Meeting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 1

by Bridget Essex

  “Why?”

  Her brow furrowed at that, and her head went to the side a little as she gazed down at me.

  “Why do you want to keep me safe?” I asked, blood roaring in my ears, a blush crawling over my skin as I began to wonder if I’d misread everything. Tommie was right. There was nothing that Kane felt for me other than what an employer feels for her employee. Every employer wants to make certain their employee works in a safe environment, don’t they? I felt so stupid as I stood there beneath her gaze, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes as I blinked them back, as I began to lean away from her.

  The ache inside of me grew too tremendous for me to bear.

  But then, Kane shook her head. She stepped forward again, and then her hands over my heart were caught between us as she pressed the length of her body against mine. She was hard, her stomach, her legs, and she was so soft, her breasts, her gaze, as she stared down into me, into every place of me, seeing me wholly and completely as she breathed out, as the sweet scent of all that was Kane Sullivan washed over me, and my body responded to it, leaning toward her, drawn toward her.

  “Rose,” she whispered, and a shiver ran through me that this perfect mouth had said my name, the syllable a deep rumble that moved through her into a softness as she gazed down at me. “I want to keep you safe,” she said softly, quietly, each word perfect and clear like the starlight above us, “because I am compelled to.”

  “Why?” I whispered, every inch of my skin hot, my heart growing within me.

  “Because…” She searched my face carefully, as if she was memorizing every curve of my skin, because, in that moment, I was memorizing hers. “From the very first moment I met you, touched you, there has been something in me that is answered by you,” she whispered as I began to shake against her. “I am compelled by you and your presence, I am drawn to your voice, your shape, everything about you the very essence of one I know completely. But I’ve never met you,” she breathed, searching my face as I stood up on my tiptoes as I softly, tentatively wrapped my arms around her waist. It was an unconscious motion, but suddenly my arms were there and they felt so right on those perfect curves that I ached for touching her, ached deep within my body, a pleasant, delicious ache that seemed to spread through the whole of me.

  “There is something in you, Rose,” she whispered, “something that calls to me.” She turned her face slightly, and she bowed her beautiful neck, but she did not kiss my mouth. She pressed her lips to the skin of my neck, and I shivered under the cool softness of them, shivered as I arched my head back, exposing more of my skin to her as her mouth opened, and she pressed one sweet, salty kiss to my skin. “It calls me gently.” Another kiss. Lower. I breathed out, closed my eyes, felt the press of her body against me, my arms gripping around her arms now as she pressed her open mouth against the skin of the space at the base of my neck, where it meets my chest, that small triangle there. “It calls me strongly,” she whispered, and then she was straightening, her hands at the base of my neck, pulling me forward, and another strongly and tightly at my hips as she guided her own against mine. “You call me, Rose,” she said.

  She kissed me, then.

  Her mouth was soft and cold and warm, all at once, and it was open against me, her lips against mine, breathing me in as she kissed me gently at first. But I wrapped my own arms around her neck, and I drew her down to me, pulled tight and strong against me as she bent her beautiful head and kissed me deeply. She tasted cold and sweet, like peppermint, but there was an unfamiliar taste to her, too, something metallic and almost too-sweet, but I hardly noticed as she pressed against me, as her mouth grew bolder, asking more. I opened up to her as she pressed her chill fingers against my neck, causing a shudder to move through me, a shudder I couldn’t quell.

  The jacket fell from my shoulders, fell with a shush against the sand as we became wrapped in one another’s arms. I wanted her with such a sudden and intense ferocity, I was consumed by it. But I didn’t want to press her, push her. Tommie had told me that Kane had lost her partner…how long ago? Maybe decades or only a few years, but maybe it had happened hundreds of years ago. I did not know how long, but that she was changing how she approached the world for me was a precious thing I wanted and needed to honor. I craved her in such completeness that I almost wept from how much I wanted her, how much I felt for her. Was this possible? It had only been a few days, but somehow, impossibly, I had found myself falling for Kane so quickly and utterly that there was no part of me that was not wholly consumed by her. She consumed me like fire, and nothing of what I had once been remained.

