by Am Hudson
As I walked, I curled my toes to grip the slimy rocks beneath my bare feet, knowing that even in the real world David would be doing the same. In our minds, though, we weren’t sitting in a comfortable, warm room anymore; we were in the dungeons at Drake’s castle, and when we walked around that corner and looked into the cell up ahead, we would see our beloved wife in chains—bleeding from her eyes.
David fought me then, searching his mind like a dreamer scans a dream to see if this terror he felt was real. So I stretched out the tunnel before us, making five cells into fifteen—the short walk to the next corner now a long trek. And he went a layer deeper into himself—distracted by this new obstacle—his blood warming just a little.
In the distance, he could now hear his beloved wife screaming, begging for the imagined henchman not to hurt her. Again. And with that one word, with the implication that she had already been hurt, he sunk down into the nightmare again, his body flooding with the toxic energy of drowning hope.
I felt a soft pulling sensation inside my head—the same one I felt as Jase fought to free himself of the nightmare—but it wasn’t strong enough now to knock me away from his mind. I knew what I was feeling, and I knew how to overcome it.
David’s own mind took control of the nightmare then, and I relaxed back, letting his past and his everyday experiences create the world, while I held him under with an iron fist.
He imagined what might have been done to his wife—imagined every horrible possibility—and his blood warmed. With just a few more steps left until he would lay eyes on her again, his mind stretched the tunnel out again and she slipped farther and farther away.
“Ara!” he called, his voice resonating out here in the real world.
I heard shuffles and footsteps as my teacher and our onlookers clearly got up to come closer.
With my hand against David’s forearm, I could feel his muscles tighten and his body shift and move with the fight, like a mental patient trying to escape. But in his nightmare, his wife called out to him, screaming so high and crying on the end of each one that he started running—forgetting everything he felt, losing himself in the instinctual desire to save her.
He could hear her whimpering, hear a man grunting, and the horrid smell of rotting eggs and blood and something else he didn’t want to think about made him run faster.
Until he reached my slope—a slight ascent he hadn’t noticed before—slight enough to slow his steps and make his feet slip. He clawed his way toward her cell, screaming her name, and I opened my eyes.
“It’s time.”
“Bite him,” Jase instructed.
David’s fist was in such a tight ball that I had trouble moving his wrist to my lips, but as it finally touched my fangs and I sunk them in, David sprung up from the nightmare, calling my name.
I jumped back, his blood spitting out from the new wound, and stood between Jason and Emily.
David looked around like a wolf in a small cage, and when he realised what was happening, he folded forward, his eyes wide and his chest caving with each laboured breath. His back was completely soaked with sweat and he actually looked pale.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Move,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Move!”
Jase grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back as David ran for the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. A second later, I heard the toilet seat go up, followed by a heaving and coughing sound.
“Too far?” I said to Jase.
He just nodded, eyes on that bathroom door.
“Should I run?” I said. “Is he going to strangle me when he comes out?”
Emily laughed. “More like hug you.”
“Yeah,” Quaid said, laughing too. “That deserves a hug. Amazing work, Queeny.”
Jase nodded in agreement, folding his arms, his warm smile changing his face. “I agree. There’s no way he can be mad after that. Best work I’ve seen.”
“Agreed,” David’s voice echoed out weakly from the bathroom.
I smiled up at Jase. “Brave enough to let me try on you again?”
“Bring it on, Queen of Darkness. I can take you.”
“I doubt that, pretty boy,” I said. “I figured out where I went wrong.”
“Oooh, I shiver in my boots,” he said playfully.
I looked down at his bare feet. “You’re not wearing boots.”
“Ha-ha.” He turned me by the shoulders and aimed me at the bed. “This time, you’ll have to bite me—to see if I stay under when you do. And at the same time, I’m gonna get Ems to attack you—see if you can keep me under and defend yourself at the same time.”
“Yeah, what good is a predator that lets its guard down?” Quaid said.
“Fine.” I linked my fingers and flexed them outward. “Lie down, and let’s get this started.”
The toilet flushed then and David popped his head out, drawing a toothbrush from his mouth to speak. “Wait for me.”
“Why?”
“Because if you’re planning to feed off my brother, you’ll do it while I’m in the room.”
“Still don’t trust me, huh?” I said playfully.
“Trust has nothing to do with it,” he stated, aiming a deliberate gaze at his laughing brother. He popped back into the bathroom then, and I looked at Jase, confused.
“What was that all about?”
Jase folded his arms, giving me a very smug grin. “It might have something to do with a certain thought you had.”
“What thought?”
He raised his brows and the same scene I’d imagined yesterday by the lake—of me drinking from Jason while David drinks from me—flashed into my thoughts like a photo on a screen. My cheeks went hot and my ears burned. “He showed you that?”
“No.” Jase shook his head. “It slipped out.”
“Well, stop laughing. I never meant to think that.” I sat down on the chair by the bed and pushed his chest to lie him down.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s out there,” he said, “and now he can’t get the horror out of his mind.”
