by M. Leighton
Annika spoke in great detail about Lindersberg, several times eliciting a response from Bo. He was able to recall the orphanage where they met, though not in as much detail as she.
“Yes, you walked in like a confident rogue and I thought I must have died and gone to heaven. Even after you told me of your thirst, I knew that there was no other life for me. I was so glad when you agreed to turn me.”
Shocked, Bo sat forward in his seat just as the bottom dropped out of my world.
“Turned you? What?”
Annika smiled widely.
“The day you agreed to make me a vampire was the greatest day of my life. I’m just sorry you don’t remember it. It was...”
Annika trailed off, casting her eyes toward the floor and glancing up at Bo from beneath her lashes. She was so coy I wanted to drop kick her.
"It was what?” Bo asked in that completely oblivious, masculine way.
“It was incredible,” she said quietly, her voice a husky whisper.
“Oh,” Bo murmured, almost dazed. He slid his fathomless eyes to me, the misery on his face reflected in their endless depths. “What kind of a person was I?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re not that person anymore. You don’t know how much of an influence Sebastian had on you back then.”
Although Bo looked marginally encouraged by my words, the worry carved into his features was plain to see, much like drawings of great burden etched into ancient stone.
“Do you remember Scabs?” Annika asked. She seemed as anxious as everyone else to move past the sudden tension.
Bo’s head jerked up and a smile drifted slowly into place. It was like a fog lifting gently from the moors.
“Ohmigod, yeah! Scabs. Whatever happened to him?”
“It turns out that he was an English duke. He was kidnapped as a child. His parents finally found him years later. They identified him by a birthmark on his right cheek.”
“With all those scabs and acne scars, how could they even see a birthmark?”
“Not that right cheek,” Annika replied.
“Ah,” Bo breathed, chuckling. “So he was royalty? Scabs?”
“Yes. He ended up marrying the beautiful daughter of some other royal family.”
“Scabs?” Bo repeated disbelievingly.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Bo just shook his head, mystified. “Tell me what happened to everyone else?”
And so Annika launched into an animated history of all the orphaned and vagrant friends they’d once shared. As they laughed and reminisced, quite a few facts returned to Bo. All it took was Annika reminding him of certain details.
Bo tried to include me by explaining little tidbits that he could remember about each person they discussed, but his efforts were for naught. Cade and I were outsiders to their reunion and I had a feeling that that was exactly how Annika wanted it.
It seemed like hours had passed when my phone rang, and, in fact, they had. The day had come and gone, and evening was upon us. The instant I heard the voice on the other end of the line, however, time stood still.
The screen on my phone had identified the caller as my mother so I excused myself to take the call in another room. I had just scooted up onto the countertop in the kitchen and settled in for a long argument when the familiar voice froze my muscles like only a sub-zero blast of terror can. The voice, though familiar, did not belong to my mother.
“Hey, Ridley. Long time, no see.”
It was Trinity.
I was speechless as my mind scrambled to make sense of the incongruity—Mom’s phone, Trinity’s voice. Mom’s phone. Trinity’s voice.
Trinity had my mother’s cell phone.
I rocked between fury and terror like a sailboat being tossed to and fro by a hurricane. I was so caught up in the furor of it that I nearly missed her next words.
“I’m not going to hurt her. I just want to talk to you. Alone. At your house. If you bring anyone with you, you won’t like what happens next.”
Without hesitation, I hopped off the counter and ran to the door.
“I’ll be there in two minutes.”
Flipping the phone shut, I flung open the door, ready to blow through town like the wind. It was Bo that stopped me.
“Ridley, what are you doing?” He was standing just behind me.
Overwhelmed by emotion and concern for my mother’s safety, I struggled to make sense of his question. It seemed as though my mind could only wrap itself around one crisis at a time. My focus was complete, just as it was when I was hungry.
Until I met Bo’s eyes.
As if I’d been weightless, drifting off into oblivion, Bo was like gravity, pulling me back down to earth, anchoring me.
“Bo, she’s got my mother.”
“Who?” he demanded, gripping my upper arms urgently.
“Trinity.”
“Let’s go,” he said, pushing me out the door and pulling it shut behind him.
“No, wait. You can’t come. She wants to see me alone. She’ll hurt her if you come, Bo.”
“She won’t have to know.”
“But what if she does? What if she finds out and does something to my mother? I can’t risk that.”
“Surely you don’t expect me to just sit here and wait while you go meet Trinity by yourself.”
“You don’t have a choice, Bo, and neither do I.”
We stared at each other for a few more seconds. I could tell that Bo was far from convinced that he should let me go alone.
“She’s my mother, Bo.”
I poured all the emotion—all the fear, all the love—into my eyes, hoping he’d see it. And he did.
Bo sighed. “I won’t be far. Just call out if you need me. I’ll hear you.”
“Thank you,” I said, stretching up on my toes to touch my lips to his. When I would’ve pulled away, he slipped an arm around my waist.
“I love you,” he whispered, tucking his face into my neck.
I closed my eyes for just a second, savoring the sound of those words. I felt my heart spread wide to take them in like a flower blossoming under the light of the sun.
