Trusting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 2

by Bridget Essex

  I was angry that they’d come after Gwen and I, I was angry that Gwen had gotten so hurt. I was angry that if anything happened to me, it would probably also happen to my best friend, who absolutely, positively deserved none of this. I should have told her that we worked for vampires, I should have told her everything. But I hadn’t, and now she was going to die. We both were.

  I took another deep breath and went a few more feet before the sound of breaking branches had grown so strong that I had to look.

  There were two figures standing in the mist on the edge of the woods. They darted into the shadows when I looked at them, but I’d seen them.

  They were so close when they darted away. They could have lunged forward and grabbed both of us. But they didn’t.

  I took a deep breath and strayed even further into the grasses, toward a deer path on the edge of the cliff face. Far, far, far down below me, the roll and hiss of the surf hitting the beach was a soothing lull. The tide was coming in. Overhead, the moon swung low, and stars were beginning to pop out of the black-blue of the sky. It was, by all accounts, an utterly beautiful autumn night.

  I didn’t want to die.

  I didn’t want Gwen to die.

  Not here. Not like this. Not now.

  And not because of me.

  A sob stuck in my throat, but I kept going, kept dragging Gwen along. She’d gone unconscious now, and she was leaning entirely on my shoulder, her feet dragging along behind us. I gripped her around the waist with such force that I was probably breaking a rib, but if I let even a little tension on my arm go now, I’d drop her entirely. I pushed her a little up further on my shoulder, trying to get her to drape over my shoulder and back, wondering if it’d be easier to carry her like that.

  And out of the mist to our left again came two shadows, darting forward.

  I stumbled to the right—far closer to the cliff face than I ever wanted to go. I took a deep breath, spreading my feet wide, and trying to take a crouching stance as I held Gwen tightly. Being this close to the edge was playing tricks with my head. Far down below, the ocean pounded the land in a constant rhythm that never stopped, the sound rushing like my blood through my body.

  The two figures disappeared, and I glanced to my right. I was a single foot away from the edge.

  It was then that I realized what they were trying to do.

  They were herding us off the cliff face.

  I took a deep breath as panic rolled through me, just like the adrenaline. They didn’t want to drain us dry—they wanted us to fall to our deaths. But why? To make it look like an accident?

  To not break the treaty? Technically?

  I hated them so much in that moment. Why were they hunting us? They weren’t even after us for our blood. Did they want us dead just for some heinous reason, or was there a colder one? Had someone put them up to this, and—if so—who wanted us dead?

  God, there were at least a few vampires who didn’t like me very much. I swallowed and tightened my hold around Gwen.

  I was not going to be pushed off this cliff. If they wanted us dead, they were going to have to do it themselves. I began to walk toward the woods again.

  And the figures came out of the shadows, close enough to see them.

  One was a man, tall and burly with a big leather trench coat on. He had long, black hair pulled back into a ponytail. The other was a redheaded woman, wearing a long peacoat and tall boots.

  Their hands were in their pockets, but in the darkness, I could still tell that they were smiling.

  And that they had very sharp teeth.

  They said nothing as they approached us. They didn’t have to. Their intimidating presence pushed me back, but I refused to move. I stood as fastly as I could, holding tight to Gwen as my heart rose into my throat. There was nowhere for me to run. I wasn’t going to leave my best friend behind, and I wasn’t going to throw both of us off the cliff.

  I stood still, and I tried to take deep, even breaths as terror poured through me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered then. To Gwen. To Tommie.

  And to Kane.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and tried to brace myself against the pain that was going to be inevitable and final and absolute.

  When nothing happened after a long moment, I screwed up enough courage to open my right eye.

  The two vampires were turning to the right, their noses to the wind. They were sniffing the air, I realized, like they scented something.

  It was so quick that if I hadn’t been staring at the right one, the woman, I never would have believed that it happened. The woman was standing, hands deep into her coat pockets, her nose to the wind, and then she wasn’t there anymore. She was rolling end over end, someone on top of her.

