by Eden Bradley
“Hurry, Violet. My skin is crawling. Fucking unbearable.”
“I’m doing it, love. Try not to shake. Here, I’ll tie you off. You’ll feel better in a few moments, I promise.”
The needle sinking into his arm felt almost good, as though his body knew it would bring relief. And it did. With his head cradled in Violet’s arms, he drifted off.
The sun was up when he woke. He was thirsty. Thirsty in a way he had never been in his life. Just awful. His head was pounding, and the sunlight coming through the beaded curtains at the windows was like daggers piercing his eyes, like the worst hangover he’d ever had. Even the blanket on his naked body felt…like too much, as if he could feel every single thread against his skin—skin that felt as if he’d been sanded all over, down to the raw flesh. Down to the bone.
And the damn thirst. Like a blinding fury in his veins.
What the hell was this?
He held his head in his hands, pressed hard against his skull, trying to make it go away. But it only got worse.
“Violet,” he whispered. “Help me.”
The rest became a blur then—the thirst burning him alive, until he truly was blind with it. Thirst as sharp as a knife at his throat, cutting into the jugular, and blood everywhere. Pooling on the floor, in his hands, in his mouth as he drank and drank and he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop!
He didn’t stop until it was all gone and she lay lifeless in his arms.
His eyes refocused, focused on her face. So lovely. So still. So dead.
He dropped her body on the floor as he scrambled away, her long red hair getting caught in his fingers. He tore his hand away so fast a fistful of it came away, long strands drifting in the air.
“Ahhh, fucking Jesus God!”
He crouched on the floor, unbelieving. But there was his Violet and she was dead, dead, dead. Blood all over the place, her flesh torn as if by an animal.
By him.
“Nooooooo!”
He howled at the empty room for what felt like hours. Finally he stopped, crawled over to Violet’s body. He pulled her into his lap, began to rock her, to sing to her the lullaby she always sang to him. Her skin had gone so cold. So cold.
His beautiful Violet.
His love.
He rocked and rocked while the sun set once more, then rose again. And finally he forgot. Everything.
Ramsey had to choke down a sob as he pulled away from Rogue, the blood tears pouring over his cheeks and splashing on his lover’s face. The pain of what he’d seen was truly unbearable—he felt as if his heart had been ripped from his chest, never to be repaired again.
It was no wonder Rogue had no memory of his human life, no clear memory of what had happened right after his Turning. It was no wonder he had never allowed himself to love in his century-long existence—his psyche knew what his conscious mind did not.
He had killed the woman he loved, torn her apart with the vicious thirst of a newborn vampire, unguided and out of control. Terrible beyond imagining.
But it hadn’t been his fault, his poor love—for he realized now, now that he knew his pain—that he did love him. He had to tell him. That he loved him. That Violet’s death was not his fault. If only he would wake.
It had been three weeks since Ramsey had found Rogue on the floor. He’d kept him on his bed, lain next to him the entire time, getting up only to feed, to hear the sparse reports from the Council.
He’d refused to see anyone but Adriana—she understood, and he couldn’t bear Julian’s sour disposition and disapproving looks right now—and he’d had a brief visit from Aleron. His friend had advised him to simply wait it out, but it was getting more and more difficult. He wondered if the trauma that had blacked out Rogue’s memory—the first such instance he had ever heard of—might keep him in this trance forever.
No.
He stroked Rogue’s face, trailed his fingers over his neck, his collarbone. His poor love.
What an irony that the only vampire he had ever loved was in trance, and might remain there, for all he knew.
But he had no time to feel sorry for himself. No, his sorrow was all for Rogue. His sorrow. His yearning. His frustration at how powerless he was to do anything for him.
He rolled onto his back on the bed with Rogue resting in his arms, his body as still as only a vampire’s could be. Ramsey stared through the vaulting windows surrounded by exquisite ironwork at the moonlit sky. The night was cloudy, but the moon shone through, outlining the clouds in silver. A few stars fought through the clouds, their starshine muted.
But they fought.
He sat up, taking Rogue with him. He had to fight, as well, and perhaps there was a way.
“Adriana! I need you.”
She was at his side in a moment—she was never far from him these days, always ready to do whatever he asked of her. He thought she cared for Rogue, as well, which was why he’d called her now.
“Yes, Ramsey?”
“Adriana, I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course. Anything.”
“I’m going back in.”
Her brows furrowed in confusion. “In?”
“My apologies. I am too eager and failed to explain. My own head is spinning with the possibilities. What if I went into Rogue’s memories?” he demanded. “Through the blood. Do you see what I mean?”
“I’m not certain I do, Ramsey. Forgive my lack of understanding. We do enter into each other’s memories whenever blood is shared.”
He nodded. “A part of our consciousness enters each other’s memories when we drink. It is as though a movie reel were playing, which you already know, of course. And we become a part of it, if from some distance. That is how we are able to see. Or that is my theory. We do it to humans, as well, but it is always more powerful between vampires, yes?”
She nodded. “So you believe you can…what?”
“That I can become a part of his memories as they play through is head. Not only watch them, but enter them. That I can communicate with him in this way, talk to him from the inside. I know it sounds crazy, but we are connected, he and I. We have been from the moment I first saw him. I knew he was mine.”
