“No. I don’t want you to touch me.”
“You need to see this,” he said, breathless. “You need to know what you’re dying for.”
“Why?”
“Why?” His voice broke, weighted with raw grief. “Because it matters.”
And a small part of me actually felt a pang of pity for him then. I held my breath, listening for the voices in the distance calling my name. All I wanted was to run to them, to get away, but he pressed his thumbs under my eyes to hold me in place.
“Take a deep breath, Ara.”
“Please—don’t.” As his icy touch sent a sharp jolt through my cheek, I jerked back, wriggling like a fish on a hook. Pushing my wrists down on his forearms only made him grip tighter, the indentation a warning that he’d crack my skull. “Get off me, it hurts.”
“I know.”
“Please.” I tugged at his thumbs. “Please stop.”
“Close your eyes,” he ordered. “It will hurt less.”
A whimpering cry shook the back of my throat. I swallowed hard, scrunching my eyes tightly over the hot, stinging tears, and drew a quick breath when I saw a girl. She looked like a memory, one that didn’t belong to me, but she was as clear as a reflection.
“Rochelle, Rochelle, Rochelle,” a man sung her name, standing over her where she cowered in the corner, her head in her arms. I looked down at her bare toes, her golden legs, and the honey blonde hair falling over her shoulder. She looked just like Emily.
“Yes.” Jason’s grip eased and the stinging in my face turned numb and cold. “She did. Will you sit still now?”
As I nodded, the film became clearer. The girl looked up, her eyes round with fright, her whole body convulsing uncontrollably.
David knelt beside her and softly ran his fingers down her arm, taking her hand to kiss it. “Such a pretty little thing. It’s a pity you had to cry, Rochelle—you really are repulsive when you snivel.”
She buried her face again, her delicate, feminine voice so high with fear. “Please. Please let me go.”
He smiled softly. “I will. I just have to do something first.”
“W-what?” Even in a quiet voice, her French accent was so thick.
His hand slid along her ankle and up her leg, coming to rest on her knee. “If you promise to lie still, I will be gentle.”
“No. Please!”
“Don’t beg, Rochelle.” He unfastened the top button on her dress, parting the collar. “It won’t hurt for long.”
“Va te faire foutre, trouduc.” She spat on him.
“You dirty little whore!” He thrashed the back of his hand across her chin with lip-splitting force.
I squealed, covering my mouth as she did.
“Shh.” Jason squeezed my face. “You’ll expose our position to your little hunting party.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Just watch.” He pushed my mind closer to the memory: David lowered his face to the girl’s and whispered something in her ear, turning her cheek to lick the blood from it after.
My chest squeezed.
“Your taste does not really appeal to me,” he said.
“Then let me go.”
“I would, if you were merely my next meal, but I’m here for another reason.”
“What reason?”
“My brother does not have the courage to do what must be done.” He ran his finger down the opening in her dress, pushing it off her shoulder. “This is not personal, Rochelle. It’s just business.”
“What must be done?” I said. “What?”
“Please?” she shrieked. “Please don’t, David, I’m p—”
“Shh.” He covered her mouth, slipping behind her and cradling her spine to his chest. “It will be over soon.”
She hummed her aversion in the back of her throat, tugging at his hand, but like Jason, he was too strong for her.
“It hurts more if you fight, Rochelle,” he whispered into her hair, meticulously rolling her head to expose the vein on her neck. “I’ll try not to enjoy this.”
“David, no!” My squeal broke off as he sank his teeth in, yanking the girl’s head back until a bone broke through her collar. I covered my face, trying to hide from the reality.
“Look at it. You need to see.”
“Please, Jason. Please don’t make me watch.”
He ripped my hands from my face. “You will watch.”
As I looked back into the memory, David’s eyes met mine, disturbing my soul with the ferocity behind them, and tearing out my every ill-conceived notion that he was human, anywhere inside. I hated him then. I saw the monster he’d warned me about so many times, and I hated him.
Sobbing loudly, I watched his victim go limp in his arms, her last breath releasing in a whisper, “David?”
He moved closer.
“I’m pregnant.”
I drew back as the realization flooded my angry soul, bringing a cascade of tears down my cheeks.
Rochelle faded.
David dropped her lifeless corpse to the floor, letting her head hit the ground, her neck twisting awkwardly as she fell. Then, he stood up and walked away. His heavy black boots were the last thing I saw in the memory before reality washed in like cold water on my face, making me jump involuntarily.
“Jason,” I cried. “I’m so sorry.”
All I could see was her face as she tried to beg David—heartless, merciless, and unrelenting David—for her life.
Jason wrapped his arms around his knees and crossed his ankles where he sat on the grass beside me, looking like something so far from a vile predator that it was hard to be afraid of him. “This is the pain I’ve lived with for so long. Do you see now?”
“I don’t want to see it.” I rolled forward, rooting my trembling hands to the grass, my soft curls sticking to the tears around my lips. “Please get it out of my head.”
“I can’t. You own it now.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. “Why? Why did he kill her?”
“The child.”
“He killed her because she was pregnant?”
