"Are they everywhere you look?"
"Pretty much. I don't know what it is but supernatural things love it here in Canville. Maybe it's the woods. They're everywhere. Things that belong in books like goblins, and shape-shifters, and trolls with fur and scales, thorns and curled horns." Angie shivered as if the mere memory of them terrified her. "You wouldn't believe some of the things I've seen." Her eyes clouded. "Sometimes they hurt each other. Badly."
"I'm sorry," Victoria said, at a loss for words. Angie would have to be a spectacular actress to look that afraid of something just in her head.
Angie went quiet for a minute. "I used to wish I was blind. I wanted to cut my own eyes out," she whispered. "I think I even tried one time. But what can you do? You are who you are, right? So I'm careful. And I only have one rule."
"What's that?"
"Never, ever let them see me looking."
Angie shrugged at the horrified expression Victoria knew she must have on her face. "Don't worry, they're not that bad," she said, and then paused, reconsidering her words. "Most of them, anyway. They tend to stick with their own kind, like what you'd usually see, the jocks and the Mathletes and the—what do you call them again? Oh right, the Stepfords."
The thought of where Christian would fit in flashed through Victoria's mind. Her question was tentative, but she wanted to know. "Angie? When you said that Christian wasn't human, what did you mean? What, exactly, is he?"
Before Angie could answer, someone stopping at their table interrupted their quiet conversation. It was the boy who'd been over by the drinks. Victoria saw Angie blanch.
"Hey Tori, you heading to class?" Wolfboy's voice was guttural despite his slight appearance. Victoria glanced at Angie who'd gone perfectly still. Her fear, though veiled, was real.
"Hey Matt. Sure," Victoria said. "I'll catch you later, Angie."
As she gathered her things, Victoria hesitated. Maybe there was a way she could see as Angie did. Without looking at Matthew, she pushed her senses out toward him as unobtrusively as possible, the reverse of what she'd done with Christian. Holding her breath, Victoria peeled past Matthew's human glamour and slid into his mind.
It felt ... raw, and distinctly not human. The amulet flared against her skin. She pushed deeper and then recoiled in immediate horror as the truth of what he was flashed into her consciousness in terrifying, gruesome, graphic detail. She stepped back, her eyes snapping to Angie's. Angie glared at her and Victoria remembered what she'd said about being careful.
"You ready?" Wolfboy asked. Victoria let the glamour slip back into place. She tried to focus on his boyish face and ignore the fact that he was a ferocious beast who could tear anyone limb from limb in seconds.
"R ... ready?"
"For the test?" Matt raised thin blond eyebrows questioningly but all Victoria saw was the memory of callused ridges of hairy flesh above a flattened, elongated snout, and orange-hued lightless eyes. She fought back a shudder.
"As ready as I can be." For a second, Victoria wasn't sure whether she was talking about the midterm or something else entirely.
She felt Angie's eyes on them the entire way out of the building.
THE AFTERNOON HAD turned into a dark, cold evening by the time Victoria finished her final midterm for Calculus, and she pulled her jacket tighter as she walked down the library steps to the parking lot. Charla had called earlier asking her to meet up for dinner, but she was far too tired. Her brain was still spinning with a nauseating combination of derivatives, limits and quotients, and fairies, werewolves and witches. She just wanted to get back to her apartment, eat some takeout, and go to bed.
She unlocked and started her car with a single unspoken command to warm the engine and get the heat going, and almost jumped out of her skin when she saw Christian leaning against the hood of his silver car parked opposite hers. Her heart hammered to life.
"Impressive," he said. Victoria stared at him silently. Everything else in her head disappeared but him. There was so much she wanted to say, to apologize for. She knew that she had hurt him by kissing Gabe and no matter what had happened between them or what she'd seen in his thoughts, he hadn't deserved it.
"Christian ..." she began.
