by Am Hudson
“Can you try?”
His eyes fixed on the ground beside his feet, then he looked up and shook his head. “I wish I could. But… even out here, away from the castle, it’s not safe.”
“Safe?” I crinkled my nose up at him. “You’re the King—the overlord. The only one anyone fears. Who says it’s not safe?”
“And that—” he pointed at me as he passed, “—is exactly why I can say no more.”
I followed him. “So you have a boss? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Amara, please.” He stopped and faced me. “For the sake of yourself and that child, ask me no more.”
The defensive, overprotective person in me wanted to keep prodding, but I’d learned a lot in my time as Queen, and one of those things was that when people had secrets, they had them for a reason. If they chose not to share them and even went as far as to ask you not to persist, it was probably best not to persist. For now.
“Okay. No more about it then.” I pretended to lock my lips and tuck the imaginary key in my pocket.
“Thank you.”
Drake continued on then and I walked beside him, or behind him when the path was too thickly overgrown, until we came to a small clearing where the light filtered down, unopposed, onto a patch of dirt. I could feel a residual energy here, but I couldn’t place the emotion connected to it—if it was sadness, hope, fear, longing.
“What is this place?”
“My escape,” he said, and moved over to sit on the ground under the golden sunbeam.
I waited on the border for a moment to get a feel for the surroundings again. With Drake sitting dead centre, the energies amalgamated and settled into one emotion—peace. And as I sat down cross-legged in front of him, I felt at peace too.
“I come here to calm my senses,” he said, laying his hand out to take mine. “It’s the one place in the world that has never been touched by other energies.”
“Until now,” I said, motioning to myself before laying my hand in his hand.
“Right. But there is a difference between Cerulean Energy and normal energy. You will come to notice it more as you get older.”
“Right. So what are we doing now?” I nodded to our hands.
“We’re going to exchange energy.” He placed one hand in the soil and gestured for me to do the same. “We connect to the earth and through our hands, and you will feel my energy as I feel yours. It will recharge us and increase our power for a while.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “So if you had any plans to kill me, now would be the best time for you.”
I shuffled awkwardly on the spot, looking at my lap.
“Amara, it’s okay.” He squeezed my hand, bending his head down to look into my eyes. “I would have wanted to kill me too.”
My arms felt weak with tension. I tried to steady my breath, but I couldn’t.
With his other hand covered in dirt, he brought it to my chin and gently tilted my face upward. “I don’t want you to feel bad for being caught out. I only wanted you to know that you don’t need to kill me.”
“I don’t, huh?” I jerked my chin away from his touch. “But you’d kill me if I wasn’t carrying your beloved Anandene?”
His closed mouth spread into a tight but warm smile, his eyes going to my belly. “I’ve grown to love you, Amara—since we first met. I watched you as you grew from a child, and you were, of all the others before you, my favourite—for reasons I can’t explain. And I would never see harm come to you. No matter what.” As he spoke the last words, I sensed an underlying meaning in them—a deeper, weighted tone making me stop for a moment and ask if he might know the truth about this soulless child. But it wasn’t possible. He wouldn’t be this kind if he knew Anandene would never come to life.
“Then show me this energising circuit.” I put my hand in the ground. “And then teach me how to make fire.”
“And lightning—that’s another thing I must also teach you.”
“Lightning?”
“We can create storms with our energy, Ara. And we can also touch lightning.” He looked up at the sky and his smile took him to a place a man should never go in the company of another. Except maybe a lover. “When it rushes through the body—” he flexed his hand, “—it’s like experiencing a thousand orgasms in one flash.”
I laughed.
“You will never feel anything like it anywhere else.”
“Except in David’s arms,” I corrected.
“Yes, well, if you are lucky enough to find your soulmate, I suppose it would be as exhilarating.”
“And is that why you want Anandene back so badly—because she’s your soulmate?”
He rolled his head down, the smile staying in his eyes but leaving his lips. “I suppose it is.”
Those words felt a little empty, though. I half expected the answer to be a bold and excitable ‘Yes!’
“Did you ever love again after her?” I asked cautiously. “I mean, I know she was your one and only, but—”
“I did. I loved two others after Anandene.”
“Where are they now?”
He put his hand in the earth and fixed his other one around mine. “Gone.” And with that, a sliver of golden heat moved through my hand. My own light sparked to life, turning my aura blue, and we both sat there in the clearing, glowing like an orb of magic.
His Life Force pulsed along every one of my veins, changing my heartbeat, and I felt the same sensation coming from him. It was as if we both had a greater understanding of the other; even though I couldn’t place my finger on what, exactly, I understood. I guess I just felt connected to him—in a way I’d never been with anyone. I felt the spiritual link and the ancestral one too, and it suddenly made sense to me why Drake valued family above all else.
When I looked into his eyes, both of us laughing, I could see my own face in the irises—see the blue in mine shine like cyan sunlight, and even the trees around us had a slight blue tinge to them. The history here—the sadness, the magic, the hope, the loss of hope, the pain, the beauty of life—all of it flowed through me, making me a part of it: all its secrets belonged to me now; all mine belonged to it. And that, I knew, was what Drake meant—that the forest held many secrets, and he had given them to it.
