“No! Please. Stop this,” I pleaded. “We can get you help, it’s all going to be all right.”
“I don’t need help, Kyndra!” Even though he was angry, and obviously still delusional, at least he knew who he was talking to. I didn’t have much hope right now, so that was what I clung to. “I need you to believe me.”
His arms exhausted, giving out. His body slumped against mine. Once again, his mouth was against my neck. “You even smell like her,” he sighed. “Sweet.”
“I spilled coffee on my pajama top this morning. That’s all.”
He sat up, my clumsiness and bad humor the miracle that I needed. He pulled his knees to his chest at the opposite end of the couch and rubbed his face hard. I shimmied up the pillow only about halfway. If I didn’t think my body would fail me, I would have ran.
“You’ve always smelled like her.” His eyes were still that freaky black. “I followed you to the church that night, because I knew by smell that I found her. Found you.”
“Aidan.” My voice was raspy from screaming.
“I don’t know what to do.” He looked up at the ceiling. “I can’t hurt you. But I need to convince you to stay.”
Since he wasn’t looking at me, he didn’t see my eyes widen. I’d thought the worst of this had passed. “Do you want to hurt me?” My words came slowly, like he’d need to special emphasis to understand.
His head turned back toward me in a blur. “No.”
He wasn’t even making any sense. My heart crumbled into a pile of dust the longer I sat there, but as afraid as I was for myself, I was even more scared for him. He may swear not to hurt me, but what would he do to himself?
Would this have happened tonight even if I hadn’t picked up that book?
I didn’t know if this was a smart move or not, but I hoped if nothing else it bought me some time. “Tell me more about Marielle.”
Aidan smiled into the distance, looking at something I didn’t see. He didn’t speak right away, instead, he gazed blindly in front of him, as if he watched a film reel of his life with Marielle.
Honestly, I was beginning to wonder if this woman ever existed outside of his imagination.
“I met Marielle when I was wounded in a battle with the French. After being hit with a buckshot, I’d been brought into a triage station. Many of the nurses didn’t want to help me, because I was Metis, but it didn’t phase Marielle. She helped everyone just the same, no matter what blood ran through their veins. Since I had to wait for her kindness, my wound became infected, and I stayed in the unit longer. She stayed with me until my fever broke, talking with me and making sure I was comfortable. I might have been delirious, but I felt like she never left my side.
After I recovered, I returned to the ward to bring her a flowers and see if maybe she’d let me take her for a date. Dates weren’t much in those days, usually just a carriage ride, or if you were like me and didn’t own a horse, a walk. I expected to be accompanied by someone in her family, or someone who worked for her family. Marielle didn’t have any family anymore. She’d lost her parents in a military battle, collateral damage as we’d say today, and her older sister had settled in the colonies with her husband before that. The sister didn’t even know her parents were gone. So Marielle was alone.
At first, she was reluctant to accept my invitation. The other nurses in the ward didn’t want to let her go out with me. Not only did the nurses know I was Metis, but other soldiers, white, hadn’t treated her with the respect she deserved. My poor Marielle had been so ashamed to tell me what had happened to her. Soon, we were spending all of our free time together, and I asked her to marry me. Once she was my wife, the wife of a Metis, she was no longer welcome to work as a nurse. I barely brought in enough money to feed us. But she wound up finding work as a tutor for a rich family, little more than a servant. I hated that my wife had to work, it made me feel like less of a man that I couldn’t provide for her, but she insisted that she loved it. The family that she worked for offered us a small house on their farm, and I’d planned to work for the family as well once the conflict ended, but I didn’t make it that far.”
The similarities Marielle’s story had to mine didn’t escape me. “Because you were attacked?”
“Yes.” Aidan swallowed. He looked at me now, so at least I felt like I was his intended audience, instead of the ghost of his wife. “I was drunk and got separated from other soldiers my unit. Gilles attacked me, fighting harder than any one man I’d ever encountered, and dragged me back to their dungeon outside of the city.”
“What was it like?”
