Ripples Through Time

by Ripples Through Time (lit)

  Raven licked her lips and said nothing. Her eyes told him she feared becoming the pun of a trick question. The answer wasn’t a stumper. She knew him. She could likely tell him painfully accurate truths he’d attempted to bury. Things no one else—not even Octavia—would know about him.

  “Yeah,” he continued. “It’s what I thought. So you know, then, that if I’m running hard in the other direction, it’s usually—”

  “To avoid something you know is true.”

  The words were simple but they astounded him. The world was often divided into two realms: knowledge and understanding. Knowledge was simply a collection of admitted facts without comprehension of what said facts meant when grouped together. Nicholas found himself shoved across the threshold dividing the realms in a blink.

  She did understand him. Christ, she did.

  “My God,” Nicholas murmured. “My…Raven…”

  Her cheeks flushed prettily. He wanted to soak up her warmth, take her in his arms and hold her close enough so that their memories became one. In an instant, he felt consumed with a crushing sense of loss. How had he not seen this before? How had he remained so blind these past few days when the answer was plain as plain could be?

  This woman belonged to him. She had crossed time to find him. She had essentially breathed life into his scattered ashes. She’d defied convention, defied immortality, defied the security of her very soul to find him. Out of love.

  He didn’t remember one blessed thing.

  He didn’t remember it, but it was there. He saw it in her eyes. He saw every stolen moment, every sinful caress, every kiss of her lips and hug of her body. He saw laughter and tears, heated arguments and even more heated reconciliations. It was an entire life lived—a history beyond his days. It was a time when he had been his own keeper.

  It was a time when he’d tracked down this warrior and somehow ended up head over heels for her.

  No. That was unfair. There was no somehow about this. He could see how. For God’s sake, a blind man could see how.

  He wanted those memories unlocked. He wanted that part of himself reclaimed. That sort of passion, selflessness, and love was something he’d craved since infancy. To know he’d had it all along was both wonderful and infuriating.

  How could the cosmos keep him from such an essential part of himself? Something so monumental? So important? So unprecedented?

  How could the cosmos keep him from his mate? From Raven?

  “You run from whatever you don’t want to face,” Raven said again, a small smile tickling her mouth. “Or…no, that’s not right. You don’t run from it. You just have the opposite reaction. You always said you loved me, and that’s why you tried to kill me. The night we first…you’d come to kill me.”

  Nicholas nodded and took another step forward, a trembling breath rocking off his lips. “You told me last night.”

  “We ended up…um…making love against a tree.”

  He loved the way she phrased it. Making love. It was something he never heard, something he rarely said. It made her look even purer than she was. Her language was tame, but there was no mistaking the passion in her voice, inspired by a simple memory.

  God, they must have set the world on fire.

  “Wish I could remember it,” Nicholas murmured. “Can just imagine how amazing you were.”

  Raven swallowed hard, and he was suddenly slammed with a potent wave of her desire, the richness of her heavenly aroma nearly sending him to his knees. “I wish you could remember, too,” she replied hoarsely. “But I don’t think either one of us was meant to remember, Nicholas.”

  “You did.”

  “It was a fluke.”

  “There could be another fluke.” He stood close to her now. The hard pebbles of her nipples rubbed tantalizingly against his chest, even with layers of clothing between them. “We can fluke it up real nice, kitten.”

  “I don’t know how,” Raven said, ignoring his innuendo.

  “We’ll find out how.” Nicholas closed his eyes, his lips brushing hers as he spoke. He wanted so badly to kiss her. He wanted to lose himself in the endless warmth of her arms, crush her against him and revel in the feel of her heart beating soundly against his chest. He wanted to occupy the time between now and the return of his coveted memories by creating new ones.

  She belonged to him.

