by A. M. Hudson
David watched intently as the blue-white light danced around my hands, then receded into my fingertips. He grabbed my wrist. “Kiss me again.”
“Happily.” I stood on my toes and he leaned down slightly, holding my neck firmly in one hand, my wrist in the other, his eyes cast to the side, watching my hand. “Why is nothing happening?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really know how it happens, I just...” I let a breath out.
“What do you think about when it happens?”
“Hm.” A thought warmed my entire body. “You.”
David laughed breathily, and with his cheeky smile, a warm charge started in my centre, branching out across my chest, into my arms, down the bone in my wrist, coming out the tips of my fingers like a bad need to touch. I dug my hands into his hair at the base of his neck and pulled his lips to mine again.
“My hairs are on end,” he whispered through the kiss. “It feels like a rush of excitement.”
I could feel it too, making me breathless, energetic. He dropped my wrist, obviously no longer interested in the flaring electricity, and ran his hands under my shirt—lifting it; his skin cool against mine, so welcome yet so unfamiliar it made me take another breath. The touch of lust filled me with new ideas, new hopes, things I’d not thought of for such a long time.
His unwelcome leather jacket fell to the floor and I reached for his shirt buttons, wanting his body on mine, his hands everywhere, anywhere, on every inch of my craving flesh.
“Craving flesh, huh?” David drew back and laughed.
“You heard that?”
“Like a speaker in my ear.”
“Holy crap. So, why can you hear me?”
David raised my hand by the wrist and his smiling eyes narrowed. “Might be something to do with this. I mean, brainwaves are just electrical signals.”
“David?” I had to exhale heavily, so excited, that I’d been holding my breath. We should consummate our wedding vows.
The old guy in him responded with shock, a laugh, but the David I loved so well, the boy from school, my husband, ran a hand across his mouth and shook his head, then picked me up, like I weighed nothing, and we landed in the plush green grass with a very human jolt.
The electricity in my fingers hummed as I smoothed my hands along his shoulders—between fabric and skin, and his strong body, so like the David I married, held me under him, pressed between my legs, wanting me once more, the way only he could.
“Ouch.” He looked down at my hands on his hard arms.
I looked too. “Oh my God. I’m sorry—I’m not used to these nails yet.” I pulled my fingers away and his skin healed shut, the four flat indents closing like vines over a fence. “I only discovered them because I took the fur of Petey’s head a few weeks ago.”
Motionless, he watched himself heal, then turned and looked at me. “I’m going to have to teach you some self-control, it seems.”
“I don’t think you really want to do that.” I tilted my head to my shoulder and winked at him.
He took a breath through lips shaped for a vowel and let it out again very slowly. “I doubt I’m in any position to be teaching you self-control, anyway, when I have nothing but less than honourable intentions.”
The girlie giggle of my past came back to make me sound like a pathetic schoolgirl for a minute. “We’re married now, David, you don’t need to be honourable.”
He shook his head, his hands travelling up my denim skirt. “I had no intentions of that.” And his emerald eyes glistened in the sunlight, his dimples pushing in with his cheeky, unreadable thoughts. In one gesture, he rose up on knees, unzipped his fly and sunk himself inside me, leaving me gasping, tangling my fingers in my own hair. The most pathetic sounds came from my lips, and I just knew the birds in the trees would be laughing. But I smiled, enjoying the feeling of David being a part of me once more, and rolled my head to look over at the lake, catching sight of my underwear as I did.
“David?”
“Yes, my love,” he said right into my ear, his shoulder against my lips, his hands pressed flat to the ground beside my ribs.
“I know this sounds kinda corny but—” I wrapped my legs over his hips, “—it’s like, when we’re connected like this, I feel like—”
“Like?” he said, almost laughing.
“Like we’re kind of one person. But not in the cheesy, romantic way. I really feel like, if I held my breath, you wouldn’t be able to take one.”
The moon shape indent above his lip showed. “That’s how I’ve always felt. We are one, Ara. Two souls, one heart—for always.”
“Always.” I felt it all around me then, what eternity felt like, what it meant to love only one person for all the years you could exist. It not only scared me but made me shaky and so happy I felt a tickle in my chest, like a cough, or maybe like I needed to laugh. There was nothing in the world that could feel more right, more complete than when two souls touched.
“Ara. Can you feel that?” David gasped, moving his hips faster.
“Feel what?” I looked up at him and squealed, pushing him off me as I backed away. “What the hell.”
“Ara, what’s wrong?”
“Your eyes!” I looked at my hands, then at his eyes again as the bright, electric blue fizzled away, and they turned back to green. “They—” I pointed to his face, “—they were blue.”
“They were?” He rubbed his face, then sat down, breathless.
“Are you okay?”
“I felt you—inside me. Like a flame—but a good flame.” His lips spread wide across his face and his eyes lit up. “A very good flame. Not burning, more, warming.”
I covered my mouth. “I could’ve hurt you.”
“No.” He rose to his knees, zipping his jeans. “My love, I felt no pain. It was intense—you—I don’t know how, but you were in my head. I could hear everything you were thinking.”
