Ari nodded, but then quickly shook her head, trying desperately to stop herself from laughing. When she looked up, Jamie smiled at her in confusion, seeing clearly that she was happy.
“Since when do you know about pathology?” she asked finally, having stopped laughing.
“I don’t really. I asked some of the other students what were on those slides before I went over to your table. No idea if they were even right. But since I came back, everyone, including the science faculty, well, they kind of accepted me as the Vice Chancellor still.”
“What?” Ari asked.
“Yea, well, I figured I have forever to learn about this stuff.”
Slowly Ari nodded.
“Well, will you be able to get out of your busy academic schedule to come to my wedding? It’s a fortnight on Saturday at Ragon’s estate in the main land,” she said.
“Of course I am going to come! Who else is going to give you away? I’m glad my little sister has someone like Ragon to look out for her.”
“You already knew?” she asked.
“Ragon asked my permission the other night when you two were playing pool.”
“Of course he did,” she said, moving away from Jamie as she re-joined her group. “What a suck up.”
Chapter 25- The Immortal Grandor
Two days before her wedding, Ari had finished all of her end of semester exams and was on her way to Ragon’s estate. Ragon, Lea, Chris and Jamie accompanied her, the group taking the barge back to England. It was mid-November and the weather had remained chilly, small slushes of ice forming at points along the sea as the barge glided through the icy waters.
Bramond had been waiting for them to arrive on the shore, polishing the large white limousine that he drove, with an old ratty cloth which he clutched to with surprising force. The moment that he had spotted Ragon, he waved over to him enthusiastically.
“Now Bramond,” said Ragon, clasping the old man on the shoulder, “I hope you don’t mind the extra work that you will be expected to carry out?”
“Excuse me, Mr Young, sir?” said Bramond, his voice delicately reflecting his confusion. “Extra work? Miss Sandra had arranged all of da wedding,” he added in a somewhat gruff tone, as if he would have liked to have been trusted with that responsibility.
“After Ari and I get married, we plan on spending the next three months at the estate, so I am afraid that you will have to put up with us for the next little while,” said Ragon, watching as a wide smile formed on Bramond’s face.
Bramond beamed at Ari, then turned to face Ragon, shaking his hand so enthusiastically that it appeared that all his Christmas’s had come at once.
“Oh, Mr Young, sir,” said Bramond, “it would be me pleasure.”
“Mine too Bramond,” said Ragon.
“Congratulations to yer Miss,” said Bramond, holding the car door open for Ari. “Begging your pardon; I should say Mrs.”
“Not just yet,” said Jamie, winking at Ragon before taking a seat in the back of the car.
The ride from the barge to Ragon’s estate seemed to take less time than normal. Ari thought that this might have something to do with the reckless way that Bramond was driving. The old man was clearly still in awe at the prospect of his master being there for the next three months, and so sped cheerily along the roads, humming ‘Oh when the saints’, tunelessly to himself.
When finally the ancient car pulled into the driveway, Clyde, Riley, Sandra and Thomas were all waiting for them on the old stone steps that led back up to Ragon’s estate.
“It’s so good to see you,” said Riley, kissing Ari on either cheek before embracing her warmly.
“You look wonderful,” said Ari, glancing across at Clyde, who was cradling Rya in his arms.
“Still no sign of what she will be,” said Clyde, interpreting Ari’s look.
“Of course there is,” said Ari, and both Clyde and Riley stared at her expectantly, as if thinking she might have had a vision, “a beautiful healthy baby girl.”
At this they smiled, and Ari let Ragon reach for her hand, just as Sandra let out a long squeal. Ari had been surprised that it had taken Sandra this long to spy her left hand and see the diamond engagement ring on it.
“Oh-my-God! It’s magnificent,” she said dramatically, blurring over to Ari and ripping her hand out of Ragon’s, so that she displayed the ring for all to see.
It was overcast, the sunlight a mere shadow behind the thick rain clouds, but there was enough light to force the diamond to sparkle.
“Congratulations,” said Thomas, shaking Ragon’s hand firmly. “If you need a minister, you know who to ask.”
“Well,” said Ragon, “I was hoping you’d say that.”
At these words Sandra rushed to Ari’s side, quickly dragging her up the stairs.
“There is so much that I need you to check. I have organised the flowers, the dress, the cake…” Sandra began to say, listing off all the essentials for the wedding, just as Ari smiled at her, nodding whenever Sandra paused, so that she could confirm her approval. “We only have today and tomorrow,” said Sandra excitedly, “and there is still so much left to do.”
That night Ari went to bed early. Though she still had tomorrow to help organise her wedding, Sandra couldn’t hide her disappointment when Ari had told her that she was too tired to do anything that day. In true gentlemanly fashion, Ragon had insisted that they sleep in separate bedrooms. Ari had said that this was stupid, especially seeing as the wedding wasn’t until Saturday, and it was only Thursday night.
