‘I’d wish you luck,’ he said as we parted, ‘but I think you are going to need more than damned luck!’
Visiting hours were obviously over, but that was not a problem for one such as me. I was soon at Rowan Locke’s bedside. And I let the relief flood through me; I wasn’t experiencing that thirst for her blood as I had amidst the events of last night. If I had, I wondered, would James have intervened?
However, it hadn’t been plain sailing. From the moment I had stepped silently into the hospital building, her intoxicating scent had been clearly discernible above the vile, institutional-chemical stench of the place … calling me. But there was a choice tonight. Tonight … I was simply being teased. I knew I couldn’t be blasé, though. At the first sign of trouble, I would be out of there.
My relief at being in control evaporated the instant I took in Rowan Locke’s sleeping form. She was broken, brutalised. Needles were coming out of her hands, connected to various fluid-filled bags hanging on the metal contraption to the side of her bed; her head was taped up, as I knew her right foot would be under the sheets. And I had done this to her. Here I was congratulating myself on not experiencing the urge to suck her dry – yet, I had broken her. I was mortified and ashamed.
I might feel vulnerable, I realised, but she was the epitome of vulnerability. But even broken and so unquestionably fragile, she was still bewitchingly beautiful.
I recalled appreciating her physical charm, even in the midst of our previous encounter. Looking at her now, I concluded she was, without doubt, the most pleasing woman I had ever seen.
I seemed unable to control the direction of my thoughts. As I stared at her, transfixed, I caught myself wondering, had I met Rowan Locke as the human Nathaniel Gray, would I have rested until she was my wife? Would I have said, to hell with the list of prerequisites I had so carefully prepared? I had had a lot of them. So many so, Elizabeth had considered them to be quite impossible to meet, thus a fail-safe method of ensuring I never became exposed to the vulnerability that opening up my heart would entail. But I found myself thinking, had Rowan Locke been the housemaid, I would have still wanted her. Whoever she was, I would have attended countless balls, undertaken no end of small-talk, and would have laid my heart wide open. I would have done anything to secure her.
I dragged my eyes away. Clearly coming tonight had not been a good idea. Damn James for being right! And yet … I didn’t want to leave.
There was no logic whatsoever to my thoughts. I had met this woman less than twenty-four hours ago, and she was the cause of the most painful and traumatic moments of my immortality. It was nonsensical I should feel this way. I shook my head. It was nonsensical I was feeling at all.
Nevertheless, I found myself thinking how it could have been. Had I met Rowan Locke as a human, our first meeting would have been so very different. And without the devastating side-effects to us both. I even imagined a little heart-faced, freckle-nosed girl, with strawberry-blonde ringlets and my mother’s soft brown eyes, and a boy, with dark unruly hair like my own, and Rowan Locke’s incredible green eyes and fair complexion. I imagined them running noisily and happily from room to room at Ridings, and their splashing in the lake as I, and Rowan Gray, looked proudly upon our exquisite children.
Enough! This could absolutely not be happening – how could I have possibly thought things could get no worse?
I was a vampire for Christ’s sake! And she was so clearly human. And I had already nearly killed her – twice! She almost certainly hated me – and I still didn’t know if she was knowingly torturing me.
God, I prayed James hadn’t been tuned in. I doubted it. Had he been, he would have stormed in by now and physically dragged me away, as I would have done him.
My mind was a rambling mess. Logic was my forte, yet it had deserted me. I reminded myself why I was here: to apologise before closing the chapter and escaping to the other side of the world; and to establish whether she was an innocent. If she was knowingly doing this to me, then … I wasn’t going there.
I was thankful she was sleeping. I had no idea what I was going to say to her. I had always been a creature of few words – one-to-one always being easier for me – but how was I going to be able to express my mortification? How could any words express how badly I felt about hurting her? How could I ensure she neither hated nor feared me?