He nodded once. “At the preliminary hearing, he claimed he was keeping the peace—ridding the world of an unauthorized half-blood.”
“Did he… was he ordered to do that?”
“No. He took it upon himself.”
“Then how do you know that’s why he killed her? How do you know it wasn’t an attempt to change her so you could keep her?”
Jason stiffened. “He tried that one. Outside the council chamber, alone, he told me he meant it as a surprise—that he lied to the King about his reasons in order to avoid punishment.”
“Then why didn’t she change?”
“Even if he was speaking the truth, even if he meant to change her, only one soul can be immortalized, or they will both die.”
“So, then, maybe he didn’t know she was pregnant?”
“My brother is not ignorant, Ara, you know this.”
I exhaled. He was right. David always had the upper hand. Always. Nothing got past him. “You loved her—like he loves me?”
The grip around his knees tightened. “She was everything to me. Fifty years has passed, and that has not changed.”
“But… now you’re planning to do the same thing to David. Don’t you know what I am to him?”
He studied my face with repugnance. “Yes, and I will take that from him.”
My head rocked from side to side in astonished, intensely maddening disbelief. How could my David be capable of such horror?
“I know it means nothing to you, Jason,” I whispered, “but… I am so so sorry.”
“You’re right. It means nothing to me. And it changes nothing,” he said resolutely. “Now you know why you must die.”
“Ara!”
I looked up to the sound of Mike’s voice. He was close. So close that if I dared to scream, he’d find me.
Without warning, Jason swept me from the wet grass an
d threw me over his shoulder. All the blood rushed into a tight pulse in my lips and cheeks, making it hard to see, leaving only the whipping breeze as evidence of the ground moving beneath us. I didn’t care if he took me away, though. I hung limply over his shoulder, unable to feel anything anymore. All I could think about were Rochelle’s eyes in her last moments—the fear, the desperation for her life and that of her unborn child—while a soft whisper repeated itself on my breath, “David. How could you?”
31
We broke through the trees into a clearing, and a dense shadowy darkness overtook. The only lights around were a thousand twinkling stars in the sky and the distant flash of police lights at the council chamber.
Jason set me down in the long grass, my bare toes sinking into the dewy soil. I hadn’t even noticed my shoes fell off until now.
The voices of the hunters were as faint now behind the height of the towering trees around us as the soft, magical music of the ball, still playing, perhaps to keep the patrons calm. But I knew they could search all night, put posters up on every tree, phone every television station in the world, and they would never find me.
“They will find you,” Jason said, his voice revealing his position in the darkness. “Once I’m finished with you, that is.”
“What!”
“It’s an element of the theatrics, Ara. They have to find you. I have to share my craftsmanship.”
“Please, Jason. Don’t,” I begged, reaching for the place my silver locket used to rest. “Just think about it for a second.”
“Ara-Rose, I have thought about it—for a very long time.” He appeared in front of me, laughing to himself. “I know exactly what I’m going to do to you, and how deeply it will wound those that find you.”
I swallowed, trying to be strong. “Then why haven’t you done it yet? Are you waiting for some perfect moment?”
As he stepped forward, the darkness lifted, leaving shadows around his eyes like hollow, yawning caves. “I’m a vampire; we like to play with our food.”
“I’m not your food. You came here to kill me. That makes me a murder victim. Not dinner.”
“Yes, I suppose it does.” His sudden grip sent a rush of blood shooting from my arm to my heart. He jerked me closer, his orange-chocolate scent tainting every beautiful memory David had connected it to. “But still, I have a few games—things I want you to suffer before I kill you.”
“Don’t do that,” I said, pushing his chest but unable to get my arm free. “Don’t keep saying things like that.”
“You really are such a stupid little thing, aren’t you?” he said with a laugh. “Or perhaps brave—making demands of your reaper.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be.”
Something exchanged between us then, a kind of knowing that came from experience; it was as if I could see every thought beyond the darkness of his eyes. He wanted to do something to me then. What it was, I didn’t know, but it made me suddenly not so sure of myself.
“Do you know what his favorite film genre is? Did he tell you?”
“Horror.” I nodded, eyes on the ground.
“With that in mind, I thought I might make this little tragedy as gruesome an end as I could dream up.” He walked slowly around me, the feel of his eyes gliding over every bare inch of my skin, stopping in front of me with his cold breath moist on my brow. “But that won’t be easy. His mind is already twisted, already desensitized from the horrors he both enjoys watching and inflicting. I had to get creative in what I came up with for you.”
I closed my eyes, crossing my forearms over my chest. I wanted to retort, but his cold, calculating voice made me feel sick and dirty.
“I’ve touched your hair before,” Jason whispered, grasping a handful of my curls and pressing them to his nose. “I watched you while you slept, and I never intended to touch you, but your hair…” He breathed in deeply, closing his eyes. “You smell so pretty. Did he ever tell you that?”
I nodded.
“And it’s not just your blood; it’s you, your human cosmetics, your hair, your clothes. All of you.” He considered the chocolate-brown curls against his palm for a moment, running his thumb over them. “This is easier than I thought.”