  The man went down just as quickly. The fog and the darkness made watching things closely almost impossible, but I saw bits and pieces of them turning end over end in the dark, and I heard the man’s snarl. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck it was so savage and low, but then I heard another voice. A voice I recognized.

  It was Kane there, Kane pinning the man down to the earth by his throat, then. Everything had become stilled. She crouched over him, pinning him to the spot, her knee on his chest and pushing down with such force that I heard a rib break beneath her.

  The man cried out in pain, but Kane tightened her hold on his massive neck, and he was silenced.

  To the side, Tommie rose from the ground, holding the woman’s hands behind her back in an elaborate corkscrew that couldn’t have felt great for that woman. Tommie looked past the man, looked past Kane.

  Her eyes fell on me, and if I hadn’t been holding up Gwen, I would have taken a step back.

  She looked utterly feral. Wild.

  Dangerous.

  “What did you do,” Tommie hissed, and even though they were a distance away at this point, and her voice was soft and low, I still heard. The cold anger in the voice carried to where I stood with Gwen.

  I glanced back at Kane, but Kane wasn’t looking my way. She was bearing the full weight of her violently blue gaze down on the man on the ground.

  “Who do you work for?” she asked then, her voice a growl that made me shiver. She loosened her grip of hands around the man’s neck, but he shook his head.

  And then, moving faster than my eyes could follow, the man rolled out from under Kane, rising in a fluid motion that I assume a tiger would make. Kane rolled over and landed on the balls of her feet in a crouch.

  The man took one look over his shoulder before he bolted toward the tree line.

  And Kane followed him like a lioness who was about to fell her prey.

  And she did.

  Kane hit the man squarely in the back, and they rolled end over end before darting between the trees.

  In the stillness and rush of the ocean below, the scuffle in the woods ended. I heard a great cracking sound.

  Kane walked slowly out from between the trees. There was a ragged cut in her suit shirt (her jacket was nowhere to be seen), and through the hole in the shirt, I could clearly see the gaping wound in her stomach. But there was no blood that seeped out of that wound. It was clean and dry, just wet flesh peeled back and open.

  And, as I watched it, as she prowled toward us, the wound began to knit together and heal itself, lacing itself up like a corset of flesh.

  So much had just happened. So much. I wanted Kane to catch my eyes, to—with that one, simple glance—tell me that everything was all right now. That we were safe. But as I watched the wound knit up on Kane’s stomach, I realized how much I didn’t know about her. How much I didn’t know about any of them.

  So Kane did not look at me as she stalked past Gwen and I. She had eyes only for the woman Tommie held tightly.

  Kane’s gaze was more dangerous than I’d ever seen it before. Her eyes were narrowed, but in the darkness, I could still see them flashing with a deep, frozen rage. And as she approached the woman, the woman who bore the brunt of her c
old and terrifying gaze, the woman fell to her knees, shaking.

  “I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you,” she whimpered, wincing away as Tommie tightened her grip on the woman’s arms. She licked her lips, eyes darting from Kane, to me, back to Kane again. She looked terrified, but she opened her mouth. She said: “Darcy. It was Darcy.”

  Kane stopped as suddenly as if she’d run into an invisible wall. Darcy. Why was Darcy such a familiar name? It meant something, something terrible, but I couldn’t think of what it reminded me of. Not yet.

  Tommie glanced at Kane, her eyes own wide as she shook her head with a slow, measured rhythm. “That’s impossible,” said Tommie, tightening her grip on the vampire’s arms again. I heard something snap wetly in the vampire, but the vampire woman made no sound other than grinding her teeth together. She panted as she crouched there, sighing out.

  “I swear,” the vampire woman whimpered again. “It was Darcy who contracted us. She set up everything. She said that if Rose was dead, the Sullivans would be weak, and then…” She drifted off into silence, glancing up at Kane.

  Kane’s long, cold fingers curled into fists, and she slowly lifted her chin.

