The Eternity Road (The Eternity Road Trilogy, Book 1)

by Lana Melyan

  “I’ll need one minute,” said Melinda.

  She took four candles from her handbag, placed them in the corners of the room, and then lit them with a wave of her hand. Hanna and Riley cut Craig free and put him on the floor beside Ruben, who was coming around and now moaning.

  They heard footsteps above and Mark’s voice.

  “Then how did they get here?” he asked.

  “Maybe Brian was still alive, maybe he died after he stopped the car,” said another voice.

  “And he drove all the way with a stake in his heart?” said Mark, frustrated. “I would agree if I had a brain like yours.”

  “I’ll lock the door,” Riley whispered, and he climbed the stairs running up along the wall.

  “Terra, aer, aqua et ignis.” Standing in the middle of the room, Melinda began muttering the incantation, “Uti tuus potestatem libero hoc domus de malo. Per malo foras . . .”

  “I hear noises,” said Mark. “Turn off that music,” he shouted.

  “It’s probably Bill,” said the other vampire.

  “Bill wasn’t . . . She is here,” snuffled Mark.

  Footsteps sounded near the basement. Riley locked the door and pressed his back against it. There was a blow, then another and after the third strike, the door swung open. Riley flew down over the stairs and hit the opposite wall.

  “Sic volo. Sic loquor,” kept muttering Melinda.

  “I knew she couldn’t be alone in this,” said Mark, coming down with two other vampires behind him.

  Melinda gazed up at them, her eyes burning with rage.

  “Not welcome,” she said, and raised her hand. “Out.”

  Mark’s hands flew to his throat. He was choking. His body hit the handrail and then, like a bullet, ricocheted to the wall. Choking and hissing, vampires behind him bounced back and disappeared from the view. Ruckus erupted upstairs.

  Controlling Mark’s body with her hand, Melinda squeezed her fingers into a fist, which made Mark curl. She opened her hand again, slightly pushed the air in Mark’s direction, and he was gone. The banging stopped.

  Coughing up blood, Ruben broke the silence. Hanna lifted his head and gently put it down on her lap. Melinda knelt beside Craig.

  “Amanda,” he said, wincing in pain. “Where is she?” Breathing heavily, he pulled himself up and sat, leaning against the stony wall.

  “They’re at our place,” said Hanna. “They’re fine, thanks to Riley.”

  “Riley’s here?” asked Ruben in husky voice.

  “Hi there,” said Riley. “I’ll go check the house.”

  Melinda went upstairs too and a soon came back with bowl of water and a towel. She ripped the towel into pieces, and she and Hanna began to clean the blood from Craig and Ruben’s healing wounds.

  “What do we do now?” asked Hanna, glancing at Melinda.

  “I’m sure they’re still around. So we wait until sunrise.”

  “Yeah, their cars are still here,” said Riley, coming back.

  “That’s fine.” Hanna took Ruben’s hand. “Your lungs are damaged. They’ll need time to heal. And you have to heal completely. I promised Kimberly that your beautiful, tanned skin would remain wound and bruise free.”

  Hanna, holding the towel by its wet corner, cleaned the fresh blood around Ruben’s now smiling lips.

  “Let’s take the guys upstairs and put them on something more comfortable,” said Riley.

  At nearly two o’clock in the morning, Hanna called Amanda. Kimberly asked if she could talk to Ruben, just to hear his voice and make sure he was all right.

  “Sorry,” said Amanda. “Bad signal. I lost her.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Everything’s fine, but they can’t come home yet. Something is wrong with the car. She said Riley can fix it, but it’s too dark. They have to wait until sunrise.”

  “Do you think she’s lying?” Kimberly asked.

  “No. Why would she?” said Amanda, who was sure that Hanna was hiding something, or hiding from someone, and they were waiting for sunrise when it would be safe to come out. She also couldn’t exclude the possibility that Craig and Ruben were injured badly enough to be taken to the hospital. Her heart skipped a few beats at that thought.

  Kimberly lay down on the couch.

