Velvet

by Temple West

  I hoped he existed somewhere. Even if it wasn’t here, I hoped he was somewhere. He should be somewhere beautiful. Where somebody loved him.

  Except I loved him. So he should be here.

  “Adrian, you promised me,” I whispered for the hundredth time.

  For the hundredth time, he didn’t answer. The meadow smelled like blood.

  I was tired. I was going to sleep. I laid my head down on his icy chest and closed my eyes and it didn’t take much to let everything drift away.

  I slept hard. So hard that even being asleep felt dark, black. Like the bottom of an abyss, perfectly silent and still.

  I was alone.

  * * *

  I found it odd that I didn’t have a nightmare. I figured I should have one. I deserved to have one. My punishment for allowing Adrian to die. But the fact that the entire night had been a waking nightmare perhaps canceled the need for a regular one. Either way, all I did was sleep, and came up slowly, like rising to the surface of a pool after letting all the air out of your lungs. You become heavier, somehow; less able to float. Waking was like that—something you have to do because you can’t stay under forever, but not something you want to do. It’s peaceful with the sound and light muted and the pressure pushing in on you from all sides equally. Water was good like that. It was fair.

  I heard my heartbeat pounding sluggishly in my ear. For a moment, I’d forgotten where I was, why I was, why he was the way he was. My heart was loud, and the beat was awkward. Maybe I was having a heart attack.

  Huh.

  It was really loud. I raised my head off Adrian’s chest to check my pulse, and the sound went away.

  Every muscle in my body froze.

  I laid my head back down on his chest and waited.

  And waited.

  Three minutes later: tha-thump (thump).

  I took my head away again. Again, the sound disappeared.

  I made myself examine his face. His eyes were still closed, face still pale and bluish, lips slack.

  Trembling, I reached for the hem of his shirt and lifted it up. Still dozens of holes—but they were pink, and closing before my eyes, slowly, chunk of tissue by chunk of tissue like some reverse-motion time lapse.

  I was going crazy. I must be. I had been out here for hours.

  Hours.

  He had been dead for hours. I was going crazy.

  “Adrian?” I whispered. Did I see his eyelids move, just the tiniest bit? “Adrian, honey, if you’re there, come back,” I whispered, holding his face in my hands. “Come back. Please come back. I’m here. Please come back.”

  He frowned, very slightly.

  Oh my God.

  I put my fingers under his jaw, trying to feel for a pulse. An artery pressed very lightly and very slowly against my fingers.

  “Oh my God,” I sobbed, hot tears splashing down my cheeks.

  He frowned again. I laughed, clapped my hands over my mouth, and watched him. I was going nuts. I was going absolutely nuts. Joe and Rachel would commit me—they’d find me out here with Adrian’s body two days from now and they’d see me laughing and crying and talking to him and they’d commit me and I wouldn’t blame them.

  He sighed a tiny bit, the creases in his forehead deepening.

  “Wake up,” I whispered.

  I rubbed his arms vigorously, thinking that maybe he’d get warmer or something. Maybe I just wanted to touch him. Maybe I was so scared that I couldn’t keep my hands still. Maybe I was going into shock.

  His lips parted and he sucked in a thin, raspy, awful breath.

  I held the side of his face, leaned down over him, tried to gather him as close as possible, keep him warm with my half-numb body. He coughed weakly, then violently, and frowned.

  “Come back,” I warned him. “You promised me.”

  He took in another breath. It sounded excruciating. It sounded like half his insides were torn up. I told him to breathe again.

  He did. In and out, irregular and hoarse and slow and it was hard to listen to, but I stared at him like if I looked away he’d disappear.

  He coughed up blood. I wiped his lips off with my sleeve. His eyes were racing back and forth behind his lids.

  Finally, he opened them.

  But as he stared up at the sky, it seemed as though he couldn’t see anything. Like the stars were his eyes and he was looking down at himself, at me, at the blood-spattered clearing, from an entire galaxy away.

  “Come back to me,” I whispered.