The energy slowed then to a trickle instead of a rush, and Drake eased his grip, sliding his hand out from under mine.
I couldn’t help but laugh, breathing heavily as if I’d just run around the block. “That was amazing.”
“And I expect you should be able to heat your bath for a good few weeks before you start getting headaches again.” He winked at me.
“You don’t… have a camera in there, do you?” I asked, a sense of dread filling me.
He rocked back, chuckling loudly. “No. I do not. But I do the same thing—heat my bath. I just figured you would too.”
“Well, I’d start the fire as well, if someone would teach me how,” I hinted not so subtly.
Drake laughed again and stood up. “Come on then. Let’s set some things on fire.”
***
Drake brought me back to the castle through the secret tunnel again, and as he closed the bookcase over the passage door, the cryptic riddle he gave me when I first came here stood to attention in my mind—reaching out to connect with invisible dots above it.
All the way back to David’s room I examined the clues, linking the significance of the words darkness and passage, and connecting them with the image in my mind of the bookcase—the one in David’s room that looked like it was once a doorway, now an end. Those books on the shelf there were so tightly packed I thought they were glued in—enough that I wasn’t willing to risk pulling one out. Why would anyone do that unless they were hiding something?
But as I stood in front of the bookshelf, looking for a lever to open a door I wasn’t sure was even there, I found nothing. Just a bell, a digital clock that told the wrong time, a straw doll that looked a bit voodoo for my liking, a
nd a box of letters from Arietta to the boys, clearly from when they were human.
I ran my fingers along the spines of the books. They went as deep as the shelf, but not as deep as the nook, and when I attempted to draw one out with a fingertip, it wouldn’t budge. At all.
I tapped and tugged the spines all the way along, but none of them even slightly shifted, which made me think about the secret passages at Loslilian—how the doors needed a little push in a corner to release the lever, then they’d spring back so one could slip their fingers in the crack and pull it open.
With that in mind, I gently pushed on each corner of the book plate, and when I came to the last one, it sprung back. As I drew it open with the tip of my fingers, I could actually hear a sticky tearing sound—of what I guessed were webs peeling away from the back of it. A few sheets of wispy white fuzz fell out from inside and landed on the floor.
If I thought David’s room was unusually free of spiders for a space that hadn’t been lived in for some time, I was wrong. Clearly, they were all hiding in his safe.
Standing two big steps away from the bookshelf, I threw the safe door all the way open, squealing when I saw the thick tunnel of webs. A dozen very heavy and fat-looking black spiders quickly shifted away from the light, rocking the webs they left behind, the front of their legs sticking out from their hiding-holes enough that I could see exactly where they all were.
My skin crawled and I almost threw up. No matter how badly I wanted to read those journals, it wasn’t enough that I’d stick my hand into a nest.
I sat down on the bed and considered the webbed safe for a while, toying with my amethyst bracelet. I could kill all the spiders with a Cerulean zap and then stick a broom in there to twist out the thick webs, but then I’d feel guilty for killing something that was minding its own business. And I wasn’t sure where I’d find a broom.
I could shock them with my light—stun them into a sleep. But that would mean sticking my hand in there, and I couldn’t actually see if those books were David’s journals. It was very likely I could get my hand in past the creepy crawlies, and end up with more law books.
It both annoyed and amazed me that something I’d wanted for so long was now right in front of me, guarded only by an imaginary fear of something that couldn’t hurt me. I didn’t see what kinds of spiders they were but, even if they were venomous, I wouldn’t die from a bite. In fact, they wouldn’t even be able to pierce my skin. So what was the big deal, right?
I decided then that no one would die. I wouldn’t hurt them and they couldn’t hurt me. I’d reach in, grab the journals, and slip them out, leaving everyone in peace.
Before beginning, I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and laid it on the bed, ready to wipe my arm when I pulled it out of the webs. Then I stood in front of the book safe and rolled my sleeve up past my elbow. There was no telling how deep this went.
My Cerulean Light flared around my fingertips, the glow filtering into the sheets of webs, but they were too thick to see past the first three layers.
One brave spider crept back out of hiding and stood to defend his territory.
I looked at him; he looked at me with way too many beady eyes, and I flexed my fingers like a cowboy reaching for his gun.
My nerves made every hair on my body feel like a spider was crawling up me, but I curled my toes over and slid my fingertips over the threshold into the deep dome of spiders. I wanted to close my eyes and just get it over with, but I figured a slow reach in would give the spiders more time to fear my hand and move away from it. If I moved fast I might startle them into landing on me.
The webs stuck to my fingertips, and as my wrist entered the nook they folded around my hand, like overused cling-wrap. I used my other hand to hold my elbow steady, stop it from shaking, but before I even reached the spine of the first book I yanked my empty hand back, shaking off the fat eight-legged thing wrapped around my pinkie.
