Aven's Dream

by Alessa James

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, Matt and Amy really seemed into each other.”

  I didn’t mention that I wasn’t so sure the Jeff and Megan thing was going to take, judging from the way Megan had looked at Will—like he had been something tasty to eat. I pulled out my books and worked steadily for the rest of the hour, managing to get through most of my assignments before the bell rang. In sixth period, I was working on the latest assignment for Mr. Blake when a hand came down on my shoulder. Jumping up, I spun around.

  “Dammit, Sean! You scared the hell out of me.”

  “You have been one jumpy chick lately, Aven. Has anyone told you that?”

  “Did you just call me a chick?”

  Sean hip checked me.

  “Did you get the feeling Megan was into your boyfriend, or what?” he laughed.

  “Well, up until now I had been hoping that it was my imagination.”

  “No way. That girl wants to jump your boyfriend.”

  “Sean! Don’t be crass.”

  “It’s the truth!”

  “What about Amy and Matt? You think they liked each other?” I asked.

  Sean shrugged.

  “Sure. Hey, so what’s the deal with Will?”

  I froze.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is he a card shark or something?” Sean prodded.

  I grinned.

  “I wouldn’t bet against him.”

  “Great, that’s two people who are going to take my money,” Sean moaned.

  My eyes narrowed as I remembered something.

  “Don’t you guys play for nickels anyway?”

  “Hey, that adds up fast with the kind of money I make, which is almost nothing. Oh, by the way, I talked to the boss man.”

  I nodded eagerly. Sean’s boss was manager of the bookstore that paid him the minimum wage he frequently complained about.

  “He said he might be able to give you a job when you get your license. You know, if you ever get around to getting one that is,” he teased.

  “I’m scheduling the test soon.”

  I didn’t mention that I hadn’t been practicing my driving at all lately.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “That’s it,” I snapped. “I’m finishing my article. One more word out of you, and you’re not getting any rides in my invisible car.”

  Sean got up and sauntered into the layout room, grinning as he cast a backwards glance at me. I had to remember to make the appointment for my driver’s exam. On the bright side, my dad’s Volvo was nearly indestructible, the perfect vehicle for learning how to drive. Smirking, I wondered how Will would handle having me behind the wheel of a car for once.

  At the end of class, I walked out to meet Will, who was already waiting for me. By the time we reached the parking lot, the wind picked up, blasting icy air around us. I shivered and pulled my jacket closer. As Will opened my door, he bent down toward me.

  “I wish I could keep you every night.”

  His words made my heart pound as the memory of our kiss from earlier resurfaced. I sat down breathlessly, and the door whooshed closed behind me. By the time Will pulled out of the parking lot, I was already lost in thought. I had so many unanswered questions, and I knew there were ones I hadn’t even thought of yet.

  How in control had Will been earlier today in school when he had kissed me? And what if we went further than that—would he still be in control? How long did we have together? I would go off to college—if I got in—next year while Will would remain perfectly ageless. And what would happen when I met his closest companions, as he had called them? Did Will have other enemies? Would this feud, or whatever it was, with Vladimir Fidatov ever end? And how did something ever end if no one involved could die—with the exception of me, of course? The sound of Will’s voice snapped me out of my reverie.

  “What are you thinking of?”

  “Nothing,” I shrugged. “Everything.”

  He smiled crookedly and then watched me, waiting. I thought about making up something and then sighed in defeat. Will would probably sense a lie.

  “I was thinking about my mortality.”

  “Is that all?” Will smiled.

  “Pretty much,” I sighed. “Don’t worry. It’s been kind of a hobby of mine since my mom died.”

  When I looked back out the window, Will didn’t say anything. Suddenly the car swerved so violently that it started spinning. Everything slowed down, and I watched as the trees whirled around in circles. In our second three-hundred-and-sixty-degree revolution, my only thought was: I’m going to die now. A second later, we were parked on the side of the road like nothing had happened.