And then there was the not insignificant complication of my being tongue-tied in her conscious presence; our torturous connection was hardly going to ease my already limited conversational skills. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to manage things.
I wrenched my eyes away, and moved to the end of the bed to look at her medical chart; they had doubled her painkillers tonight. The thought of her in pain stabbed me to the core. It had hurt last night too, even in the midst of everything that had happened. I took in the flowers around the room. I had forgotten that’s what humans did. I would get some of the early flowering roses from Ridings. I realised I had never, either as man or vampire, given a woman flowers … not even Elizabeth, despite my knowing her love of them. Sending this woman flowers didn’t mean anything, I reassured myself: it was the very least I could do in the circumstances.
I moved silently to pick up one of the half-a-dozen cards standing on the mobile hospital table. The card in my hand was made from a piece of standard white A4 printer-paper. Folded only approximately in half, it had obviously been made by a child. On its front, a stick-figure with a skirt and long red hair had been drawn in coloured pen; two smaller stick-figures with spiky hair were either side. They were all holding stick-hands; some with six fingers, some with two, and some with three and four. I was … touched at the innocence, and the fact that, by chance, not one of the hands had the requisite five digits.
All three figures had impossibly large smiles lighting up their faces. In the sky was a bright yellow sun; under their feet, what I could only assume to be, blue grass. I read the words within the card: get Well Aunty rowAn and come and play witH Us Soon. LOVE Nathan and Tom. Every bit of available space was covered in kisses. Ninety-seven of them, I instantaneously processed.
I continued to inspect each of the cards around the room. As I put the last card back, my eyes were drawn to the waste-paper basket under the table. It contained a discarded bunch of fresh flowers, still in their wrapping, and a piece of, what must have been, the small card that accompanied it. I retrieved the piece and quickly found three others, slotting them back together. Their scent was repulsive, but they had come from the bin.
On the front of the card was a nondescript picture of a pink gerbera flower, and inside, in a tiny swirling script, the words: ‘My Dearest Rowan, I find myself having to say sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It was not yet our time.’ It was signed with an extravagant, flourishing S. I was intrigued. Who was ‘S’? Why was he sorry? Why were the flowers so clearly discarded? And, most significantly, Why was he calling her ‘My Dearest Rowan’?
There was so much I didn’t know about Rowan Locke, and I found I wanted to know everything; every tiny little detail of her life. It could be argued, it was the sensible thing to do – it might provide a clue as to what had happened, and a solution to my current … problems. But it didn’t feel sensible. It felt borderline obsessive. I could not allow this to happen. Van Gogh’s Starry Night was one thing; a human woman who tortured me, quite another.
I spent much of the night watching over her, getting progressively angrier with myself for being responsible for her hospitalisation. It was about 4 a.m. when it became obvious she was having a nightmare. Nightmares no longer haunt me, my sleep being deep and dreamless. But I recalled those following my mother’s death, and those in the fallout of 1817. I wanted to wake her, to comfort her as I would once have liked to have been comforted myself. But I knew it would terrify her as much, if not more, than the nightmare itself.
I was filled with horror as she started to mumble, ‘Get away from me. I’ll scream!’ Words that were repeated again and ag
ain. Was this nightmare about me? Could the events of that night have sparked the sort of terror she was now experiencing? I vehemently prayed not.
The nightmare passed before I was able to put into action any alternative plan for waking her. I had been working through ways of alerting the medical staff to her condition. But despite its passing, I could not bear to helplessly watch her restless sleep further. I saw sunrise from the hospital roof. There I lay within the shadows until official visiting hours, trying to come to terms with my own terror at being face-to-face with a conscious Rowan Locke.
I had known when she awoke: 6.49 a.m. From that point, I was party to her deepest, innermost feelings; although how many I understood, I know not. They appeared less extreme than before. I guessed there were fewer stimuli and perhaps the increased painkillers were having an impact? But, nevertheless, they were the reason I lay on the roof, attempting to take deep, calming breaths.
