by Am Hudson
Vicki’s face folded in where all the passing years made impressions on her skin, and the vampire, the man, the husband, moved in to comfort her again.
“Then why, Greg?” She looked up at him. “Why? I just can’t make myself understand why you left—why you didn’t just tell me the truth about the need to fake your own death.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well,” she snapped breathily. “You’ve got forever to explain it, don’t you?”
Lord Eden’s shoulders lifted with a deep breath and he moved back a few steps to sit down on the sofa. “It will hurt you for me to explain.”
“I’m hurting now,” she pointed out, propping one hand on her hip.
The vampire held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “You’ve always been my best friend, Vicki—my confidante, my ally. But something an immortal comes to understand after centuries walking the earth is…”
Oh no, I thought. I knew exactly what he was going to say. And I wanted to stop him, but at the same time, if I were Vicki, I’d want to hear it. No matter how bad it hurt.
“There is love,” he explained, “the kind you have for a lifetime. And there is the love you have for eternity—”
Vicki’s shoulders lowered as her head came up a little and she closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Vicki. I don’t want to hurt you—”
“What does he mean?” Sam asked, looking from his mom to his dad. “I don’t understand.”
“Your father is telling me he doesn’t love me enough to be with me forever,” she said pragmatically, then turned a cold eye on her dead husband. “Does that sound correct?”
Sam’s eyes followed hers. “Is that true? You faked your death to get away from us?”
“To protect you—”
“No, you could have stayed to protect us, you—”
“I had to leave. I couldn’t take you with me—”
“But you could’ve sent us somewhere to be safe. You could’ve made us wait for you if you wanted to, but you didn’t.” Sam’s eyes narrowed at his father. “You didn’t because you didn’t want us anymore, did you?”
“I always wanted you, Sam. I will always be here for you—”
“But not for Mom?” Sam asked, and the energy in the room fell flat.
Lord Eden clasped his hands in his lap and looked down at them. “I’m sorry, I—”
“How can you be so cruel?”
“I wish I felt differently, Sam, but—”
“Well you know what I wish?” Sam said, standing defensively beside his mom, his arm circling her shoulders. “I wish you had never come back. You need to leave.”
Lord Eden looked at Vicki. She nodded, covering her nose and mouth to hold back the tears.
Mike stepped in then. “Sam, why don’t we let your mom and dad go upstairs and talk? You can—”
“No.” Vicki put her hand up, shaking her head. “No. I… I think we’ve heard all we need to hear.”
Lord Eden nodded to himself, placing both hands on his knees, then he stood up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
“I’m glad you did,” Vicki said, lowering her hand and rolling her shoulders back. “Because now I can finally move on—knowing I was never in your heart the way you were in mine.”
Lord Eden opened his mouth, but obviously thought better of it, because he closed it, took a step away and then stopped by Sam. “I hope you can forgive me one day, son.”
Sam angled his chin upward, stiffening his lip, and Lord Eden took that for it was: a cold farewell.
I went to touch him as he passed, but he politely turned his head, his eyes glassy, and brushed me off.
The front door closed behind him, and Mike and I stood awkwardly under the archway between the den and the entranceway, not really sure what to do.
Vicki took a very audible calming breath and let it out, tidying her straight hair. “Who wants coffee before we leave for the safe-house?”
“Mom,” Sam said in a flat tone. “You can’t just make coffee and biscuits. Dad just said he never loved you the way he’s meant to. You’re supposed to cry!”
Vicki swallowed with what looked like difficulty, nodding. “I will, Sam,” she said in a weak voice, patting his arm as she passed. And I admired her then. She had always been a rock. She could show emotion when she needed to, but she mostly showed strength. I knew how much she was hurting right now, but she’d make some coffee, talk about the baby and our plans for Christmas, and when we dropped her at the safe-house, she’d go up to her room, draw a hot bath, sink right in, and cry until her fingers pruned.
When she hopped out and dried off, though, she would be renewed, and I knew that she would never think of Greg Thompson again. Like me, she realised that the man we all loved really was a lie, and the truth was nothing even close to it.
***
David reached down and scooped up my hand as we reached the clearing around our lake. From here I could see the perspective Jason took when he painted that masterpiece he left as a gift, and almost as though I were lost in that world of oil brushstrokes, the forest today looked too perfect to be real. The days that brought us closer to winter had stripped all the trees bare, aside from the distant evergreens bordering the road, and the lake was so still that the tall white columns of the naked tress reflected back off its surface like elven staffs.
We made ourselves comfortable by our rock, and as I stretched my legs out and opened my face to the bright sun, David flipped sideways and planted his head in my lap.
“What does he think we need to talk about?” he asked.
“He thinks I’m not admitting the truth about how I feel—that maybe what we did with Chastity really does bother me—deep down inside.” I opened my eyes wider as I said the last words.
“Does it?” he asked earnestly.
I squinted in thought. “I know it would bother other people. But blood and sex just… they go hand in hand. They always have. And I’m just—” I laughed, going back to that night in my thoughts. “I don’t think I could do that again unless I was in the mood, and it won’t be a regular thing. But it was good for the thrill.”
