by Am Hudson
“Drake gave it to me,” I said, looking at him then the bracelet. “It’s amethyst.”
“Why did he give it to you? And why would you wear it?”
“It helps me draw on Nature’s power when I’m not actually near Nature.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re wearing it.”
I covered it with my other hand. “I like it.”
He dropped my hand and stepped back. “We’re going to the market tomorrow. I’ll buy you a new one.”
“Why?”
“Because the man that killed our children gave it to you, Ara! And who knows if that bracelet has some kind of watching spell on it.”
As he said that, my stomach dropped—taking me back to my first day at the castle. Drake promised to let me call David once we could be sure he was an ally not an enemy. He said he’d use a watching spell to make sure.
My wide eyes took David in with a new sinking feeling. Maybe that was how Drake knew I’d planned to kill him. And if he knew that, it was highly likely he already knew about the soulless baby I was carrying.
“Are you okay, my love?” David asked, cupping my cheek. “You look… haunted.”
I shook it off. Surely if Drake knew that he wouldn’t have let me go. “I’m fine,” I assured him—saving that conversation for a clearer head. “Just tired.”
“Then I’ll light this fire and we can rest.” He bent down and kissed my hand, then vanished. A second later, in the perfect and still silence of the house, I heard the distant clicking of what I assumed was an axe on a tree. But that was the only sound; there was no chaotic chirruping of nocturnal creatures, or rustles in the bushes. It was unnerving to be so close to nature and hear nothing but the wind.
Then again, this site hadn’t been disturbed in so long that any foreign movement would still the creatures and insects into silence, for sure. Out here, David and I were the predators now, and while the crickets and frogs didn’t need to fear us, they instinctively did.
I rose from the chair with a bit of effort and shuffled over to the bed. An oil lamp and a damp packet of matches lay on the nightstand beside it, challenging my mind like a History teacher on the first day of school. I had no idea how to light the thing, but I’d seen it in movies—where they take off the glass and turn the nozzle thing and then strike a match—so I tried that, and thankfully there was enough oil on the wick to ignite the flame.
I gave the brass tub a little shake and heard the swish of maybe half an inch of liquid. It’ll be enough until David gets back, I thought as I put it back down. He lived through the ages of candles and oil lamps. He’d know what to do from there.
I placed the glass back over the flame and it brightened somewhat, giving me a more rounded glow of light to work by. And although the lake house looked like something from a horror film, it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Soon there’d be a roaring fire and clean sheets, and David and I could lay in each other’s arms.
My heart skipped a fluttery little beat just thinking about it.
With my hands on my hips I appraised the mattress next; sunken in the middle, angling to the floor a little on the left corner where the springs had clearly worn away, and so dirty I wasn’t sure it’d be safe, even for my immortal lungs, to sleep on. It would need a good beating and some sunshine at the very least. Then maybe a bucket of bleach, because God knows how many people actually died on it.
“Something wrong?” David asked, coming back in with an arm full of dead tree.
“We can’t sleep on this, David. It’s way too gross.”
He laughed, rolling the pile out by the fireplace. He stood up then, dusting off his black shirt and hands. “Well, I guess we’ll camp out on the floor tonight then—by the fire. And we’ll go into town tomorrow and get some new furniture.”
“Is it safe to go into town?”
“Of course.” He bent and collected the smaller bits of wood. “Walt’s men aren’t just lingering around the department store, you know—waiting for us to walk in and buy a mattress.”
I smiled. He had a point. “You’ve done this before,” I said.
“What?” He squatted by the fire and neatly arranged the kindling on the bed of aged soot. “Lit a fire?”
“No.” I walked over and knelt down beside him, clearing away a patch of dust and leaves first. “Run. Hidden away.”
“Many times,” he said with a breathy laugh. “And not always from vampires. Sometimes from humans.”
“Really?”
“Mm.” He nodded absently. “In the war—both of them, actually. And when I’d get caught red-handed with a dead girl in my arms—”
“You’ve been caught by humans—identified?”
“Many times.”
I laughed, sitting down on my bottom to give baby more room. “You’ll have to tell me some of your stories while we’re here—hiding from the world.”
He reached up and grabbed a box of matches from the mantle, tapping them against his hand as he brought them down. “I’d like that.”
“Really?” I raised my brows at him. “Wow—David sharing. Times have changed.”
“I’m not afraid I’ll shock you anymore.” He struck the match. “You’ve read my journals. There’s not much I can tell you that you don’t already know.”
I looked at the bent match then at David. “Want me to light that for you?”
“What? This?” He held it up.
“No. The fire.” I clambered up awkwardly onto my knees and leaned toward it, and with my hand just above the kindling, I closed my eyes, built the warmth up in my fingertips—by aid of lustful thoughts about what came next—and sent the heat toward the wood, willing it to ignite. Like a good little pile of dead trees, it lit up beneath my palm—the blaze starting on the top and channelling its way deep into the kindling.
I drew myself back then, giving it a little blow to assist the flame.
