Loved vj-2

by Морган Райс

  Caleb looked down, checked the scroll, and looked back up at the woods. Still nothing.

  Caitlin turned herself, in every direction, and squinted into the darkness with all she had.

  As her eyes adjusted, she thought she spotted something.

  “Caleb,” she said.

  He turned, and she raised a finger.

  “See that? On the horizon. It looks like a thicket of branches. Do you think?”

  He looked at it and squinted. Finally, he took her hand, and led her towards it. “Nothing to lose,” he said.

  As they walked towards it, leaves rustling, getting closer, Caitlin felt encouraged. It was a huge, impenetrable thicket of tangled branches and thorns. It almost looked like a wall. They circled it, and it must’ve been 100 feet deep in every direction. It was impenetrable. If anything fit his description, this was it. No one could get anywhere near this thing, unless they had a thick machete, and were willing to spend days chopping. Whatever was at its center—if anything—would likely be untouched.

  But then again, maybe this was just a huge thicket of branches and thorns, and all that they would find for their trouble was more thorns.

  Caleb nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “This could be it.”

  He studied it for a while, the finally said, “Stand back.”

  Caitlin took several steps back, wondering what he would do.

  Caleb pulled his sleeves down, over his hands, shielding them, then reached in, and with his incredible strength, tore at the thicket of branches. It was incredible, like watching a chainsaw attack the pile.

  Within seconds, he had cleared a path, just wide enough for one person to walk through. He was already lost deep in the thicket, when she heard his voice call out: “Here!”

  Caitlin walked through the narrow pathway, through the wall of branches, a good 30 feet deep, and finally caught up to him.

  She saw, over his shoulder, a small, stone wall.

  “You found it,” he said, and broke into a grin.

  He cleared some more branches, and revealed a small, arched entryway to the tiny stone cottage.

  He entered, taking her hand, and she followed close behind.

  It was dark and musty, and they both took a few halting steps in, before Caleb suddenly stopped.

  They heard something rolling beneath their feet, and Caleb reached down. He held something up.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He held it high, but she couldn’t really see in the darkness. Finally, he said, “Old candles. I think they’re intact. Hold this.”

  Caitlin took it and rubbed his hands together with lightning speed. She had never seen anything like it. Within seconds, his hands were moving so fast that she could feel the heat coming off of them. He then put his hands over the tip of the candle, and held them there. After a second, he pulled back, and as he did, to Caitlin’s shock, the candle was aflame. She looked up at him in awe.

  She wished she could do that, too.

  “You have to teach me that one,” she said, smiling.

  In the candle light, she could see him smile. She lowered the candle to the floor and revealed several more candles, all spread out. So that was the rolling noise they’d heard. He picked one up and pulled back its wick, and she reached over and lit it. Now they each had a burning candle. And it was enough to light up the place.

  The cottage was tiny, just tall enough for her to stand in, and low enough for Caleb to have to crouch. Its one room wasn’t large, maybe ten by ten feet. Its walls were stone, and while they weren’t perfectly aligned, there didn’t seem any obvious places to hide anything in. Against the far wall was a small fireplace, filled with branches which must have gotten in through its small chimney over the centuries.

  She looked down and saw that the floorboards were made of wood. Remarkably, they were still intact. But that made sense. There were no windows in the cottage, and aside from the chimney and the doorway, no way for any of the elements to get in. And given how thickly overgrown the branches were, no elements had gotten near this cottage for hundreds of years.

  But otherwise, there was really not much to see, and not any obvious places to hide anything. It was completely bare. Unfortunately, it seemed like another dead end.

  At least it was dry, and sheltered, and cozy. If nothing else, they could spend the night here.

  Maybe warm up, rest a bit.

  “Think you can get the fireplace to work?” she asked.

  He examined it. “I don’t see why not.”

  He handed her the candle, went over to it, and quickly extracted all the debris and branches.

  Caitlin sneezed at the dust.

  He reached up into the chimney and extracted more branches, and gathered them up and carried them out of the cottage.

  Caitlin could hear climbing on the roof, and then heard him extracting more branches from the chimney. She suddenly felt a small draft of air, and realized he had cleared it. Seconds later, he appeared back inside, carrying a small stack of dry, burnable wood. She marveled at how fast he did everything. The speed of the vampire race. It was incredible. It made her feel so sluggish in comparison.

  He placed the wood in the fireplace, took the candle from her, and lit it in several places. Within a few minutes, they had a roaring fire in the cozy little cottage. She was grateful for the heat.

  She crammed their candles into the stone walls, up high, and between that and the fire, the room was now quite bright and warm. With her hands now free, she got close to the fire and leaned back against the stone wall. She rubbed her hands before it, and was starting to feel better.

  Caleb followed suit, sitting on the opposite side of the fire, his back against the wall. They faced each other across the small room, their feet almost touching.

  Caleb examined the room, looking at the floor, scanning the walls, then the ceiling. He looked intently at the bricks in the fireplace, scrutinizing every possible detail. Caitlin found herself looking, too. They both had the same thing on their minds: what could be hiding here? And where?