She smiled. “I knew it, too.”
“Then you think this might be possible?”
“I have no idea, Ramsey. But aren’t we ourselves impossible? Creatures who drink human blood, who are so much stronger than our mortal frames should be capable of… Are we not creatures of magic?”
He smiled at her whimsical description. He called himself a monster. A god. If there was any true magic inside him, he needed it now. “Then you will help me.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“Only stay with me. We have exchanged blood, you and I. That always establishes a connection that can never be broken. If I am lost in him for too long, call me out of it. Give me no more than two days. I do not know how time functions in the blood memories. I do not know if I can reach that plane. But I must try.”
“I will be here.”
She sat in a chair close to the bed, and settled into a state of utter stillness—a lovely vampire statue, his guardian angel, and Rogue’s.
Ramsey cradled his lover in his arms—his love—and bent to sink his fangs into his neck.
At first there was nothing more than the lovely, silvery flavor of Rogue’s blood. He was so lost wherever he was that Ramsey got nothing more. Then the flashes began.
The glorious red of her hair, faded and matted. Her pale, pale pink lips. Lovely.
He focused, called to Rogue in his mind over and over.
He got more flashing impressions: the old London flat, the scent of incense, the more bitter scent of heroin cooking in the silver spoon, the sound of Violet’s laughter, Janis Joplin singing about a piece of her heart.
Sadness. A yawning chasm of sadness and despair that threatened to overwhelm. This was where he would find Rogue.
Focus.
The thirst like a blinding fu
ry.
Violet.
The thirst burning him alive. Thirst as sharp as a knife. Blood everywhere. He couldn’t stop!
Her long red hair caught in his fingers.
“Ah, fucking Jesus God!”
She was dead. Dead, dead, dead. Blood all over the place, her flesh torn.
By him.
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…
His beautiful Violet.
His love.
Love.
That was what he needed to find Rogue, buried beneath a century of unbearable grief.
He called to him once more.
“Rogue!”
He felt the wooden boards of the old floor under his feet. Smelled again the incense. The blood.
“Come to me, Rogue. I will take you away from here.”
He moved closer, deeper. Saw Violet’s still body on the floor, her pink and blue flowered skirt torn into ghostly shreds. Even now, she was beautiful.
“Rogue,” he called again. “Let me help you.”
“There is no help for me,” came the answer.
He was crouched in a dark corner.
Ramsey stepped closer, relief flooding him at having made the connection. “I have figured it out.”
A bitter laugh from him. He looked so miserable Ramsey’s heart broke for him, for all he’d lost, for the terrible burden he carried.
“There is nothing to figure out. No redemption for me. There is nothing but…this.”
“Not true.” Ramsey held his hand out. “There is love.”
“I loved her.” Rogue’s voice broke on a sob. “I loved her and look what I’ve done to her. I wanted to save her from herself…but I couldn’t save her from me.”
“This was not your fault.”
“Then tell me someone else did these horrible things to her. You can’t. I did this. To the woman I loved. Have you ever heard of anything so terrible? I am a criminal beyond any atonement. A monster.”
“It is not true. I swear I know it not to be true.”
“How can you know what I don’t?” Rogue asked, his tone laden with doubt.
“I know because I saw what happened. I saw it all. You’d been given heroin—she gave it to you without knowing the effect it would have. I do not judge her. But do you know what the drug does to a vampire? The effect it has if we even drink from a morphie? It challenges the sanity of the very strongest of us, the oldest. And for a newly Turned one such as you were? One who was never taught to feed, what to expect, what you even were? I cannot begin to imagine what it must have done to your mind.”
Rogue shook his head, but Ramsey saw the tension in his shoulders let go the tiniest bit.
Ramsey took another step nearer to the still-wary Rogue.
“I know another truth, Rogue.”
“What do you know?”
His heart was a hammering beat in his chest, but it was a warm rhythm he hadn’t felt in centuries. “I know that I love you.”
“You cannot.” The words sounded as if they caught in his throat.
“I do. I love you,” he insisted. “As impossible as it seems for me, given the circumstances of my life. Given that I swore I would never love again. Given your irrepressible, impossible personality—or perhaps because of it—you are my love.”
Rogue’s turquoise eyes filled with the blood tears, but he would not shed them.
“Ramsey…I am…unlovable. Unworthy. Impossible.”
“And yet I love you. And the impossible is possible again. Anything is. Everything. Love makes it so. Love allowed me to follow you here, to find you when you were lost.”
He was standing over him now. The room began to fade away as he drew him to his feet and into his arms. He smiled as he held him, back on the big round red bed in the Palacio de Crista that was the home of his Midnight Playground club. His home. Their home. If only Rogue would stay with him.
Rogue’s beautiful face was red with the blood tears, white with shock.
“Violet,” he whispered, clutching his head. “Jesus. What have I done?”
“It’s alright. It’s long over.”
“I murdered her. I hurt her…ah, God.”
Ramsey pulled him into his embrace, held him tight enough to crush bone had he been human while Rogue keened his grief, while he shivered with it, his body bowing.
