“I’ll explain it all to you later,” grandma said, winking at both me and Chaseyn. “Thank goodness Eli was there to pull you out. He’s a real hero.”
Chaseyn shifted his weight uncomfortably. I could hardly believe my grandma was still trying to sell me on Eli with Chaseyn standing right there.
“It was nothing, really,” Eli blushed. He was obviously uncomfortable. “Chaseyn was just a few steps behind. He took care of all the major details.”
It had only been about 26 hours since the fateful event, and there was still so much to consider. Chaseyn had managed to stave off my mother by telling her that he would bring me home safely. He played down my injuries, suggesting there was barely a scratch on my skin. My grandma helped convince her to stay put.
“Can I talk to Chaseyn alone for a minute,” I asked.
“Sure, sweetums,” my grandma said, dragging Hank out the door. Eli followed close behind. “We’ll be back in five.”
It was just like her to rush our rendez vous. Just when I thought she might come around to Chaseyn, I could see that it would take more time to get her onside.
“She knows,” Chaseyn said as soon as they were out the door, and I understood why she was even more reluctant to succumb to his charms in the same way my mother had.
“How much,” I asked.
“Everything. It was impossible to keep from her,” Chaseyn said quickly. “She has an incredible gift of insight—unlike any I have seen before in a human.”
“Perfect. Now what? Where’s Frost?”
“I was hoping you might remember,” he said. “Mina and I have been trying to uncover her whereabouts, but we can’t place her. Did she say anything to you before...well, you know.”
“Before she bit me?”
“Yes.”
“No. The last thing I remember is the gleam of her sharp eye teeth as they lunged toward my jugular. I was sure she had decided to kill me, but she must have chosen to let me live after all. What does this mean?”
“It means we have to be very careful,” Chaseyn explained. “Frost likely heard Eli searching for you and feared revealing her dark secret if he had discovered her there unscathed. If she wants to finish what she started, she will have to sink her teeth into you twice more before the next full moon. After that, Frost won’t be able to touch you. Alexei would have to send another member of his biological army to find you and finish the job.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We wait,” he said. “Cordelia?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I broke my promise.”
As if on cue, my grandma emerged. Hank and Eli were no where to be seen. I knew this meant she wanted to talk. Alone. Chaseyn left the room without so much as a word.
“Grandma, when did you know…about Chaseyn, I mean,” I asked perfectly candidly.
“I knew—we both knew—instantly,” she said carefully.
“What do you mean you both knew?”
“The minute I saw Chaseyn standing there at the airport in Denver when we fist met, a cold rush came over me. I knew instantly what it meant,” she explained. “I could tell immediately that he felt something, too. He may not have known what it was at the time, but I’m sure he figured it out quickly. After he talked to his mother, no doubt.”
With Chaseyn’s ability to foresee and understand events on another level, I knew Mina’s wisdom would only have enhanced any information he had already discerned. In fact, it was possible Chaseyn knew what he was stepping into before he had even left for the airport that day. I knew my grandma had come to discuss other matters though, and I remained silent so that she could proceed.
“Lia, you can’t stay with him. It’s too dangerous,” she began. “You wouldn’t be here, in this place, if it wasn’t for him.”
“That’s not true, and you know it,” I protested. “It’s because of him that I stand a chance at coming out of this…alive.”
I pondered that last thought for a moment. Should one of Alexei’s soldiers actually complete his or her mission, I wouldn’t exactly be dead. Rather, I would be undead, and I was only marginally certain that was negative. Part of me had considered the possibility of remaining forever with Chaseyn as a warrior of the underworld, so to speak. Still, if I was to crossover, I would want it to be at his hands, not by the tainted fangs of an immortal soul. Often, I had thought about our future, but I had yet to make a decision. There was plenty of time, and it deserved a thorough assessment before coming to an absolute conclusion. Besides, I had no idea if Chaseyn would be willing to have me join him in eternity.
“It’s impossible for me to support your relationship,” she persisted. “Chaseyn is one of them. How can you be so sure that he isn’t part of the plan?”
For the second time since I had met Chaseyn, my grandma caused me to doubt the sincerity of his devotion and commitment. She had a point that I had to consider.
“I don’t know that for sure, but what other choice do I have,” I posed, knowing that was the truth. Either way, I was fodder for Alexei’s centuries-old game. At this stage, it was better to hope that Chaseyn was free from Alexei’s grasp and prepared to stand off against his father than to believe he would turn against me in the end. “Let’s assume for a moment that Chaseyn is sincere, shall we? He can help me escape this curse.”
“Or, he could take matters into his own hands…,” she replied.
“I can’t run from this. There is no place I can hide where Alexei won’t be able to find me. He’s populated an army of his offspring to hunt me down and fulfill this destiny,” I said through a heavy flow of salty tears. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Okay,” she conceded. “I see your point, but I don’t have to like it.”
