Wild Hearts

by Bridget Essex

  The vampire is about two feet away now. If he lifted his hand, it would brush against me.

  This close up, his grin is barbaric. A scarecrow with a bloody mouth.

  I look up at him, tilting my chin up.

  Everything else fades around me.

  And the only thing I'm capable of thinking or doing, the only thing that rises in me strong enough to act on...

  Is this:

  I whisper softly, but with a thread of white-hot conviction:

  “Fuck you.”

  This makes the creature pause.

  Perhaps he was about to reach out and wrap his hands around my throat.

  Perhaps he was just about to sink his veins into my jugular.

  I'm not sure.

  But whatever he was about to do...he stops.

  He stares down at me.

  And he actually laughs.

  It's a small, hard sound, and it comes from the pit of his belly. There is absolutely zero mirth to it as he looks down at me, his dark eyes narrowing.

  His laughter stops.

  He reaches up his hands.

  They're reaching for my neck.

  And that's when it happens.

  Darkness.

  The light goes out.

  Chapter 13: Never Alone

  I'm going to die.

  I close my eyes to the darkness.

  I tense my body.

  I wait for the searing agony of pain.

  And I wait...

  And wait...

  Suddenly, there is light. So much light. The absolute darkness, impenetrable and infinite, lifts with searing brightness.

  So bright that the light brings pain with it.

  I cry out, lifting my arm to shield my eyes. Even though they're closed, the light is so potent that it burns through me.

  I hear a sound, something else that's pain-filled.

  A scream.

  And then...

  A wet snap.

  Fingers reach out, grip my wrist gently.

  Warm fingers.

  I know this hand.

  “Ella. Ella, come on. We've got to go...” she murmurs to me, voice low, urgent.

  Silver.

  I'm too tense, too stiff, to move, but I turn my face toward her. She reaches up, and there's tenderness as her fingers trace the curve of my jaw.

  And then, gentle but insistent, she tugs me forward.

  I stumble after about two steps.

  My feet just kicked something strange and lumpy on the floor, and...

  Oh, God, oh, God, is that him?

  Even if I could glance down to see if my suspicions are correct...I wouldn't be able to make out anything. Vivid shapes dart in front of my eyes from the bright light, and apart from that, everything else is a blur.

  So Silver tugs me forward...

  And after two steps, three steps...

  There is blessed darkness once more.

  I can hear the weight of a door settling into its frame.

  I can hear the turning of a lock.

  And then Silver's warm palms touch my jaw, lifting my face to her.

  “Are you okay?” Her voice is thick with emotion.

  It's surprising.

  I close my eyes, open them back up.

  “I can't see anything.”

  My voice is shaking.

  “That will come back. Give it a minute. Are you in any pain?”

  I blink again.

  The pain in my eyes is gone.

  I can sort of make out the shape of her in front of me now. It's blurry, but solid.

  She's solid.

  And here.

  She's here with me.

  I reach up, pressing my hands over top of hers. I hold her there, her palms curved against my face, and I close my eyes, trying to calm my breathing. But I can't. I keep panting, my heart beating far too fast, the blood rushing in my head.

  I close my eyes and tears begin to leak down, falling over my cheeks, dripping into her palms.

  “What...what happened?” I manage.

  I can see the outline of her, can see the shrug, can feel the movement of her, so close to me that we're pressing against each other in places.

  Her warmth radiates into me.

  “Just...a trick of the light,” she tells me.

  A trick of the light?

  I close my eyes tighter. “Is he dead?”

  She waits a long moment.

  But then she tells me, voice quiet:

  “Yes.”

  A sob rises in my throat, but I swallow it down, press my palms harder against her, feel the weight of her hands against me. It settles me a little, even though I'm shaking, trembling.

  I take a deep breath, swallow another sob. I cough a little, then turn my face into her right hand.

  “Did that really just happen? He was...he was going to kill us...did that really just happen...” I whisper.

  She sighs, long and low.

  “Yes.”

  “You killed him.”

  The silence is the answer. She doesn't have to say it again.

  But I press:

  “You killed him because he was going to kill me.”

  No hesitation now: “yes.”

  “You didn't have to do that for me.”

  Silence. And then:

  “Yes...I did.”

  A pause.

  And then, voice lower, softer:

  “I had to protect you.”

  I open my eyes.

  She's so close, her head bowed to me. The furrow between her brows is back, and she's searching my face. When I open my eyes, we connect, and she holds my gaze, her jaw working, tensing and relaxing, her teeth ground tightly together.

  The panic that I felt a few minutes ago...

  It hasn't really left.

  And seeing her right before me, the solidity and gentleness of her, the realness of her...

  I just react.

  “You...you don't have to protect me,” I choke. “You don't have to do anything. You killed for me before...and now...now you just did it again.” I close my eyes, wince. “Did that really just happen? Was that even real?” And then, after another quavering breath: “was he...was he what I think he was?”

