by Myers, AJ
“Don’t be so paranoid,” I scolded myself as I slid off the robe I had been wearing since my last flight from the bathroom. “And even if it is still there, this shower is much better than the one down the hall. Are you really going to let her deprive you of it?”
I was still giving myself reasons to ignore the thing in the mirror when I stepped into the shower. I stood beneath the hot spray for what seemed like an eternity, letting it warm my freezing skin. To pass the time, I prayed to whatever sick Fate that had screwed me over for just a few tears to help ease the terrible tightness in my chest that had passed painful and had become excruciating.
Apparently, no one was listening. In the end, that might have been a good thing. If I ever started crying, I probably wouldn’t stop.
I was stepping out of the shower when I felt a tingle go up my spine that set alarm bells off in my head loud enough to cause permanent brain damage. Scared out of my mind, I pulled on my clothes without bothering to dry off, not even caring that they were sticking to my suddenly clammy skin uncomfortably. I hesitated with my hand on the door, my whole body trembling in fear.
Whatever was setting my danger sensors off like a fire alarm was right on the other side of the wood. I could feel it there, waiting for me. And yet, there was something else there, too, almost lost in the flood of fear pounding through my body. It was the feeling of warmth and…safety. Confused by the mixed signals my body was sending me, I forced myself to throw the door open and walk out. I had barely taken a step, though, when I froze in place, my mouth falling open again.
In the center of the room was a magnificent iridescent glow. That glow simultaneously terrified me and made me want to run to it and fold myself up in it. It was both the scariest and the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And, oh my God! The aroma that went with it! There was no describing it. It was like a little taste of Heaven.
Then, as my eyes adjusted, I saw the face and form that went with it.
“Tyler?” I whispered, staring at his familiar, handsome face like I was staring at one of the Seven Wonders of the Witchy World. Tyler shook his too-long, sun-streaked dark hair out of his face, and pierced me with those gorgeous golden eyes of his in a stare that had my blood surging through my veins in an adrenaline-induced rush of both fear and excitement…and ravenous hunger.
There was no way that could be good.
“Hey there, beautiful,” he said softly.
As he spoke that magnificent glow around him started to fade, becoming a kind of aura-like halo around him. Seeing my half-fascinated, half-wary look, he smiled at me gently, all the while never taking his eyes from mine.
Circling around him, part of me still screaming that he was dangerous and I needed to get away from him, I asked, “What are you?”
“Your friend,” he said, his smile slipping just a little.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” I snapped. “What are you?”
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Em. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I lied, still trying to get to the door. An effort he completely negated when he casually strolled over and leaned against it, folding his arms over his chest. My breath caught and I had to fight against a burst of fear that was playing havoc with my fight or flight instinct.
“Are you sure about that beautiful?” he asked softly. “You’re sure you’re not afraid of me?”
“Yes.” I winced when I heard the squeak that had crept into my voice. Apparently Tyler heard it, too.
“Funny,” he said, cocking his head to the side and giving me another gentle smile, “you look bloody terrified.”
“Well, I’m not,” I bit out, my jaw clenched tight. Balling my hands into fists so he wouldn’t see how they had started to tremble, I asked, “Why would I be scared of you, Tyler? You’re my friend, right?”
Very carefully, holding his hands up like he was trying to reassure me that he didn’t have a weapon or something hidden in his palms, Tyler stood up straight and stepped away from the door. He backed away several paces, leaving me a clear path.
“Go ahead, Em,” he said softly, continuing to back away. “I only want to help you, I swear. But you have to let me. I can’t force you to do that.”
“You’re giving me a choice?”
“Yes, love, you always have a choice,” he told me, his voice quiet and sad. “Right now, your choices are stay and let me help you or run. Please don’t run, Em. I don’t want to see you fall, beautiful.”
My gaze kept moving between him and the door as I bit my lip in indecision. That part of me that was terrified of him was yelling at me to stop thinking and run. The other part of me, though, was begging me to stay.
I needed help. I needed it more than I had ever needed it before. I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know what it meant that I was suddenly starving to death because he smelled good. And I didn’t know how to fix any of it. But maybe, just maybe, Tyler did.
“Trust me, Em,” Tyler whispered. “I would never hurt you. Never. Let me help you.”
I caught and held his gaze for a long, tense moment. Tyler never dropped his eyes. He just stood there, waiting patiently for me to make my decision. It was that patience that helped me conquer my fear.
I was being ridiculous. This was my friend, the guy who’d risked his own life to save me when I was just seconds away from being ghoul food on the lost plane. And there I was, treating him like he was the monster.
Little padded room, here I come.
“I do trust you,” I told him, surprised to hear the words come out of my own mouth. “I always have.”
And it was true. My trust issues had never extended to Tyler. I hadn’t trusted Nathan or my parents or Grams, but I had always trusted Tyler. Even the knowledge that he was hiding something big from me hadn’t changed that. In the end, what did it really matter what he was? He was my friend and he wouldn’t hurt me. That was all I cared about.
“Prove it,” Tyler said softly, holding out his hand to me. “If you really trust me, take my hand, Em.”
