by Tracy Wolff
It felt a little like that when Jaxon was fading. Like everything else in my life, even the bad stuff, just disappeared, leaving only the most basic survival instincts in its place. I know Bradbury meant his book to be a warning, but fading is so cool that I can’t help wondering how Jaxon feels about it.
I wonder if it feels for him the way it did for me, or if vampires are more able to handle it because they’re built to go those kinds of speeds. I almost ask him, but he seems happy—really happy—and I don’t want to ruin that with questions that might be hard to answer.
So I don’t say anything at all, at least not until Jaxon turns me around and I get to see the view from the very top of this very tall mountain. And it is breathtaking. Massive peaks as far as the eye can see, miles upon miles of snow packed onto the tops and sides of mountains in a kind of frozen wonderland made even more precious by the fact that we really might be the only two people to ever stand here.
It’s an awe-inspiring feeling…and a humbling one, which only grows as astronomical twilight closes in around us, turning the world to a faint purple.
The aurora borealis isn’t out yet, but some of the stars are, and seeing them against this gorgeous, seemingly never-ending horizon helps put everything I’m going through in perspective. I can’t help comparing what one human life—one human’s problems—is in contrast to all this, just like I can’t help wondering, for the very first time, what immortality feels like. I mean, I know what I feel when I’m standing here. Small, insignificant, finite. But what does someone like Jaxon feel, not only with the knowledge that he can climb—and conquer—this impossible mountain in minutes, but also with the knowledge that he will be here as long as this mountain is.
I can’t imagine what that feels like.
I don’t know how long we stand there staring off into the ever-darkening distance. Long enough for Jaxon’s arms to creep around me and for me to relax against him.
Long enough for the last little bit of sun to sink down below the mountains.
More than long enough for the cold to seep in.
Jaxon notices my first shiver and pulls away reluctantly. I know how he feels. Right now, I’d be okay with spending eternity up here on this mountain, just him and me and this incredible feeling of peace. I haven’t experienced anything like it since before my parents died. And maybe not even then.
Peace can’t last with Hudson inside you, a voice in the back of my head says, shattering the feeling of contentment. Could it be my gargoyle side again, warning me? I wonder. Obviously Hudson wouldn’t warn me about himself.
Another question for my research, I decide, if my life ever slows down enough for me to actually get some done. Which reminds me, I need to set aside some time when I get back to Katmere to review the notes on gargoyles that Hudson apparently took. Another shiver races down my spine as I wonder what he was looking for about me.
“We need to go,” Jaxon says, unzipping my backpack and pulling out a stainless-steel bottle of water. “But you need to drink something before we do. These altitudes can be brutal.”
“Even on gargoyles?” I tease, leaning in to him again because it feels right.
“Especially on gargoyles.” He smirks as he holds the bottle out to me.
I drink, more because Jaxon is standing there watching me than because I’m actually thirsty. It’s a small thing, not worth arguing about, especially when he knows more about this climate than I do. The last thing I need is to add dehydration on top of everything else going on inside me right now.
“Can I have a granola bar?” I ask when I hand him the bottle to put back in my pack.
“Sure,” he says, digging in the backpack to find me one.
After chewing a few bites, I ask, “How long until we get to the Bloodletter’s cave?”
Jaxon lifts me into his arms again, considers it. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not we run into any bears.”
“Bears?” I squeak, because nobody said anything about bears. “Aren’t they still hibernating?”
“It’s March,” he answers.
“What does that mean?”
When he doesn’t answer, I poke him in the shoulder. “Jaxon! What does that mean?”
He shoots me a wicked grin. “It means we’ll see.”
I poke him again. “What about—”
He takes off, full fade, before I can finish the thought, and then it’s just Jaxon and me flying down the side of a mountain. Well, Jaxon, me, and, apparently, a bunch of bears.
I so didn’t sign up for this.
30
Winner Winner
Bloodletter’s
Dinner
It seems like only a few minutes before Jaxon stops again, but when I glance at my cell phone, I realize that another hour has gone by. That means that if we traveled at the same speed we did during the first half of the trip, we must be about five hundred miles from Katmere.
“We’re here,” Jaxon says, but I figured as much. It’s in the tightness of his mouth, the sudden tenseness of his shoulders.
I look around, try to find the ice cave where we’re supposed to meet the Bloodletter, but all I see is mountain in every direction. Mountain and snow. Then again, I’m not exactly an expert on ice caves.
“Is there anything I need to know?” I ask when he takes my hand, starts to lead me closer to the base of the mountain.
“Honestly, there’s so much you need to know that I’m not sure where to start.”
I laugh at first, because I think he’s joking, but a quick glance at his face tells me that I’ve misread the situation. In response, the ball of tension in my stomach gets just a little tighter.
“Maybe the abbreviated version?” I suggest as we come to another sudden stop, this time right in front of two giant piles of snow.
