“Ara,” David stepped forward. “This is Vicki.”
“Your mother?” I studied his face, trying to catch even a glimpse of resemblance.
He shook his head and waved the woman over to us. “She’s actually yours.”
“Huh? But mine died when I was younger.”
“Not mother by blood,” Vicki said, her lips arching down and quivering, “but mother all the same.”
“How come I haven’t met you until now?”
“I couldn’t bear to see you until you knew who you were. I…” She choked up for a moment, taking a jagged breath to speak again. “Can I hug you, please?”
“Um…” I lifted one shoulder, not sure what to say, and the woman took that as a yes, rushing in to wrap me up in the kind of way I’d always imagined a mother would embrace her child. Vicki smelled a bit like mothballs and old books, which reminded me of the night David and I went into that closet, and as much as I wanted to hold on—draw on this experience for the moment when I’d see Harry again—I felt funny hugging her while thinking about him.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” she said, finally pulling away.
“I’m not really back,” I corrected her. “I know who I was, but who I am is entirely different to your Ara and—”
“I know.” She nodded softly, the natural lines in her face showing her age. “But you are a part of her, no matter the differences now.”
For her sake, for the sadness and visible loss in this woman’s eyes, I almost wished I was her Ara. David’s too. But I still just felt no connection to her. Didn’t even feel like a ‘part’ of her, yet for some reason, it felt wrong to say that to this woman.
“Why…?” I held my breath, unsure if this would offend her.
“Why what, dear?” she prompted.
“Why did Brett care for me if I have a family?” He’d never mentioned a mother, and the only father I had was too busy running the Drakarian monarchy to care for me. But what had Vicki been doing all this time?
David placed his hand on the small of my back—an offer of comfort clearly, but I shrugged him off.
“Ara,” he started.
“David, let me explain it,” Vicki cut in. “We weren’t sure you would ever regenerate,” she said to me. “It wasn’t guaranteed, and when you did finally arise, I was living here—away from that world. They couldn’t transport you here to be cared for and I couldn’t return there.”
“Why?” I asked.
“My son…” She did this odd kind of hiccupping sob thing and covered her mouth. “He died only days after you.”
I didn’t realize how tense and closed-off I was until the pity made my arms and shoulders sink. “I’m sorry.”
“I was barely half a person myself after his death,” she explained, “so I knew I couldn’t be there to help you become a whole one again. I—”
“You don’t need to explain,” I said, reaching out to touch her arm. “I understand.”
Something in her eyes told me she knew I would. She smiled then and held my hand, running her eyes past every inch of my face. I wanted to ask how her son died, but it was clearly a painful story, so I filed that curiosity away with a hundred others in the ‘later’ corner of my brain, although it was getting a bit full in there.
When Mike and Emily came back in, we all talked for a while, standing in the same spots, until Vicki mentioned photo albums. It occurred to me that it was the perfect way to better understand my children’s past before actually meeting them.
“Can I see them?” I asked. “The albums?”
“Of course. Right over there.” Vicki directed my gaze to a bookshelf in the back corner of the room—stacked high with books of all shapes and sizes.
Mike and Emily left us to it, and David followed, saying something about coffee, while I sat myself down on the ground and scrolled along the spines, skipping past “Ara and David’s Wedding” and taking out “Elora Aged 1-3” instead.
Fine blonde baby hair and emerald eyes looked back up at me from the first page. She was a supernaturally beautiful baby, and I could see the power of Vampire and Lilithian blood running just under the surface of her radiant skin.
When I flipped over the page, I met with a very cheeky grin under a slathering of chocolate cake-mix, two tiny teeth showing white under all the brown. “Aw, she was so cute.”
“She was always very spirited,” Vicki said from beside me.
It felt odd seeing my face in pictures that I didn’t remember posing for. In some I was helping the baby in my lap unwrap presents or take steps, and as I looked closer at one, I noticed a black line under my wedding band—like a tattoo. But shining out above all the little things I noticed, I could see one thing for certain. “We look happy,” I noted, brushing my fingertips over a picture of Elora by the fire on Christmas. Beside that, a little girl in a pretty gold party dress sat in her father’s lap by the same piano in this room, her tiny hands set to the keys underneath his, both of them wearing the exact same smile. David just looked so attentive and so loving, and I realized I’d never really seen that side of him—the father. It did slightly alter my heart toward him. Just a little.
“Is he a good dad?” I asked Vicki.
“Yes,” she said in a deeper, whispery voice. “But he’s changed since he became human.”
“In what way?”
“He was always very loving and kind to the kids, but there’s something more…” Her eyes drifted away as she thought about that.
“Human about it now?” I offered.
Vicki nodded.
I shut the book then and picked out the album labelled “Harry—Age 1-5”. The same cheeky grin that belonged to his big sister filled out the pages of this book. It seemed that was the only smile he ever wore, and I got the sense that he was a bit of a troublemaker, in a cute way.