Aidan chuckled. “They told me about their mission, to overthrow the French and to live independently. They had seen me fight, and said I fought like I had nothing to lose. It was true. And they didn’t care that I wasn’t white. They respected me just the same. I was tired of the oppression in the city, I liked what they had to say. I wanted more for my family. Once I realized I’d never see my family again, I got angry. At that time, Marielle was pregnant, and I was concerned where our child would fit in, having Metis blood. If Marielle shared my concerns, she never said so. She thought the sky was the limit for our son, she had a boy. I never got to meet him as his father, but she named him after me.”
His eyes had begun to glisten when he spoke of the son he didn’t get to raise, his words caught in his throat as he spoke about him. The sadness that reverberated through the room was something I could reach out and touch, a wall pushing us apart on the couch, but still, this all seemed like a bad dream.
“What did you do?”
“I was bound to Gilles. He was my creator, and I needed him to help me survive as a vampire. I was a military deserter, which I could have been thrown in jail for. I also couldn’t return to my pregnant wife. For Gilles, I was a ruthless soldier, taking out my anger on unsuspecting victims. We fed from thieves and whores when we weren’t engaged in a battle. I drained them all, until I met Talis.”
“But what about Marielle?” Finally, a visible hole in his story. “You couldn’t have fallen in love with someone else when she was still alive. I mean, why couldn’t you have just gone home to your wife if that was the case?”
“Marielle never recovered from the terrible labor she suffered with my son. And she had no idea what happened to me. Already heartbroken, I’m not sure if she had the desire to get stronger. Breastfeeding literally sucked the life from her.” Aidan had that other dimension look in his eyes again, and I shifted away from him, hugging my arms around my body. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’d been watching her, but I couldn’t let her see me. One night, I couldn’t take her suffering anymore. It had been my intention to have her spend forever with me, to make her my queen. But she wasn’t strong enough.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. He was claiming to have killed his wife, who he was still so obviously in love with. The one who he confused with me. Goosebumps prickled my skin.
His head hung. “I had taken everything away from my vibrant, beautiful wife. Because she mourned my loss, she wasn’t strong enough to bear my son. It was only right that I put a stop to her suffering, since I was the cause of it. It wasn’t my death that made me bloodthirsty and inhuman. It was hers.”
“I’m sorry doesn’t seem like the right thing to say.” But yet, I was compelled to say something, to make sure this was all still real.
“I’ve thought that very same thing many times. I’m not proud of many things that I’ve done, but to be sorry for it would be to torment the suffering. After Marielle was gone.” He had to stop and regroup. “I didn’t want to live this life anymore, either. When I met Talis, her fire gave me a reason to live. I saw in her the same hope in a damnable world that Marielle had. And that’s what made me think that the spirit of Marielle might still be alive, instead of a ghost that haunted me.”
“Her spirit will always be alive.” I spoke softly, afraid to startle him. “As long as you still love her.”
“Yes. That’s what I
always believed. But Kyndra, did you pick up on the similarities of her life to yours? I know her soul didn’t get to rest. It needed a home. And in you, I think Marielle finally found her home.”
“Stop talking like that, Aidan. It scares me.”
“You can’t run from everything that scares you, my love. You’ll be running all of your life.”
I gasped, almost more of a whimper, when he called me my love. Sitting here with him, I felt like the bimbo in a horror movie, who’d run through the woods in heels trying to get away from the masked killer. A strange peace fell over me, knowing that my fate seemed to be out of my hands now.
With no place to run to, he had me where he wanted me.
Eighteen
“Come to bed with me, Kyndra,” Aidan pleaded, his eyes so tired and sad. My own eyes burned from exhaustion and the onset of an emotional hangover.
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea.” I backed away from him, bumping into a bookshelf. “We’ve both had a long night.”
And no matter what the truth actually was, I was pretty sure I was in danger.
He moved in front of me, faster than a human should have been able to move. The back of his fingers brushed against my cheek. “Do you have any other ideas?”
