Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence

by Am Hudson

  I bit my lip as I thought about that part, looking at my little girl and trying to imagine her all grown up, holding hands with the man I chose for her.

  The front door burst open then with the blast of wind from outside, and an unnecessarily rugged-up David walked in backward, his arms full of sparkly presents. “Found them.”

  “Right where I said they’d be?” I asked, stepping down off the chair, leaving my crêpe streamer half-strung.

  “What can I say?” He closed the door with his foot. “I’m a man. I was looking with my man eyes.”

  I laughed, taking Elora’s presents from him and laying them on the table. We didn’t need to buy her very much, given that Christmas was only yesterday, but that didn’t stop me from splurging on all kinds of things she didn’t really need or that she probably couldn’t actually play with yet. “When’re Mike and Em getting here?”

  “They just called to say there were stuck in a pile of snow.” David laughed. “Mike’s digging them out now, but they might be a few minutes late.”

  “What about Falcon?”

  “Late too, I’m afraid,” Vicki said from the kitchen. “He’s bringing a surprise for you.”

  “For who?” I said.

  “For you.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  David leaned in and kissed my cheek. “It’s kind of for both of you, I guess—both you and Elora.”

  “O…kay,” I said, a bit weirded out. “And what about Morgana? Is she going to be late too?”

  David just winced. I took that as a yes.

  “Well.” I sat down, my shoulders sinking as I looked up at the pretty party decorations. “I guess that gives me more time to get set up.”

  “Yes please,” David said out of nowhere.

  Vicki stopped by the coffee pot and looked back at him. “I’ve asked you a hundred times not to do that.”

  “Sorry.” He tapped his head. “Force of habit.”

  “Well, if you want a coffee, you can ask me, like a normal person would have to do.”

  “You would have to offer first,” he said smartly, “since a normal person wouldn’t have known you planned to make coffee until you actually told them that.”

  She just groaned and took the filter out of the coffee pot, shaking it around and scrutinising it before finally tossing it in the trash.

  David pulled a chair out to sit down facing Elora’s high chair, and she squealed with expectation, hiding her face behind her Hungry Caterpillar book.

  “Does Daddy’s little Princess want to play?” He picked up the book and put it over his eyes, lowering it quickly and springing forward. “Boo!”

  Elora’s face lit up and she squealed, thrusting herself back in the chair.

  I laughed too, but my smile faded as something in her face reminded me of my own. Which reminded me of Drake. Over a month had passed so far, and his body had steadily continued to rot, leaving no hope that he would ever rise from the dead. It was far-fetched to begin with, I suppose, just a pipe dream. But I couldn’t dull it down or make it go away. It was as if I could feel him still—feel his presence around me—and I hoped that wasn’t just because I could sense Lost Immortal souls. He had to rise from the dead, because I still needed him.

  “Ara?” David said softly, his eyes locked to my face as I looked at him. He reached across the table, palm up, waiting for mine.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

  David curled his fingers around mine as I laid my hand in his. “Just think about Elora today—and how much she’s going to love that new doll house you bought her. You know? The one she can’t play with until she’s five or over.”

  That brought a smile to my face. I sat back, laughing at myself, and looked out the window for a moment at the powdery snow shrouding the house across the street. “It’s pretty bad out there today.”

  “Tell me about it,” David said. “Makes it hard to hunt humans in this weather—everyone stays indoors.”

  “Are you hungry?” I offered my wrist. “Or if you want human blood, you can just go bite your brother.”

  “He hates it when I do that.”

  “And so do I,” Vicki said, sliding the coffee pot into its perch. “He’s got two papers due after Christmas, and every time you feed from him, his iron levels drop and he ends up sleeping for a week.”

  David scoffed. “He’s a faker. And he’s got you all figured out, Vicki.”

  She just shook her head, as if she knew better. And she probably did, to be honest.

  David and I looked up then when she sighed heavily and tossed something into the sink. “How many times do I have to tell hat boy?”

  “Let me guess,” I said with a smirk. “Paintbrushes. Again.”

  She held up a long wooden-handled brush with blue-tipped bristles. “I knew he was washing them in here. He denied it, but I saw the paint splatters and I could smell the turps,” she said, tapping her nose. “He can’t hide that from a vampire.”

  “Another few years and he’ll be old enough and wise enough to get a place of his own,” David said absently, showing Elora how to spin the toy on her tray.

  “That’s not what I want,” Vicki shrieked. “I love having him here. But I might have to build him his own bathroom—with a deep sink for paintbrushes.”

  “Just set him up in the garage,” I suggested.

  “It’s too cold out there.” She put the paintbrush on some paper towel. “And besides, it’s the first thing he does when he wakes up and the last before he sleeps. I don’t want him to feel like an outsider—being kicked into the garage to spend most of his days.”

