Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  “You’re a doctor,” I said. “How can you even believe in witchcraft?”

  Sam was thoughtful for a moment. “I never used to, before. But the things I’ve seen – you can’t explain them away with logic. What I’ve learnt over the years is to never assume you know how things work, because just as soon as you figure the world out, everything changes again.”

  “Is that what happened to you?” I asked quietly. “Did everything change for you the way it’s changing for me?”

  Sam chuckled, but it was a dry laugh, devoid of anything good. “I was so young when I met Ivy,” he said. “Twenty years old, I was. I was doing so well in college. About to graduate early, with honours, and then go to med school.”

  “Did you go? To med school?”

  “Eventually,” he replied, his voice as dry and dead as the burnt trees that surrounded us. “I had to … wait a few years, until it was safe.”

  “Why’d you have to wait?” I asked. I needed to know everything.

  “The blood,” he said, his cheeks flushing pink. “I couldn’t handle being around all that blood.” He was embarrassed, I realized with a start. Ashamed that he was driven by a desire I was yet to fully understand.

  “I don’t think about blood,” I confessed. “At all. I don’t even like it much. Do you think there’s something wrong with me, Sam?”

  He smiled, little creases curling up at the corners of his toffee–coloured eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Mia. It’s the rest of us who aren’t right.”

  I stared at my palms. There were no scars from where I had dragged myself over broken glass in that courtyard in Mexico, when I had died. I thought about my death and all the secrets I had yet to learn.

  “Did you die, Sam? When you were Turned?”

  His face fell then, and it was his turn to stare at the ground. “We all die. We are alive, and then we die, and when we wake up again, we are something else entirely.”

  “Have you ever killed someone?” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer me.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to call Evie, tell her what was going on. If she thought I was a weirdo, so be it. I couldn’t carry the weight of my secret alone for another minute. And if she really was what Sam said – a witch – then maybe she could protect my family when I couldn’t.

  I must have dialled and hung up at least ten times before I got up enough nerve to let the call go through. She answered on the first ring, the sound of her voice taking the breath out of my lungs.

  “Hello?” She answered, and I could hear the suspicion in her tone.

  Right. She thinks I’m not me. She thinks it’s a shapeshifter calling her from my number.

  “Evie,” I choked. I burst into tears.

  “Holy shit, it’s you.” Her voice changed completely to one of worry and concern. “Where are you? Are you okay? Tell me, I can come get you. I can help you, Mia. Mia?”

  Where to start? What to say? Would she even believe me? I wouldn’t believe me.

  “I was – taken,” I said falteringly. “I, um, I’ve been in Mexico. But I’m okay now.” No I’m not. “Someone helped me get out of there. I’m in a safe place now.”

  Why was I so reluctant to tell her where I was?

  “Are you in Mexico now?” She asked. “I don’t think so. You’re near the beach, aren’t you?”

  “How do you know that?” I asked quickly. Was she a part of this?

  She sighed. “Mia, there are lots of things about me that you don’t know. There are things I can do that other people can’t do. I’ve been trying to find you ever since you disappeared.”

  The witch thing. Right. “Have I – have I tried to call you before now?“

  She snorted. “No, but some bitch pretending to be you called me up. She hung up really fast once she realized I wasn’t as stupid as your average blonde.”

  “Oh. Good.” I didn’t know what to say.

  “Mia, I’m so sorry. Are you – are you one of them now?” She didn’t say the word vampire, but we both knew what she meant.

  I guess she took my silence as a yes.

  “I should have known they were fucking vampires hanging around school. I should have been more careful.” There. She had said the word so I didn’t have to.

  “It’s not your fault, Evie.”

  “Give me the address. I’m on the first flight out there.”

  “Whoa,” I said quickly. “You can’t leave. I need you to protect Jared and my mom. Does Jared know anything?”

  She breathed out heavily. “No. Although he’s pissed that you left without telling him. What if something happens to you and I’m not there to help you, Mia? I left you alone in a goddamn parking lot in New York the day after I saw a vampire in our history class. What was I thinking?”

  I pressed my forehead to the cool bedroom wall and closed my eyes. “You were thinking everything would be okay. Just like me.”

  “At first I thought they’d killed you,” Evie confessed. “Only I couldn’t find your ghost anywhere.”

  “My ghost?” My ghost?!

  “Yeah. I kept waiting for your ghost – your soul – to show up, and it never did.”

  But I had died. According to Ryan, for a couple of hours, I had been dead.

  “I thought I felt you die,” Evie said miserably, as if reading my mind. “And when that feeling went away, I realized the vampires must have Turned you, and that it was too late.”

  My vision blurred as I blinked back something hot. It overflowed, and a single tear escaped, running down my cheek.

  “Oh shit,” Evie said. “That’s not what I meant. You need to come home, Mia. Now.”

  Another hot tear, then another. “I can’t. If I come back he’s going to kill everyone I care about.”

  Evie didn’t say anything.

  “Hello?” I asked the empty phone line.

  “I’m here,” Evie replied quickly. “I just –”

  “Don’t know what to do?” I supplied helpfully. “That makes two of us.”

