“It isn’t?”
“No.” He smiled sweetly, softly, his eyes warming and wrinkling slightly on the outer corners in a way they never had before. “It was stupid to think that way. If you remember our past one day, that doesn’t mean you’ll forget what we’ve experienced since we came back together.” His dark green eyes held onto mine for a moment, slightly squared with determination, then he nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Good.” I grinned. “Then I’ll go call Jase.”
“Jason,” he corrected sternly. “And I’m pretty sure he’ll be asleep.”
“No way. I gave him Lilith’s blood yesterday. The Jason I know would’ve been up all night working on a cure,” I said as I hopped up and wandered across the room to the table by the door. David watched me. I could feel his eyes appraising my nakedness and it made me feel beautiful.
He got up then, and wandered over to the window. I leaned against the wall with the phone to my ear, watching him watch the sunrise, his eyes going pale green in the grayness of a coming day. The scars on his ribs looked red and menacing in that light, but as he smiled at a bird pressing its belly right up to the window, I saw the striking contrast between the damage and the joy, like he was a work of art: beauty and agony. I knew Cal would love to paint something like that, but I also knew David would never look so lovely and vulnerable around anyone else. Especially not Cal. Hell, he barely ever smiled around anyone else.
In this moment, with David’s guard completely down, I could see so much of Cal in him. They had the same cocky grin at times and the way they held themselves often made them look alike from behind. I wondered if I was hunting for similarities because I wanted Cal to be a descendant of Arthur, or if I was seeing them because they were really there. I think, in a lot of ways, I felt a kind of loneliness in David for having such little blood family left and it seemed almost as if Cal, and his family, might fill a little of that hole; expand David’s world a little more.
“Hello,” Jason said chirpily.
“Hey, Jase,” I said, rolling my eyes when David called out in a firm tone, “Jason.”
“Hey, Ara, what’s up?” he said.
“It’s time.” I left it hanging, hoping he’d catch on, but he didn’t.
“Time for what?”
“You need to come and turn your brother back, and then have the doctors remove his scars.”
“Right,” he said, and I got an image as clear as day in my head of him nodding as he fumbled out of his lab coat and tripped his way out of the door. I even heard something crash, heard him cuss. “Okay. I’m on my way.”
I hung up the phone and grinned at David. “You better put some pants on.”
“Me?” He stood up, eyes moving the length of my naked body. “I think you should follow your own advice. And then you can leave.”
“Leave?” I put the phone down.
“I don’t want you here when I turn.” He slipped his shirt over his head and bent to get his jeans.
“Why?”
“I just don’t. It’s… I’m a human,” he explained, getting dressed. “You’ve seen me strong, weak, everything in between, and I can accept that. But the vampire side of me… that’s separate. He’s… he can’t be seen to be weak. I don’t want to begin our new immortal lives with you thinking of me screaming and crying, begging for mercy.”
I laughed. “Okay, tough guy. I’ll leave then.”
He smiled softly, reaching out to me. “Couple days and it’ll be over, okay? Then we can go home and start Christmas shopping.”
I settled into his warm arms, my bare skin feeling silky against his clothes in a way that made me want to take them all off him again. “Isn’t it funny?”
“What is, my love?”
“The next time we make love, you’ll be a vampire.”
“Mm.” He kissed my head. “And we can feed off each other again.”
My fangs burned with the desire, filling the cavity under my tongue with saliva. “In that case, I might go feed now so I don’t bite you when you’ve turned. You won’t be immune to my venom.”
“Who will you feed off?”
“Are you okay with me feeding from Eric? I’m sure Lors won’t mind if—”
“No. She will mind,” he stated. “They’re married now, Ar. Only use Eric in emergencies.”
“Who then?”
“You can feed off Jason—”
“No I can’t. You and Cal said he’s the king and—”
“You can. You’re an exception, being former queen. We just can’t tell other people that.”
“Why?”
“Because Jason needs to be seen as strong and untouchable. To all. No one even mentions the fact that his wife feeds off him.”
I nodded. “So you don’t mind me feeding off him?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Oh, I just thought, you know, since I slept with him and it nearly ruined our marriage—”
David laughed loudly, throwing his head back. “It’s fine, Ara. I know you. I trust you. And I trust my brother.”
“Speaking of which.” I jerked away and dashed into the closet. “He’s here.”
“That was fast.”
“I guess he’s a little eager to have his vampire brother back.”
“Yeah,” he said, heading to the door. “I guess so.”
* * *
None of it made any sense. I understood that he needed to wait to turn David, but even after I sat staring at Jason for the last ten minutes, listening to every word he said, I just didn’t get it. When I looked beside me at David, I was relieved to see he was just as lost as me.
“Once Ali and I put our heads together on this one, it was easy,” Jase said. “For all we know about diseases and cures in modern medicine, if Lilith only wanted one person cured, she sure as shit shouldn’t have given you that blood yesterday.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s like having access to patient zero—she’s given us exactly what we needed to create a cure by giving us the source of the, what we’re calling, virus. And that’s how it acts,” he explained, using his hands to talk as well. “The virus is spread via chemicals you release when you’re feeling connected to someone, on any level, and it goes right to the brain and starts altering things—”
“Like the hugging hormone,” I said, excited that I could contribute to the conversation.