“I’m not the slightest bit bothered by it,” David said, wiping his hands on a towel as he came out the bathroom. He dropped the towel beside Jason’s leg and sat down on the bed. “But just the same as if I were to feed from Emily, Ara would rather be in the room.”
I gave David a soft smile and nod to show I understood where he was coming from.
“Now, this time,” David said, “take him to a place that has no relevance to his life. You won’t necessarily know your victims, and so you won’t be able to use a memory or a phobia to frighten them.”
“So I need a generic fear?” I offered, my mind already ticking.
“Right.” David got up off the bed and came to stand behind me. “And at some point—randomly—I’m going to attack you.”
“So am I,” Em added.
“Okay.” I nodded, looking at Jase. “Let’s do this.”
Jason and I closed our eyes, and I sharpened my senses, maintaining full awareness of everything around me: the crackling fire; the window slightly ajar in the attic; the breeze sweeping in and brushing the curtain along the wall. I pinpointed the location of each vampire in the house: Em by the stove; Quaid leaning against the wall by the fire; David right behind me; two guards smoking outside. By the power of my Cerulean Energy, if any of them moved an inch, I’d know about it.
When Jason’s eyes opened a second later, it was to a long table with seven stern faces staring back at him—one of them his uncle. A much taller and darker version of Drake left his seat and came around to where he knelt on the floor, and just the idea that he was brought before the council was enough to heat Jason just the way I liked it. When he fought me, I just laughed and shook my head. He didn’t stand a chance now.
“Both of you,” David said, “Out. Now.”
My attention wandered from Jase for a split second, and his mind lifted a few layers.
As I shoved him back d
own and locked him inside his own endless mind, I heard David repeat his command to Em and Quaid, both of them laughing as they slid the glass door shut behind them.
My muscles tightened along my thighs and upper arms, ready for an attack. My ears pricked and my nose took in more of the smells around me—the smoky flames, the bread going stale on the table, David’s orange-chocolate breath as it brushed along my neck, and the rich, tangy taste of the fear in Jason’s blood. He was ready.
“Bite him,” David whispered in my ear.
“You’ll attack me,” I said, struggling a little to keep Jason locked down.
“That’s not why I sent the others away.” He knelt down by my legs and gathered my hand up in his, angling it so my wrist was exposed. “I want to taste you as you absorb his life force. And I want you to take it all—as if you meant to kill him.”
I couldn’t look at David to express my shock; if I looked away, if I let my attention slip again, Jase would surface. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Yes you do.”
I wet my lips.
“Bite him, Ara.” His deep, milky voice turned my lungs to liquid. I drew a long breath and steadied my heart, leaning slightly toward Jase’s body. My little belly pressed against the tops of my thighs, so I parted my knees to make more room, and keeping Jason firmly under my spell I picked up his hand; it felt solid and firm, and bigger than I remembered, but his skin was smooth and a few degrees warmer than David, with the rush of fear changing his blood. A thin layer of sweat sheathed his flesh like fine rain on a coat, and as I parted my lips against it, I could taste the salt. The fear. Then, the fact that Em and Quaid were outside watching us, and the fact that I was about to feed off my ex-lover while his brother, my husband, fed from me, meant nothing. Jase was just a kill. And I would drink until he stopped breathing.
As my teeth broke his flesh, David’s broke mine. I tensed, angling my arm outward awkwardly as if to shake off the pain. He bit hard and he bit fiercely, and as Jason’s blood flooded my system with warmth and touched David’s lips, I felt him change in the way I know I had when I tasted a human through his blood. He relaxed slightly, and his energy changed—changed the way it would when he’d ask me a question and was waiting on an answer.
The tiny sensors within my fingertips warned me that my victim was close—that his pulse was weak and slow, and as I sucked more furiously to draw out the thinning blood from inside him, his chest rose and it held there before sinking deeply. It didn’t rise again.
His skin went cool and the sweat made it clammy. His eyes opened slightly and the lids fluttered. His arms and legs went limp and the fight in him died. Even his mind went blank, empty.
I stopped drinking and pushed his arm away with my tongue, sitting back as David did. My wound stung as it healed, and I looked up from the bite mark into my husband’s jet-black eyes.
“When you feed, and your eyes change this way—” He ran his thumb along my lashes. “It is the freakiest, scariest thing in the world.”
“I killed him,” I whispered as the realisation spread my lashes wide. “I killed Jase.”
“Finally.”
“How long until he regenerates?”
He smiled at his brother’s limp body, then winked at me. “An hour or so. And he’ll be pissed, so we had better go into town and shop for some Christmas decorations.”
I licked the last of Jase’s blood from my lips and savoured it on my tongue. “Why did you do that?”
“You thought it, Ara,” he said simply, standing up. “And if you thought it, then it would only be a matter of time before that thought became a fantasy, and then became action.”
“You don’t trust me?” I stood up too.
“I don’t trust the Spirit Bind—nor do I trust the fact that you two are fated to be together. And I never will.”
