. The skin came away with a long peeling sensation, each nerve disconnecting with one last shudder.
I couldn’t scream then, couldn’t make my voice find my lips; they quivered, fighting to feel the air come past them. But there was none—no air, no hope. The muscles in my wrist had detached from the bone, I was sure, leaving the edges of my skin floating on a wild, hot wind, freezing then burning as the venom raced back through in the opposite direction.
Please stop! Please.
“I’ll stop when you’re dead.”
I tried to roll my body—to send myself to the ground—but he held me fiercely, slowly smearing his tongue across the wound. I kicked both legs, hooking my heels into the bark to push my hips out from under his, but couldn’t get free.
And all the lies David told me… The venom numbs the flesh… You know I’d never let you fall… I will always protect you… thrashed about on the trails of my agony, rising in waves of hatred for all—all man, all vampires, for everything that ever was or ever would be. I wanted it to stop. Life to stop. The world to stop. I wanted to scream, to cry with all my heart and beg him to tell me why. Why? Why aren’t you here? Why did you leave me to die like this?
This pain didn’t belong to me. I shouldn’t be here.
I cried, letting the sound be whatever the agony in my soul needed it to be, and as I imagined my Mike finding me, cradling me in arms of safety, saying, Baby, I’m here. I’m here, you’re safe now, the cry came from a place so much deeper than I’d ever cried before. He’d make it all okay. He’d make it stop.
But so would David.
David? I turned my head to look at the empty expanse beside me. David. Please come for me. Please don’t leave me here to die.
Jason drew his lips away and moved them up my arm, over my shoulder, stopping just below my breast. His silky hair smelled like apple, making me relax a little.
“Is that it?” I asked softly, my legs gently falling on either side of the branch, feet dangling into oblivion. “Will I die now?”
Jason laughed against my ribcage. “No. I’m going to bite you again.”
Before I could think to react, the sear of venom barred my tears and the weight of his body against mine forced the branch into my spine, as if it would rip me in half. I opened my mouth to scream, but Jason pinched the base of my throat, gagging me with my own tongue.
I dug my thumb into his wrist, merely making him hold tighter—trapping my anguish inside of me. Then, like holding a breath for a second too long before finally exhaling, he released my throat, leaning back to look down at me.
Tiny, rasping gulps of air lifted my chest in quick jolts. I ran my swollen tongue over the roof of my mouth, trying to open the passage again. “I can’t—” I stammered. I can’t breathe.
“Okay, just calm down. I’ll fix it.” He rubbed his thumb across the lump in my throat, and the tension eased, oozing past my dry lips, as if the venom in my limbs had finally seeped into my muscles. I could actually feel it assimilate, like a drop of food dye in a glass of water, making the burn in my arm sting like hot sauce on raw lips.
The predator wiped his sleeve along his mouth, breathing heavily as if he’d just enjoyed a swig of cola on a really hot day. “I knew you’d taste lovely, Ara-Rose. After all, my brother always did like them… sweet.”
I really didn’t care if he enjoyed my blood; all I could focus on was the violent quiver in my jaw, making my teeth clatter in my mouth, and the deepest, most binding cold I’d ever suffered.
“K… K…”
“What?” He brought his ear to my lips.
“Kill. Me.”
He leaned back, a cruel smile shining out under the blood. “Only if you beg me nicely.”
“P—” I shut my eyes, moistening my throat. “Please.”
“As you wish.”
Nothing but a breath of perfect silence passed me then, a cool breeze parting my lips and lifting my hair from my face, as the ground rushed up to meet me.
* * *
Sharp vibrations rattled through my core, resonating with the sound of dry pasta snapping between teeth. The impact struck me only as a memory when my body came to rest in a disheveled lump at the base of the tree.
Jason appeared beside me then, crouching into a soft landing. Though I was weary and suffocating under pain, I could see his face perfectly in the darkness now. His tight lips broke into a malicious spread as our eyes met, and he reached down to shift my body, curving my rag doll limbs to the correct position. I could feel them move, but they felt lank and hollow, like the empty sleeve of a coat.
“Shh,” he said, brushing my cheek. “Don’t cry.”
I tried not to, tried to just breathe, but every time my lungs expanded, a sharp jab made me stop. I just wanted to be dead.
“You will be soon, sweet girl. And it’s better this way—if you can’t move.” He sat taller, indulgently eyeing my half-naked form. “It won’t take me as long if I don’t have to pin you down.”
My lips arched tightly, trembling. I lay perfectly still, wiping an imaginary cloth over my body to rid the creeping, icky feeling tingling up my spine, branching out from where his hand rested against my leg. I didn’t want this to be my end. I didn’t want to lose my virginity like this. I just wanted to be loved; to feel the touch of a person that wanted me like I wanted them.
Please not this, Jason, please. Kill me, but don’t do this to me.