  “I think she’s lying,” she said sadly. “Ruben’s probably hurt. He’s in pain and can’t speak.”

  “Let’s hope for the best.” Amanda cringed in the armchair. If something happened to them, it would be her fault, it would be because of her selfishness.

  There was nothing else to do but wait until morning. Kimberly closed her eyes, and a few minutes later Amanda heard her deep, even breathing.

  Amanda felt strange. With Kimberly asleep, it was like she was alone in the house. That awkward sensation made her look around as if she were seeing everything for the first time.

  It was Craig’s home, where he touched everything. Where he listened to music, watched TV, read a book, where he ate, where he slept. Amanda stood up and walked to the stairs. She knew which of the bedrooms was his, and even though the thought of intruding in such a private space made her feel embarrassed, she couldn’t resist the temptation to see it.

  She pushed the door open and stood in the doorway looking into the dark room. The strip of light coming from the hallway fell across the large bed with a dark wooden frame.

  Amanda stepped inside and closed the door. Now, only moonlight glimmered through the gap between the curtains on the tall windows, illuminating the room.

  She walked to the desk not far from the arch in the wall and pushed the small button on the table lamp. Beige tiles shone from the room beyond the arch, and she could see the edge of a white bathtub sticking out.

  Amanda looked at the desk. Beside the closed laptop was a stack of printed maps. She picked up a few and looked through them. They were images of roofs surrounded by trees. On each of them was written the address and road number. Craig was looking for some place, and it had nothing to do with hiking. What was he looking for? Was he trying to find that important thing he had talked about?

  No. She wasn’t going to think about that right now. She wasn’t there to search or detect. Still, there was one thing Amanda was hoping to see in this room: a picture of Eleanor. Her eyes moved around, but there were no pictures in the room at all; not on the desk, not under the lamp on the nightstand, and nowhere on the walls.

  Amanda put the maps down. On the back of the chair, standing in front of the table, hung Craig’s shirt. She took it, glanced at the bed again, and approached it. Her hand stroked the soft, coffee-colored cover. She lifted it and slipped under. The moment her head touched the pillow, her eyes filled with tears. Pressing the shirt to her chest and inhaling the familiar, thin scent of aftershave, she closed her eyes.

  22

  YEAR 1852, June

  Eighteen years had passed since Eleanor had been turned, but when she looked into Craig’s eyes she had the same breathtaking feeling as when she first saw him. He said, and she could see it in his tender look, that he felt the same way.

  She loved her new family, and she regularly visited her old one, watching them from behind the trees and keeping an eye on her daughter. She couldn’t stop thanking Gabriella and everybody else for saving her life, giving her a chance to be with Craig, and to be able to watch her little Margaret grow up.

  Two years after Richard buried her, he got married. Leaving his part of the sawmill to his daughter, he sold the house and moved to England, leaving Margaret with Eleanor’s parents. Eleanor was happy that Margaret was living in her parents’ house and that Richard didn’t take her to England with him, but the thought that her child would grow up without a mother and a father caused her pain. The only thing that made her feel better was seeing how much her parents and her brothers loved and cared about Margaret.

  She stood in the dark narrow alley in Paris, looking at the low window. The room behind it was poorly illuminated by a single candle.
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  She bent down. Peering through the panes of the sooty glass, she could see only shadows, outlines of male and female figures.

  “We have to leave before somebody finds us,” said a female voice.

  “Nobody is going to find us here,” said a man. “I bet they don’t even have relatives. Nobody’s going to miss them.”

  “That man tasted horrible. Let’s go find something else.”

  Not far down the alley a door creaked, and Eleanor heard heels clicking against the cobblestone street.

  “Eleanor,” called Hanna. “There’s nothing in there.”

  Eleanor looked back.

  “I hope the boys are luckier than us, I hope they found them, because I don’t want to be late for that ball. We are in Paris,” Hanna said excitedly, stretching her hands to the sky full of stars. “The best city in the world. I want to go shopping, and I want to dance at the ball . . .”

  “They’re here,” said Eleanor.

  Hanna’s hands fell down.