  “Why didn’t you call me sooner, tell me what was happening?”

  I shrugged even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “And tell you what? That I’m a vampire? Do you know how stupid that sounds to me?”

  “It’s not your fault,” Evie said softly, soothing my jagged nerves. “You didn’t know about all this. Most people never do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a witch?” I asked her. “You’ve known me for my whole life, Evie, and you never said a word!”

  “Would you have believed me?” she asked tiredly. “Or would you have thought that I was crazy?”

  She was right. “I just wish I had been prepared, you know? You think for your whole life that the world is one way, and it’s nothing like you thought it was. It sucks.”

  “It does suck. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have told you something, at least.”

  “Is my m–mom okay?”

  “She’s good. She’s safe.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose as another wave of headache crashed into my forehead. “She thinks I’m at school?”

  “Yeah.” Evie’s voice was apologetic. “She’s been getting emails from someone who says they’re you. And calls, I think.”

  “I heard. Ryan showed me – it’s hard to explain. But I heard one of the calls the shapeshifter made to my mom. She had no idea.”

  “Ryan. He’s the one who helped you escape in Mexico?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. I omitted the part about him taking me in the first place. I don’t know why I was protective of him after what he had done, but there it was.

  “And where are you now?” She insisted.

  “Los Angeles,” I replied, hoping my vagueness would satisfy her.

  “Address, Mia. Come on. I need to see that you’re alright.”

  Panic swirled through me. “Please don’t come,” I begged. “I don’t want you to see me like this. I need you to
stay with Jared!”

  “Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m going to promise to stay with Jared, and make sure your mom is protected, and you’re going to tell me the address.”

  My shoulders sagged in defeat. I rattled off the address and confirmed it as she repeated it three times.

  “I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said. “I’m so tired, I haven’t slept.”

  “Go,” Evie said gently. “Sleep. You’ll be home soon, I swear.”

  As I ended the call, I had to wonder if what she was saying was even possible. Surely if Caleb was looking for me, I would have to stay away until he wasn’t a threat anymore.

  How could I make sure he was out of the picture? How did an eighteen–year–old girl turned vampire kill such an old and powerful creature?

  TWENTY-TWO

  I couldn’t sleep. My bed was comfortable, my pillow just the right height and firmness. I felt queasy, but I was starting to think that the dropping sensation in my stomach would never go away. I just couldn’t shut my mind off.

  I could hear so many things, including some I probably wasn’t supposed to hear. They say a vampire’s hearing is most acute straight after Turning, and I was no exception. Ryan was breathing deeply, probably sleeping in the room next to mine. Ivy was in the kitchen. It sounded like she was emptying the dishwasher or something. I could hear Sam in the basement, tinkering with something – probably studying the sample of blood he’d drawn from my arm earlier in the afternoon.

  I could hear his every minuscule movement and imagined what he could be doing. Strangely enough, as I listened closer, an entire picture of what he was doing began playing in my head. Almost as if I could see exactly what he was doing, just by listening and concentrating. I was listening with more than my ears – it was like some kind of psychic energy was allowing me to know just what was going on in another room of the house without actually being in there. It was kind of cool. I wondered how much was real, and how much was my imagination filling in the blanks.

  I listened and ‘watched' from my room as Sam took the small vial of my blood and removed the cap. Using an eyedropper, he drew up a single drop and squeezed it onto a glass slide. The slide carefully went underneath a large microscope, and he pressed his eye to the viewfinder.

  A newborn vampire’s blood is a peculiar thing to look at, I have since been told. It still has all of the visual markers of human blood, but if you look closely under a high–powered microscope, you will see the presence of a virus, attacking every single cell, burrowing into the nucleus like a hungry worm and recoding the genetic structure that once made that individual a human being. A DNA test is even more telling, and that’s what Sam did next.

  He slid his chair over to his computer, opened a program with a few clicks of a mouse and dropped another pinprick worth of blood onto a paper swab. This swab he fed into an expensive–looking machine about the size of a commercial photocopier. Sam kicked back in his chair and watched as colored bars and graphs appeared on his computer screen. After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door.

  It was Ivy. I knew it even before I heard her speak. Something about her stride, the way she knocked at the door with impatience. I just knew.

  “Whatcha doing?” Ivy asked, kicking the door shut behind her and following him over to the desk. “More research?”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes. He looked tired.

  “You look tired,” Ivy said, echoing my observations as she brushed a stray hair out of his eyes. She hesitated a little before she spoke again. “You should drink a little, just get a good night’s –”

  “What have I told you?” Sam exploded. I’d never seen – or heard – him angry before. “I told you no. The answer is still no.”

  Ivy's face was pinched with concern. “I’m worried about you, Sammy. You look … sick.”

  Sam shrugged. “Maybe I’m starting to age, Isobel. Maybe not drinking blood is making me human again.”

  “Shut up,” she replied. “I don’t want to argue. Show me what you’re working on.”

  Sam glanced at his computer screen again to see the model of my DNA building on the screen, twin helix strands with a ghostly third ribbon intertwined – the vampire virus.