Sitting on the edge of my bed, she wrapped her arms around me and rocked slowly back and forth. To comfort me, she hummed the same lullaby she often sang to get me to sleep as a child.
“I love you, grandma.”
“Me, too, Lia. Me, too.”
Chapter 28 - The Plan
Another twelve hours passed before the medical team felt I was in stable physical condition and could be released from the hospital. Looking at the perfectly formed gash on my neck, they contemplated how two identical glass pieces could have made such an impression. Each shard cut equally deep through my flesh, causing mass amounts of blood to spill forth from my veins. It was the only major wound I had sustained during the incident, and the only one that mattered now. They would never know the truth, and I had to work hard to keep it that way.
Recalling the tale of Alexei’s transformation from human to vampire, I knew that, had I been completely conscious in the moments following Frost’s bite, I would have experienced an intense fever and temporary paralysis. Fortunately, that memory had been banished from my brain. However, the after affects were imminent. Shortly after I had awakened in the hospital, I became increasingly aware of my heightened senses.
“It’s like everything is in some sort of multi-dimensional, Technicolor dream world,” I said, waving my hand back and forth in front of my face. I could see every pore, every freckle and line in immense detail. “It’s so surreal.”
“Shhh,” warned Chaseyn. “Someone might hear you.”
“Oh, right,” I remembered. “How long do you think it will last? It’s kind of neat.”
“A couple of days at most. But, you mustn’t let any of the staff know. Okay?”
“Of course. Oh, no. What’s that smell? It’s disgusting,” I said, holding my nose.
“Bed pans. Sometimes, having an acute sense of smell can be more of a pain that it is pleasant. You’ll get used to it eventually.”
“Just get me out of here.”
Once I was safely tucked into bed at my grandma’s house, the others descended upon me like hawks that had just spotted fresh carrion on the roadside.
“We need a plan,” Eli said fervently.
Mina had now caught up to our group at my grandma’s h
ouse, and she had insisted on telling Hank and Eli the truth. Every detail. Now, Eli was wearing a hole in the carpet from pacing back and forth.
“Good thinking, Sherlock,” Chaseyn said sarcastically. He and Eli had been butting heads since I had come home from the hospital. Their show of gratitude for one another was just a guise for my benefit. Now that I was showing marked signs of improvement, they felt secure revealing their true emotions. “What impressive skills of deduction you have acquired.”
“Enough, boys,” my grandma hollered.
“He’s hardly a boy,” Eli countered. “He should learn to act his age. You don’t see my grandfather romping around with teenage girls like he’s king of the world.”
“If I had his genes—,” Hank began to tease.
“Hank,” my grandma warned, cutting off his words mid sentence.
“It’s not like that,” Mina explained. “Chaseyn may be the same age as your grandfather biologically, but he lacks the experience needed to develop mentally and emotionally beyond his early twenties.”
“I’m standing right here,” Chaseyn reminded the group.
“Chaseyn, it’s important for them to understand,” she continued. “Because of his physical appearance, people treat him in such a way that he has only ever been able to have the experiences and emotions of someone between the ages of 15 and 23. And, he will relieve those same emotions over and over again for all eternity. No one is ever going to talk to him like a man who has the wisdom of several decades and multiple graduate degrees. He will never have a professional career, be a father, grow old...the list is endless.”
“Cool,” Eli broke in.
“No. Eli, it’s not cool,” Mina said forcefully. “Don’t ever wish for this. Not for one minute.”
Mina’s command rang loudly inside my head. Despite the fact that she had spoken the words in response to Eli’s bemused comment, she was looking deep into my eyes, willing me to comprehend the authority behind her weighty words. Her message was clear.
“Okay, mom,” Chaseyn said wryly. “I think everyone’s been educated well enough about my pathetic existence and meager emotional aspirations. Can we focus on the task at hand?”
Mina, who rarely expressed emotion, smiled at her only son. Chaseyn was always in control, determined. She had just revealed a side to him that I had not contemplated previously. Though he had spent many decades roaming the Earth, we shared a common innocence in many ways. He seemed softer in the light of this realization. Eli thought so, too. I could tell by the way he quieted and waited for Chaseyn to declare a course of action.
In the time it had taken Mina to unravel the mystery of Chaseyn’s emotional shortcomings, he had formulated a plan. Simple, though it was.
“The next full moon is in four-and-a-half days. We just need to keep a constant vigil until then,” he told our small group.
“I’m supposed to go home in three days. There is no way my mom will believe that I want to stay here any longer than I have to,” I reasoned.
“You’re right,” Chaseyn agreed. “That’s why we’ll tell her that the attending physician wanted to see you one last time before you left and that he would be out of town until Monday.”
