“No, but if Vampirie’s my dad, then why did he die?”
“Sweetheart,” he said, taking my arm to move us away from the door. “Maybe he’s not dead. It was a closed-casket. There was no viewing—”
“Yes, because he didn’t want to be on display. He always said that.”
“I know. But maybe there was a good reason for that. And what about this?” He accidentally brushed the inner curve of my breast as he lifted my new talisman and showed it to me. “What if this is some kinda clue? Maybe Amara wasn’t his mother. Maybe he raised her as he raised Rose, one after another, becoming their son or sibling if they got too old to be his daughter.”
“Then where is he?” I shrugged, my eyes tearing over. “If he’s not dead, if he’s a vampire, where is he? And why did he have to die? Why did he do that to Sam and to Vicki?”
“Why did he leave your mother?”
“I…”
“Ara, he may be doing what he has to to protect you. Maybe now, more than ever, he needs to become the vampire—something he can’t be if he has a human life. Any vampire knows that. It’s one or the other.”
“But he ages. And he—”
“I don’t have all the answers. And I don’t want to give you false hope either, but I know you’ll sit here all night and draw all of these conclusions on your own anyway.”
We both laughed lightly.
“I’d rather we talked about it—joined forces and tried to figure this out than to have you do it alone, because I know you will. And I know that uncovering these kinds of secrets is easier when you have a wingman.”
I wiped under my eye. “Why are you being so helpful, David?”
He relaxed back a little, studying me like I was hidden behind a wall of hesitation. “I never meant to be…”—his eyes drifted to the place of thought—“cruel to you, Ara. I guess I did mean to hurt you, but that’s not what I want now. I just want us to…”
“Get along?” I tried.
He nodded. “I know we both have wounds, but I need us to put those aside, so we can unite and end this mess of contracts and ancient feuds once and for all. I’m tired of it. I just want to live.”
I smiled, my shoulders moving back to their natural position as I exhaled. “That sounds pretty good.”
“Good. And…”
I waited for the end of that sentence, but he hesitated quite a bit longer. “And?”
“And I told Vicki I left our wedding album on the bus. She’s sending another—”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, because a giant sob burst out from my lips and into my hands, the gust obstructing all sound. “You got another one?”
He nodded, looking incredibly awkward. “I’m sorry I did that to you, Ara—especially just after you found out your dad was sick. I…”
“It’s okay.” I reached up with my tear-moistened hand and patted his forearm. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I was a dick.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you were.”
“I was hurt,” he said, piercing the long silence that followed with, “And angry. And I… I saw you there in that picture, and it brought back a mix of so many emotions, Ara—not just for the pain of what’s gone, of what I thought our future held on that day, but also for what happened next.”
I cringed, flashing back unwillingly to the agonizing darkness of that torture chamber.
“It’s a black hole in my lifeline, you have to understand,” he said. “I can’t go back there. Not to the wedding and not to what happened to you after. You don’t know what I suffered while Jason was torturing you, and even though it was all a game—just Drake and his lies—I didn’t know that then, and to think back on it… to see us so happy and so innocent, to see us before, it shattered me, Ara. And I lost control. And I am sorry.”
I looked up to meet his eyes, but they were averted.
“I really did love you once,” he said simply, swallowing hard after. “And I failed you so many times I think I hate you more for that now than I hate myself.”
“You hate me because you feel like you failed me?” I asked with a hint of amusement.
He laughed. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Can you try?”
After a moment, he exhaled a long breath and looked at me with soft eyes. “It’s easier to hate you than to love you—than to be sorry. I can’t… I’m exhausted by the amount of guilt I carry for the many times I let you down—mistreated you, abused you—”
“You never abused me.”
“I did, Ara. Verbally, mentally, emotionally. I was controlling and…” He stopped, the corners of his lips arching downward as he regained control of his emotions. “I just need you to understand something about me.”
I tried not to cry for seeing him so broken, so remorseful after wanting it for so long, but a few tears slipped past my lashes anyway and I swiped them aside. “What’s that?”
He blew a breath into closed palms and walked away, taking a seat on the blanket box at the end of the bed. “This controlling, overbearing man I was when we were together, it’s not who I am. It’s who I became.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s because of Pepper. Because… what happened to her was my fault and if I’d had more control of her, it would never have happened.”
“What makes you think that?” I sat down beside him.
“She was only sixteen—”
“Sixteen!”
“She was a few weeks shy of seventeen when she was turned but, in vampire years, she was over forty. She wasn’t a baby, but she was still young.”
“I’ll say.”
David smiled at me. “I fell for her because of her innocence and naivety. She was the kind of girl that really needed to be taken care of. And…”
“That was a perfect match.”
“Yeah.” He sat straight, rubbing his palms down his thighs. “But she was also hard to handle. I had to tell her what to do, where to go, even how to act. There was a certain etiquette expected from the girlfriend of a council leader, and Pepper didn’t fit that bill. She needed constant supervision.”
