by Rena Marks
I flipped my torn top over my head and shimmied into my skirt. The old word came to mind. Bred.
He continued on. “They wish to cut you up and see what made you tick. See how to re-create you well enough to be able to control the next clone they make of you.”
“If that were the case, they would never have let me go. Don’t you see? I need to do this.”
“Know this, Afton. I will always seek you. You cannot keep from me.”
I felt trapped. Again. Slowly suffocated, the humanity stripped from my soul to be wholly replaced with the vampire infection. That was what I saw in his eyes. A contagion I couldn’t escape.
He needed me to be as he was.
That was exactly what Ethan wanted. His own vampiress. It was then that I knew I’d be on the run from two sources. The government and my lover.
“What is it you want from me?” I whispered, needing him to voice it.
“Stay.”
“Why? I will not be your vampire whore, to be hated by vampires and humans alike.”
“Hated by all? Not all vampires are evil. Just as not all humans are good.”
“I know that,” I snapped. “I am not a child.”
He continued as if I didn’t speak. “I myself would call that human government camp evil.”
“And the vampires good?” Because I knew otherwise, each one I’d extinguished had been worth it.
“Not all.”
“Point out where the evil lies, Ethan,” I challenged. He’d never before spoken poorly of anyone in his own race, I was positive he thought them better than the humans.
“A long time ago, there was one. It was a difficult decision, to make…you would call it exterminate. We decided he was too evil to be allowed to wreak havoc on mankind.”
“You killed one of your own?” I couldn’t believe it, not the righteous Ethan.
He stared ahead, lost in remembrance. “He was a monster when he was human. For some reason, when he crossed over, he was unnatural. But sly. It took centuries to see it.”
I regretted every instance in which I’d scorned killing a vamp over killing a human. It never occurred to me that Ethan might have had to as their leader.
“You had to exterminate him? Who was he?”
“My stepfather.”
Ethan killed a family member? I stared in disbelief.
“Yes. I left him to bleed to death in the rising sun. I wanted to do so much more but I was the leader. I couldn’t let it be a personal killing, it had to be a judgment call for the greater good of the clan.”
He turned away from me to dress.
That was the most painful way to die. Natural UV rays stole regenerating abilities from vampires. Left in the sun, the dying vampire had felt every drop of blood that left his body. He felt every unnatural year that rolled by during his death. Some said a vampire was forced to endure a karma-induced balancing, reliving every sin he’d made against others. Feeling every horror he’d caused threefold.
When Ethan finished dressing, I reached for his shoulder. He turned toward me. “How long ago?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly. A quarter of a century.”
But I’d bet my life Ethan knew exactly how long it had been. Down to the year. The month.
The very time of day.
We walked back to the cave in silence. When we reached it, Ethan grabbed my hand. “I love you, Afton. Don’t even think about trying to get away.”
Chapter Seven
The skies were darkening early. Gray storm clouds rolled across the brilliant purple of the night. I watched from my balcony patio, bemused.
Saddened.
Lonely.
Wondering if I had done the right thing by sneaking away again. Ethan had taken me into a town to shop. There was an underground system where merchants catered to vampires. We shopped until I was back to my usual garb of leather boots and skintight black clothing. Covertly, I studied the town, planning where I would head for my escape. With a new wardrobe, I knew I could blend with the people.
With sunglasses, I could walk during the daylight.
But I refused to reminisce on a stormy night. Stop it, I chided myself. You are used to being alone. We enter this world alone and we die alone.
Die alone. Ethan’s greatest fear.
Why did my thoughts keep returning to him? What was he doing, right now? Was it raining back at the cave, just a few droplets hitting here and there, like it was now? Was he watching the same storm I watched? Were the vampires even at the cave dwelling, or had they moved on to another location?
Just as I’d moved on. I lived in a small apartment like a human now. I hadn’t yet met my neighbors and had no desire to.
Still, I missed him with every breath I took. When we had been together at the underground merchants, no one blinked when they saw a human paired with a vampire. As a matter of fact, I would even venture to say Ethan was well respected despite his race.
He didn’t bother to hide his affection for me. While I studied a silver-bladed knife, he wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck, making it plain for all to see our relationship.
“Take it, bella. Why try to decide if you should or not? Just do it.”
“I’m spending your money. I’d like to spend it wisely.”
“What’s mine is yours, just like you possess my heart. Take the knife.”
He’d insisted on buying it, along with an expensive leather duffel bag full of my black signature clothing. I’d almost changed my mind about leaving him.
But when we returned to the cave, my transformation triggered an interesting wariness from the vampire tribe. My conversion back to black reminded them of the Extinguisher uniform. The Extinguisher in their midst.
I knew Ethan was disappointed in his people. They couldn’t seem to accept me and who could blame them?
He tried to made amends for them. “I forgot to give you this,” Ethan said. In his hand he held a leather twine necklace. “Jordan wanted you to have it. His first loss.”
He looped it around my neck and I glanced down to see a tiny fang. It was a sweet gesture. “Wow, he bypassed the vampire tooth fairy to give this to me?”
