by Am Hudson
“Let me guess,” he said, “You still love me.”
“Well, I was going to say your face hadn’t changed—given the immortality and all,” I said, chuckling over his sudden jab in my ribs. “I’m kidding.” I pushed his hand away but kept hold of it. “I was just joking.”
“I know,” he said. “But you’re right. Neither of us has changed—one bit. Physically. And one day, a hundred years from now, we will drive this same road and see many more changes within these streets, Ara, but unlike any other move through time for me, I will now have you beside me. Always.”
“And forever.”
He drew my hand up to his mouth and kissed the back. “Always and forever.”
Chapter Five
We turned down the road toward the lake, and my heart melted around the feeling of coming home. The trees had grown in over the road and fallen branches made it difficult to drive a straight line, so David took things easy, keeping the speed low for the first time in his life, while I looked out the window, trying to spot the fox warning signs around the border.
So many memories belonged to this one place—memories of almost everyone I loved. Mike and I had trained here. Jason and I had talked here. I met Petey for the first time here. David and I had spent more time alone here than we had anywhere else in our entire little world. And now, this narrow corner of the earth was our entire world.
“Have you spoken to Falcon?” I asked. “Does he know you’ve come to get me?”
“He came up with the plan.”
“What plan?”
“We gathered the knights in a secret meeting and had a…” He laughed. “Rather complex attack plan at the ready. We were going to swoop in with guns and flamethrowers, bomb some buildings with the help of the human faction, and use that as a distraction to save you.”
“Were?”
“Yes.” He stopped talking while he swerved right then left around some fallen branches. “We were planning to leave two days after we first saw your spirit that night.”
“First saw?” I said. “Did I come back?”
“Twice. You don’t remember?”
I shook my head. “I remember the first time.”
“Well, yes, you returned again—scared the living hell out of me.”
“I did?”
“You appeared while I was… in the bathroom.”
“Doing what?”
“Reading a paper, Ara, what d’you think?”
If vampires could blush, he would have. I laughed obnoxiously loud.
“You went to Jason, too.”
I stopped laughing. “I did?”
David nodded. “That’s how we knew you were okay—that you weren’t being held prisoner. I planned to send Falcon in to talk with Drake so I could stay and maintain power at the manor, since Walter had already assumed temporary power while I was gone, but when he found out where you were—by means unknown—he started a coup, worked everyone into a frenzy about the evil witch child, and our people followed him.”
“Couldn’t you have stopped him? I mean, you’re more powerful than he is—more powerful than you’ve let on, right?”
“I didn’t want to stay and fight him for the throne. I don’t care about the throne—or the people.” He laid his hand firmly on my knee. “All I wanted was to find you and make sure you were safe.”
I patted his hand. “So you just gave up the throne and left our people in Walter’s hands?”
“Not entirely. Falcon stayed behind to be my ‘eyes and ears’.”
“What about Blade, and Quaid?”
“In the rush, I never got to speak to them. I’m not sure what happened.”
That made me nervous. “What about Jason? Is he safe, being that they think I’ll go to him?”
“He’s in hiding—with that guy Trey.”
“He made it there then—Trey?”
“Safe and sound.”
“What about his human family?”
“They’re fine.” David nodded. “Jason dropped what he was working on and immediately set Trey and his family up somewhere with a nice house, new car, and enough money to get by until Trey gets a job.”
“So they’re under the Lilithian rule now?”
“If there is one left, yes.”
“Good. And don’t worry.” I squeezed his hand. “We will get our monarchy back.”
“I thought you didn’t want it.” He looked sideways at me. “You always wanted a normal life—free of all of this.”
“I did. I mean, I do, but…” My eyes drifted away to the thick wall of trees. “It’s people like Trey that make me want to stay—to defend them; to give them a better life. What will happen to all those people if I’m not there to speak for them?”
David smiled, his eyes sharpening first, then his lips. “I’m proud of you, Ara.”
“I know.”
When we reached the pair of trees guarding the pathway to the lake, David didn’t pull over and stop the car; he turned and we took a deep dip down a ditch before bumping and bouncing over the grown-in path, the headlights beaming back at us off the trees.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my head hitting the soft rooftop.
“Taking us home.”
“Home? This leads to the lake—we can’t live here.”
He just smiled—that damn secret smile I hadn’t seen in so long. And I couldn’t argue after that; all I could do was sit and grin like a little girl, replaying that smile over and over. And oddly enough, thinking about that look he got when he had a secret, I realised that I’d never seen that on Jason. They were twins, but their smiles differed so greatly they wouldn’t look alike standing side-by-side with a grin on their faces.
“So Jason got banished, huh?” I asked.
“He did.” David’s knuckles gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter.
“I’ll change that,” I promised, “when I’m back in power.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you so upset about it?”
“Because, after all he’s done for those people—saving their Queen many times from not only the mad king but the power we forced you to use, and developing the Re-humanisation Technique—he deserved better. Someone should have spoken for him.”
