by Unknown
“Will you talk to me now?” With brief hesitation his arms slid around my body.
“I may as well.” All I could think was that any hope of my everlasting happiness was about to jump out of this tree. Unlike me it wouldn’t survive the fall. It was time. I’d been a fraud. I’d known this for so very long now, and had hidden it from him so thoroughly I had even forgotten it myself.
I took in a deep reluctant breath. “To explain I have to go back a bit. The night you saw me walking, and took me home the first time, Neesa gave me a tarot reading that shook her up. She saw my death in the cards that night.” Damien’s arms clinched around my waist. He remembered this part.
“She insisted I go see her mother in poor hope that she would prove herself wrong. They made me do this trance meditation. During which I fell asleep and had another dream of the woman doing a spell. Turns out it was a binding spell...
“Later, after the day of our walk in the rain, I had another dream only this time you were there. I told you I dreamed of you. The spell was her binding the two of you together for the rest of eternity. When you looked at her in this dream I realized that.” Damien held me to him securely. As if he held me tight enough, what I was saying would all be a lie.
I kept going though. No point in stopping now. “We’re not meant for one another, Damien. It’s her you’re supposed to be with. Not me. It’s like all this time the dreams were just leading up to that. Her way of telling me that she knew I was going to come between you two or something and that it didn’t matter. You would always be hers as she would always be yours.”
Damien sat quietly for a moment. “Can we try something?” he whispered faintly. Unable to speak I simply nodded. “It won’t be physically painful.” Unspoken words warned the pain was of a different variety. “I want you to focus on every detail you remember from the two dreams.” His hands slid down my arms slowly, interlacing his fingers into my own.
“Do you still trust me, Anna?” he whispered against the nape of my neck, kissing up just under my ear. I nodded softly. I trusted him. He didn’t remember her, yet.
“I want to see them but the only way I know to connect with you thoroughly enough to see them as you do is through this.” His lips had been right against my ear. As he finished the sentence, his mouth spread open over the nape of my neck, letting his fangs sink into me like a hot knife into butter.
Instantly aroused I let out a soft moan. It took all my concentration to focus on those dreams. Reliving the realization that we were not meant to be together while feeling his bite made this moment so much worse.
The first dream I chose to torture myself with was the second one I had mentioned. The one where I saw Damien and the one that had led me to realize that his heart and soul belonged to another.
Damien sat on a rock just outside of a makeshift hut. Looking as magnificent as always, though a little strange. I understood the difference now. He had been human still. Dark bronze skin glistened in the golden sun. His head hung forward between his knees, with a knife in hand. Long ash brown hair slowly fell onto the powder soft white sand. It matched the braid from the spell perfectly. There was no doubt it was Damien the spell had been cast for.
Even as I relieved the dream, I felt the same rush of awe inspired love. It was as if I were there again. He was her everything. She would have given up all of the magic, the power, anything and everything just to be with him. That is why she had bound herself to him. And through this, the dreading knowledge found me again with just as much pain as it had the first time.
Now that I understood, it doubled the sickening blow. He was hers and hers alone. When he was done he turned to look up at her with that unmistakable half grin of his. He would have it no other way. As he stood looking slightly more like the Damien I knew now, just darker, and albeit bald, he came to her. Pulling her into his arms, he leaned his lips to hers.
Too painful to watch I switched my focus to the next dream.
In the middle of a thick magnificent jungle filled with huge exotic trees draped in the brightest of every hue of green. Ivy hung everywhere as if a web were connecting all forms of plant life.
Flowers bloomed everywhere of every color and size. Some bigger than my entire body even. There was no dead vegetation covering the ground. Anywhere plants did not grow the earth was covered in pure white sand.
Beneath my bare feet it felt soft as baby powder. I stood in a very small clearing. Before me there was a small hole dug and set up as a fire pit. In it a fire burning there already, though unlike normal flame of red and yellow it burned a pure white.