  David shook his head, rolling his eyes, but I thought Vicki was really sweet. In his short time here so far, Jase had won over a lot of hearts. He’d made a lot of friends at school and all his teachers adored him, and Vicki was starting to get emotionally attached, too. I knew that if David and I ever had to move back to the manor to run the monarchy, Jase would be fine here with Vicki and Sam.

  “Anyway,” I said, standing up. “I need to finish icing this cake.”

  “I thought it looked perfect.” David’s face pulled in an odd sort of frown.

  “When I put it in the fridge I knocked the edge, so I need to fix a few bits up. But I might finish the streamers and balloons first.”

  “Well.” He slid his hands under Elora’s arms and picked her up. “I might put this little one down for a nap before we put on her party dress.”

  “Okay. And don’t forget to change her nappy first,” I added as he walked from the room, reminding myself again that they called them diapers over here. “And her blankie’s in the laundry basket by the bedroom door—”

  “Got it, Ara,” he said in a dull tone.

  Vicki and I laughed.

  “It needs folding, by the way,” I tried. “The laundry. If you’re bored.”

  “I’m never that bored,” he called back.

  “No one ever is around here,” Vicki noted absently.

  “I kinda like it,” I said, standing on the chair again to string up the balloons. “It beats sentencing vampires to years of torture or imprisonment.”

  “Hm. Yes, and when is your next session of Court?”

  “January.” I leaned forward and tacked the string of balloons to the wall. “Why?”

  “I thought we might all go out to the manor for a few days—just to get away.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, thinking about that amazing tub in my bathroom, and I knew Vicki was thinking the same. “That’d be nice.”

  ***

  We waited as long as we could for Falcon, but after Em and Mike arrived with Max and Josh, followed soon after by Morgana and Blade, it was getting late and Elora was getting restless. We all stood around eating and drinking and watching her ignore her presents while she played with the paper, and when her late afternoon sleep time came around, I decided it was time to do the cake—end the party.

  “Can’t we wait just another fi
ve minutes,” Vicki pleaded. “They might just be caught in traffic.”

  “They?”

  “Yes. He’s bringing Quaid, isn’t he?”

  “I thought Quaid was in London.” I reached into the fridge and pulled out the cake, being careful this time not to knock it. “Seeing to his Set?”

  “Oh, um…” She glanced back at David. “I must have misheard.”

  “Well, I’ve waited long enough, Vicki.” I nodded at Elora, rubbing her eyes. “She needs to go to bed, and…”

  “We’re here!” Falcon’s voice flowed through the house with a steely breeze and a layer of snowflakes. He struggled with the giant present in his hands and the scarf around his neck, trying to close the door on the uninvited gust of frost. “Sorry we’re late.”

  “Who’s we?” I said, a bit irritated, and as I stepped around the kitchen counter and looked past Falcon, my heart stopped, freezing my feet to the spot. The light in my hands sparked and flared as it connected with the new energy in the room, and the bulging ache that’d been in my chest for the last six weeks broke apart into a budding flower, filling me up with an emotion I couldn’t place.

  His blue eyes fixed on my face for a second, moving then to the little girl in David’s arms. “She’s grown.”

  I nodded, trying to swallow down the lump in my throat. I could feel everyone watching, wearing that same kind of goofy smile people wear when someone walks into a surprise party, but I didn’t care.

  “I thought you were dead,” I whispered, my voice not really working. “For good.”

  “Resurrection takes time.” He took off his gloves and tucked them into the pocket of his big black coat, extending both arms. “Come to me, daughter. I’ve longed to hold you since I first awoke.”

  I rushed forward and pressed myself into his cold clothes, closing my eyes tight, wondering why Morgana wasn’t falling into his arms, too. And then it sunk in. She already knew he was awake.

  “How long have you been alive again?” I pulled back and looked up at him; he was thinner, his skin pale but freshly-shaven, and the blue in his eyes was dull and almost grey. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”

  “We wanted to surprise you,” Falcon confessed.

  “He woke up a week ago,” Morgana said from across the dining area, “but…”

  “But?” I looked back at her.

  “I didn’t want you to see me in that state.” Drake turned my face back to him. “You suffered enough in taking my head from my body. You didn’t need to see me struggling to recover.”

  “Struggling?”

  He moved his head in one simple nod, the gesture carrying the weight of everything he’d clearly endured.

  I moved in and hugged him again, letting myself finally believe everything, absolutely everything in my life would be okay now. “Did they tell you—about Lord Eden?”

  “They did,” he said simply. “And my only regret is that I was not here to take off his head myself.”

  I hugged him a bit tighter. “I wasn’t sure you’d forgive us for killing him.”

  “There is nothing to forgive—on my part. However—” he leaned back to smile down at me. “I feel I must apologise for being late.” He looked at Elora again. “I drained at least six humans just today in order to be well enough to travel. And even then…” He left it hanging.

