“Kallias was right,” Erik argued. “I did know what would happen.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rose asked curiously.
“I did warn you that it was dangerous, but…I should have told you everything,” he sighed. “I’m careless. Kallias knows that, but…you didn’t.”
“I’m not angry at you,” Rose assured him. “You did what I asked.”
“I assumed you would tell me when the headache started. I would have ended it right then,” Erik said, scowling at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t realize that it was related,” she began.
“Still…” he prompted.
“I thought I could ignore the pain. I always do,” she said.
He stared at her. “Don’t. Pain always means something.”
Rose stared back at him, stunned by his sudden seriousness. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Kallias’s tall, dark form. He smiled ever-so-slightly at her as he strode into the kitchen, immediately walking over to the cupboard to grab several plates. He dropped them on the counter and leaned casually over the counter, his weight on his forearms, as he watched her. His hair hung around his face, still soaked from the shower, and he wore a pair of black jeans that looked identical to the other sixteen pairs of black jeans he owned and a black button-down shirt with the first four buttons unbuttoned and the cuffs rolled up to his elbows.
Erik grinned at him. “You seem to be in a better mood today.”
Kallias shrugged. “For now.”
Erik laughed as he raked the eggs into a plate. “Bacon?” he asked Kallias.
Kallias pushed away from the counter. “Sure, I’ll make it,” he said as he walked over to the refrigerator. He opened it and pulled out a pack of bacon.
Erik slid a plate of eggs toward Rose and then took his own plate to the other side of the counter. He sat across from her. “Toss me a beer,” he told Kallias.
“Toss a glass bottle. Yeah, that sounds smart,” she muttered sarcastically.
But then, Kallias did toss the glass bottle across the room, and Erik caught it without even looking up from his food. Rose just scowled at them.
“Rose called me a slut,” Erik bragged as he salted his food.
Kallias snorted, “I doubt she meant for you to take it as a compliment.”
“I didn’t,” she muttered, narrowing her eyes at the blonde vampire.
Erik grinned as he sprinkled pepper on his eggs. “It made my night.”
Rose continued to glare at him as she sipped her coffee. As she shifted her gaze away from him, she nearly spat out her coffee as she saw Emma suddenly sitting directly across from her, studying her with her small, curious, hazel eyes.
“I’m seriously going to tie bells around all of your necks,” Rose muttered.
“What size clothing do you wear?” Emma asked excitedly.
Rose frowned at the strange question. “Uh…why do you want to know?”
Emma smiled brightly. “I want to get you a dress while I’m out tonight.”
“A dress?” Rose repeated, trying to hide her disgust.
“I promise not to get any blood on it,” Emma said.
“Yes, and I appreciate that…” Rose sighed as she set her coffee cup down. “But here’s the thing. I don’t wear dresses. Ever. I kind of hate them.”
“But,” Emma pouted, “dresses are pretty. And they make sex easier.”
“That’s true,” Erik commented without even looking up from his food.
“I’m not really the pretty type,” Rose tried to explain. She glanced down at her plaid pajamas. “I have other clothes. I promise. This isn’t my only outfit.”
“I think you would look sexy in a dress,” Emma said. She flashed a mischievous smile at Kallias, but Kallias didn’t seem to notice. His full attention was on the bacon that he was cooking. “Don’t you, Kallias?” Emma asked.
“She looks beautiful in everything she wears,” he replied automatically.
Everyone in the room suddenly turned to gape at Kallias, stunned by the uncharacteristic statement. Erik even put down his fork and looked up from his food for the first time since he’d fixed it. Kallias seemed to realize what he said a little too late. He looked up at them, wincing at their surprised expressions.
“I just realized that I forgot my weapons,” Kallias muttered.
As Kallias disappeared from the room, Erik grinned and scoffed, “He didn’t forget his weapons. Kallias never goes anywhere without his weapons.”
“Has he ever called anyone beautiful before?” Emma asked Erik.
“I didn’t even realize beautiful was part of his vocabulary,” Erik laughed.
Rose remained silent, still shocked by the unexpected compliment. No one had ever called her beautiful before, and she certainly had never expected Kallias to be the first one to do it. When she finally tore her gaze from the empty doorway, she realized that Erik was watching her with an amused smirk.
He mouthed, “Told you so,” so that only she would notice.
—
A high-pitched grating sound echoed through the hallway, originating from Kallias’s room. Rose frowned and cracked the door. She peeked inside.
Kallias sat on the edge of his bed, sharpening his dagger on a heavy, gray whetstone. A smile curved at his lips. “Are you really trying to spy on a vampire?”
Rose pulled the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside the cool, dark room. “I had to make sure you weren’t naked or anything,” she teased.
He glanced down at his fully dressed state with a smirk. “Disappointed?”
“No,” she scoffed. She crossed the room and sat next to him. Her pajama-clad thigh brushed his jean-clad thigh. “Why did you call me beautiful?”
He sighed, “Do you have to overcomplicate everything?”
“I’m not overcomplicating it,” she argued. “I asked a simple question.”
“There is nothing simple about it,” he muttered. He set the dagger aside.
