Dark Secrets Box Set

by Angela M Hudson

  “Are you okay?” David asked, his voice coming across with an undertone of a smile. When he looked up at me with liquid-red lips and jet-black eyes, I dropped my head back and smiled.

  “I like you like this.”

  “Ha,” he laughed softly, sliding his body over mine until he came to rest against me. “You always were a little sadistic.”

  I studied his bloodied lips, considering them long before I said, “Kiss me.”

  And he did. Human blood and vampire blood once again mixed in my mouth—salt and sugar, stinging my lips a little—making a new memory for me to hold onto when I breathed his sweet, chocolaty cologne. I traced his fang with my tongue then drew his lip to my teeth, and bit down.

  “Ow,” he muttered into my mouth. “You cut me!”

  My eyes blurred then focused on his face right in front of mine. “I did?”

  “Yes.” He touched his finger to the cut, rolling his hand away to reveal two small breaks in the skin, like a rabbit had bitten him.

  “Serious?” I tried to sit up a little, but the weight of his body had me pinned. “How?”

  “I’m weak.” He placed both hands by my shoulders, straightening them so his body lifted from mine. “You could bite me right now, and I’d break.”

  A freight train sped through my chest, quickening my heart. “Will you let me try?”

  His bent elbows brought him closer. “I’d like that.”

  “Really? Do you really think it’ll work?”

  “Yeah, I barely needed to scratch it a second ago to get the blood out.”

  “Why are you so weak?” I kept tracing the skin on his neck, imagining cutting through it.

  “Maybe because this is the first blood I’ve had in nearly a fortnight.”

  “Ouch. It must have hurt to go so long without food.”

  “You might say I felt I deserved it.”

  I offered a sympathetic pout to his bashful smile. “How ’bout I hurt you instead, with my teeth. I think that’s a better punishment.”

  “I have to say, I agree.”

  We both laughed.

  My jaw stretched and my tongue pulled to the back of my throat as I drew the cold air before the bite, practicing the best theatrical version of a vampire I could manage. My eyes bulged, my teeth fixing into his flesh, sending my mind racing as it cracked open under my teeth, like biting into a cling-wrapped sandwich. Each tiny tooth made it through, deeper where my own puny fangs sat.

  “Okay, now I see why vampires starve themselves to have humans feed from them,” he said, half holding his breath between words.

  My persistent gnawing broke some major artery or something then, and I released the tension of my jaw to draw back the liquid, barely keeping up with what spilled into my mouth. It felt good; a deep kind of good, and a warm tingle rose up from my stomach, making my heart thump unnaturally and bring a new kind of sensation, almost like being ultimately full of hot cocoa—your feet warmed by the fire, a soft pillow on your lap, and a few melted remains of marshmallow on the corner of your lip. Ultimate bliss.

  I turned my head away from his skin, dizzy and breathless but so strangely energized, my limbs racing with an almost electrical charge.

  David rolled onto his back, folding my floppy body against his chest. “Are you okay, my love?”

  “Mm-hm.” I nodded, taking a long, deep breath. “Eric was right.”

  “About what?” David’s arm tightened around me.

  “Lust.” I could barely stay awake long enough to form words. “The kill is an act of lust. Blood lust… desire.”

  “Yes. It’s not supposed to hurt, like my brother’s…” he said the end bit quieter, probably not intended for my ears, but I heard it anyway.

  “No. It was nothing like Jason’s. Yours was like… magic.”

  “Yes.” He swiped my hair back and kissed my head. “Just like magic.”

  “I like your magic,” I whispered, taking the hand of the Sandman as he led me away to the world of restful dreams.

  11

  The daylight felt unwelcome in my room, intruding on my dreams after what felt like only ten minutes. I could still feel the tingle of David’s blood all through my body, like an electrical current, charging and exciting my skin. I wanted more of the night, more blood, more of… him. But outside, life was in full swing, with cars and people out and about, while the heat bounced off the pavement and entered my room, making me sticky and a little uncomfortable where I lay in the crook of David’s arm. I reached across and traced a gentle line along his waist under the sheet. He was cool again, as if sleeping had used up every ounce of blood he’d drank last night.

