I lifted my arms, and Morgaine pulled the tatty remains of the happiest day of my life over shoulders. I just couldn’t make sense of it all. How did it all go so wrong? From the first day of the rest of our lives to being apart for eternity. How did he end up in Drake’s hands if they planned to save me—talked history while they waited? What went so wrong?
“Lift your hips,” Morgaine said as she hooked her thumbs into the sides of my underwear then slipped them down my legs. The warm water caressed my limbs, washing away the blood and other impurities that lodged in my skin while I was being stored and tortured.
“There now, isn’t that better?” she asked.
I cupped my hands over my breasts, leaning my head on the hard tiles again.
“Your shampoo smells pretty,” Morgaine said, lathering it in from the tips, working it upward until her delicate fingers rubbed gentle circles around my scalp.
I closed my eyes, letting the soap drip down the ridges beside my nose, the soft strawberry scent giving me a flash feeling of normality.
Sound fizzled out but came rushing back quickly as Morgaine flooded my head and face with warm water, then wiped her hand down my eyes and cheeks, smoothing away the soap. “You’re going to be all right, Amara,” she said softly.
That’s where she was wrong. I just wanted them to let me die—cut me into pieces and store me in jars around the world.
“Okay, you’re clean.” Emily held her wrist in front of my lips. “No more excuses. Bite.”
“No.” I pulled away.
“Ara, you need blood. Bite.”
“Emily, don’t you know? My bite can kill you.”
“No, it won’t. I’m immune.”
“What?” I looked up, seeing her face for the first time. “How can you be immune?”
“Because I’ve been drinking Mike’s blood, Ara, it gives me immunity to your venom too.”
“Only as long as you keep drinking it,” Morgaine added.
“Well”—Emily chuckled once—“I’m pretty sure I’ll be covered then. I’m the one refusing him lately.”
“I thought Mike hated blood?” I said.
Emily smiled. “Yeah, but it’s funny what a case of vampirism can do to change your outlook.”
I folded my arms, closing my eyes.
“It’s pretty cool, really,” Emily continued. “Well, it is now—wasn’t a few weeks ago, though.”
I frowned, not wanting to but unable to resist asking “Why?”
Morg and Emily laughed, a friendship showing between them that seemed ages old.
“So,” Emily said, “it was, like, the day Eric came to see us to tell us about you being kidnapped—”
“Eric told you?” I cut in, still feeling his cold, tight hands blocking the passage of air to my throat.
“Yeah.”
“But… but he was helping Jason.”
“We know, Ara,” Emily said. “We sent him back to the castle to find out your location.”
“That’s why he was there?”
“Well, there were a number of reasons, but that was why we had him there.”
“So, anyway,” Emily continued, “when Mike found out what happened to you and David, he asked me to change him into a vampire so he could rescue you.”
Emily and Morgaine laughed again, the sound warming the room.
“I didn’t know the exact method, so I just followed what Jason did to me.” Emily folded her arms and smiled at nothing. “You should’ve seen the look on his face when nothing happened.”
“Did he get sick? Or go into a coma?”
“Nope. Nothing. Didn’t even feel the sting of venom.”
“Why? He’s like me.” I sat up more on each word. “How can he have escaped a coma?”
“When you were bitten by a vampire for the first time, you had no immunity. See, a created vampire gets stronger from the siring moment, blood or none,” Morgaine explained. “But a born Lilithian is only as strong as the accumulation of blood in her lifetime.”
“So, if I’d been drinking more blood, I wouldn’t have gone into a coma?”
“That’s right,” Emily said. “It takes only a week of blood to build immunity—”
“And only a week to lose it,” Morgaine added solemnly.
“The more blood you have, Ara, the stronger you’ll get.” Emily smiled and offered me her arm again.
“But I’m not strong.” I turned my head, pushing Emily’s arm away. “I’m pathetic and weak. I couldn’t even try to escape when he gave me the chance.”
