“Well…” I felt better then, but that still felt really strange. “That’s kinda handy, I guess.”
“It was the same when Max and Josh were young, and we had Elora.”
“Max and Josh?”
“Mike’s sons. Well, Mike and Em’s sons.”
“They have other kids? But I thought they were just having their first.”
“Max and Josh were adopted,” he said. “Did you ever hear about the Immortal Damned?”
I racked my brain, trying to find those words, but no one had ever mentioned them. And still, something sparked then. I saw a dark cell and small round faces peering out at me, putting two and two together. If Max and Josh were adopted and David mentioned Immortal Damned, which my brain recalled were children in a cell, then maybe Mike’s kids were adopted from there. “Were they locked away?”
“Yes.” He laughed, a breathy laugh of relief. “You remember?”
“Not really. Only faces in a cell.”
“Well, Max and Josh were children made into vampires. It was once believed that they could not be controlled, and since we had no Lilithians with which to kill them back then, they were locked away in cells and forgotten about.”
“Oh my God.” I covered my mouth, seeing more of the horror in my memory.
“Until you came along, that is,” he said proudly.
“Me?”
“Yeah. Before we even found a way to return them to human form, which, I might add, is the main reason you and Jason discovered that was even possible—”
“Me and Jason?”
“Another story,” he said, waving his hand. “But yes, you freed them all from their cells and gave them a better life—gave them homes. Proved they could be rehabilitated. Following that, you and my brother discovered how to reverse immortality and you began the process of changing them all back. Mike adopted two of them—brothers—and the rest is history.”
“Wow.” I stared into space. “I just thought vampires could always be reversed. I never realized it was something recent.”
“Yeah, about twenty-years recent.”
“Wow.” I felt like I was learning so much about my past self, and she didn’t really seem all that bad. “So why did Brett say I had such a tragic life?” I asked. “It doesn’t sound all bad.”
“It wasn’t.” He smiled sadly. “But the life—the human life—you had that led you to me was tragic, and it shaped you for many years to come. So Fal… sorry, Brett may have told a few white lies to stop you wanting to know more, but he did have his reasons.”
“Which were?”
He swallowed hard. “We were afraid of losing you. There are people in our community that see the future—”
“Like Elora?”
“Yeah.” He smiled, his eyes glassy. “She told you?”
“No.” I shook my head, frowning. “At least, I don’t think so.”
His smile grew. “Maybe you remembered it.”
“Maybe.” I smiled too.
“Well, anyway, a prophet told Falcon that you would leave and never return if we told you about your old life—and… if I was the one to care for you while you were rehabilitating.”
My eyes widened. “Really? That’s why you didn’t care for me?”
He nodded. “Not that I was even given the choice, remember?”
I nodded.
“But had they told me that—about you running away—I would have told them where to shove that vision.” He laughed. “Nothing would have stopped me from caring for you.” His eyes saddened then. “And I would’ve messed up all hope for our future.”
I put my hand over his. “Only out of love. You can’t blame yourself for loving your wife unconditionally.”
He turned his hand over and curled his fingers around mine. “Says the girl that’s been fighting that love ever since we met.”
My shoulders came up self-consciously as I drew my hand away. It wasn’t intended as a reminder to keep his distance, and he didn’t take it that way either. I wanted to say that I wasn’t fighting it now, but I knew he’d tell me he wasn’t offering it either, so I just smiled, and he smiled back, then we sat drinking coffee and talking about nothing until Brett arrived home.
42
David
Ara chose a pink quilt for her new bedroom and had Mike cover the walls with butterflies. She would only sleep in there a few nights a week, but it was her room—just down the hall from mine, adjacent to the other hidden door to Harry’s room—her window overlooking the lake across the road.
When Mike realized how unintentionally cruel he’d been to keep her on the couch, he’d cried. He was one of the only other people that loved her once as much as I did, and it broke his heart, visibly, that he’d done that to her.
She felt bad for making him feel bad, even begged me not to tell him she’d been upset. She understood so little of the world that every time I came to realize that a little more, it made me feel like more of a monster for punishing her the way I did.
We’d started anew, as friends, but I accepted the fact that she would most likely never love me now after the way I treated her. Not in the way I wanted her to love me. Still wanted her to. Wanted this Ara to. Since getting to know her better this week, I’d seen her for the bright little spark she really was. I just wanted to spend all my time with her. Even asked if she’d come as my Cinderella for Halloween tomorrow night. But she’d already been costume shopping with Cal. My nemesis. The one thing truly standing in the way.
There was a remedy for that, however. Once he was a vampire, it would be immensely easy to trick him into breaking a supreme law, and then I’d be rid of him for at least a hundred years—a hundred years of grade-one torture.
As my evil side brushed on the horrors he would endure, the human heart in me squeezed, restricting my breath as flashes from those tombs darkened my mind. I focused on the foot of my bed, seeing the blue cover there where there once was a white one—one Ara chose when we shared this room on visits to Australia—which only made the agony worse. I could almost feel her body beside mine, feel her soft skin brush against my leg every time she rolled over, and as I cast my eyes across the room to the cold fireplace, I could see us sitting there talking late in the night.