  “This is definitely the place,” Caleb said. “This is where Elizabeth lived. The question is: why did the map send us here? I don’t see anything,” he said, finally, admitting defeat.

  “Neither do I,” Caitlin had to admit.

  A comfortable silence fell over them. After the whirlwind events of the day, she was exhausted.

  She was just happy that they had shelter for the night, and too tired to think of anything else. She loved the feeling of his coat around her shoulders. She felt the shape of her journal, still inside her jean pocket, and felt like taking it out and writing. But she was too tired.

  She looked across the room, and studied Caleb. She marveled at how he was so impervious to the cold, to being tired, to seemingly even being hungry. In fact, if anything, he seemed to gain energy at night. He still looked in perfect condition, despite all they’d been through. Despite being shot. She looked at his arm, and saw that it was already entirely healed.

  As he stared into the fire, lost in thought, his eyes glowed an intense brown, and she felt overwhelmed with the need to know more about him.

  “Tell me about you,” Caitlin said. “Please.”

  “What do you want to know?” he asked, still looking into the fire.

  “Everything,” she said. “The things you have seen…I can’t even comprehend,” she said. “What do you remember most?”

  A long silence blanketed the room as Caleb sat there, brows furrowed.

  “It’s hard to say,” he began softly. “In the beginning, in the first lifetimes, I was just overwhelmed with the thrill of being alive, century after century. I had lived when all others I cared for had died. At first, you begin to lose friends and family, and anyone you’d ever loved. That is what hurts the most. That is the hardest time. You begin to feel very, very alone.

  “After the first hundred years, you begin to form attachments to places instead of people. To villages, cities, buildings,
mountains. This is what you cling to.

  “But as centuries turn into centuries, even these places disappear. Towns disappear. New towns arise. Countries get folded into other countries. Wars wipe out entire cultures you loved. Languages get lost. So you learn not to cling to places either.”

  He cleared his throat, concentrating.

  “When places you love disappear, you cling to possessions. For hundreds of years, I collected artifacts, priceless treasure. I took great joy in that. But after hundreds of years, that, too, lost its luster. It becomes meaningless.

  “Ultimately, after thousands of years, you look at life differently. You don’t attach yourself to people, to places, or to possessions. You don’t attach yourself to anything.”

  “Then what stays with you?” Caitlin finally asked. “What do you care about? There must be something.”

  Caleb stared, thinking.

  “I suppose,” he said, finally, “what stays with you, when all else falls away…are impressions.”

  “Impressions?”

  “Impressions of certain people. Memories of times you spent together. How they affected you.”

  Caitlin wanted to choose her next words carefully.

  “Do you mean, like…relationships? As in, like, romance?”

  A silence covered the room. She could feel him choosing his words.

  “There are all sorts of relationships that matter, but at the end of the day, romance probably stays with you the most,” he finally said. “But there is more to it than that. In the beginning, it is about romance. But over time, the person…occupies a small part of you. I don’t know how else to explain it. But after all the centuries, that is what remains.”

  Caitlin she was touched by his honesty. She had expected him to talk about where he was born, where he grew up. But he had done far more, as usual. His words impacted her, but she wasn’t sure how. She didn’t know how to respond.

  “After so much time,” he finally continued, “when you meet people, you immediately try to place how you knew them in other lifetimes. I find that anyone who I meet now, I have also spent significant time with them in some incarnation. They never remember, but I always do. I find myself waiting for the moment when I recognize how I’ve known them before. And then it comes, and it all makes sense.”

  Caitlin was afraid to ask the next question. She hesitated.

  “So…what about us?”

  Caitlin’s brow furrowed, as he stared into the fire. He waited a long time before he responded.

  “You’re the only one I’ve ever met where everything is…obscured. I know, somewhere, that I have known you. But I still don’t know how. Something is being held back from me, and I don’t understand why. I can only assume that there is something about you—about us—that I’m not supposed to know.”

  Caitlin didn’t know what to say. She felt overwhelmed with emotion for him, and she didn’t trust herself to say anything. She knew that whatever she said would come out wrong.

  She stood up and grabbed a log, and with a trembling hand, reached out to throw it on the fire.

  But she was so nervous, that the log slipped, landing on the floor with a thud.

  Caitlin and Caleb both stopped and stared at each other. The thud of the wood: it was hollow.

  The floorboards. There was something beneath them.

  At the same moment, they both hurried to the spot on the floor where the log landed, as Caleb smoothed it over with his hand. Centuries of dust were wiped away, revealing the bare wood. He rapped hard on it with his knuckles, and there was, again, a hollow sound.

  “Stand back,” he said, and she leaned back against the wall.

  As she did, he pulled his arm back and punched the floorboard. There was cracking wood, as he punched a hole right through it, and reached in and tore up several floorboards.

