He laughed. “No. You only feel it with your soul mate, and it’s especially rare for humans to feel it. My uncle took a risk changing Jason and I on the hope we would be more like him genetically. And there was nothing to lose anyway. We’d just signed up to join the army. He wanted us protected if we ever went to war.”
“Really? That’s how you became a vampire?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would he do that? He could’ve killed you.”
“He swore an oath to protect our bloodline. It was either death by Arthur or by something possibly a lot worse.”
“So, he risked killing you to save you?”
“Love works in mysterious ways, Ara.”
“Love? Love is not plunging two barely nineteen-year-old boys into a world of murder.”
His knee sunk as he pressed his foot to the clutch and changed to a lower gear, bringing the car smoothly onto the gravelly roadside. When we stopped, he sat staring at the dash for a second in silence.
“Being a vampire’s not all bad, you know.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I reached across and grabbed his hand. “I didn’t mean to imply your uncle didn’t care for you or anything, I just—” Was just implying that if he loved the boys, why would he possibly think a life of vampirism was better than death?
“I’ve lived a good life, Ara. I have no regrets about immortality.” He smiled at our hands then, opening my palm to trace a line down the middle. “And you wouldn’t either, you know—once you got used to it.”
“Used to the killing, you mean?”
“There is a bright side.” He followed the Fate Line along my palm. “You never age.”
“I’m seventeen. I think I have a few years before ageing is going to bother me.”
“I don’t know,” he teased. “You’re already changing. Look.” He pointed to the line. “This is shorter than it was a week ago.”
I snatched my hand back. “Are you saying my days are numbered?”
“No.” He smiled to himself. “Just that things are… changing.”
“Nothing stays the same forever.”
“I do,” he said. “Well, physically, anyway.”
“I don’t know. I think your maturity levels stayed the same as your eighteen-year-old human self.”
“Is that so?” His emerald eyes met mine. “This coming from a girl who thinks throwing a tantrum is an acceptable method of getting her own way.”
“I don’t think it gets me my own way. It actually does.”
He laughed. “Only because your dad’s treading on eggshells around you until he’s sure you won’t run away or commit suicide.”
“Then why do my tantrums work on you?”
“Because,” he said, kissing my hand, “I am completely whipped.”
I laughed and then sat back in the chair, letting my hand fall into my lap. “I wish we could be like two characters in a book; that some miracle could keep us together.”
“I know, my love, but this is life,” David said. “And our reality is that fiction doesn’t mix with fact.”
“Yet I’m sitting beside a vampire right now,” I said sarcastically.
“The only thing fictional about vampires is the possibility of one falling for a human.”
I smiled to myself.
He stole my hand again and sat quietly, tracing his fingertip down the middle of my palm.
“It really bothers you, doesn’t it?” I asked.
“What?”
“The lines—the changes.”
“It’s representative of many things, I believe.”
“Like what?”
“Perhaps not just the future, but maybe…”
“Maybe?”
“Nothing.” He laughed and folded my fingers around his, but the smile faded from his eyes and a flicker of something foreign flashed for only a second before it disappeared. “I’m just being melodramatic.”
“David.” I squeezed his hand a little tighter. “Is something wrong?”
“I—No.” He patted my hand and released it, smiling. “It’s nothing. Let’s just enjoy this day.”
“Okay, but you’d tell me, right? If there was something wrong?”
“Probably not.”
I cleared my throat, unbuckling my seatbelt as the vampire appeared at my open door.
“Would you like to go back to the island today?”
“Yeah.” I took his hand. “Sounds great.”
* * *
Raindrops broke the glassy stillness of the water, distorting the deep red reflection of autumn foliage. Ripple upon ripple stretched closer to the shore, pushing the clusters of orange and brown leaves in laps up onto the clay banks. David and I stood at the cusp of the lake, hand in hand, considering the watery road out to the island.
“It’s magnificent this time of year, isn’t it?”
“It’s always magnificent,” I said. “But I wish I’d worn a skirt instead of jeans.”
“Hm,” he hummed, giving an automated smile.
I stood between him and his distracted glare. “David?”
“Hm?” He managed to look at me this time.
“I know there’s something wrong. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“Well, it’s nothing that needs discussing right now.”
Above us, the dark gray clouds closed in, swallowing the last smudge of blue left in the sky. A storm was on the way. I hugged myself, shivering a little as dots of rain fell over my bare shoulders.
“Are you cold?” David asked, rubbing my arm.
I nodded. “I can feel the autumn coming on.”
“And so follows the winter,” he said absently, his shoulders sinking. “Come on then.”
My hand linked with his. “Should we go home?”
“No. We’ll go to the island. Never know when it might be our last chance to go back there.”
“I’ll always go back there, even if… you know.”
His nose and chin stayed pointed at the island, while his eyes slowly drifted onto me, narrowing, as the obvious questions on his mind rested a breath away from his lips. When I opened my mouth to probe him further, a squeal escaped me. My arms flailed out like an octopus’s as he bent down and scooped me up.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting us to the island faster.”