“He gave you a chance to escape?” Emily gasped.
“No, he just—” I shut my mouth and crossed my arms. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
They went quiet, probably exchanging glances of concern. They all wanted to know what happened, but as long as I kept it inside, none of it was real—not Jason’s betrayal, not David’s death, not immortality, and not what happened to me either.
“Ara.” Emily rolled the taps off and wrapped a towel around my shoulders. “I need you to drink blood, okay. Or I will have to pin you down and force it in, and I—”
“Don’t!” Eric appeared behind Morgaine. “What ever you do, don’t do that.”
“Eric? That was quick.” Emily moved as Morgaine stood up.
“I know.” He stared back at me, his face pale. “How is she?”
Morgaine rolled a hand out, offering the scene.
“Amara.” Eric squatted beside the shower and untucked my hand from the towel, holding it gently. “S’il vous plait, ma belle amie. Drink blood.”
“I can’t, Eric.” My eyes watered, looking into his. “I can’t. I don’t want to be a vampire. I just wanna go home—to my dad’s, back to normal life.”
“But Amara, my beautiful, most dear friend, you are a vampire. And you must drink blood, or you will wither away.” He stroked the back of my hand. “And I don’t want you to suffer any more than you already have.”
I looked up to his liquid eyes, seeing only worlds of compassion and love behind them. There was a connection between us now—a secret connection—forged by a journey that only he and I shared. Things would never be the same between us again.
We both watched the story unfold in each other’s eyes, torn and tearless on the outside, destroyed and pleading for mercy inside.
“Please drink. If for nothing else in the world but to do it for me, please. Just drink blood, Amara.”
“Yeah”—Morgaine stepped in—“then I’ll tell you how to save the Immortal Damned.”
“Is there really a way?” I looked past Eric. “Or are you just lying to make me want to live?”
“Would it make you want to live?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure. Perhaps. But only because saving those kids would be the one thing I could do right by David after taking his life. I nodded slowly.
“Amara?” Eric smoothed his hand down my face and rested it on my shoulder. “I’m going to carry you, okay?”
I nodded.
He scooped me out of the shower and swiftly glided along the floor until we reached my bedroom, then placed me gently on my feet. I clutched the towel to my chest as the familiar, enveloping scent of my room struck me with a harsh internal blow. I could still smell him here. I was supposed to be gone, on a plane to Paris, coming back here only when I was immortal. Now, I was here, a Lilithian, but I didn’t have him.
The bed—I cried, setting eyes upon it—it looked just the same as the way we left it when we woke the morning before our wedding and made it with fresh sheets, cleaning away the blood from the night before.
If I’d known, on that last night together—when he held me and touched every inch of my body with widespread fingers, kissing my beating heart and feeling the warmth that would soon belong to immortality—that that memory would be our last, for eternity, I’d have held on just a little bit longer.
I couldn’t die; all I could do was suffer an eternal darkness without a body—a wandering soul, no longer connected to the worl
d—like my coma, that horrible nightmare I never wanted to return to. But life now without David, how was that any different?
How would I wake tomorrow and see the sun? What was the sun?
What did it mean to me now if it would never mean holding hands with David, laying by the lake under the new summer foliage, or warming our cold hands in the light through the window over the piano?
He was gone, and so was everything good this world had left in it. He met me at the doorway to our eternity, and I lost him there—lost him for forever.
“Ara?” Mike came up out of nowhere, his voice softer than ever before. “Come on, baby, let’s get some clothes on you.”
Tears screened my eyes as I stared at the empty, unraveled, unused bed; it wouldn’t smell like him now. It’d be cold, the history of his skin against the sheets absent, gone. It was all so empty. So, so empty.
The tears spilled over then, each inch of skin they touched turning to death. This was stupid. I couldn’t. I couldn’t live without him, I never could.
“Mike?” I looked up at him, blinking as more tears fell. “Mike, you have to kill me.”