By the gentle light of the oil lamp on the nightstand beside us, and by the slightly blue glow in the fire, David’s green eyes looked brown and dark as he took me in with a look of total surprise.
“What?” I asked self-consciously. “You’ve seen me use my powers before.”
“But not with so much confidence.” Before the flame could burn out, David grabbed a log and gently arranged it over the kindling. “It’s… sexy on you.”
“What is?”
“Confidence—like that day on the beach. The battle.” He sat back on the round rug and dusted off his knees. “Before everything went… wrong… I wanted nothing more than to take you up to our chambers and rip your clothes off.”
I laughed.
“You’re this sweet, sometimes naïve little thing, Ara, and I love that about you. So much so that, when you wield a sword to cut down bad guys, or use your powers, it is the sexiest thing in the world, because I always so easily forget that you can.”
My hair fell in my face as I tipped it timidly forward. David brushed it back and tucked it behind my ear. And we sat by the fire for a while, warming our hands, not really talking much. He’d catch the odd thought in my head here and there about something I did or saw at Drake’s, and answer with his own thoughts—sometimes memories. And I just kept going over and over it in my mind—how amazing it felt to finally be free—just a boy and girl by a lake. In love. Together. Married. Both finally immortal—without fear of what would tear us apart. Nothing would ever tear us apart again. Nothing. To prove the greatest love, you must face the greatest challenges. And we had been tested and tried. More times than fair. And we’d passed. More times than possible.
“I say bring it on.” David reached over and took my hand.
“Huh?”
He nodded to my head. “There will be more battles for us, Ara—things that will to try to tear us apart. And I say bring it on. Because it’ll never work.”
I shuffled closer and rested my head against his shoulder. “That was my exact conclusion.”
“I know.” He put his arm ar
ound me and kissed my head. “I can read your mind, remember?”
***
When the fire crackled down to a low flame and I started drifting off sitting up, my head against David’s arm, he gently moved me off him and jumped up, disappearing through the sitting room and into a nook. I could hear his footsteps above me, light, but just enough screech and bump coming through the floor boards to make me hope this house was as sturdy as David believed.
He came back down a minute or so later and dumped a pile of blankets and sheets on the floor.
“Where’d you get those?” I asked.
“Closet upstairs.”
“What else is up there?” I looked at the roof symbolically.
“Mostly junk. It used to be a room for Jason and I, but it’s just a bunch of boxes and picture frames, and pretty much anything else we didn’t want to leave at the castle or drag around with us every winter.”
My eyes lit up. “Can I maybe go through some of it tomorrow? Will there be pictures of you when you were human?”
“There may be,” he said, but his smile suggested that there definitely was.
I stood back while David shook and then laid out a few thick quilts. He lifted the blue suitcase he brought from Drake’s castle onto the bed, pulled out some sheets, and laid them over the makeshift mattress on the floor.
“These blankets haven’t been used in decades,” he said. “They need a good wash, but they’re not mouldy.”
“David, the walls are mouldy. It’s a safe bet the blankets are too.”
“The walls aren’t that bad.” He grabbed the last blanket from the pile. “Uncle Arthur came out here every few years to repair the roof and fix broken windows, so it’s a solid enough little house. It just needs a little TLC.”
“A lot of TLC,” I said, taking the blanket. “How come you never told me this was here?”
“Same reason no one knows to look here for us. Not even your guards.”
“Which is?”
“If no one knows about it, no one can find me.” He snatched the blanket back off me and shook it out over the bed. “And when we first met, Ara, you were one of the people I may have needed to hide from—for your own good.”
I sat down on top the blanket before it even landed flat. “Is there anything else out here I should know about?”
“A farmhouse.” He grabbed another log and stuffed it on the fire, using the metal poker to roll it in when it ran away from the flames.
“Seriously?”
“Back in the late eighteen hundreds there was a small chicken farm here. The house is so old it’s just a frame, really. There’s apparently no roof and it was just one room, no bathroom, but it’s out here somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Not sure. I never found it.”
“How much land do you actually own here?”
“You mean how much do we own?” He smiled, sitting down cross-legged beside me, both of us facing the only source of colour in this drab little house. “A bit.”
“Load of good owning land will do us if we’re never free to live on it or make anything of it anyway.”
“We will be.” He tilted my face upward and leaned in to kiss the tip of my nose. “We just have to fight a few more battles first. But I don’t want to worry about any of that tonight. I just want to enjoy this time together—alone.”
I sighed, forcing myself to notice the sound of silence; no vampires murdering people; no animals or servants pottering around. “Completely alone.”
“Not… entirely,” he said slowly, his ears pricked.
“What do you mean?” I asked nervously.
“Get back.” David sprung to his feet, dragging me under my arms to stand, then he lunged forward suddenly and tore the blanket off the makeshift mattress, scooting back when an inhumanly large eight-legged monster shot forward.
I screamed, leaping onto the wobbly kitchen table, and David appeared in the corner across the room, standing on the bed.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at him. “Kill it!”