  I felt remade by her.

  I felt undone by her.

  Her hand behind my neck crept to the edge of my dress’s top as she kissed me, a delicate thumb pressing under the material at the neck to the skin there. I breathed out against her as she pressed her thumb’s pad to me, how searing cool it was, but I was so hot beneath her that the cold and hot seemed to merge, somehow. I leaned against her, breathing out.

  And against me, Kane stiffened.

  She pulled back from me, her breath coming quickly, in short gasps, as she gazed questioningly down at me.

  “What is it?” I whispered, trying to keep my voice calm, quiet. It echoed around us, melting with the shush of the waves, far down the beach.

  “I heard…something,” said Kane, then, carefully, glancing back up the path we’d come down. There was nothing there, only the low angle of the path, and—far above us, on the cliff—the shrubs that had been planted there who knew how long ago.

  She glanced down at me again, and her eyes were dark, so dark with longing that all I was responded to it. She wrapped me in her arms, and she bent her head to drink me in again…

  But she paused.

  We both turned. And I knew that we had both seen it.

  Coming down the path toward us was the lone figure of a woman. She walked slowly, carefully, as if she didn’t know the way, her hair streaming out behind her in the starlight could have been any color, but it was full and curly and wavy and she wore a dress that flowed out behind her, too. Though the night was very cold, she wore no coat or sweater, only a dress that had no sleeves, of a gauzy material that would be better worn in a painting than in real life.

  But as she came toward us, a strong, bad feeling began to unfurl in my stomach. Kane stared at this woman as she came closer, as her features became more distinguished, and then the unthinkable happened.

  Kane stepped away from me. She stepped away from me, and she stood there, in the dark, as the woman paused at the very edge of the path, her bare feet an inch from the sand.

  There was something so strange about her. So familiar. I stared at her, at her long hair that somehow, impossibly, I knew was red, at the upturned nose and the smiling mouth and the curvaceous body.

  She held out a single hand. And it was not to me.

  Kane took one step forward, her mouth open, her bright blue eyes filling with tears.

  She whispered one word, and it was that single word that broke my world apart:

  “…Melody?”

  -- Eternal Thief --

  Kane stood squarely on the sand, staring up at this impossible ghost from her past, this beautiful woman who stood above her on the path. My mouth was still warm, still wet from our kiss, and my whole body was alive from that kiss…

  But it seemed, as Kane stared at this woman, that Kane didn’t even know I was here anymore.

  Standing above her, on the path down to the sea, stood a beautiful creature that I shouldn’t have recognized—but did. She had long, flowing red hair, and she wore a gauzy, flimsy dress that was almost suicidal on this chill October night, with the ocean crashing away behind us, its frothing waves pounding against the unrelenting sand. But as the chill wind blew, stirring the sea grasses and moving our clothing about us, this stranger didn’t seem to care about the cold, about her dress, about anything really—except for Kane.

  She held one pretty hand out to K
ane, palm up, long pretty fingers extended toward her, curling slightly as if she beckoned Kane forward, and Kane who watched this woman move with haunted eyes opened her beautiful, full lips and repeated the word, the word that had destroyed me:

  “Melody?” Kane’s voice, usually so smoky and smooth and low came out anguished, pained as she stood there with her legs apart, her hands curled into fists. Though she stood with her usual graceful strength, though she leaned forward powerfully, she was shaking a little, I realized, in shock. Kane looked like she saw a ghost, but the woman before us was too substantial to be anything other than real. She wasn’t transparent.

  She was…real.

  And if this was Melody, the Melody who Tommie had told me about only that afternoon, then it meant that this was the Melody who Kane had loved with all of her heart, the Melody who had supposedly died, though I don’t know how long ago. The Melody that Kane had sworn was her true love and soul mate, what Tommie had called “romantic garbage.”