“He used to crawl to the top of the chest in about five seconds and then he’d just wait for someone to walk in and spot him,” Vicki said, pointing to a picture of Harry on a chest of drawers in nothing but a diaper. “We’d usually scream in shock when we’d find him, and he’d just cackle and squeal. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”
I laughed, looking to the picture beside that. “He’s always had that spark, hasn’t he?”
“He gets that from you,” Vicki said, brushing her hair behind her ear.
“No.” I shook my head, looking at a picture of David with Harry in his lap. “He gets it from his father.”
I didn’t notice David come in until he sat down beside me, placing a coffee cup on the floor by my knee and one beside Vicki’s hand. I picked it up and absently took a sip as I turned the page, but I had to stop and look at David before I saw even one picture there. “Did you make this?”
“The coffee?” he said, grinning into his own cup.
“This is amazing.” I took another sip. It was just the right balance between hot and perfect, with the creamiest blend of rich coffee, milk and light sugar. I’d never tasted anything like it.
Then, as I took in his grin, I got the sense that I had—before—and with that, I got the sense that he knew exactly how much I’d like it.
I looked down at the book and lost myself in Harry’s baby face for a while, not uttering a word more about how great the coffee was. I’d have to be careful not to fall in love with David’s tricks. If I did fall for him, I wanted it to be real—not a manipulation of all the things he knew I liked before.
“This picture here.” Vicki pointed to Harry laughing, the faces all around him completely stunned as the wax melted on the candles of his fourth birthday cake. “This is the exact moment everyone in that room learned Harry could read minds.”
“Read minds?” My head whipped up and I looked at David.
He nodded, tucking his knees up and resting his arms over them. “He gets it from us.”
“Us? As in you and me?”
He nodded. “When I was a vampire, I could read minds. And you eventually learned
how too.”
My head was in a spin. That was what he meant earlier when he was surprised that I’d ‘heard’ him. It was a thought he had—about moving out. He didn’t say that out loud at all.
“You knew Harry could read minds before this,” Vicki noted. “But you kept it quiet.”
“Why?”
“Because it can be dangerous for people to know these things, especially with a little boy that can’t defend himself yet.”
“Why would he need to defend himself?”
“Harry has a rare skill,” David said. “There may be people out there that wish to manipulate it and use it for their own purpose. It would only take a second where we weren’t watching, and Harry could be gone—”
“All because he can read minds?”
“You don’t know what an asset it is in this world,” David said, which felt strange. I thought for so long that he had never been a part of the immortal world, so to have him suddenly in it—knowing more than me—was off-putting. And also cool. I guess I felt less alone now.
“And my brother, Jason”—he shuffled closer and aimed a finger at the face of himself standing beside a younger version of himself—“he can give you back some of your memories, if you want them—”
“How?”
“It’s one of his talents—if he’s taken memories from you in the past, which in your case, he has.”
“Why would he take my memories?”
“He…” He cleared his throat. “Okay, take was a poor choice of words. More like looked into them. And by doing that, they’re stored in his memory.”
“Oh okay.” I nodded.
“There aren’t many,” he added, “but it might be enough to give you a glimpse of your old life.”
I looked down at the picture again. He and his brother were an exact likeness—a decade or so aside—and as I looked at Jason’s smile, I felt a very strong but distant connection to it. “Is he a painter?”
“Who?” Vicki said.
“Yes,” David said, keeping his eyes on me, an expectant smile warming his face.
“Do you remember him?” Vicki asked, hopeful.
“No.” I flipped over a page. “But… I think I remember something about paintings. And a Jason.”
“But Falcon said you would never get your memories back—that’s what they all said,” Vicki declared.
“We still don’t know much about it, Vicki,” David said in that cool, milky voice. “Jason got his memories back, remember?”
“But he wasn’t burnt to ash! He was only—” She stopped short on my sudden gasp.
I slammed the book shut. “I was burned?”
David went pale, turning his whole body away before placing his hands down and pushing up to stand.
“David?” Vicki called.
He ignored her and slowly walked from the room, stiff and rigid, like he’d just been kicked in the butt.
I looked at Vicki. “Why did he walk away?”
“He’s never spoken of…” Her shoulders rounded. “He can’t face it—what happened to you.”
“Why? What did happen?”
“Do you want to know this?” she asked, like I was a child.
“I think I need to.” I watched after David, wishing he’d come back.
“Your sister killed you—”
“I know that bit. Because she needed my soul, right?”
“Right. But I’m guessing David didn’t tell you that she hated you at the time—or that she hated David more.”
“He left that bit out.”
“No one knows exactly what happened. All we know is that you were both tortured before she injected David with Lilithian venom and only let you save him if you promised to give up your soul.”
I touched a thumb to my fang, picturing it all. My venom could be lethal to a vampire with no immunity, but… “If we were married, he’d have been immune, right?”
“He was,” she said. “But after a period of torture and blood-loss, that immunity died, as he would have without a pulse of your life-giving light.”
