by A. M. Hudson
“Sounds—” I studied his face, “unbearable.”
“You have no idea,” he said through a breathy laugh as the tension in the room eased.
“I know you, David. I know you have a good heart, but, I mean, I’m struggling to understand how you can be so loving, yet so…dangerous. How…how do you live with the guilt? For killing people.”
David laughed lightly. “I don’t. I have no choice but to stay alive, but I hate myself for some of the things I’ve done. You just find a way to do it without leaving too many scars on the world—or your own heart. But there aren’t too many vampires that have empathy for humans. It gets lost when we change. Mostly, you’re just food to us.” As he shrugged, he flashed his lopsided smile at me; I shuddered.
Food? “Don’t ever use that term around me again, David. I still care for humans, you know, since I’m one of them.”
He lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Ara—we’re just from different worlds, you and I. I’ll be careful what I say around you, I promise.” He looked into my eyes, his gaze guarded. “Assuming you still want to see me.”
That much I don’t know yet. More questions. “So, is that why you sneak into my room?” He looked at my face as I spoke. “Is it some freaky stalking-vampire thing?”
“Kinda.” His lip pressed into the side of his cheek. When I frowned at him, a little dismayed, he added, “You have to understand…eternity is a very long time. To be away from you for even a few minutes, it just feels like I’ve already lost you—like you were just a dream. It scares me to be without you.” He rubbed his flat palm over the left side of his chest. “I feel physical pain, in here, when we’re not together. And when I’m around you I feel peaceful—things don’t hurt as much, like you kind of block out all the pain.”
“I think—” I smiled awkwardly, “I think I know what you mean.”
“For me, when I’m with you—” David nodded, then continued, “I’m more human than monster. More heart-and-soul than vacant-shadowy-night.” He blinked softly and added, “Plus,” with a smile.
“Plus what?”
“Plus, I’m crazy in love with you.”
I looked down to hide my wide grin and flushing cheeks.
“It’s not enough for me just to love you, though,” he said. “I need to be with you—to see you, to touch you—to be a part of you in a way no one else in the world ever could.”
My face fell into my hands and my head rocked from side to side as I giggled quietly. Oh, my God. I’m in love with a vampire. A real blood-sucking vampire. No wonder he ran when I asked him to bite me.
“Ara? Are…are you crying, ma jolie fille?” David’s hesitant embrace fell around me, and the fear I felt before edged in the centre of my stomach, while the weight of his arms on my body made my heart beat faster. But I closed my eyes and focused on the truth; this is David. Not some random murderer.
My David.
I looked up, and the vampire ran his fingers over the skin under my cheekbone, forcing me to close my eyes with the tingle of his cool touch—a touch that feels so normal to me now.
“Are you okay?” David asked, looking overly concerned.
“Relax, David. I haven’t lost it…yet.”
“Sorry.” He broke into a breathy laugh. “It’s just that…when a guy tells a girl he’s a vampire, he doesn’t exactly expect to be laughed at.”
“Well, in my defence, I screamed first.”
He stiffened. I know how much it hurt him when I screamed. But he’s a vampire! It’s to be expected, right?
“Yes,” he answered my thought again, “but it still hurt.”
“Well, would you expect anything less than fear, David? You’re a dangerous creature. You’re not a Cullen,” I added, with a wry smile.
He laughed, loud and full. The sound warmed the room with its grace. “I wish.” He rolled his head backward as the laugh dissipated to a smile. “Great books, though.”
“You read them?”
“Of course.” He breathed out, still smiling as he added, “Wouldn’t life be so much easier if it were really that way?”
“No, because then you’d be icy-cold…and pale. But I like your golden skin.”
“I know you do.” He nodded once. My cheeks flushed with heat.
“So, you don’t, like, sparkle or anything, do you?” In all seriousness, I think that’s a fair question. David glowered at me. I guess he doesn’t share my resolve.
“Ara. You’ve seen me in the sun,” he stated drily, raising one brow. “Did I look like a lamp to you?”
Hmm, I remember how lovely he looked in the sun, how he seemed to glow—an incandescent beauty with perfectly formed muscles. His skin was so soft and smooth, hairless, as far as I could see. But although the memory is bright and golden—making me forget how dark my room is getting—I’m pretty sure he didn’t have moths buzzing around his head or anything. So, no, he didn’t look like a lamp. But, boy would I love to take his shirt off right now just to be sure it was all real.
A tiny smile tugged the corners of David’s lips, changing his whole expression.
“Stop it!” I scolded, holding my index finger up to warn him against his invasive, mind-reading behaviour. Will there ever be any way to get used to him being constantly in my head?
David’s shoulders lifted with his short, breathy laugh.
Obviously not.
“Okay. So, myths aside.” I shuffled my position to make myself more comfortable. Let the interrogation begin. “Why aren’t you cold and blue and pale?” I rushed through the questions, suddenly very curious. “Well, you’re a little pale—sometimes, and colder than other guys.”