“What is?” I asked, my shaky breath brushing warmly across my tear-stained lips.
“I was sure your beautiful face would force compassion within me, but”—he shook his head, dropping my hair—“I feel nothing for you, as if you were merely a dog who had bitten a child. I just want to see you dead in the worst way possible.”
My crossed arms tightened.
“And don’t get me wrong: I do see this as a waste of life—beautiful life. I will not deny the fact that you are undeserving of this, Ara, but I cannot let you live. You understand this, I hope?” He lifted my chin. “However, I would like to dance with you one last time before I begin.”
My body moved with his, close, circling like two birds falling mid-flight. The feel of his cool fingers at the ribbon of my corset and the softness of his palm against mine made me wish only that I were his; his girl, for him to touch, to love, to hold. I wanted to be a part of him, as I once was with David.
He spun me out from his body gracefully, and I twirled back into his chest, completely intoxicated by his spell, and entirely aware of it too. We swayed together under the cool breeze, surrounded by the trees, where no one could see us and no one would ever find us—not until he was finished with me.
“Beg me not to kill you,” he whispered against my hair. “Beg me, and I will show you mercy.”
“I—” My throat tightened, eyes spilling with tears as I looked into his. He was just like David. But he was going to kill me no matter how much I begged. And the worst part was, it didn’t matter to me because, as if a thread of finely woven silk had bound us, I was unable to resist. I wanted him to kill me; I wanted him to hurt me first.
“That’s not a very convincing plea for your life, Ara,” he said.
The faint blue sparkle surrounding my thoughts persisted like delirium consuming an otherwise rational mind. I smiled up at him, wishing we would dance this way together forever. “What are you doing to me, Jason? Why doesn’t anything make sense?”
“Hush now, sweet girl. I am making this easier by allowing you to feel safe with me. It is one of my many talents.”
“But I—”
“Shh. This is a time-limited extension of kindness.”
My throat fought hard for its own vocabulary. But he smelled just like David, and I missed him so much I just wanted to believe he was David; to imagine for one last moment that I was in his arms, that I still mattered to him.
“Close your eyes and you shall believe it.”
“You can never be him. And you’ll just be closer to becoming the monster he is by killing me.” My gaze delved deep into his hollow, shadowed eyes. “But you will never have a heart like his, and I will never give you mine.”
His hands slipped from my waist, and an icy rush tore away the cloud of my confusion, leaving behind a sudden explosion of terror.
“I don’t want your heart, you stupid girl.” He peeled me from the closeness of his body, tossing me off to the side by my arm. The long ball gown caught under my toes and I tipped backward, a sharp sting ripping through my hand as it caught me against the ground. Before I could even find the source of the sudden pain, blood gushed out over my fingertip. I screamed, pinching the edge of a partially detached nail, my arm shaking like glass in an earthquake.
“Ooh.” Jason stood over me, wincing. “Nasty. You’ll need to fold that back or it’ll come right off.”
“I know!” I yelled at him, trying to use my thumb to roll the nail back in place, but every time I touched it, it shifted and the pain intensified, closing in around me as if I were in a red box.
“Settle down.” Jason took my hand and straightened my arm out to the side, away from my line of sight, and…
“Ah!” I screamed, the sound
reducing to a tiny whimper as the agony receded. When Jason released me, I doubled over and wept breathlessly into my skirt, the blood staining the blue. I just wanted to go home. I didn’t want to die like this. Not like this.
“Ara, look at me.”
I struggled to push myself up to my knees, falling on my elbows each time.
The killer just watched. I couldn’t even look at his face to see if he was enjoying it. I felt pathetic and helpless, humiliated by my own whimpering. But I couldn’t stop it. It just kept coming out.
“Why are you crying like that?” He grabbed my arm to help me.
I tried to speak, but the words had no shape. They were just distraught sobs, like an hysterical child. All the anger had trickled away with realization: he wasn’t playing games. He really was going to kill me. This was real. I was going to die here. Tonight. Even the distant sound of voices searching, having grown in number, couldn’t be sounds of salvation for me; they were merely a cruel, cold reminder that there was life beyond this. And I would never know it again.
“Please just let me go, Jason.”
“I can’t.”
I wiped the tears and dribble from my chin. “Please. I had nothing to do with her death. I—”
“But your lover did.”
“No.” I covered my ears, shaking my head. “David’s not to blame, either. It’s you. You loved her. You brought her into your world. You didn’t protect her!”
“You know nothing!” I felt only a brash jolt, nerves burning in the base of my skull as he grasped a handful of my hair, his shaky breath coming through his teeth in three short words. “You. Know. Nothing.”
“I know what you are,” I said, arching my neck to stop my hair from coming out. “I know the things you’re capable of.”
“Then you can imagine what I’m about to do to you.”
I tried to shake my head. “You won’t hurt me. Emily told me that you’re swee—”
“You shut your mouth, you horrible little human.” His fingers knotted tighter, dragging my scalp upward.
“Jason, please.” I slowly reached for his arm. “Please, look at me. I’m not the enemy. I’m not the—”
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