  Caitlin grabbed a candle, and put it inside the hole. There was not much space, and they could see the dirt on the ground. Caitlin moved the candle. At first, it revealed nothing. But as she moved the candle to the corner, she suddenly saw something. “There.”

  Caitlin reached in and slowly extracted it. She held it up, and wiped away an inch of dust.

  It was a small, red satin pouch. Tied shut by a string.

  She handed Caleb the candle, and began opening it. She wondered what on earth it could be. A coin? A piece of jewelry? Her heart pounded with excitement as she finally got it open. She reached in delicately, and felt something cold and metal.

  She held it up and they both stared.

  It was a small key.

  She looked back in the pouch, to make sure there was nothing else. This was it. Just this key.

  She handed it to Caleb. He too, held it up, getting closer to the fire, examining it every which way.

  “Do you recognize it?” Caitlin asked.

  He shook his head.

  Caitlin came over, getting close to him, as they both sat by the fire and touched the key. As she turned it over, she noticed something. She licked her finger, and rubbed it alongside the metal. A final layer of dust evaporated, and there was visible a small inscription, written in a delicate script.

  The Vincent House.

  She looked to Caleb. “Do you know it?”

  He leaned back, shook his head and sighed.

  “I guess our search isn’t over,” he finally said.

  She could hear the disappointment in his voice. He had clearly expected to find the sword here.

  She was sorry, and felt somehow to blame. She, too, was frustrated by all the clues. She leaned back herself, settling in for what she assumed might be a long search. At least this place had yielded a clue. At least it wasn’t a dead end. Now, at least, they held a key. But to what?

  Before she could finish the thought, Caitlin suddenly keeled over in pain. She was struck by a hunger pang, worse than any she’d ever had. She could barely catch her breath.

  She felt the hand on her shoulder. “Caitlin?”

  He didn’t wait for her to respond. She felt a strong hand beneath her arm, then felt herself being picked up, and carried, as he sprinted with her out of the cottage, through the thicket of branches, and into the forest.

  As the pains struck her, again and again, she felt herself being carried through the forest, and saw the trees whirling by her at super speed.

  She felt the rage building inside of her. The desire to feed. To kill. Her body was changing rapidly, and as she squirmed in his arms, she didn’t know how much longer she could keep it under control.

  Caleb finally stopped, set her down, and stood her on her feet. He held her squarely by the shoulders, and looked directly at her.

  “You must listen to me. I know it is hard to hear right now. But you must focus.”

  She tried as hard as she could to focus on his words, his eyes. Her world was misting over with a red haze, and the urge to kill coursed through her veins.

  “It is the need to feed. You need blood. Now. We are in a forest. I can teach you. We can hunt together.”

  Teach you. Teach you. She tried to hold onto his words.

  She felt herself being pulled, and before she knew it, they were off into the night.

  THIRTEEN

  Samantha woke at the crack of dawn, and looked over. There, in bed beside her, was the teenage boy. Sam. He had been so easily seduced. She almost felt bad. She knew she had violated a law in sleeping with a human, but this one was so young and fresh, she had decided to bend the rules. Why not? No one would ever know. Of course, she would never tell, and she wouldn’t keep Sam alive long enough to tell anyone himself. Once every few hundred years, she had to indulge. It was the least she could allow herself.

  Besides, there was something about him, something that, for a human, made him almost tolerable. In fact, if she were being honest with herself, more than tolerable. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, and this, more than anything, bothered her.

  Agitated by her feelings, she sat up, still naked, and in on
e swift motion jumped to her feet and walked silently through the room. She picked up her clothes and dressed quickly, looking out the sliding glass doors. Dawn was breaking. How ironic, she thought. Sleeping during the night, and waking in the morning. Just like a human. The thought of it made her sick, but there were times one had to make exceptions.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw the boy sleeping soundly. She had tired him out, that was for sure. She knew he’d never had an experience like it, and that he never would again. After all, she had 2,000 years of experience. He was certainly lucky. At least for now. He would be equally unlucky in the coming weeks, when she’d had her fill of him, and had found out all she needed to know about his father. Then, she would dispose of him. But for now, he was a fun toy. Quite fun.

  He remained sound asleep, as she was so lithe, so limber on her feet. Like a cat. She could prance through the entire house and he would never hear a thing, unless she wanted him to. One of the many advantages of being a vampire.

  He had been so gullible: he had really believed that this house was hers. She’d worried how she would explain the fact that there were no blankets or sheets or pillows—or anything in the house— but to her surprise, he didn’t even ask. And the place has been at least partially furnished. Probably all the doings of some desperate broker, staging the house for his hypothetical showings. At least she had put it all to good use.

  She felt the heat course again through her veins, and realized that she couldn’t wait any longer.

  She needed to feed. It had been hard for her to mate with him and not finish it off, like she always did, with feeding. But she needed him alive. He was the key, and she’d had to control herself. But that didn’t stop the hunger, and as she walked about the empty house, looking out at the breaking sky, the empty country road, she wondered if any unsuspecting humans might be walking down the path. Perhaps a small child, up too early. That would be perfect.