He stared ahead at the emptiness beyond my soul, and I let my tears flow. This was it, there was no more hope. Once, I owned the hope that maybe he was out there somewhere waiting for me, looking for me. But now, I knew. I knew he’d never smile at me again, knew he wouldn’t walk around the corner and throw me on the bed, tickling me until I screamed. I’d never taste another cup of his perfect coffee, make love to him as my husband, or even have our first dance. It was gone. Even the ring on his finger. Gone, no memento to keep. It was all just taken away. An instant, and he vanished forever.
I closed my eyes, going back to that moment he stepped out of Jason’s car and took my hand—saw his smile, felt his lips. If I’d known that was the last touch, I could’ve held on longer, kissed him, told him how much I loved him, how sorry I was that I didn’t give up my life to be with him sooner.
A hand appeared in front of me. Unable to see through the tears, unable to breathe through the pain in my chest, I only made out the blurred, shifting image of something gold and round.
“David asked me to keep these safe for him,” Morgaine said.
The tears rolled down my face, as if maybe they didn’t belong to me, like I was watching them leave the eyes of the dead. My shaky, thin fingers rose to her hand and scooped up a wedding band and a silver bangle with a moonstone at the center. The last memory of David’s mother, now, the last memory of David.
Mike caught me as my knees buckled and carried me to the bed, my hands clutching tightly around the metal remains of my life.
“Mike?” Morgaine stood beside him, both of them towering over me. “She needs blood. We might have to—”
“No.” Eric touched Mike’s shoulder. “I stood there and watched her nearly drown in blood as it was forced down her throat. I won’t let that happen to her again.”
Everyone lowered their gazes away from the victim on the bed.
“Let me talk with her,” Eric finished.
Mike nodded and took a step back, allowing Eric to sit on the bed. He cradled me to his chest, my bare skin pressing against his warm silk shirt. “Amara. I’m going to make a little slit in my arm, and you’re going to drink from me, okay.”
“No.”
Eric rubbed his thumb across his brow, then slid both hands along the sides of my face, clutching firmly. “I’m not joking, Ara. You are a vampire; you need to accept that.”
My tongue moved forward and wet my lips. I wanted blood so badly, but I wasn’t ready to accept that fact. Not yet.
Eric took my silence as subordination though, and speared his vein with a fingernail, the blood pulsing out in one gush before flowing down his wrist. And acceptance was no longer optional. I dumped the bangle and wedding band on the bed beside me and pressed my lips to the sweet, sugary taste of Eric’s blood. It was like the first sip of hot cocoa in winter, warm and soothing against the ache I didn’t know I had in my throat.
“That’s a good girl.” He gently stroked my hair, moving his hand onto my face to blot the tears away as I cried the heartache and anger from my soul. “Shh, that’s it, just breathe.”
And I did, but the wound healed shut under my lips, cutting my supply before the thirst was satiated. As I sat back and wiped my forearm across my mouth, I caught Mike popping his own mouth closed, quickly standing taller.
“You’ll get used to it, Mike,” Eric said, tearing his eyes away from me to look at Mike. “She’s a vampire. You can’t stop her from biting anymore.”
And I apparently couldn’t stop myself from drinking blood either, even if I wanted to. I folded my arms over my chest and looked down. I was no longer operated by free will. I’d become what David was—an alien-controlled version of my former self. Blood first. Life second.
“Come on,” Mike offered his hand. “You’re shivering. Time to get dressed.”
I stood up, tugging hard on him to get to my feet.
“Morg, hand me those clothes there?” Mike pointed to the chair by the wardrobe. “Thanks.” He caught them and slipped the sweater over my head. “Come on, slide your arms through,” he said, guiding each one. “Okay, sit.” He pushed me gently onto the bed and wriggled my feet through my underwear and tracksuit pants, then took my hand, stood me up, and shimmed them under the towel, pulling it away once my clothes covered me completely.
“See? Magic.” He grinned.