I crawled closer to him and sat between his knees, curling into a ball against his chest. The electricity in my hands fired again, and I held them in front of me as David watched.
“I can’t control it—it just happens.” And it scares the hell out me.
“Don’t be afraid, sweet girl—we’ll figure it out.”
You can hear me?
“Yes.” He kissed my hair. “Thank God.”
I looked up at him and grinned mischievously; “God, my dear husband, had nothing to do with what we just did.”
His eyes widened; he slowly turned his gaze from my hands to my eyes. “You heard that?”
“Course,” I said. ‘Why wouldn’t I?”
His answering silence, mixed with the look in his eye, said everything.
“Wait! That was a thought?”
He said nothing more. Just rested his chin on the curve of my shoulder, hugging me to his chest as we watched the sun sneak closer to the treetops.
Chapter 30
Leaning my elbow on the picnic basket, I smiled at the place where we once laid the rug out and spent our afternoon unsure what the other wanted. The flavour of grapes that scented my breath that day he refused to kiss me, when we were so young and I knew nothing of vampires, once again sat on my lips.
“Thoughts?” David said, rolling up from the shoulders to look at me, the sun forcing him to squint.
“I can’t believe I ever thought you didn’t love me.”
He flopped back down, his hands on his belly, his long legs extended out, crossed at the ankles. “I know. It was irritating, to more than just myself.”
I laughed. “Yeah, guess I drove everyone crazy, didn’t I?”
“You wouldn’t be the girl I love if you didn’t.”
I popped another grape in my mouth and looked away from the memory of my old life. Despite today being our last day together until after my coronation, I still liked this life better than my human one. “It kind of sucks,” I said.
“Vampires?”
“Ha-ha. No. The coronation.”
“I didn�
��t realise we were talking about the coronation.”
“We weren’t. I was thinking about it. I’m just used to you being a part of my thoughts, is all. I forget to tell you exactly what I was thinking.” I smiled.
“Yes. It’s certainly a new experience for me—to have no clue what you’re talking about.”
I shuffled over and sat by his hips. “Well, I was just thinking that it sucks, because my knight, who was really a king all along—” he looked up and smiled at me, “—won’t even be there for my coronation—the most important day of my vampire life.”
“I know. It hurts me, too, Ara. But I’m so proud of you.” He sat up, pulling the sleeves of his black shirt over his forearms, then took my hand. “I want nothing more than to be there when you finally make your oath.”
“Really? I didn’t think you really cared either way.”
“That’s because you don’t know how much this means to me; to be the one married to the queen.” His eyes sparkled with admiration. “Royalty is something which has always been of great importance, not only to myself as a human, but also to my vampire self. I’ve worked for a hundred years to protect and serve my king, and now, I will serve alongside the queen—for all time. I want to be there when you rise to power, Ara, but sometimes we have to accept things we can’t change.”
“So, what you’re saying is…” I looked at the sky. “Life sucks—get used to it.”
“I’m saying; life changes. We don’t always like the things we must endure, but being a part of the world means walking anyway, even when it would be easier to give up.”
As David’s eyes met mine and the warmth of the summer sun was stolen by the shimmer behind his smile, my heart fluttered. “You’re right. I don’t like it, but you’re right.”
He sat back against the rock, smiling, his eyes closed. “I’m always right.”
“Not always.”
His brow arched, his eyes staying shut. “Is that a challenge I hear in your voice, mon amour?”
“Frankly, I don’t think I have the energy to challenge you today.” I laid down, my arms under my head.
“You look exhausted.”
“I didn’t sleep last night.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I laid awake, too.”
“Why?”
He recrossed his ankles the other way. “Arthur.”
“What about him?” I rolled over and laid on my side to look at my husband.
“I don’t feel as though you took me seriously when I asked you to think before you act when around him.”
“I did, David. I know I didn’t make a point of confirming it, but, you know him better than anyone. If you tell me not to trust him, I won’t.”
“I’m not saying that, sweetheart. You can trust him, just be careful before you do.”
“Okay.” I frowned. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The memory of Arthur, his letters, the things he told me about Jason, filled my mind for a while. David just sat with me, so good at remaining silent when I’d get lost on the train of thought. Part of me wondered if he was reading them, but when I looked at him and he smiled, watching me, I knew he was just letting me follow them myself, see where they’d take me. But the train didn’t go in the right direction this time; it stopped in front of a dark, windy platform, and pushed an uninvited passenger onto my lips in the form of a question.
“David?”
“Yes, my love?”
“I. Uh.” Hm, how to word this? “When Jason took me to the—um, when he was tying me to the chair.” I took a breath. “He told me that the skeleton—the baby—was your handy work. What did he mean by that?”
David sat taller, inhaling through his teeth. “So you know about that, huh?”
“No. I don’t know anything—because you never tell me anything.”
“And I’m not about to start.” He looked away.
“Hey! Don’t do that. I have a right to know if my husband is a baby killer.”
“Ara, please. I don’t want to talk about this.”
My lip quivered and I sat still, unable to see through my tears. “David. If you don’t tell me, I’ll…”
“Okay.” He leaped forward and grabbed my arm, his finger pointing right in my face. “Just don’t. Finish. That sentence.”
