“Audrey drove down to help me plan the funeral. She’d…had experience with that,” she said, leaning back against the leather seat, staring at the trees as they blurred past. “Audrey and I… We were the only ones who even attended.”
His jaw tightened. “What about your father?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know who he is.”
“You never wanted to know?” he asked curiously.
She laughed, a short, bitter laugh. “My mom slept with drug dealers when she wanted more drugs. Have you ever met a drug dealer? They’re not exactly the kind of people you want to call ‘Dad.’ Well, not in my experience, anyway.”
His eyes narrowed at that last part. “Did one of them hurt you?”
She straightened in her seat. “So,” she said, flashing a fake smile at him as she changed the subject, “am I allowed to know where we’re going now?”
He continued to scowl at her, but he didn’t press the issue. He knew what it was like to not want to talk about the past. “My home,” he answered.
“Oh,” she said. “Please tell me you don’t live in a cemetery.”
He snorted. “I live in a normal house, just like a human,” he assured her. Then, he frowned and corrected himself, “Well, it’s an almost normal house.”
“Yeah,” she said, grimacing, “it’s the almost part that worries me.”
He grinned. “If it makes you feel any better, there are nowhere near as many corpses and tombstones in my house as there are in a cemetery.”
She frowned worriedly at him. “I hope you’re joking.”
Kallias leaned forward and glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “I think, as long as I drive fast enough, I can have us there by tomorrow night.”
Her eyes widened. “Tomorrow night? Where do you live?”
“Just outside of New York City,” he answered.
She blinked. “Are you kidding me? That’s a long drive!”
“I know,” he said, frowning. “I’ve driven it.”
“What will happen when the sun rises?” she sputtered.
“You know, humans have invented these great places where you can sleep while you’re traveling,” Kallias said slowly. “They’re called hotels.”
Rose glared at him. “I am not sleeping in a hotel room with you.”
A mischievous smirk tugged at his lips, a smirk that Rose had come to recognize as a warning that he was about to say something flirty and extremely inappropriate. “Well, we don’t have to sleep, if you have something else in mind.”
Yep, just as she predicted.
She rolled her eyes and leaned toward him, resting her arm on the leather console. “I wouldn’t have sex with you if you were the last person on earth.”
His smirk didn’t falter. “Who said anything about sex?” he teased, faking surprise. “Rose, I never would have guessed that you have such a dirty mind.”
She gaped at him. “I don’t! I wasn’t thinking about that! You said…” she trailed off, her cheeks flushing. “You set me up for that,” she complained.
He laughed loudly, obviously having fun at her expense. “I did.”
She watched him laugh, transfixed by the uncharacteristic smile on his face. He looked genuinely happy, for once. The lights from passing cars and streetlights danced across his face, and she blinked as she noticed his fangs flash in the darkness. “You hid your fangs from me when I thought you were human.”
His smile faded. “If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll keep hiding them.”
“It doesn’t,” she told him.
He frowned at her in surprise. “It doesn’t?”
“I’d rather you not hide things from me,” Rose said.
A strange look passed over his face. A look that seemed…guilty, Rose thought. But he quickly hid it, his lips curving into a slight smile. “Okay.”
“Is it difficult to hide them?” she asked curiously.
“It was, at first,” Kallias said, “but not anymore.”
She watched as he shifted lanes to pass another car that, unlike them, was moving at a reasonable speed. “Can I ask you something?” she asked nervously.
He sighed, “I assume you will anyway.”
She pursed her lips. “That vampire… He said Theron killed your wife.”
His entire body seemed to suddenly tighten: his jaw, his shoulders, his grip on the steering wheel. “That’s not a question,” he said, his voice strained.
“Her name,” she said, swallowing uneasily. “Was it Phoebe?”
At the mention of her name, his grip around the steering wheel tightened so much that his knuckles turned white. “I don’t want to talk about this, Rose.”
“It was,” she realized, her gut sinking with guilt. “That’s why Theron said what he did. He wanted to hurt you. And then, I made that comment about her. No wonder you reacted the way you did.” Her voice cracked, and when she turned to look at him, her blue eyes were bright and watery. “I feel horrible.”
His brows furrowed. “I overreacted. It just…surprised me. That’s all.”
“I hurt you,” she argued shamefully, “by mentioning her.”
His eyes softened. “You didn’t know.”
“I’m normally more considerate than that,” she muttered.
“Stop,” he said, looking at her. “Stop feeling guilty. Stop apologizing.”
She stared at him. “Were you human when you were married to her?”
He looked back at the road. “Obviously,” he answered, his tone acidic. “It’s not like I could marry someone as a vampire. Legally, I don’t even exist.”
She nodded. “Theron was the one who murdered you, too, wasn’t he?”
His jaw clenched. “I said that I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Yeah. Sorry,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Did you have children?”
He glared at her. “What part of this are you not understanding?”
“I just want to know more about you,” she explained. “We’re going to be working together, or whatever you want to call it. I want to understand you.”
