“That’s the problem, Wilona,” she stood, “I can’t. All you can see is what you want and you’ll twist things in any possible way you can to get it. You’re terrified of growing old and dying; you’re practically rabid with mortal terror. You’re not literally foaming at the mouth but you might as well be because everything you say hurts like an infected bite! I’ll go tell Darlene you feel well enough to leave now. And don’t think we’ll let you anywhere near Stuart ever again.” She turned away from the beautiful woman lying across the bed, like a parody of a fairytale princess, demanding to sip a magical liquid to save herself from turning into an old hag and going to sleep forever.
Chapter Twenty
When Audrey returned to the study, Stuart and Jonathan were talking quietly, both leaning forward in their chairs. She wasn’t sure if she could sense they were discussing her or if she was simply paranoid. Upstairs in the bedroom, she had felt as strong as a rock over which the dirty water of Wilona’s cynical perspectives flowed without any effect. But now she didn’t feel so effortlessly invulnerable to her mother’s words; she had to fight them with the mysterious immune system of her intuition, which told her they were all wrong, the very opposite of the truth and good health.
Jonathan immediately stood as she entered the room. He strode over to her, put an arm around her shoulders and led her over to the chair she had been sitting in earlier. “Are you all right?” he whispered into her hair.
She nodded, pleased to see that her father’s eyes now looked more determined than tired.
It was an effort to sit down because her body felt oddly light. It seemed if she didn’t hold on to the chair she might rise off the cushion and float up toward the ceiling, which wouldn’t stop her ascent because it was mostly empty space held together by atoms only making it appear solid to her physical senses…
She spoke because her voice also served to anchor her in the room—her father’s office, an important part of her life filled with the ghosts of memories, such a crowd of them she could make out only a few specific ones at a time—“Is it true, Jonathan, that your ancestral home is falling into ruin and you've no money to repair it?”
Stuart said sternly, “Just because you drank a little vampire blood doesn’t give you the excuse to be rude, Audrey.”
It occurred to her she was seeing him more clearly lately. He wasn’t just her father, he was a man with uncompromisingly strong yet also profoundly flexible edges to his personality. She was having to put away her self-centered view of him as merely her own personal, adorably eccentric scholar the same way she had relegated her stuffed animals to boxes in the attic.
She smiled at him and the love and relief she saw in his eyes when he smiled back made her feel what they were going through at the moment was worthwhile.
“Daddy, I think Consuelo is in love with you.”
“I know she is and I love her too. She’s a wonderful woman.”
She studied his face and was surprised when he didn’t look away. “But you don’t love her like you did mother, do you?”
“There are many kinds of love, Audrey. There’s nothing sexual between us, there never has been, and it doesn’t matter.”
“I understand. The kitchen is her bedroom, full of sensual colors, textures and scents, hot broths and creamy frostings. She makes every meal as delicious, as desirable as possible, and how much you enjoy it, how much-”
“Um, yes dear.” He sat back and picked at a loose thread in his sweater he suddenly noticed.
She and Jonathan shared a smile during which she caught a breathtaking glimpse of sunny, uncomplicated days to come after the paranormal storm they were weathering blew over.
“It’s true I’m not rich,” he confessed abruptly. “And the house does need a lot of work. I’m hoping I’ll have more time to deal with it soon. I have connections; I can get the materials I need at cost. I also have a special savings I set aside years ago for home improvement, and I’m motivated now.”
Her smile deepened as his earnest, almost vulnerable expression filled her with a sense of her own power, over him and over those weak, doubting parts of her which had no place in how beautiful she felt in his eyes.
“Daddy, Wilona needs to leave now and never come back. Jonathan, would you be so kind as to escort her out for us?’
At once he stood and, gazing down at her, said almost reverently, “Yes, my lady” then without consulting Stuart left the room.
She sighed and sat back, feeling more comfortably substantial and rooted in her life, real life.
Her father had also risen. “I’m going to let Consuelo know everything is being sorted.”
