by Tara Brown
“I'm going to ask for something you won't want to give.” He leaned in. The smell of him made my mouth water. “But you’ll have to.” He almost sang it, taunting me.
“I won’t take Shane’s humanity from him.” I said it matter-of-factly.
He rolled his eyes. “Humanity, shimanity.”
“I need you to take his memories again. He saw me eating today in an alley. Please just do it.”
“Eating?” His eyes widened. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Although, for all the things I had rolling around in my naughty mind, that was sort of uninspired. I imagined you had been unfaithful or something delicious like that.” He glanced at his fat leather watch. “There’s still plenty of time, you know. To be unfaithful.”
My phone vibrated, just in the nick of time.
His phone was already in his hands. “Oh dear,” he muttered, staring at the same message.
“Frig,” I whispered.
“My sentiments exactly.” He offered his hand. “Shall we travel together?”
I was gone before he had the chance to touch me again.
My heels clicked against the cold cement as I tried to walk off the smell of him.
The rainwater made the sound echo between the narrow buildings as a scent hit my nose. I cringed, knowing it was about to get very disturbing once I rounded a corner or two.
The cover of darkness tried to shroud her, but nothing could hide from me, not really.
The cold air was refreshing and helped shake off the feeling of Dorian all over me. I needed to kill him. I felt sick, knowing I’d let him kiss me, again. I didn’t even fight him the way I could have. I never did. I usually just ran.
I forced my thoughts back to the task at hand, unsure if this was another trap. I didn’t even care anymore. I didn’t watch my back, ever. I never checked around me. I'd become the cocky immortal I’d mocked only an hour earlier.
Cocky and overconfident.
Strangers’ deaths meant so little to me now. Some days it meant freedom for them and others it meant food for me. If I was lucky, sometimes it meant revenge. Those were the best.
Either way, I couldn’t care less about the deaths that surrounded me. The only death I seemed to care about was the one I couldn’t have. My own. I would live forever this way. Nothing could kill me.
I rounded a corner as the smell hit me in the face. It wasn’t just blood though. There was sex and lust mixed with the blood.
She was here. She was in the alley with me. Giselle was feeding.
I swallowed and played with the platinum ring around my finger. I twirled it with my thumb. I didn’t want to kill her but I didn’t know what to do about her. She wasn’t getting better.
I didn’t change my gait. I let my heels click against the cold cement. The sound of me filled the alley. It didn’t matter how noisy I was. Giselle wouldn’t hear me. We fed the same, and in the beginning, I too saw nothing but the meal.
In the beginning, I was obsessed with the meal. I didn’t think on that time, if I could help it.
Wind blew past me, warm wind. My skin shivered. “Aleks,” I whispered.
His presence in the alley was all I needed. The smell of him made everything better.
It pushed away any thoughts of Dorian and Shane and reminded my heart who it belonged to. My inconstant heart.
A curse of my family.
Aleks was with the others, lining the rooftop above. I could smell and hear them all. I hoped they would stay away and let me handle this.
She was mine. Mine in fault and responsibility.
My fingers sparked flashes of light that revealed things I wouldn’t normally be able to see. A ladder against an old brick wall. The glint of a silver garbage can. A pair of men's leather dress shoes, twitching on the ground.
In the flashes, I saw her face. It was more beautiful than anything in the world. As my shadow cast over her and the sparks created more light, she turned and snarled at me like a wild animal. Her fingers pulled at him. He was well dressed and wore a ring on his finger. He would be missed by someone. A family perhaps.
She’d done it again. Blood coated her beautiful lips.
“Oliver,” I barely finished whispering his name and he was beside me.
His warm arm brushed against mine. “He’s dying, Aimee. Just do it.” His voice was broken. Like my heart. We all felt sick for what we’d done to her. Saving her never really worked out the way we had intended it to.
He reached a hand for her arm but she snarled again and jerked away. She held the dying man in her arms, much the same as a child holding a doll. Her tragically beautiful face was considerably altered from the face I’d grown to love.
“Giselle, you’re coming.” Oliver took no nonsense from her. He reached in and grabbed her thin arm. He shook her free of the dying man in the suit and she was gone before the man hit the ground. I bent down next to him, wrapped my fingers around his bare wrist, and let go of the control I held so tightly.
The cool air sparkled with life and light, his life and light. I gasped, pulling him in. He filled the tiny void where my hunger sat. I hadn’t eaten this much since Lydia found me and locked me in that room to feed. But Giselle’s leftovers were everywhere and I was the easiest end to their lives.
As his life separated from the body, I let him fall back onto the cold wet concrete. He would be a tragedy of the city. I slipped his watch from his other wrist and removed his wallet from the rumpled pants. His soul took up more space than he would’ve ever realized.
Atop the buildings their eyes watched me in the night sky. I couldn’t stop myself from searching for his. His beautiful white-blue eyes. He didn’t smile or even try to. He knew about Dorian. He knew me better than anyone. He glared and then he was gone.
The other glistening eyes vanished one at a time.
The last face left was Dorian's. He stood where Aleks had been, speaking in a low voice he knew I could hear, “It's done. Now you owe me and I will collect.”