  “Where?”

  Eleanor nodded toward the window.

  “I think the people who live here are already dead,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, no.”

  They ran around the iron railing and down the stone stairs.

  Hanna lifted the edges of her gown and kicked in the shabby door. Splintering into different directions, it fell down. The woman standing behind it hissed.

  “Look what you did, idiot,” she shouted at Hanna, pointing at the torn skirt of her dress.

  “You’re not going to need it anymore,” said Hanna scornfully. “You better worry about your head.”

  There were no bodies in the room. Beside the stove, standing under the opposite wall, Eleanor saw a half open door. She hurried toward it.

  Another woman and a man stood in the dark corner near the window.

  Vampires could move as fast as Hunters. Hanna stood in the doorway so nobody could escape.

  “Look at the bright side, Sheena,” said the second woman. “Those girls look delicious.”

  “Yep, our blood is special,” said Hanna, gazing at her. “Come and taste it.”

  At that moment, a man flew out from the other room and flopped face down on the floor before Sheena. She jerked.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she yelled. “Pull yourself together, Albert.” She looked down at the man.

  Keeping Hanna in view from the corner of his eye, Albert stood up. His hand slipped into the pocket of his drab olive coat with a fur collar. He retrieved a white handkerchief and wiped his bleeding nose.

  Somebody roared in the second room, then came a choking nose. The second woman glanced at the room’s door.

  “Owen is still having fun,” she said. Her upper lip crept up, exposing her fangs. She moved forward, but the man standing beside her grabbed her by the arm and pulled back.

  Hanna was holding a stake in her left hand under the cloak. The man kept staring right at that spot. She looked down. The tip of the stake was sticking out.

  “Are you looking at this?” Hanna raised her hand.

  Sheena laughed loudly.

  “Isn’t she adorable? Look at her little stake.”

  Hanna stepped to her. Albert darted to the gap formed between Hanna and the way out. Hanna lunged after him, caught him by the neck, and threw him back to Sheena’s feet.

  “I didn’t say you could leave,” she said in a cold voice.

  Sheena growled. Thin blue veins began spreading on her face, looking gray under the dim candlelight.

  “Come here, you little bitch, I’ll rip your head off,” she said and swooped at Hanna.

  Hanna clutched her by the throat and hurled her down. Sheena crashed onto the floor, wheezing. Hanna flipped the stake in her hand and stuck it deep into the vampire’s chest.

  The other woman gasped. The man standing beside her, who hadn’t said a word all this time, spoke.

  “I felt your power the moment you stepped in. You are one of them, aren’t you?” He wasn’t angry or scared. He was bemused. “You are so young,” he whispered.

  “So you’ve heard about us,” said Eleanor darkly, coming out of the second room. She looked at Hanna. “They are dead. Man, woman, and baby.”

  She pulled the chair from the corner and smashed it into pieces with one blow of her foot. She picked up the sharp pieces and threw two of them to Hanna.

  “Let’s finish this,” she said.

  Albert, who was still sitting on the floor, crawled backward. Eleanor grabbed him by the throat and lifted up. Hanna stepped over Sheena’s body and walked to the other two vampires. She made the first strike and then the second. Albert’s screams stopped, too.

  Eleanor and Hanna stood on the street again.

  “The baby was only a few months old,” said Hanna.

  “Yes,” Eleanor sighed.

  Craig, Ruben, and Edmond, following the witch’s instructions, were separately searching other parts of the town.

  “We have to let them know it’s done,” said Eleanor. She pushed her ring first to the coin with her number then Craig’s and Ruben’s coins.

  Hanna sent the message to Edmond, and silently they headed back to the hotel.

  Eleanor was sitting in front of the wide oval mirror and staring into it with an absent look. Standing behind her, Craig bent and kissed her neatly gathered, dark-brown curls.

  “We were too late, Craig,” she said, subconsciously fingering the diamond leaves of the necklace she held in her hands. “We couldn’t save them.”

  “Eleanor, you have to stop thinking about that,” said Craig, looking at her reflection. He gently took the necklace out of her hands and put it around her neck. “You and Hanna just killed five vampires. Imagine how many people you saved today.”