But it wasn’t my Ara, I realized. When I looked on our past for a small sliver of comfort, it was this new Ara I saw sitting there with me.
I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling the deep ridges of my scars there, waiting for the tightness inside me to evolve into a panic attack, but it didn’t this time. It was like I could feel her hand there, comforting my agony, dulling the pain and the torture in my soul until I felt almost nothing at all—nothing but the scars that remained. And they were just scars for a moment, while I thought of her. Just scars without a past. Without a reason to exist. In this state of mind, they had no power over me.
“David?” said a small voice, my door opening just a crack.
I pulled my sheet up to hide the scars. “Hey you. What ya doin’ up so late?”
“I had a nightmare.” She pushed the door all the way open. “Can I come in?”
“Of course you can.” I was about to get up and put on a shirt, but she ran across my floor, like a child afraid of an ankle-grabbing clown, and leapt onto my bed, wriggling under the covers and nestling her body close to mine.
I sighed, not sure I was ready for this, but tucked the covers securely around her anyway. “What was your dream about?”
She rolled her face up from my hairy chest—the same chest I’d been trying to hide from her—her eyes so wide I instinctively cupped the side of her face to comfort her. She was terrified, shaking, her feet and knees so cold I started rubbing her bare leg before I realized I was doing it.
“When you hurt me the other day, that wasn’t the first time, was it?” she asked.
“What!” I stopped touching her leg and grasped her face with both hands. “Why would you say that?”
“I… in my dream, you were hitting me, and I was b
egging for you to stop—”
I pressed my brow to hers, wishing to God I could still read her mind. “Ara, I’ve hurt you before in other ways, but I’ve never hit you. Ever.”
“It was a memory though,” she insisted, “they feel different to dreams—”
“Another memory?” I held her gaze.
She nodded timidly, as if she didn’t want to confess that.
“How many have you had?”
“A lot. More since we went through the boxes the other day.”
I laughed, blowing what was probably terrible breath all over her face. But she didn’t care. “Well, this one wasn’t a memory—oh.” I rethought that. “Maybe it was.” She wouldn’t be able to distinguish the difference between Jason and me. “It might have been Jason.”
“Again?”
“Yes.” I let go of her face and wrapped my arm around her, cradling her body so close to mine that I could feel how soft and fragile she was. Even though I was human and she was immortal, she was still so trusting and so delicate. She had nothing but a thin cotton nightdress and undies on, and I had nothing between that and my manhood but a thin pair of cotton boxers. It was too much for me—too hard to concentrate and tell her what she needed to know. “He was hired to hurt you once—to test the strength of your kind.”
“Why?”
I knew this would be an all-night conversation, so I just kissed her head instead and said, “It doesn’t matter tonight, my love. We can talk in the morning.”
“I don’t want to dream about that again.” Her hand landed against my chest, moving around to my back then as she held onto me. Me. The one that had hurt her more than anyone in this new life, and she held onto me to make her safe. I wanted to move her hand away, knowing she would feel my scars, but a part of me also wanted her to feel them—wanted her to know they were there. I’d feel different in the morning, I knew that, but for tonight, I needed her to be a part of my tragedy.
“You won’t.” I kissed her head again. “I’ll make sure of it.”
She looked up at me, the tip of her nose touching my chin. “Can I stay in here for a while?”
“You can stay all night.” I settled down a little deeper into the mattress and cradled her in both arms, rolling her just slightly so her warm breath fell against the thick jagged scar around my nipple. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“David?” she whispered, half asleep.
“Yeah.”
“I think I just remembered…”
“Remembered what?”
“I think you were there that night—when he hurt me. I remember a fireplace and…”
“Yes.” I kissed her head again.
“And Eric was there too.”
“Yes.” I laughed, so glad to hear her remember.
“And I was sad after that.”
“For a very long time, yes.”
She nodded. “I’m not now.”
“I know. And you never will be again. I promise.”
“Pinkie promise?” she said, but fell asleep before I could answer.
I took a deep breath and settled in for a sleepless night. Sleepless because I would worry every time she moved that she would wake and decide against sleeping here with me. She could never know how much I needed her right now.
Outside, the night was calm. It felt like forever since I’d heard the wind or even the crickets competing with frogs across the road at the lake, but with her in my arms, or, I guess, with someone in my arms, I felt at peace, and suddenly the simple things in life mattered to me again.
As I listened to the song of nature, I actually started to think about work again—the job at the small law firm I left just a month after starting when I took on the new role as a student at high school. I could believe now that it might be nice to work again. It might be nice to have my own life again and feel like the fully-grown man I once was.
Ara’s hand came up then as she stirred, resting softly against the scar on my rib. I tensed, holding my breath. If she woke, if she felt that thick, damaged skin beneath her fingers and asked what happened, it would crack a hole in our relationship again because I would have to walk away. I would have to shut her out because, in telling her what had happened down there in those tombs, she would see the monster in me and hate me. I could never tell her. She could never know unless she one day regained her memories and remembered for herself. This Ara—the girl I might spend the rest of my life with—would have to live as though none of that ever happened.