  And a few moments later, he did. His eyes twitched, unfocused. Then he turned, and saw me, recognition lighting up his face. Tears leaked out of his eyes and ran down his bloodstained skin.

  We stayed like that for a long time. Staring at each other as he tried to breathe; coughing occasionally as his insides knit themselves back together. I ran my hand under his shirt to feel his injuries. They were raw and sticky, but closed.

  “Caitlin?” he whispered in a harsh rasp.

  “I’ve got you. Don’t talk, okay? I’ve got you.”

  He couldn’t even nod, just stared at me, his eyes blurred with tears, hardly even blinking, as his breathing slowly became less and less jagged. Eventually it became regular; a clear, consistent sound.

  “What?” I asked, when a tortured look passed over his face. “What do you need?”

  His face contorted into an expression I didn’t understand. All he said was, “No.”

  I brushed his hair back from his face, thinking he was delusional. “What do you mean no? No what?”

  He shook his head weakly. “Go away.”

  I pulled back. “What?”

  His eyes snapped open, blazing silver. “Go away.”

  I shook my head violently.

  “Caitlin,” he whispered, looking panicked, “I will hurt you. I won’t stop.”

  It finally dawned on me. He’d bled for hours—he’d been thirsty before his father had even shown up. He convulsed, sweat rolling down his temples, teeth clenched.

  “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” I propped him up against my knee, pulling my hair away from my neck.

  “No,” he whispered, gritting his teeth on the word, writhing in my arms like he was on fire.

  “Shut up,” I said, and leaned over him.

  He let out something between a groan and a snarl and then there were teeth in my skin, slicing through it.

  And it hurt.

  Oh my God, it hurt.

  I held back a cry because if he heard it, he’d stop, and if he stopped, he’d die.

  He tried to be gentle. Still it felt like someone was twisting scalpels in my neck. I grew light-headed as the blood that should have been pumping into my brain was now draining into Adrian. As he grew stronger, he reached up and held my face with his hand and I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing. Just breathing. Everything else was starting to fade away.

  I don’t know how long it went on for. I only knew the pain was constant and sharp; the only clearness in the fog of existing. I had no real concept of time, but eventually, blessedly, it stopped. He pressed his trembling lips to my skin in a kiss.

  “You promised me,” I murmured, on the thin edge of consciousness.

  “I know,” he whispered. “Open your eyes.”

  I did. He met mine and murmured something in that funny language of his—and I could feel the teethmarks in my neck closing back up. I should really ask him about that language sometime. Probably not now, though.

  I fell back against the snow, drained. In my mind I laughed because I’d never used that word literally before. I felt Adrian crawl slowly over me. He touched my cheek, my eyes, my lips. He whispered my name brokenly against my heart.

  And then I didn’t feel anything.

  * * *

  I used to chew on pennies when I was teething, or so my mom always told me. She’d have to hide all of them on the top shelf so I couldn’t find them. I remember they tasted like copper.

  I woke up in the clearing and the
world was copper. The trees, the grass, the clouds, my tongue—all copper. I would never be able to get that smell, that taste, out of my head.

  I realized something heavy was covering me from head to foot.

  Ah, yes.

  That would be Adrian.

  I muttered and shifted. He woke up, blinking sleepily. Our eyes met and we stared at each other for a long time. And then I reached up, stiff from the cold and dried blood, and put my arms around his neck and hugged him because I still didn’t believe he was alive—I wanted to, but wasn’t I crazy? Crazy people thought their dead, fake ex-boyfriends were alive. I didn’t know anymore. His arms felt warm around me—real. As long as they held on, I didn’t care if I was crazy. That was fine.

  “Adrian?” I whispered against his cheek.

  He buried his face in my hair. “I’m here.”

  “Okay.”

  I drifted off again.

  “Caitlin,” he murmured into my hair a while later.

  “Hmm?”

  “We need to go back.”

  “There’s no going back,” I mumbled.