  Eleanor stood up. She wore an ivory, silky gown with golden embroidery around the décolleté and on the edges of the sleeves, lowered below the shoulders. A lush skirt emphasized her thin, corseted waist even more.

  “You look amazing,” said Craig.

  “You, too,” said Eleanor, stroking the lapel of his black dress coat.

  She took his arm and they went to the living room, where Hanna, Edmond, and Ruben were waiting for them.

  “Oh, Hanna, it’s gorgeous,” said Eleanor, looking at Hanna’s peach dress with ribbons.

  “So. Let’s go have fun,” Ruben beamed. “I hope Madame de Lécuyer has a few pretty girls for me.”

  “Just don’t break the rules,” Hanna admonished. “Remember—you can’t pursue them after the dance.”

  Ruben spread his hands.

  “Then what’s the point of dancing?”

  “She’s right,” Craig smirked. “You don’t want to disappoint Madame de Lécuyer. Gabriella wouldn’t like it.”

  Carlotta de Lécuyer was a friend to Samson and Gabriella. More than twenty years earlier, her carriage was attacked by vampires on a countryside road, and Samson and Gabriella saved her from, as she thought, robbers. In gratitude, she invited them to visit her in Paris. The first ten years, they visited Madame de Lécuyer and her husband every time they were in France. But as time passed, their meetings became impossible and they kept in touch by less and less frequent letters. The last one Madame de Lécuyer received right from the hands of Eleanor and Hanna, who introduced themselves as Samson and Gabriella Mountney’s daughters. She was very pleased and kindly invited them with their fiancés and friend to the upcoming ball.

  Eleanor sat on the sofa in a small room festively decorated with flowers. She looked into the large hall between the pinned up velvet curtains. Big chandeliers, sparkling with crystal pendants, brightly lighted it. The small orchestra was placed on the balcony of the second floor.

  Hanna and Edmond were dancing a waltz, and not far from them Eleanor saw Ruben. He was dancing with some elderly woman and looked like he was in pain. Eleanor smiled.

  “He looks desperate,” she said to Craig as he walked into the room. “What happened? Nobody else wished to dance with hi
m?”

  Craig glanced into the hall.

  “Oh, that.” He smiled too. “Monsieur de Lécuyer introduced him to his sister. She said that Ruben is lucky she wasn’t already engaged for this dance.”

  Madame de Lécuyer, a not very tall woman with a rounded figure, entered the room with an envelope in her hands.

  “Eleanor, my darling,” she said, sitting next to her, “this morning I received a letter from your mother.” She handed the envelope to Eleanor. “Since she didn’t know which hotel you’re staying in, she sent it to me. I hope it’s good news.”

  Eleanor opened the letter. When she read it, she felt happy and sad at the same time.

  “Margaret is getting married,” she said, looking up at Craig. “The wedding is in the beginning of August.”

  “We have to go back,” said Craig. “Don’t worry, my love, we’ll make it in time.”

  “So, it’s good news,” said Madame de Lécuyer. “But you seem a bit sad.”

  “Oh, no. I’m just emotional,” said Eleanor.

  “You look like your mother,” said Madame de Lécuyer, and her hazel eyes softened. She took Eleanor’s hand. “Gabriella’s eyes and hair are darker, but you look like her.”

  Eleanor nodded and looked down.

  “I’m sorry she couldn’t come,” added Madame de Lécuyer. “I miss her, and I would be delighted to see her again.”

  Those words made Eleanor miss Gabriella, too. They had been apart before, and for a much longer time than now. She didn’t understand why, but suddenly an inexplicable longing washed over her. She felt anxious. She wanted to go home.

  They had planned to spend another month in London, but Eleanor told the others about the letter and about her and Craig’s decision to return to America.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Hanna. “Can’t wait to see Margaret as a bride.”

  After half a minute of discussion about how they had all seen London, that London was not going anywhere and they had an eternity to visit it again, everybody went to their rooms and began packing.