“Fine.” I flinched. “Thanks.”
“He was a mess, you should know that. Wandering the city in uniform, worried and confused. I took him home and told him to go have some fun. I told him to take one of the girls he used to date and have a blast.” He grinned, driving that last one in deeper. “See you later.” His voice was oozing with promise.
“Asshole.” I shivered and winked and tried to ignore the regret that filled me more than my meal.
When I flashed home, Lydia's kitchen table seemed small with the group that was there. Missing Sam and the kids had become a full-time job.
We never recovered.
We never got past this reality.
We coped.
Our silence was heavy and painful.
“Where Is she?” Lorri stormed into the room. Her blood-red boots slapped the floor.
Lydia lifted an eyebrow. “You have no right to do that here, Lorri. You may not take her from my home.”
Lorri scowled. “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. This mess has to be cleaned up.” Her harsh stare landed on me. “You know the rules.”
“I know.” I had no defense beyond my love of her.
I had no defense because of my blame in it all.
Lorri's manicured finger was in my face before I could blink. “You fix this. You have two weeks. Tristan, Ophelia, and Giselle are all running out of time.”
She was gone as I parted my lips to beg.
Lydia's eyes drifted to me.
“I know.” I sighed. “I'll go talk to her.”
“No. Leave her be. She needs to calm down. Annabelle will take care of—”
I winked out before she finished the sentence. I chose home instead of him, instead of Aleks. I didn’t want to lie to him again. I didn’t want to say I hadn’t seen Shane. I didn’t want to explain the smell of Dorian on me.
Most of all, I didn’t want to think about Dorian’s words. He was right and I hated him even more because of it.
Aleks was casting a spell on
me. He always had. Throughout varying stages of our relationship I’d convinced myself it was nothing. I had believed it was better to have him than no one.
I was cruel.
I was my sister, more than I wanted to admit.
I wandered town, gazing in the windows of the houses. The lights inside showed everything.
The love.
The warmth.
The normalcy that existed in a place like this.
All of it cut me like tiny knives.
Not because I was jealous, but because all I saw were lives I wouldn’t ever be part of. I got lost in the clicking of my boots and suddenly I was in front of my house.
The moment felt the same as it had the first week I changed. I had nowhere to go but I didn’t belong here.
Inside the house shadows moved behind the blinds. My father and sister were there, being normal.
She would be complaining about something and trying to con a little more of something out of him. He would resist and then give in, smiling with that sparkle in his eyes.
I needed my dad.
Maybe a visit wouldn’t be so bad.
I walked up to the front lawn just as the door opened.
“Love you too, Daddy.” Alise stepped out the door followed by a group of people. The last person closed the door.
“He seemed better, huh?” His voice cut into me. I couldn’t breathe or flash. I became a lawn ornament, wanting so badly for this to be a normal moment.
They walked down the stairs. Blake and Alise were hand in hand. Behind them Shane and Jessica Morgan came down, holding hands. She had been his girlfriend before Alise and he dated. Before he and I dated. Before. She must be the girl he remembered dating that Dorian told him to go find to have fun with, now that he didn’t remember ever dating me.
I’d convinced Dorian to steal that from him.
I’d convinced myself it was better.
Jessica was better for him. I had always wished to be her when we were younger; popular Jessica Morgan, holding hands with Shane Bagley and watching him play football. Before, when I thought he was the love of my life. Seeing him, I had to convince myself he wasn’t. But the cold, hard truth was that it wasn’t him. It was all of this. He was normal.
And now I was the only one who remembered we had dated. Me and Blake.
“Aimes?” Shane’s voice was so different than it had been only hours before in the alley. Dorian’s magic made it so.
“Oh hey, guys.” I smiled awkwardly. “How’s it going?”
Maybe Jessica was the girl in O's vision.
The girl he would be happy with.
“We’re going out.” Alise pointed to the house. “Careful, he has a cold.” She looked around. “How did you get here?”
“I walked.” What a stupid answer!
Blake laughed. “You and the walking.”
“From college? Dude.” Alise rolled her eyes.
“Of course not.” I scoffed.
“You home for the weekend?” Shane asked me, though his eyes didn’t meet mine. It was like he didn’t want to look at me but didn’t know why.
“Yeah.” I swallowed my feelings, pushing them down was getting easier. I wanted to join the group and go out and be normal. I'd never been normal. Somehow I’d always missed the boat. Or got run over by the friggin’ thing.
“Cool.” Shane knit his brow, still staring at his feet. “That's awesome. You should try to catch up with us all. Jeeze, Aimes, feels like it’s been forever.” His cheeks blushed and I wanted so badly to read into it. The girl I once was reminded the new me that this was the right choice, not being with him was the right thing to do. I had freed him.
“Yeah, ages.” Blake laughed again. I wanted to throw something at him. He was the only one who remembered things the way they were.
“So instead of partying on campus you’re here?” Alise gave me her best fake smile. “Having a nerd weekend with Dad?”
“Something like that.” I laughed. “Jane Austen and WoW.” I glanced at Blake who crossed his arms.