“I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but I can try.” He shakes his head, runs a gloved hand up and down his thigh in the most nervous gesture I’ve ever seen from him as the silence goes on and on and on. I’ve just about decided that he’s changed his mind, that he’s not going to tell me anything, when Jaxon says in a voice that’s more wind than whisper, “Don’t get too close to her. Don’t try to shake her hand when you meet her. Don’t—”
He breaks off, and this time he runs a palm over his face instead of his thigh and, though it blends in with the howl of a nearby wolf, I swear I hear him say, “This is never going to work.”
“You don’t know that,” I answer.
His head snaps up, and this time the obsidian gaze he focuses on me is like nothing I’ve ever seen from him. Silver flames dance in the depths of his eyes, and there is a mountain of despair there as well as a host of other emotions that I don’t recognize or understand.
“You realize she’s a vampire, right?”
“Of course.” I don’t know where he’s going with this, but they were pretty clear back at the library.
“If she hasn’t eaten in a while,” Jaxon says, mouth twisted in a grimace I could never have missed, “she’ll probably have a food source there.”
“A food source?” I repeat. “You mean a human?”
“Yeah.” He swallows hard. “I want you to know that I don’t do what she does. I don’t feed from people the way she does. I don’t—”
“It’s okay,” I tell him as I realize that he’s as nervous about what I’m going to think of his upbringing and the woman who raised him as he is about my safety and the fact that his brother is now hanging out inside me somewhere.
It’s a shocking revelation about a guy who has never appeared anything but confident, and it warms me even as it makes me nervous.
Jaxon nods. “Sometimes she lures tourists in. Sometimes other paranormals bring her ‘gifts’ for her assistance.” He holds my gaze. “Not me, though.”
“Whatever happens in there is okay,” I tell him, leaning forward so that my arms are wrapped around his waist and my chin is resting on his chest. “I promise.”
“‘Okay’ is a bit of an overstatement,” he tells me. “But she is tens of thousands of years old, so it is what it is.” He hugs me back, then steps away. “Also, you need to let me do most of the talking in there. If she asks you a question, answer, of course, but she doesn’t particularly like strangers. Oh, and don’t touch her or let her touch you.”
Okay, now the warnings are just getting weird. “Why would I touch her?”
“Just give her a wide berth, I mean. She doesn’t like people very much.”
“I never would have guessed that, considering she lives in an ice cave in one of the most remote areas of Alaska.”
“Yeah, well, there’re a lot of reasons people live where they do. It’s not always about choice.”
I start to ask him what he means, but he might as well have hung a No Trespassing sign on that statement. So in the end, I don’t push. Instead, I just nod and ask, “Anything else I need to know?”
“Nothing I can explain to you in a couple of minutes. Besides, it’s getting colder. We should go in before you freeze.”
I am cold, my teeth all but chattering despite the many, many layers of clothing I’m currently wearing, so I don’t argue. Instead, I just step back and wait for Jaxon to lead the way.
And though I think I’m ready for anything, I have to admit the one thing I don’t expect is for Jaxon to raise a hand and lift an entire bank of snow several feet into the air. But as he does, he reveals a small opening in the base of the mountain: the entrance to the ice cave.
Jaxon drops the snow behind us, then moves his hands through the air in a complicated pattern. I try to watch what he’s doing, but he’s moving so fast that his hands are little more than a blur. I start to ask, but he’s concentrating so hard that I just stand there waiting for him to finish instead.
“Safeguards,” he tells me as he takes my hand and walks me into the cave.
“To protect people from wandering in?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “To keep my father out.”
Jaxon’s jaw tightens, and I get the sense he really doesn’t want me asking more questions. So I don’t.
Besides, it’s taking every ounce of concentration I have to keep from slipping and sliding down the steepest, narrowest, iciest path I have ever seen. Jaxon holds my hand tightly all the way, using his strength to steady me several times as we descend.
He’s got his phone in his left hand, the flashlight app on to illuminate our path, and we stop several times so that I can get a better foothold. Those are actually the times I like best, because they’re the only times I finally get to really look around the cave we’re walking into…and it is absolutely gorgeous. Everywhere I gaze are beautiful ice and rock formations—some sharp enough to impale a person, others stripped away by time and water to reveal their very origins.
Those are some of my favorites.
Eventually, we get to a fork in the path but continue down the right side.
There’s a second fork at the bottom of that path, and this time Jaxon takes us to the left. We go through another set of safeguards and then suddenly, everything flattens out. We’re in a huge room, filled with so many lit candles that, after the dark, I have to blink against the glare of them all.
“What is this place?” I whisper to Jaxon, because it seems like the kind of place that demands a whisper. Wide open, with high ceilings and brilliant rock and ice formations in all directions, it’s the most stunning natural wonder I’ve ever seen.
The place feels like a dream…at least until I glance toward one of the corners and realize there are chains and cuffs jammed into the ceiling—right above a couple of bloodstained buckets. There’s no one in the cuffs right now, but the fact that they exist at all takes away my awe at the beauty of the room.
Jaxon sees where I’m looking—it’s hard to be subtle when you imagine humans being hung and drained of their blood—and steps forward to deliberately block my view. I don’t argue with him; I already have a pretty good idea I’m going to be seeing that setup in my nightmares for some time to come. I don’t need to see it in real life again. Ever.