“Hm, well, technically everything you think you know is a myth. You see, despite ancient storytelling, vampires are not actually dead.” He sat down from his squatted position beside me, wrapped arms around his knees and crossed his ankles in front of him. “And we’re not undead, either—we’re actually alive.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s why we’re not blue and pale. You know what else we’re not?” he hinted with a lopsided grin.
“Enlighten me,” I said playfully.
“We’re not evil demons or weirdo’s with anaemia, but,” he held a finger out, pointing to the roof, “we are in fact, colder—which is where some of the stories come from, I guess.”
“But…why are you cold if you’re alive?”
“Why are you cold?” He grinned; I shrugged. “See, if we go for long periods without…nourishment, we get colder and a little pale.”
“So, you’re not so very different from me, then?” I grinned playfully. “My hands are always cold and I turn into a monster when I’m hungry.”
“Ha! Maybe you’re a vampire and you just don’t know it.” He pointed at me, wearing a very cute, dimpled smile.
It’s nice to laugh with him again. “There’s just one thing I’m curious about, though. You said you’re not dead?”
He nodded.
Everything David and I have ever done together, every moment I’ve touched him since we met—I ran over in my mind. “I—I can’t remember ever hearing a heart-beat. Do you have a heart?”
David looked down, his lip creasing up into his dimple. “I don’t have a heart-beat, because I don’t need my heart to beat. You see, the energy—the life force that I draw from a human moves the blood through my arteries. It’s very powerful. And I don’t need my heart to pump the blood to my lungs to get oxygen in it, either, because I don’t make the blood. It comes to me with oxygen in it. See?” He held out his forearm and rolled up his sleeve to reveal clear veins, slightly protruding from his skin as if he were flexing the muscles in his arm. “Your veins carry blood to your heart to be sent off for oxygenation. Mine—” he ran his finger over the vein in his arm, “—don’t contain blood. They carry the remaining life force, the energy that makes me immortal. The blood runs through the arteries, which are deeper. That’s why my veins are clear.”
> “So…really? You don’t make your own blood?”
“Nope. When the blood I drink runs out of oxygen and nutrients, I simply drink more.”
“Wow.” I stared at his arm.
“But,” he added, rolling his sleeve back down, “I do still have a heart.”
My head bounced and my lips pressed together into a thin smile. “I know.”
“Then you know I love you? For eternity.” His hand flinched a little—like he was going to reach for me, but thought better of it.
“I know you do. The trouble is—I love you, too.”
“Why should that be a problem?”
“Because you’re a vampire, David. You—” My words are lost. What do I say? I’m not sure how I feel about you now that I know you kill people? That’s kinda shallow, isn’t it? But, then, hang on, he said eternity. Last I checked, I was human—humans aren’t immortal. Did he mean he wants me to…
“Only if you want to,” he said in a low, smooth voice. “I would never change you against your will.”
“David—” I started slowly.
“Ara, please? You shouldn’t think about that just now. Not until you’ve had time to come to terms with this.”
“Okay.” I nodded and sat thinking for a moment. “So, how long have you been a vampire?” It has to have been longer than I’ve known him.
“Since nineteen-thirteen.”
“I knew it! I knew you weren’t an eighteen-year-old boy.” I shook my head in amazement. “It all makes so much sense now—especially how you keep appearing at my side all the time.” After that thought, came another, but a more carefully considered question this time, “Are you…alone?”
He shook his head. “I told you once that I lived with my uncle and that I have a twin brother?”
I nodded.
“They’re the same as me.”
“What about girlfriends? Have you ever had one?” I probably don’t really want to know, especially if she went out to dinner with him and ended up becoming the main course.
David laughed again.
Did I say that aloud? No, I’m sure I didn’t.
“I’m not that careless, but, yes, I have had girlfriends.”
“Was anyone special? I mean, you’re pretty old, right, so have you ever, like, loved anyone?”
“Loved?”
“Yeah—like you love me.”
“Like I love you?” He shook his head. “Never. But there were two other girls I’ve loved in my existence. Neither of them worked out.”
“Why?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Why do you want to know this?”
I rolled my head to one side and scowled. “Same reason you wonder about Mike—” I pointed at him, “And I know you do.”
David grinned.
“—You wanna know who the competition is,” I finished, with a shrug.
He laughed once. “Okay. Fine. Well, let’s just say that for one of the girls—it turned out that we were really too different, and…” he took a breath and the smile dropped from his lips, “and the other was…just not meant to be.”
“Well, what happened to her?” I moved an inch closer, sensing his obvious distress.
He hesitated. “Perhaps this story is for another time.”
“Is that what happened two years ago?” I asked after dropping it for a whole three seconds. “Is she the reason you missed so much school—why you came to live here?”
“Ara—” David moaned, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So, you can tell me that you kill people, but you won’t talk about past girlfriends?”
“Ara. Stop it.”
“Why? Why won’t you tell me?” Agitation wandered into my tone. “Was she human, like me? Did you love her as much as you love me?”
“She’s gone!” David yelled, “Okay? Just drop it!”
My heart jumped to the sound of his raised voice. He has never yelled like that before. I sank back into myself. “I’m sorry, David.”