I swallowed. “No.”
His hand dropped to mine. “Then come.”
I followed him to his room. My rubbery legs shook, threatening to give out with every step. I stopped breathing when he took my hand. But still, I went.
The bed was still unmade from the day before, the clothes he’d meant to wear lay on a chair in the corner. Aidan stopped at the side of the bed, the one that I would normally crawl into so willingly, and faced me.
“You need to take off those dirty pajamas.” He brought his hands to the bottom of my top, starting to pull it up. I stopped him.
“They aren’t that bad,” I insisted, holding on to my filthy clothes for dear life.
“You told me you spilled coffee on your top and walked through dirty puddles. Take them off.” His eyes burned into mine.
Tonight, Aidan had an answer for everything, whether it made sense or not. I humored him for survival. If he thought I stayed willingly, maybe he wouldn’t hurt me. If I ran, I lost whatever control I thought I had over the situation. I shimmied out of my pajamas, dropping them in a heap beside us on the floor. My arm covered my breasts. I’d never felt so bare in my life.
Aidan sat on the edge of the bed, encouraging me to join him. I sat just far enough away from him that our skin wouldn’t touch. He crawled back toward his side of the bed, pulled the covers down and slid his body between them, turning off the light. I watched him over my shoulder.
“Come to bed, Kyndra.” His voice was husky as he repeated his invitation.
He looked so alluring, lying on his side, wanting me to join him, but I knew my mind was playing tricks on me. Still, I swung my legs on to the mattress and settled in beside him, turning so my back nestled against his chest. This was how we lay together, any time I’d joined him in his bed. He brought the covers up over me, but they did little to ward off the chill. Aidan’s hand brushed my bare breasts, my body betraying me with its response. Settling with his arm slung low but firm across my belly, he moaned as his head landed on his pillow, resting against my shoulder.
I don’t think Aidan even breathed, and neither did I. I lay unblinking, unthinking, unfeeling.
I prayed. The last time I prayed had been when Memere was sick. I’d read St. Jude’s prayer over and over until I could recite it from memory. But the patron saint of lost causes didn’t take my phone calls then, and I didn’t know how much had changed in the last year to make him want to listen. It wasn’t like I’d become a better person since then. I’d done things that would make a saint blush.
Things I wouldn’t have had to do if he’d listened in the first place.
In my nightmare, Aidan, covered in my blood, chewed the flesh and bone of my fingers. I begged him to stop, but he said he couldn’t. He needed to consume all of me. I only realized I’d fallen asleep when I woke up screaming. Stretching out my fingers, I counted them to make sure they were all still there.
Aidan slept through the whole thing, only pulling me in closer to his body. He held me so tightly I could only take shallow breaths.
I willed myself to go back to sleep. Delirium wouldn’t do me any good. I needed to have my wits about me once I could break free of Aidan’s grip.
**
“Aidan,” I murmured. “I need to get up.”
His grasp loosened just enough to let me wriggle free, he must not have been conscious or it would have never been that easy. I pulled the covers back up over him, taking a few precious seconds that I shouldn’t have wasted to watch him sleep. How could he look so content while my skin crawled at the memory of last night? His lips curled upward as he snuggled against my vacant pillow.
Only a matter of time before he realized I was gone.
Tiptoeing quickly across the room, I closed the door as quietly as possible. Still on my toes, I gathered clean clothes from my room, ignoring the now framed note that Aidan had wrote me the night I’d decided to stay here. I looked like hell. Dirty hair, puffy face, blotchy skin. Since the sidewalk was far from the catwalk, it was just going to have to do.
A phone message confirmed my appointment for my drug test tomorrow afternoon. But until then, I had twenty four hours of emptiness ahead of me.
My jacket still laid forgotten over the back of the couch. I looked at Aidan’s closed door while I buttoned it, expecting it to open any moment. Once I pulled my hat down over my ears, I turned toward the front door.
No looking back.
Regret choked me as I headed to Mass Ave, retracing my steps from the night before. I hadn’t brought anything with me. No keys, no clothes, no plan.
