“I promise.” She offered her pinky. “But what about Blade?”
I shook her pinky with mine. “Especially not Blade.”
Her eyes drifted slowly onto the day outside the window then, a hard gust of air following from her lips. “Okay. Fine. Look, I gotta go. I’ll see ya at dinner.”
“Okay. See ya.” I waved her off dismissively, knowing she was pissed, but I was just too hungry to really care.
“And…” She stopped, holding my door slightly ajar. “I know it doesn’t bring him back or make it any easier to deal with but… I’m so sorry about your dad.”
My mind flashed back to that dream from last night, going through the stages of acceptance all over again as I told myself he wasn’t a vampire. He was dead. “Thanks, Em.”
“Just… you know you’re not the only one, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—” She tightened her lips for a second. “I cry for him all the time.”
My eyes watered along with hers, and she left the room quickly then before either of us started blubbering.
* * *
Mike changed his usually long stride to match that of the tiny thing beside him, her head only just coming up past his nipples, her frame so petite she could snap if he accidentally tripped on that rug and landed on her. She kinda looked like a child, really, with her lovely soft blonde hair falling like baby’s breath over her shoulders and the wide-eyed enthusiasm of youth, but she’d clearly reached puberty early in her human years because, despite me being older and pregnant, she had bigger boobs and better curves—the appeal of a woman. And I could see now why David hadn’t been at all concerned with how young she was when he was sleeping with her—every night. Probably every morning too, in that way couples without the world on their shoulders do.
Her name was promptly added to my growing list of girls I didn’t like. Girls that’d been with David. Funny enough though, Em wasn’t on that list. Yet.
David’s ex, with her arms folded and her attention belonging wholly to Mike’s gorgeous smile, watched him with such fascination, nodding and smiling as he waved his hands around, presenting random spots in the roof of the manor.
His eyes warmed more then as he looked up and saw me heading toward him, and he gently placed his hand to the girl’s back, stopping her. “Ara?”
“Hey, guys.” I drew my hands from my jeans pockets in the hope of appearing older and more confident, secretly taking the stopping distance to scrutinize the girl: her eyes of pale green sparkled too much for a vampire, in my opinion, and I didn’t really find her thin pink lips as kissable as I pictured David’s ‘type’ having. I mean, yeah, she was like me in a lot of ways, with her small frame, bright disposition and the instant trust she had for those she met—trust that shone out clearly in her anticipating smile. Like me, yeah, but also mixed with a bit of Emily. And my eyes slowly went to Mike then, noting the way he stood beside her: just a little closer than polite. Great.
I closed a tiny indignant huff into the back of my throat, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. Surely, he wasn’t even thinking about falling for David’s leftovers! Sixteen-year-old-child leftovers.
“Ara,” Mike said softly, with just a hint of confusion underneath—enough to wake me into realizing I was staring open-mouthed and squinty-eyed at the newcomer. “This is Pepper.”
“Pepper?” the girl squeaked.
“Sorry.” Mike winced. “Sara.”
“Sara?” I frowned, doing a double take.
Pepper laughed, sweeping her light-blue baseball cap off her head and offering her hand. “I don’t know why they keep calling me Pepper.” We shook hands. “I must look like a spice.”
I laughed awkwardly, making suppositions about her based on the handshake: tiny. Sweet. Friendly. And quite possibly not as demonic as I needed her to be. “So, what brings you to Loslilian, Sara?”
“I was at school, and…” She looked up shyly at Mike. “Next thing I know I wake up here and they tell me I’m a vampire.”
“Oh.” I looked at Mike while I asked her my next question. “So you’re new?”
They both nodded—Mike’s bearing a little more weight, though.
“And… how are you liking it so far?” I asked.
In the way young people often do, not realizing just how rude it actually is, Pepper shrugged, popping the baseball cap on again. It didn’t match her light denim jeans and feminine, almost transparent pink top at all, either. And she wasn’t even wearing a bra. Were it not for the fact that vampires didn’t get cold, I would have been able to see the shape of her nipples. Not just the color.
“Well, you’ll need to learn how to dress then, sweetie,” I said politely, well, kind of politely. You might say sweetly-condescending. “Rule number one about being a vampire is that you have to blend in. It’s autumn.” I presented the gray day. “No one wears invisible tops when it’s cold.”
“We were just headed into town,” Mike said, kindly enough that only I’d hear the defensive undertone. “We’re gonna take Emily with us—go get some clothes.”
“Okay.” I nodded, half scowling up at Mike. “Is the king okay with that?”
He patted my upper arm. “All approved. He’s asked us to take Jason, too.”
I wanted to laugh. But I held it in. “You’re taking Jason and your ex-fiancée shopping with a “new” vampire?”
“Yeah.” Mike wiped a hand across his mouth. “It’ll be an interesting day, that’s for sure.”
“Well”—I walked past them—“have fun.”
“We will.”
Of course they would. They were going shopping. To be normal for a day.
Sometimes it really sucked being queen. And it sucked that Pepper’s treatment had worked so well I now had to live under the same roof as her. I mean, I wanted to help her. But I at least thought she’d spend a few months in therapy down at the Institute for the Damned. Now was not a good time to have another one of David’s exes shoved in my face. Especially pretty and sweet exes.