  “David?” I whispered quietly, but only a deep, restful breath responded. I pushed up and knelt beside him, taking a moment to bask in the perfection of his angelic face. He was so unguarded, his arm still shaped to hold my body, each breath coming in quietly through his slightly parted lips. I loved how peaceful he looked—how he could let all his predatory instincts go, and be as relaxed as any human—beside me, with me, trusting me. The wound on his neck had healed completely, leaving only a small trail of blood over his shoulder, like a tendril of long burgundy hair branching into pale pinks up his throat and along his jaw.

  In the kitchen, Emily and Mike spoke softly over the sound of a boiling kettle, their quiet whispers sounding louder in the still of the morning, indicating that, clearly, they’d not quashed Em’s curiosities about David’s return.

  I rubbed my face firmly, breathing away the stress, anxiety, sleep and year worth of heartache, but as my hands grazed past my mouth, dried flakes broke away from my skin, pulling the tiny hairs around my lip. Only flashes of the horrible state my face must be in entered my mind. I slowly rolled my hands away and looked down at them, the smear of last night’s feast staring back at me like red paint.

  “Oh, my holy God,” I whispered to myself. Nothing escaped the vestiges of our hunger last night—not my brand-new sheets, not my chest, my fingernails, even the ends of my hair were all stuck together. I gently lifted the sheet away from David’s chest and covered my mouth, the shake of hilarity moving up my insides in a silent giggle.

  “Look across the room.” David smiled sweetly, keeping his eyes closed. “You won’t find it so funny then.”

  He was right. As my gaze reached the antique mirror, I gasped at the sight of frizzy brown hair framing the pale, blood-covered face of the girl sitting next to the ultimately still corpse in her bed. “Oh, my God,” I squeaked, breaking into a vain attempt at removing the leftovers from my face. “This room looks like the set of a B-grade horror film or a cheap crime drama.”

  “No,” he said simply. “Crime scenes really do look this overdone.”

  “Speak from experience, do you?”

  “Yes, but not for the reason you think.”

  “What reason then?”

  He opened one eye, clearly not in a hurry to be awake. “I used to be a detective.”

  “Serious?” I smirked. “You? A detective?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, except that you were probably investigating murders you committed.”

  The sharp corner of his lip angled toward his dimple. “Very funny.”

  “I thought it was,” I said, but my self-amused chuckle stopped short at the sound of my door handle grating in a turn, my hand reaching out like a stop sign.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Emily chirped as she glided in, whitewash fear paling her face the moment she looked up. “Oh, my God!”

  “Em—”

  “You killed him.” The stack of letters in her hand fell to the floor. “He’s dead! Mike! Mike—”

  “Shh. Em—” I pleaded over the top of her screams, trying to get up, but David grabbed my arm and held me in place as Mike charged in and scooped the screaming ball of Emily into his arms, folding her face into his chest.

  “He’s dead. He’s…” she sobbed.

  Mike took one look at the supposedly dea
d 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.

  “Em,” Mike whispered into her hair. “He’s not dead. Look.”

  She stopped whimpering and turned her head slowly, her eyes meeting the smile in David’s. “This is a joke?”

  “No, it’s—”

  “You guys are pranking me. I knew it!” She pushed out from Mike’s arms and before I knew what she was doing, ripped the sheet away from my naked body, screaming again under the sound of Mike’s new laughter. But his smile dropped quickly when his eyes travelled the length of my body and spotted the purple, welting bruises. I looked like an escaped sample product from a giant-mosquito convention.

  David grabbed the sheet, covering me over again. “Eyes off, brother.”

  “I’m not checking her out, David.” His frown deepened. “Are you sure you did enough damage there, mate? You’re supposed to protect her, not eat her.”

  David threw a pillow at him.

  “Nice try.” Mike laughed, catching it. “I may be human, but I still have quick reflexes.”

  David stole the pillow from under my elbow and threw that one, too. Mike caught it, no surprise there, but as he lowered it and his eyes swept past my face, pinpointing my neck, he froze.

  “Wait. Did you actually… bite her—with your teeth?”

  David smiled, his eyes becoming small. “Yes.”

  Mike took a quick step forward, the merciless protector within him rising to the call of duty. “You—”

  “Relax.” David lay back on crossed arms. “I didn’t use my fangs.”

  “What do you mean? How can you not? Look at those things.”

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

  “That”—Mike pointed at me—“is not delicately. Look what you’ve—”

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

  They both stopped to look at Emily, muttering an apology.

