The Forever Girl

by Immortal Ink Publishing, LLC

  “Not so fast!” She snapped her fingers, and two stocky Cruor emerged from the crowd. They blocked Charles’ path. A willowy, red-haired woman appeared at their side, her smile unnatural.

  Thalia scowled. “Check them, Circe.”

  Circe’s large green eyes widened. “Yes,” she hissed. She flittered between my friends and me, grasping locks of hair and inhaling deeply. Her nostrils flared at Ivory’s scent, but she passed her over. She reached me and nuzzled a long strand of my hair. As I leaned away, she smiled and stroked my head. “Such a life, this one!”

  “Enough, Circe. Thank you.”

  Circe disappeared into the crowd, and Thalia smiled at Charles. “That one”—she bit her thumbnail and indicated me with her pinky—“would be valuable.”

  A vein pulsed in Charles’ neck and a soft hum vibrated through his body. Why didn’t he just shift?

  “Surely you aren’t attached?” she asked, dropping her hand away from her mouth.

  “We’re leaving, Thalia. You are outside your rights.”

  “Temper, temper.” She sighed, the sound sickening coming from her. “But, my sweet Charlie, we’ve missed you. And what of Adonis and Blake? Have you forgotten who your real friends are?”

  “These women know nothing. Do not cross me.” His voice sounded rougher, more gravelly.

  “Cross you? Oh Charlie, I’d never cross you.” She patted his chest and winked. “You’ve already been crossed.”

  A young, scrawny Cruor pushed his way through the crowd. He bowed toward Thalia. “I’m sure Charles can manage this … misunderstanding. He’s been around longer than both of us put together.” He arched his eyebrows.

  Thalia stepped back, cocked her head to one side, and tapped a finger against her cheek. “Fine. We have their scents.” To Charles, she added, “Pray you handle this well.”

  She turned up her nose and spun on her heel, then threw her hand to the air as she stormed off. The Cruor scattered, some following her into the house while others disappeared into the shadows.

  The young Cruor remained. “You owe me.”

  “Thanks, Adonis. Could you…?” He nodded towards Lauren, who trembled behind Ivory. “Take them to their car first. We’ll meet you there.”

  “You got it,” Adonis said. “But be careful, man. Thalia’s been into some things lately. The laws don’t matter to her anymore. And Blake—”

  “Blake is an idiot. He doesn’t concern me.”

  Adonis lifted his hands. “I’m not arguing. Just keep an eye out, that’s all.”

  “I always do.”

  I looked back as we walked away. “What about Ivory and Lauren?” My voice shook uncontrollably, and I realized how much my body was shaking. I felt cold and sick, as though I’d never sleep again.

  “Adonis can erase and change human memories. We’ll circle back around and meet them at the car. Lauren’s memory of tonight’s events will not be quite the same. You’ll have to convince her to go to the diner instead of the cemetery.”

  “But Ivory—”

  “Adonis knows her. She’ll help.”

  As we left the alley, I spotted Mrs. Franklin’s car parked nearby, only several feet away from us. The car started rolling forward, and she cruised by with windows down, staring at us wide-eyed, her hands glued to the steering wheel. My stomach sank, and I couldn’t look away.

  Forget this, Mrs. Franklin, please. Whatever you think you saw, forget it.

  But my thoughts wouldn’t influence her the way a Cruor’s would. I could alert them, suggest they erase her memories as well, but I couldn’t risk her life. Surely she wouldn’t think any more of this than some godless Halloween festivity?

  “You okay?” Charles asked. He must not have noticed Mrs. Franklin.

  “Me?” I asked. “Yeah.” I shook my head. “No. No, I’m not.”

  We walked a moment in silence. Maybe if I waited long enough, my heart would slow and breathing would come easier. When no peace came, I turned to Charles.

  “What were you doing here? And why didn’t Adonis want to erase my memory?”

  He stopped walking. “We need to talk.”

  “That thing … Thalia … knew you.”