“Wait until you’ve made your first kill.” He closed his eyes, making himself more comfortable. “You think you’re messed up now, but there is nothing that beats sucking the life out of something and living off it for days.”
“Hm. Yeah, I’ll pass, thanks,” I said, holding my hand just above his eyes to shield them from the sun. “So, did you speak to Chastity after I left today?”
“I did.” His tone pitched high with interest. “Turns out she was more into what we did than she let on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say her taste is more feminine than I first thought.”
“She’s a lesbian?”
“She is.” He sounded way too excited.
“Get that thought out of your head, David Thomas Knight!” I flicked him in the temple. “Things got crazy last night—in the moment, but I am not doing that to her!”
“Why not?” he whined, rolling onto his side, his arm across my lap, elbow on the ground beside me. “You liked the way she tasted in my blood, right?”
I felt my cheeks go hot.
“You never know,” he said, sliding a finger under the hem of my dress. “Maybe you’d like it if you tasted her in a different way—”
“Stop that.” I slapped his hand away; he laughed. “I was blood hungry, David. I would never go down on a girl—”
“Relax.” He rolled onto his back again, closing his eyes. “I was kidding.”
I could tell from the small crooked smile that he was. But I could also tell from his tone that he wasn’t.
After a moment of silence, Mike’s words in the car this morning got the better of me. “Should it bother me?”
“What?” He popped one eye open.
“Should it bother me what we did?”
He laughed. “Did it bother you before Mike said it
should?”
I shook my head.
“Then no.” He closed his eye again. “It shouldn’t.”
“But—”
“Ara.” He opened both eyes. “Does it bother you, or doesn’t it?”
In my mind I replayed it—the way his jaw brushed against her most private zone; the way she smelled and the way it turned us both on; all the thoughts and ideas I saw in his mind as he drank from her—all those things should’ve grossed me out, but in the moment, I just found it incredibly hot. I knew I’d do it again. Even if that wouldn’t be right now, without the heat of desire, but I knew I would definitely do it again.
“You weren’t there with her,” I said. “You were there with me—for me, to make love to me. Nothing about last night bothers me—not even because it technically should. But as soon as it becomes about the other girl—or guy—it’s over. We won’t do it again.”
He didn’t say anything, so I looked down at him and found a pair of raised brows and a smirk. “Guy, huh?” he said.
“Well. I,” I stammered, scratching just behind my ear.
“Did you have anyone in mind?” His tone went up on the end.
My heart flipped as I accidentally thought of Jase. “I didn’t mean that!” I put my hands on his chest. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
David laughed. “He’s done that before, you know.”
My blood stilled with confusion. “Who’s done what?”
“Jason.” He laughed. “Two guys and a girl.”
“Seriously?”
His head moved against my thighs in a nod. “You wouldn’t think it, huh?”
“No.”
“And it’s out of the question with you and I,” he added, “so don’t even think about it, but yes, Jason has done it before.”
“How?” I racked my mind trying to figure out how two guys would have their naughty way with one girl—without doing anything I wouldn’t want to imagine Jase doing. No offence to Falcon if that’s what he likes, but if Jase did, then I would be kind of… shocked.
“You can’t use your imagination?” he asked with a gentle laugh, reaching up to stroke my cheek. “Do you want me to show you his memory?”
“You have it?” I almost fell forward with disbelief.
“It was too funny not to steal.” His deep, glassy eyes moved from the wiry branches to me. “Wanna see it?”
“Um, thanks, but no.” I folded my arms on top of Bump. “I really do not need to see Jason going at it with another guy.”
“He didn’t touch the other guy.”
“Then how did he…?”
“They call it a Pig on a Spit.”
“A what!”
He laughed loudly. “A Pig. On. A Spit.”
“I don’t get it. Oh!” I said as it sunk in. “One guy on each end, right?”
“Right.”
That sounded kind of gross, but it also made my blood heat up.
“No!” David said out of nowhere, and a little bit too loudly.
“What’s no?”
“No. Never.”
“What?”
“I can see everything you’re thinking, my horny little pregnant wife. And I forbid it. You will not become a rotisserie no matter how badly you want it.”
I laughed so hard and so loud then that a flock of birds suddenly left the island across the water. “I don’t want it, David—sex with anyone else. Ever. I just imagined it for a moment.”
“Do me a favour then, and next time, don’t imagine anyone I know.”
“Sorry.”
He just laughed lightly.
After that, despite the impending battle after Christmas and the concern for my child’s life, despite the vampires residing at our peaceful little lake house right now, David and I spent the next hour or so talking about everything but our worries. And I think the way he smiled and the lightness of his voice made me fall a little bit more in love with him for every minute that passed. I could feel my heart healing inside, and everything we’d been through, everything we’d suffered both apart and at each other’s hands, just seemed to slip into a past that felt further away than it actually was. I found myself noticing more about the world around me—the colour of the dirt around the lake, how it was darker where the chill had tarnished the grass; and the birds, how it seemed routine that every afternoon at around three o’clock they would take flight and spread out across the sky; and how, in this light I could see the small scar on David’s chin that I hadn’t noticed since I thought he was human—it was all there. All of it. Every normal thing in my human world had always been here in my supernatural world, but I just never had eyes to see it.