The same light I used to save that snake. The same light Queen Lilith also possessed, which could make a vampire human after an injection of venom. “So I made him human?”
“Yes.”
Then he lied when we spoke last night. Or rather, he let me believe I turned him human under different circumstances. “So it was my life for his?”
“Yes.”
My hands fell heavily into my lap. “I must have really loved him.”
“You did,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “And he hasn’t forgiven himself—can’t come to terms with the fact that he didn’t save you.”
“Save me?”
“She burned you alive after she extracted your soul.”
The horror ate me up for a second, but the curiosity forced me to just move on. “But, if I had no soul, wouldn’t I be dead?”
“It takes a while. A person can live for up to twenty-four hours without a soul.”
“Oh.”
“And David had to watch. He was conscious as you burned alive. Morgana—your sister—made sure of that.”
“Poor David.”
Vicki nodded. “He won’t talk about what Morgana did to you down in those tombs, but his brother, Jason—”
“Wait!” I put two and two together: his brother; mind reading; the phone calls. “Jason. He’s the king!”
“Yes.” She smiled.
“It…” It all made sense. Jason was family. That’s why he cared so much if I recovered. “Brett said Jason and I were close once.”
“You were.” She nodded. “And that’s why he stole a glance into David’s head shortly after you died—to see what happened to you.”
“So what happened?” I laid the photo album aside and shuffled forward like an excited kid on a story mat.
“We don’t know. He said he’d never speak of it.”
That made my skin ache in certain places and I didn’t know why. I swallowed hard as if a knot of tension had made my throat thick, but there was nothing there. I wanted to say that it was all okay now, because I was alive and David was alive. But I wasn’t alive. I mean, she wasn’t. Ara wasn’t. She did die that day, but I at least understood now why it was so important for David to get her back: he needed to tell her; he needed to make her understand, just like I needed to make him understand after our fight, that he was sorry. That he would give anything to take it back. He just needed it to all be okay again. And I couldn’t give him Ara. I couldn’t give him my love. But I could give him peace.
I stood up, reluctantly leaving my coffee behind.
“Where are you going?” Vicki asked softly.
“I need to speak to him—tell him it’s okay now.”
26
David
She’d climbed out of Falcon’s car wearing a sky-blue sweater and a pair of jeans, which I didn’t think much of until she’d turned and looked into my eyes. In that color, she so easily took my breath away. I’d convinced myself last night to just be her friend until she was ready for more, and I completely fucked it up. My heart wouldn’t let me keep my distance, and now she was pulling away. I could tell.
Then, to make matters worse, I left the room at a crucial time. It should’ve been me talking to her about her death, but I couldn’t face her if she saw me cry. Nothing in my past, in my century of life, haunted me as her death or the days that led to it did. Nothing I had ever witnessed compared to the suffering she endured, and nothing could make me speak of it. I would have to tell her eventually, but until that day, all she would know is what everyone else knew: nothing. We suffered. We survived. That is all. No one could fathom to what degree. Not even the most heinous of minds could comprehend it. Most people had forgotten what Morgana was best known for before Ara’s rise to power. People no longer remembered her as the most brutal and clever torturer in the monarchy, and though I was once intimate with her before I ever even knew Ara existed, it did not still her hand.
She knew better than any man that the only way to make me suffer was to hurt those I love.
I was forced now to relive that nightmare every time Ara looked at me with hope in her eye. Every time she looked sad. Every time I sat in front of a fireplace and felt the heat of it on my human skin, or when I cut meat for dinner, or thought about sex. Thought about sex with her. And the medication wasn’t helping. For my own sake, even out on the ocean these last four-and-a-half months, I kept it up—took two pills every day and fought against the pulling tide of fogginess in my brain to concentrate while navigating a yacht with my son on it, but I wasn’t any better. I was still depressed, and I was starting to think it wasn’t chemical. It was circumstantial, and medicine just couldn’t fix that. Time couldn’t fix that. Only she could.
I saw her shadow as she came up the stairs and I quickly checked around my room to make sure it was clean, hoping she was headed in here. But the front door flew open then and I heard Harry’s busy end-of-day chatter. As much as I wanted to stay in here and wallow in my sadness, I wanted more to see my son reunite with his mother, so I got up off my bed and stood in the hallway, looking down on Ara as she turned and her eyes met Harry’s.
“Mom!” Harry threw his bag down and ran up the stairs. Ara stumbled back a bit with the force of his hug, but wasted no time wrapping her arms around him.
Emily and Vicki came into the entranceway to watch, and we all just waited, listening to them both softly crying in the silence of this big old house. The emotion swelled up around us all then, and I fought hard not to be overcome, but I just never thought I’d see her wrap him up in that loving embrace again, and no matter how different this Ara was from her former self, she could still love like no other. She still hugged Harry in exactly the same way she used to, and he was completely aware of that, closing his eyes and hugging her like she was the same woman that left us.
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