“You mean control?”
“I guess. Except, I didn’t wanna be that guy, so I tried to stand back and let her learn from her mistakes, but—”
“Wow, that doesn’t sound like you.”
He shook his head slowly. “That’s because it’s that stupid, modern ideal that got her arrested.”
“How?”
“If I’d been there… I mean, she came to me. She asked about children, and I brushed it off. I was busy that day, and I just didn’t have the time to sit and talk about it. If I had, if I’d ordered her to stop thinking about it, if I’d maybe locked her up until I got back from work that day, she wouldn’t have—” He stopped and bit his knuckle.
“David.” I gently slid my hand onto his knee. “Pepper turning that child wasn’t your fault.”
“But it was. I was her guardian, her boyfriend—responsible for her.”
“No. If you wanna blame someone for what was ultimately her decision then, I hate to say it, David, but you need to be talking with Jason.”
“Why?” He looked up quickly.
“You don’t know?”
He sat forward, slowly turning his knees to face mine, and took both my hands. “Ara, you better tell me what you know.”
“It was a long time ago, and it was only said in passing, but Jase told me he was the one who convinced Pepper to turn the child.”
David spun away like he was about to vomit.
“I thought you knew,” I added.
“How did he do it?” he said into his hands. “How did he convince her?”
“I don’t know. But, from what I remember, he was ordered to, or something.”
He stood up.
“David.” I stood too. “Where are you going?”
“Relax, Ara, I’m not gonna skin him. I just want to know what happened.”
“Then I’m co
ming with you.”
“He doesn’t need you to protect him.”
“I’m not just there for him, okay. You both need a mediator because you’re too darn immature to sort it out like grown men.” I put my hands on my hips. “And if you won’t let me come, then you’re not going anywhere near him.”
“You have no say.”
I smirked at him. “Try me.”
He let out a breath through a smile. “Fine. You can come. But it won’t be pretty.”
It wasn’t as bad as I thought, though: Jason quietly told his story while I stood in the shadows with my arms folded, hearing everything objectively. He told us how Drake had grown tired of Pepper’s misconduct and compelled him under the power of his oath to convince Pepper that he was David, then beg her to turn a child.
When David realized that Pepper not only felt betrayed by his sentencing and torturing her, but that she thought all along that he wanted this child with her, he sat down on the edge of Jason’s bed and stared at the floor between his feet.
“Drake did this purely to get David to attend school,” Jase concluded.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’ve only just put it together today—after you told me what Drake did to your mom and Harry—but I remember Drake asking David to take Pepper with him on his bi-annual leave. He said that she was too young for this world and needed a few more years in school.”
“But I refused,” David said. “Told him she needed to be in the adult world to grow up—not in school.”
Jason’s eyes said it all as he looked at me. It was David’s fault. If he’d accepted the offer, Drake would never have had need to ‘get rid of’ Pepper and traumatize David into going anywhere he recommended.
“David.” I walked over and cautiously touched his shoulder. “This is good news.”
“How?”
“Because you said she was terrified of you. When she finds out that it wasn’t you who made her turn the child, then turned against her, she might come ‘round.”
He looked up at me.
“Her story doesn’t have to have a sad ending. Bring her here. We can help nurse her back to health.”
“She is beyond help, Ara.”
“No. No one is. Jason can erase everything from her mind.” I presented Jase, who nodded. “You’ve seen the success we’ve had with the Damned. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll take her to the Stone and plead with the Mother to help me.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “You’d do that—for her?”
“Of course I would, David.” I touched my chest. “I have no reason in this entire world not to.”
“Not even the fact that she’s my ex?”
My face folded awkwardly with a mix of a frown and a smile. “I’m just not that kind of person.”
“He knows that,” Jase said simply.
David stood up really slowly and looked me over, resting a closed fist just under his nose, then nodded. “What if it doesn’t work?”
“We won’t stop trying until it does.” I smiled. “But I think it will.”
“I’ll come with you to get her,” Jason said. “You’ll need me to get in her head and keep her calm so we can transport her.”
David didn’t even look back at Jason. I could tell, anyone could tell, that he hated Jason more than ever right now. But I knew, deep inside, he didn’t blame his brother. He blamed Drake.
“We leave at first light,” he said. “And not a second later.”
Jason nodded. “I’ll start packing. Ara?”
“Mm?”
“Rain-check on that picnic?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “That’s fine.”
* * *
Words from that little chat with David replayed in my head while I tried to sleep, entering with one meaning, leaving with a completely different one. I knew there was no renewing our relationship and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want the David I knew before to be with that sad, sorry little version of me. It was set for failure from day one: he was too controlling, and I was too… easily led.
But the way he looked at me tonight—with that tiny hint of undeniable love in his eyes—somehow diluted the anger I felt toward him and deposited a quick flicker of a thought that maybe we hadn’t lost in love just yet.