“Arthur would have—if he’d been there,” I suggested.
David’s knuckles turned white under the blue glow of dashboard lights. “Do not mention his name.”
“Why?”
“Because I will likely crack this steering wheel and we will be continuing on foot.”
I laughed, sobering then as my heart warmed. “It’s nice to see the love you have for him—for Jason. I always knew you loved him, but it’s just nice to actually see it.”
“He’s my brother.” He shrugged. “I’ll always love him. No matter what.”
The car slowed then and a giant log stared back at us from beyond the headlights—completely blocking our path.
“Oh my god!” I leaned forward and undid my seatbelt. “We’re here.”
“Yes.” He reached across to clip my belt back in. “But we’re not stopping here.”
“Where are we going?”
He manoeuvred the car awkwardly across the bumpy terrain around the log, tall grass scraping the paintwork, while small twigs scratched at the windows. “A house—at the end of the dried-up stream.”
“A house?” My bones nearly took off running ahead to see it. “There’s a house out here?”
“Yes.” David laughed. “Now shush. I’m trying not to hit anything and damage my car.”
I sat back, my hands over my belly, and thought about the fact that this was Bump’s first time coming to our lake. And hopefully not the last.
When we finally came to a pair of grassy tyre tracks and left the forest floor behind, I felt less like a stuffed toy in a washing machine and more like a passenger in a car. I even relaxed enough to recognise a lot of the trees. Each one held a memory of some kind—as if I could actually see the echoes of our p
ast—see myself standing there in the place where we really started this entire journey; one that would eventually lead us back here—still just as in love.
“Do you remember that day?” I asked, nodding toward the very end of the tyre tracks—where I’d once found myself lost after he admitted to stalking me.
“The day I first said I love you?” He laughed. “No, I’d forgotten.”
“Ha-ha. So funny.” I sat back again, holding the sides of the leather seat with both hands. “How much longer until we get there?”
“It’s another ten minutes inland.”
“I’m not sure my bladder can take another ten minutes on this old road.”
“We’ll drive along the old dried up creek bed in a minute—it’ll be a bit… smoother.”
“Good idea.” My butt bounced right off the seat then and the baby nearly pushed my heart up my throat as we landed. I looked at David, irritated. “Ten minutes you say?”
“If my memory serves me.”
“Memory?” I jiggled sideways then, almost banging my head on the window. “How long has it been since you’ve come out here?”
“Sixty years, give or take,” he said with a shrug.
“Then what makes you think the lake house will even be there!”
“Oh, it’s there.” He nodded with certainty. “Might be a bit run down and old, but—”
“A bit run down? David! It’ll be dilapidated.”
“It’ll be fine. Stop worrying.” His hand slid smoothly down my thigh and stopped on my knee, and a warm wave of calm ran through me—David’s forced calm. But I didn’t push him away or reject it, because it had been an awfully long time since he’d done that. It made me feel human again—and vulnerable in a nice way.
With my head clear of worry, I thought about when I first started using my powers—how I’d sit on that black rock by the lake and shoot my light into the water. Back then, even in the presence of Nature, my head would hurt, and it only occurred to me now that what Jason taught me—to transfer my energy into the ground and draw it back out—came so naturally these days I never even felt myself doing it. I didn’t even get one headache when Drake took me out training, and it just made me wish I’d had Drake as an ally when I first found out I was Lilithian. He taught me more in four hours than anyone had in my entire time as Queen, and I knew there was more he could teach me—if given the chance. If David would give him the chance—trust him.
As I laid my head on the car door and looked out the front window, something about the way the headlights shone on the lonely, overgrown trees made me feel unsafe—even with David by my side. The last time I came out to the lake was during my training to become the Queen—a soldier. Now, I had the capabilities of any great warrior, and I had nothing to fear. Not a human. Not a vampire. Not even a weapon. But I feared Walt. I feared his fear. I feared his desire for power. I feared being hunted for the rest of my life—being made to use my abilities as weapons, always being on my guard.
“What’s going to happen to us, David?”
His mind was completely focused on driving, but he stepped outside of navigation-mode for a second and, when he looked at my face, pulled the car to a slow stop, drawing the handbrake up but leaving the engine running.
“We’re going to lay low—until you’ve had the baby—”
“But—”
“Ah. I’m speaking. You be quiet,” he said playfully.
I pretended to zip my lips. Begrudgingly.
“You can have the baby, and when she is safe, we will recruit an army—”
“But then Drake will know she’s not Anandene.”
“What happened to shutting up?” he said with a small smile.
“David, we need him—his army. If we’re going to take back what’s ours, we need to fight! We can’t do that without his help.”
“And we can’t do it while you’re pregnant. It’s too risky, because I know damn well that you won’t sit back and let us win Loslilian back without you. And I can’t have my pregnant wife wielding a sword—”
“I fought at the Fall Battle,” I said. “And I was fine.”