My self-absorbedness stopped short of my next whine as the air at the end of the corridor chilled substantially then. I looked up to see Morgaine leaning on the wall by the entrance to the Great Hall.
“He likes that girl,” she warned, unfolding her arms. “Mike does.”
“She’s very sweet.” I shrugged. “What’s not to like?”
“He liked me. But now, because of you, he doesn’t even speak to me anymore.”
“No, that’s because you’re the enemy, Morg.”
“And that’s your fault,” she said. “He would never have known if you didn’t tell him. You cost me my only real friend.”
“What do you expect?” I threw my hands out to the sides. “That he’d just say, ‘Oh right. You wanna kill my best friend. But hey, that’s cool, ’cause we’re mates’?”
Her fists tightened by her sides, a long, heavy breath squeezing out through her teeth. “He was the only person I had to talk to around here. You could’ve at least left me him.”
I scoffed and walked away. This girl was unbelievable. “Get over it, Morg. No one likes a traitor.”
“Oh yeah,” she called. “Well, no one likes a whore, either.”
“Whatever,” I called back. “You can’t get to me, you know. I’m above it.”
“Then maybe I’ll get to the Upper House,” she yelled spitefully. And I stopped. “You might not care if you’re a whore, but they will.”
I turned back around slowly. “I dare you to. Because I am just looking for a reason to rip your goddamn head off, Morgaine. Don’t force my hand.”
Her eyes flicked to my hand. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then we have something in common,” I said coolly. “But if you ever threaten me again, I will give you good reason to fear me.”
“You can’t touch me.”
“Famous last words, Morgana.”
* * *
With the little portrait of my baby tucked to
my chest, I skipped through the corridors toward David’s room, calling out to announce myself as well as knocking on his closed door. I didn’t want a repeat of the last time I entered here.
“Come in, Ara,” he called in as dull and flat a voice as humanly possible.
“Hey.” I popped in all excitedly, swinging the door shut with my hip.
“Hey.” He perked up a bit when he actually looked at me from behind his book, the late afternoon sun streaming through the glass pane beside him and making his skin glow the same color as the leather sofa he was on. “What brings you to this end of the manor?”
“I forgot to tell you something.”
“Before you do—” He put his book down on the coffee table and shuffled forward, bringing us face to face as I sat down, shifting the giant hardback aside to make room for my widening butt. “I need to tell you something first.”
“Okay.” I tucked my good news behind my back for the time being.
“I heard you met Pepper today.”
“Mm-hm.”
“What did you think of her?”
“Honestly?” I pulled a face, like I was going to tell him exactly how much I didn’t like her. But that would’ve been a lie. “She’s really sweet.”
One corner of his mouth slowly edged toward his cheek, bringing out that sharp dimple I hadn’t seen in almost two months. “So you don’t mind if she stays here?”
“Nope,” I said too quickly, laying the picture down on the table behind me. If we were here to talk about Pepper, I wasn’t showing him this today. It would sour the experience for me.
“Good.” He sat back a bit, grabbing his book as he went. “Because she needs more time between sessions with Jason. It’ll be at least a few weeks before she’s eligible for the change.”
“Change?”
He nodded, like I was supposed to know what he meant.
“What change?” I added.
He flipped a page over in his book, cradling it gently against those long fingertips of his. “Back to human.”
“You’re turning her back?” I tried not to fall off the table as I drew myself forward in surprise, but slipped a little anyway, correcting myself under the spark of David’s amusement.
He laughed out loud then, closing the book and putting it down. “No. You are.”
“I… well, I mean, I know I have to. But…” I studied my powerful hand for a second, imagining the moment I’d feel her heart beat, knowing it’d be the last I ever saw of her. “I thought you wanted her around.”
The amusement in his eyes simmered away to a soft smile. “No.”
I gave a hard nod, like a person who took shocking news as a cold fact and dealt with it. He saw through me, though.
“It’s okay,” he said, taking his attention back to his book. “You can be happy.”
But I wasn’t happy. I actually shrunk a little with shame. “It’s not that I don’t like her, you know. I—”
“It’s okay, Ara.” He reached across quickly and cupped my knee, stupefying me into silence. “I get it.”
Both of us froze for a moment as he realized he was touching me and slowly drew his hand away.
“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” he added.
I focused on his black woolly sock and the length of his toes under it as he lowered his heel to the ground, laying the book beside his thigh before sitting slightly on the edge of the sofa again.
“Judging from your tone, I’m guessing I’ve done something wrong,” I said.
“No.” He glanced once at his bed across the room and then his gaze fell onto the floor between his feet. “I did.”
“What? When?”
“The night you came here.” He nodded to the bed. “Saw what you saw.”
I closed my eyes around the very vivid memory.
“I… I know it, perhaps, shouldn’t matter to you, Ara, being that we’re no longer together, but it would matter to me to know, and I…” His hand edged toward mine, reversing with better thought. “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t go through with it.”
