Wherever they were, she didn’t like it.
A cold chill slipped under the cuffs of her jeans as she stepped out onto the soggy ground. The soil was saturated with all the rain they had seen in the past days, and the grass squished beneath her shoes. She rubbed against her nubby cotton sweater to bring some heat to her skin and sniffed the air. It was clean and fresh, like summer rain, but there was an unmistakable sour note that she couldn’t quite discern, like mildew or rot.
Looking around she could discern the outlines of barren trees whose branches sprang out of the fog like wicked fingers of death. Why didn’t they have leaves? It was the middle of summer but somehow everything around her seemed dead and decaying, from the stubbly browning grass beneath her feet to the black paint peeling on the gate. “Where are we, Sebastian?”
“I come here when I need to think.” He walked around to the passenger side of the car. He looked so sexy tonight. His hair gleamed like black diamonds, and as usual, he was dressed head to toe in black. And for some reason his cologne even smelled more enticing.
Looking away from his tempting figure, Scarlet was startled by the stone gargoyles that sat on either side of the gate. They were as big as a short man, and ugly, with thick stone tongues hanging out of grotesquely curved mouths, and wing spans as wide as her arms.
“What did you bring me here for? I’m freezing.”
“I wanted to show you a few things, teach you about yourself, and explain some of the powers you possess.”
“Did we have to come all the way out here?” She shivered and dance around, her feet making suction noises in the grass, while Sebastian seemed comfortable with the cool weather. “This is a long way out. What’s so special about this place?”
“I’ll show you. But first, lesson number one.” He took her hands from her shoulders and held them out to her sides. “You shouldn’t be cold. A vampire can adjust his body temperature to match the environment. If you concentrate, you can do the same.”
“You mean you’re not cold?” she chattered.
“No. Just relax and concentrate. Tell your body to lower its temperature, and envision in your mind that it’s happening, and it will.”
“That sounds too easy.”
“Try it.”
It seemed like nonsense to her, but she’d give it a try. It wasn’t as if she had someplace better to be, although she wished she did. Scarlet stood still, closing her eyes, and imagined her blood cooling itself so it was a few degrees less than normal. Immediately, she felt her body stop shaking, and a warmth spread through her torso and radiated out to her extremities. After about a minute of thinking of warmth and relaxation, she opened her eyes to see Sebastian smiling at her.
“Pretty easy, huh?”
“Yes. I feel fine now. I’m not cold at all.”
“Let’s go, then.”
They walked to the gate, and as they neared it the fog caressed the spaces between the bars, floating through the cold iron and billowing in thick clouds so she could barely see her feet. She fingered the gargoyle’s head and shuddered at the wings on his back. Anything monstrous inevitably reminded her of vampires and of her own situation.
Sebastian lifted the rusted lock and the thick chain that wrapped around the gate clattered dully. “Do you want to open this?”
“Me? Do you have a key?”
He laughed and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t need a key, Scarlet. You’re a vampire. You now have the strength of ten men. And big men at that.”
This was hard to believe. But after thinking on it she realized that she hadn’t done anything lately that needed any strength, so she had no idea if it was true. There was only one way to find out. “I’ll try.”
She braced her feet against the spongy ground, preparing for a struggle. With her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, she placed her hand on the cold rusty metal and turned. To her surprise, it moved easily, and the lock snapped with a crunch under her fingers. The chain slipped down and clanked against the bars and Sebastian pulled it out from the gate, tossing it to the ground while she stood staring at the old lock in her hand.
“I can’t believe it.”
“Your strength will come in handy,” he said, leading her through the gate.
She could make out a large stone building just ahead of them, though the fog hung on the ground like steam rising from hell. They weaved back and forth, since the path Sebastian was taking was cluttered with large stone blocks every so often. He moved swiftly, and she did her best to dodge the obstacles on the ground as they neared the building, but she slipped and tumbled over one of them and immediately realized what he had been swerving around.
Frantically, she pushed up from the wet grass and grabbed for Sebastian so he would slow down. Her nails nearly tore his shirt as she clutched him for dear life.
“Sebastian, this is a graveyard! What are we doing here?”
“I want you to see the inside of the mausoleum.” He pointed ahead to the stone building. Placing a warm hand on hers, he was able to pry her manic grasp from the back of his arm and put an arm around her waist.
“Why? This is so gross. I want to leave now!”
She couldn’t believe how casual he was about being here around all these dead people. The only time she had ever been to a graveyard was for her parents’ funeral. Even then, Gary had carried her back to the car before she collapsed from the horror of being in such surroundings. There was something about dead bodies beneath her feet that did not sit well with her.
She started to shiver and Sebastian hugged her close, his eyes catching the moonlight as he spoke. “This is where I stayed when I first came to America, over a hundred years ago. I wanted to show you my origins.” He smoothed a hand along the side of her face. “You are my blood child so my history is now yours, too.”
“Couldn’t you have done this at home?” she said nervously eyeing the tombstones jutting out of the stale ground.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m here and I won’t let anything happen to you. Besides, the only things out here are a bunch of bones and coffins. No ghosts, I think.”
