Dark Secrets Box Set

by Angela M Hudson

  I slumped on my hand a little further. None of it mattered though, did it? Because he’d be gone soon, probably taking his immortal Emily with him, and leave us lowly humans behind to suffer the aches of our broken hearts alone.

  “Here.” David replaced my cold coffee cup with a warm one.

  “Oh, um, thanks.” I gave him a half smile, dropping my gaze immediately.

  “Okay, that’s it,” he said firmly, sitting down. “We can’t go on like this. What’s wrong?”

  Without hesitation, I fixed my teary eyes on him and said, “You were flirting with Emily.”

  “Flirting?” He almost fell off his seat. “Ara, that is not flirting. We’re friends. That’s all.”

  I nodded, tinkering with the rim of my cup. “But she’s… so normal and, I mean, she’s blonde and pretty and…” And better for him than I am; a vampire; a level-headed girl.

  “Ara, I’m a vampire”—his jaw set stiff as he spoke—“a reasonably old one, at that. You know I’ve had other girls. You know they’ve been different to you, but if they were better for me than you, I’d still be with them. I’d have stuck around when I caught them kissing their ex-fiancé, I’d have fought to be with them, even though their life would be at risk for it.”

  “I know.” I shrugged slowly. “But—”

  “But it’s human nature to wonder,” he said with a nod.

  “Yes. And, well, I was quietly wondering. You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

  “But I’m glad I did.” He leaned back, tucking his feet under the table. “There is only one thing worse than discussing a past you wish to leave behind, Ara, and that is when people make their own assumptions based on facts others have given them. So, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “Really?” A smile lifted my cheeks.

  “Discretionally.”

  Which meant he wouldn’t tell me anything, but would make it seem like he had, until I thought carefully about it later. It was a talent of his. “Is Emily your type?”

  David looked up at her door, his long fingers tapping the table. “No.”

  “How many girls have you dated?”

  He went to laugh, covering his mouth with a soft fist. “Um, really? You want to know that?”

  I nodded.

  David sat taller. “Um, okay. Well, uh… I don’t know.”

  “Ten… fifteen…?”

  “Ara, I’m a hundred-and-twenty years old. I’ve had three serious relationships in my life, and the rest have been…”

  “Not so serious?” I suggested.

  He looked at Emily’s door again, scratching his brow. I looked too.

  “What? What’s the deal with Emily?” I said.

  “She’s laughing at me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, Ara”—he leaned forward, placing both hands on the table in front of me—“I dated girls for one reason, and it wasn’t love. I hardly had time for my own primal needs, let alone relationships.”

  “So, you were a fly guy?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Were they all vampires?”

  He went to answer, but stopped and pressed his lips into a hard line before reluctantly saying, “Yes.”

  “Do you still see any of them, were they from your Set?”

  “Some.” He nodded. “The vampire community becomes very small after a few decades, my love. I’m pretty sure everyone’s dated or been in love with everyone at some point. And there’s really no way to avoid seeing them again.”

  “I guess that must suck—not really having a great selection.”

  He laughed. “Yeah.”

  “So, have you ever loved someone enough to want them for forever?”

  “Uh, well, aside from you, not for forever, no. Or I wouldn’t be here. But, I thought I wanted to marry a girl once.”

  I looked up quickly. “Who?”

  “A girl named Morgaine.”

  “Who was she?”

  “She was a vampire, of sorts. She… we were just too different.” He shook his head, staring at the table. “But yes, I had girlfriends, and I loved all of them in ways. Not for long though, Ara. I’m not… I wasn’t that kinda guy.”

  “So, what happened to her—to Morgaine?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I like long stories.”

  He nodded, then motioned toward my cup. “Drink, while it’s hot.”

  I took that as David severing this direction of conversation. But I was in no way done with our walk through time. “Did you have to give up the love of a girl when you became a vampire?”

  His distant smile seemed to reflect days gone by. “Not love, no.”

  I stared at him for a moment, waiting for an elaboration. He grabbed my hand and stood up. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “For a walk in the past.”

  “The past?” I moaned, leaving my tasty coffee to go cold on the table.

  “Yeah, I wanna teach you a thing or two about history.” His eyes lit up on the corners, a perfect toothy smile slipping across his lips.

  * * *

  We hopped out of the car and wandered up the wooden steps of the town museum, featured in an old house donated by one of the founders. It smelled of polished wood and warm paper, while the cool breeze carried the scent of engine fuel and aged books through the open space. Soft voices of pre-recorded history lectures hummed gently in rooms beyond, making it feel as though someone was home, despite how empty and quiet it was in here otherwise.

  “I don’t see what you can teach me about history that I haven’t already seen here,” I remarked snidely as we dropped a gold coin in the wooden box by the door and grabbed a pamphlet.

  David strolled causally with his hands behind his back, sporting a smug grin. “We’ll see.”

  “Oh, you just love being right, don’t you?”

  “It’s just so easy for me.”

  “Well, I’m going to make it my mission to prove you wrong now.”

  He nodded, unperturbed. “You can try.”

  “It’s probably not worth the effort.”