“Bravo.” Eric clapped. “You’ve done that before.”
“Well”—Mike threw the towel over his shoulder—“I grew up with her. I’ve had to do that quite a few times.”
“Okay,” Morgaine said, “well, I’ll leave you guys to it. I need to get back t—”
“Morgaine.” I reached for her. “Tell me how to save them: the Immortal Damned. You said you’d tell me.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” She grinned. “The power within you.”
“Huh?”
“Your life has been mapped out, Amara. According to a prophecy told centuries ago, you will have a child one day. She will restore peace to our kind and wield great power. One of those is said to be the gift of life.”
“Life?”
“Yes, to restore what once was living, now without death.” She grinned. My face folded into a frown. “The ability to return vampires to their original form.”
“Human form?” I almost leaped off the bed.
“Yes.”
I looked down at my hands, slowly crossing my belly. “A child can do that?”
“Yes.” She grinned, then shrugged. “I said I knew a way; didn’t say you were going to like it.”
Mike moved in and slipped his hands under my arms, lifting me up the bed to the pillow, tucking my feet under the blanket as he did. “Sleep now, Ar. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
I nodded.
Eric sat beside me again and rolled up his sleeve. “I’ll just give you a little more—it’ll help you sleep.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
As the warmth of blood filled my mouth once again, I closed my eyes for a second and drank lazily, letting half of it slip down my chin.
“So tired, aren’t ya, kiddo?” He wiped the blood from my neck and chest with a towel, then handed it back to Mike.
“Eric,” I whispered before the softness of sleep swallowed my thoughts.
“Yes, beautiful girl.”
“How did you end up being Jason’s assistant?”
“I lied to the Council—told them the vampire and the pretty girl I’d been hanging out with was Jason and his girlfriend. They found out the truth, and my punishment was to assist in your torture.”
“Then how did you get to Mike and Emily—to tell them?”
“Jason sent me on an errand to get a t… to get something he needed.”
“A tool.” I rolled my face away, closing my eyes. “Don’t treat me like a baby, Eric. He sent you to get a tool.”
; “Yes.”
“Didn’t he know you’d go get help?”
“Yes.”
I looked at him, my mind waking. “Why did he let you go then?”
“He couldn’t admit it, but he wanted you rescued.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How do you know he wanted you to get help?”
“Because when he un-cuffed me and told me to go into town, I asked him if he was crazy—asked him if he knew where my allegiance really laid.”
“What did he say?”
“He said yes.”
Mike’s shadow filled the space around Eric. “That’s enough for tonight, mate. Let her rest.”
“Okay,” he said to Mike then looked back at me. “Amara, I’ll be right outside your door. Just whisper and I’ll come.”
“Thanks, Eric,” I murmured.
The door closed, leaving me in darkness, and as the peaceful tranquility of blood stole me away, I looked beside me and imagined David there.
“I’m so sorry, David,” I whispered softly as I closed my eyes.
* * *
Quiet whispers urged my attention. My eyes stayed shut while my ears pricked.
“I know she’s alive,” said a voice I didn’t know—a strong, austere voice.
“She’s dead. Now, will you please leave us to grieve her passing in peace,” Mike said.
I heard a thud, like a flat palm on wood. “I watched you leave the castle with her, Monsieur White. I know she’s alive. Now show me to her, I beg of you.”
My eyes flashed open. Wait! I did know that voice.
“She’s sleeping,” Mike said dully.
“She’s awake. I can hear her heart,” the man said, his voice traveling through the walls, right into my deepest cavity of fear.
Mike sighed.
“Please,” the man said, “just let me see her. Let me see that she’s all right, and I’ll leave.”
“What makes you think I’m going to trust you for one second with her?”
“I ask out of respect, Monsieur White. If I came here to impose or to hurt her, I’d have brought guards.”
All went silent. I wished I were out there watching.
“I am unarmed, unprotected,” the man said softly. “See for yourself.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 125