He slowly sat back with his tongue pushing out his cheek, his eyes lost in thought. “Look, let’s just get settled—regroup. Okay? Then we can discuss politics.”
“Fine.” I rubbed my face vigorously. “We’ve both got very good arguments here. And I am just too tired to see anything clearly. Let’s just go find this house. And it better have a bed.”
“It does,” he said with a grin, putting the shift into drive. “And probably a few spiders as well.”
“That’s good,” I said chirpily, “So you won’t be the only deathly terrifying creature there?”
“Hey, may I remind you that your species kills my kind. You’re a hell of a lot scarier than I.”
“I’m hungry too. So I hope you’ve fed up on humans, because I’m going to drain you dry once I get your clothes off you.”
He shifted awkwardly in his seat, moving the fly on his jeans sideways.
“You okay?” I asked.
“You just…” He hesitated at first, and then exhaled and just said, “…gave me a hard-on.”
I threw my head back, laughing loudly.
***
A museum of mismatched furniture and fixtures from different eras stood proudly elevated over a dried-up creek bed—as if time and life had forgotten this house was here. David had darted inside before I even hauled myself out of the car, and opened all the windows and doors, letting the cool breeze in to freshen up the smell of absence and fear. The wispy, torn curtains moved out through the balcony doors like ghosts that were just set free, and the bones of the house creaked against its stilts, threatening to crumble under my feet.
I knew from looking up at it as we first pulled up that the house was one big, formerly white, square building, with what looked like an attic up top in the high peak of the rooftop. My inner History student determined the building to have been built sometime around the early eighteen hundreds, but as I climbed the stairs and stood in the double doorway, looking across at the steel-framed bed and the stripy mattress— stained with aged blood and years of moisture damage—it could more easily be placed sometime in the twenties. There were once soft white curtains around that dirty old bed, but they’d worn so thin with age that they resembled nothing more than flakey webs now.
Across from the foot of the bed, a pair of glass doors led to the balcony, but I didn’t really notice too much else aside from the fact that there was a kitchen of some sort to my left and what might be a bathroom backing onto the wall where the bed was.
“What do you think?” David asked, coming up the stairs with a suitcase in each hand.
Testing the solidity of the wooden floors before actually stepping in, I walked carefully over to an old fabric chair from the twenties and dusted off the seat. “Hard to discern an era.”
“I know.” He put the bags down by the door. “It was built in oh-eight, but we had a kitchen fire sometime around the twenties. I think Jason moved out here for a few months in the thirties to play house with some human, and he fixed up the damage from the fire then.”
As I leaned back comfortably in the dusty, rickety old chair, I looked across at a sturdy iron monstrosity in the kitchen. It was too dark to tell, but it looked as though the stove was once lime green and quite modern in its day. Beside it was a freestanding kitchen cabinet with cupboards up top and below, a counter between, and a gaudy-looking porcelain sink on fancy legs under the window. And that was it, aside from a small square table and two kitchen chairs. There was, however, still a red-and-white chequered tablecloth laid over the table. It was worn and chewed holey by moths; but in an abandoned, dystopian kind of way, it was quite homely.
The wind picked up a bit outside and swept across the floors then, pushing sixty years of leaves toward my toes. I lifted my feet off the ground, hugging myself. “I’m cold.”
“I’ll light a fire.”
�
��A fire?” I gasped, looking around. “Where?”
He laughed. “Behind the bookcase.”
“What bookca—” As my eyes took another scan of the room I saw it; at the foot of the bed—a bookcase no bigger than an average mantle, clearly built to hide the fireplace. “Why would you bury it away like that?”
“More use for a bookshelf than a fireplace,” he said simply, and appeared by it a second later. I watched in a numb, tired state as he gently took the books off in threes, laid them in a neat pile on the floor by the bed, and then dusted his hands off. I could see a tiny bit of his reflection in the grubby oval-shaped mirror over the mantle as he searched for something, smoothing his hands along the gilded frame.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a catch here somewhere—behind the mirror. It releases the bookcase.”
“Oh,” I said, and he obviously found it because the bookcase sprung forward an inch on one side. David rolled it outward like a door and fixed it against the wall beside the fireplace, stacking the books he removed into the new shelf on the opposite side.
“There’s no firewood,” he announced, standing up.
I shut my eyes and leaned my head back. “After sixty years without tenants, are you surprised?”
“No. But it means I need to leave you alone for a few minutes.” His hand gently cupped my knee. I kept my eyes closed. “Will you be okay?”
“I’ll be fine. If anyone comes I’ll pretend I’m a ghost.”
David laughed. “If you feel up to it, I’m pretty sure the shower will still work.”
One eye popped open. “There’s plumbing here?”
“There is,” he said with a nod. “If the pipes aren’t blocked, and I doubt there’ll be hot water. But I’ll go light the pilot anyway.”
“Don’t stress it.” I showed him my hand. “I can heat a bath if need be.”
He grabbed my hand quickly then, startling me. “Where did you get this?”