  She hesitates, and I open my eyes, look at her as she studies me. Her jaw is tight as she gives one small nod.

  “Vampire.” She says the word quickly, like it's bitter in her mouth.

  I stare at her.

  I knew what he was.

  She didn't have to speak the word for me to know.

  But now that it's been said...

  It seems absurd.

  It is absurd.

  ...Isn't it?

  But the woman before me...she's a werewolf. And...and so am I. And in a world where a woman can transform into a wolf...why wouldn't this be possible?

  Not only possible but probable.

  My logical side is trying so very, very hard to grapple with all of this.

  It's mostly failing.

  “But...but why did he want to hurt me?” Tears prick at the edges of my eyes again, but I'm angry at them suddenly.

  I press my palms down against her hands, feel her strength radiating into me, and I close my eyes, rest there, just for a heartbeat.

  She saved me.

  She protected me.

  I don't even know what to say that. I don't even know what to do.

  So I stand there, her hands gentle against my skin.

  I stand there, we stand there.

  Together.

  Silver breathes out into the stillness. “You have to understand,” she tells me, voice low, gruff. “They want you because you're special, and—”

  I snort at that, closing my eyes tighter, shaking my head a little. Bitterness rises within me, and I shut my eyes tighter, tighter, closing out the light.

  “Ella...” She trails off.

  It's a long moment before I think I can speak clearly, without my voice shaking.

  My eyes remain tightly closed.


  Because if I looked at her while I asked this...I don't know if I could say it.

  “What if you're wrong?” I ask her. “What if you're wrong, and there's nothing special about me? What if I'm perfectly ordinary?” The tears trail down my cheeks now, one after another in perfect succession. My insides are tight as I murmur: “Just a perfectly ordinary, sad person, and that's just all there is to me...all there ever will be?”

  I'm surprised by my outburst, my throat thick with emotion, choking on the bitterness in my own words.

  But she does not recoil.

  “There is absolutely no reason that you've saved my life...twice, already. Maybe more times than that.” Still my eyes tightly shut. I can see no light. “They...you said they murdered my mother. That they want to hurt me. But what do you have to do with any of this? I mean, really, in the grand scheme of everything, why don't you just let them take me? It would be so much easier.”

  There.

  Now I've said it.

  The truth.

  Silver remains quiet.

  And now that I've said as much, the shame and embarrassment rise in me like bile.

  I have to fill the silence.

  “You told me that Ma saved your life once. You paid her back, Silver. You've paid her back in spades. You don't owe her anything, anymore.”

  I open my eyes.

  She's watching me carefully.

  The shame is reaching critical mass, and my face begins to burn. I don't know what else to say, but I try to find something. “I...” I begin with.

  But Silver moves her head, almost imperceptibly, a little to the side as she studies me.

  I pause.

  Her eyes are bright in the dark.

  I can see them shining.

  “I know we've only just met,” she tells me, and she actually laughs at this, her head to the side as she considers me. “But I feel that in the short amount of time we've known each other...we've been through some things, haven't we?”

  Through the tears, I manage a watery chuckle.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, do you really think I'm the type of person who would just...leave?”

  I watch her in the darkness. There's the ghost of a smile along the curves of her mouth, but she's staring at me with an intensity that's...disarming.

  “You're not alone,” she murmurs. “And as long as I'm alive to help you through this, you're never alone. I promise.”

  Her words wash over me, gruff, low...gentle.

  And I believe her.

  But still, it rises in me. A single question.

  The question I need an answer to.

  So I whisper it into the dark.

  “...Why?”

  Silver breathes in and she breathes out.

  She does not break her gaze.

  And she doesn't have to think before she answers.

  “Because I wanted to help you. I...I needed to.”

  I say nothing. I look up at her. I search her face.

  So she begins to speak, voice low, insistent:

  “Your grandmother asked for a volunteer to shadow you. To make sure that you stayed safe, and to bring you to her. I stepped up because of my promise to your mother. But...I also knew your story. You were like me, in a way.” She takes another breath, and she works her jaw. “You were alone. And that...that touched me. Your story affected me. And I wanted to help. But...” She continues, as I open my mouth, stopping me. “When I saw you, when I shadowed you...I came to realize that you weren't just a story or a promise. You were a person. And...and I liked that person very much. And I wanted to help you.”

  She continues, soft, steady:

  “I know there is magic in you.” She doesn't wait for me to argue. She turns her hand, brushes a warm knuckle along the curve of my jaw.

  Her head is to the side, and she smiles then, before moving away.

  “I can see it,” she tells me, parting words.

  I can see it.

  Chapter 14: Shadows

  I don't have time to recover from the attack in the stairwell.

  But I need more time to recover from what she just said...

  And I'm not going to get it.

  The corridor is dark and narrow. There's thin boards on the walls, nailed to rough-hewn beams; the ceiling is simple, bare wood above us, slanted to a peak.

  Are we in the attic?