“Excellent idea.” She smiled up at him. “You do that.”
“Will you manage by yourself? You could come with me…”
“No. I want to sit here and think. Jonathan will be back soon. I’ll be fine. Really.”
He hesitated, but then turned and walked away, more slowly than Jonathan but with a lightness in his step she recognized—nearly every evening he walked that way either into the dining room or the kitchen, depending on how formal they felt like being. Consuelo made him happy. Through her lovingly and passionately prepared dishes, she offered him all the beauty and comfort, stimulation, excitement and fulfillment his wife had deprived him of. Food and love. Human beings needed an abundance of both to grow and thrive, body and soul. Wasn’t that fact alone proof of God? If the universe was merely a vast casino, and her life a chance roll of the elemental dice, why was love so vital to happiness that even a powerful, centuries-old vampire was obsessed by it?
Falkon needs me.
She knew this to be true as surely as she knew she was staring at a small statue of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun holding up a spear aimed at an invisible crocodile. She reached up and suffered a sinking sensation when she failed to find the scarab amulet. Her thoughts tripped over a rush of emotions—fear, anger, uncertainty—and she was no longer so sure about what her intuition told her concerning Falkon. But if he wasn’t somehow vulnerable he wouldn’t have bothered to steal her protective amulet…
He’s coming for me.
She rose, abandoning the chair as she became uncomfortably aware of her heartbeats. Fear-excitement, fear-excitement, fear-excitement… she couldn’t separate them, couldn’t distinguish between them. She could actually hear her heart’s steady beat… it reminded her of another sound she had once been very familiar with… a jump-rope hitting the ground as she stood poised beside it, concentrating, waiting for just the right moment to leap into the silent, empty space between each thump, thump, thump, her body ready to obey the instant her mind broadcast the silent command…
Jonathan returned.
Standing beside Tutankhamun, she looked over at him and said, “The Dragon’s Breath, the Zero Point field, it’s the pause, the space between our heartbeats.” It wasn’t a question; she was remembering something Falkon had said: There are endless worlds out there no farther away than your heartbeats.
As though realizing she didn’t need an answer, he approached her silently.
“And life-death, life-death, creation-destruction, creation-destruction, that’s what our heart would say if it spoke with words. When we die—when our heart flat-lines—it’s like two girls letting go of a jump rope, but I’m still there, ready to play the game of incarnation all over again another time.”
Smiling, he lifted her up onto the table and spread her legs.
She regretted having opted for yoga pants again this morning. If she had been wearing a dress or a skirt it would have been a simple matter to unzip his jeans, shove her panties to one side and guide his cock straight into her. Slipping her arms around his neck, she moved her hands up to his head and brought his lips down against hers, whispering, “Let’s go make love in the Dragon’s Breath!” The feel of his skull cradled in her palms was seriously turning her on, she longed to feel it trapped between her legs…
“I told you, Audrey,” he thrust against her hard e
nough to take her breath away and get her juices flowing, “we’ll make love there when you’re ready. With Falkon inside you, it would be foolishly dangerous and you know it.”
“Mm, a threesome,” she squirmed against his hard-on, “in the Zero Point Field! How very tempting.”
“No doubt, but at the moment I simply cannot oblige you, my love.”
Naturally, she had expected his reaction—she was, after all, suffering from a kind of fever that made her more carelessly self-indulgent than normal—nevertheless, how calmly he could resist her was annoying. “Then let’s go up to my room,” she suggested, more in an effort to get Wilona’s cynical voice out of her head than in the hope he would comply with her request.
“All right,” he said abruptly, lifting her off the table. “I’ll meet you up there.”