“I love you, too.”
“I’ll give you a minute or two head start and then I’ll follow. Stick to the backs of buildings and houses, and stay in the trees and shadows whenever you can. Remember, you can run as fast as the wind.”
“Got it.”
With a tight smile more for Bo’s benefit than mine, I turned and took off like a shot, racing down Sebastian’s driveway.
On any other evening, I might’ve enjoyed flitting from yard to yard, through the trees and within the shadows, making dogs bark at the wind and children puzzle over it.
It was amazing that they seemed almost to be standing still as I sped by. I even paused, ever so briefly, to help one little girl.
I was darting through her back yard just as she was screwing up her face to cry because her puppy had managed to wrestle a doll from her arms. As I breezed by, I snatched the doll from the puppy’s mouth and tossed it back at the child’s feet. The look on her face was so comical I had to laugh, a sound that I imagined drifted back to her like the rustling of the leaves in the wind.
Beyond that, however, there was no joy in my quick trip. After leaving the little girl’s back yard, my mind returned its singular focus to Trinity and my mother.
When I arrived at my house, I was confused to see that Mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway. I couldn’t decide if that was alarming or comforting. I gave it only a passing thought, though, choosing instead to focus on the girl that lay just beyond the brick walls of my home.
The door was unlocked, which caused a chill to wiggle its way down my spine. I slipped through and closed it snugly behind me.
I stopped inside the foyer to smell and to listen. Absolute silence greeted me, as did the familiar smells of home. In a layer of scent just beneath those I’d always found inside the house, there was the dark, dank aroma of earth. It bou
nced around in my head like a key without a lock until it slid effortlessly into a memory, releasing a realization that surprised me.
I had smelled that strong scent before. I’d smelled it in the woods the night of Summer’s pre-Halloween party, right before I’d been attacked. A voice had whispered “T” and I had assumed it was Drew. But Drew smelled of pine; I would always remember that, too. It was etched in my mind along with the terror of him biting into my flesh and the heartbreak of him begging for Bo to kill him.
I didn’t think it was possible for my muscles to hold any more tension, but I felt them squeeze in response to my thoughts, as if preparing for the battle of a lifetime. When my sensitive ears finally picked up on a tiny noise, I sprang into action, moving soundlessly toward my bedroom from whence the muffled thump had come.
When I rounded the corner, my bedroom door was open. Trinity was sitting on the end of my bed, flipping through an old photo album of a cheer camp we’d attended together in the ninth grade. She didn’t even bother to look up when I stepped into the doorway.
“This was when you started to change. After Izzy died. You were never the same after that,” Trinity observed. “At the time, I hated you for it. I felt like you thought you were better than us, like you were special somehow since your sister died.” Trinity looked up at me, her blue eyes sincere and full of regret. “That’s the first day that you were better than us. I just didn’t know it.”
I had no idea what to say to that, so I said nothing. I simply watched as Trinity looked back down at the album and turned the page. Upside down, I could see a picture of Summer, smiling widely as she stood beside Trinity posing for the photo. Trinity gently brushed her fingers over the image.
“Summer was good like that before I turned her into a monster. I drained her of compassion. I fed off it like an animal. Little by little, I could see her changing, but I just didn’t care,” she said with a bitter laugh. “My entire life, all I’ve ever cared about is myself. And my grandmother. She was the only other person I truly gave a crap about and she died because of it.”
Trinity flipped the album’s cover shut. It closed with a thud of finality. She laid it on the bed beside her and then rubbed her palms on her jeans. After a long pause, she raised her eyes to me.
“I wish she’d killed me that night,” Trinity finally said, her voice trembling with emotion. “I don’t want to live like this anymore, Ridley.”
Understandably skeptical, I stood motionlessly in the doorway, examining Trinity. I looked closely for signs of subterfuge, for signs of the evil I knew her to be capable of. But rather than finding indications of either, I saw a girl I’d known most of my life trying to come to terms with the consequences of her actions. I saw Trinity overwhelmed by guilt.
She really looked terrible, but not in a way that others might recognize. Her long blonde hair was freshly brushed and neatly wound at the nape of her neck. Her skin was clean, as were her nails. Her clothes were spotless and fashionable. In fact, her outfit was something I might’ve seen her wear before both of our lives were turned upside down.
No, the change wasn’t something that a stranger could see. But, nonetheless, it was there and I was beginning to think it just might be sincere.
“Why are you here, Trinity?”
“I wanted you to know that I’m leaving. I just wanted to talk to you first, to apologize.” She paused to swallow back tears I could hear in her voice. “I’m so sorry, Ridley. For everything.”
“Well, now you’ve apologized so I think—”
“And there’s something else,” she quickly interrupted. “I think Savannah’s involved in all this somehow.”
For the first time since arriving, I felt like I was seeing a little bit of the old Trinity—the grand manipulator, the vicious, spiteful girl I’d always known. That had to be it, because there was no way Savannah was involved. No way.