Her hand slipped away then and she rolled over, still deep in peaceful sleep, her nightdress coming up slightly as she positioned herself against me. I tried to think of other things—to keep my thoughts off her bare thigh against mine; her chest rising and falling with soft, sweet breath; my penis touching the indent between her bottom cheeks—but her body was lovely, and even though this girl wasn’t my wife, even though she was technically still a teenager in the mind, I wanted to slip her underwear down and wake her with the gentle touch of intimacy.
I drew the blanket back slightly and looked at her bare hip, reliving the damage that had been done to Ara in the tombs. Unlike me, she was still immortal when she was cut, so her body bore not one mark. Not one shred of evidence that such horrific things had occurred.
She stirred a little as I lifted her nightdress and smoothed my hand along the curve of her waist and up to her ribs. Her skin was perfect all over, as far as I could see, even her breasts. Well, the one I could see from this angle. I thought about opening her legs and checking for scars, but that was definitely too invasive.
She wasn’t my wife, I had to remind myself, and inspecting her body this way while she was sleeping was crossing a line. But I had to know. I wanted to roll her over and inspect the other side, but I decided to leave her be, laying my body alongside hers and covering us again instead.
I left her night-dress up though, so I could feel her skin against mine. She didn’t stir. It didn’t seem to bother her, but I knew I couldn’t fall asleep like this. I would need to put on a shirt before morning came, and if she woke to find her body almost naked in my arms, she would know it was deliberate. She’d think I was creepy, and she’d be right to. It was creepy, but I just didn’t care. Not tonight. Tonight, I just needed her skin and the consequences could be damned.
As I started to drift, my hand habitually moved down her stomach to rest at the lowest point, where life began. I knew there was no life within her now, but a part of me—maybe the man stuck in the past—could still feel it. She drew a deeper breath as I rested my chin on her shoulder and kissed her cheek, wishing I could take back what happened to her.
My sweet Ara was gone, forever stuck there in that tomb now, suffering it all over and over again, and I was here with my arms around what felt like another girl.
I let go and lay on my back, drawing the sheet up to my chest. “What are you doing, you fool?” I said quietly to myself, rolling over then to go to sleep.
43
Ara
I ran upstairs to Cal’s room and jumped on his back, shaking him awake. “Why are you napping?”
He rolled his head up and looked at me groggily, then buried his face in his pillows again. “I don’t wanna go to school.”
I laughed. “Come on, you don’t wanna spend your last few hours as a human in bed, do you?”
“Yeah. Kinda,” he said with a smile and a suggestive wink.
I slapped him on the arm. “Get up. We’ve only got an hour until the party.”
“Eric said I should sleep.” His voice was muffled in his pillows.
“Why?”
“Something about the changes I’ll go through over the next few days. He says it’ll be really taxing, and a rest beforehand can help.”
“But it’s only an hour until the party.” I shook him again, jumping up and down on him. “I’ve been calling and calling. I was getting worried.”
“Sorry.” He rolled right over then and cupped my hips to keep me on him, but when I fe
lt his boner press against my vagina, I lifted my leg over him and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I need my costume,” I said. “Where’d you put it?”
He just pointed to the box of stuff by the stairs, slipping his hands under the blanket then.
“Where’s your costume?” I asked, grabbing mine off the top of the box.
“Hanging in the bathroom.”
Since he wasn’t looking, I snuck over and took a peek, laughing when I saw the high-collared cape. Fitting. “Did you plan that?” I called.
“Plan what?”
“To be dressed as a vampire the night you become one?”
He laughed. “No, but it should make for a good laugh, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, imagining Cal as a vampire. I could see him being the kind of guy that had a sense of humor about it—kind of like Eric—so it was also fitting that Eric would be the one turning him; be his master, of sorts. They were alike in a lot of ways, personality-wise.
“Has David said anything more about it?” he asked.
“About you being turned?” I confirmed. “No.”
“You think he’s hurt?”
No, I was sure of it. I only had to think of his face, when I told him, to see that. “Yeah. He wondered why I don’t want that with him.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Tell him what?” I sat down cross-legged on his floor.
“How you feel?”
“I can’t, Cal—”
“You can,” he demanded, rolling up a bit so he could look at me. “Because you can’t sit halfway between being with him and not being with him. You either want him or you don’t.”
“I do. But I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“What if things don’t work out? What if we get the kids’ hopes up and then we break up again—”
“They’ll deal—”
“No. They won’t. They’ve been through enough, Cal. And if David was a kind, loving guy all the time, I’d go for it. But he’s not.” I thought back to the day in the courtyard. What if he did that to me again? I could never ever tell Elora, but if he did that to me, I would have to leave him. And then she’d be left wondering why. “I just want to be sure first. I need to piss him off a few times to test it.”
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