  But Melody was dead, or—at least—she was supposed to be, had been, and though Tommie hadn’t told me how long ago it was supposed to have happened, she seemed to imply that it had been at least decades, if not longer, since Melody had walked the earth. And though Kane had, since Melody’s death, not even looked at another woman, when I’d arrived at the Sullivan Hotel…well. We both started looking at each other.

  And Kane had been falling in love with me, and I’d been falling in love with her, and now my entire world of possibilities was shattered by this beautiful stranger walking down the path to the beach, a sure smile on her lips as she held both of her hands out to Kane now.

  To take back what had only been hers.

  What had never been mine.

  A single tear fell down Kane’s cheek from her too-blue eyes, eyes that were so often violently blue, icy blue, housing the deep power that thrummed through Kane, the power that had first attracted me to her. But there was nothing but sadness, but confusion on her handsome face now as she stared up at Melody, as that one tear seemed to catch all of the starlight in the sky as it fell slowly over her perfect, pale skin.

  Melody—if that was, in fact, Melody—took the last step down from the path, and she was finally standing on the sand of the beach itself. She was about a head shorter than Kane, but power seemed to radiate from her like heat as she took one last lazy step forward to stand right in front of Kane. She lifted her pale arms around Kane’s waist, and then she was drawing Kane closer. Kane caved to her, pressing herself against Melody’s body, then, as she put her long-fingered hands against Melody’s face, cupping her fine cheeks in her palms, peering down into her eyes, searching them for some sort of answer.

  “But…how?” Kane whispered, searching her face, her own contorted with anguish. “You were dead.” The word came out broken.

  Melody gazed up at her adoringly as my stomach turned, as she shook her head, the red waves of her hair shifting lightly. “We have a lot of catching up to do,” she promised, her voice as soft as a purr, and then one of her hands was at the back of Kane’s neck, and she drew Kane down to her.

  And kissed her.

  Revulsion roared up through me, though I should have felt nothing but happiness for them. Melody, the love of Kane’s life, her soul mate, had supposedly been dead. And now…she obviously wasn’t, because she stood there, pressed against Kane so tightly that there was not a molecule of space between their bodies as their mouths merged together. And it was wonderful for Kane to have her back. I loved Kane--I wanted her to be happy with all of my heart. I should feel happy for her, should be joyful for her.

  But I couldn’t.

  And as I watched (I couldn’t tear my eyes away--I know I should have given them a private moment, but I couldn’t…too much feeling roared through me), Melody’s eyes flicked open, her long black lashes fluttering against her too-pale face. She was positioned in such a way that she could just peer at me over Kane’s shoulder.

  And she did. As she kissed Kane, the woman I had, not a moment earlier, kissed myself, drinking her in as one of the best, gentlest and most beautiful experiences of my life, this new woman now, this new woman who was destroying anything I might have ever had with Kane, stared at me.

  Her eyes flashed and narrowed in the darkness as if she was laughing at me. She looked, in that moment, smug and confidant.

  But there was something else there, something deeper. My stomach turned as she stared at me over Kane’s shoulder, eyes wide in the darkness.

  There was something…wrong there. Something deep inside her that I only saw a shadow of. But it was enough.

  I couldn’t watch anymore. I reached up, brushed my fingers over my own lips, felt a great sob begin to rise in me, and I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t see it. I was too upset to think clearly—how many people have just had their first wonderful kiss with a woman they think could be the one, and then any possibility of that gets snatched away almost immediately after? Probably a very, very small number in the whole history of the world.

  And here I was, lucky enough to be one of them.

  I choked down my small sob, leaving Kane’s coat—the one she’d so generously and chivalrously put about my shoulders only a few short moments before—crumpled on the sand, like all my hopes, and I moved past Melody and Kane, Kane who was too wrapped up in the embrace and kiss to even notice I was leaving.