"Have dinner with me, Tori," he said. His face was haunted, his eyes shadowed but inviting. Victoria knew that she couldn't refuse him, and even as tired as she was and despite everything she'd learned from Angie, she only wanted to be near him again. So she nodded and relocked her car.
The ride to Christian's house was silent, and other than the soft background noise, the only sound in the car was their breathing. He looked tired, his angular face made even sharper by the shadows under his eyes, but still her pulse raced at his closeness. She felt her breath stop when he quietly slid his hand into hers as they pulled into his curving driveway.
They walked into the foyer of the house and Victoria bit back a gasp. It was as magnificent on the inside as it had appeared from the outside. Warm, rich mahogany floors led into a large entrance hall with two sweeping curved staircases winged out on either side. Beautiful cathedral ceilings opened up to a prism-like sky light in the foyer.
Christian, still silent, pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. It wasn't at all what she'd expected. Her heart drummed a familiar tune in her chest, a tune that every logical part of her fought futilely against. She didn't want him to be this way—she preferred him arrogant or hateful, not soft and contrite as he was now. It made it too difficult to be indifferent and to not give in to her bewildering feelings for him.
He moved, pressing his cool cheek against her hair. "Christian, I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean—"
"It's forgotten. I was the cause, I see that now."
"But you didn't deserve—"
He pressed his thumb over her lips quieting her, and brushed it back and forth, his face strained and unreadable, but warm. "Why don't we start over?" he said. "I'm Christian."
"Tori," she whispered.
"Enchanté, Tori." He kissed her on both cheeks in the French custom and Victoria felt as if her knees were melting.
She hesitated, still wary, but didn't move until Christian took her hand and led her toward the back of the house where there was a large, comfortable den. As they sat down, a tiny Asian man appeared, carrying a tray of food along with a bottle of red wine, which he placed on the coffee table. He left as silently as he had come in.
Victoria hadn't realized how ravenous she was and she inhaled the simple meal. She noticed that Christian didn't eat. He only sipped a bit of the wine while she ate, and when she looked inquiringly at him, he assured her that he had eaten earlier. When she was full, she sat back into the cushions and curled her feet beneath her.
"Tori," Christian began, his voice husky, "I have tried to escape this thing between us, to push you out of my mind, but I can't. The truth is that you haunt my dreams and my every waking moment."
"Is that so bad?" she said, echoing his words at the bar.
"Yes." He sighed. "I brought you here to talk to you, Tori. You should stay away from me. It's for your own good. What you saw before inside my mind was real—I am bound by a covenant to stay away from you."
"I don't understand. I thought—"
"In my world, for us to be together has terrible consequences. There are laws in place that forbid it."
"What laws? What world?"
"The laws of my world." He stared at her, understanding her confusion; she didn't know what he was. "And it's not fair to you because you don't know ... what ..." He looked away as if the words were choking him.
"What?" she said. "Christian, please just tell me."
"What I am," he finished. "It's better if you see. I won't block you Tori, but please promise me one thing."
"Anything," she said, as he raised a palm for her to listen.
"Promise me that you will give me a chance to explain." Victoria stared at him, startled by what sounded like fear in his voice.
&nb
sp; "Okay?" he said. She nodded. His smile was strained as he clasped her hands.
Victoria cleared her mind and took a deep breath, her clammy fingers grasping his tightly. She reached forward tentatively and entered his mind, his walls gone. What she found was, Christian, his sensitivity, his sharp intelligence, his bare uncluttered feelings for her. She wanted to bask in them, bask in the feelings she now understood as mirroring her own.
Keep going, please. You must know it all, he thought to her. You must see me.
She forced herself go further, glimpsing his childhood, his adolescence and his older years. And further still, so many images in the older years that she became confused, something was off about the timing and the way he looked so consistent in all of the images. She went deeper still, following the shadows down, down, down, until she found herself on the edge of a cloying darkness—the thing she'd sensed briefly at the bar.