James had checked on me but I needed to be able to do this alone. I was proposing to hold some kind of half-respectable conversation with my torturer that betrayed nothing about me. I had to get things under control.
I missed the start of visiting hours. In fact, I didn’t feel able to venture from the roof until early afternoon – fifteen minutes after she had been administered another double-dose of painkillers. They definitely had a calming effect.
I walked through the now-busy hospital at human-speed, soundless as a vampire. I, nevertheless, felt clumsy.
I stopped breathing as I experienced that revolting, acrid smell again. My hackles went up. It was no wonder humans contracted God-only-knows-what in hospitals, if they never emptied their bins. The sooner Rowan was out of there, the better.
I walked around a male and female, evidently in argument.
‘Your meddling will not stop me!’ he hissed. ‘All these years you hid—’
‘You are deluded!’ she snapped. ‘And call it what you like, but I warn you now, Simeon – you ever come near again, I will consider it an act of war. And you will experience my full force!’
Though physically petite, the woman was clearly holding her own. She sounded formidable.
I turned the corner, skirted around a knee-high human child, and found myself at the half-open door to Rowan’s room. I fought the urge to walk straight past; I needed to do this.
Bracing myself, I tapped on the door, gently nudging it open a little further. I had no idea how this was going to go. Was she terrified of me and about to start screaming the hospital down? Would she even agree to see me? I was nervous as hell.
Looking towards the head of the bed, I connected immediately with those remarkable eyes; the same eyes I had been unable to keep out of my head since first encountering them. My immortal heart produced several extra beats, and I could have sworn I felt light-headed.
I had a distinct sensation that any sense I might still possess was about to go straight out of the window.
‘Am I welcome?’ A simple question, but not so simple to get the cautious words out in an audible fashion.
She was both surprised and shocked to see me; her expressive eyes communicating what I knew her to be feeling. But could I also feel … irritation? She blushed becomingly, sending my vampire juices racing. This was going to be difficult.
Breaking eye contact, she awkwardly used her hands to repeatedly smooth her wonderful, sleep-tussled hair and to straighten her bedding and then again back up to her hair. I was pleased to see she was sat up today, propped against pillows, and needles were no longer assaulting her fragile body.
‘Nathaniel Gray …’ she said quietly, in that unique melodic way she had of saying my name.
I felt a warm glow flow through my cold veins.
‘… it all depends on whether you’re going to give killing me another go.’
Not possessing the ability to read human thoughts, it took me too long to take in the mischievous sparkle in her eyes.
And then she grinned at me.
Her face lit up in a way I had never before seen it. Relief flooded through me – unspeakable relief – and I found myself spellbound by her face. A not unpleasant tingling sensation flooded my body.
‘It was a joke! I didn’t for one moment think you’d take it seriously – unless of course, you have come to kill me, and my sister’s got it right?’
I had been walking more fully into the room but paused mid-stride at her latest revelation. What could her sister have got right? I should be getting seriously panicked. And I was. Yet I couldn’t stop thinking that whatever happened, it was worth it to have experienced the pleasure that flooded my being – my pleasure – as she smiled and her eyes lit up like that. It felt so good. How long had I been without this sensation? Had I ever experienced such a feeling before? I didn’t think so. And I had thought it would be her emotions that would cause me problems.
She looked abashed but started to laugh; perhaps at me, I knew not – nor cared. It was a wonderful sound to my ears. It was like a harmony of all my favourite sounds: that magical morning bird song that erupts at first light in earliest spring; the sound of a gurgling brook as the first waters start flowing after a big freeze … and her own light, melodic voice, when she spoke my name.
And then she winced.
I snapped out of my revelries. My voice raw, I asked, ‘Are you in pain?’
She looked at me for a long moment, taking in my face but focusing on my eyes, which I doubted could fully hide my anguish. I was concerned; I knew my unshrouded eyes were far too expressive and intense for human company, and my shroud had never been designed to hide such a depth of feeling.