  “Raven…”

  “I’m so sorry, Nicholas…”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  He brushed his lips against hers again, this time with deliberate intent. Then he couldn’t help himself. He was lost and he didn’t give a lick if he ever found himself again. With a long moan, he surrendered. God help him, she shone with such pure radiance—a ray of wholesome light spearing through the storm clouds of his existence. She felt hot and wet, a tropical paradise which blinked away the cold desert of his past.

  Her taste electrified him.

  “Oh,” Raven gasped, cupping his cheeks and anchoring him into her kiss. “I’ve missed you.”

  The starved desperation in her voice made him ache. “Raven…”

  “I know,” she replied between kisses, her hips moving in a manner against his that had to be subconscious. “I know. You don’t remember, but I do.”

  Nicholas nipped at her lips, the growl of his demon suddenly making itself known, startling him. His demon never emerged when lips and tongues came into play. Never. While the stirring felt small enough to almost escape notice, the fact that it stirred at all had him dumbfounded. “I want to,” he murmured heatedly. “Those are my memories, too.”

  A strangled half-sob, half-gasp tore through her lips. “Nicholas…”

  He couldn’t help but grin. An unprompted moan of his name during a moment of unbridled passion did a lot to a man’s ego, but this especially took the cake. She whimpered for him. Perhaps it was a fluke. He wanted to believe that the vampire she remembered and the vampire kissing her now were simply growing closer. Perhaps if they merged completely in her mind, his own would open and fill in the achingly hollow gaps.

  “I love that,” he murmured, nudging her brow with his. At some point his fangs had descended. He didn’t know when. He hadn’t felt it occur—it just had. Perhaps this was nature’s way of directing his blood home. Raven was his mate and his destiny. While he didn’t feel sure he loved her yet, there was no doubt that he eventually would.

  If he loved her once, he would again. He just needed to get to know her beyond what he already knew—the little things which made and unmade people. He needed to know that as well.

  “Love what?” she asked.

  “You called me Nicholas.”

  “Oh.” Her cheeks reddened even further, and his heart swelled with affection. “I’ll try to keep doing that.”

  Nicholas grinned and claimed her lips again, his eager tongue pressing into her mouth to taste her sinful richness again. He loved the way her tongue stroked his, the way she whimpered and moved her lips against his mouth, and the way she attempted to both swallow and crawl up inside him. She embodied passion. In every sweep of her delicate lips, he felt her desperation.

  Desperation for him.

  It was the most potent aphrodisiac he’d ever known.

  “Raven…”

  The tip of his fangs pricked her tongue by accident, of that he felt certain. What followed, however, was completely intentional. Nicholas growled and slammed her against the nearest wall, sucking her tongue desperately between lips and drawing her coppery essence into his throat with hunger unlike anything the world had experienced before. Her legs wound around his waist, the moist center of her sweat pants rubbing against his hard cock in ways that would make the devil blush. She was so hot. God, so hot, so alive, so fucking vibrant.

  And his. Raven belonged to him. He had her blood now. No going back. Not after this. Tasting her blood brought him completion. Tasting her blood had brought all of him home.

  Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, a previously dead-bolted door
crashed open, courtesy of her blood.

  Oh God.

  There it was. Figments, fragments, fractions—swirling and colliding with a history he already knew. Contradicting scenes with a parallel version of events he’d already lived. It happened in no particular order. The face of Octavia vanished, his maker replaced with the whiff of a woman’s perfume and the painfully sweet sensation of death. He saw flames and heard screams of victims who had died well before this life had taken shape. At once, he sat in a theatre, watching Hamlet slay Claudius as Fortinbras drew nearer to Denmark. He sat in a pub, chatting with a toothy whore and lamenting the lack of warmth of his own existence. He sat on a ship bound for the Americas, dreaming up ludicrous first-meeting scenarios and entertaining himself by gambling with another migrating vamp over which crewman would next drop with smallpox.

  He moved through a thicket trees. He saw her. She slayed three vampires before his eyes and offered a wave in his direction. Just a simple, open, non-confrontational wave to let him know he hadn’t seemed as sneaky as he thought. It was almost as though she had been performing for him.