“David?”
“Hm?” he hummed in an ultra-relaxed state.
“For the record, I’m really not okay with sex threesomes. Blood threesomes I don’t mind, but—”
“It’s not my thing either, Ara,” he said bluntly.
“You say that, but… I mean…” I bit my lip and took a deep breath, preparing myself for his answer. “Did you want to have sex with Chastity last night?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“Truly? Because I’d rather you were honest.” Although, honesty could lead to a white-hot shot of Cerulean Light if I didn’t like the answer.
He opened both eyes and studied mine, his pupils getting larger. “I have no reason to lie to you. And I also have no reason to want another girl, I might add.” He rolled up to sit, then spun around so he faced me, his legs crossed under him like a kid on a rug at preschool. When he lifted my hand and threaded his fingers through mine, I felt a familiar flicker of static energy between our palms—something I hadn’t noticed for a long time. “You, my love, cannot be compared to—you cannot be looked past or brushed off like other girls can. I will never want another girl as long as I live, because everything I ever wanted in a girl is right here.” He squeezed my hand. “Don’t ever doubt that, but please, also, don’t ever feel like you can’t ask me.”
I sucked my lip in as I smiled sheepishly.
“Okay?” he prompted.
“Okay.”
Chapter Nine
Clear beads of sweat broke out across Jase’s forehead, his eyes scrunched tight as he fought me. Even with the wintry wind battering the shutters outside, I felt a warm trickle run down from my neck and drip into the gap between my jeans and my tailbone. He was stronger than Em, stronger than Quaid, and holding him in the grip of fear wasn’t as easy as it was with them.
“Focus, Ara.” David’s instruction came through the thick fog of concentration. “You’re letting your feelings for him get in the way.”
“He’s fighting me.” My voice came out strained, as though the fight was physical.
“No, you’re letting him fight you.” I felt his hand on my arm. “Lock him down. Tell yourself you’re more powerful than him, and—”
“Argh!” David jumped back as I slipped off the chair and landed hard on my bum by the bed, flapping my hands around my head. “Get it off! Get it off!”
“There’s nothing there, Ara,” he said flatly, standing back.
“There is!” I looked away from him to the webs on my hands and face, kicking my legs as the spiders skittered toward me. “Get them off me!”
“What happened?” Em asked urgently, running her hand over the webs.
“He flung it back at me—the nightmare,” I yelled. “He drew me into it.”
David squatted beside me, and Jason sat up, lowering his legs over the side of the bed.
“Are you okay, Ara?” Jase softly cupped his palm over my head, and the nightmare faded.
David batted his hand away. “She’s fine.”
I breathed deeply through the remaining fear, lifting my own mind back to the surface—to reality—where it was light and warm with the heat of the fire. “I’m not strong enough to lock Jason down.”
“You are,” Jase assured me. “But when you doubt yourself, you open the floodgates of vulnerability, and any vam
pire—no matter how young or old—will feel that, and you’ll lose the fight.”
“But it was working,” David added, cupping my hand and helping me to my feet. “A few more seconds and his blood would have been at just the right temperature.”
“I know.” I rubbed my head, then my sore butt. “But how do I feed off a powerful vampire and keep him locked down in the nightmare at the same time? I’m not sure I can do that.”
David’s eyes flicked to Jason. “No.”
Jase put both hands up, shaking his head. “I never said it.”
“But you thought it, and no! She is not feeding off you.”
I grinned, seeing an opportunity to tease David. “Why not? After all, you did say I had to practise on him so you could teach me—”
“Fine.” He moved over and laid on the bed, straightening his t-shirt as he made himself comfortable. “You can practice on me then.”
“But that would mean Jase would have to teach,” I teased, folding my arms.
David closed his eyes and angled his chin to the roof. “Just get started.”
“Okay, if you insist.” I sat back down on the chair beside the bed.
“And be prepared, Ara,” David warned. “I will not go easy on you.”
“Neither will I,” I said with a smirk, and David opened his eyes then to darkness. Pitch black emptiness.
“Good,” Jase said. “The fear of nothingness.”
“Do you think it will be enough?”
“The kind of taste you prefer in blood comes from fear, not the adrenaline rush of fright. Draw it out—build on it, and when you feel his blood change—” he grabbed my hand and placed it on David’s arm, “—taste it to see if he’s afraid enough for you.”
As I touched David, his mind woke to the realisation that this scenario wasn’t real. He pushed back, fighting me out of his mind, and his blood cooled. If my touch alone was enough to draw him to the surface, then I needed to take him deeper into the nightmare, because a bite would certainly bring him up again—and it would be when I was at my most vulnerable.
I closed my eyes and imagined shadows bouncing under a swinging lantern, felt the bite of an underground chill, and when I drew a deep breath through my nose, I imagined the smell of rotting eggs—so thick and hot I wanted to cough the taste out from the back of my throat. And David took a breath as I did, letting it out with a little cough. The smell was foul enough to make me want to leave his mind, but I was determined to pull him down deep.