Jaxon seems to feel the same way, because he’s tugging me over to the largest arch pretty quickly now, even though the floor is still slippery and uneven.
“Ready?” he asks, right before we get there.
I nod, because honestly, what else am I going to do? And then, with Jaxon’s arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders, I walk straight through the archway to meet the Bloodletter.
31
Welcome to the
Ice Age
I don’t know what I’m expecting when I walk through that frozen archway, but the perfectly put-together living room in front of me is. Not. It.
The room is gorgeous, the ceiling and walls decorated with more rock and ice formations…and behind glass, one very large expressionist painting of a field of poppies in all the shades of red and blue and green and gold.
I’m transfixed by it, much the way I was by the Klimt I saw in Jaxon’s room when I first got to Katmere. Partly because it is beautiful and partly because the closer I get to it, the more convinced I become that the painting is an original Monet.
Then again, when you’ve been alive for thousands of years, I guess it’s easier to get your hands on the works of the masters—maybe even before they became masters.
The rest of the room looks like any living room anywhere—with an upgrade from standard to absolutely stunning. A gigantic rock fireplace dominates one of the side walls. Bookshelves line the room, filled with books bound in cracked and colorful leather, and a giant rug that looks like a bouquet of flowers exploded stretches across the massive floor.
In the center of the room, facing away from the fire, are two large wingback chairs in the same red as the poppies in the painting. Across from them, separated by a long rectangular glass coffee table, is a comfortable-looking sofa in harvest gold.
And sitting on the sofa, legs curled under her with a book in her lap, is a very sweet-looking old woman, with short gray curls and colorful reading glasses. She’s dressed in a silk caftan in swirling shades of blue, and her light-brown skin glows in the candlelight as she closes her book and deposits it on the glass table.
“Four visits in as many months,” she says, looking up at us with a soft smile. “Careful, Jaxon, or I’m going to start getting spoiled.”
Her voice sounds like she looks—sweet, cultured, calm—and I feel a little like I’m being punked. This is the most dangerous vampire in existence? This is the woman Jaxon refers to as the Bloodletter? She looks like she’d be more at home knitting and playing with her grandchildren than she ever would hanging people upside down from the ceiling to drain their blood.
But Jaxon is moving us toward her, his head angled down in the most submissive gesture I have ever seen from him, so this has to be her, fuzzy slippers and all.
“You could never be spoiled,” he answers as we come to a stop right in front of her. Or rather, Jaxon comes to a stop in front of her. I come to a stop several feet back, as Jaxon has deliberately angled his body between us. “I like the new color scheme.”
“I was overdue for a change. Spring is a time for renewal, after all.” She smiles ruefully. “Unless you’re an old vampire like myself.”
“Ancient isn’t the same as old,” Jaxon says to her, and I can tell from his voice that he means it. And also that he admires her a great deal, even if he doesn’t trust her completely.
“Always such a charmer.” She stands up, her gaze meeting mine for the first time. “But I’m guessing you already know that.”
I nod, more cognizant than ever of Jaxon’s warning to let him do the talking. Because while the Bloodlette
r might look like the sweetest grandma ever, her green eyes gleam with shrewdness—and more than a little bit of avarice—as she looks me over. Add in the fact that I can see the tips of her fangs glowing against her bottom lip in the firelight, and I’m beginning to feel a little bit like a fly to the proverbial spider.
“You brought your mate,” she tells him with an arch look, one that speaks volumes I don’t begin to understand.
“I did,” he replies.
“Well, let me get a look at her, then.” She walks forward, pressing a hand to the side of Jaxon’s biceps in an effort to guide him over a few steps.
Jaxon doesn’t budge, which makes the Bloodletter laugh, a bright, colorful sound that echoes off the vaulted ceilings and ice-hard walls. “That’s my boy,” she says. “Always the overprotective one. But I can assure you this time, there’s no need.”
Again, she presses on his biceps in a very obvious “scoot over a little” gesture. Again, he doesn’t move so much as an inch.
Annoyance replaces amusement in her bright-green eyes, and she sends him a look that, not going to lie, has me shaking a little in my shoes. Certain that she can smell it, I tamp down the small quiver of fear and meet her curious gaze with one of my own.
I can tell she likes that, just as I can tell how unhappy she is with Jaxon’s refusal to bend to her will. Deciding to take it out of both their hands, I step forward and smile at her. “I’m Grace,” I say, and though convention suggests that I offer my hand, Jaxon’s earlier warning still rings in my ears. “It’s really nice to meet you.”
She gives me a delighted smile in response but makes no move to touch me, either—even before Jaxon lets out an obvious sound of displeasure.
“It’s wonderful to meet you, too. I’m glad everything has…worked itself out with you.”
Surprised by her words, I glance at Jaxon. He doesn’t take his eyes off the woman who raised him, but he does answer my silent question. “She knows you’re a gargoyle. I came to see her twice when you were locked in stone.”