  He had her shoved against a tree, her molten pussy clamped tight around his cock, her cries muffled in his shoulder as he explored the only paradise a creature such as himself would ever know. Her arms were around him. He fell back.

  Fell back onto a bed. She was grinning, her fingers tickling his stomach, her infectious laughter coloring the air, her beautiful face brought to life in ways no poet could describe.

  Now he stood in the underground—the makeshift basement. She had pressed herself against him. Trembling and terrified, and he didn’t know how to help her.

  She stood tied to a stake.

  Then he felt pain. An arrow pierced his flesh. It seemed to happen so quickly, the scene around him melting until he lay on a bed, watching her sob. He wanted to tell her so badly not to cry. He regretted nothing. It seemed his fault, really. He had pushed her to an end she hadn’t been ready to face. He shouldn’t have pushed her.

  Then blackness.

  A gut-consuming gasp tore at his throat. Nicholas seized her arms and shoved her back, his body crippled with the weight of realization. He hunched over and rested his palms against his knees, harsh, cruel gasps scratching their way toward freedom.

  He felt her tremble but didn’t look up. He couldn’t.

  The pain of knowledge felt too great. He knew everything. He knew everything and he couldn’t look up.

  Chapter 18

  Colonial New Hampshire, 1701

  For the first time since they’d sealed their blood together, he fought himself to keep from sharing every wretched feeling tearing through his body with her. He didn’t want her to feel this. What he experienced physically seemed inconsequential. If Ravenna knew of it, she would spend the rest of her days haunted by his pain. He wouldn’t allow that. He couldn’t.

  The arrow had been tipped with holy water. There seemed no other explanation for the slow way his insides melted away or the agony searing his veins. It was a technique popular among vampire hunters, a special blend of poison holding no cure…except one.

  Blood of the Few.

  He honestly didn’t know where that rumor had begun, that the warrior blood would cure him. It simply existed, floating around among some of vampiric society’s higher circles. Whether or not it had been proven was another matter. In any regard, he’d made up his mind within an instant of recognition that he would keep the alleged miracle cure to himself.

  Whether or not it mirrored truth seemed a different matter, and he wouldn’t risk his girl’s life. Not for anything.

  Nicolai did his best to smile as Ravenna knelt down beside him, pressing a damp cloth to his brow. He hated the look in her eyes, the guilt-contorted devastation she couldn’t hope to hide from him. It consumed her and saturated every move of her glorious body. He hated the small breaths she took when he knew she tried to keep herself composed.

  His beautiful girl. His Raven.

  He hated seeing her cry.

  He hated knowing he was the reason.

  “Is this good?” she asked gently, her shaking hands pampering his brow. They had managed to find shelter in an empty cottage, one not too far from the settlement they’d left behind. Nicolai suspected the family had fallen ill, for outside sat three headstones guarding freshly disturbed soil. Disease was humanity’s weakness.

  However, an empty cottage provided a bed against his back, which was more than he felt he deserved. No matter how these last few months with Ravenna had been lived, he remained a creature of darkness, and creatures of darkness did not deserve humanly comforts.

  “It’s good?” Ravenna asked again, sitting back in the wooden rocker she’d dragged from the front living area. “Not too warm?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “I’ll get you some more blood.”

  Nicolai shook his head weakly and grasped her wrist, holding her soundly beside him. She’d been pouring blood down his throat ever since they’d stopped, whatever blood she could get her hands on. Mainly it was animal, taken perhaps from the barn, but there had been a few mouthfuls which tasted suspiciously human. He felt certain she hadn’t harmed anyone. His girl didn’t have it in her.

  He didn’t have it in him to tell her that no amount of blood would help him. He couldn’t.

  “Don’t go,” Nicolai murmured. “Stay with me.”