Kneeling down before the small fire, I reached to my right where clusters of wooden bowls were laid out, each containing something different. Red powders and white ones, yellow grains and iridescent blue beady looking things. One contained a thick red liquid, Damien’s blood I realized, and the one beside it a thick lock of long human hair that was a dark ashy brown.
While chanting words unknown to me I threw different amounts of all different things in the fire. To my left was a blade, handcrafted, but beautiful. Picking it up, I sliced my left palm deeply and mixed my blood in the bowl with his.
Then taking the knife again I cut a large lock of my own hair and braided it in with the other. I poured some of the bowl of blood over the braid. All the while engrossed with the chant before placing the hair into the fire. At long last, I picked up the bowl, drinking down the rest of the blood myself.
As she looked up to the mirror I ended it there.
The rest didn’t matter. He’d seen her. He’d seen them together. And he’d seen the spell that bound them. What more could possibly matter?
The moment didn’t last any longer than the dreams. His lips left my neck as the dream ended. “Shayla,” he groaned. Laying his head down on my shoulder his hands slipped from mine.
So that was her name. All these years and I never knew.
Every part of me wanted to stay with him in my own greed to just feel him near me. But my mind beat out my heart this time. Soon as he slumped back against the tree away from me, I swung my legs off the left side of the branch and gracefully fell to the earth. Before I had really landed I was off running. Damien didn’t follow.
My senses weren’t at my best as I was watching the ground more than where my feet were taking me. It was easy to avoid the trees but I had never expected to run into Phoenix of all people. Of course he had seen me coming. He was only aiming to stop me.
His hands grasped my arms before I could fall from the sudden impact as my body slammed into his. “Anna!” He seemed surprised, but I somehow doubted it. “What the hell did he do to you?” Phoenix whispered with a flair of anger in his voice that I didn’t understand.
“What? How did you know? He didn’t do anything,” I quickly corrected as I went to pull away but Phoenix kept one hand on my arm.
“You can’t lie to me.” He seemed bewildered by the thought that I had tried.
“Why would you care?” It didn’t come out harshly just painfully sad and curious.
“What makes you think that I do?” His cryptic taunting hit my last nerve. Jerking my arms away I started running again. But it did no good. Phoenix was by far faster than me.
“Stop,” I wouldn’t have if his voice wouldn’t have intimidated me so. Phoenix didn’t seem like the type of man, let alone Vampire, anyone should cross.
“What do you want from me?” I breathed out in annoyance. “I’m leaving okay! What more could you want? I know you want me gone so please don’t make this worse. You’ve won!” My brow furrowed. No matter how angry I tried to look or sound my eyes gave me away. I was learning a new form of pain.
Cautiously his fingers came up, pulling back the wild strands of hair, tucking them behind my ear. “I don’t hate you,” he said with a sigh. “I’m not a complete ass, despite whatever anyone else is telling you. Come. Let’s go for a walk.”
He didn’t touch me again as we walked at an easy human pace. Nor did we tal
k for quite some time. At long last we came upon a fallen tree in the woods. Waiving his hand for me to join him, he sat down against the trunk.
“He loves you, Lianna,” he said it so simply that it sounded almost plausible.
I nodded, pulling my knees to my chest. I believed Damien loved me, but that he loved her more. “I know.”
“Then what’s the problem? The fact that you’re a touch more blood thirsty than they are all used to?” Unable to verbally respond, I shook my head no.
“There’s so very much that you don’t know yet. But you will learn. Just hang in there.” He leaned forward picking up my hand, holding it between both of his own. His eyes focused on mine. I couldn’t say a word. I could only look back. “You can’t give up yet, Lianna.”
His voice sunk so low I thought I imagined it, “He doesn’t deserve you.” As he gazed off into the woods, his mouth pulled into a slight smirk. Following the line of sight, I jumped up, but Phoenix’s hands around mine became an iron grip. He had been holding me here for Damien. Literally.