Victoria felt Christian's hands squeeze reassuringly against hers and she pushed against it. Without warning, it shifted into something heavy that enveloped her, her skin crawling as if hundreds of roaches covered every inch of her body. A red-eyed face formed in the darkness. The monster grinned, its distended fangs bloodied and gleaming, and a salty, metallic tanginess coated her tongue. She tasted blood.
Angie's words echoed like thunder in her mind—not human, not human, not human. With wild strength Victoria withdrew, wrenching her hand out of Christian's now slackened grip. His expression was unfathomable.
"You're a—" she gasped, incoherent, scooting her body to the far end of the sofa. She tasted the phantom blood again and swallowed the hot bile in her throat along with the words that wouldn't come. Angie was wrong—he'd been human once, just not anymore.
Christian stared at her, his fists clenched in his lap. There was no way he could explain or condone what he was. From her reaction, he was prepared for the worst. It seemed like eons had passed until she finally spoke, her gaze burning into his.
"You're not human." It was not a question.
"No."
"You're a vampire."
"Yes."
Victoria closed her eyes, her breathing harsh in the deafening silence, her heartbeat erratic. Christian was a vampire. A vampire! As in a dead thing that needed to drink blood to stay alive. It seemed like an absurdity—the physical beauty of him and the ugly truth of what he was. The knowledge was staggering.
Still, like her, he wielded a terrible power and was capable of committing many horrible things, but that didn't make him a terrible person. The words Brigid had written flooded her mind ... liaisons between witches and vampires, the Undead, were forbidden. How much had he risked to show her what he was? Humbled by his trust, Victoria moved closer and touched his cool face with her palm.
"You're still Christian. Beneath what you are, it's still you." Her hands trembled, the amulet searing into her skin even as the words left her lips.
"Victoria, I am not that boy anymore." Christian's laugh was jarring, the ugly sound echoing in the room. "I'm not him. This"—he gestured at himself—"body is not alive. It's a dead monster that steals life from others. Didn't you see what I am?"
"Christian." She said his name so quietly that it gentled him even before she placed both hands on his side of his head. "I know what you are, I saw it. What I am trying to tell you is that I also saw how you feel about me. And I know you would never hurt me."
"But what if—"
"You won't." A smile lit her face. "You may have just met your match. There's no way you could get past my magical defenses!" Then her tone got serious, and she said quietly, "Don't forget what I am, Christian." It was the first time that Victoria had ever acknowledged what she was to him, and the act frightened and liberated her all at the same time.
"The laws—" Christian began. She placed a hand against his mouth.
"Some laws need to be broken."
Christian kissed her palm and pulled her into his arms with a smothered laugh, giving in to the silent ache that had been his constant companion for weeks. He brushed the hair off her temple.
"Thank you," he said softly.
"For what?"
"For not running."
"A wise friend once told me, 'you are who you are.'" Victoria traced a line from the scar on the corner of his eyebrow across his cheekbone. "I know what you are, but I also know who you are too. And the 'who' is the part that defines us."
Christian stared at her with an enigmatic expression. "You are extraordinary."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Well, I'm not exactly normal either."
Despite her brave words, fear slunk around her insides. Though she refused to reconcile the thing she'd seen with him, a part of her knew that they were one and the same. Deep down, it terrified her. Memories of monsters with sharp teeth and red eyes skulking in the bowels of her closets filled her head. But that wasn't him, she told herself fiercely. She knew it wasn't him. Just as what she'd learned about herself, was not all of who she was. Still, she shivered.
"Who was the little man who served us?"
"That's Anton. He's my caretaker, you could say. His wife cleans and he also takes care of the gardens. They live in a small guest house at the far end of the property."
"Do they know?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Yes, I suspect so, after all, it's not like they see me eat food on a regular basis." Christian flashed his perfect white smile at his joke. "Don't worry, their family has worked for my family in France for years."
"So how old are you really then?"
"I was born in 1816, so you could say a couple of centuries give or take a few years."