“How could you possibly understand me?” Kallias scoffed.
“I can try,” Rose said softly. “Anyone can try.”
He sighed, “No. We didn’t have children.”
“Why not?” she asked curiously. “I assume you were married long enough to have kids. You were twenty-six years old when you died, and during that time period, I think the average age for men to marry was around nineteen or twenty years old. And fourteen or fifteen years old for women. Right?”
“I was twenty when we married,” he agreed, “and Phoebe was sixteen.”
She nodded. “Did you not want kids?”
He sighed. “Phoebe became pregnant twice, but she…miscarried.”
“I’m sorry,” she said sympathetically.
“Don’t be,” he said. “It was better that we never had children. If they’d been born, I can only imagine what Theron would have done to them.”
She felt sick. “You think he would’ve hurt a child?”
“I think Theron will hurt anyone he gets his hands on,” he answered.
She exhaled shakily. She watched him for a moment, relieved to see that his muscles seemed to be gradually relaxing. “It’s hard to imagine you married.”
His lips quirked up at that. “Why? Because I’m an ass?”
“Well, there is that,” she agreed playfully. “But it’s more that kissing-means-nothing-and-I-don’t-believe-in-love-or-anything-good attitude you have.”
“Marriage was more about convenience back then,” he pointed out.
“You didn’t love her?” she asked, frowning.
He was quiet for a while. “Of course I loved her,” he said finally.
She nodded in understanding. “So this attitude came later?”
He sighed, “I never said that I didn’t believe in love.”
“Do you?” she asked curiously.
“I believe it exists,” Kallia
s admitted. “It’s just not worth the pain.”
“What is worth it, if not love?” she said. “Love makes life worth living.”
He rolled his eyes at her idealistic attitude. “Nothing makes life worth living,” he scoffed. “Every day we wake up in this godforsaken world is a curse.”
She blinked at the harshness. “Well, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?”
Kallias scowled. “I’m of the darkness. Sunshine kills me.”
Rose stared at him blankly. “It was an expression,” she muttered. “Have you ever considered the fact that maybe a little optimism might help you? If you’re always looking at the bad in everything, you’ll never see the good.”
“Optimism is foolish. It sets you up for disappointment and pain,” he argued. “The higher you set your expectations, the further you fall.”
“At least then, you’d get off the ground,” she muttered under her breath.
“That’s easy to say when you’ve never been in love before,” he said.
She glanced at him, her eyes narrowing. “Maybe I haven’t experienced romantic love, but I do love people. I love my brother. I love Audrey. I love Owen. I even loved my mom, despite all the ways she hurt me. I know what it’s like to give part of your heart to people. And I also know what it’s like to have that piece of your heart ripped apart. I think that even darkest parts of love are worth it.”
“I disagree,” he stated simply, offering no further explanation.
“You can’t tell me that if you had the chance to go back and live your human years all over again, you’d choose to never love your wife at all,” she said.
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Kallias replied coldly.
Rose fell silent, stunned by his response. She’d never known of anyone to feel that way. Even the people she’d known who had lost a spouse or a lover had always said they’d go back and fall in love all over again, if they could. The kind of pain she saw in his expression, that she heard in his voice…that wasn’t the kind of pain that death causes. “She must have really hurt you,” she realized.
He blinked in surprise. He didn’t understand how she could read him so easily. She wasn’t even a telepath. “I’m finished with this conversation,” he said.
Rose nodded, finally giving up. Uncomfortable with the sudden tense silence, she leaned forward and switched on the radio. Her eyebrows lifted as a familiar contemporary rock song filled the car. “You listen to modern music?”
“Just because I was born thousands of years ago, doesn’t mean I’ve been living under a rock all of this time,” he grumbled. “I like many types of music.”
“Of course you do,” she said, barely holding back laughter. “It’s just…this isn’t the type of music I expected a big, bad vampire to be listening to.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re mocking me.”
“Just a little,” she teased, holding her finger and thumb an inch apart.
“So, what kind of music did you expect a vampire to listen to?” he asked.
“Have you ever seen a horror movie?” she asked excitedly. “I watch them sometimes with Owen, especially if they’re based on a book that I’ve read, and it’s really stereotypical for the bad guys to listen to these peaceful opera songs.”
He laughed, “You expected me to listen to opera?”
“If you were really as big and bad as you think you are,” she teased, leaning close enough for him to smell the honey in her hair, “you’d listen to opera.”
He laughed at her, amused by her playfulness. Not willing to let her win, he grinned and countered, “It doesn’t get much bigger than me, sweetheart.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re disgusting,” she said, nearly laughing as she said the words. She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, on a less weird note, I have a question. Do vampires…umm…well…use the bathroom…like humans?”
His eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “You think that is less weird?”
She frowned. “Right. Yeah, I didn’t really think that through before I said it,” she muttered under her breath. She looked at him. “Anyway, do you?”
He suppressed a laugh. “Why?”
“I’m just a little worried that you might be expecting to make this drive without bathroom breaks, and well,” Rose explained, blushing, “we’ve been in a building without a bathroom all day, and I’ve kind of had to pee for hours.”