I nodded, sniffling. “How’d you know what I was going to say?”
“I don’t.” He sat back down. “Nor do I want to know.”
“Then tell me what happened to that baby. And don’t just give me half the story, making it sound like you told me the whole thing.”
He sighed, rolling his head back onto the rock. “I never wanted you to learn of this.”
“Why?”
“Because, I…because it was the most heinous task ever requested of me.” He hung his head low. “And I did something that day that I am most ashamed of.”
I swallowed hard.
“After Drake killed Lilith, he believed his Warriors had wiped out her entire blood-line. But they were wrong.”
My heart picked up and my pulse suddenly became present in my stomach.
“Lilith’s granddaughter, Evangeline, bore a child. She hid the infant before they came to destroy her after Lilith’s death.”
“And they found it?”
“No. That child survived, but never triggered immortality. And her bloodline went on.”
“So, this was centuries ago?”
“Yes, and then, in nineteen-forty-five, when I applied for my position as a council member for my Set, Arthur pulled some strings. They accepted me on the provision that I carry out a task; to kill a child they believed to be Lilithian.”
My eyes closed as my breath deepened.
“She was barely two days old,” he continued. “I laid her on the stone steps of the torture chamber and watched her for a moment while she cried.” David closed his eyes and clenched his fists. “What happened after has been my greatest shame as a vampire for a hundred years.”
“David?” I covered my mouth, trying to stop the tears.
“Ara, please?” He grabbed my hand; I pushed him away. “Please listen. I—my career as a vampire, my position as a council member was based on what I did in that moment.” He sat back and stared forward as if he watched the memory like a projection on the grass by the lake. “I placed the knife to her throat, and she stopped crying—staring at me with her inquisitive blue eyes.”
Tears streamed then as I envisioned David taking the life of that innocent baby.
“The blade clinked as it hit the floor.” David looked at his hands, and I looked up at him. “I lifted her into my arms and touched my fingers to her tiny mouth—feeling the softness of her breath through her cherry lips, and that of her skin; a softness I’d never felt before—except the day I held my little cousin—the day I lost my aunt.”
The sound of the coming summer around the lake faded as David recalled his tale. My chest shook with sobs.
“She was as perfect a child as I had ever seen, and I fell instantly in love with her. So…I ran,” David said.
“What?” I looked up, confused.
“I ran,” he repeated. “I stole the child and fled the castle. She slept in my arms while I carried her—trusting me implicitly, as if I were human. And when I placed her on the steps of an old church, she watched me with those sapphire eyes; watched me back away like she knew something I didn’t. And I never saw her again.” David’s chin dropped to his chest; “But it is what I did next that haunts my dreams to this day.”
“What?” I reached for him. “What did you do?”
“I walked—wandered until I reached Arietta’s grave, then dropped to my knees, weeping like a fool; nothing of the hardened council member I was supposed to be. My career was in ruins, my reputation, and that of my uncle’s.” David nodded to himself then. “So, I started digging.”
“Hu!” I gasped.
“I dug until I reached the casket of my a
unt and her infant child. Then, I stole the bones—charred them to wash off the stench of aged flesh, and presented them to my king.”
“You didn’t kill the baby? You left her alive?” My eyes widened as I marvelled at my husband.
“Yes.” He dropped his head.
“David?” I leaned closer, touching his arm. “Why would you be so ashamed of that?”
“Because I lied—to my own king, and I desecrated the remains of my dead aunt’s child.”
“But you did the right thing, even without compassion for my kind, you still did what was right.”
“Yeah, according to your kind.”
“But that’s what matters. Life. You protected that which was sacred, David—before you even had the heart to. That was a very noble and brave thing to do—the act of a true king.”
David looked at me then.
“You don’t get it, do you?” I touched his face, cupping my hand over his cheek. “I owe you my life. You saved my ancestor. It’s because of you that I exist.”
David’s eyes sparkled. “I—I hadn’t realised that.”
“Our destinies were tied, even over fifty years ago.”
I watched his face as a smile crept into the corners of his mouth and he sat slowly taller, thought growing in his eyes. “Your name-sake—your father’s mother. That was her.”
“No.” My brow pulled low and I shook my head. “No, it had to have been my mother’s mother—only females are born to Lilithian pure bloods.”
“No.” David shook his head, his eyes wide. “I looked for her—for the baby. They told me she’d been adopted, that her name was Amara. I just never made the connection until now.”
“But—” tiny bumps of cold ran over my arms, “—then my mum—wasn’t my mum?”
“Ara, if Amara was your father’s mother, and Lilithian blood is only passed down through females, then your dad isn’t your dad either.”
“No.” My mouth dropped. “How can that be? I look like my mum. I have her hair.” I held up a long, silky-brown strand.
“And you look like your father, too, Ara—too much not to be of that blood.”
My body flooded with heat then cold as the world stopped, and my heart pounded in my chest, thumping, beating to the rhythm of betrayal. How could he? My hands burned, tingling with the static charge as waves of electricity lashed over my clenched fists.