Grey Eyes (Book One, The Forever Trilogy)

by Brandon Alston

  Chapter 23

  Autobiography

  I was lying in bed when Tristan arrived.  I still hadn’t stopped shaking.  I was thankful that my grandmother and Helena weren’t here to see me because that would certainly raise questions that I didn’t want to answer.  The look in Tristan’s eyes matched Duncan’s when I told him what had happened.  I had to stop him from going after him.  It was the first time that I saw Tristan battle with his anger like Aiden had to back at the club.

  “He had no right to threaten you like that,” he said, holding me.  The anger added a kind of growl to his voice.  “If you say the word…”

  “No,” I whispered.  “I could never condone something like that, no matter what he thinks of me.”

  He sighed.  “Ana, you’ve always been a conjurer.  Every time you’ve come back.  But I want you to know something, you have the most beautiful soul I’ve ever known, and I have lived for hundreds of years.  I wish now that you could have enough of your memories to see what a magnificent spirit you have—that you’ve always had.  You are the same girl who saw a monster in her cabin that night—the girl that feared me but did not judge me, that had the patience to teach me how to love and reconnect with my own goodness… That is you.  That’s why I love you.  Why I’ll always love you.  I will protect you from anything that wishes to hurt you, Ana.  Fear nothing.  Not now, not ever.”

  I closed my eyes and began to relax into the safety of his arms.  I understood now, why I needed to tell Darren that we could never work.  Because while I had feelings for him, and truly did care for him, the things I felt for Tristan were beyond definition.  Words didn’t capture how close I felt to him right now, as if I could disappear into his soul and exist there forever.  I did feel safe with him, and my fears just seemed silly after hearing his words.  Of course, he would protect me.  

  “Ask me something,” he said in a much lighter tone.

  “Huh?”

  “Ask me something,” he repeated.  “You’ve always had a…curious streak.  Always.  I’m sure you still have questions for me.”

  I laughed to myself.  He did know me well.

  “Why are you so pretty?” I asked.  That made him laugh.

  “What do you mean exactly?”

  “The vampire under my bed was so different—he didn’t look human at all, but you, I wouldn’t be able to tell that you weren’t human just from looking at you.  Plus, you and Aiden are so…good looking.”

  “Becoming a vampire won’t make you ‘pretty,’” he laughed.  “I remain the same as I was in life, as far as my appearance goes anyway, but that’s because I was bitten by The Source.  The venom that turned me was pure, undiluted.  You see, every time a vampire turns another, the venom in the subsequent vampire is less concentrated.  Because it‘s the venom that preserves your human body, diluted venom preserves less.  For instance, weaker venoms will preserve the inner organs but not the skin and eyes.  That’s where the partial myth, about vampires being unable to survive in sunlight, comes from—when exposed, unpreserved skin will dry and harden, to the point it cracks and crumbles.  Such was the case of the vampire that attacked you.  Aiden and I on the other hand, can heal from almost anything, at a rate that we could walk through fire if we had to.”

  “And what exactly is ‘The Source?’” I asked next.  I tried to remember what Duncan had told me about vampires, but the thought of Duncan was too jarring to think clearly right now.

  Something dark flashed in his eyes.  “The source being Daemon, the first born son of Merline.”

  My head jerked up.  Now I did remember.  “You were turned by him?”

  He nodded.  “I am the third vampire ever to exist.  And Aiden is the second.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “You want to hear that story?” he sighed.

  “I do.  I want to know everything about you.”

  “So you’re asking about Daemon and our past only because you’re curious?  There’s no other reason?”

  “No other reason.”

  “You swear?” he asked.

  “I swear,” I repeated, putting my hand over my heart.  He smiled at the gesture.  I made a mental note to listen carefully.  He hadn’t ever reacted like this to one of my questions before.  Maybe, there was something in the story to help me figure out what he was keeping from me.

  “Then lay down,” he breathed.  “And I will tell you the story of how I came to be a vampire.”

  “I was an orphan, a boy of ten, who had lived almost my entire life in the streets when I met Aiden.  He was starving, and had stumbled into my cave in search of something to kill so that he could eat.  I’d stolen some pork from a butcher and was cooking it by a fire when he arrived.  We fought for it, and I nearly killed him.  Despite his size advantage, he had gone days without eating and was very weak.  He begged me to help him.  He explained that his family had been murdered by the peasants who worked their land, and that they had burned down his home and claimed the property for themselves.”