“Er!” he growled and placed his hands on his head, letting out another loud sigh. “No, Ara, I’m sorry—” he took my hand and looked deep into my eyes, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. It’s just—they took her away. She was a vampire, and they took her away.”
“Why?”
“Ara, please, I don’t want to talk about it.” Unable to look at me, he studied the ground for a moment.
“You really did love her?” I asked quietly.
“Yes.” He looked up at me. “But nothing like the way I love you—that has no measure, but I loved her enough.”
“Will she ever come back?” I studied his eyes.
“No.”
“Do you want her to?”
“No,” he raised his voice a little, then softened it, running his fingers through his hair. “Look. It doesn’t matter—I just. I don’t want to talk about it yet, okay?”
“Okay. I’m sorry. I won’t ask again.”
“No—” He moaned, rolling his head back a little. “You can ask—just not today.”
That’s what he always says; I’ll tell you, but not today. How irritating. So, then, when will he tell me? When can I ask? ‘Never’ seems to be a perfectly good time for him. I mean, it took him this long to tell me he’s a freakin vampire.
I can’t believe the big secret he’s been keeping from me all this time is nothing I could possibly have imagined. I’m good at assumptions, but boy was I wrong about his one. I should’ve realised, though—it explains so many things.
My mind wandered through the past few weeks, analysing and going over everything we said or did together, then stopped on the best memory I have stored away up there in my catalogue of thoughts; the butterflies.
That was so magical. He either took me there at exactly the right time, or he had something to do with it. I looked up. David’s head titled down a little and a very sexy smile spread across his lips. “You did that? The butterflies?” I asked, full of wonder.
“It’s one of my many talents,” he said, still grinning.
“But how? Are you magic?”
“No.” He shook his head, almost laughing. “I’m a creature of nature, Ara. Hard as that is to believe—”
“A creature of nature! But you kill people?” How can he compare himself to nature?
“Ara?” he scolded softly. “I’m no different to the lion killing the antelope.”
“Except that the lion doesn’t look like the antelope, or live among its kind.”
“True, but still, like the lion, I blend into my natural surroundings; he has the advantage of a certain colouring, and I have the ability to emulate the human form.”
“Yeah, but if you’re so natural, how come your species isn’t born—you’re, I don’t know, like, created, aren’t you?”
“You’re unbelievable, girl.” He shook his head. “You’re sitting beside a vampire, and wrought with scepticisms. Is it so hard to believe that I might be one of God’s creatures—just because I kill?”
I thrust my shoulders back and sat up straight. “Yes.”
“Look—” He exhaled with frustration, “what I am is a natural occurrence—a curse passed on by those of an ancient blood-line.”
“Your bloodline?”
“No. I was human once. You see, it takes a genetic polarity in a human which, when converged with vampire venom, triggers the change in their genetic makeup. They become less human and more of what is commonly called a vampire.”
“A genetic polarity?” I frowned, thinking over his words. I took genetic sciences in school—I wasn’t any good at it. “So, are you saying you have to have the right gene to become a vampire?”
“Yup, so, even though I’m a supernatural being, I’m actually mostly natural—just also very super.” He grinned warmly, straightening one leg out in front of him.
“So, if you’re not magic, how did you do that thing with the butterflies?”
He shrugged. “They’re just affected by humidity.
Vampires? We can manipulate the elements—water and temperature for example.” He scratched the back of his neck and shuffled his position. “I can get really scientific about it if you like, but most people fall asleep after about ten minutes.”
He has an explanation for everything. Always. I hate that. “Well, it was the most beautiful moment of my life, so far.” I’ve dreamed about those flutters of blue and yellow, surrounding us like we were in some private, mystical bubble, nearly every night since that day. It’s just a pity he had to ruin it by making it combined with the memory of my first kiss—to a guy who’s leaving me.
“You know—” David hesitated. “There’s a reason I did that, Ara, and it’s not what you think.”
“Did what?”
“Kissed you.”
I hugged my knees, not bothering to tuck my dress under my legs. “I’m listening.”
“I did that—” he leaned a little closer and lowered his voice, “because I love you, and I wanted to be your first kiss.”
“That’s a little selfish, don’t you think? Being that you plan to leave.”
He shook his head, pressing his lips into a flat smile. “It was worth it.”
Hm, yes, it was worth it—he’s right. And even if I lose him forever, we’ll always have that one perfect memory. With the thought of losing him, my mind snapped back to the issue at hand—suddenly racing with a thousand questions. “Okay, hang on, hang on, back up here a second. So—” I paused to compile all the information. “So you’re not magic?”
“I wouldn’t say that—there is an element of magic, by human definition.”
“Well, I guess there’d have to be with all that speed and healing fast stuff.” I stopped and turned the pages of myth in my mind. “Hang on. You did say you heal fast, right?”
“Yup.” He grinned, hugging his knee.
My mind is getting lost in information. “How?”
“Rapid cell regeneration. It’s responsible for immortality as well,” he answered with a hint of humour in his voice.
“Okay, Mr. I-have-an-answer-for-everything. So you’re not a demon, then?” I looked at him, my own tone light and quizzical.
He shook his head.