Kallias stood and walked over to his closet. He pulled open the door and grabbed his black leather jacket from the sea of black clothing inside the closet.
“Wow. You have such a colorful wardrobe,” Rose said sarcastically.
Kallias shrugged on his leather jacket, one corner of his lips tilting upward into a half-smile. He returned to her and surprised her by suddenly leaning over her, his knee resting on the empty space of the bed between her legs, and his palms resting on the mattress on each side of her hips, holding his weight. “Well, it would be difficult to sneak around at night in bright-colored clothing.”
She swallowed and leaned back so that their bodies didn’t touch. “Oh, I know. It’s like that time I wore neon yellow to rob a bank,” she muttered jokingly.
Kallias chuckled at her and rocked back onto his feet, towering over her again. “Hey, what ever happened to that dagger that I loaned you?” he asked.
She sighed, “See, here’s the thing. I found out the hard way that when you throw a dagger over the side of a cliff, it is nearly impossible to retrieve it.”
He snorted, “I’d be worried if we had been around any cliffs recently.”
Rose shrugged. “Hey, you never know. Maybe Erik dangled me off the edge of a cliff last night. He’s not really the best babysitter, you know.”
Kallias sighed, “No one is babysitting you. I just need to know someone is here to protect you.” He looked away. “I would be a nervous wreck if I didn’t.”
She stared at him. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might feel the same way about you being out there all alone? Don’t you think I worry about you, too?”
His lips curved downward into a deep scowl. “You shouldn’t.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. Because you’re a vampire?”
“Because I am long past my expiration date,” he corrected.
Her eyes narrowed. A spark of fear and anger raced through her veins at the nonchalant way that he viewed his own death. She
stood, her heart racing. “Do you think that makes the possibility of you dying any easier for me to handle?” she snapped, her voice cracking. “If something happened to you…I…”
His brows furrowed, and sympathetic pain flashed in his eyes. He stepped toward her, and his hands seemed to hang suspended in the air for a moment, as if he were going to pull her into his arms. But then, he shook his head in frustration and dropped his hands to his side, clenching his fists. “It shouldn’t matter to you,” he said angrily. “A week ago, I wasn’t even in your life.”
“But now, you are,” Rose said quietly, “and you always will be.”
For a moment, Kallias just stared at her, his expression blank. Then, slowly, the shock in his eyes darkened, morphing into anger. “Where do you think this is headed, Rose? Do you really think that we will be together after all of this is over? After Theron is dead, I am taking you back to your home, and you will never see me again. You will move on with your life, and I won’t be part of it.”
Her eyes burned. “That’s not what you want.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Kallias snarled.
“Yes, it does!” Rose snapped. “Dang it, Kallias. Stop doing this!”
“Stop doing what?” he asked.
“Trying to protect me from every little thing,” she said. “I never asked to be saved, okay? I don’t need you to save me from heartbreak. I can handle it. Maybe some women want a guy in shining armor who will treat them like a delicate little princess. But do you know what I want? I want someone who cares about me and accepts me. That’s all. That’s enough for me. Because that’s real.”
“I do,” he said. “But I’m not the person who should be with you.”
“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” she snapped. “You’re trying to protect me from yourself, from getting hurt. But that’s not your job. You don’t get to decide who should or shouldn’t be with me. That’s my decision, not yours.”
“Don’t you get it, Rose?” he said. “I can never give you what you want.”
“Oh,” Rose said. “Enlighten me, Oh-Great-Wise-One. What do I want?”
“What everyone wants,” he sighed. “Someone to grow old with you, to marry you, to have a normal life with you. Someone who can give you children.”
“Maybe I don’t want any of that,” she suggested.
He raised an eyebrow at that. “Bullshit.”
“Fine. Maybe I don’t want any of that with anyone else,” she amended. She shrugged sadly. “If you just took the time to read my mind—which you are perfectly capable of doing, by the way—instead of just assuming that you know what every human on the planet wants, you would know that what I want is you.”
Pain burned in his eyes. “Rose… There are people out there who are better for you. Humans. Normal people. People who aren’t damaged like I am.”
“Everyone is damaged! Everyone has baggage!” Rose argued. “Do you honestly think that I’m not damaged after all of the crap that I’ve been through? Normal people—as you call them—wouldn’t want to deal with my damage. But you… You accept it, and I accept yours. That is what love is. It’s not about shopping for the best deal. It is about finding someone who accepts your baggage and wants to help you carry it. I accept you, Kallias. Nothing else matters.”
“It does matter,” Kallias insisted. “Years from now, it will matter.”
She rolled her eyes. “And you call me stubborn.”
He stepped closer to her, leaning down so that his dark, flashing brown eyes were level with her gaze. “This isn’t some fantasy story where the princess falls in love with the monster, and then, the monster magically becomes human again, and they live happily ever after. That doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Okay, if you’re talking about Beauty and the Beast, Beauty was actually the merchant’s daughter, not a princess,” Rose corrected, “well, according to the book that was written in 1756 by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, anyway.”
Kallias stared at her, his lips twitching, as if he were barely resisting the urge to laugh. Then, he sighed, his expression falling serious again, and he walked over to the bed. He snatched up his dagger and started walking toward the door.