“Thank you, Phoenix,” Damien spoke as he came through the trees.
Phoenix released me after a soft squeeze. “Of course, brother. Though do watch the fire, Damien, for she does burn,” Phoenix spoke, looking back to me briefly before he disappeared.
“Let me explain,” Damien pleaded before me. He nearly dropped to his knees as he came to stand in front of me.
“You don’t have to. I get it.” If he wasn’t so much faster I would have taken off right then.
“No- you don’t.” Desperation in his eyes, he took my face in his hands. His gaze pleading with me. “You don’t understand anything right now. And neither do I.” My brow arched. Had he lost it? “Just trust me, Anna. Believe me when I say that the only bonds I have with anyone is you.”
“You knew her. You knew her name, not even I knew her name,” I refused to give in so easily despite how badly I wanted to.
“Yes, and I love her just as much now as I did then.” For the life of me I wanted to scream and wipe the grin off his face for hurting me like that. I was letting him go. How could he rub it in my face? With that he kissed me.
His lips brushed mine as he spoke- still kissing me, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies, according to Aristotle. However he didn’t take count for reincarnation.” Damien chuckled almost bitterly. But I wasn’t laughing. Pulling me tighter to him, his eyes begged me to understand.
“What the hell are you trying to do to me?” Breathing out in a rasp, my eyes clinched shut. He still held me tight against him.
“Come on, Anna. You mean to tell me you don’t believe in reincarnation despite the fact you’re a Vampire? You were right, Anna, the spell certainly did bind me to you.”
Dumbfounded, I just stood there clung to him, trying to grasp the straws of my sanity, desperate to understand. “That’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“I’m nothing like her.”
“It’s the only reasonable explanation. I found you, didn’t I? I was unexplainably drawn to you. Before now I couldn’t remember a thing from before I turned. But when you showed me your dreams it brought things back. Just that day. Nothing else yet, but I remember every single thing about that day. When she looked at me I knew for certain whom she was. Who and what she became...” It wasn’t possible. He was wrong. Clawing in desperation at the most unfathomable possibility.
Forcefully, I pushed him away from me, stepping back from his touch, despite my body screaming to feel him near me. “You’re wrong.” I shook my head as I continued to back away from him.
“Anna, how could you doubt it? Why would you even want to believe anything else?” The pain in his eyes mimicked my own.
Swallowing down on the painful thoughts, I took my breath to try and make him see this as I did. “If I choose to believe it then I am choosing to believe I took away your entire choice in the matter of loving me, and possibly somehow am responsible for your turning.” He said nothing as the ideas of either possibility sunk in. “There is still a great amount of pain to side with your beliefs, Damien. Consider those. And consider this, even if they are true; do you really trust in a love that was coerced against your will? Those dreams were always a painful haze. I never fully understood anything about them beyond the death, and the horrible pain. Why do you think they haunted me so much? I can scarcely recall them now, and I have no want to try.”
Despite my want to defend my heart, I hated that I was hurting him so completely. “I don’t need to consider anything!” he begged.
Reaching my hands out, I held both of his within my own. “While I say this, my heart tells me that I am not your Shayla. The dream of your love tells me that it was stronger than any magic, and that she’s not ever going to give up. That she will find you. Most importantly that if I am here when she does, we will come to learn true heartbreak.” My hands fell away.
“Anna, don’t do this. Please don’t.” I couldn’t respond to him. When the heart and mind war with one another it’s anyone’s fight. Desperation stained his words as well as his features. As if exhausted his hands came up to scrub over his face. “Okay. I have waited this long for you I can wait until we find out the truth, or at least until I prove there is no one in existence now or otherwise that I could possibly love more now or ever going forward.” Never had I seen him so flustered. “It’s not like you don’t have an eternity.”