  “What the hell!” I screamed into the silence.

  I jerked open the car door and scrambled out, bending over in case I was about to throw up. I didn’t hear Will get out of the car, but suddenly I saw his shoes in front of me. When I was finally sure I wasn’t going to hurl, I straightened up.

  “I’ll restate my original question: What the hell? Did you see a deer or something?”

  “I was making a point,” Will said calmly.

  “Another one? And what would this one be?”

  “That I will not let anything happen to you, Aven. I’ve spent too long alone to lose you.”

  “Well, you can’t do anything about time,” I whispered. “The next eighty years could go by in the blink of an eye for you, and it would be my entire lifetime. I’ll look like Mrs. Hendrix, and you’ll still be … this.”

  The sound of crunching gravel caused me to turn, and I watched as a mud-caked pickup truck pulled up behind the Aston Martin. Seeing a gun rack with a hunting rifle in the cab, I swallowed. I couldn’t think of a time when I had actually seen a gun, not counting TV and the movies. Will pulled me to him and leaned down, pressing his lips to mine. My mind spun as he broke away from me, and I turned dizzily in time to see a man stepping from the driver’s side of the truck.

  “You folks having car trouble?”

  The guy had a ball cap pulled low, so I couldn’t really see his face—just his work boots, camo jacket, and jeans. I guessed he wasn’t that much older than Will. Scratch that. He was probably two centuries younger than Will. I shivered suddenly; I didn’t like the feeling I was getting from him. It was bad. Really bad.

  “No trouble at all,” Will shrugged before looking over at me. “Aven, get in the car.”

  The passenger-side door of the truck opened, and a second man leaned over the door, openly leering at me with blood-shot, watery blue eyes.

  “Aven? Now, that’s a strange name for such a pretty little redhead,” the first man said, drawing my attention back to him. “But I don’t think Aven needs to go anywhere. What do you think, sweetie?”

  The sound of the name my dad called me on this man’s lips made my stomach turn, and suddenly I realized I couldn’t move. I just stood there, frozen, as the first man took a step forward while the other one continued watching from his perch at the truck. Will muttered something under his breath, but I couldn’t make out what it was with my heart beating so loudly in my ears.

  “Are you sure you want to choose this path?” Will asked.

  The guy closest to us laughed, sending another spike of terror through me.

  “Choose this path? Are you some kind of Zen master?” the man chortled.

  The one at the truck lifted a can of beer to his lips, and I bristled. A drunk driver had killed my mom—it wasn’t something I took lightly. Will looked over at me, his blue eyes blazing.

  “Aven, get in the car,” he said more forcefully.

  Nodding, I finally got my legs to work and stumbled toward the car before a crack of thunder stopping me in my tracks. Turning back, I saw the man at the truck holding the rifle’s muzzle skyward.

  “Girl ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the first man said, grinning and spitting a watery brown liquid from the side of his mouth. “Now, next bullet’s for you if you don’t do what I’m s
ayin’. Throw me your wallet and then get in that fancy car of yours and start drivin’.”

  Will nodded and reached into his back pocket. I watched silently as he tossed the billfold into the air. Then, before I could blink or move, I saw a blur. The man standing closest to us was suddenly flat on his back, and less than a second later, Will had grabbed the second man from the truck. The rifle was already in Will’s hands, and I watched as he bent the barrel in half and threw it to the ground. Then he turned and slammed the other man against the truck, his eyes glowing with rage as he pressed the man’s throat until I heard a gurgling noise from where I stood.

  “Will!”

  I didn’t even realize I had screamed until Will looked over at me. He hurled the man to the ground like a ragdoll and threw his arms up in the air.

  “Fidatov!” he growled, the sound of it echoing off of the trees.

  He was next to me an instant later, his hand wrapping around my arm before he hauled me over to his car, opened the door, and set me in the seat. Before I had even registered him sitting in the driver’s seat, the car was already moving.