“He loves you,” Ethan said simply.
I said nothing. But the cherubic face entered my mind, the fluffy hair tumbling every which way. The sweet face I hadn’t seen since my return with the black clothing. He’d been kept away.
That was when I decided my original plan to leave was for the best. That night, I hungered for him. We made wild, frantic love. When dawn broke and he collapsed from exhaustion, I pressed a final kiss to his lips and snuck out with the morning light. While I was tired, the sun didn’t drain me physically, like it would him. Added to that, I waited ’til he relaxed in a vampiric slumber. It would lull him, then the sunlight would prevent his rise.
I knew I couldn’t stay long in town. I had to escape quickly, while Ethan was exhausted from staying up all night and then having the sun rise so early. Mentally, he’d try to pull himself from his unconscious stupor, the vampire kind of sleep, but physically his body would be too exhausted to cooperate.
My means of travel was a train. It ran straight through the middle of town. I was a hop, skip and a jump from somewhere. I just didn’t yet know where I was.
Now, I’d traveled to my destination. I had settled in the town of Hastings. It was sixty miles from Coven, in which there was a mental institution.
For years, I had deliberately avoided the town where my mother lived. I could never have the government suspect I was interested in her, by having any business in the nearby vicinity.
I hid in the shadows of the night on the grounds of Concord Clinic. At first glance, it looked like an expensive golf course, lush lawns of rich green, cut evenly across the yard. The clinic was modest, painted a stark white with black metal railing for the windows with balconies.
A tree with large, thick branches was planted near the building, which enabled my climb. I swung onto a balcony o
n the second floor and looked up. Two more floors. Grasping the metal bars of the balcony directly above me, I pulled myself up a floor. Then I climbed farther, to the fourth floor, figuring I may as well start at the top.
There was a screen door separating the balcony from the main room. Pushing it aside, I crossed the threshold.
An older man was strapped to his bed, machines bleeping. He was so drugged out his unfocused eyes stared to a point beyond me. I walked passed him and poked my head out the front door that connected with the hallway. No personnel in sight. A chart hung on the wall next to the door.
I skimmed the personal information. Joseph Millicotti, sixty-eight years old. Had been committed with Alzheimer’s when he was in his early forties.
I paused. That didn’t make sense, no one contracted the disease at forty. It had to be a typo. I moved farther down the chart.
A danger to society because he had been a willing blood donor for vampires. An ex-priest who believed vampires were our brethren, put here among us for a reason, and we should help them out.
The government certainly put a stop to his beliefs and donations. His chart listed so many narcotics, he was kept in a drugged stupor.
Personally, I had a soft spot for those who dedicated their lives to their religion. As I’d told Reese, the church had taken me in as a child. There had been a long battle with the government over the rights to keep me without full parental consent when the Academy of Extinguishers was first created. I’d always be grateful to the nuns there, one in particular who had taught me child’s prayers.
Along with Millicotti’s chart was a map of the fourth floor. Bingo. My finger ran down the alphabetical listing, finding the name I was looking for.
Virginia Reis. Room 452. I rolled my eyes. The best security they could think up was to place her on the highest floor?
I headed straight for her room. Things got noisier down the hallway. The babble of incoherent voices, some TVs. Throat dry with trepidation, I turned the handle to her door to find it locked.
I nearly crushed it with my frustration. Why the hell was a door in a mental hospital locked from the outside? Normally, patients were locked in to keep them from wandering out.
I inhaled deeply, forcing myself to think. I didn’t want to leave any traces of my visit. Never burn your bridges if you could help it.
I reached for Virginia’s chart near the door.
It was still attached to the clipboard. The hospital thought to save a step of needing a separate clipboard and a cardboard file folder, combining the two to make a large plastic folder. I took the plastic file folder from her chart and inserted it between the door jamb and the lock. It took a couple of tries before it clicked. I shook my head. What they’d succeeded in creating was a flexible credit card capable of unlocking doors. It clicked easily and I pushed the door open.
Virginia Reis sat in a rocking chair, legs drawn up like a child. She looked like me but different. With red hair. She was extremely young, only twenty years older than me, she could have been my sister instead of my mother. She was delicate where I was strong. And her eyes were vacant. Even though she looked right at me, she looked through me at the same time.
She hugged her legs to her. “I know you.”
“Do you?”
“I had a dolly. She looked like you.”
I cringed. There was once a child’s doll modeled after me. Dressed in black leather with permanently attached, dark sunglasses.
Virginia looked at me expectantly, so I responded. “What happened to your dolly?”
“Taken away,” she moaned. “And I took such good care of her. I braided her hair every day.”
The hopes I had were dashed. Gibberish was all she spoke. How would she ever have seen the Extinguisher Barbie when locked in this place? Still, I played along, just to keep her talking.
“Where’d you get her?”
She rocked in the chair, looking away. A panicked, frenzied rocking, like an autistic child’s. I followed her gaze.