He studied my face for a long moment, as the crease in his brow slowly deepened, his eyes narrowing. Warm tears ran in streams over the sides of my face, and the burning in my limbs ceased, giving way to a dull, hammer-like pulse. But my mind focused only on Jason towering over me; my legs apart beneath him, his body free to enter mine, as I had no way to stop him. I just wanted to bend my knee and kick him in the groin again, send his balls into his throat.
“Now, now, sweet Ara. Be nice.” He rose up over my body to wipe the tears from my cheeks, but stopped, his head cocked. “Look at you: so broken, so sad, but still just so pretty.”
And he was just so much like David. If I watched his face, ignoring the deeper, almost timid tones of his voice, I could imagine he was David—needed to imagine he was, so my heart could survive the fear.
They say that fear paralyses, but that was the wrong word. It felt more like running full speed then stopping at a dead end with no air.
Each breath I took responded to my panic, rising inch for inch with Jason’s lips moving down my body. He kissed me sweetly on my ribs, running his thumb over the bite, then moved down along my flesh to the very top of my inner thigh.
“He wanted to bite you here… that day he drank your blood.” He kissed me there. “He was afraid you’d die if he bit you. But luckily”—he looked over his shoulder for a second—“I don’t have to worry about that.”
No, please stop. Please don’t, Jason.
The familiarity of pine and grass made my heart ache for normality. Even the stars, once so mysterious, seemed only so recognizable to my weary eyes as I watched them, wishing on each one for something, anything to come along and save me from this.
“I’ve already bitten you, Ara. Only death can save you now,” he advised, and like a serrated clamp breaking the flesh, he sank his teeth into my leg. A surge of agony stole a squeal from my lips and it split the air like a thousand knives through an eternity of silence, ringing out off the emptiness all around me.
My thigh bone seemed to lengthen with the ferocious burning, making the scream move deeper into my soul—resounding from the back of my throat in the highest save-me-God-save-me pitch I’d ever heard until, finally, all life, all sound faded, my cry becoming only a distant shriek, like a whistle blowing.
But even when I closed my mouth, panting as the pain blast through my hip, the whistle continued.
Then, I heard a holler. “She’s over here! Over here!”
The whistle blew once more, ringing in my mind as if I were spinning in a giant plastic bin, while others shouted the same sentence out across the park, the words reaching each group like stones falling down a quarry.
Jason sighed. “Why did you have to go and scream? Now you’ve ruined all my fun.”
The cold night air burned my throat as it scraped into my lungs, dragging vestiges of Jason’s sweet scent with it—a scent that once reminded me of love, but now, only reeked of cold fear.
He landed on the grass, his body stretched out alongside mine, a cheeky grin putting the vampire to rest. “They’re coming for you.”
I tried to nod. I knew this much, but I knew he wasn’t finished with me yet. Vampires were fast; he had plenty of time.
Just promise me you won’t hurt any of them.
His immaculately green eyes softened, turning bright as his body absorbed the life-force of my blood. “I want you to know, Ara”—he leaned down, his deep voice vibrating warmly against my brow—“I’ve enjoyed our time together, although it’s been cut short. And I will watch when they come for you. I want to see what your replacement thinks when he finds you all broken and demoralized; this worthless, unwanted little girl that nobody cared to fight for.”
I swallowed back the lump in my throat. The venom had burned in my limbs for so long now that they were numb to all he could think of to hurt me—except the truth. Jason was right. David never came for me. Even until I hit the ground, I still stupidly believed he would. And now I would die alone, disgraced, and all hope for an eternity of blood would only ever be a promise I wished I’d made. When I still had the chance.
I ruined my own life by loving a vampire. But I destroyed my future when I denied him an eternity. And now nothing would alter the outcome.
A sharp, tight grip capped my throat, and Jason’s cheek touched my jaw as he sank his teeth into the curve of my shoulder. My body twitched, convulsing without the knowledge of my brain. I felt calm inside, unable to process what I was suffering.
“Your blood is running thin,” he said, his wet red mouth right in front of mine.
I studied it carefully, seeing my David in the way he smiled, the way he closed his lips for a second like he was considering kissing me.
“I was considering it,” he said, and he looked up from my mouth, his eyes cold again. “I know how much it’ll hurt my brother to see our lips touch.” He came down slowly and opened my mouth with his tongue, sinking it inside with a mix of blood and venom or spit or something that burned the back of my throat. I tried not to swallow, holding my breath, but as I coughed from the sting, spitting back in his mouth, I had no choice.
“Don’t drown in it,” he said, drawing back to turn my head so the blood dribbled out the corner of my mouth.
It was nearly over now. The nightmare was fading away with the stars in the sky, the fear easing with the serenity of near-death, and I was sure I smiled as I looked up at Jason.
“Tell David… I love… him,” I muttered weakly—not a message for Jason to deliver, but a part of the story before the end. David would hear it when Jason showed him the memory, and he’d know that even in death, it was his name on my lips.