  “We've got to move,” Silver tells me over her shoulder. She's picking her way carefully along the rough boards beneath her feet. “If there was one of those assholes after us, there's sure as hell gonna be more. Come on. It's not much further.”

  That kicks me into action.

  “What's not much further?” I ask, following along behind.

  The old boards creak mightily beneath me, and she winces, turns to me, brows furrowed.

  I wince back, step up onto my tiptoes.

  The boards still creak.

  There are boxes covered in dust-coated blankets and sheets, large lumps of what's probably furniture beneath grimy drapes of what once might been cloth. There's one window, at a peak in the roof, an octagon shape, that's grimy and one pane's broken, but it lets in the smallest amount of light from the streetlamps down below.

  It's not really enough light to see by.

  But it is enough light to glance around this attic and think that it's probably almost one hundred percent haunted.

  Well, maybe haunted is a strong word. Because it doesn't actually need to be haunted now that I know vampires are real.

  And because one just tried to kill me out in the stairwell.

  I glance at the shadows and gulp.

  Anything could be up here.

  Anything.

  Silver pauses and turns again to glance back at me. Her eyes are still bright in the darkness, and because of this, I can tell that she's raising her brows at me.

  “Ella?”

  “I'm...I'm coming,” I tell her, clearing my throat and tip toeing as quickly as I can to move beside her.

  She chuckles a little, her head to the side. Again, it's very dark up here, but when I glance up at her face, I can see the amusement in her smile.

  “There's nothing close by. Not yet,” she promises.

  “How can you tell?”

  She wrinkles her nose, gives me a warm smile. Her teeth flash brightly in the dark. “I can smell them. You can, too. You just don't know what to...well, look for yet, so to speak. Smell for.”

  “I mean, all I can smell is dust,” I tell her, wrinkling my nose, too. I want to sneeze pretty badly, but if the floor creaking wasn't a good idea, a sneeze probably isn't either.

  “Yeah, it's not great,” Silver sighs. Her face contorts, momentarily, in the classic “oh, God, I've got to sneeze but don't want to” expression, then she breathes out a sigh of relief, scuffing her knuckles under her nose.

  “C'mon,” she tells me. “We'll be out of this in a minute. Thankfully, her apartment isn't dusty. Well. As dusty.”

  I follow across the creaky floorboards, mystified, as Silver leads on.

  The attic is large, because the house beneath it is enormous. I try not to look to the right or to the left (or, God forbid, behind me), because there are all sorts of shapes in the sheets and furniture, shapes that if I let my imagination run away with me...

  Well, my heart's pounding pretty hard already, thanks.

  As we get farther and farther away from the window, there is less and less light to see by. It's still storming outside, the gusts of wind kicking up the snow and swirling it past the window and through the broken pane, into the attic. There's a small drift beneath the window, and another farther down the hallway. The snow glitters in the faint light, the cold hard and impenetrable.

  I put one foot in front of the other, shivering. Whether it's from shock or the cold, I'm not sure. I try to wiggle my shoulders, pushing my coat up to cover my frozen nose...

  And that's when I trip.

  I fall into Silver.

  Sh
e was only one step ahead of me, and the fall isn't awful. It's not like I'm arcing through the air to faceplant on a dusty sofa. It's just a bit of a stumble.

  But she's right in front of me.

  And that means her ass is right in front of me.

  I could tell you about projected angles and about how tall she is in relation to me, the distance I was from her, and how the stumble put me in a downward slant. You know, math and stuff.

  I reach out to catch myself...

  And it's sure as hell not math I'm thinking about when my hands collide with the perfect curves of her backside.

  “Perfect” is subjective, right? It's also kind of a weird word. I can sit down and eat a sandwich and say “oh, my God, this is perfect,” and—considering all the other stuff in the entire universe—it is absolutely not the sandwich that's perfect. But it's relative, right? The sandwich is perfect in comparison to other sandwiches. It's perfect when you think about a sandwich-less situation.

  The moment is perfect, right there and then.

  I'm a logical lady, and I take words at face value. I try not to be hyperbolic, to exclaim that this actually is the most perfect sandwich in the world.

  It's not how I talk, really.

  I'm giving you all of that background so you can understand where I'm coming from at the exact moment that my hands reach out and slam into her ass as I catch myself from falling.

  Because it's pretty perfect.

  I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about her ass, I promise. But I'm still surprised at how muscular it is. It's definitely got some softness, especially along those upper curves, but the rest of it is...is hard.

  Pleasingly so, obviously.

  God.

  It's...really nice.

  Just surprising.

  And nice...

  And...

  I think I just short-circuited.

  I stand upright quickly, and though it's almost pitch dark in this corner of the attic, I can tell that blood rushes to my face faster than a flash flood. I hold my hands in front of me kind of limply. Did I...did I really just cup her ass? Oh, my God, that was so inappropriate. That was so...so awful.

  She chuckles a little, glancing over her shoulder. “You all right back there?”

  She's giving me an out. I don't even have to expound for hours about how sorry I am.