I looked down sadly at my feet.
David appeared under my gaze and tilted my face upward. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t trust you, mon amour. I love you.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “And I know you would never do anything with my brother—again. I know you would talk about it with me if you did have those feelings, but I just don’t want you to have those feelings. And that—” he nodded to the almost-corpse, “—what we just did quelled any curiosity, didn’t it?”
I looked back at him from Jase and nodded.
“Good.” He pulled my chin toward him and kissed my lips, holding me there until he’d drawn a complete lungful of air. “Then let’s get our shoes on and get out of here before he wakes up.”
***
Winter had truly set in long before its official first day this year. It’d been freezing cold out here since we first arrived mid-November, and today, despite the warmth of friendship and family, the chill was unrelenting.
Vicki handed Sam the potatoes and he lifted them above his head as he passed me in the narrow gap between Emily and the extra chairs and tables we’d stuffed into the tiny space.
I smiled over at David, sitting by the Christmas tree, playing with my present as the first notes of Silent Night filled the air with magic. I would never be able to play that song like he could, but at least I was married to him and, in turn, married to those hands. So I could make him play any time I wanted.
But under all the laughter and fun of Christmas Eve, there was an air of tension—of fear, perhaps—knowing that the battle at Loslilian, according to Lord Eden, would be any day now. Would possibly be tomorrow, but definitely before the snow fell two days from now.
“Where’s Jason with that wine?” Vicki asked herself, pulling the curtain aside to look out the window for the tenth time.
“Relax,” Quaid said. “It’s a bit of a drive from here to Ara’s old house.”
“But it’ll be worth it,” David added, leaning back a bit to look at Vicki past the tinselled pine tree as he played. “My wine collection leaves nothing to be desired.”
Vicki blushed a little, looking away from David. Knowing now what he was, she could relate to him and his old-guy ways so much more than she could when he acted like the kid human trying to woo her daughter.
“I’m just worried, that’s all,” she said bashfully. “He’s such a nice kid, and there’s all that danger out there.”
“He’ll be fine, Mom,” Sam said in a rather tired-sounding tone, sitting down at the table. We were both a little concerned that, since the moment she met Jason, she might have thought he was a bit cute. I just wanted to say ‘And a bit young, don’t you think, Vicki?’ but technically, he was more than double her age. However, if she knew Jason was the one that hurt me at the masquerade, that affection she had for him would die very quickly. And then he would probably end up with a stake through his heart.
“Ara?” David said. “Why not take over for me, and I’ll go call Jason.”
“I thought you didn’t have phones out here?” Vicki said accusingly.
“We don’t.” David kissed my head as I sat down on the piano stool. “But we keep some disposable phones for emergencies—and take one with us when we leave the house. I think this qualifies as an emergency.” He looked at me for confirmation.
“Considering I can’t drink the wine with dinner—” I motioned down at the baby in my belly as she moved my sparkly red top around with a limb; David smiled and placed his hand firmly over it, “—I wouldn’t agree that it’s an emergency. Having said that, I am a little worried,” I finished. Not because Walter might get Jason, but because Safia might. If she had overheard anything David and I had said in this house, then that put both Jason and I in very real danger. I knew he could take care of himself, almost better than any of us, but it didn’t stop me worrying all the same.
“Whoa!” David dropped to his knees beside me and put both hands on my belly, bringing his lips close to whisper his voice into my skin. “Hello, little baby.” He laughed then. “What on earth are you doing in there?”
I wriggled uncomfortably. “I think she’s trying to tell me I need t
o pee.”
“Okay.” David kissed my belly again and stood up, offering his hand. “You go pee, and I’ll go call my half-wit brother.”
***
Vicki washed the dishes while Em dried and Quaid put away. I laid out spoons and forks for dessert, and David sat by the piano again, regaling us with his solo performance. But he was troubled, I could tell. He’d checked the clock several times since we started dinner, and at first I wasn’t worried. Jase said on the phone that he’d be half an hour, and as we finished the meal, only an hour had passed. But after we prepared dessert and with the clean up nearly done, two and a half hours was pushing it. Something had happened, and we both knew it.
Try calling him again, I thought.
David looked up, then over at me.
Call him, I repeated.
He stood up and took the phone from his back pocket, then quietly and inconspicuously walked out onto the porch.
I helped Vicki layer more cream on the trifle, pulled the pie from the oven, and fished the ice-cream from the cooler outside, and by the time everyone sat down at the table again, David still hadn’t come back in.
“Is David joining us?” Vicki asked.
“I’ll just…” My eyes drifted to the vampire in the darkness outside, leaning into his hands against the porch railing, his body at a deep lean. “I’ll just check on him.”
A cloud of worry fell over the room as all heads turned and they saw what I saw. I opened the door and closed it quietly before talking.
“Everything okay?”
“He’s not answering.”
“Are you worried?”
He just nodded, his eyes staying on his feet.
“Do you wanna go look for him?”
“No.” He turned around and leaned on the railing, his eyes going past me to the watching ones behind.