“Don’t even try it, Trinity. Savannah isn’t involved in any of this. You’re just jealous because—”
“But I’m not,” Trinity said, coming to her feet and walking to me. When she reached out to put her hands on my arms, I flinched, backing away from her. She jerked her fingers back, her expression crestfallen. “Okay, I deserved that, but I’m telling you the truth, Ridley. This has nothing to do with Devon. If I still wanted him, I wouldn’t have let him go.”
“You let Devon go?”
“Yes, even though I knew he’d go straight to Savannah. I realized that I just couldn’t go on like this anymore. I can’t live with myself, with all that I’ve done. I thought bringing this to you, helping you in some way, might make it so that you could forgive me.”
She seemed so desperate for me to believe her that it made it hard not to. Desperation in any form was so unlike Trinity, it was difficult to doubt her sincerity.
“Why do you think Savannah is involved?”
“I actually found out when I went looking for Devon. I knew he’d be somewhere close to her. He can’t stay away from her for very long, so I went by her house one night, hoping to find him. I saw the shimmer of a vampire leaving through her window and I thought it was him so I followed.
“I trailed him into the woods where he met up with a man and a little girl. The man fed him from his wrist, but when his form started to come back I saw that it wasn’t Devon at all. It was a woman.”
Trinity watched me, as if waiting for me to look shocked or surprised. I was neither.
“Did she have red hair?”
Trinity frowned. “Yes. How did you know?”
“That was Heather, Savannah’s mother. Savannah doesn’t know that she’s a vampire. She thinks she drowned a few years ago and that she’s seeing her ghost.”
“How can she see anything?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know, but she can. She can see Devon, too. I don’t know what it is about us, but when we’re transparent, she can see us.”
Trinity took a step back.
“Us?”
“Oh, yeah. Heather infected me.”
Trinity sniffed.
“I thought you smelled a little different.”
“That’s because I am. Did you really think I’d come here to meet a vampire alone? Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
It was Trinity’s turn to shrug.
“I figured because it was your mom that…”
“Where is she, by the way?”
“She’s still at O’Malley’s. She’s already three sheets to the wind. It wasn’t very difficult to get her phone and her keys. At the very least, I thought I might save some innocent person from being run over by your drunk-driving mother.”
Relief washed through me, even though my initial fear had already dissipated somewhat since seeing Trinity in this condition.
“I knew you’d come for her, though. That’s why I did it this way. You really are a good person, Ridley. I’ve never told you that because I never really cared. But you are and I hope one day you can forgive me.”
I could feel the emotion of the Hallmark Moment chiseling away at the ice around my heart, but I wasn’t quite ready to go all in and say that everything was forgiven.
“Where are you planning to go?”
Trinity shook her head.
“I don’t even know. I just know I need to get out of here. Everyone already thinks I’m dead. I figure this is as good a time as any to start over. I’m learning to control myself better and better, so I thought I might be able to actually help people somewhere down the line.”
Her intention hung between us like a living thing, as if she had spoken the words, Anything to make up for what I’ve done.
I could only imagine how she felt. The guilt I’d already experienced over my reaction to my mother was just a taste of what Trinity must be going through. She’d actually hurt people.
I wanted to ask her about Drew and Aisha, but I didn’t want to add to her already burning conscience. Not that it mattered. One of the answers chose that very moment
to come busting through my bedroom window.
CHAPTER NINE
Glass shards sprayed in every direction as Aisha’s body crashed through the window. When her feet hit my carpeted floor, she paused. In that slight hesitation, I could see that she was no longer the Aisha we’d known.
As I’d feared, she was gradually succumbing to the life-draining bite of the vampire. Now she was consumed with the madness left in its wake. Though she wasn’t quite as dirty and bedraggled as Summer had been, I recognized the signs.
Aisha’s rich chocolate skin was now sallow and unhealthy looking. Her eyes were yellowed and ringed with a darkness that seemed to come from within. Her lips twitched as if in readiness to pull back from her teeth in a sneer, and her chin was wet with drool she could no longer control.
Unfortunately, none of that affected her speed. Just like Summer, she was fast and she was strong. Very, very strong.
As if in slow motion, Trinity and I watched Aisha move toward us. When we glanced at one another, I saw some small amount of satisfaction in Trinity’s eyes, as if she was somehow deserving of the gruesome death that was headed straight for us. I was so shocked by Trinity’s reaction that when Aisha grabbed her around the waist, turned and leapt through the window, my reaction was delayed by a few very valuable seconds.
When my mind regained control and transmitted orders to my legs, I didn’t hesitate to pursue the duo. Though I might’ve paused before lending a hand to Trinity the last time she was at my house, things had changed and I couldn’t let her be killed without putting up some kind resistance on her behalf.
As my feet hit the ground on the outside of my bedroom window, Bo appeared at my side. Immediately, he started firing off questions.
“What happened? Where’s your mom? Are you alright? Who was that?”
“I’m fine. Bo, we need to help Trinity,” I said, tugging his arm in the direction I thought they’d fled.
“What? Why?” he asked, resisting.
“Because she came to apologize and to help us. My mom was never in any danger. Now Trinity’s in trouble and I can’t just stand by and let Aisha take her. Not without a fight. She’ll kill her.”