  “Will?”

  It was barely a whisper, but I knew he had heard me.

  “Were you going to kill that man?”

  “Yes!” he growled. “I would gladly kill anyone whose intent is to harm you.”

  I shivered, coldness sweeping over me again as the scenery swept by us. We rode in silence, and only the sudden change in terrain jarred me out of my trance. Yesterday had felt like a dream, but now I had the feeling the darkness of the nightmare was only beginning.

  Chapter 14: Salvation

  Will parked in front of the towering glass and steel structure that was his house. Before I could move, he was already opening my door and unbuckling my seatbelt. Until today, it hadn’t completely sunk in quite how fast or strong Will really was.

  “You have a right to be frightened of me,” he said quietly as he held out his hand for me to step out. “You should be frightened of me.”

  Getting out of the car, I shook my head. I wanted—no I needed—to convince him that he was different than his enemy, and more importantly, that I wasn’t afraid of him. I thought of the rage I had felt when I found out my mom had been killed by a drunk driver. For months, I had wanted to kill the man who had taken my mom away from me—because he had survived, and she hadn’t. I dreamed of it; I wished for his death.

  “If you’re a monster, then I am one, too,” I said, reaching up to touch his cheek.

  Will shook his head sadly as we walked to the entrance to the house.

  “No, Aven. I know of monsters, and you are not one of them.”

  As the glass slid open, Darcy bounded outside to greet us. I bent down and scratched his head as Will disappeared. A second later, the SUV from the weekend pulled up in front of us, and Will got out to open the back for Darcy. Then he came around and lifted me into the passenger seat. Hearing Darcy crunching on dog kibble in the back made me smile. Then Will appeared on the driver’s side, and the SUV shot forward, propelling us away from the fortress behind us. As I looked back one last time, my mind flashed to the sketches I had seen on the drafting table in Will’s bedroom.

  “Did you …”

  “Design the house?” he finished.

  He nodded, and I stared at him.

  “But how?”

  “I have a graduate degree in architecture.” He paused and smiled. “You asked what I did with my nights.”

  “Wow. Then, pretending to be a high school student has to be pretty boring.”

  “Attending high school has been infinitely more pleasant than anything I’ve done in the past two centuries, particularly now that I have you to look forward to.”

  I blushed.

  “How did you become what you are?” I asked when I looked back at Will.

  He gave me a look.

  “What? It’s a relief to be able to ask you questions and have you actually answer them. And I don’t have anything to go on. I mean, I’m assuming you weren’t bitten like a real vampire.”

  “A real vampire?” Will laughed.

  I froze.

  “Are there real vampires?”

  Will stopped smiling.

  “Yes, in a manner of speaking.”

  I shook my head. He was back to evasion.

  “In a manner of speaking? What does that mean?”

  “Fidatov might fit your perception of a real vampire.”

  I felt a twinge of uneasiness.

  “How so?”

  “I told you that my kind—” he looked over at me and smiled “—feeds off of the emotions of other creatures. One of the most potent emotions is terror. Vladimir Fidatov tortures his victims and often drains them of more than just their emotions. He is a savage.”

  “That’s awful …” I trailed off, fighting the urge to be sick. “How could you ever think that you’re like him?”

  “I did once fervently believe that he and I were the same. I now agree with what Nietzsche said: Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil. What drives Fidatov is purely greed and malice. Love is merely a human weakness in his mind, and people are merely tools.”

  “Those men from earlier—were they his tools?”

  Will nodded.

  “So, then he’ll just keep sending crazy psychos after me forever? I mean, as long as I’m alive?”

  Will gave me a pained look.

  “No. I will stop him.”

  “No offense, but you dropped him to the bottom of the ocean—and that didn’t seem to work. You can’t go to the police, obviously. I mean, what are they going to do about an immortal serial killer? But then how do you stop someone like him?”

  “You trap him, weaken him, and then imprison him.”