She was so surprised and thrilled, she refrained from asking him where he was going first, afraid he would change his mind if she seemed too impatient; not sufficiently in control of the bloody vampire virus she was supposedly fighting. But the truth was, the only thing that felt undeniably real was his body against hers. As they walked out of her father’s office, it seemed a dream they would soon be naked together again. And instead of waking her up, the hot sensation of his hand spanking her ass and propelling her up the first two steps shoved her even deeper into the impression of consciously walking into a fantasy. Part of her was tempted, but she resisted looking back to see in what direction he was headed. To make sure Wilona wasn’t lingering on the grounds in one form or another? Toward Darlene’s office? She didn’t care really. He would be in her room and inside her soon. Or would he? Her heartbeat seemed to trip over the sudden doubt.
Did he say he would meet me in my room just to get me upstairs and out of his way?
She stopped and turned around. The hall below her was empty. There was no telltale burn mark on the floor where lightning had seemed to strike seconds before Falkon appeared at her side. It was early afternoon and yet it was dark outside, still a totally dreary winter day even though it had stopped raining. And yet the silence felt ominous, like the lull between the first storm and another one moving invisibly toward them. She could see the chandeliers reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows flanking the main entrance, two windows on each side. Four chandeliers hung over the floor and sixteen hovered over the stone driveway, as though the bare trees outside were magically blooming. Then she saw herself—specifically the pale orb of her face and her white sweater—standing between two pillar-like oak trees. Her reflection was ghostly but distinct, untroubled by the weather where it floated in the woods, and yet it wasn’t free; it was anchored to the physical body standing inside the protective structure of the house. She began turning away but then stood rooted to the spot when her reflection failed to obey her.
Slowly, with her palms facing upward, she raised her arms on either side of her.
Her specter in the woods still didn’t move.
Holding a position that felt uncomfortably like an invocation, she understood then that her physical body was the reflection of her true being, not the other way around. The interior of the house merging with the world outside—where naked trees bloomed luminous flowers immune to gusts of wind and drenching downpours, and a staircase curved up into the sky as though into other dimensions—that was reality.
It was an effort to take her eyes off who she truly was and keep walking up steps that merely led to her bedroom, but Jonathan was joining her there, where they could be together as two separate bodies lusting to become one again. She wasn’t a vampire yet, she still cast a reflection, but it was disturbingly disconnected from her.
The world of flesh constitutes the death of infinite potential for the sake of a defined form of experience.
That had to be why, traditionally, vampires didn’t cast a reflection, because they had cut themselves off from their own eternally creative spirits in order to obsessively preserve one finite production. Vampires were like actors terrified they themselves would cease to exist when the drama of the character they were inhabiting ended, and the physical set was torn down to be recycled for future performances.
She stepped into her dark bedroom and quickly switched on a light, but she was still seeing her invulnerable reflection hovering out in the woods, peacefully at one with the trees, their bare branches evocative of electrical wires through which Divine energies flowed, and mysteriously manifested as their roots plugged deep into the forces of earth.
Darlene had made her bed. Twice a month a cleaning crew came in the housekeeper orchestrated like a conductor, but the rest of the time she dusted, lit fires, washed towels and served tea all by herself. It was much too easy to take her for granted. In fact, it was much too easy to take anything and everything for granted when it was all nothing less than miraculous.
She gravitated over to her dresser, toying with the idea of pleasantly surprising Jonathan by stripping off her clothes and slipping into something sexy. It had been a long time since she wore stockings and a garter belt and a black lace teddy. But then she thought of Wilona’s abandoned boxes of lingerie sitting up in the attic and the impulse vanished like a firefly. Yet she still felt like taking all her clothes off. She tossed the white sweater into the wicker laundry basket with a superstitious relief. The gesture helped convince her that her reflection wasn’t still standing outside looking in as though waiting for something. The first thing she had done upon entering the room was pull the curtains closed over the glass doors and now she avoided her full-length mirror. She heard the tell-tale knocking in the radiators telling her the central heat was on and working, followed a few moments later by a long hissing sound as hot water began flowing through the metal coils. She had been listening to that sound all her life. For weeks after her mother disappeared it had frightened her, made her fear a large snake had found its way into her room and would slip into her bed as soon as she fell asleep. Stuart had spent long hours here with her attempting to dispel her nocturnal terrors, as had Darlene and Consuelo. She was on her own now.