I exhaled and looked up at the sky. The stars blurred into a thin silver line and the night surrounded me. For a second, I saw them—Mom and Harry—nothing more than a flash, or maybe just a flicker of a memory standing there behind Jason. I wanted to run to them, call to them, ask them to help me. But I knew they weren’t really there, and that even if they were, they couldn’t help.
There was no help. People died every day. People suffered every day. No one came to save them, and no one was coming for me.
I’m sorry, Mom, I thought, I know you wanted better for me.
“It’s okay now.” She nodded, reaching out. “Come on, it’s time to go.”
But I need to see David again. I need to tell him that I changed my mind.
“About what?” she said.
Dying. I don’t want to die. I want to live—forever. With him.
“I know.” A sympathetic smile warmed her face, like everything was okay. But it wasn’t. Not at all. She wasn’t going to help me. She wanted me to come with her—to end it all right now. Right here.
“Death is only the beginning, Ara.” She smiled. “There is so much more for you now.”
No! I want to go home!
“Please?” Cold air brushed out past my lips, colder than it should be. I thought I felt my hands shaking, but wasn’t sure. The only thing I knew I felt was the warm, mucky feeling of something sticky under my head and all over the side of my neck. I struggled to open my eyes then, feeling myself being pulled down, like I was swimming against a strong current and losing the fight. I tried to kick my legs, to clutch at my throat and tear away the belt of restraint, but my hands were gone; there was nothing to move, nothing to free me from the sweltering wrap of my own death.
And then, from deep in the darkness, a warm hand pulled me back to the night. I held onto it with my mind, focused on it with all of my strength until I heard a voice.
“Ara? Baby, oh baby.” It echoed like an old memory. “God, what has he done to you—?”
“Mike?” I think I whispered.
“Ara.” His golden voice hit the walls of my subconscious and bounced off the empty space around me. “You stay with me… with me… with me,” it echoed again. “Ara, please—don’t let go… let go… let go—”
I felt a hand around the back of my head, and a heavy cold settled on my limbs, making me wish I could sleep. Just fall asleep and everything would be okay.
“Oh, God!” His distraught voice cut out under grief. “Get help—please, she’s losing too much blood. Get help!”
33
Nothing. No stars. No sound. I tried to open my eyes to see against the black, but as I truly noticed the emptiness for the first time, I felt my heart stop; my eyes were already open.
“Mike?” I called, but my own voice fell flat in front of me, as if I’d spoken into cupped hands. I waited. Waited past that moment you expect everything to be okay, past the breath you held when you thought you heard something, and finally realized what happened.
I’d let go.
Perfect silence. Complete weightlessness; it made me breathless, like I needed sound or a horizon to remind me how to breathe. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even suffocate because there was only emptiness where my lungs should be. All I could actually feel were tingles, shivering across every part of my body that had turned into air. I wanted to break free, but there was nothing to break free from.
I was gone.
Mike was gone.
The world was gone.
Everything was gone…
* * *
Floating through space and time, I waited for morning to come and light the corners of this dark room, but the sun never rose. I wasn’t sure how many days or years had passed, but this couldn’t be sleep; it couldn’t just be a dream. In fact,
I was pretty sure this was Hell.
No fire, no pain, just eternal blackness slowly, second-by-quiet-second, driving me mad.
It reminded me of the time I went swimming as a little girl. I’d closed my eyes and floated in the water for a while. With my ears under the lapping of waves, aware only of my own body, I had thought it was peaceful then, but here in this unimaginable expanse of nothing, floating, unable to find the shore, it was just agonizingly confining.
The only thing I ever found down here was the memories, hidden behind shadows in the darkness. And when the darkness got too much, those memories became nightmares—unhappy endings I’d keep examining in my mind over and over again, never able to find the conclusion, because there’d never be a conclusion. Not for me. In death, we have no resolution.
My last breath would have been taken in the arms of my best friend; my naked, twisted body would have stirred thoughts in him I couldn’t control; he’d think Jason raped me, did other unspeakable things to me, and I couldn’t tell him the truth.
Tears of frustration and anger wanted release, but with no face and no eyes to cry from they were trapped, lodged like a rolled-up sock in my chest—quivering and growing into a feeling I had never known before. I wanted to rattle the bars of my cage, to scream at those responsible.
But the rage always wore down to misery, and when misery was unreleased, trapped in by nothingness, it turned to fear, then to rage again. It was an endless cycle. And even that made me mad, because there was just nothing… nothing I could do to make it stop.
“Let me out of here!” my mind called into the darkness. I imagined myself circling around, gripping my hair with both hands and falling to the floor with my head in my knees.
It did no good to picture it, though. I still felt just the same.
“Mike.” I imagined myself looking up to wherever up was. “Mike. He didn’t rape me.” I needed him to know that. I needed him to know how sorry I was for leaving the dance and for not remembering how he taught me to survive, how to fight. “Mike? Please, please be there. Please.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 62