  “We need to go back,” he repeated. “We have to get to my house. I need to call Mariana and Dominic and Julian. We need to get warm.”

  Warm sounded good.

  Half letting go of me, we stumbled to our knees, and then, after many shaky attempts, we made it to our feet. I was so dizzy. The clearing smelled of copper. Adrian smelled like copper.

  We took a step, and then another. Holding on to each other for balance, we staggered across the meadow and into the trees, the bright starlight dusting the path enough for us to see our feet on the white ground. We walked for so long. Everything in me begged me to stop, to fall into the snow and sleep, but I ignored me, and thought about clean clothes, a hot bath, hot chocolate, a fire, food, protein, food, a blanket, sleeping in a bed, sleeping anywhere.

  The house came into view. The utility van was gone.

  “Adrian,” I said, pulling him to a stop. “I … smelled him. It was like—like charred meat. What did you do?”

  He paused before saying, “I honestly don’t know. Whatever it was, I’ve never done that before. I didn’t even know I could.”

  We went inside the open front door cautiously, listening. The house was silent, a few lights burning on into the darkness.

  “Grab some clothes, whatever you need for a few days,” he said as we headed up the stairs, checking every door as we went. There was no one there. As I packed, he went back downstairs and started raiding our fridge. I moved sluggishly, limply placing sweatpants and shirts and socks into a duffel bag, paying little attention to what I grabbed or if it matched. I headed downstairs again. Adrian looked better, more awake—more alive.

  “You ready?”

  I nodded.

  “Lock the door, and we’ll come back tomorrow.”

  We headed outside and I locked the door. My phone beeped anxiously in my bag. I fumbled onto the motorcycle and unlocked the screen. I had a text message from Rachel asking how I was doing over at Trish’s. I texted her back: sry was watching movie marathon. im good, going to bed now.

  I shoved my helmet on and Adrian pulled down the driveway, onto the main road, toward his house. Ten minutes later, we were there, the massive wrought-iron gates swinging open. He parked, and I tapped my phone again and sent a text off to Trish: can u cover me? im with adrian; rachel & joe think im with you. thx.

  I could only hope that Rachel hadn’t already called Trish or her parents and asked how I was. Since I’d never called Trish earlier to tell her I would be coming over, she wouldn’t know that I hadn’t gone with them to Norah’s competition like I was supposed to. Oh hell, I hope the police hadn’t been called. I shoved my phone in my pocket, too tired to think through the possibilities, and followed Adrian inside. We went up to Adrian’s room and he found his cell phone where he’d left it. I sat on the floor, not wanting to get blood on any of the furniture. Some insane part of me found it amusing that the last time I’d been in this room, I’d been drunk and Adrian had been a pirate.

  “Mariana?” he asked a moment later. “Come home now. He came back.” He listened for a moment, then glanced at me. “At the house, with me. I’ll fill you in when you get here.” He listened a moment longer, then hung up.

  “Why didn’t they help?” I asked. “Why were you alone?”

  He shook his head. “They were in D.C., following a lead about our father. It was a setup. He planned this whole damn thing.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair, then grimaced when he realized it was matted with blood. “I need, uh—you need food.” He helped me up and we stumbled downstairs and into the kitchen where he flipped on a few lights.

  “Eat these,” he said, handing me a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “It’ll hit your system fast.”

  I popped one into my mouth and chewed mechanically. I loved chocolate chip cookies, but I honestly couldn’t taste them now. He opened the fridge and reached into a drawer, pulling out a plastic IV bag. I watched, fascinated, as he ripped off the stopper and drained the blood in one long swallow. I was on my second cookie when he reached for another bag. I figured I should be nauseous, but I wasn’t. He wiped his lips, threw both bags in the trash, and reached back in the fridge, pulling out a covered Tupperware container. He popped the lid, slid something onto a plate, and stuck it in the microwave.

  “What’s that?” I asked around my fourth cookie.

  “Spaghetti; lots of carbs. Can you handle that?”