“With what?” I looked right at him, waiting, but he wouldn’t look at me.
“I didn’t sleep with those girls—didn’t even kill them.”
“You didn’t?” I asked, playing dumb.
He shook his head softly.
“Why?”
“Well—” He laughed, his straight white teeth and the sharp point of his fangs showing under those perfect dark-pink lips. “Firstly, you kinda ruined the mojo.”
I laughed, too.
“And, second…” he added timidly.
“Second?” I prompted.
“I was worried—about something I said to you.”
“Which bit?”
“I told you I’d been doing that when I fed, and you took it to mean I’d had naked girls and tied them up and done all sorts of sick things to them—”
“No, I—”
“Ara, I can read your mind, remember?”
I closed my mouth.
“But that wasn’t what I meant—when I told you that,” he said. “And I shouldn’t have let you think that for so long. I felt… terrible about it.”
My stomach shrunk and moved up into my chest, making it all tight.
“What I meant was… the way I kill—the way I always killed before I even met you, is to…” he stuttered, fighting to get the words past his lips.
“David?” I grabbed his hand, this time not so afraid he’d pull away. And he didn’t. He just looked quickly at our joined flesh and moved that stunned gaze to my eyes. “Don’t be afraid to open up to me. I am the one person in this entire world that will never judge you.”
“You used to,” he snapped defensively, bringing the past up like an insult. “You used to hate hearing anything about the kill. You never wanted anything to do with my vampire side and—”
“Things have changed.” I squeezed his hand a bit, trying not to draw too much attention to our touch. But it was too late. He realized how twisted it was that we were sitting that way and drew his hand from mine. “I was young then, David,” I continued. “And I might have told you I loved you for who you were, vampire and all, but I never really understood totally what that meant.”
“And you do now?” His cold tone suggested outward disbelief.
I nodded. “I’m sorry for making you feel like a monster. But you need to know that…” As I hesitated, searching my feet for the right words, he looked up from his own, curiously waiting, his dark lashes thinning his green eyes into slits. “I’m okay with the kill. Of course I’d prefer you stick to the Pledge, but I guess, when it comes to people I lo-”—I tripped over the noun and replaced it with—“care about, I don’t really see humans as humans anymore.”
He laughed.
“I know that sounds awful,” I added, for some reason feeling the need to defend that atrocious belief to a vampire—one I knew he shared wholeheartedly. “But… in a lot of ways, I see them as collateral damage because, if you didn’t drink their blood, you’d wither away, suffer.” I looked right into his eyes then, my own all glassy with a few tears. “And that would be worse.”
“Would it then?” He smiled the words out, an edge of sarcasm lighting up his face.
“For what it’s worth, yes. I don’t enjoy the idea of you suffering, you know. Even if I’d like to inflict pain on you myself sometimes.”
His eyes flicked to the bed again, then the box at the end of it, where I knew he kept his tools of sexual torture. He knew I didn’t mean I’d like to inflict that kind of pain on him, but his mind went there, quickly coming back as he cleared his throat to dispel the dirty thought.
“So—” I cleared my own throat. “Please talk to me about the kill. Don’t feel like you have to hide your true self from me, David. Jason certainly doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen him kill.”
“He took you to a kill?” He almost leapt out of
his seat.
“No. I… I leave my body sometimes and—”
“Oh.” He nodded and sat back, scratching just beside his eye as if it were actually itchy. “That spirit-walking-thing you do.”
“Yeah,” I said nervously. “I ended up in the kill suites one day.”
“And you saw him?”
“Yeah.” I bobbed my head a few too many times, reliving the moment in my thoughts for David to see. “And he just attacks. Scares them—”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He’s really quite brutal.” I smiled at his frown. “Shocking, huh?”
“Not even I do that.”
“I know.” I reached across and cupped the back of his hand, giving a gentle squeeze that he, surprisingly, didn’t draw away from this time. “So please talk to me, David. I mean, you’re quite okay with me hating you now anyway, so why keep up pretenses—acting like some moralistic human-lover?”
He laughed. “Even if I do talk to you about this, my aim is not to make you hate me, Ara. Not right now anyway. And not when it comes to… my preferences.”
“Then, please help me understand—about both the kill and the… sex?” I asked delicately. “Because, I know we’re through and all, but I’d like to understand.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really know why. Maybe because I still loved him, and maybe because it still mattered to me how he thought I saw him. And also… “Let’s just say that curiosity plays a really big part.”
He laughed, easing into ‘lovely’ David again. “Well, the truth is… I do tie my victims up—in the way you saw that night.” He rubbed his eyelid furiously, exhaling. “Sometimes partially naked, sometimes not—”
“Against their will?”
“Not usually.”
“Not usually?” I asked with a light laugh. “But sometimes you tie them up screaming?”
“Sometimes. If they annoy me enough.”
My brows went up. “Remind me not to annoy you.”
His eyes and lips sharpened on the edges in such a way that his whole face seemed to drop about ten years.
“Do you…” I thought again before continuing, not sure I wanted the answer. “Do you get naked with them when you kill them?”
Echoes & Silence Part 1 Page 29