‘No … I’m okay,’ she replied slowly, before speaking rapidly. ‘I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have joked like that – it was insensitive and inappropriate and – I don’t know why I … Around you I – I’ll just shut up!’ She was red in the face and looking anywhere but at me.
‘No!’ I cried, slightly too forcefully, almost betraying my desperate desire to hear her voice. I urged more quietly, ‘Please do not.’
We held each other’s gaze, neither seeming able to look away. Could I be using my charm, unconsciously? I looked at her flushed cheeks and reluctantly turned away. Use of the charm would be unforgivable in these circumstances, but would have explained her feelings, that had, for a moment, been a wonderful complementary symphony to whatever I, myself, was now feeling.
Was I losing control of when my charm was engaged, too? I reached the extraordinary decision: I would worry about that later. For the moment, I wished to focus entirely on Rowan Locke.
Released from my gaze, she became fascinated by a bit of fluff on the pink hospital blanket. ‘It’s really best I do.’ She laughed awkwardly, still playing with the fluff.
I inhaled so I had further air in my lungs with which to speak. She smelt delectable. ‘I needed to say sorry. I am mortified over what I have done to you.’
‘Don’t worry about it – it was an accident. Everyone has accidents.’
‘Not I,’ I confessed, quietly.
‘Well – you do now!’
I found myself smiling, despite my nerves and the topic of our conversation. ‘Yes, I do now,’ I conceded.
Stealing a quick glance at me, she asked, ‘You’ve seriously never had a car accident before?’
‘No.’
‘How is that possible?’
Disguising my frown, I said, ‘I am sorry?’
‘You are such a crap driver!’
I stared at her dumbfounded before finding myself laughing. My body and mind were not completely my own; I was being infiltrated, was a bag of nerves. She was asking questions of me I couldn’t possibly answer – and I was being criticised – yet I was enjoying her company. I was finding that when her emotions were placed in context and not a blind onslaught, they were that much more manageable. And then there was, of course, that matter of my being distracted by, what could only be described as, my own pleasure at her company.
But in this particular mom
ent … In this particular moment as I laughed and held her eyes, her emotions were as pleasurable to experience as my own.
‘It was not a good night,’ I mused, after she had looked away. Her blush was so attractive.
‘Tell me about it … You are insured?’
For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. I assumed I was, but that sort of thing was handled by Richard Morley. He undertakes our more formal communications with the human world and much of the management of our personal properties and estates, although not the now vast assets of Gray Investments, for which I have my own dedicated team.
But did he organise car insurance?
She looked at me suspiciously, taking my pause as a negative, before again inflicting me with that grin of hers. ‘Ha! Ha! Well that was the simplest of the options my sister came up with. But she will be disappointed. Poor Clare! She’d so many more exciting explanations.’
‘What your sister had right …’ I murmured.
‘You wouldn’t believe what she came up with about you, Nathaniel Gray.’
I tentatively met her gaze. What had she come up with about me? I didn’t think I could feel fear but … Hoping I had secured a calm exterior mask, I hedged. ‘Please call me Nate.’
She shook her head at me. ‘Okay, Nate …’ She paused to grin. ‘After your performance at the accident, Clare was all for you being Mafioso, or on the run from the police, or a real-life James Bond. Failing that, she thought you might simply be uninsured – but she wasn’t particularly enamoured with that one!’
I let out the air I had evidently been holding in my lungs and chuckled, whilst running a hand over my face. We were both smiling broadly now. My smile started as one of relief, but ended up as one of sheer exhilaration at the beauty before me.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Honestly, you need to know my sister.’ Sounding more serious, she added, ‘But you have to admit, it was really bizarre. No police, no ambulance, no insurance companies – being driven to London! That is what happened, isn’t it? It just wasn’t really normal.’
No Such Thing As Immortality Page 4