“You want me to kill it?” he screeched back. “I hate spiders.”
“Is that a joke?!” I watched it scamper across the floor—going where it pleased. “Are you saying you want me to kill it?”
David cleared his throat and looked from me to the spider to the kitchen. “The pan.” He pointed to the sink about an arm’s reach from me. “Pass me that frypan.”
Checking first for more spiders, I leaned over and grabbed the handle. “What kind of a vampire is afraid of spiders?”
“A very human one, Ara,” he snapped. “One of the first things I ever told you is that we carry over our human traits—and fears.”
“And spiders is one of yours?”
“Not a huge fear. If it was a little spider it’d be splattered by now. But that’s no ordinary spider.” The fear in his eyes as he looked at the giant crawly made him look cute and sweet in a very human way.
I couldn’t help it then, I burst out laughing. “An arachnophobic vampire!”
“I’m not arachnophobic,” he said defensively. “That guy is enough to scare anyone.” He hopped down off the bed, jumping a little when a leaf moved near his foot, and walked over to grab the pan from me. “You okay? Aside from hysterical with laughter?”
I nodded, wiping my nose against my sleeve. I really needed to learn not to laugh through my nose.
“Okay, Spider Man,” he said to the bug, crouching as he moved in on it. “Time to die.”
The pan went in the air and came back down almost hard enough to go through the floor, and a very wet pop, followed by a meaty crunch, ended the debacle. I covered my ears, tensing from shoulders to curled toes.
David turned back with a boyish grin on his face. “I’ve never seen a spider explode before.”
I looked at the bottom of the pot—at the stringy remains of a leg among the greasy goo—and my stomach just turned, the baby rolling against it to make matters worse.
“Shit.” I covered my mouth and ran for the bathroom, hoping to God there was a toilet in there.
***
I didn’t realise I’d fallen asleep until thundering rain clapped the tin roof and the milky scent of clay wafted up from the dried banks underneath us. In that exact moment, I also realised the chimney must be damaged up top, because as the wind threw the doors open and saturated David and I, the fire went out.
The smell of vomit still sitting in a toilet that didn’t flush blasted through the house on the gusts of stormy wind, too, making me think about that fat wet spider and all its guts.
I rolled over and hid under the blankets as David jumped up and fastened the doors closed. When he came back to bed it was without his shirt, and with very wet, icy arms. He slipped them around me and pressed his lips to my head. “Your hair is wet,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.” He hugged me and Bump tightly from behind. “I wish I could have found better accommodations for us—”
“Don’t be sorry.” I moved his hand off my hip so I could roll to face him. “This is perfect, David—if a little stinky and cold. But we’re together. Alone.”
“Yes, but there is one problem with this picture.” I could tell from the cheeky tone that he was in a playful mood.
“What’s that?”
“We’re not naked.”
And we hadn’t been naked since that first night making love before I went to the castle. But after what I showed him—my memory of Arthur—could he really stand to touch me again?
“I can erase that.” He slid both hands along the sides of my face and looked into my eyes, his nose touching mine. “I can take it away—all of it—so you never have to think of it again.”
“I’ve come to terms with it, David. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Don’t lie to me, Ara. You haven’t come to terms with anything.” His hands slid around to the back of my neck, his thumbs smoothing circles just beside my ears. “You’re c
ompletely damaged by it. I felt it. I felt everything you felt when he touched you, and I know you’re not okay. You’re trying to be okay because you know he meant well—because you don’t feel like you have a right to feel abused, given that you went there willingly.”
His words sunk through to a part of me that I’d forced to shut up long ago. He’d always been good at that—at knowing what I was thinking—even without reading my mind. But this was different. This was understanding—a kind of empathy that used an entirely different skillset than reading minds. “I don’t need you to erase it, David. I just need to bury it deep in a dark corner and forget it happened.”
“That’s not healthy, my love.” He moved his thumb to wipe under my eye, then kissed my forehead so gently his lips barely touched. “But if that’s the way you want it, then I respect that. Just please don’t question my affections for you. What Arthur did to you will never stop me from touching you.” He shook my face a little. “Never.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay.” He kissed my head and then laughed for no apparent reason, his warm breath filling my nose up with orange and chocolate.
“What’s so funny?”
He laughed again. “I thanked him for sleeping with you, you know—Jason.”
“Why?”
“Because, in doing that, he stopped you from sleeping with Arthur.”
“He didn’t stop me. I stopped myself.”
“I know, but when it came down to it, Ara, you would have tried to make a baby with anyone to save me from my own mission for death.”
“You think I would’ve tried again with Arthur?”
“I don’t know. I’m just glad it wasn’t necessary. Because… Jason… I can forgive. But my uncle…”
We both shivered.
“I would have killed him,” he added. “And then it’s very likely I might have killed you.”
I pushed away from him and sat up. “Are you serious?”
He waited a moment then sat up too. The darkness made shadows around his eyes, hiding them so he looked a little like a soulless demon. “I’m just being honest. I’m sorry if that scares you.”