  “See, you’re already learning,” he said and nodded to the room ahead. “You’ve heard of Harry Houdini?”

  “Yeah. The magician, right?” We stopped in front of an aircraft display. The old Cessna on the roof, hoisted to the rafters by metal cables, still smelled of oil—gritty and dry.

  “Yes,” David said. “But what most people don’t know is that he was also a pioneer of flight.”

  My brow creased. “You’re making that up.”

  “No, I’m not, sweetheart. I wouldn’t do that. You see?” He pressed a fingertip to an image on the carpet-backed pin-board: two men sitting inside the open-aired cockpit of what looked like a toy plane; it had wings of wood, longer than modern planes—stacked on top each other—with wheels that belonged on a bicycle. “That’s Harry Houdini,” he said.

  “Wow. Hey, you were alive then, did you ever meet him?”

  “You lived in Australia, did you ever meet The Crock Hunter?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly.” He shook his head, looking back at the image. “But, I know his story. I followed it in the papers. Harry”—he pointed to the man—“was the first person ever to fly a powered aircraft in Australia.”

  “Really? I should’ve known that.”

  “It’s not really common knowledge.”

  “So, what kind of plane is that?” I leaned closer. “I know what a Cessna and a bi-plane are, but that’s, like, wooden or something, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is.” He smiled. “It was a French Voisin biplane. He paid five thousand dollars for it, I believe. Here, it says, He shipped it over to Australia in nineteen-ten.” David rubbed his chin. “I think it was at Diggers Rest, near Melbourne, that he made the flight.”

  I scrolled down the page of information and, sure enough, the words Diggers Rest stood out. “Okay, I’m impressed.”

  David
kind of skipped on his toe then, with his hands behind his back as he walked away.

  “Guess I was wrong,” I noted, catching up to him. “You did teach me something I didn’t know.”

  “There’s so much to learn about the world, Ara.” He seemed to motion around the museum, or maybe the world, with a kind of fascination I’d never seen in him before. “I’ve had nearly two lifetimes, and I still have not seen even half of its wonders.”

  “Yet you always seem to know everything.”

  “No, mon amour. I don’t know everything. In fact, when I visited a museum last, I learned something new.”

  “Really? What was that?” I said with a laugh.

  “That Leonardo da Vinci didn’t, in fact, invent the scissors, despite what you learned in history class.” He turned his head to one side, bringing his shoulder up with the rise of a very cheeky grin.

  “Well, I feel smarter now for having learned that useless little fact.”

  We wandered side by side through the house, David pointing out interesting facts from a firsthand experience of history, and as we came to an almost deserted section, we stopped. “This is why I brought you here.” He slipped his fingers through mine, shocking me a little as our palms touched. I hadn’t expected he’d ever touch me again after what I did with Mike.

  “The World War One display?”

  “Yes.” When the other visitors left the room, David looked over his shoulder, then spun around slowly, checking for more spectators, I assume. “You’ll love this,” he said, dragging me to the center of a large freestanding pin-board. “I first noticed this about ten years ago. Ever since, I almost feel like this place connects me to my old life.”

  I stood before the collage of paper cut-outs and faded sepia images, mixed among black and whites, all thumbtacked carefully to the carpet wall. “You need to come here to feel connected?” I asked. I didn’t know he even needed to feel connected.

  “I still have feelings, Ara. Nostalgia being one of them.” He looked away. “Sometimes.”

  “Okay, so… what am I looking at here?”

  He scrolled along the different images, then pointed to a group-shot of about ten men standing together; some in uniform, some shirtless. “Look closer at this picture.”

  Reluctantly, since I had no idea what I was looking for, I leaned a little closer and scanned the image, passing over a boy with a mustache, a boy holding a gun and a boy smoking, but stopped, stark-still, my blood running cold in the tops of my arms, when I saw a boy with dark hair, his easy smile and aura of confidence standing out among the few emaciated men beside him. “This is yo—”

  “Shh. It’s not something I like people to know.” He nodded to an old couple that’d slipped into the room, unnoticed by me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s a dumb thing to say, but… you look exactly the same.”

  “Yeah, will you look at that?” A man, suddenly poking his head right between David’s and my shoulders, pointed to the picture we were gawking at. “Ancestor of yours, son?”

  “Uh, yes, he was my great-grandfather,” David said, as though it was a fact he’d shared many times.

  “Dead-ringer for the old codger, ehy?” the man said, clapping David on the shoulder.

  David just winked at me, both of us smiling in our private moment of amusement. When the man and his wife walked away, I took a closer look at the picture, at my David, looking so hot in his uniform. “Was anyone else like you? A… vampire?” I whispered the last word.

  David looked at the image again, his lips pressed thin. “I wish it had been possible.”

  “Did you fight in World War Two as well?”

  Without a word, he nodded, growing taller.

  “You’re very brave,” I said.

  “No I’m not, Ara. I went in knowing I couldn’t die. But these guys”—he smiled, nodding at the photo—“these guys put everything on the line to protect what they loved; to stand up for what they believed in. I was just there to eat the bad guys.”