  “I stayed with them for a while,” he said, dropping his voice so low I barely heard. Even the Cruor, with their enhanced senses, wouldn’t be able to hear him now—not at this ever-growing distance Charles had placed between us and them. “Sometimes I hunt with them. They were supposed to meet me tonight but never showed.”

  “Stayed with them?” I rubbed my palms against my thighs, wiping the cold sweat on my jeans. “Why would you do that?”

  “This whole thing—it’s getting out of hand. I didn’t want to drag you into this.” He stuck his hands deep in his pockets and his shoulders hunched forward. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  My heart sank, dreading the untold news. “Such as…?”

  “The Strigoi didn’t only hunt the inhumane Cruor. Some turned dark, hunting all earth elementals, good and bad alike. So the Universe turned to the creation of air elementals—the Ankou.”

  “There are others?” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. Of course there were other. “I’m not sure I want to know any more.”

  “You might as well, and you need to hear the rest to understand what I need to tell you.”

  “Those were earth elementals.”

  Charles gently squeezed my hand, regret etching into the lines around his eyes. “The Ankou were sent as grim reapers of the evil Strigoi, but with their magic also came the ability for elementals to crossbreed. The blending of bloodlines caused discoveries to increase. Humans attacked the supernaturals out of fear. Many innocents died.

  “As a result, the Council banned the mixing of bloodlines to protect the supernatural species as a whole, as well as many innocent humans. The Ankou were enslaved to perform purifying procedures, using their gift of advanced supernatural medicine to get rid of one or other of the bloodlines in each dual-breed. But the results were unreliable, and so the Council decreed death to all of the dual-natured.”

  “How does that affect us?”

  “The Council will kill anyone who isn’t pure and anyone who associates with them.” Charles gave me a long look. “As for those Cruor … they think I’m a pure Cruor, too. That’s why Adonis isn’t erasing your memories. He thinks I’m going to. If Thalia learns any different, she’ll have me and my family killed.”

  I shook my head. “They can’t do that.”

  “They can, Sophia. They do so all the time.”

  “How do you pretend to be Cruor? Can’t they tell? I don’t understand.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Please don’t tell me—”

  “I didn’t choose this.”

  Shit. Charles was dual-natured? “But I’ve seen you, everyday. I mean every day … in the sun.”

  “Being Strigoi—being born instead of turned—changes things. I shift slower, but can tolerate sunlight. I’m not as strong as the Cruor, but I’m faster.”

  “But the daffodil oil. You never had a problem coming into my house.”

  “This is the very reason the Council sees dual-breeds as a threat to the supernatural race. Despite our strengths being less potent, so are our weaknesses less severe. Our tolerances to such things—sunlight, silver, daffodil oil—are remarkable. Almost as though these things don’t affect as at all. It’s a bit draining and makes us feel … off … but we can still function.”

  “Does Adrian know?” I asked quietly.

  Charles’ Adam’s Apple bobbed. “Ivory and Adrian are the only ones who know I’m dual-natured. And obviously my parents. Now you know, too.”

  “You should have told me.”

  He swept a lock of hair from my face, his hand warm against my chilled skin. “I didn’t want to scare you. Or put you in any further danger.”

  “Who you are means more to me than what you are,” I said, knowing I was in no place to point the finger. I had my s
ecrets, too.

  His eyes burned into mine. He caressed my cheek with the back of his fingers and slid his hand down my arm to my hand. Goose bumps rushed over my skin and my heart quickened. He tickled the inside of my palm and our faces inched closer together, his breath feathering against my cheek. All those times before we’d been this close I hadn’t been sure what I wanted to happen, but now I had no doubts.

  He lifted a hand and trailed his thumb over my bottom lip. His gaze lowered to my mouth, but then he tilted his forehead against mine, locked his eyes on mine, and lowered his voice. “Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to kiss you.”