“Will she come back,” Eli asked, referring to Frost.
“Most likely,” Mina said. “Frost has been training for this moment her entire life. She’s not likely to walk away so easily.”
“What chance do we stand against a vampire,” Hank added.
“She is young,” Mina told him, resting a hand on his shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. “She will make mistakes. She already has.”
“What do you mean,” Hank asked.
“Frost was only born a few years ago. Her strength is minimal compared to decades old vampires, and her skills are not yet honed. Though she is much stronger than other girls her size, she would be no match for Eli’s brawn,” Mina stated matter of fact.
“Seriously? That is so cool,” Eli said gleefully.
“Bear in mind, though, her senses of sight and smell are exceptionally sharp. Regardless of the fact that she is in the infantile stages of her undead form, she can use these skills to her advantage. For this reason, Chaseyn and I will remain nearby at all times.”
“Will you know if she’s here,” I asked.
“Mina will have a better sense than me,” Chaseyn said, looking ashamed. “Vampires can feel each other’s presence within a certain proximity.”
“You’re not a vampire,” I said, acknowledging the reason for his shame.
He nodded.
“For once, I wish—“
“No you don’t, Chaseyn,” Mina stopped him. “You’re very fortunate to remain at least partly human.”
“You can use your special skill to track her, can’t you,” Eli asked—obviously proud of the fact that he had made such a deduction.
“Not this time. She’s my sister—half-sister, anyway. My sixth sense is unreliable when dealing with blood relatives. Basically, I’m flying blind.”
“So how did you know she was with me in the funhouse?”
“The bracelet…it’s a sort of amulet, if you will,” he explained. “It’s not foolproof, but it detects minor changes in your body chemistry based on anxiety. Occasionally, I am able to feel these changes through heated pulses in a similar silver cuff that I wear on my left wrist.”
He lifted the sleeve of his Oxford shirt to reveal the narrow band.
“It worked once, but it is all dependent on Cordelia’s emotional state. She had a great deal of time to contemplate her fate. She worked up a large amount of stress while she tried to understand the events unfolding around her. A surprise attack, for example, would leave her less response time.”
I shuddered, and Chaseyn wrapped his arms around my shoulders. Eli looked on enviously, and for a moment I felt badly that he was so willing to help me given his unrequited love. I wanted desperately to feel something more for him—after all, he was a beautiful, talented young man with a promising future. He could give me a normal life. Better than normal—he could give me everything that Chaseyn never could. Yet, I could not will myself to want that.
“So what do we do now,” Eli asked Chaseyn nervously, echoing my sentiments just one day earlier as I lay in a hospital bed healing from the wounds inflicted by Frost’s first attack. This time, Mina answered, using the same simple words Chaseyn had used earlier.
“We wait.”
Before the clock struck twelve announcing lunch hour on the first day of our stake out, I was going mad. Between Chaseyn and Eli stalking me around the house, I felt like a prisoner in my own—well, my grandma’s—home. I had all but got on my hands and knees begging for a little privacy, but they insisted it was necessary to monitor my every move. We continued in much the same fashion for the next two days.
Hank, Mina, and my grandma had settled into their own routine. Realizing Chaseyn and Eli were practically tripping over each other to cater to my every whim, they felt secure finding other ways to entertain themselves. Mostly, Hank lay sprawled across the couch watching college football on my grandma’s small-screen television. Mina took lessons in domesticity.
“Now, darling, you must be careful to coat the countertop with only a small amount of flour. Any more, and you will ruin the dough,” I heard my grandma saying in the kitchen. “No, no. That’s much too much. Let me just dab some of it up. There you go.”
Visions of a dust-covered Mina clad in jeans and an oversized T-shirt—quite a stretch from her normally perfectly pressed designer fashions—cluttered my head. With a rolling pin in hand, I could see her moving to and fro and she struggled to make the pastry just the right thickness so she could press in the star- and heart-shaped cookies cutters. The thought made me chuckle.
“What’s so funny,” Chaseyn asked. I was lying with my head in his lap as he stroked my head gently, being careful to avoid my wounds. It was one of the few moments Eli had left us alone together and only because he had been sent on an
errand to get more milk and eggs. My grandma was determined to teach Mina how to make the most delicious sugar cookies despite the fact that not a single one of her creations would ever touch Mina’s lips.
“Listen to them,” I said.
“How many batches have they made?”
“This is the third. Who is going to eat all of those cookies?”
We laughed together and kissed a little before Eli rejoined us. For his sake, I sat up straight and motioned for Chaseyn to select from a series of board games that were stashed in the corner of the room. After much thoughtful consideration, he lifted Monopoly from the center of the stack. I realized later that this was one of the few games he would not be able to anticipate our moves. For the next two hours, we competed in a high-stakes round of one of the world’s favorite pastimes.
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