“What would Bramond think if we slept in the same bed?” Ragon had said, outside her room when he had kissed her goodnight.
Ari had tried desperately to drag him in the room with her, even pulling the sheets back of her large four poster bed and laying seductively as she curled her index finger, tempting him to come inside. But Ragon would not budge, keeping his distance at the front of the room, while trying to pull his eyes from her exposed thighs.
Finally Ari conceited defeat and after swinging the large wooden door shut, moved back over to her bed again. For a moment her eyes raked the little bed side table and she smiled when she saw a long stem rose next to a tall glass of water, with a note propped underneath it. Reaching excitedly for the red flower, she drew it to her. Ragon must have brought it up earlier that day. Though the rose was still beautiful, the petals drooped and the fragrance that you might have expected from such a once magnificent flower, was gone. For just a second, Ari was forcibly reminded of the dead bunch of flowers Matthew had given her, what felt like a lifetime ago, when she had been in Australia. Quickly she pushed that thought aside and reached for the note:
‘Good night my love, I am so happy you said yes. Love Ragon’
She smiled as she read the letter. Reaching for the large glass of water that sat atop it, Ari sipped at it, reading and re-reading the letter and thinking that in a few short days, she would be married to the man she loved. For a moment happiness swarmed in her, but then she felt panicked, one hand pulling at her sheets, the other reaching for her throat. She couldn’t breathe!
“I knew this would be the only way,” someone said from the darkness.
Ari’s eyes searched the room. Her head was foggy, oddly distanced from her body and she tried to pull herself from the stupor that was threatening to take over, but it felt as if her system had been paralysed.
“Who’s… there?” she asked, forcing herself to talk, despite the overwhelming numbing sensation that had gripped her.
“You don’t know my voice by now?” said the high cold voice. “I’m hurt.”
Then a person appeared from the darkness and the glass in Ari’s hand fell to the floor, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces, as cool liquid spilled across the carpet.
“Ki… Kiara?” Ari trembled, looking up at the dark haired beauty.
Ari tried to lift her hands, thinking of stoping time, but she was too weak. For some reason all of her energy was gone, replaced by a numbing sensatio
n.
“You haven’t forgotten me then?” said Kiara. “That’s good, because I certainly haven’t forgotten you. I knew this was the only way to get you alone, make sure that you couldn’t use your powers against me,” she added, now staring at the spilt glass of water that Ari had drunk from.
Instantly Ari’s eyes locked on the glass of water, realising with a pang of horror, that it was poison.
“Why?” croaked Ari, feeling the surge of the poison as it began to swarm through her system, slowly shutting everything down.
“You have everything that I wanted,” said Kiara, her eyes almost sad. “I was turned a long time ago. Virgil was my maker. The Ancients took me in, cared for me, and I become Virgil’s assassin. For centuries I obeyed their every command, never turning another, simply living for Virgil’s affection. But Virgil never loved me, not as I did him. Then I found Ragon. When I saw him, dying on the battlefield, there was something in his eyes… I couldn’t kill him. I had killed hundreds before, maybe even thousands. I didn’t understand why this human, this man, could evoke something so strange inside me. So I decided to turn him, to make him my fledgling, thinking that the love I had for Virgil might be felt by Ragon.”
For a moment Ari felt sympathy swell inside her but then her breathing became difficult and she gasped, desperate for air. Her fingers clutched uselessly at the sheets, her knuckles white against them, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get enough oxygen… she was suffocating.
“You can’t imagine the pain of not being loved. It was the one thing I craved, and the only thing denied to me by immortality. Forever can be a long time to miss something you never knew. But with Ragon, the way he looked at me when I was with him as he died, it was the closest I have ever come to knowing love. For decades we were together. Every day I waited for him to look at me again that way, but he did not. If anything he became more distant, until finally he left.”
Ari thought of Matthew, the vampire Kiara had turned. Didn’t she realise that Matthew loved her? He worshiped her, obeyed her every command. Then Ari realised that Kiara would never be able to feel love, not from Ragon, nor any man. Ragon was right; she couldn’t love.
“I wasn’t going to stay,” Kiara added, glancing at the open window, “but now that I am here, I can’t resist the temptation of watching the light go out in your eyes. It is after all, foolish to assume an adversary is defeated unless you see them die.”
“He, he doesn’t love you,” said Ari, her eyes bulging as she felt the last of her oxygen leave her system, “and even if he did, you wouldn’t be able to feel it. Ragon was right. You… can’t… love.”
“That’s not true,” screamed Kiara, temporarily angered before she glanced around nervously then blurred to Ari. “He would have loved me eventually. If it weren’t for you, we would be together now. Even as a baby Ragon wanted to save you. Why did he choose you over me? I made him. I gave him the gift of immortality. I cared for him, taught him how to hunt, even laid with him. When you are gone, he will come back to me. He has to! Soon he will see that what I am doing for him is a kindness. You don’t even want to risk death to be with him forever. You won’t even bargain your humanity for the chance of becoming a vampire to stay with him. You don’t deserve him.”