Draped around her window were silver chains. I headed to it without thinking. Old necklaces, pieces of metal jewelry, strung together. Silver that had never once been cleaned was now tarnished to black.
“Don’t touch those!”
“Why not?” I asked softly.
“That’s how I know they’re working. Monsters can’t touch them or they’ll turn silver again. I check them every single day.”
She knew something of vampires to know they couldn’t touch true silver. There was not one piece of costume jewelry on the wall, it was all genuine silver, including the decorative chains stringing them together. My heart began to beat a little faster, this time with fear. My fear of the truth.
Why was Virginia Reis afraid of vampires?
“Why are you afraid of the monsters? Wasn’t it humans who locked you up here? Who took your dolly from you?”
More frenzied rocking.
“Virginia?”
“They pretend to be humans but they’re not!”
“Who pretends?”
Her hospital gown slipped off one shoulder with her furious swaying. Scar tissue threaded around a breast, twisting like a patch of tangled weeds.
“Virginia, you’re safe. I would never let anyone hurt you.”
She stopped her rocking. “You’ll save me?”
I kneeled down before her and placed my head in her lap. She smelled of wild lavender, of open fields and wind. “Of course. But you know, there are other good people here. Like Mr. Millicotti, around the corner on this same floor. Room 403.” A human who didn’t believe the lies of the government. Surely he had coherent moments in which to talk.
Her fingers reached out to touch my hair. “So soft,” she whispered. “It would look good braided. Lots of teeny, tiny braids will swing when you walk. What’s this?”
She’d found the twine around my neck that had Jordan’s lost tooth threaded through it. “It’s a tooth,” I said.
“It’s a fang,” she countered, matter-of-factly.
Would she freak out that I wore a vampire fang around my neck? Would she take it as I was friendly with them? Or would she consider it a notch in my belt? A vampire kill in which I saved a part of him, like an amputated trophy?
She didn’t say another word, just fingered the small fang thoughtfully.
“I need to hurry,” I said. “Before they know I was here to see you.”
She nodded, but how lucid she was I couldn’t tell. I knew one way to test her. What was the dolly? A Barbie? Or something else?
“Virginia, tell me about the dolly’s father.”
* * * * *
The wind lifted my hair, breaking my recollections of my visit with my mother. I pulled my wrap tighter around my shoulders, for even though it wasn’t cold, some innate sense made me shiver. In the past, someone might have used the phrase “walked over my grave”.
But the weather was slowly changing right before my eyes. While the wind wasn’t blowing, it was definitely stirring.
Bella.
The whisper carried on the wings of my imagination. Only one person ever called me that. I dismissed the whole idea that it could possibly be his voice. But there it was again, a little stronger, perhaps because this time I listened for it. I strained, wondering if I would drive myself insane in the end, rambling of winds and voices.
Much like my mother.
Bella.
My lips parted. “Ethan.”
Now the night grew chilly, the wet droplets cold against my skin.
My love.
“You’re not real.” I spoke aloud, hoping to shock my brain into reality. My voice wasn’t as strong as I expected, though not quite a whisper like I heard his as being.
Take a look around.
I refused to turn my head, though now I was sure he spoke.
I’m the beating of your heart. You will never be separate from me.
I spoke aloud still. “Someday my heart will stop.”
Our love contin
ues on. Like the raindrops falling down.
Surprise caught my breath. Did he know it rained? That the droplets pitter-pattered on the concrete of the balcony? He had grown powerful. He had never before managed to connect with me over a distance as great as that between us now.
And then I felt it. Satisfaction on his end. He was satisfied that I was aware of his increased power. Why would that be important to him? I always knew of his strength. His ability to control the minds and bodies of others with his blind lust for me.
Not lust.
I covered more shock that he knew what I thought. My brain conjured the correct word. Love. But I refused to say it. Instead, I said, “What do you want of me?”
Your peace in finding what you seek. Then return to me.
I sighed into the crisp night. “It’s not that easy.”
You always make life difficult.
“You refuse to acknowledge the difficulty.”
Either come to me, or I’ll come to you.
“I have something to do.”
What?
“I need to go visit…” I paused, for once again, knowledge was power. How much did I want him to have?
Who? His voice insisted and I was driven to respond.
“My mother.”
The information was wrenched from me. Anger raged within me that he took my will, forced me to respond to him with his vampire trickery. So even though I’d visited her recently, I refused to share the details with him of the visit I’d already made. I would let him believe that it was upcoming.
But it was all I needed to say and suddenly he was there. Manifested as easily as a swirl of fall leaves twisted beneath a whirlwind that begins the tornado.
“It’s something I should do myself,” I said wryly, still shocked with his aggressive actions.
Powerful didn’t begin to describe him. I was pulled to him as easily as if I wore magnetic clothing. My feet slid across the balcony as though it were an ice skating rink.
I slammed into him and he caught me with open arms. “You will not go alone,” he muttered, as his lips descended to mine.
As easily as that, the hint of the impending storm was over. We stood in the warmer night air, the moonlight shining upon our hair. And as easily as that, I wanted to believe that I didn’t have to be alone.