“Yes. Now, I won’t go into any more detail, because it looked like you two had no idea what I was talking about before, but to put it in layman’s: I can cure affected humans with an antidote—you might liken it to an anti-venom—and to prevent reinfection, I can make the cells that carry the curse lay dormant in you so they won’t be activated when you feel things. Ali’s helping with that. She’s using a binding spell to sort-of trap the curse in your blood. And it means you most likely won’t transfer it on to any subsequent children either. It’s too late for this little one.” He nodded to my belly. “But we can cure her, or him, once she or he is born.”
I crossed my hands over my belly, grinning at David like a little kid. He laughed, jumping up so swiftly to hug his brother that Jase was thrown off for a moment.
“You’re welcome,” he said, patting David’s back. “Now we just need to get you cured before we turn you. It’s much harder after, like in Cal’s case.”
“Cal?” David sat back down beside me, taking my hand tightly in his. “I thought he wasn’t affected by the curse anymore.”
“He lied to you,” I said, cringing because I knew David had trusted Cal.
“Little shit—”
“Don’t be too mad at him,” Jason said. “He’s scared shitless of you. What did you expect him to do? Tell you the truth?”
“Yes!”
I laughed, so did Jason.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter.” Jase slid forward on the seat. “I can cure Cal too, but the process is different because he’s a vampire and his immune system will eat up the antidote like it’s a virus
. But it’s not impossible. It’s just easier to cure you before we turn you.”
“How long does it take?” I asked.
“About an hour, give or take. But, and this is only a theory because we haven’t had time to test it, I’m assuming it won’t be completely out of his system for another twenty-four hours after the initial injection.”
David looked at me and I looked at him. We really needed to hurry home. We didn’t have twenty-four hours to wait for the cure to work, and then another three or four days while he turned into a vampire and recovered.
“We could bring Harry here,” David suggested.
“We can’t. He wants to be with Em and Mike when they have the baby. And I do too,” I said.
Jason sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, guys. It is what it is.”
“Then take me to the lab.” David stood up. “Let’s get this godforsaken curse cured.”
* * *
Sporting a sore arm after a series of injections, I laid in bed after dinner but couldn’t sleep. David, however, had started snoring the second his head hit the pillow. Jason did warn us that, as his immune system fought the virus in his brain, he would feel very tired and possibly grumpy. But he was out so cold I could wrap my hand around his bare penis and he wouldn’t wake. I had to admit, though; I was looking forward to meeting the David that wasn’t cursed. I wanted to see how different his love was without it driving his every thought. And I couldn’t wait to see Falcon too. After remembering small snippets of him from my past the other day, I saw him in a completely different light. I understood on a new level now why he cared for me the way he did. It wasn’t anything to do with that curse. He was in love with me, yes, but he cared for me because he was a close friend before all this chaos. I trusted him. We’d confided in each other many times. And now I just couldn’t call him Brett anymore. I felt like Brett was a completely different person, and I wondered if David would seem that way too, if I ever got my memory of him back.
In the case of Brett versus Falcon, everything we’d done, talked about, or experienced since I woke from the death coma just felt like a dream; like I was walking through fog the whole time; it happened, but it also didn’t. And I felt oddly betrayed by the fact that he’d once told me he wasn’t cursed, that he’d been in love before and that it meant he was immune.
I tried to remember my daughter then—to think of her in relation to what her and Falcon did after that potion, as if maybe I might feel differently about it. But I couldn’t, and I still felt the same. I still felt like Falcon wasn’t to blame, and yet if I was the old Ara now, would I hate him for sleeping with my little girl?
Would I hate David for the things he’d done to me since I woke up?
“He is finally at peace,” said a familiar voice, making me jump out of my skin.
I whipped the covers up to my chest in fright and shut my eyes tight as I collected myself. “You scared the hell out of me, Arthur!”
The ghost laughed, a cool chill appearing by my arm. When I opened my eyes, he’d moved from the foot of the bed, where he usually appeared, to sit by my side. “How are you, my dear?”
“I’m good.” I sat up. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” he said with a gentle laugh. “In the interest of moving on, I’ve come to show you something.”
“What?”
“Come,” he said, and stood up, wavering away like steam on the horizon. I grabbed my dressing gown and snuck out the bedroom door, closing it quietly behind me. But Arthur was nowhere to be seen. I glanced up the dim-lit hall and even to the hidden door across from my room, but he was gone.
“Arthur?” I called quietly, and that’s when I saw a flicker of ghostly light heading around the corner. I followed, my bare feet moving swiftly but quietly over the marble floors. It was cold out here with no fireplace to warm the halls, almost as if I could feel a snowfall coming on. But it never snowed here until the day after Christmas. How I knew that, I wasn’t sure. But I just did.