"Omigod, a geriatric!" Victoria grinned, then sobered. "How did you—" She broke off, unable to phrase the question. Christian nodded; he didn't have to read her thoughts to know what she was asking.
"It's a long story. And you're tired."
"That's okay, I'm comfortable," she said, stifling a yawn.
Christian looked at her once with an enigmatic expression then started his tale.
"My father was Charles Beaumaris, the Duke of Avigny, a cousin to King Louis XVI. In 1792, my family fled France at the direction of Marie Antoinette for fear of assassination. They lived for a while in Austria, and then spent several years in Louisiana, New York, and Boston. Lucian, my brother, and I were born in 1816 in New York. My family returned to France three years after the abdication of Napoleon." Christian took a deep breath and continued, knowing he had just finished the easy part, the easy human part.
"Because of my family's connections with Louis-Philippe, who was then king, in the summer of 1835 my brother and I were kidnapped and tortured by the very same people who attempted to assassinate him later that same summer. We were nineteen. They wanted information on his whereabouts and beat us to within an inch of our lives, leaving us for dead in an alley. It was the last thing I remember then, waking up ravenous days later ... but not for food ..." He looked at Victoria almost apologetically. She motioned for him to continue. "The people who had found us were vampires. They knew who we were and at first, they were only going to take one of us, but in the end they turned us both."
"It was hard for me, but Lucian bore the mantle as if he had been born to their world. He reveled in the changes and became a willing servant of the blood. I did not. I could not. We were charismatic, young, and immortal. He wanted to conquer. I wanted to learn and remember what it was like to love, how to be human."
Christian opened his mind to Victoria as he delved into his memories and images flooded her mind. She was lost in the pictures of his past, no longer on the couch beside him but in a different world, a different time.
Dressed in riding breeches, boots, and a waist-coat with a smart riding jacket, Christian was a polished young man surveying his estate as a red-orange sun descended beyond a row of hills. The landscape rolled for miles, acres and acres of perfectly manicured gardens. A large L-shaped stone mansion loomed behind him.
Victoria felt herself gasp at its
magnificent lushness. Fontainebleau, he thought to her. She watched the young Christian climb onto a skittish black horse that calmed the minute he whispered something into her ears. She sensed that the horse was afraid of the monster it carried, but it still gave in to its master's velvet commands.
In his recollection, a girl in a yellow dress approached him. "Your Grace, your brother Lord Devereux sent me to welcome you back home," she told him. Her face was flushed and the young Christian was clearly affected. He turned away but Victoria could feel his aching desire as fresh as it was then.
"Go," he told the girl. It was little more than a growl. "I do not want ... you."
"Please my Lord Duke, he will kill me should I return. Please." Her voice was beseeching as she pulled a yellow scarf from her neck. Blood flowed from a vertical incision already cut deep into her flesh. The smell buckled every restraint within him, just as Lucian had known it would, and he flew off the horse toward the girl in a single leap.
"Will my brother stop at nothing?" he snarled, bending the girl's neck to the side. He bent, drawn despite himself, a terrible change ripping through his body. It was only the terrified rearing of the horse beside him that made him snap out of the fog of hunger consuming him. Christian staggered back. "Tell Lord Devereux I said go to hell, and I shall be happy to join him there!"
Victoria could feel Christian's self-disgust buried deeply into the memory. She squeezed his hand, and the images dissipated. His regret was suffocating, even now. He turned to her.
"Lucian did that often, and sometimes, too many times to count, I gave in to the horror of what I was ... am. There was no way back so eventually I stopped fighting."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I've long made peace with what I am," Christian said. "Before long, Lucian and I were at odds with each other and started to drift apart. He used to say I was too soft. As the first-born twin, I was a Vampire Lord, but I wanted no part of Lucian's regime so I abdicated my rights to him, and left. The House of Devereux is now a very powerful vampire coven and Lucian is feared by many."
"Why?" Victoria asked.
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