“Oh. Crap!” I buried my face in his neck, my teeth caging as gravity tried to hold me down under the vampire’s need for speed. It felt kind of like going upside-down on a roller coaster, with invisible forces pushing at my head, compressing my arms and legs, possibly trying to cube me.
We stopped abruptly and my gut kept going as my feet touched the ground. I folded over, feeling heat rush into my cheeks and ears.
“You gonna be sick?” David laughed.
“I’m okay.” I reached up and grabbed his arm, using it to steady myself. “I’m okay.”
“Just take slow breaths. It’ll ease off.”
I nodded, rolling to a stand under the majesty of our secret little island. Even if I was about to puke, the cool cave of foliage stole my thoughts enough to make me forget how fast I’d just travelled, while the fruity tingle of wild flowers filled my senses, making it easier to breathe.
“Better now?” David asked.
“Yeah. Better.”
“Good.”
In my periphery, a vibrant purple petal caught my eye. I turned to David and smiled.
“For you,” he said, tucking my hair back with the flower.
“You know, I still have the one you gave me here last time.”
“I know,” he said, sliding his hand down my arm to take my hand. “Ara?”
“Mm?” I tore my eyes away from the canopy.
“I need to tell you something.” As our eyes met, a flash of sadness tinted his pale green. “Something which, I’m afraid to say, is not good news.”
“Okay.”
“I told you I’d warn you when it was tim
e for me to leave?”
My stomach sunk, and I bit my bottom lip.
“I…” His deep voice steadied with a chest-lifting breath, gaze fixing on my lips before rising up to my eyes. “The time has come.”
“What? When?”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks? But, that’s not enough time. How can I… how can you expect me to…” I fought several arguments with him in my head, not winning any of them. “No, you can’t do this. You have to tell them no.”
“That’s not the worst part, Ara.” He took another deep breath. “In that two weeks, I am expected to operate the Set from the New York offices. I will only be able to see you at night.”
“Night? Two weeks? And that’s it? For forever?”
“Unless you become a vampire,” he said in a low, dry tone.
“David. I can’t make a decision like that in two weeks. How can you possibly expect me to—”
“Because you have to, Ara!” He stared at my face just long enough to see his harsh tone hurt me. “The time is now. Like it or not. You have to choose. When the full moon rises in a fortnight, I will be boarding a train and leaving for Le Château de la Mort—with or without you beside me.”
“You can’t do this to me. Mike’s here for the next two weeks. How am I going to choose between life and immortality while he’s distracting me?” I wiped fat raindrops off my shoulder, moving out from under the giant leaf collecting them. “Can’t you reason with them? Can’t you do something?”
“Ara. You don’t understand the ways of the Set. I’ve been ordered to return by the head of the World Council—the King, for God’s sake. One does not refuse an order from the King.”
“But—”
“Look.” He dropped his head with a dejected breath. “Two weeks to get my affairs in order was a generous courtesy. He needn’t have offered that at all.”
“Why? Are you in trouble?”
“In ways.” He looked up at the leaf above us and then took my hand, leading me to the shelter of a larger tree. “The man I entrusted to run things in my absence has proven less than reliable. I must return and pull things into line.”
“But you have a life here. What about school and—”
“The Set do not care! It’s a part of being on the Council. I knew this when I joined; I accepted that with all of its glory and all of its responsibility. I must leave. That is all there is to it.”
The pattering of rain filled the silence around us while it all sunk in, and a part of me wondered if this was a lie—his way of pushing me to make a decision.
“I’m not pushing you to make a decision, Ara,” he said coldly. “It’s pretty clear already that you have, and when your so-called best friend arrives, I’m pretty sure he’ll help cement it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“David?” I demanded.
He stared at the ground, his caged teeth making his jaw tight.
“David, I don’t understand where this is coming from.” I went for his hand but he jerked it back. “Please?”
“I was listening,” he confessed, “when you spoke to Emily and Alana about Mike.”
My lips parted for some kind of explanation, but only air came out.
“I didn’t hear all of it, but I heard enough to make a few connections.” He looked at me, his eyes void of love. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? The reason you were crying the night you asked your mother to pick you up? The night she—”
“Yes,” I whispered.
David softened immediately, cupping the back of my head and squishing my cheek against his warm, soggy cotton shirt. “He was a fool to turn you down.”
“No, he was probably smart.”
“I suppose that explains your over-analyzing when I wouldn’t kiss you. I’m sorry. If I had known—”
“It’s not your fault. You did the right thing. Better to feel undesirable for a few days than to be dead, right?” I laughed a short release of tension.
“Do you love him?”
“Who?”
“Mike.”
“I—” My thumbnail came up slowly and wedged itself between my teeth.
“S’il te plaît, mon amour, tell me the truth. It will hurt more if you lie.”