I couldn’t say I wanted that at all, really, but my mind was starting to convince other parts of me, and just as soon as that old feeling of love slipped in and brightened my eyes, so too did the voice of Lilith—taking me back to that night, right before I argued with David in the corridor outside his room—when Lilith warned me that Jason’s fate was tied with mine; that his love was a key in saving us from something much worse later on.
Only trouble was, I loved him—loved Jason enough to worry that, if I was having second thoughts about David, what would that mean for him?
He deserved a girl that loved him like the flower loves the sun. Cliché, I know, but he shone so bright in my world that I couldn’t let him become the day behind my eyes, seen only when the cloud—David—wasn’t around. He deserved so much better than that. And I decided then that until my heart and mind were in sync again, it was time to back away slightly. No matter what Lilith wanted.
I rolled my covers back with one arm and wriggled out of bed, feet landing first, arms pushing me onto my side, so I could roll up gracefully without pulling a muscle in my bulbous tummy. These thoughts and feelings did no good bouncing around in my head all night, so loud I couldn’t sleep; the time had come to talk to Jason about it. If he knew how I felt, he could do with it what he wanted. Something told me, though, that he would not pick up his pride and sense of self-preservation at the door and leave me to wallow in my own confusion; he’d stick around and make it hard for me to decide.
I hesitated by my door, gripping the handle, and took a long breath, readying myself for those green eyes and that sweet smile to muddle my clarity up again.
“Quaid,” I said, opening my door. But Falcon, surprisingly, looked up instead. I stopped mid-step, not sure I should go on.
“Everything okay?” he asked, bookmarking his page.
“Uh, yeah.” I closed my door behind me. “I can’t sleep.”
His lips meshed tightly, and he looked from me to Jason’s bedroom door. “He’s awake.”
“How’d you know that’s where I was headed?” I said, shrinking a little.
He shrugged and crossed an ankle over his knee, going back to his book as if I’d not even disturbed him. I took that as silent approval, no matter how strange it seemed, and walked sideways, spine to the wall, in case Falcon grabbed me and hauled me into my own room again. Even as I rapped my knuckles lightly on Jase’s door, I never took eyes off my guard.
“I could hear you tossing and turning from here,” Jase said, opening his door.
I turned around then and gave him an awkward grin, baring all my front teeth in a cheesy attempt to say sorry.
He laughed. “Come in. I’ll get changed and we’ll go down to the lab.”
“The lab?”
He shut the door behind him and appeared across the room at his drawers. “You’ve been thinking about this breakthrough. I know it’s keeping you up.”
The lids of my eyes came closer together as the muscles twitched in confusion. “Jase, I wasn’t—”
“I know,” he said simply. “But I’m not ready to talk about all that right now, Ara. You’re not telling me anything I haven’t already heard in your thoughts a million times.”
The narrowed slits of my eyes angled to the ground. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Matters of the heart take time to figure out, sweet girl. And I…” He stopped with his hands on the top of the oak chest, his head lowered.
“You?” I prompted.
“He’s changed. He’s not the man he used to be.”
“Who?”
“My brother.” He turned and looked at me then. “The man I thought I knew… you don’t need me to protect you from him anymore—
he’s proven that. And so have you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” He drummed his fingertips on the wood. “You don’t take shit from him like you used to. And he… well, let’s just say I’m not so scared anymore that he’ll hurt you.”
“And what changed that?”
He turned to his drawers again. “The way he’s been since everything. I gotta say, Ara”—he flashed me a guarded grin before looking away again—“I expected him to beat you after he found out about you and me—at the very least.”
“So did I.” I rubbed my head, taking a seat on the edge of his bed.
“I know you’re confused about things again, pretty girl, and I know talking them through helps, but…” He bowed his head in sorrow. “For the sake of my own salvation, I just can’t do that tonight.”
“Okay,” I said, offering a sympathetic smile, despite him not looking at me. “Get dressed then and we’ll go see about this breakthrough.”
“I am sorry, Ara,” he said.
Our gazes locked from across the room for a long moment, time moving on without us.
“I don’t expect you to be my go-to guy, Jase—”
“But I don’t mind, I—”
“Yes, but that wasn’t what I came here for. I…” I let my shoulders drop, not realizing how high they were until my stomach hurt from holding my breath. “I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t quite—”
“On the same page as me?” he suggested. “Romantically speaking.”
I nodded.
“I appreciate that, Ara—more than you know.”
I nodded again, and the smile I held became a forced one, locked in place by his intense stare. I knew he was in my head, reading all the thoughts he didn’t want to hear me say, but I let him in there, because if I couldn’t at least be sure about what I wanted, I could be honest. And as he turned away and started fussing about in his drawers, I knew that was enough. At least for now. If it were me and I couldn’t have what I desired most, I’d be happy for a bit just knowing where I stood. It hurt my heart in the deepest, most breaking way to be brutally honest with him, knowing it hurt him so bad, but that also clearly meant it was the right thing to do.
Echoes & Silence Part 1 Page 17