  “A peasant myself, I had very little sympathy for nobles like he and his family.  They enjoyed themselves at our expense, I understood this even that young.  In fact, it wasn’t until he promised to teach me how to read and write that I agreed to help him.”

  “Eventually, I came to trust him.  Then that trust grew into a type of brotherhood.  We came to depend on each other for our survival.  Sometimes Aiden’s last name and family ring would earn him sympathy from the other noblemen.  They would do him favors or give him their leftovers in honor of the man they knew his father to have been.  I came to understand that his father had been a truly good man.  That helped me understand the tragedy of his loss.  But there were also times when those favors and sympathies simply weren’t there, and I’d have to steal or go hunt for food.  Many nights we went to sleep hungry, but it was never just one of us.  Either both of us ate, or both of us starved.  We came to share everything.”  

  “It was this principle of sharing that led me to meet Daemon.  We were seventeen and eighteen then, and Aiden had stumbled across him in a field.  He was weak and there was a mob chasing him—warlocks, but Aiden did not know that then.  He told me later that his sympathy was born from the memory of the mob that had come for his family, and so he hid him in some trees, and pointed the mob in another direction.  When he returned to where he’d hidden Daemon, he found him hunched over, he thought him dead, but once he got close Daemon lashed out at him with his blade—“

  “The scar?” I interrupted.

  Tristan nodded.  “That scar was where the knife struck him.  Daemon then crawled over and began to drink from Aiden, but remembering how he’d helped him, he spared Aiden’s life.  It was the first time Daemon had ever left a victim alive.  When Aiden met up with me later that night, I thought that he had gotten himself drunk.  He was not yet used to being a vampire, so he moved awkwardly and kept tripping over himself.  He was so excited, and sat me down to show me the things he could do.  He moved like the wind—he could be here in one moment and there in the next.  He could lift me by my shirt, over his head, with his smallest finger.  He told me what happened, how he’d met this stranger and had helped him.  He thought the man was an angel who had fallen to earth.  He insisted that we find this man so that he could “bless” me as well.” 

  “We searched for weeks before we found him in a small town a few dozen miles from where we’d grown up.  During this time, Aiden would leave during the night and not tell me where he was going.  I didn’t think anything of it. After all, there was no one I trusted more in the world.  Daemon was wary of us when we first approached him, thinking Aiden had come to kill him.  He kept asking how he had healed so fast and if he knew witches.  Aiden kept asking if he could “bless” me too—never having told me of the predator, he’d become in the night.  Daemon asked to see what he meant, and Aiden showed him.  Daemon was beside himself.  Daemon asked him if he thirsted for
the blood of men and Aiden told him he did.” 

  “It was the first I’d learned this, and so I ran.  They caught up with me easily and forced me off into the woods.  Aiden begged me to join him but I refused, I was no murderer.  It set him off when I reminded him that he was no better than the men who had killed his family.  The animal in him attacked me.  Aiden says that he killed me that night, but that Daemon had bitten me, and I awoke the next morning as if I’d merely been asleep.” 

  “Still, my mind was human and I refused to drink.  My body grew weak and sick, and everyday Aiden would beg me to change my mind.  I was determined to die.  But that wasn’t to be.  Daemon had plans for me.  When I had become too weak to move, Daemon brought me a man they had attacked, positioning him in such a way that the blood from his injuries would drip into my mouth.  Tasting human blood for the first time awoke the monster in my mind.  It took me, ruined my soul.”

  “Daemon had discovered that he could create more of himself, an army with which he could fight the witches who hunted him.  Aiden and I were to be his generals, and we were so driven by our own bloodlust and newfound power that we followed him.  He created just two others, and then we set out to spread his revenge across the earth.”

  “I was evil, Ana.  I, the abomination.  I was that and much more—until I saw you in that field.  The boy who had resisted this life for as long as his body would allow, he returned that day.  Yet, I have no doubt that I would have sank back into my old ways had you not accepted me that night in your room.  You showed me that I was something that could be loved and that gave me something to live for—a reason to fight the predator in my mind.  When the temptations became unbearable, and the darkness in my soul called, I was always strong enough to overcome it.   I am a living testament that there is nothing more powerful than love, and it was your love, born from your beautiful spirit, that saved me.