by R. M. Webb
“That’s the thing,” he says. “Worry won’t kill you. But the things I’m trying to keep from you? They probably will.”
Chapter 13
Honestly, I don’t expect him to tell me what’s going on. At least not right away. But that’s not going to keep me from trying. “I’m not good at being out of control. I’m not good at not knowing what’s going on, at living in limbo. Please tell me, something at least. Anything.”
Thomas studies me, considering. I take a page from Mia’s book and do my best to wait patiently and give him the space he needs to think. It’s not my forte. I’m not exceptionally patient. I break after just a few minutes of silence. “Please, Thomas. I want to help.”
“Help?” He pushes me away and stands up. “How? How could you help? Your life is fragile, your existence so easily extinguished. You said it yourself. Really think about what you said. If the things I’m dealing with are enough to frighten me, a vampire, think how deadly they are to you, a mere human.”
But what if I wasn’t human? What if he made me a vampire? Would I be strong enough then? But these are things I can only think, for saying them would certainly push him too far, too fast. Whatever has kept him from sharing blood with me surely won’t let him consider turning me completely. At least, not yet.
“I understand that,” I say instead. “I really do. But don’t you think that it’d be good if I at least knew what to look out for? You don’t have to tell me everything, but surely there’s something I can know.”
And this time, I do manage to find the patience to wait, to let him think. I hate to see him so agitated, so upset, so unsure. It makes me more nervous than I care to admit. Finally, he calms visibly and sits next to me, pulling me into his lap and smoothing my hair out of my face. He’s cradling me like he did the night he healed my bruises with his blood and I welcome it, the closeness, the intimacy.
“Here’s what you can know.” I stay ever so still, afraid that even the tiniest of movements will make him rethink what he’s about to tell me. “Alec Lewis is dead. Killed by a mutual enemy. His body will not be found. His wife is under duress, and the things she says and does are probably not of her own design.”
I think of Mia, proudly marching down to the Citadel and proclaiming that she believes in vampires, answering the secret message she thought she heard in Gwen’s words. What will happen to her? How much danger is she in?
“If Gwen’s not in control, then who is?”
“That’s all I can tell you, Rachel.”
“That’s all? How is that going to help me stop worrying about you? What about you? How much danger are you in? Why are you so scared?”
“The enemies I fight are no stronger than I am, but they are … more underhanded. They won’t fight fair, and what better way to gain an advantage over me than to come after you?”
“I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself.” Even I hear how silly that sounds. Me, a twenty-one year old girl ready to pit herself against monsters who’ve lived for centuries.
“You will be fine. But only if you trust me to take care of you.” Thomas kisses the top of my head and then pulls back on it gently, turning my face up towards him. He runs his fingers across my cheekbones and eyebrows, traces the line of my nose and bumps ever so delicately over my lips. I love the cold trails of contact left in the wake of his finger. “I never thought I’d care so deeply about you.” His voice is far away, almost as if he’s speaking to himself. “When I came here that first night, I never thought I’d end up wanting to stay.”
His eyes focus on mine, and I see the lust burning in them. He bends down to kiss me and there’s more fire beneath the ice of his lips than ever before. I press into him, my hand squeezing the strong muscles in his arm. His kiss grows more insistent and I melt under its heat. Maybe he’ll bite me tonight. Maybe he’ll let me in again, share that part of himself with me, that part I crave so much. I don’t offer my neck to him, I don’t tilt my head away from his kiss, exposing my throat as I’ve done so many times. I simply return his kiss with all the passion I’m feeling and wait for him to take the lead. I hand control over to him, maybe for the first time in my life, letting someone else dictate where we go and how fast we get there. It’s thrilling.
And it works. His lips trail from mine and he kisses along the line of my jaw, down towards my ear, working his way to the soft spot of my throat where my pulse is pounding away with my excitement. And then his lips are gone. I hear the soft intake of his breath as he opens his mouth too wide for a kiss and I sigh, letting my head fall back, giving him more room to sink his teeth into my vein.