  Ravenna’s eyes glistened with tears, and he felt his heart rip again. “I was going to ask you the same thing,” she whispered, pressing a tear-drenched kiss against his lips. “Oh Nicolai…”

  “I’m…not…going anywhere.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.” She shook her head hard, large liquid crystals sketching rivers down her gorgeous cheeks. “I was such a fool. God, I was so blind.”

  “Hush, sweetheart.”

  “I thought…I don’t even know what I thought.” Ravenna shuddered and kissed his mouth again. Even soaked in tears, she tasted wonderful. “I wanted to…”

  Nicolai squeezed her hand tenderly. “You wanted…to cut…ties.”

  She nodded.

  “It’s…what I…I wanted, too.”

  “But I didn’t need to go there!” she protested. “God, why did I go there?”

  His smile grew wider. He felt a sentimental, lovesick fool with a clouded mind, but even as he lay there dying, he knew he would rather lie nowhere else.

  Nicolai had long heard that people who knew they were about to die grew peaceful in the last throes. He hadn’t believed it, and he’d definitely never thought it could be applied to vampires. Resting under Ravenna’s tear-filled eyes, her love for him brimming so brightly the stars would bow out in shame, not even the imminence of death could make him regret a lick of what he’d experienced.

  “You…went there…” he murmured tenderly, raising her hand to his mouth so he could feel her skin against his lips. “…because you…have faith.”

  She shook her head. “My faith is killing you.”

  “The arrow’s…what’s killing me,” Nicolai retorted. “You didn’t shoot me, did you?”

  Ravenna choked a sob and lowered her eyes.

  “Don’t…take on…blame for what…others have done.”

  “If I hadn’t gone there—”

  “It would’ve…happened…eventually. Your Guardian…really wanted me dead.” His smile melted away. “You…warned me, Raven. You…warned me every…day.”

  “I brought him to us!”

  Nicolai shook his head, or rather tried. His body didn’t want to move. It felt hard enough doing the little things like smile at her, kiss her hand, speak. All these things he felt determined to do because they were the moments which would follow him into Hell. If his eternal torment for being a killer waited at the end of the road, he wanted memories of soft, healing light to counteract the harshness of flames.

  He wouldn’t sit passively during his last minutes with the only woman he’d ever loved. He wo
uldn’t let her watch him die without knowing how much she meant to him, how he only existed for her, that he could live this life a thousand times but would never be satisfied if Fate denied him her kiss.

  These last few months with her had been the only ones wherein he’d actually lived. Everything else had been a stagnant walk through time. He’d felt so much, felt a world beyond cold and the starving pangs of demon-hood and the curse of his eternal condition. He’d felt. He’d loved.

  These last few months meant more to him than anything else in this world could hope to mean.

  He felt no regret, only the sorrow of parting.

  Alone. No Guardian. No father. No Nicolai.

  He wanted to believe in the Christian tradition that some part of him would be able to remain with her and watch over her. He wanted to believe he could soothe her when she wept and hold her when she couldn’t sleep, perhaps even whisper that all would eventually be all right. He wanted to believe demons had that luxury, but Nicolai could not fool himself.

  Though there seemed nothing to regret in the choices he’d made for himself, there remained a world of remorse for what he’d done to her. He’d been a cruel bastard, demanding so much of her. Demanding her at all. Taking her from the world she knew and introducing her to this only to rip the shade of happiness away from her. Not only that, their blood would remain forever linked. She would feel the pain of his death every day. Every day she breathed, she would feel this.

  Nicolai had done this to her, selfishly and without hesitation, all because he’d wanted her forever.

  He had forever now.

  It stood the unspoken reason why mating never took place, why claims were so unheard of. To lose one’s mate remained figurative death of the soul.

  Were it the other way around, Nicolai knew the Hell he would face would quiver at the whisper of what he’d put himself through at the gut-wrenching agony of losing his beloved.

  A hell he’d condemned her to for the rest of her days.

  “Have I told…I love you today?” he murmured, brushing a soft kiss against her hand again.

  An anguished sob tore from her lips.

  “I do, sweetheart. I…love you so much.”