“Yeah, we'll be playing some serious video games at my place. Pew, pew, pew.” His eyes glistened. He knew there would be pew, pew, pew but it would be real. The monsters and the death would be very real.
I was grateful for Blake. He was still my beacon.
“Well, we better go.” Shane pulled on Jessica's hand. “It was nice seeing you, Aimes. See ya 'round.” He dragged her down the sidewalk and kissed her hand.
He used to kiss my hand. We used to do normal things like watch TV or shop for food and kiss in the aisles. It was short-lived but I remember every second.
Blake flashed me a grin, a forced grin. “See ya, Aimes. I’ll call later, kay? A little pew, pew, pew will make you feel better.”
“It will if you stop saying pew, pew, pew.”
“Never.” He chuckled and walked off, leaving me alone again.
They all strolled down the sidewalk while I tried not to cringe when he hugged Jessica and laughed.
The warm wind was there suddenly, lifting my hair into the air. My skin prickled as my panic and pain were gone, taken. He soothed the nerves and filled the gaps where I wished my life were normal. He was my brand of crazy.
His arms wrapped around me and pulled me in. “You smell like Dorian.”
“He did his usual attempts at mocking and scaring me.” I lied, sort of.
He growled. “I know.”
“Can't you beat him up or something?” I turned and forced a grin over my lips.
“No. He’s an archangel. Impossible to beat up. But I could get him very drunk and humiliate him, again.”
“I don’t even want to know,” I grouched. “Wanna meet my dad?” I hadn’t told Aleks of my plan to smooth things over for my dad, but he was an intricate part of the plot.
“If I say ‘more than anything,’ can we not and go home?” He chuckled against my face and kissed my cheek, slowly erasing the pain of the past week.
Giselle was a ravenous psycho.
Shane didn’t recall the smallest of details.
Lorri wanted me to eat Giselle.
O and Trist needed to kill their mom, and Lorri and I still had to kill their dad.
I was not nearly as in love as I should have been with the right person and possibly too in love with the wrong one.
But none of it mattered because of those white-blue eyes and Aleks’ scent all around me.
His eyes narrowed and darted to Shane and the others. “Still miss it all, huh?”
“Yeah.” I glanced to where my sister and the crowd were walking on the sidewalk. “I want us to be like them. I want you to be my boyfriend and take me to a party and be my date and hang with my sister and her friends. I want us to be normal. I want to pay bills and have a house and shop for food and get a cat. It’s not fair. I already have a name for the cat. Shakespeare.” I knew that was what I loved about Shane. I loved that he was real. A real man in the real world. It made me a real girl. Even before I was part of the underworld, I had pictured him in the life I wanted.
“You don’t want that life, trust me.” He kissed my cheek again. “In twenty years when they’re starting to age and their lives are stale, they will be the ones saying it isn’t fair. Trust me, I've been there before.”
He smiled at me under the orange glow from the streetlights. “It doesn’t feel like enough right now. I want us to be normal.”
He lifted my hand and kissed the back of it. “It has to be enough. We can't ever be those things. You're a killer and I'm already dead, for the second time.”
I laughed. It hurt, but he made everything hurt less.
“I miss being normal,” I whispered. I didn’t mean to pine for Shane.
“You were never normal.” He kissed my forehead. “It'll get better. Be grateful he’s safe.”
“Speaking of which, come on.” I stepped away from him and pulled hard on his hand, to get him walking to the front door with me. “You still need to meet my dad.”
“Can't we just get the cat? I like the name Shakespeare,” he groaned.
“We’re doing both.” I dragged him to the front door and opened it. “Dad, I'm home.”
Chapter 2
Captive
Ophelia
Oliver’s fingers traced their way up and down my arm. I wanted to be somewhere alone with him, instead of on babysitting duty. We were becoming closer in all the ways guys and girls got closer. He kissed me in the shadows of all the creepy places we went. He confessed his love for me more than he said anything else.
And I believed him.
It was crazy.
But it was also right.
There was no denying the contentment I felt being with him.
But Giselle was feral and he had made her that way.
It was weird to see. She was the most beautiful girl in the world, and yet she was completely taken by her hunger. She could be seducing every guy in the world and living it large. Instead, her dark eyes darted around the small room like a nervous crackhead.
She moaned from the hunger and curled into a ball.
I glanced up and whispered, “Why is it so bad for her? Are all succubi this brutal?”
“No,” he whispered back. “She still has the blood lust from being a vampire. She remembers what it was like to eat blood. She’s been biting the people she’s sucking dry. So, she’s still getting blood from them while taking their essence. Being a succubus is intense enough on its own. The transformation can be brutal but she has withdrawal and the change going on.”
“Do you share feelings with her the way Dorian and Aimee do?” Their impossible connection was so obvious I could taste it in the air when I was around them.
“Yeah.” Oliver didn’t take his eyes off her.
He stared at her and I got lost in him.
He was so beautiful, even in the dark. I couldn’t help but think about him in a way that I shouldn’t, considering the age difference. But he had me mesmerized.
“Oliver, we have a situation,” someone interrupted our silence.
We both lifted our heads to find Marcus standing in the light of the open door. He watched us with his dark eyes glowing. Clearly, he’d just eaten.