He could hardly stand to see it, his jaw clenched against the incredible pain and fury palpable in the air, in every taut muscle in Rogue’s body, yet he would not release him until he was done.
It was several hours later, the sun rising on the distant horizon when Rogue finally relaxed in his arms. Adriana had left them alone as soon as she saw Rogue was awake, slipping out quietly, a smile on her lovely lips.
“You stayed with me,” Rogue said quietly.
“You are my love, Rogue. I told you. I have seen your pain and I love you all the more for it. And now you remember. You know who you are. It has been experienced, it has been witnessed, and you can put it aside now. Other memories will follow. Good memories of your past. And we will make our own together. But you must let this one go. I cannot allow it to poison you any longer. I cannot bear to see it.”
“I cannot believe you would love me, Ramsey. After all you’ve seen.”
“Do you doubt my word?”
“No, of course not. And I can feel it. I see it in your eyes. I don’t understand it, yet I know it’s there.”
“Do you love me, Rogue?” he asked, the words unfamiliar on his tongue, words so long gone unspoken. He needed to know—needed to know so badly it hurt.
He gazed into those turquoise eyes, relief flooding him. Rogue was back. But he hadn’t answered the question.
What if he were wrong? What if Rogue was too much the rebel to love? Too unable to ever work past his grief? What if his gypsy ways pulled him away from him, from this place, so he could wander the world once more?
Could he live without him?
He didn’t know.
Chapter Nine
Rogue found Ramsey’s gaze, locked his own there. “I do.” He paused, blinked, emotion an unfamiliar flood, warming him like the light of the sun. “For coming to find me. For unraveling the mystery that was my life. For wanting to. And for redeeming me, as much as I can be redeemed. I still believe I am a monster—”
“You are no more monster than I. And perhaps Adriana is right, and there is magic inside us. Perhaps we aren’t all bad.”
“Aren’t we all, Ramsey?” he had to ask. “All of us who live on human blood? We had this conversation when we first met, you and I. You were the first to say it, but I understand your theory—and you’re right. Brilliantly so. What I did…it was monstrous in a way most humans cannot comprehend. In a way I could not. Perhaps I never will entirely.”
“But that comprehension in itself—that proves you are redeemable. You care, Rogue, and because you care you can control your urges. ”
Rogue hung his head and stared into his lap for a long while. “Perhaps.” He looked up, searching for the love in Ramsey’s expression, found it there. Fierce. Powerful beyond imagining. “But it is you, Ramsey, you who redeem me. Not the fact that I was twisted up in the heroin or the blood lust of a newborn vampire. But that you could…love me.”
Impossible. And yet it was so. Ramsey loved him. He loved in return. After all these years alone.
Ramsey reached for him in silence and pulled him close, his strong arms holding him in a way he had never been held in his life—not this vampiric existence or the human life that was trickling back to him in bits and pieces.
“I’m remembering,” he whispered.
“Tell me,” Ramsey said.
“My mother had blond hair, like me. And my eyes…they were hers, I think. She died when I was young. I lived in London always, but in different homes. I can see them all as if I’m looking at photographs one at a time, but quickly. It’s…strange. None of them were much finer than that place I lived with Violet. God, Violet…” he s
ighed.
“Shh, my Rogue.” Ramsey stroked his hair, and he trembled under the touch of his hand. “Do you remember what your name was?”
“No. No. There’s nothing there but these flickering images of my life. But it doesn’t matter, does it? None of it matters any longer. This is who I am now. Rogue. Your lover. Yours, Ramsey, if you truly want me.”
“Yes, mine. Absolutely and completely.”
“I still don’t understand it.”
“I will tell you what I am feeling, Rogue. I will try to explain. Something about you makes me feel as if you are beginning to open up something inside me I have kept shut down since Benjamin died. For more than one hundred sixty years, Rogue. It is as if our blood knows each other. As if I need to know nothing else but the feel of your body against mine. But it is far more than physical, my love. You touch me in a way I have not felt before. No, not even with my dear lost Benjamin. It is so deep. So fervent. So fine, as if every fiber and detail of this emotion is perfect. Exquisite.”
Rogue pulled back to look at him. His heart was squeezing, unclenching, over and over, until he felt a new level of opening up, a sliding sensation inside his chest.
He pulled Ramsey’s head down and kissed him, hard, using his tongue to open those gorgeously plush lips. Ah, his tongue was sweet, soft as silk. And Ramsey’s hands on his waist were so strong, signaling his command even in this moment in which their emotion floated on the air, invading every pore of his being—and he knew his lover was experiencing these things in exactly the same way.
Ramsey pushed him down on the bed with the smallest pressure points on his shoulder, his chest. Yet Rogue felt his authority in every small gesture, every tiny touch. And he gloried in it. In the love behind it, which was still a wonder to him, and perhaps always would be.
He pushed against Ramsey’s mouth, sucking his tongue until Ramsey groaned his pleasure. In moments Ramsey had stripped them both of their clothes, and it was naked flesh to naked flesh, their cool skin heating with desire between them. The older vampire took his hand and guided it to his thick cock, which was as hard and heavy as he’d ever felt it.