  In that single moment, the woman flicked her gaze up to me, and in that heartbeat, I saw her lip curl, if ever so slightly. That was the only warning we got before she jerked away from Tommie, to the right, a direction that Tommie wasn’t expecting, because her grip on the vampire loosened enough for the vampire to roll forward, out of Tommie’s grasp. But the vampire woman didn’t bolt for the line of trees, away.

  She bolted toward me.

  I didn’t know what to do, and it was too quick for me to react or, really, do anything, anyway. I took a quick breath and simply braced myself for impact. I had the presence of mind to let go of Gwen, and she fell to the side, slumping against the ground, but at least out of harm’s way. The vampire woman was going to hit me, and we’d roll together, end over end, and we were close enough to the cliff face that I would fall down, down, if I wasn’t bitten first. I was going to die.

  But I didn’t. The woman, close enough for her fingernails to gouge a crescent moon pattern out of my shoulder, was caught out of mid-air by Kane. Kane who moved faster than any living creature was capable of.

  And, as I watched, Kane moved her hands from the woman’s shoulders up to the woman’s head. And in one smooth, fluid motion, Kane twisted the woman’s skull in her hands, jerking the neck to the side.

  I heard a sickening, wet snap, and the woman fell limply at Kane’s feet, as boneless as a marionette whose strings are no longer pulled.

  She was dead.

  “Oh, my God,” I whispered, but Kane was at my side then, her cold arm around my waist, still not gazing me in the eyes. She glanced out at sea, and I caught something deep in the depths of her blue gaze. Something I couldn’t quite place.

  Kane Sullivan, I’d thought, felt no fear.

  But she looked afraid, in that heartbeat.

  She cleared her throat and glanced down at me and Gwen, shaking her head slightly.

  “We must get you inside. It’s not safe out here,” she growled, and then Tommie was on the other side of me, and she gently took up Gwen in her arms, hefting her up like she weighed nothing, Gwen’s limbs and head dangling.

  I don’t remember much about the climb up the hill. I was in a state of shock, of exhaustion, but I held my own as Kane’s tender arm helped steer me and hold me up. We climbed together, slowly, up the rest of the hill, and when we hit the level land of the Sullivan Hotel’s parking lot, Kane jerked her chin toward the side door, down to the basement kitchen.

  “Gwen’s bleeding,” she told Tommie tightly, and Tommie nodded once.

  The vampires would scent us, I realized with a light head as Kane took us down through the kitchens. Treaty or no treaty, could a vampire control him or herself when there was so much blood?

  There was no one at the stove or the counters—they were deserted. There was no one out in the basement hallway or staircase that led up to the front hall.

  “Gwen needs a doctor,” I told Kane, glancing over at my best friend, at the pallid cast to her face, how slick with sweat her skin was, how brightly colored the blood seemed on her soaked through t-shirt. “We were in an accident,” I managed, gripping Kane’s arm now. “Her van’s totaled. They pushed us off the road.”

  “I’ll take her to the doctor in town,” offered Tommie, straightening a little and glancing at me with soft eyes. “You’re safe here now, Rose. Stay in my rooms. When I come back, we’ll settle this, all right?” Even though she was holding Gwen, she managed to step forward somehow and hold my gaze as her shoulder pressed against mine. “We’ll be back soon,” she said as she leaned forward, and then her cold lips were pressed against mine.

  My heart was roaring through me, and as it roared, I could feel it tearing in two, right down the middle. Because Tommie’s mouth was against mine as Kane’s arm was around my waist.

  I was held in the middle of two women that I cared about utterly. And, no matter what I did, I was going to hurt them. Perhaps both of them, perhaps one of them. But their pain was inevitable.

  As was mine.

  Tommie turned on her heel and was down the corridor and out the front door before I could even blink. Gwen would be all right, I knew. I hoped. She had to be. She couldn’t be in trouble because of me. She had to be all right.

  Kane’s jaw worked as she gazed steadily at the floor, at the red and black tiles, and not at me. “Let’s get you up to Tommie’s rooms, then,” she said softly.