He goes rigid. His arms tighten around me, constricting my movement. This isn’t passion, it’s something else altogether. I sit up and watch his pupils constrict in fear, his eyes boring holes into my front door. He cocks his head as if he’s listening.
“Someone’s here. A man and a woman.” His voice hisses out between his clenched jaws in the tightest whisper I’ve ever heard. There are three strong knocks on my door and I hear Mia talking to someone who answers in a voice too low for me to make out. I relax, if only a little.
“It’s Mia. My friend from across the courtyard.”
“Who is she with?”
“I don’t know.”
“Her heart rate is elevated, as is his. She’s nervous. Why?”
“I don’t know why. Things have been strained between us. Maybe she’s uncomfortable?”
“Do you trust her?”
“Yes. Before you, she’s the person I trusted most in the world.”
“Then let her in, I’ll be upstairs, listening. If anything goes wrong … well … you don’t have to worry.” And with that, Thomas is gone.
After taking a moment to calm myself, to smooth my hair back into place, I wander up to the door and open it a crack, peering through as if I didn’t know who might be standing on the other side. “Oh, hey!” I feign surprise, doubling it when I discover that the person standing next to her is Elijah, the barista from the coffee shop.
“Sorry to just pop over, but can we come in?” The fact that Mia has to apologize for showing up unannounced shows me just how much our friendship has crumbled. She used to show up whenever she felt like it, no phone call needed. She’s even got the spare set of keys and permission to use them whenever she wants.
“Of course! Silly … you know you’re always welcome.” I step aside and Mia leads Elijah over to the couch. “Can I get you anything?”
Mia looks to Elijah who shakes his head. “Nah. I’m good, too,” she says.
I take the last remaining seat on the couch. “So what’s up? What’re you two kids getting into tonight?” I suppose I should be thrilled to see her. Thrilled to meet the guy she’s so excited to be with. Thrilled that our relationship is starting to look a little more normal again. But I’m not. Thomas is upstairs and even that much distance between us is too much. I want Mia and Elijah to leave so we can continue doing what we were doing before we were so rudely interrupted.
My question makes Mia nervous and suddenly I am, too. “Well, we actually came here tonight because we wanted to talk to you.”
I school my face into something I hope resembles curiosity rather than anger. “Oh yea? What’s up?”
Mia’s got to know that I’m not cool with being ambushed and I’m sure she sees straight through my light tone. “Remember how I said that Elijah and I have a lot in common?”
Ok. That’s not what I expected. “Ya…”
“Well we really do,” she pauses to beam in his direction and it’s hard not to notice how incredibly happy she is. “And well,” and here’s where the happiness on her face dissolves into plain old nerves. Whatever she’s about to say is sure to be awful. “He and I feel very much the same about all the vampire stuff. And about what we think Gwen Lewis is really saying. He thinks, just like I do, that it’s all fake. That she’s trying to find the people who know the truth about vampires, the people who truly know in their hea
rts that vampires exist, and she’s calling us all to her Citadel so we can start doing something about it. Something real.”
Elijah nods and in that moment I hate him. I don’t care how happy Mia is. If he’s going to feed her fears and help her spiral out of control like this, then he’s no good for her. I stay silent, waiting to hear the rest of what Mia has to say, knowing full well I’m not going to like it.
She swallows hard. This must be the part that’s got her all keyed up. “I told him about what happened to you. The parts I know, anyway.” My breath is caught in my throat and she hurries on. “I told him how you showed up at my door, all bruised, scared out of your skull. I told him about the bite on your neck…” She finally notices the look on my face and her words trail off, whatever it was she was going to say devoured by my fury.
“You. Had. No. Right.” I bite the words off because my teeth are clenched together and if I relax my jaw even a little, I’ll start screaming.
Her jaw drops and she lets her mouth hang open, looking like a stupid little girl caught out after curfew. She starts to talk, to make some kind of excuse, but I cut her off. I don’t want to hear her voice.