  In the limited light, through the shadows frozen between our faces, I could make out the lines of his face and the brightness of his eyes. I wished he would kiss me. Wished to drum up the nerve and kiss him myself.

  Charles closed his eyes and bent his head closer to mine. My eyes closed, too, and the world was silence and we existed in the darkness behind our eyelids. A breeze slipped between us, and, for a moment, I thought possibly his lips had brushed mine.

  He pulled away, eyes full of regret. “I may never be able to give you what you want. It’s better for you if I don’t … if I—”

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure what ‘okay’ meant. Okay if he never gave me what I wanted? Or okay he didn’t want to kiss me because of that?

  “Can you understand why I didn’t tell you?” he asked. “If they knew I was the Strigoi who had helped you, they’d realize I wasn’t pure. That would have ended badly for both of us.”

  I cringed at the word ‘pure’. Now I understood why he’d feared being followed when we’d met at the club. Did he live his whole life this way, always questioning the intentions of anyone who crossed his path? Always wondering if someone was ‘onto’ him?

  “I would never say anything,” I told him, giving him a long look to impart the sincerity of my promise.

  “You might not have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked into the distance. “How did you say you found this place?”

  “A book my mentor gave me had the address. And some code: LC 47.”

  “Local Coterie 47,” he said, returning his gaze to mine. “Every Cruor coterie has a number. What book was it?”

  “Council records for the Salem witch trials.”

  “Sounds like one of Adrian’s books.”

  One of Adrian’s books? It made sense, I guess. Perhaps Ivory had borrowed it and accidentally left it at Sparrow’s Grotto. Paloma probably thought it had shown up out of nowhere.

  “So what are we going to do about the Council?” I asked.

  Charles frowned. “They must be aware something’s up. That a Strigoi saved you and now you’re with me. If they put it all together….” He shook his head. “We can’t risk drawing more attention to ourselves. Marcus’ interest in you was bad enough. Now he’s finally back in Damascus, and you’ve got Thalia’s attention instead.”

  “Do we need to leave or something?” Was anywhere safe?

  “No one would make a move without being sure. I don’t think they’re even considering it, not yet, and they have no knowledge of where I live. If needed, though, my parents have a place in the Japanese mountains we could stay—one of the few locations left in which the Council has no real presence. We’d just have to be careful we weren’t followed there.”

  “This dual-breed thing—is that the real reason you don’t age?” I asked, suddenly uncertain of everything I’d learned up until this point.

  “Even if I stop shifting, I’m still part Cruor. Only pure Strigoi can age.”

  I didn’t care if he was part Cruor, but if we could turn him into a pure Strigoi, then there was hope of a future for us. Us, together. Though I wasn’t looking for any major commitment, I needed to know if it was possible. I needed to know how much to protect my heart.

  “What about the procedure?” I asked. “The one the Ankou once used.”

  “I said I’d be able to age,” Charles said darkly. “I didn’t say I would.”

  At his sudden change of tone, I pulled back, trying to keep my face a mask of indifference.

  After a long moment, he added, “It’s not that I don’t want to, but I have my family, understand? And the Ankou might turn me over to the Council.” He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. “I can’t think about this right now, Sophia. I’m sorry.”

  I gave him a solemn nod and opted for a change in subject. “You mentioned the Ankou as a third elemental race,” I said. “There are more?”

  He nodded. “The Chibold, once, but not so much now.”

  “Fire elementals?” I asked.

  “They were sprites that materialized as small human children, though some aged into their late teens. They needed host families to survive, but as adoption became more of a bureaucratic process—and these weren’t real children—the host families became fewer and farther between. The Chibold also had a reputation for causing trouble, thus not many supernatural families being willing to take them in.”

  “So what happened to them?”

  “They died off, as happens if they go longer than a century without a host family. They were around during the War, back when the Council first declared the dual-natureds be killed. The Chibold caused a lot of destruction with their fires and telekinetic powers.”