It would be hard, but it was the last hope my heart had. “Okay, I’ll stay for now. Until… Until something sways though, I need time.” His eyes narrowed with confusion. He’d just begged for time, what did I mean? “I need to protect my heart, and in doing so I think yours, too.” Time away from him emotionally. Were we breaking up? Did Vampires date in a way that allowed them to break up the same as mortals? If they did or didn’t- they did now. His hand came up dragging over his face and through his short messy hair. I had hurt him.
We walked slowly at a human pace rather than running as we usually would. Neither of us could speak. There was simply too much for us to say. We needed time to think now. We had actually ended up about five miles off the protected property line. About a mile into our walk Damien stopped in his tracks and grabbed a hold of my arm. As I moved to pull from him, he put his hand over my mouth.
As he pulled his hand away, my brow furrowed. His index finger placing over his lips silently asked me to stay quiet. Still holding my arm, he pulled me closer to him protectively. Deep in concentration, he closed his eyes. It was then that I caught the smell. Woodsy and wild. Stronger than any ordinary animal with a strange bitterness to the odor. “Run,” he whispered as faint as the sound of a feather falling on snow. “Don’t stop until you’re inside the house.”
Jerking me from my reprieve, Damien propelled me forward quickly. We moved fast as a speeding train and silent as a ghost. He didn’t answer my unspoken question until we were in view of the house, “Shifter. Not a friendly one. He had friends coming.”
“How could you tell?” He released my arm finally as we began to slow. Tapping a finger to his head, indicating he heard the Shifter. “What did he want?” Damien didn’t answer.
Questions flooded my mind for him. Did he know who it was? Was it someone with Demetrius? Was he going to tell the others? He didn’t answer me. He didn’t even look at me, acting as if he never heard the thoughts at all.
We never slowed as we entered the house. Lara was the only one sitting down stairs. Her face was twisted out of the ordinary angel like expression into something more disturbed. She didn’t speak to us directly, but I was certain she was saying something to Damien. I could read it in her eyes. She had seen something.
Damien looked to me with a sigh. “Sit down. Everyone else is coming now.” Damien sat in his usual seat. Feeling at a loss, I sat on the floor leaning back into the large couch across from him.
Phoenix entered first through the back doors. He sat on the couch directly beside me. I refused to thi
nk of any questions revolving around that.
Before long the living room was full. Hendrick stood by the stairs. Jezabell occupied the loveseat. “What does she know, Damien?” Jezabell questioned.
“Nothing yet.” Damien had been watching me closely up until then. Upon Jezabell’s question his eyes dropped to the floor. Jezabell’s brow lifted curiously. More silent communication passing between the two. Was he telling her about us? Or the Shifter?
“The Shifter,” Damien said to me, catching my eyes briefly with his answer. I replied with a soft nod.
“He was a tracker. He wasn’t here to attack, but I believe he would have if he had caught one of us alone. There was another one further out. They were hungry,” Damien spoke, his eyes narrowed as he glanced to Phoenix. Glancing up at him, I caught the slight movement of Phoenix shaking his head no.
“Okay can you all quit with the telepathy for a little bit?” I grumbled in obvious frustration.
Phoenix looked down to me with a twisted smirk. “My apologies, Anna. He was just asking me if I told the others anything of our walk in the woods. Which I have not.”
Damien looked down to me before his gaze fell to the floor, slumping down in his chair. He’d aged years in less than an hour, and for the first time in possibly decades truly looked like he’d not slept since mortality. Lara looked back and forth between the three of us. “We have secrets from one another now? What’s going on?” Lara’s eyes moved from a stone silent Damien to rest on me. “What did you do to him?”
Phoenix nudged me with his knee in the shoulder, to urge me to speak. “I thought I was the one owed an explanation?” I grumbled in complaint.
“You first, Anna.” Phoenix nodded encouraging me to explain things. In a rapid accession I began. Unable to look at Damien, my vision focused on my knees as I told them the entire story. I hated this but what choice did I have. I went over the dreams, then the meditation that lead us up to today when Damien saw Shayla. Before I could continue Jezabell interrupted. Her expression overjoyed surprise.