“Not another word. I wasn’t ready for you to know the whole story about that night. How in God’s name would you think I’d be ready for anyone else to hear even the smallest detail?” I’m standing now. My face is red and I might be overreacting, but she needs to see how upset I am because she’s really overstepped her bounds. “That wasn’t your story to tell!”
Elijah finally speaks. “Your story could save so many others from experiencing what you’ve experienced.”
“You have no idea what I’ve experienced.”
“No,” he says, and the look of false compassion on his face disgusts me. He’s feeling something towards me alright, and it’s not compassion. I’m guessing it’s disgust. “No,” he continues, trying to placate me. “I’ve not had to survive after a vampire attack. But I’m sure there are people out there who have. People who are feeling just like you. Don’t you think your story could help them?”
I have no idea what to say. These people are so off base, they don’t have a clue. Not one shred of one iota of a clue. It wasn’t a vampire who attacked me. It wasn’t a vampire who hurt me. It was a man. A person just like me, just like Mia, just like Elijah. It’s the vampire who saved me. But I can’t tell them that. I won’t.
Mia speaks up. “I know this is all so scary, but we want to take you down to the Citadel with us tomorrow. We want to talk to Gwen Lewis, to tell her that we know what she’s trying to say, that we believe. And …” Now it’s my turn to stare open mouthed.
“Get out,” I finally manage.
“Rachel -”
“Get out!” I can’t stand the sight of her. How dare she share my story? How dare she tell him the things she thought she knew about me? After all this time, it turns out she doesn’t really know anything about me. Her coming here like this just proves how little she knows. “Get out of here and don’t you dare come back!”
Mia stumbles to her feet, tears brimming in her eyes and leaves with Elijah following close on her heels. She takes one last look at me - a look filled with hurt and fear and anger and goodbye - and shuts the door between us.
Chapter 14
Thomas is at my side the second the door closes. Just like that. One minute I’m alone, staring after Mia, the next his hands are on my face, his lovely eyes searching mine.
“Are you ok?” Thomas presses me to his chest but I just can’t relax into his embrace. He strokes my hair, whispering words of comfort, his voice quiet. I can’t quite make out the words, but the sound is enough. After a while, he stops whispering and starts humming a beautiful melody, haunting and sweet. It seems ancient. How long has that song existed? How many generations of people sang it before it was forgotten, maybe leaving only Thomas as the only creature left to remember it? How many other things are housed in this man, things that the rest of the world has forgotten?
“Ya, I’m fine.” I pause. I sigh. I pull back to look Thomas in the eye. “No, I’m not fine. I’m upset. I’m hurt. I’m confused. And I’m scared. But, you know, one foot in front of the other and all …”
“I don’t want you going to the Citadel. Not with them. Not alone. Not ever. It’s dangerous there.”
Part of me bristles at being told what to do. I’m not very good at following the beat of someone else’s drum. The other part, the rational part, totally recognizes that if Thomas says it’s dangerous at the Citadel, then it’s dangerous at the Citadel and I’d do well to keep myself as far from the place as I can possibly get.
Thomas reaches passed me into my closet and pulls out my coat, wrapping it around my shoulders without explaining why. “What are you going to do?”
I’m just as confused by the coat as I am by his question. “About what?”
“About your friend.” He grabs my purse off its place on the bottom stair and hands it to me and opens the door while I sling it over my shoulder. Once outside, I stand stupidly on the doorstep, just staring at Thomas while about three hundred questions fight for control of my mouth. Where are we going? Why aren’t we sitting down on the couch and wrapping up in each other? Finishing what we started? Why would I need to do anything about Mia? What could I possibly do? “Lock the door, sweetheart.”
Thomas’s statement wrenches me back in gear and I do as I’m told. He takes a minute to fuss with my coat, zipping it, pulling the collar up tight around my neck, and then offers me his hand. I deal with the fussing, impatient but quiet, but refuse to place my hand in his until I know just what’s going on. “Where are we going?”