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

  She looked at Mike. He nodded then sat on the foot of the bed, folding his arms smugly, 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.

  “Look, there’s a reason for all of this.” I just had to figure it out as I went along. “See, David’s—”

  “A vampire,” Mike interjected.

  Emily’s head whipped around so fast I thought it might pop off. She studied David carefully, thoughts moving her features, then dropped her arms and sat between Mike and me, saying nothing.

  “Take your time,” David said softly. “You don’t have to say a thing until you’re ready.”

  Mike kept his arms folded, clearly giving her space to process it, while my heart beat in my chest so fiercely I was sure even Em could hear it.

  “Well,” she said, finally. “That makes… I mean, you have no idea how many things that explains.”

  David chuckled softly, folding a corner of the sheet over a trail of blood in front of him, then looked back up as Em opened her mouth to speak again.

  “So, you’re not really married, David?”

  “No.”

  A shower of relief rained down over her. “I knew it.”

  “I know you did.”

  She looked up from David and straight at me. “Ara, I thought you’d killed him. And you!” She turned and slapped Mike on the chest. “You lied to me. You said you didn’t know why David wouldn’t stay.”

  “No, I said if I knew the truth, I most likely would definitely not be inclined to inform you.” He flashed that cheeky smile that always got him out of trouble with me.

  Emily didn’t find it so charming. She looked back at David and me, pointing to her lip. “So, you drink each other’s blood?”

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

  “My God. Why?”

  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.

  “So, if you’re a vampire, 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.

  “Ara?” she prompted.

  “She can’t be changed,” Mike said.

  “Why?”

  “You have to have a specific gene.”

  Her face folded in confusion. “And… you don’t have it, Ara?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have a gene test done?”

  “No,” I said.

  The confusion deepened. “Then… so you tried it—you tried to become a vampire?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “In a roundabout way,” Mike added. I scowled at him.

  Emily sat quiet for a while, clearly running everything over in her mind. “Is that why you left her, David? Because she doesn’t have the gene?”

  He nodded.

  She sighed, rolling back into Mike’s arms. “I’m the worst friend in the world.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “All those things I said to you, Ara. It all just makes so much sense now—how you told me it wasn’t your choice to be apart.” She covered her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I should have been more supportive. I should’ve—”

  “Em.” I touched her knee, drawing my bloodied hand away quickly when I saw the state of it. “It’s really okay. I knew you’d be more supportive if I told you the truth.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  I shrugged.

  A loud car outside passed then, bringing normality into the room for a second, all of us turning our heads to the window until it passed and left us in the world of the supernatural again.

  “How can you know?” Emily said softly. “Without being turned…”

  “Know what?” I asked.

  “That you don’t have the gene?”

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

  “Who?” Mike asked.

  “David’s brother,” 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 said, 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 leaving me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have told me.” She folded her arms. “Do you know how much easier it would have made things?”

  “Yes, but I couldn’t say anything.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not allowed to. I almost did.” David looked up at me. 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.”

  She glared at him. “What’s yes?”

  “Yes, a vampire attacked Ara last year.”

  She covered her mouth. “Seriously?”

  “Yes,” I said under my breath.

  “Oh, Ara. I’m so sorry. Wait.” Her hand fell away from her mouth, eyes cutting through my vampire. “How did you know what I was thinking, David?”

  His crooked smile gave him away.

  Emily’s face went blank
and pale. “Have you always been able to do that?”

  His smile broadened, 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.”

  “Oh, God. So many… so many things I wouldn’t have wanted to share.” She couldn’t look at David, which he found rather amusing, while Mike seemed oddly troubled. I too wondered exactly what she would have thought that would mortify her so much.

  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 at that masquerade?”

  He nodded to himself, deeply troubled. “I… was at a meeting.”

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

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

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

  “Em,” Mike said again.

  “No. It’s not good enough. He’s a vampire. She’d never have been attacked if it weren’t for him.” She pointed right at David, her small sliver of hatred passing over the room. David looked down. “And then, what, you just left her while she was still in hospital, because she—”

  “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’s whole expression changed. “Jason? My Jason?”

  As if my words had filtered across the room slowly, entering Mike’s ears later than Emily’s, a great hole suddenly tore into his world. He covered his mouth, angling his face away.