I balked for a second, some instinct kicking me back into flight mode. I chewed on my bottom lip nervously, eyeing his hand like it was a snake that was just waiting to bite me. I had to give myself another pep talk before I could take even the first step toward him.
This was Tyler. My Tyler, who had always tried to protect me, who had been my friend, who had sketched my face from memory, who had made me laugh when nothing in the world seemed funny anymore.
All of my doubt disappeared in a puff of smoke as the memory of his arms around me when he pulled me away from Bastian played out in my mind. That memory unfroze my feet and I was suddenly across the room. Ignoring his outstretched hand, I flung myself at him and buried my face against his chest. His arms closed around me in a bone-crushing hug that did more to ease the gaping hole inside me where my other half had been than any magic elixir could have done.
“I’ll always trust you, Ty,” I whispered when we’d stood that way for what seemed like hours. “Always.”
“Thank you,” he whispered back, kissing the top of my head. “Now that that’s all settled, what do you say we get started? We have a lot to cover—and I really want to get the worst of it over with while I’m still on your good side.”
∞§∞§∞§∞
Two hours later, I was sitting cross-legged in the middle of Nathan’s big bed with my head in my hands as I tried to process all the information Tyler had given me—and fighting that urge to run screaming from the room again. Not because I was scared of Tyler, but because I couldn’t take any more Darkling 101 without my head exploding.
“Okay, so let me see if I have this all straight,” I muttered, lifting my head enough to glance down at the notebook Tyler had so thoughtfully provided so that I could take notes. “No more salt.”
“No more salt,” Tyler confirmed with a weary smile, relaxing back in the chair he had dragged in from the living room for our les
son. “Salt will burn you. Do you remember what happened the night you threw salt in Jack’s face?” I nodded and he smiled wryly. “Well, imagine eating it.”
A memory of Bastian, still firmly ensconced in my friend’s body, holding his face and howling in agony, flashed across my mind suddenly. Blessed salt from the Holy Land, Nathan had taunted him, his voice hard. Keep trying me and I’ll bury you in it just so I can stand back and listen to you scream.
I swallowed hard, feeling sick again, as I remembered the blistered and broken skin on Bastian’s borrowed face. No, I definitely didn’t want to know what would happen if I actually ate it.
Translation: No more fries, no more chips, and no more popcorn.
Just kill me now, I thought with a grimace.
“No more gold,” I continued.
“Correct.”
I tried not to think about my cross, but the image of it floated across my vision anyway, like it was taunting me. Shoving it to the back of my mind and locking it in a little mental box for me to deal with later, I forced my thoughts away from it and back to the notebook in front of me.
At least I didn’t have to ask for an explanation for why I couldn’t wear gold. Trust me, the stinging imprint of my cross burned into my chest was explanation enough. Like salt, gold burns. I’m not such a masochist that I would put myself through that just to wear a piece of jewelry.
“And the cold?” I asked. “Why am I so cold? Seriously, Ty, I feel like I’ve been dunked in ice water. How long is that going to last?”
He gave me a long look, and I knew before he said anything that the feeling wasn’t going to go away. I was always going to be cold. I would never know what it felt like to be warm again.
Somehow, that was harder for me to take than anything else he’d told me. Okay, so I couldn’t have fries anymore. My overly-curvaceous rear didn’t need the extra calories anyway. As for my jewelry, that wasn’t much of a loss, either. The only jewelry I usually wore was my cross, anyway.
But to never be warm again? That was just…cruel.
“It’ll get easier as you get used to it,” Tyler finally said, confirming what I’d already gleaned from his silence. “It’s harder for you because your element is fire. Before the change, your body temperature was higher than normal. As your body adjusts to that loss of heat you won’t feel as cold anymore. It’s just going to take some time, Em.”
Time. At least that was something I had plenty of.
I had to suppress another wince at that thought. Immortality was something I’d never considered as a possible future, even though my boyfriend was a vampire. And honestly, it wasn’t a future Nathan would have recommended. Suddenly, though, that was the future waiting for me. An eternity of wishing and wanting and watching the people I loved grow old and die, moving on without me. Depressing didn’t even begin to cover that.
“The winter months will be particularly hard for you,” Tyler continued his lecture, unaware that with each new bit of information he gave me, another little part of me died. “You’ll need to stay inside as much as possible when the temperature drops below fifty. If you do have to go out, make sure you dress as warmly as possible. Though you won’t feel warm, it will insulate you against the negative effects of the cold on your body.”
“What kind of effects?” I asked, even though I really didn’t want to know.
“You’ll experience something akin to hypothermia after only a short time in cold temperatures,” Tyler explained. “Your body will become sluggish and you’ll be easily…confused. It will activate your need to feed since your body will interpret the effect as a need for energy. For a young darkling, that can be very dangerous. ”
I nodded, jotting that down in the notebook along with all my other rules and regulations. Going outside? Bundle up like an Eskimo. Check.
Once I was done, I just stared down at it, thinking of all the things that would keep me from doing. No more skiing, no more ice skating, no more impromptu snowball fights with Kim and Blake. I would have to hide in the house like a hibernating bear all winter to keep my demon from freezing.