  Wouldn’t that throw the Universe’s balance completely out of whack? Missing an entire element? Then again, they’d thought it was good idea to only introduce one at the start. As crazy as I was, I had no place making judgments about ‘balance’ or the Universe’s decisions.

  The Council, on the other hand, was another story entirely.

  We walked the rest of the way around the block in silence, stopping when Lauren’s car came back into view. Adonis was still with Lauren and Ivory, but no other Cruor were anywhere to be seen. Judging by the glazed sheen to Lauren’s eyes, she was still under his influence. We stayed far enough away to talk privately, so long as we kept our voices low.

  “I’m still worried about Thalia,” I said. “She said they have our scent now. Whatever that means.”

  “Thalia has the attention span of a gnat. She’ll find something else to occupy her time by the end of the night. While you’d have been better off never coming to her attention to begin with, it’s not like she’s going to hunt you down.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re not that important, darling,” he said, smirking.

  Though his light candor broke the tension surrounding my concerns, my mind still forced me to logic. Thalia struck me as someone far too passionate to let things go. I shuddered, remembering the other Cruor—the crazed redhead. “What about Circe?”

  “Circe is a marionette controlled by its puppet master. She’s not going to do anything unless Thalia tells her. Those two are always together.”

  “Thalia might not want to kill you,” I said, “but there’s no reason she wouldn’t come after me.”

  “Thalia isn’t as dangerous as she likes to believe. She’s too busy sucking up to the Council to break any laws.”

  This was my chance—an opportunity where I could use his help to get answers about my ancestor without him learning about my family’s curse. “Still, maybe it would help if I learned more about your world.”

  “Such as?”

  “You said humans once killed some of your kind. That some who died truly were elementals.”

  Charles nodded.

  “This is going to sound crazy”—I stole a glance at him—“but an ancestor of mine was killed during the Salem witch trials. Her court document was in my attic, but there’s no mention of her in any public records. Could she have been an elemental? Like, say, a spirit elemental?”

  “Oh.” He sucked in a deep breath and nodded. “Wow.” Another moment passed. “Well, she might have been a human who got dragged into things.”

  “Or not,” I said.

  “There were spi
rit elementals,” Charles replied. “Witches. But they were a small population.”

  “Witches?”

  “Humans chosen by the Universe, imbued with unique powers that would have been too risky to give an immortal. They died off with their human bodies. Their existence was short-lived. I don’t know anything more than that.”

  “You’re a huge help.”

  “If you’d let me finish…. I was going to say Adrian might know more. I’ll call him tonight and arrange something.”

  Feeling a little more secure, I allowed myself the indulgence of asking him more about the Cruor lifestyle. It hadn’t mattered before, but if it was part of who Charles was, I would need to understand everything.

  He told me how their blood cravings worked—how he didn’t struggle with them as much as a pure Cruor. He told me how most didn’t live as well as they could afford out of fear they might draw attention to themselves. Those who integrated with society lived their lives through forged documents and false family trees; they kept their money spread throughout different banks and in Swiss accounts.

  As for the Strigoi, their animal forms also put them at more risk, such as if they crossed the path of a hunter. A human would have no way of knowing they were more than just an animal. The idea of it made me happier I didn’t eat meat.

  I asked Charles what happened if Strigoi were killed in their animal form, and he said … nothing. They just stayed in animal form; it was the Universe’s way of protecting their secrets.

  “Don’t you worry about hurting your own kind during a hunt?” I asked.

  Charles shook his head. “We know who we are. We would never accidentally confuse a Strigoi for a real animal. Their scent, their eyes … even the way it feels to be around them … it’s too unique to mistake for anything else.”

  So this was ‘life’ as an immortal? Suddenly my financial troubles didn’t seem so bad.

  That night, in my dreams, I saw Elizabeth again. She was standing in front of the gallows, inches away from me. She stared into my eyes, slowly lifted the Samhain ritual apple to her lips, and bit into its red flesh.

  Inside, the fruit had rotted.