It hit the floor and scurried under the bed, leaving me with nowhere to leap to get my feet off the ground.
“Ew! Ew! Ew!” I skipped about for a second, dusting myself off, feeling a hundred spiders that weren’t actually there crawl all over my neck.
Inside the nook, the other spiders surrounded the journals, laughing and snickering at me.
“You rotten little bastards!” I marched over with new determination and jammed my hand at vampire speed into the webs. They broke apart and folded back with the whoosh of air, and when I drew my hand out this time it was with a journal wrapped safely inside it. And no spiders.
I checked quickly to make sure it was actually a journal and, satisfied in seeing the date on the spine, put it aside and repeated the grabbing process. Only four journals came out with spiders, but all of them covered in webs and eggs. I wiped each one off with the towel, then picked up the spider-covered ones from the floor and wiped them off too, leaving the safe open in case the spiders wanted to go home. Then, with five journals for my reading pleasure, I left the room, and the spiders, and headed out to the courtyard.
Chapter Four
I sat down under a naked tree in the very centre of the courtyard, taking a few minutes to get comfy and sort the journals by date: nineteen-thirteen, nineteen-sixteen, two from the eighties, and one unlabelled. Eager as I was to read every part of David’s journey as a vampire, I thought it best to start at the beginning—nineteen-thirteen. The year he was turned.
They were quite thick for journals—enough that I needed two hands to hold the earlier ones—and not all of them were leather. Nineteen-thirteen was cardboard-bound, the spine peeling away from the binding, and when I cracked it open I thought for a moment that it ripped, but it just folded oddly against my palm. The pages were so thick they felt more like card, and the yellowing around the edges had slowly spread to circle the text. Other than that, they were in good enough condition to read without too much squinting. Although, David’s handwriting was quite cursive and almost impossible to make out—at first—and the ink was smudged slightly near the binding on each left page, where his hand had run across it before it was dry. I studied the letters for a moment, realising that the s’s weren’t actually r’s and that the letter I thought was a backward e was actually a z. It was beautiful, but I much preferred his modern hand.
As I brushed a few stray webs off the corners of the pages and began my descent into his past, I hoped with all my heart that the human version of David may have written in these pages before the vampire came to life.
Two pages in, I was sorely disappointed.
October:
Uncle Arthur sat in his study, a glass of warm brandy to mind his company, a fire crackling over the silence of his confusion. He pawed over those damn pages once again, searching for something. Always searching. I leaned against his armchair, asked him what he was looking for and, as always he turned to me and responded with:
“The answer to that which may never be found, but must be searched for in order to be known.”
I knew those words so well that I said them as he spoke.
He rose then, placed his glass aside slowly, and told me to be about my own business—that it was unbecoming of a young man to mock his uncle in his own study.
Mock him? Mock him, he says. Is it mockery to make an observation?
Mockery would be to brand one’s uncle the blind fool he is—searching for things he will never find. Of course, if my uncle had thought to share his adventures, perhaps the talents of myself, or my brother, might serve him in some way.
Jason has confessed an ability to hear a man talk without use of his mouth—that on a number of occasions he has heard Uncle Arthur say something, only to deny speaking at all. It worries him, the ability to read minds, but I am not so discontented. I have not yet shared this with anyone and I do not mean to. However, if my uncle would allow me entry to his circle of secrets, I might allow him to enter mine. Together, we could solve this mystery that ails him. If there is, in fact, a mystery at all. Perhaps t’is the madness
in him—a madness that would have seen a mere mortal locked away after my aunt passed—a madness that, in the minds of those that do not die of a broken heart, will twist their thoughts until they eventually no longer make sense.
Uncle Arthur has gone mad. He is not the man I once knew. He is a bloody fool, and I am done with him.
The words at the base of the page were smudged beyond comprehension. I traced a brown stain with my fingertips and held the pages to my nose. It smelled sweet and buttery, with a tiny hint of alcohol.
I smiled, imagining him writing this in such an enraged state that he missed his lip as he sipped his drink. I could see him jumping back, wiping the page, cursing as the ink smeared across it.
On the next page he’d written the month and, beside it, what I imagined was perhaps a title:
The First Kill.
Uncle warned me that the first one would be the hardest, but he did not say in what way it would be hard.
He had gathered my kills for me since the day I was turned, but with only weeks left until Jason and I leave for war, we had to become self-sufficient. Until now, I drank blood merely for the thirst. I’d been present once when Jason made love to a girl before killing her, but I’d had nothing more than a hard-on for the idea. I hadn’t crossed the line. Until now.
Her name was Mary. She was dark-skinned, pretty, with jet-black hair and eyes to match. She barely gave me a glance as she passed me in the street.
I had planned to make it quick. I planned to hold her and be kind, but her insolence irritated me, so I ravished the bitch before my dick had even gone hard.
Something about the stillness in her, as she lay dying in her bed, made the desire to feel her skin against mine unbearable. I tore the fabric away from her breasts and took off my own shirt, laying against her, and with death on her lips, a breath away from taking her last, she whispered for to me to make love to her.