I didn’t know where to go as dusk fell over Cambridge. My old routine would have been to walk through the mall, but I didn’t want to see anyone I knew. I’d expected to return triumphant, in my scrubs, so I could tell them about my great new life as a nursing assistant and my fantastic boyfriend.
One more day until I could lay claim to that job. But for now, I had nothing to brag about.
In warmer weather, I’d hang out in Harvard Square, get a cheap cup of coffee, and see who I could find. Today, it felt good to be outside after the airlessness of Aidan’s room, so that seemed like a good plan. Switching things up, I got a cup of fruity tea and climbed up on the concrete embankment over the T station to watch the world go by. I tried not to think of Aidan while I sipped my drink. I usually loved doing this. If anyone fascinated me, I’d make up a story about who they were and what they were doing here.
For example, I’d never talked to the tiny Asian lady who worked at the magazine shop adjacent to the embankment. Her salt and pepper hair was stylishly cut in a bob, and today she wore a blue quilted jacket with black dress pants. In my mind, her name was Judy, and she had come here to be close to her son who studied at Harvard. Once he’d become a doctor, he bought her the magazine stand. Under a pseudonym, she blogged about her customers, who they were and what they bought.
Maybe I should be the one writing books. Although I had no idea how to give a story a happy ending.
Someone jumped up on the concrete wall beside me. I turned slightly to acknowledge them, but didn’t really see them. I’d moved on from Judy to the impossibly tall, skinny kid roller skating over the bricks on the sidewalk. The laws of physics should have rendered him on his ass, but he glided along effortlessly. Making his journey more difficult was the guitar case slung across his back.
“Don’t have anything to say to me, princess?” Shit. Had I been thinking clearly today, I would have remembered what good business Matt did in the square. College kids loved their pills.
“Not really.” My tea tasted sour now. Matt just ruined everything. I concentrated on Judy, hoping maybe he’d get the hint and go away.
Now that it was dark, a piece
of me hoped to see Aidan coming around the corner, looking relieved to have spotted me. I might have run from him, but it didn’t mean I didn’t want to be found.
“Where have you been?” Of course it didn’t work.
I straightened my back and faced him. “At school.” Finally I had something to be proud of. “I’m going to start working soon.”
“Good for you.” He didn’t sound all that sarcastic. “We should celebrate.”
One final scan for Aidan. Nothing. I sighed. Doing the right thing got me nowhere.
Maybe I belonged with the trash.
“Okay.”
Nineteen
The party never stopped at Matt’s house. I stopped to gag at the sour milk smell that hit me in the face as soon as I made it to the doorway. Then I had to put my hand out to keep the actual door from hitting me in the face. Matt was many things, but a gentleman he was not.
Aidan would have held the door open for me, I thought. But Aidan was also convinced that we were both three hundred years old. So here I was. Back where it all began.
“Look who’s back!” Philthy Phil, Matt’s buddy who crashed here most of the time, called out. Sounding genuinely happy to see me again, he sat in the middle of the living room floor, his shirt rode up over his considerable stomach, a greasy stain all the way down the down the front of it. I could only see his mutton chop sideburns on either side of his impressive bong. It looked more like plumbing than a smoking accessory. Phil never strayed from weed, or far from this room, unless he had to greet the pizza delivery guy.
Pizza. I wondered if there was any. I hadn’t had anything to eat in days. I’d been too nervous before my interview, and too freaked out after it to even think about food. I had to be careful around here. Just because there was food, didn’t mean it was edible. It could have been sitting on the counter for a week.
“Yeah, look who’s back.” A couple of Matt’s porn star cokehead girls sat on the couch. One picked at a sore on her arm, and the oozing wound made me forget all about pizza. Another attempted to clean up the mess in the kitchen. None of the girls that hung around here were ever very nice to me. Matt insisted they were jealous.
Silent Night: Vampire Holiday Romance (The Night Songs Collection Book 4) Page 12