  I nodded. “Do you have any milk?” I was eating chocolate chip cookies. I needed milk.

  “Milk? Yeah…” He grabbed a gallon from the fridge, poured me a huge glass, and set it in front of me, hands shaking.

  “Keep drinking,” I told him.

  He saw me sitting there, munching on my fifth cookie, then went back to the fridge and pulled out his third bag and began sipping at it slowly. The microwave dinged. He held the IV in one hand and handed me the plate of spaghetti with the other, then set a knife and a fork in front of me.

  He’d been dead an hour ago.

  I twirled some pasta on my fork and ate it. Mariana’s cooking. Good.

  “Why aren’t you in Virginia?” he asked finally, voice neutral. “You were supposed to be in Virginia.”

  I blinked. “Our water heater broke. I had to wait for the repairman.”

  Tommie. The repairman. Adrian’s father. So stupid.

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I couldn’t tell if he was angry.

  So I shrugged. “We broke up. I didn’t want to call you.”

  He bowed against the island we were both sitting at, his face in shadow. “We thought you would be gone all weekend,” he muttered. “We had someone in Virginia on standby to keep an eye on you. We let our guard down—Mariana and Dominic went off, Julian was in New York, and I stayed here with Lucian. I could feel you at your place, but I assumed it was residuals. I didn’t think.”

  I swallowed my bite of spaghetti. “If you thought I was gone, how did you know what was happening?”

  He looked up and I couldn’t read his face. “You—felt something—that you don’t normally feel. Well, you don’t … feel it all the time; only—it shouldn’t have been there, not if it was residual. You don’t feel like that when—when you’re away from me.”

  My stomach clenched into a slimy ball of curdled cookies and spaghetti. I knew what he was talking about.

  “Adrian,” I said, eyes watering, “I got all messed up.”

  “We don’t have to talk about this now.” I couldn’t tell if he was offering me a way out or just didn’t want to hear about how I’d made out with his father.

  I felt sick. Adrian had died because of me.

  I let the fork clatter to my plate as I stumbled to the garbage can, barely getting the lid off before I violently threw up. There were hands on my back pulling my hair away and I just kept going until there was nothing left, and even
then I couldn’t stop for a while. Adrian handed me a paper towel.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, and he helped me sit on the stool again because I was shaking too badly.

  “Caitlin,” he murmured, “he’s a demon. I know you don’t like that word, I know you don’t believe it, but you’ve seen him now. You have to understand that he has means of persuasion beyond your control.”

  “I don’t care about him. I care that I almost got you killed,” I whispered.

  “No,” he said tightly. “I almost got you killed. Twice.”

  “I let him into my house.”

  He met my eyes levelly. “You were waiting for a plumber. A plumber came.”

  He blinked, and swallowed tightly.

  “Did you get enough?” I asked, nodding at the empty IV bag.

  “Yeah,” he muttered, voice rough and thick. “We should get cleaned up.”

  I looked tiredly at the hall, which led to the stairs, which led to another hall.

  “I don’t think I have enough blood pressure to make it that far.”

  He put his arms around me, lifting me off the stool. I listened closely to his heart as he carried me up the stairs to what had sort of become my bedroom. He nudged the door open with his foot, walked across the plush carpet into the bathroom and turned the lights on low, then set me on my feet. Reaching into the medicine cabinet, he pulled out two brand-new toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. We stood, trembling, at the dual sinks and brushed our teeth, not making eye contact.

  He finished first and went to the giant claw-foot tub and began to fill it with hot, foaming water. When he came back, he frowned, perhaps really seeing me for the first time since we’d gotten to the house.

  “You’re covered in blood,” he said bluntly.

  “Yeah, well, it’s all yours,” I replied. “And his. And you have more of it on you than I do.”

  “I also have more of yours in me than you do,” he muttered to himself. “Are you awake enough to take a shower?”

  Honestly? Probably not. I nodded, though.

  He looked around, pointed at the towels as if to say, “Hey, there’s towels,” and then actually said, “I’ll be right outside.”