He thinks?
“This is lovely, you taking me here to this big stone place, but . . .”
“It’s a mausoleum.”
“Whatever. But what about your real past? Where you were born, what you did as a child before you became a vampire? That’s what I want to know more about.”
The thick stone door of the mausoleum groaned and cracked open under Sebastian’s strength. He pushed it back against the outside wall and entered with the aid of the moonlight to guide his steps.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to answer her, Scarlet followed. Inside, the moon shone in through two iron-barred windows and spread across the floor. Through the hazy moonlight, she could make out a large stone coffin resting in the center of the room. All around her the walls were lined with drawers the same size as those on her dressers at home. What they were filled with she didn’t want to imagine.
“Did you hear me, Sebastian?”
“Huh? Yes, I’ll tell you about that part of my life later.” He looked over the coffin. “But right now let’s do this, okay?”
He rubbed his hands together and eagerly approached the stone sarcophagus, blowing the dust from the cover to reveal intricate designs carved into the top. Two cherubs danced over the cold gray stone cover, twirling and twined within arcs of delicate vines and roses.
He fingered the roses. “See here, wild roses. It’s always been a belief that if you place wild roses over a vampire’s coffin, he won’t be able to leave. He’ll be trapped within his own sanctuary.”
“Not true, huh?”
"Perhaps if they had been real roses, and, planted by witches."
Scarlet grimaced and swallowed. All this vampire lore and myth was making her anxious. But he motioned her closer and she forgot her fears as she examined the work. It must have taken a long time to carve.
“This is your coffin?”
she asked with new wonderment.
“Yes. Well . . . sort of.” He walked around to the opposite side and fingered the curves of the intricately carved vines. “It belonged to a relative. Before it was transferred to America, I traded places with the body inside. It was my only way to get over here, you see. Or at least, at the time it was the simplest method of travel.”
She was repulsed at his gall. “You took a dead body out of here? And then laid in it yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that’s crude.”
He chuckled, his attention on the stone sepulcher. “Do you want me to get you one?”
“Sebastian! Don’t say things like that. The idea of lying in a coffin while still breathing is . . . is . . .” She backed away from the coffin and grabbed her stomach. “Yuck!”
Scarlet turned and dashed out of the building. Tombstones jutted out of the fog in front and behind her. She couldn’t decide which was worse—dead bodies or a vampire and his coffin. The wind howled and the trees scraped against the mausoleum, and even though she could see now where the sound was coming from, the fog and the tombstones made her skin crawl.
“Sebastian!” she yelled back into the building.
“What?” The voice came from behind her and Scarlet spun to see him standing between her and the graves. “How did you get there? You were just in there."
“Don’t get so excited, Scarlet. Just relax. I never imagined you’d be so nervous in a graveyard.”
“I want to leave now. I don’t understand why you needed to bring me here and show me this. It only proves that your origins, as you call them, are dead people, tombstones, and ghosts. Death and misery, that’s all this is!”
“I didn’t bring you out here to argue with you.” He was clearly irritated as he ground his jaws together. “Leave if you like, but I thought this would give us a chance to learn more about each other. I want you to understand me, not for you to write me off as some sort of monster.”
Scarlet sighed. “Sebastian, I don’t know.”
“I wanted to show you some of the powers you have. It will make things easier for you. Will you at least let me explain a few more things before we leave?”
She walked past him and the fog whispered across her face. Beyond her stood rows of tombstones hidden in the mist, and then his car. She didn’t want to walk back by herself. Shrugging, she gave in. “Then show me.”
“Come here and I will.”
She turned to Sebastian, but he wasn’t there. A thick cloud of white mist hovered in front of her and she saw only the opening to the mausoleum where he’d stood. She had heard him as plain as day, his voice was so close.
“Where are you?” She scanned the ground and the air before her, and saw only grayness and white mist.
“I’m up here, cherie.”
His voice came from somewhere in front of her, only higher up. The fog was thickening but she looked up above the low mist. Sebastian stood on top of the mausoleum, his hair blowing in the wind. He beckoned her to come but she shook her head and stepped back to judge the distance.
“How did you get up there?”
He knelt and looked down at her, smiling that delicious smile. “I jumped.”
“So this is another one of your vampire tricks?”
“Yes, and yours too. Take a running leap. You can do it with no problem.”
He exhibited so much confidence in her. It was easy for him to say; he was already up there. She looked at the one-story structure before her. About ten feet, she thought.
“I can’t do this, Sebastian.”
“Why not? You’re no different from me now.” He stood and put a finger to his chin. “Except perhaps that you are a woman, and everyone knows that women are not as strong as men.” He looked down his nose to see if he’d sparked a little anger.
Sure enough, he had. Scarlet paced away from the building, hands in fists at her sides. She turned and faced the stone mausoleum. Fine, just run and jump, she told herself.
Her feet quickened their pace and she ran toward the building. When there was but a few feet between her and the wall, she pushed from the soggy ground, soaring through the mist until her feet touched the flat stone roof and she stood next to Sebastian.