She stood between the bed and the French doors, hugging herself and wondering what was taking Jonathan so long. She didn’t want to admit she wasn’t turned on anymore, hoping that as soon as he walked into the room her desire would resurrect. When he was around she felt immortal, but all by herself, with vampire venom coursing through her veins, she felt vulnerable. Wilona’s voice kept getting uncomfortably louder in her head every time she remembered her saying, “Oh Audrey, are you really so simple minded?”
Where was Jonathan? Was he in conference with Darlene, the two of them smiling smugly because the seduction of naïve and idealistic Audrey Goodrich was going exactly as planned? People who didn’t lie were always surprised when others did. It had happened to her more than once that someone—usually a boyfriend—had repeatedly lied to her and she’d been clueless, even stubbornly refusing to believe it when friends tried to get her to see what was going on. She imagined she was more mature now, less easily deceived, but what if she was being more foolishly obstinate than ever? What if her mother was right and she was making the tragic of mistake of trusting the wrong people—the wrong man—and in the process throwing away her chance to live forever?
A sudden gust of wind rattled the French doors behind her.
“Audrey.”
It remained warm in the room, the locked doors hadn’t opened, and she knew without looking the curtains were still closed, but she was no longer alone. Deep down she had been expecting him while on the surface her thoughts had chosen to ignore the knowledge he was coming for her. Was it the irresistible broadcast of his willpower that had taken hold of her and forced her to yank off all her clothes so when he arrived she would be completely exposed and open to him?
Jonathan!
Where was he? How could he have left her alone for so long? She clung to these questions, ignoring the presence in her room while listening desperately for the sound of approaching footsteps. Nothing.
She
tensed, closing her eyes as Falkon stepped up behind her. Caressing her hair, he draped it gently over her right shoulder, exposing the left side of her neck.
“It’s time, my love.”
She couldn’t find her voice to argue. It was time. She couldn’t go on fighting what she desired…
Slowly, he turned her to face him and commanded, “Look at me.”
She opened her eyes and reached for him in an effort to stop herself from plunging up into his eyes, eyes that were all pupil, voracious black holes. She swayed because where his shirt should have been there was nothing and yet she could see him, his broad shoulders and lean hips and the smile on his lips. She also felt his hands beneath her arms and his thumbs digging into the flesh above her breasts as he lifted her off the floor until her feet just barely grazed the rug. There was no point trying to push him away; there was nothing there to push, and she couldn’t move. His presence was so concentrated, so powerful, so inescapable and undeniable, it paralyzed her. She hung from his hands feeling as light and insubstantial as her reflection, except the discomfort caused by his talon-like grip was real. So too was the pain when he lowered his head and slowly, relishing the penetration, sank two agonizingly long fangs into the vulnerable tenderness just above where her neck met her shoulder. She couldn’t believe it was happening, and that she wasn’t even fighting him, but she simply couldn’t. She could scarcely feel her body anymore; she had become pure anguish. Only her sex was mysteriously exempt from the torment. As his teeth sank deep into her neck her pussy grew warmer until between her breasts the blinding pain met and clashed with an indescribable longing. She was afraid her heart would burst from the pressure as the opposing sensations battled each other. She could scarcely breathe it was so awful and so unbelievably glorious. She was terrified she was going to die and yet she had never felt so intensely alive. Then he began sucking her blood and her awareness flickered as her life flowed into his mouth like a live current burning her skin around the puncture wounds, a haunting socket into which he was plugged with a fierce, implacable intent. Terror meant nothing anymore, it was only a synonym for pleasure as she hung like a rag doll from his hands, her head tilted submissively to one side. The only part of her that moved was her pelvis, which shuddered slightly as she suffered an orgasm that just kept escalating in intensity instead of ebbing...
Eternal Blood - Books 1-3 Wolf Shield, Sword of the Blood, Vampire Bride Page 22