I followed the eerie light Arthur gave off through the manor, past the Great Hall, where staff were cleaning still from dinner a few hours ago, and to the stairwell on the opposite side of the manor. Memories flickered around inside my head as I travelled through, unhindered by conversations or faces, just walking freely as I would have once before.
Up two flights of stairs the apparition vanished, leaving nothing but an eerie chill outside the first door, which was left open. A fire magically came to light over the hearth in that room, roaring like it had been lit hours ago, and as I stepped in, the door slammed shut behind me. I knew not to be afraid, but I was anyway—felt the chill of the ghostly presence even as the warmth of the fire melted my icy toes.
“Hello?” I called. “Arthur?”
No one answered. Above the fireplace, the expressionless face of a man looked down on me. I wasn’t sure who he was, but he did have the Knight family resemblance. His stern gaze made me feel unwelcome here, made me want to leave and never think of this room again.
I stepped around the boxes of stuff and the furniture placed haphazardly, stored, I should say, around the room. Clearly, everything that once belonged to Arthur was now locked away in here like some disorganized shrine. I thought it was a waste of a pretty nice room, really, and I was sure Arthur would feel the same.
I poked around in things as I inspected the man’s life from this place in the future, where he no longer existed, digging inside boxes and lifting sheets to look over old furniture. But as I stopped at a stack of old paintings, leaning against the wall in the same way Cal would set his, I got the profound sense that I needed to look there. I could feel that snowy chill again, as if Arthur were guiding me to this.
“If there’s any more paintings of that scary old dude that’s sitting over the fire, warn me now. I’ve seen enough of his face to last me a lifetime,” I said, hoping I wasn’t talking to myself.
I fingered through the first five paintings, but they were just landscapes, and one of a woman with long blonde hair, much like the woman Arthur was with once when I saw him. She had a beautiful smile which, oddly, reminded me of David. I wondered if she was his mother or maybe grandmother or something. When I flipped that one forward to look at the next, I nearly dropped them all, catching them quickly with my knees as I also caught my breath. The man in the painting looked strange, and younger than he did when I saw his face, but his likeness was unmistakable. It was those eyes. The shape, the set, that something darker behind them that could only be a family trait. I’d seen it in David, in Arthur, even in Cal, and I’d seen this exact face in the paintings stored in Cal’s room back home. His grandfather. If this painting was Arthur, as the gold plaque on the frame stated, then the man in Cal’s painting was, without doubt, a direct descendant of Arthur Knight.
“Ara, what are you doing?” David said, his face pale with worry as he stood in the doorway. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Look.” I reached out for his hand, nodding down at the painting. “This man is an almost exact likeness for the picture of Cal’s grandfather—the one in his room.”
His head snapped up from the painting to look at me. “Really?”
“Yes. I remember it so clearly—who could forget those eyes? And it confirms it,” I said, excited. “Cal is your family.”
He put his arm around me, pulling me in to his side, nodding as he really took in the picture. “You’re probably right, but I’d need to see that painting first before I’ll believe it.”
“I’ll text him when we get back to our room. He can send us a picture.”
“Or you can take my word for it,” Arthur said.
David stiffened, his warm breath coming out in cold circles as he realized who was behind him.
“I never knew,” Arthur said, and I repeated it for David. “I always believed that child was fathered by Jane’s husband.”
“You never looked in on him?” David said. “Saw his likeness?”
Arthur shook his head.
“I think, perhaps, I did not want to know.”
“He didn’t want to know,” I told David.
“Why?”
“I was afraid what that would mean. You know how things were in those days.”
David nodded as I repeated the words for him.
“But what is done now cannot be undone.” I spoke for Arthur. “And it should bring you joy to know you have cousins.”
David smiled, his emotions presenting clearly on his face. I’d never seen him smile like that before, not in all the time I’d known him, and I understood it then. I knew a weight had been lifted now with the curse gone. I understood how much easier it would be for him to feel other things when he wasn’t consumed by loving me.
“I’ll look after them, Uncle Arthur,” he said. “You have my word.”
Arthur just bowed his head, as I was sure David knew, because he did the same, and then Arthur was gone. We both felt the absence of the ghost in the way the air entered our lungs, exhaling deeply as we laughed.
“You have a cousin!” I said, wrapping my arms around him and jumping up and down on the spot.
“Who does?” Jason asked, joining the party from the hallway. “And what are you doing in here? This room is off limits—to everyone.”
“Not anymore, bro.” David walked over to his brother, his steps full of life, his face bright and open with a smile. “Come. I want to show you something.”
He led Jason to the painting of Arthur and folded his arms, nodding at it. “Cal has one very similar in his house. One of his grandfather.”
“And?”
“And it turns out Jane Auclair’s child wasn’t her husband’s.”
Jason lifted his wide eyes to David’s, his skin tightening as small bumps spread out across his arms.
“Bro, Cal’s our cousin,” David finished.
The news spread through Jason like helium in the air. He squeaked in reply, no words coming out.
“This is good news, brother,” David said, steadying Jason by the elbow.
“I…” Jason just laughed then, looking from the painting to David. “Are you sure?”
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