  “I’m trying to figure out why Mia’s so calm and composed after being Turned less than a week ago.” He pointed to the screen. “It all looks normal so far. I’m stumped.”

  I was calm and composed? I hardly thought so. I felt more like an emotional, sobbing mess most of the time.

  “You seem to be developing an obsession over this girl,” Ivy said, and when Sam looked at her in surprise, her green eyes practically screamed with envy. And I wasn’t even in the room! “Walks in the park, dinner together. I’ve hardly seen you since she arrived.”

  Sam shook his head. I was flabbergasted. I had been in her house less than twenty–four hours and Ivy was already showing resentment?

  “You sound like a jealous teenager,” Sam said. “This girl is different. I want to know why. I want to help her. I doubt your psychopathic ex is really doing anything to help her.”

  I started to feel a little dishonest. Didn’t they realize I could hear everything they were saying?

  “If it were up to you, the girl would starve to death.” Ivy's eyes were blazing now. “Perhaps we should try that? I mean, it took you ten years to live without human blood, but hey, she’s different.”

  Sam rubbed his temples wearily. “Go, please. Have an O–Neg or something. Calm yourself down.”

  Oooh, burn. These two obviously had more issues than the average couple.

  Ivy looked taken aback. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? You think she can go without blood but you want me to have a fucking drink to calm down?!”

  They were both yelling now, and Sam stood taller, towering over her. “You’ve never tried not drinking it,” he accused.

  “I’m a vampire!” Ivy shouted. “It’s. What. I. Do.”

  “You,” Sam murmured in a voice barely above a whisper, “drink blood because you like it. You cut into people and take their blood because you like it. You are the way you are because you like it.”

  Ivy clenched her jaw, drawing her hand back. Her strike missed, Sam’s hand shooting out to catch her wrist mid–air with ease. “Looks like that’s not all you’ve been drinking,” he muttered, pushing her away. “Look at you. You’re tanked!”

  Ivy shook her head, turned and fled up the stairs away from him.

  That had been intense. I shook my head, blinked my eyes a few times and waited patiently for the images in my head to dissolve. I tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable, but my mind wouldn’t stop racing. Every time I got close to drifting off, another image jumped into my brain. Ivy opening a wine bottle in the kitchen. Sam pacing in the basement. Ryan shifting in his sleep.

  I glanced at my phone. Three–fifteen in the morning. So much for vampires being able to sleep soundly. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the high bed, my feet just touching the cool floor. I padded over to the door and opened it, not surprised when a vampire fell into the room at my feet.

  Ryan groaned and rubbed his face wearily. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, stepping over him. “I’m just getting a sandwich. Go back to sleep.”

  He didn’t follow me, so he must have either retreated to his room or curled up on the hallway floor again. I didn’t really care, as long as he left me alone.

  As I entered the kitchen, dark except for a lone lamp, I knew I wasn’t alone.

  “You look exhausted,” Ivy observed from the large oak table where she sat. An empty wine glass and a half–full bottle of red wine sat in front of her.

  “So do you,” I replied. It was a lie. She looked sensational. And drunk.

  She shrugged. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” she quipped, smiling darkly. I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, not sure whether I should invade her space and make something to eat, or just go the
hell back to bed.

  “There’s some cold cuts in the fridge,” she said. “Bread’s in the pantry.”

  So she did have excellent hearing as well. Thank God she couldn’t read my thoughts on top of that.

  “Thanks,” I said awkwardly, reasoning that I may as well eat now that she had given me permission. I opened the giant stainless steel fridge and started grabbing salami, cheese, mayonnaise and tomatoes. I found a loaf of bread and a plate and started assembling a monster sandwich. Suddenly, I was absolutely starving again.

  I stood at the dark granite bench and ate my sandwich, then another, and a third. By the end I was just eating salami and sliced beef straight from the package and not bothering with bread or condiments. The meat tasted really good, but unsatisfying at the same time – it was too dry, too overcooked for my liking.

  “Sam told me you’re not craving blood,” Ivy said quietly. She had been silent the entire time I was eating, a good fifteen minutes, and I had almost forgotten she was there.

  “No,” I said after swallowing another mouthful of roast beef. “The thought of it makes me feel sick.”

  She nodded, taking a moment to think about what I had said.

  When she didn’t keep talking, I tried to think of something to say, something to break the unbearable silence.

  “What kind of wine is that?” I asked.

  She looked at the bottle. “Tempranillo. From Spain. You want some?”

  I shook my head. “Maybe some other time.” After seeing Ryan with his blood–infused coffee, I didn’t want to risk spiked wine.

  As I was putting everything back in the fridge, I smelled something really good. It smelled thick and juicy, like a rare beef roast. I shifted a few things around, packages of salad mix and a bowl of chopped pineapple and strawberries, until my eyes landed on the thing that was making my mouth water.

  It was a stack of plastic bags, each holding an equal measure of human blood. I was drawn to them like a moth to a flame, my mouth tensed to rip open the flimsy packaging and suck greedily at the viscous nectar contained within. I stepped back and shook my head, and just as soon as the intense and foreign hunger had consumed me, it was gone again.