I closed my eyes and a tight cramp twisted my heart. If Mike had loved me that night, I wouldn’t be here. But he didn’t, and now I had David. Yet a big part of me still wanted Mike, just not a big enough part to want him over David.
“I love you more than I love him,” I offered, but it wasn’t enough. He stiffened, straightening away from me. “Please don’t be upset with me, David.”
“I’m not upset, Ara. It’s just clear to me what this means.”
“What does it mean?” I asked accusingly.
“He’s better for you. You can live with him; die with him; have a family—have the life you want with him.”
“But he doesn’t love me.”
“I gave you a chance to be upfront with me,” he said coldly. “When I asked you if you loved him—in your room that day—you had every opportunity to tell me the truth then.”
“I know.” My eyes closed involuntarily. “I’m sorry. It’s just that… I’m really confused. When Mike rejected me, I locked all the feelings I have for him deep inside. I felt so damn stupid. I didn’t even want to admit them to myself.” I searched for compassion in David’s eyes, but only a hard man glared down at me, his jaw stiff. Everything around me felt colder then: the air, my arms, my face, even my heart. “I just… nothing I ever do will change how he feels about me, so there wasn’t a point in hurting you with the truth.”
“And what is the truth? That you would never have been with me if he had loved you?”
“Maybe,” I said, looking at my feet. “But only because I would never have come here in the first place, never even met you, but now—”
“Perhaps, with this information coming to light, I should just leave today.”
“David. No,” I said, grabbing his arm, but my next words disappeared under a roll of thunder. “It doesn’t have to be this way—”
“It already is. You love Mike, and you don’t want to kill for me.”
“I never said that. Please, we can make our own future. I still believe there’s hope for us, for our lives tog—”
“Shh.” He placed a finger over my lips and brought his face down to align our eyes. “You need to stop, Ara. It is all too clear to me now that I have to be the strong one, for both of us”—he dropped his finger—“and you have to be the one that goes on. You must go on, have babies, beautiful babies, and be happy.”
“Don’t you get it, David?” I shook my head, my eyes watering. “You’re the only thing that makes me happy now.”
“That won’t always be true, Ara. Look, you’ve been waiting for me to tell you I’ll stay; that all of this is some nightmare. But, my love”—his eyes softened, a hundred years of sadness flaming within them—“it’s not.”
I managed one syllable before the smoke of his words stung my eyes, forcing the volcanic eruption of tears.
“Don’t cry, sweetheart. I love you, and you will always belong to me. But I can’t keep lying to myself, believing you’ll change your mind.”
“But, maybe I will.”
He shook his head again. “Even then, it would only be to save me from eternal solitude. It would not be because you wanted it. And for that reason, I just can’t take your dreams away. Your human life is your greatest gift, and leaving you to live it will be my greatest sacrifice.”
I sniffled, wiping my hand over my nose. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It does, my love.” He pointed to a blue and black butterfly dancing in the shelter of a silky leaf. “You see that: it’s a sign.”
“How so?”
“Ever since that day we first kissed, those butterflies have been everywhere I go. And I think, symbolically, they represent you.”
�
�How?”
He wrapped both arms around my waist from behind, tucking his chin against my shoulder. “She started her life in the shadows, close to the ground—lived and existed only as others saw her: a caterpillar, nothing more. Then one day she bloomed into a beautiful, brightly winged creature—something she could never have been had someone ended her before she had time to change.
“And though that life is short in comparison to most, she will live each moment, spreading her beauty and her life through this place so that when her existence comes to an end, as the sun goes down on her final day, her beauty will go on, and there will always be another to carry on her name.”
David kissed the top of my ear, smoothing his hands against the skin on my belly just under my top.
“I love you,” he said, “and your spirit will go on. As long as you have happiness, I have everything I will ever desire.”
“But what will you do without me?”
“At the risk of sounding overly philosophical, I am the rain.” He looked up at the sky; I looked too. “I exist each clouded day whether the butterfly flies or falls. A human life is but a blink in the eye of eternity. I will go on when you are gone, I will have no choice.”
“Go on, or move on?”
His arms tightened around me. “I will never move on. The pain I will feel for eternity without you is a sacrifice I am willing to make to save you from forever longing, wishing you’d been given the chance to live. I owe that to you.” He nodded once. “For the love I feel, I owe that to you.”
“So that’s it? You’re making the decision for me?” I turned to face him.
“I have to, Ara. I’ve been watching, waiting, scanning your thoughts to find some hint of promise for us. But you don’t, anywhere in your thoughts, want to be a vampire. And yet you keep making me wait for your answer. And stupidly, I keep waiting.”
I had nothing to say. He was right. Life was just too important. I’d seen it in action: the beauty, the magic it had to offer. And I feared, if I gave that up for immortality, I’d never forgive myself, or worse, never forgive David.
“Just give me two weeks more. Before you’re gone forever, please? Just let me have the last two weeks with you.”
“Two more weeks?” He stepped back. “While I work the days in New York and you spend them with another man—one you happen to love?”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 41