Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  Ten minutes later, I was scratching my reddened skin as we left California and drove into Arizona. The Mojave desert stretched ahead of us, shimmering with mirages of things that did not exist.

  “That sucks,” Sam said, reaching over and pressing two cool fingers to the pink flesh at my wrist. The skin stayed white for several moments, indicating a nasty burn.

  “I remember that,” Sam said. “It took months before I could go out in the sun without getting fried.”

  They called Sam the Ripper. Ryan’s words came back to me like a knife to the heart.

  “What was it like for you?” I asked carefully. “In the beginning.”

  He didn’t answer, and after several minutes had passed I guessed that he wasn’t going to.

  “Have you ever wanted to kill someone? To feel their life force fade away? To take everything from them?”

  I thought of Caleb. Of Ryan.

  “No,” I replied. “Maybe.”

  He tore his eyes from the road and stared straight at me. The anguish in his gaze was unmistakable and raw.

  “I did. I feasted on the suffering of others. The more they hurt, the better I felt. Their blood was like a never–ending river of pain.”

  “You … hurt people?”

  “I killed people, Mia. I killed a lot of people. And worse.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. His eyes were glossy, and I wondered if he was going to cry. I’ve never seen a guy cry before.

  “There are things worse than killing someone. I’ve done most of them.”

  I swallowed thickly and cracked the window, staring straight ahead. The landscape was barren and desolate, but it looked positively radiant compared to sitting in the car listening to Sam talk about murdering people. I was suddenly all too aware of the fact that nobody knew where I was. Or who I was with. The one person I had trusted in the midst of chaos, and he was telling me this?

  Hot, stale air flooded the car, and I closed my window again. I slumped down in my seat and looked limply at Sam, concentrating on the road ahead. I could tell by his expression that he felt me staring, but he didn’t turn to look at me. He was clearly locked inside his own struggle.

  “Would you do that now?” I asked. “Would you hurt someone again? Would you hurt me?”

  He cleared his throat. “Of course not.”

  “Did you hurt anyone before you were a vampire?”

  Now he looked at me. “I know what you’re doing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re trying to pass the blame. Like it wasn’t my fault.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I replied forcefully. “Unless you decided to let someone Turn you, to make you a vampire, then none of it is your fault.”

  “But what about you?” Sam repeated. “What happened to you that you’re so different? You don’t even like blood.”

  I blushed, stared at the floor.

  “Oh, come on, Mia. A few minor cravings is nothing compared to what I’ve just described. Trust me.”

  The funny thing was, I did trust him. Even after what he’d told me. I glanced at his hands and couldn’t imagine them being used to inflict misery upon somebody.

  “I tried to bite Ryan,” I said sheepishly. I didn’t need to tell him the rest.

  Sam laughed! I felt my face turn even redder.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I would love it if you bit him. A scar would be even better. God knows he deserves much worse.”

  I frowned. “You don’t like him very much,” I said, “do you?”

  “Do you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. And I really didn’t. The pull I felt towards him was incredibly intense. If I thought about moving further away from him, it hurt, a dull thud between my temples and a sharp spike in my chest.

  “Don’t you have that feeling with Ivy? That pull?”

  Sam’s face fell a little. “Not exactly,” he said. “I love her, but we don’t have that bond a vampire and maker normally share. It’s a long story.”

  “Is that why?” I asked gently. “Why it was so bad for you? Because you didn’t have that voice in your head telling you everything would be alright?”

  Because as much as I hated to admit it, Ryan’s voice inside my head, infuriating as it could be, was the only thing that had kept me sane during those first few weeks after waking up as a baby vampire.

  “Maybe,” Sam replied. “Who knows? It was a long time ago.”

  He continued to drive while I thought.

  “How old are you, again?” I asked. I knew he had told me when I first met him, but in the murky recesses of my brain, the number had vanished.

  “Thirty-seven” Sam said.

  “You don’t look a day over twenty–one,” I remarked.

  “That’s because I’m not.” Sam grinned. “I was Turned on my twenty-first birthday. Well, technically it was the next day, so I guess you could say I am a day over twenty-one.”

  “How did it – what happened?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer. I still couldn’t talk about what had happened to me. Who was I to think that he was any different?

  “I was living in New York at the time,” Sam began. “Ivy and I had had this huge fight, because she needed to go back to LA and wanted me to go with her, and I couldn't, because my dad was sick and I wanted to be close to everyone and finish school.

  “I turned twenty–one in May. My parents threw me a huge party at their house. We were all drinking. Most people were gone by 2 a.m. I went to bed after that. I didn’t even wake up and the whole house was on fire.

  “All I remember is Ivy dragging me out of bed and jumping out of the window with me in her arms. That was the first time it really occurred to me that there was something different about her. You know ... something not human. She had been giving me blood samples for my research at the university, but she always told me it was someone else’s blood we were studying.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “What happened?”

  “I was dying,” Sam said. “Well, I did die, I guess. I had burns to most of my body. Before I passed out, Ivy offered to save me, to give me some of that blood, and when she cut her wrist I knew the blood had been hers. I had watched the virus in that blood completely overtake human blood and change DNA. I didn't want it touching me. I said no.”