  “Until he escapes,” I frowned. “Then again, I guess if that happens two hundred years from now, I won’t be around to do anything about it—will I?”

  I smiled sadly and turned to look out the window. Within a few minutes, my eyelids were too heavy to keep open. I decided to close them just for a few seconds. The next thing I knew, I was weightless in someone’s arms.

  “Dad?” I mumbled groggily.

  Opening my eyes, I looked up at Will as he set me on the couch in my living room.

  “Your father will be home soon,” he said.

  Not soon enough, and I could tell from the look on Will’s face that he was going to leave. He was still afraid I thought he was a monster. Sitting up, I reached toward him.

  “Stay. Please.”

  “Are you certain?”

  I nodded, and he scooped me up and settled onto the couch with me mostly in his lap. I laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

  “What?” Will asked curiously.

  “This. It’s just strange. I didn’t think I would date until I got to college, and if someone had told me at the beginning of this year that I would be with you, I would have laughed my ass off.”

  “You have a surprisingly low sense of self worth,” Will said in a recriminating tone.

  I turned and looked up at him.

  “No, I don’t. Really. I get good grades in most of my classes. AP U.S. History and AP English are no problem. The SATs? I rocked the writing and critical reading sections. The math section? Okay, so my score outright sucked, but I’m only in Trig. I can’t sing. Dancing is out—I look like a flailing walrus.” Will raised an eyebrow. “Take my word for it. I think I look pretty good in a bathing suit, but I’m pale as hell. The point is: I know my strengths, and I know my weaknesses. My strengths don’t exactly translate to hot-guy magnet.”

  “Am I hot?” Will asked with a surprised laugh.

  I snorted.

  “Oh my god. Are you really asking that? Most of the girls in school want to devour you.”

  My stomach suddenly snarled at me.

  “Speaking of hunger …” Will said humorously.

  “Okay, that was embarrassing.”

  I tried to sit up, but Will
kept his arm wrapped around me.

  “Dinner?” he asked.

  I nodded, waiting for him to let me up. He didn’t. He just took out his phone with his other hand. Giving him a curious look, I waited. When he started giving my dad’s usual order at the pizza place, my mouth dropped open. Squirming out of his grip, I swiveled around until I was facing him with my legs on either side of his.

  “Seriously? You totally have been stalking me! My music, my dad’s order at the pizza place …”

  “Your father orders a copious quantity of pizza,” Will smiled.

  “His version of a home-cooked meal. Yours, too—judging from last night.”

  “You seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Uh, yeah. I did. A little too much.”

  I couldn’t help thinking about other things I had enjoyed too much recently—and suddenly my current position took on heightened significance. My eyes shot to Will’s, which didn’t help things. He was staring at me in a way that made my breathing hiccup in my chest, and when he reached up slowly and brushed my lower lip with his thumb, I nearly blacked out. Scrambling backwards, I started to fall off the couch when Will caught me, pulling me up until we were both standing. He shook his head.

  “You are very difficult to resist.”

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard that one,” I said breathlessly.

  Will’s eyes narrowed.

  “Good.”

  “Good? Really? I’m sorry, but how can immortal perfection be remotely jealous of anything or anyone?”

  “Admittedly, jealousy is another emotion that is new to me.”

  Smiling, I pulled away from him. I walked into the kitchen, stumbling when I noticed Will beside me. As usual, there was no sound of footsteps to indicate his pursuit.

  “Okay,” I said, laughing. “That’s something I’m never going to get used to.”

  “What’s that?” Will asked.

  “Your ability to walk into a room without making a sound.”

  I walked to the refrigerator to pour a glass of water before starting to unload the dishwasher.

  “Did you mean what you said about the dance?” Will asked as he watched me.

  “I have nothing to wear, and until I get my license, I have no way of making enough money for a dress. My dad just got me a computer, and there’s no way I’m asking him for money for a dress.”