Perfect.
And speaking of hiding in the house…
“How long am I on house arrest?”
“Until you’re ready,” he said, his voice as calm and soothing as it had been when he started on my introduction into the world of the undead.
“So I can go back to school tomorrow, right?” I asked sarcastically.
“No.”
“But you just said I could go when I was ready,” I countered, pointing an accusing finger at him. “I’m ready.”
Sighing, he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling like he was praying for the patience not to strangle me. “You know what I meant, Em. Don’t be difficult.”
I scowled at him, but let the matter drop. He meant until I was capable of not sucking the life out of the first human I ran across. I flinched and started flipping through my notebook until I got to the section I had labeled ‘If You Do This, You’re Toast’, and then just sat there staring down at the words written in my own handwriting.
I was a life-sucking parasite. Literally. As a darkling, my food of choice was going to be the life essence of other beings. According to Tyler, since I’d been infected by a lust demon I would probably be drawn to people experiencing passionate emotions.
So, yeah, going back to a building full of sexually frustrated, drama-loving teenagers probably wasn’t such a good idea.
“Explain the whole aura thing again,” I told him, glancing up just in time to see his eyes tighten ever so slightly.
“The auras are how darklings choose their…prey,” he said, stumbling over the word ‘prey’ the way he had every time he’d had to say it. “Some auras will be more appealing to you than others. You’ll be drawn to them. For some, it’s how mesmerizing they can be. For others, they can literally smell the essence that goes with the aura that attracts their attention.”
I’d already figured out that I was in that second category of freaks, so I didn’t have to ask what they might ‘smell’ like. Even as he sat there instructing me on how to be a dead chick, the smell coming off Tyler was driving me crazy. Oblivious to his effect on me, Tyler continued to school me on Aromatic Auras without missing a beat.
“Once you’ve fed on someone’s aura, it becomes like a drug to you. And, like an addict, you’ll want more and more of it. Which is why feeding is so dangerous for a darkling. Because if you take too much…”
My ‘prey’ dies and I become a full-fledged demon, I finished for him when his voice trailed off.
That point I didn’t need him to cover again—he had made sure to tell me like ten times already. If one of my victims died, I was a goner. I would become the thing I hated most. I would become Bastian—cold, calculated, and with no love for anything or anyone but the kill.
Yeah, that I understood very well.
“So I need to be careful with my shots.” I picked up the syringe Tyler had handed me earlier and examined the glimmering, electric-blue liquid it contained. “What is this stuff, anyway?”
“It’s called Nexus,” Tyler said, watching the liquid flow back and forth in the syringe like he was hypnotized by it. “Do you know what Nexus means?”
“The center of the circle inscribed in a regular polygon?” I suggested. My geometry teacher would have been so proud!
“That’s one definition,” Tyler said with an indulgent smile. “But there is another definition, one more fitting to this situation. A nexus can also be the source from which something originates. In this case, living energy. Without this energy, there is no life. And, like everything else on the planet, darklings also need this energy to survive.”
“Unfortunately, darklings are the only creatures in this world that do not produce this energy on their own,” Tyler continued, finally tearing his eyes away from the syringe in my hand. “Even vampires, who are termed the undead, produce it in some form. Without an infusion of living energy, darklings go into
stasis, they wither away. Some die. The alternative is that they lose control. When that happens, their demon takes over and—” He stopped talking so suddenly that it took me by surprise. After giving me a strangely sympathetic look, he took the syringe and pulled off the cap that protected the needle with an almost-whispered, “Let’s just say very bad things happen.
“Now, beautiful, left or right?”
“Excuse me?” I asked, surprised by the abrupt change of subject.
“Do you prefer to get your injections in your left thigh or your right?” he clarified. “Like epinephrine for severe allergic reactions, Nexus works best if delivered intramuscularly in the thigh.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I mumbled, not really understanding, but deciding to believe that he knew what he was doing. “The right, I guess.”
“Um, you’ll have to take off your jeans,” he said, his voice a little rougher than it had been only seconds before when he’d been explaining why I had to jab needles into my thighs for the rest of my life.
“Oh.”
I was suddenly glad that I couldn’t blush anymore. Tyler wasn’t so lucky. He was looking anywhere but at me, and his cheeks were definitely looking a little pink.
He turned his back when I stood up and reached for the button of my jeans. For a second, I stood there and smiled as I studied his back. What can I say? The fact that he would do that touched me. It wasn’t just that it was a totally chivalrous thing to do, but that he trusted me not to hurt him. Otherwise, he never would have turned his back on me. That trust went a long way toward making me feel kind of human again.
Once I’d stripped out of my jeans, I crawled under the comforter and bared my right leg. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Still not quite meeting my eye, Tyler sat down on the edge of the bed next to me and pushed the comforter aside a little more. Usually, I would have been self-conscious about a cute guy examining my bare thigh, but I didn’t have time for that. No, I was too busy watching the syringe in his hand like it was some mutant bug that was going to bite me.