  I thought of falling from that building in Mexico, and being offered the same deal by Ryan, and I shuddered.

  “But she did it anyway.” He looked terribly sad, clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles.

  “And your family?” I probed gently.

  “All dead in the fire,” Sam replied stoically. “My mother, my father, a sister and two brothers. All gone.”

  My throat was so tight I could barely speak. Without thinking, I reached out and squeezed Sam’s right hand, the one that wasn’t on the steering wheel.

  “Did you forgive Ivy? For Turning you even though you said no?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “She saved my life. She loved me.”

  Something about that story made me terribly uneasy, but I couldn't put a finger on it.

  She loved me. Sometimes love makes people do crazy things.

  We travelled in silence for another twenty or so minutes.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said, breaking the sadness that lingered in the air like dead souls.

  Sam just looked at me. “Again?”

  The truth was, my stomach was turning in on itself again, and I was terrified of throwing up in the car while we were doing ninety on the interstate. I told Sam this and he appeared concerned.

  “How long have you felt like this?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. A few weeks, maybe? It’s hard to remember with everything that’s been going on. I’m sure it’s just part of being a vampire.”

  He frowned. “It’s not something I’ve ever heard of. And you say you still eat mostly regular food?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I get cravings for cheeseburgers a lot. I
think it’s the red meat.”

  “And the blood? You crave that, too?”

  “A few times,” I admitted, embarrassed. I almost told him how I had slept with Ryan, but changed my mind. I liked Sam. I didn’t want him knowing that dirty little secret.

  “A few times a day?”

  “No,” I replied. “Just a few times. Once I wanted to bite Ryan. Another time I smelled the blood in the refrigerator. Other times, it makes me feel clearer, but I don’t crave it. It still kind of grosses me out.”

  “You need to stop and pee a lot for a vampire,” Sam mused.

  “Gee,” I replied. “Awkward much?”

  “Sorry,” Sam said, giving me one of his enormous puppy-dog smiles that reached all the way to his eyes. “I’m just trying to get a catalogue of symptoms so I can try and figure out what’s making you sick all the time.”

  “I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal,” I said, suddenly alarmed. “Do you think there’s something wrong with me? Ryan says I sleep a lot for a vampire.”

  “You do,” Sam confirmed.

  “Great, so I’m basically a lazy sloth vampire.”

  “Cravings. Nausea. Vomiting. Excessive urination. Fatigue. If I didn’t know better,” he joked, “I’d say you were pregnant.”

  I laughed. “That’s impossible. Vampires can’t have babies.”

  “Plus, it takes two to make a baby,” Sam added. “Unless it was the immaculate vampire conception.” He was still chuckling to himself when he caught a glimpse of my red face and his smile vanished. “Whoa,” he said. “You and Ryan?”

  “It was a mistake,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I hope he didn’t compel you,” Sam said tightly. “I might have to murder him if he did.”

  “No, he didn’t compel me,” I said, burying my face in my hands. “Oh. My. God. I am so mortified right now.”

  “It’s no big deal,” Sam said. “It’s none of my business.”

  Neither of us spoke for a few minutes.

  “In that case,” Sam said pointedly. “My earlier diagnosis may have some merit.”

  “That’s not funny,” I said angrily.

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Sam said, looking at me seriously. “Mia, it can and does happen from time to time. Don’t think yourself impervious to getting pregnant just because Ryan told you so.”

  My jaw dropped. “You’re serious. You’re actually serious. This is insane!”

  Sam was pulling into a small cluster of shops that I hadn’t even noticed.

  “Where are you going?” I demanded.

  “To buy something,” Sam replied. He pulled into a parking bay, shut off the engine and took the keys. “Need anything? Snacks, water?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks.” I really wanted to ask him to pick up some kind of hotdog with extra salt, but I didn’t want to give his outlandish theory any more fuel, so I didn’t.

  I pondered Sam’s crazy idea while I waited for him to come out of the convenience store. There was no way I could be pregnant – my mind couldn’t even comprehend such a possibility. Besides, Ryan was older and wiser than Sam, at least when it came to vampire–related facts. If he said all vampires were sterile, then I believed him. Sam was just being crazy.

  By the time he had returned, I was happy again and thinking about what I would do first when I got home. A visit to Jared, of course, then a quick trip across the Hudson River to see my mom at her work offices in Manhattan sounded good. I still hadn’t thought of a convincing story as to why I was home when school was days from starting. I decided to stick with good old–fashioned homesickness as my excuse. Besides, it was true.

  Sam handed me a brown paper bag as he got into the car. “What’s this?” I asked as I opened the bag, at the same time realizing what the pink cardboard box contained. “Jesus, Sam!”

  “Just humor me,” he said, starting the car. “Take the test. Tell me how wrong I am. And then we’ll never speak of it again.”

  FORTY-ONE

  We decided between us to stop for the night in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. We’d been on the road for over twelve hours and both of us were starting to get pretty tired. We hadn’t mentioned the stupid pregnancy idea again, and I had all but forgotten about it when I rushed ahead of Sam and towards the bathroom of our motel room.