  I ran the rest of the way up the path. I didn’t look back once. When I was far enough away that I thought they wouldn’t hear, I let out my breath in a great, rushing sob, pressing my hand against the side of the cliff face, almost doubled over with grief.

  It felt like my heart was being squeezed. “Breaking” wasn’t the appropriate word, really.

  It felt more like my heart was being destroyed.

  I wished terrible things in that moment. I wished I’d never come to the Sullivan Hotel. I wished I’d never left my plain, boring life in New Hampshire, the life where nothing exciting ever happened to me, where I could continue to live in the same apartment I’d lived in with my now dead girlfriend, keeping everything from when we were together, from when she was alive, constant so that I could never, ever, ever get hurt. I wished, in short, that I’d never tried.

  It’s because I came to Maine that this had happened. It’s because I tried new things that this happened. It’s because I’d tried to be brave, build a new and different life for myself, that this happened.

  I ran across the gravel parking lot, the sprawling red stone walls of the Sullivan Hotel towering overhead seemed to leer toward me, utterly foreboding and not the least bit welcoming. I’d thought this big red stone house was going to be my new home, full of possibility.

  And all it had brought me was sadness.

  I pushed open the front door, and there, in the large waiting area of the hotel, sat a woman I’d never seen before, lounging on one of the antique velvet-covered couches in the waiting area before the front desk. She wore a short black pencil skirt and cream-colored blouse, and her dark blonde hair was swept up in a messy updo. She looked like she should be behind a desk in a mahogany-colored office, but instead she was sprawled on the couch, the first few buttons on her blouse undone…and there was Tommie, practically straddling her.

  Drinking from two tiny wounds in her neck.

  Tommie’s fangs, exactly like when Kane had given me blood back in order to save me, were elongated and lengthened, and her tongue made little wet sounds as she suckled at the wounds, her eyes almost rolling back in her head as her hands squeezed the woman’s breasts like they were on a bed somewhere hidden away, instead of in an entrance to a hotel.

  Unlike when Mags lured me out to try to drown and drink me dry in the ocean, this seemed like a consensual sort of thing, though it still turned my stomach as I watched the pretty woman writhe beneath Tommie’s administrations, the blood seeming so red beneath the hotel’s lights. Tommie’s chin-length black hair was being held in the woman’s pink-nailed hands, and Tommie’s fedora wa
s on the other side of the couch, as if it’d been tossed off in a hurry.

  I walked past them quickly. But even though Tommie was…occupied, she still noticed.

  “Rose?” She slurred the word as if she was about five or six beers in to the night. I wondered if drinking blood did something for vampires, then realized that was probably a silly question. Of course it probably did something for them, probably made them feel drunk or who-knew-what-else, or why would they ever do it if they didn’t have a reason to? I still had a lot to learn about vampires.

  No.

  Maybe I had nothing more to learn about vampires.

  Maybe I’d leave.

  I walked quickly down the hallway, ignoring Tommie’s calls after me, but then she was trotting after me, buttoning up the last few buttons of her spotless white shirt, adjusting her plum-colored tie so that it was straight, and plunking her much-abused fedora on her head. She was a very clean drinker, it seemed. Her lips were a little redder than usual, and her incisors were descended, but other than that, there wasn’t a speck of blood on her.

  “Hey,” she said, all but dancing in front of me, holding out her hands, her brows furrowed as she frowned down at me. “What the hell’s the matter?”

  “What do you care?” It was a petulant, childish reaction, but I was too upset and too tired to be speaking to anyone right now. I wanted her to go back to that pretty woman and keep drinking and to leave me the hell alone.

  “Rose, what’s the matter?” she repeated, stepping forward, her strong hands closing around my upper arms. I stood there, then, her skin radiating heat through my sweater. Maybe it’s because she’d just fed that she was warm, I thought dully in the back of my mind. Usually, vampire skin was freezing.

  And why did she care?