  I could tell from the way he was smiling that he meant that as a joke—a really bad, vampire-humor joke. “That’s not entirely true, David. You said your uncle changed you because you wanted to join the army. So, you can’t have been craving human blood then.”

  A broad grin broke out across his lips, making his eyes sparkle. “Okay, you got me there. But I wasn’t afraid to die, because I wasn’t going to war, remember? I joined before war broke out.”

  “Then why did your uncle change you if there was no risk of death?”

  “Because, when you join a cause where guns are involved, there is always death. It was naive of any of us to think otherwise. My uncle was not so. He’d been around for many centuries and knew exactly what war entailed.” David leaned a little closer and whispered the next part. “He fought in wars as far back as The Hundred Years’ War.”

  “Wow, that is really cool.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I know. We grew up hearing stories.”

  “So, you always knew what he was then?”

  “It was never a secret.”

  “You must have loved him, to be boys so young and keep that to yourselves.”

  “There is a certain level of respect my uncle commands.” David’s shoulders straightened. “Which is why, when Jason and I told him we wanted to join the army and he insisted we’d be going to our deaths, we heeded his words, despite what we believed.”

  “Lucky you did.” I remembered the gravestones David had shown me before he left last year: the ones of him and Jason when they apparently died in the wars.

  “Yes. Lucky. But he’d have forced us to change if we’d not obliged.”

  “Is he allowed to do that?”

  David’s thoughts stayed hidden behind his smiling eyes. “No.”

  “So, how old is he—your uncle?”

  “Old?” He frowned. “We don’t really measure age after a few hundred years.”

  “Oh, so ancient is a better word.”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Well, how ancient is he, I mean, like, how long ago was he born?”

  “He never told us that much, only that he’d been around to see a first-hand account of the Bubonic Plague and was the first member of the Council. Probably met Merlin, too.”

  We both laughed softly.

  “That’s kind of gross. Being that old. Doesn’t he, like, rot or something?”

  David laughed. “Nope, fresh as the day he was born. Just smarter.”

  “So, he’s not really your uncle, then? If he was born all those centuries ago.”

  “Technically, no. But we’re descendants of his brother.” David and I started walking again to a display near a large open window. The corner store down the road was cooking sausage-rolls, and the scent wafted in with the breeze.

  “So, he kind of is your uncle—distant uncle,” I said.

  “Yes, but I have only ever thought of him as my uncle. And yet, he’s always been more like a father.” David stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. “He swore in blood to his dying brother to protect and watch over the blood of Knight for eternity.”

  “Must be hard for you then—to be an outlaw and not be able to see him anymore.”

  David nodded, looking at the ground. “More than you know.”

  “I’m sorry.” Because it was all my fault.

  “It’s worth it.” He pressed his lips together and then looked up at me. I smiled. He smiled back.

  But the sweet moment where everything between us was all right passed too quickly, because it wasn’t all right. Not at all. I’d still kissed Mike and I’d still dreamed about his brother, who I couldn’t get out of my head no matter how much I tried.

  “So…” I leaned on the wall beside him. “How come Jason wasn’t in any of those photos?”

  David’s smile faded. “That was taken after we were separated, when he became a POW. He was executed sometime in nineteen-sixteen.”

  “Did they bury him?�
�� I always wondered if the boys had to dig their way out of a coffin after feigning death.

  “Yes.”

  Creepy. I almost felt sorry for Jason. “Have you ever been buried?”

  David hesitated. “No.”

  “Does it bother you to talk about this—to talk about Jason?” I said.

  He studied me carefully. I thickened the mind blanket. “Does it bother you?”

  “No.”

  “It should.” He stood up from the wall and walked to the window. “It bothers me to think of him.”

  “I’m sorry.” I stood beside him. “I guess we both just deal with things differently.”

  “There’s a picture of him in the World War Two display,” he said, out of the blue.

  “There is?” My interests piqued, maybe a little too much.

  “Yes. But it’s not here. It’s in Washington.”

  “Oh.”

  David, keeping his eyes on the day outside, his hands in his pockets, said, “His plane was shot down during the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

  “Oh my God. Was he hurt?”

  “Burned beyond recognition.”

  “You can burn?”

  “Yeah,” he scoffed, coming back to life. “Fire is the one thing that can penetrate us without force of vampire teeth or implements driven by our hands. It won’t kill us, but it’ll melt our flesh right off.”

  “Ouch. So, that would’ve really hurt, right?”

  “I’ve never been burned, but Jason said it was the worst six weeks of his life—trying to recover. He returned to base after that, told them he’d been lost out at sea all this time holding onto a plank of wood to survive.”

  “And they believed him?”

  “Well, there was really too much else to be worrying about by that point. We were officially at war. They all but threw him back in a plane and sent him off.”

  “Why did he go back? Why not just stay dead?”

  David toed a raised nail in the floorboard. “My brother wanted to go to war. He was hell-bent on defending this great new world and would never have left his comrades a man short.”

  “Sounds like a completely different guy.”

  He nodded, taking great interest in something outside, a kind of focused, furrowed-brow look to him. “He never received any medals or special honors for his bravery either. Something that, to this day, I find unjust.”