“Kallias?” she called before he could leave the room.
He paused at the door and turned back toward her. “Yes?”
“You are a vampire,” she said. “If this isn’t a fantasy story, what is it?”
He watched her, his eyes hardening with cold indifference. “It’s a horror story,” he answered. “And in horror stories, the monsters eat the humans.”
—
Rose collapsed on the sofa, next to Erik. Geoffrey and Emma sat on the sofa across from them, Emma sitting in Geoffrey’s lap as they watched television.
“Do antidepressants work on vampires?” Rose asked Erik grumpily. “Because I think your friend, Mr. Doom-and-Gloom, needs some.”
“Human medication does not affect vampires,” Geoffrey answered absently as he watched the movie that played on the television. “Our metabolisms work too rapidly. Blood is the only thing that our bodies can hold onto.”
“You can always count on Geoff to give you a serious answer, even when you’re joking,” Erik muttered. He turned toward Rose. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Rose sighed. “Do you know where he went?”
“Mr. Doom-and-Gloom?” Erik asked with a grin. “He’s in the kitchen.”
Rose stood up and dusted off her pants. “Wish me luck.”
Erik laughed, “Good luck.”
When Rose reached the kitchen, she found Kallias standing in front of the sink, washing an iron skillet, his back turned to her. He didn’t move or flinch. But she knew that he knew that she was standing behind him. He always knew.
“I came to return your dagger,” she said, her voice sharp, as she held the sheathed dagger out in front of her, “since I’m just going to get eaten anyway.”
Kallias still didn’t turn toward her, but his lips curved into a small smile at her sassy remark. He managed to hide the smile before he turned to face her. He wiped off his hands on a small, white hand towel. “I had hoped you would.”
She bristled at that. She marched over to him and shoved the sheathed dagger into his wet hands. “Here,” she snapped. “Your precious dagger.”
“It’s not very precious,” he said. “It is actually my most inexpensive one.”
She glared at him. “Fine. Your cheap dagger that’s so important to you.”
“Rose,” he called as she turned to leave. He laughed, “Wait a minute.”
She turned back toward him and crossed her arms. “What is it?”
Kallias reached behind him and grabbed something from the counter. He walked over to her, finally allowing himself to smile. He held out a long, thin object, wrapped sloppily in brown packaging paper. “I wanted to give you this.”
Rose stared down at the horrendously wrapped package. “What is that?”
Kallias glanced down at it. “We didn’t have wrapping paper when I was human. I don’t know how it works yet. I think it turned out okay, though.”
“Not the paper,” she corrected. “What is the thing inside the paper?”
“Uh,” he stammered, raking his fingers through his hair. “Just open it.”
Rose hesitantly took the package from him and gently pulled at the paper. The silver gleamed in the low light of the kitchen as she removed the paper.
“Flowers would have made more sense, I guess,” he sighed. “Or jewelry? Do humans still give each other jewelry? I realize that this is a ridiculous gift…”
“Ridiculous?” she scoffed, tracing the design with her finger. “I love it.”
He smiled. “I never use it, and I… I thought about you when I saw it.”
She stared at the long, beautifully engraved dagger. “Is that an owl?”
He reached out, his finger tracing the design engraved into the handle and sheath of the
dagger. “Yes. It’s Athena’s owl, actually. The goddess of…”
“Wisdom and war,” she finished. “Yeah, I know my Greek mythology.”
“Right. Of course you do,” he sighed. He swallowed uneasily. “Athena’s owl was a symbol of wisdom and strength. And, Rose, you are the wisest and strongest person that I have ever met. So, I just… I wanted you to have it.”
Rose stared up at him, her eyes wide. He’d said that so easily, as if it were just a matter of fact. “You are confusing me with these compliments today,” she said with a small smile, “especially after what you said in your bedroom…”
“I’m sorry,” he interrupted. He left it at that. He didn’t elaborate.
Rose understood. He was sorry for what he said, but he still felt the same.
“The dagger is carved from silver, so it won’t rust in the same way that an iron dagger would,” he said quietly. “It might tarnish after a while, but I can give you some polish for that. I sharpened it, so be careful with the blade.”
She smiled and carefully pulled the dagger out of the silver sheath, noticing how clearly her reflection appeared on the blade. She traced the design of the handle. “I never realized a dagger could be this beautiful,” she breathed.
“The blacksmith that made it wanted to be an artist,” he said.
“He was an artist,” Rose murmured.
Kallias smiled. “So, does this mean that you like it?”
“Depends,” she said with a cute smile. “Do I get to keep it?”
He snorted, “Of course you do. Why do you think I wrapped it?”
“I’m not sure that qualified as wrapping, Kallias,” she said playfully.
He scowled at her. “I tried my best,” he pouted. “I have big fingers.”
She laughed. “I thought you never gave away your weapons,” she teased.
He swallowed uneasily. “I don’t,” he muttered, “usually.”
Rose smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I love it.”
“You don’t have to say that,” he sighed. “A human man would have gotten you flowers or something. I should have just gotten you flowers.”
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 62