Ari tried to speak but couldn’t. The poison had done its job; darkness was trying to press down on her, threatening to snuff out her life. Kiara’s poison had spread, not just through her system, but through everyone Ari held dear. Kiara had killed the people she loved, all because she wanted Ragon for herself. Slowly the faces of all the people that Ari would be leaving behind swarmed in her hypoxic mind.
Ragon! He was the love of her life. It would destroy him when he found out that she had died. He had told her plainly what he would do if anything ever happened to her. She tried to force away this thought; she would have been able to die happy just knowing that Ragon would never love Kiara, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t hope that he might love another one day. She was not so selfish that she could not let him move on… she was not Kiara.
Then she thought of Jamie; she’d had such a short time with her brother, and now he would live forever without her. There was so much she still didn’t know about him; what his favourite colour was, the type of girls he liked, what he remembered of their parents. How had she not spent every precious moment with him, trying to get to know him just a little better? She had thought they would have had a life time together, getting to be just like a family, but now they would be separated, again. And then she thought of Riley and Clyde; she would never see them again, or little Rya. She would never see Clyde’s cheeky winks or get to spend time with Sandra and Thomas.
With this thought in mind, Ari closed her eyes, determined for her last thoughts to be only of happy moments. Ragon’s face came to her, his perfect green eyes, his dark hair hidden beneath a beanie. She remembered the first time he had spoken to her, when he had rescued her at the university, what felt like a lifetime ago. She had been so terrified, but even then there had been something magical about how he had saved her. Even though he had told her that he was a vampire, somewhere, deep down, she knew that she’d already begun to fall in love with him. With her eyes still closed, she remembered their first kiss, felt his cold lips touch hers, when they had been at the planetarium. How he had proposed to her, even though it meant his risking his happiness by falling in love with a mortal.
Lost in the darkness of her mind, three more faces came to her; Larissa, Cambridge and Ryder and she realised that soon she would be with them again. She would get to see Ryder’s blue eyes and Larissa’s smiling face, and maybe even hear Cambridge’s deep booming laugh, as he welcomed her to wherever she was going. She had no idea what would happen once she left this world, but she was sure she would see them again, and not just them, but also her parents.
Then out of the darkness she felt something. There was something thick and wet on her lips and she tasted a strange coppery tang… blood.
“Please,” someone said, and Ari thought that it might have been Ragon who spoke.
“I will kill you for this,” someone else said, perhaps Jamie.
Then there were loud noises, painful ones, and Ari tried to push them away, thinking only of sleep and the peace that the darkness offered, and the friends and family she might see again in death. And again she tasted the foul blood in her mouth, settling past her lips and on her tongue, as it swarmed down her throat. Then suddenly she understood… someone was trying to turn her into a vampire.
Instantly Ari thought of Jamie; her brother who was now a vampire and though she still felt the poison in her system, she became hopeful. The Grandor descendants could become immortal; Ragon and Ari could be together for ever. Then the question that she had asked herself a thousand times since falling in love with Ragon, suddenly seemed so stupid. Of course she wanted to be a vampire; of course she wanted to be his wife; of course she wanted to be with him forever. How could she have been so foolish to not realise this until now? Why would she not want to live forever with the man that had made her whole again? Why would she not want to risk humanity for a chance at happily ever after, forever?
“Are you sure that this is what she wants?” someone said, perhaps Lea, and though Ari couldn’t nod, she felt her heart screaming yes, wishing that somehow she could reassure her friend, that being a vampire was exactly what she desired.
She didn’t care that she would be intolerant to the sunlight or that she would have to drink blood; all that she wanted was to spend eternity with Ragon, and her brother and the coven.
“How can you even ask me that?” replied a harsh voice, and Ari knew this time it was Ragon who spoke.
“You know what she will be giving up?” another person said. “If she becomes a vampire, there won’t be any more Grandor Descendants. Jamie is a vampire; he can’t pass on his magic. If Ari becomes one too, the Grandor line will end.”
Ari could tell by the reference to her destiny, it was
Lea who spoke, and for one wild moment, Ari knew that she might be right. It was Ari’s responsibility to defend the innocent, and how was she supposed to do that if she became the very thing that she was supposed to protect the humans against? But she had learnt from the recent battle with the Ancients, that it wasn’t Grandor’s desire to rid the world of immortals. All Grandor wanted was for his line to do the right thing.
“If she doesn’t become a vampire, she will die,” Ragon replied.
Ari sat still, trapped in the horrible numbness of the poison. All the emotions she had felt over the past year, hit her hard in the chest. She had been through so much but now had so much, and it was all because of Ragon. She knew that whenever she needed him, he would be there for her, forever, and she didn’t want to leave him, not yet… not ever.
She felt someone pick her up, placing her lovingly in their hard cold arms.
“I love you,” whispered Ragon.
Bound (The Grandor Descendant Series Book 3) Page 39