He smiles, that wonderful ‘ray of light dancing on the mountain top’ smile that just melts my heart. I suddenly don’t care very much where we’re going as long as I’m going to be with him. “I thought,” he says and runs a hand through his hair, turning his head so I can admire his profile, “that you deserved a bit of fun.”
What? Fun? He’s leading me away from my front door and I can’t keep up with the rapid changes in the emotional tone of the evening. I’m not exactly following willingly, stuttering and stammering out my confused protests, pulling back towards my door. Thomas stops dragging me about halfway down the walk leading away from my apartment and stops.
“I’m sorry, Thomas, I’m just … confused. First you can’t be near me at all because of all this danger. Then, we’re sneaking around, you showing up in my bedroom in the middle of the night, leaving without telling me when I’ll see you again. Now, after I scream at my best friend and her crazy cult boyfriend, everything’s all fine and dandy and we’re walking hand in hand out to have some fun? Where maybe the bad guys can see us?”
Frustration darkens Thomas’s eyes and I remember that I’m dealing with a very dangerous creature. A creature thousands of times more powerful than that awful man in the warehouse district. He pulls me a few more stumbling steps along the walk and then hisses at me through clenched teeth. “Please stop fighting me. Your friend and Mr. Cult Crazy are watching us and the people who’re looking for me might be nearby. I’m taking you somewhere safe.”
That kicks my ass in gear and I stop resisting him. We walk off together into the night, holding hands, even swinging them between us. As soon as we round the corner out of sight of Mia’s window, Thomas drops my hand and points to a car in the parking lot. “We’re driving tonight.”
We’ve never driven anywhere. I didn’t even know he could drive. The outside of the car gleams in the light dropped by the streetlamp and somehow I know the interior is going to be impeccably maintained as well. Everything about Thomas is fastidious. We’re in the car and several blocks from my apartment before I speak. “Can you please tell me what’s going on?
He sighs and looks at me, studying my face with such intensity that I begin to fidget. I can’t read his expression in the pulsing light of passing streetlamps and headlights from other cars. “I was wrong to come back to you. I’
m afraid your apartment isn’t safe anymore.” He tears his focus from me and turns on his turn signal. “And I’m not comfortable with your friends being so insistent about taking you to the Citadel. I’m taking you somewhere safe.” He smiles. “And somewhere fun.”
I blink when I look out the window and realize where we are. The warehouse district. I feel decidedly unsafe. Exposed. There are monsters here that are way worse than the one sitting in the driver’s seat next to me. My heart is thrumming in my chest and my fingers go all cold and clammy and tingly.
Thomas zeros in on my fear, he’s so tuned into the slightest change in my emotion. There’s a question in his eyes followed by realization and then the predator is out in full sight, Thomas’s handsome face transformed by some kind of ‘otherness’. “Don’t worry about that man. He won’t hurt you ever again.” Thomas’s voice is wicked and sharp and full of so many things I don’t want to think about. “He won’t hurt anyone ever again.”
And then we’re pulling into the parking lot at Club Diablo and I’m spared from having to decide if I’m going to ask him exactly what he means. The parking lot is packed. The neon lights are lit up over the door. Graffiti no longer covers the walls and people wait outside, corralled into order by plush red velvet ropes.
“Whoa.” I say. “This place has changed since the last time I was here.”
Thomas smiles and nods. “The club owner has returned. We’re not hiding anymore.” I’m not sure what he means by that but apparently it’s a night where I have questions I don’t ask bouncing around in my skull.
“I’m not sure I’m dressed for this.”
“You look amazing just as you are.” He offers my hand and I take it. “Always.” He doesn’t wait for a response. He just leads me up to the front of the line where a monstrous man wearing a black T-shirt straining across his barrel chest and gigantic biceps glares out over the people waiting to get into the club.