Kallias snorted, “I’ll take the next exit.”
—
Late into the night, Rose’s stomach began to grumble in hunger.
Kallias glanced at her. “What time do humans usually eat breakfast?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Usually before midnight.”
He glanced at the clock on the dashboard, his eyes widening. “Shit. Why didn’t you say something?” he snapped as he suddenly swerved into the outside lane to look for an exit. “I didn’t save your life from Theron just to let you starve!”
As his maniacal driving jolted her in her seat, she found herself once again extremely grateful for the seat belt strap that held her securely in her seat. “Relax,” she muttered. “I won’t die after one day without eating. If I could, I would have died a long time ago.” She grimaced as she let that last part slip.
Kallias glanced at her. “When you were a child?” he remembered.
“I’m just going to blame my talkativeness on the lack of coffee,” she grumbled, irritated that she’d blurted something so awkward and personal. “I’ve usually had about fourteen cups of espresso by this time of the night.”
“How long?” he asked, a hint of anger in his voice.
She frowned. “How long did I go without eating?” she asked. She shifted uneasily. She’d never even discussed this with Audrey. Only one living person knew about her childhood, and he was in prison. “Only a few days, usually.”
“Usually?” he repeated in a low growl.
She glanced up at him, startled by the obvious anger in his voice.
His grip tightened around the steering wheel. “This happened often?”
She watched him, confused by how angry that made him. “Did you have drugs in your culture? Do you have any idea what they can do to people?”
“Of course we had drugs,” he muttered. “We drank wine regularly. Some became addicted to that. We had various types of opiates. The Lotus flower.”
“Oh, of course,” she said, smiling. “The Lotus. From the Odyssey.”
He looked at her. “What is your point?”
She shrugged. “My point is: addiction can change people. It can take everything that someone is and leave just a hollow shell, like it did to my mother.”
“That’s not an excuse,” he said. “You should’ve been fed and protected.”
Her lips curved slightly into a small, sad smile. “My brother did that, sometimes. Most of the time, he was a typical big brother, picking on me and giving me a hard time, but sometimes, he acted beyond his age. When my stomach would start to hurt, and I’d start to cry, he would steal food for us from the gas station. It was usually candy. He was still a little boy, after all,” she said, her eyes softening at the memory. “But he took care of me, even when he had to break the law to do it. I don’t know what would’ve happened, if I hadn’t had him.”
Kallias gazed at her as he stopped at a traffic light. “You’re fond of him.”
“Sure. When he’s not getting himself locked up in prison,” she muttered.
“You’re angry at him for getting arrested,” he observed.
It hadn’t been a question or even an accusation. It was simply an observation. Rose frowned at him. “No, I’m not. It’s his life he ruined, not mine.”
“But he left you alone,” Kallias said. “He was your only family.”
“He was arrested,” Rose argued. “He didn’t leave by choice.”
“You’re reasoning with me,” he said. “Emotions don’t listen to reason.”
She stared at him, unnerved by the way he seemed t
o see right through her. “I’m not saying there are good reasons to break the law,” she sighed, “but there are better reasons, I think. Getting food so that we didn’t starve was one thing. But getting involved with gangs and drugs? That was just stupid. He should have known better. I know it’s terrible to be angry at him right now, but…”
“It’s not terrible,” he interrupted. “It just means you care about him.”
She sighed, “I appreciate your attempt to make me feel better, but…”
“I had a little sister,” Kallias admitted suddenly.
She blinked, surprised that he’d actually told her something. “You did?”
“I had several siblings, actually, but I hated most of them,” he admitted unapologetically. “But my sister was so young and so kind. I took care of her and protected her from my father.” His jaw tightened as he mentioned his father.
“From your father?” she repeated, frowning.
He glanced at her but chose to ignore the question. “We cremated the dead in Athens, back when I was human. We’d place the ashes in a decorated urn. Sometimes, the family would set candles around the urn and build a kind of shrine in their home to honor the dead. But after my death, there was no body to cremate. Most of my family didn’t give a shit about honoring me, but my baby sister, on the other hand, did. She didn’t have an urn, but she set up a small shrine in her courtyard to honor me, and every few days, she would tear it down.”
She scowled at that. “Why would she tear it down?”
He smiled. “My sister had a temper. And she was angry at me.”
“For dying?” Rose asked incredulously.
He shrugged. “I had always been there for her, and then, I wasn’t.”
“But it wasn’t your fault,” she argued.
“Like I said, emotions don’t listen to reason,” he said.
“Why didn’t you go to her, and show her that you were alive?” she asked.
“It would have been too dangerous, both for her and for me,” he explained. “I couldn’t control my hunger. I couldn’t get near anyone without wanting to…” He sucked in a harsh breath, shuddering at the memory. “I could have killed her, if I’d gotten too close. Besides, I was a monster, and the moment she saw me alive, she would’ve known. Death would have been a happier ending.”
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 33