  And that’s when I snapped.

  “No,” I told her, and I reached up and gripped her shoulder, trying to catch her gaze. I held her violently blue eyes with my own and I swallowed. I was shaking. “I can’t do this,” I told her. “Everything’s not as it should be.” I didn’t even know what that meant, but it was how I felt, the truest truth inside of me. “Please tell me that you feel it, too.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I stiffened, my blood turning to ice in my veins.

  Melody.

  She was walking down the Widowmaker staircase, the staircase that—on the very first morning of being here—Kane had saved me from. Kane was always saving me, in small ways and big ways, and now here was this woman who had somehow, miraculously, reappeared to take from me that which had never belonged to me…but that which I’d hoped with my whole heart could be mine, if I’d tried hard enough.

  I hadn’t even been able to try. Melody had taken everything from me.

  And now she was walking down the steep staircase as if she was a tightrope walker, as if she knew those steps intimately. And she did, I realized. She’d lived in the Sullivan Hotel much, much longer than me.

  I took a deep breath and I stepped away from Kane, feeling utterly defeated. Feeling my heart broken and crumbling inside of me, and something that could never, ever be put back together again.

  But as I turned to go back down the hallway of paintings, of red and black tile, away from the woman who called to me like a gravity…I was stopped.

  Cold, lovely fingers curled around my wrist, holding me in place.

  Kane.

  When I turned back to look at her, my heart caught in my throat.

  Her eyes were soft, as they gazed into mine. The ice blue of them was melted around the edges.

  And, as I watched, Kane Sullivan—the strongest woman I’d ever known in my whole life—let a single tear fall from her left eye and traced a path across her perfect cheekbone and skin, drifting down to her chin and falling away into the darkness of the hallway.

  “Melody,” said Kane then, her low, gravelly voice strong and clear and unwavering. She turned to look at the woman who’d paused on the staircase, the woman who stared at me with shrewd, narrowed eyes, arms crossed, waiting.

  We were all waiting. I held my breath. This couldn’t possibly be happening.

  But then it did.

  “Melody, I can’t do this anymo
re. I am so very, very sorry,” she said, standing even straighter, glancing up the staircase at the woman who had been her soulmate, the woman she had never forgotten, slipping into sadness over the days, weeks, months and years of a century. The woman she had promised her entire being to. She gazed at this woman, and she breathed out. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, and I can’t fathom the things that you have gone through in the time that we were apart. I’m so sorry you experience that pain and darkness. I did everything I could to keep it from you, and I failed in that. But the connection that we have has been severed. You have become someone cruel and unkind and that is not the woman I knew or loved. The connection that I felt, that I mourned all these years, no longer exists between us. Please forgive me,” she said, her voice catching and breaking at the end. “But we can’t be together.”

  Melody’s eyes flashed dangerously dark as she turned and glanced down at me now. “Is it because of her?” she asked, her voice chillingly calm. “What has she done to you? What has she told you?” she hissed, descending the last few steps to stand on the level with us, her hands clenched into immoveable fists at her sides. “Did she seduce you?” She drew herself up to her full height, and her words turned utterly imperious. “Have you slept with her?” she asked then, her voice almost a whisper.

  “No,” said Kane, her voice breaking again. “I would never do anything like that to you, Melody. I have only ever been faithful to you. You and only you. But I do not think we should try to conform something that existed a century ago to something our hearts no longer want. I know,” she said, raising her chin and holding Melody’s gaze, “that you no longer feel the same way about me that you used to. That you do not want me like you used to. And there is no crime in that, no shame. We did our best to try again, and it was not meant to be. And we must accept that. It’s over.”

  I expected Melody to be upset. Perhaps to say that they needed another chance, that they needed to try again. I could feel Kane wavering as she held tightly to my wrist, as tightly as a drowning woman would grip a lifeline. I knew that she did not want to cause Melody pain. I knew that feeling all too well. If Melody wept at this moment, if she asked for another chance, Kane would grant her that.