  “Wait!” Sam said, tossing me the brown paper bag. And then, when he saw my face, he added, “just humor me.”

  I rolled my eyes and shut the bathroom door.

  “Hey, you want some food?” Sam called after me. “There’s a Pizza Hut a few blocks down. Do you want me to grab you something?”

  “Sure,” I replied, taking the cardboard box out of the paper bag and ripping it open. I waited for Sam to leave, and when I heard the motel room door close behind him, I peed on the stick and replaced the cap.

  I tossed the test on the counter and promptly forgot about it. I wandered out to the main room, where I had thrown my bag onto the first of two single beds. I decided to take a quick shower while Sam was getting pizza. I took my oversized toiletry bag into the bathroom and locked the door. I had just turned the water on when I spied the pregnancy test sitting on the counter.

  Two lines.

  I dropped the toiletry bag and fell to my knees, swiping the test off the counter as my knees buckled. I turned the test over, to recheck the helpful little diagram that was stuck to the back. One line – not pregnant. Two lines – pregnant.

  I read those words and my entire world came crashing down around my feet.

  There are things worse than death. And here I was, in the midst of one of those things.

  I think back now and still can’t believe how calm I was. Now, I realize that I was in shock. I acted quickly, knowing that Sam could return at any moment. I opened my toiletry bag and emptied the entire contents onto the grimy bathroom tiles. Bottles of makeup, nail polish and hairspray scattered everywhere. My eyes fell upon a disposable plastic razor, and I snatched it up. I smashed it under a can of hairspray and fished out the sharp razor blade.

  I stood on shaky legs and took one final look at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t live through one more thing. Certainly not this. The word baby tried to enter my thoughts and I banished it angrily.

  Monster.

  What had Ryan done to me?

  What the goddamn had he put inside of me? It was too much for me to bear.

  I didn’t want to think about any of it, ever again. I was done. Finished.

  I told you to leave me there to die.

  And God, how I wished he had.

  Deciding to kill myself was relatively simple. It was the only solution I could see to my impossible quandary.

  My words to Ryan became a chant that I repeated over and over.

  I told you to leave me there to die.

  The sharp, dragging pinch of the razor blade took my breath away as I gouged it into the pale flesh of my wrist. Up, not across. How did I know that? It didn’t matter. Deeper, deeper. Jesus Christ, it hurt. I cried out and kicked the vanity, trying to distract myself from the pain. I forced myself to think about what I had endured in Mexico, and my Turning, and how this was absolutely nothing compared to the pain I had experienced before.

  I watched, fascinated as my own blood began to pump from my artery. Bullseye.

  One down. One to go. Only–

  “What?” I panicked, watching in utter disbelief as the skin around my wound began to knit together. “No, no, no!” I rubbed my wrist, and underneath my blood was a perfect patch of skin – no cut, no pain, no bleeding, and, most of all, no escape.

  Ryan’s words came back to me then. You’re a vampire. It will heal in a matter of minutes.

  No escape. Unless …

  I skated around the slippery tiles, now slicked with my blood, looking for the bottle of sleeping pills Ryan had given me after pulling me from the bathtub. I had tossed them into my bag at the last minute, and now I was relieved.

  These things are like vampire va
lium.

  Yes, but could they kill a vampire?

  I unscrewed the lid and shook a couple of the bright blue capsules into my hand, crushing them in my palm.

  Bingo.

  My skin immediately began to sizzle. No wonder. The thick sludge in the capsules smelled exactly the same as the Asphodel flower Clair had been wearing in her hair. Only this blue gloop looked like concentrate. I climbed into the empty bathtub, clutching the razor and bottle of pills to my chest. I took the razor blade and wiped it against the aqua–colored stuff in my palm, getting as much as possible on the thin blade. I took a deep breath, and repeated my earlier action against the delicate, completely healed skin of my inner wrist.

  I screamed. The blue stuff – Asphodel root, according to the pill bottle – immediately entered my bloodstream, and my whole body began to convulse. I leaned over the side of the tub and retched violently. Vampire poison.

  Sam had been gone maybe ten minutes at this point, and I didn’t want him to get back until I was well and truly finished. The bathroom door was locked, hopefully buying me some extra time if he did get back before I bled out.

  Other wrist, Blake. Hurry up.

  I managed a messy cut on the other wrist before I dropped the razor blade and slumped back in the tub. Everything inside me was on fire. Except my stomach. From my waist to my hips, I felt a buzzing numbness that could have been the stone in my womb dying along with me.

  Thank God.

  It was going to be over soon, I knew it. The pills were working well, and quickly. I closed my eyes and waited to die for the second time in as many months.

  My ears picked up the jingling of keys, and the door to the motel room opened.

  “Pepperoni pizza okay?” I heard Sam ask casually. “Mia?”

  “Y–yes,” I called out weakly. More than anything, I didn’t want him coming in until I was dead and finished. I asked you to leave me there to die.

  Despite being close to passing out, I could still see what was going on beyond the bathroom door. I watched with closed eyes as Sam placed the pizza box on the table and sniffed the air.