She looked over the edge to the ground. “I did it!” In her elation she threw her arms around him and gave him a squeeze.
“And you didn’t trust me,” he said.
Realizing that her arms were still around his neck, she pulled away. “Well, that was fun. What’s next?”
“Let’s go over here.” He walked to the edge of the roof, where he sat Indian style and motioned for her to sit facing him.
“Now what?” she asked.
He pulled up his sleeve and held out his left hand turning it up so his wrist was exposed to the cool night air. “Take my pulse.”
“What?”
“Just put your hand over my wrist.” He pulled her hand from her lap and placed it on his wrist so her fingers rested on top of his thick blue vein. She could feel the blood beating below his skin, slow and steady. What was he up to? “Do you feel it?”
“Your pulse? Yes, it’s normal. Don’t worry, you’re not going to die,” she joked.
“No, I mean, can you feel the beat? It’s slow, yet not quite in time with your pulse. Your heart is beating faster.”
He was so sexy under the bright moonlight. She could almost have kissed him if she I wasn’t so confused at that moment. “Yeah, so?”
“Come here.”
He put his hands on her knees and turned her body so she was facing away from him. Then he pulled her close, so they sat spoon style, his legs out to her sides. She was reluctant to be directed by him, but found it impossible to resist, and she sank back against his chest, relishing his strong embrace. The heat from his body seeped through her sweater and cuddled her skin. He pressed his legs close to hers and reached around for her hand.
“Now what are you doing?”
He placed her fingers on his neck, right over the thick jugular vein that pounded out his life’s rhythm. His hand held hers firmly and he laid his head aside of hers so their cheeks touched. The fine coolness of Sebastian’s sleek hair floating across her cheek made her shiver then he moved to let their skin touch, and she could feel his breath blowing gently over her face.
Scarlet closed her eyes and blocked out the night and the eerie graveyard noises, concentrating on his gentle breathing and the sure pulse that beat against her fingertips. The slow steady rhythm of someone who was confident and strong.
Soon, she was hypnotized by the rhythm of his heart, and realized that her own heart beat in time with his. Every time his vein bulged and pounded against her hand, her heart expanded and beat against her chest. They were in synch, their hearts beating as one.
“I feel it,” she whispered.
He embraced her, bringing her body snug against his chest. She felt so safe. A part of him.
His words echoed in her mind. Trust me.
Yes, I can, she thought.
She tilted her head toward him and Sebastian closed his mouth over hers in a long, deep kiss that started a fire within her. His lips were firm and hot and they melted any coolness she had left for him. She ran her fingers through his hair, pulling him close so that his chest pressed against hers and she could feel him burning for her.
“Our hearts beat as one when we are together, cherie,” he whispered into her mouth. “We are one. And we will always be one, a jamais."
“Ow.” With a wince, she pulled away. Fierce networks of pain rippled through her upper jaw, as if a dentist were going at her without Novocain.
“Cherie, it’s all right. Relax. Your teeth are coming in. Feel.” He took her hand and placed her finger on the tip of what was once a smoothly rounded canine tooth.
Flinching at the sharpness, Scarlet carefully tongued the tooth, feeling first along the sides that had, of their own will, descended into her mouth. The tips were pin-sharp and the warmth of
her blood came to the tip of her tongue. “It really is happening, isn’t it?”
“You can will them up if you wish.”
“How? I didn’t even know they were going to come down.”
“It must have been my kiss,” he said with a sly grin. “When you’re ready to feed, it will be automatic, and when you’re finished you’ve only to will them back up, much the way you adjusted your body temperature.”
Still holding her jaw agape for fear of slashing her lips to shreds, she looked to Sebastian as he nodded for her to try. Closing her eyes, she imagined the spikes in her mouth to be rising and slipping deep into the folds of her gums. She swore she could feel the smooth white instruments glide upward and then finally come to rest.
“You see?”
Opening her eyes, and with a flick of her tongue across her teeth, Scarlet realized that she had done it. “This is so weird. I don’t know if I can deal with this.”
“You have forever to learn to deal with it, Scarlet.”
There was that word again. Forever. It never failed to slash like a knife through any conversation they had.
She spread her arms out, breaking Sebastian’s grasp, and pushed away, turning and resting on her knees before him. There was so much she didn’t want to hear, yet so much she was curious about. “Is there any truth to the myth about dead people rising from their coffins to do their master’s bidding? You know, the living dead?”
“Now where did that come from?” Sebastian asked in surprise.
“Well, we are sitting here in a graveyard. What am I supposed to think? I just want to know if it’s true.”
“Scarlet, weren’t you listening when I explained everything to you? I told you we are not the living dead. You and I are alive.”
She sat back and blew out a breath of relief. But Sebastian’s strange silence bothered her. “That is good, isn’t it?”
He seemed as though he wanted not to say anything, that if he didn’t speak the subject would be dropped. But she implored him. “There are some vampires who deal with that sort of stuff?”
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