  “You’re forgiven,” I said, noticing then that his neck was bandaged under his scarf, a thin line of blood seeping through. “You’re here. That’s all that matters.”

  “And just in time for cake.” Falcon raised his brows, handing the gift to David.

  “Yes. I was just putting the candles in.” I moved back toward the kitchen. “You can hang your coats on the rack there. And can I get you a warm drink?”

  “Perhaps after this beauty has blown out her candles,” Drake said, standing in front of the high chair. He moved his hands as if to reach for her, then thought better and reeled them back in. “May I hold her?”

  “Of course.”

  Vicki moved past me quickly to help unstrap Elora from her chair, so I went back to the cake and started placing candles in, looking up for a moment as Drake’s arms circled his granddaughter.

  Elora stiffened a little, unsure of this new face, new smell, but as he reached up and held onto her little fat hand, she pulled his thumb toward her mouth and drooled all over it.

  Drake laughed, drawing it back. “No, little Princess, we mustn’t do that,” he warned softly. “You don’t want to try vampire blood yet.”

  “Starting early.” David laughed proudly, folding his arms.

  “Now hang on a second,” I said playfully. “For all we know, she might grow up to crave Lilithian blood—or human blood,” I offered, lighting the candles.

  “No, she won’t,” Drake said simply, sitting down at the head of the table with her in his lap. “She’s Lilithian.”

  “How can you know that?”

  He touched a fingertip to her nose and a blue glow soaked into her skin, turning her aura a purple-white. No one else saw it, but my eyes widened and I nearly dropped the matches. I hadn’t learned much about auras yet, but from what I’d seen so far of my own, I knew enough to know that only a Lilithian’s aura glowed like that when touched with Cerulean light. I’d never seen David’s do it, or Em’s, but Mike’s had, and so had Vicki’s.

  “What is it?” Mike asked, looking from Elora to me. “What did you see?”

  “Cerulean Magic,” I said quietly. “She’s Lilithian.”

  David stepped forward and curled his hand over her head, sweeping her hair down where it stood on end. “What greater gift could we have on the anniversary of her birth than the knowledge of what she is?”

  I stood by the counter with the glowing cake in my hands, the flames hot against my chin, and smiled at the little Lilithian girl, surrounded by family and friends. She was a lucky girl—to have so many that love her; to be Lilithian; to be the daughter of a King and Queen—and I felt proud to know she would grow to be more human than vampire, and one day, maybe, inherit my Cerulean Magic, as I did from my father.

  “Ara, put the cake down before it melts,” Mike said loudly, laughing.

  I snapped out of it with a giggle, shaking off the dream state, and Vicki took a hundred photos as I put the cake in front of Elora, the burly chorus of “Happy Birthday to You” filling the room.

  Elora’s little face lit up with determination and she slapped the edge of her cake, ruining all my hard work, but we all just laughed, Drake moving her hand back as she reached for the hot candles.

  David leaned in as the song ended and helped her blow them out, looking up to speak to Mike after, a smile lighting up his face, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying—what any of them were saying. I took in each face of each person I loved in this room, committing it eternally to memory, knowing that one day, centuries from now, the photos would fade and the videos would no longer play, and many of these faces may no longer be with us but that, somewhere deep inside of my mind, there would always be the memory. There would always be the past, and as black and as dark as it could be, it could also be filled with light.

  From where I stood outside that front window, looking up at this old house, so long ago, to where I stood now, looking out of it, so much had changed. So much had been altered both in my life and inside of me that I was no longer the same sad, lost little girl. The mask I once wore I no longer needed and the home I once longed for had grown around me, filled with everything I could ever have wanted.

  A mom.

  A dad.

  A sister.

  A brother.

  A child.

  And most importantly, a bright future beside the man I loved.

  Epilogue

  Sixteen years went by before I looked at the old pile of books on the shelf—the ones I brought with me from the manor. I pawed over the spines, noticing the black band on my ring finger for the first time in years when saw the leather-bound journal of information on Bra
nds, going back in my mind to the day Petey handed it to me.

  As I reached the bottom of the pile and found an old diary of Jason’s, I thought back to a story I was once told about another journal—Drake’s—where he mentioned a child the old Queen Lilith may have had: Evada. There were still so many buried truths and ancient secrets in my ancestors’ past, and now that Elora was grown and I had so much more time on my hands, I was finally ready to think about everything I’d ignored all this time.

  In the leather-bound journal about Brands, I would find a way to remove the black Mark from my ring finger, and until now I hadn’t wanted to. But if David and I were to tear off our masks and return to school as youthful teens next fall, I would have to erase the marks of the past. It was time. As much as it broke my heart, I knew it was time.

  “You ready?” David asked, popping his head around the corner.

  For a moment, still sinking in the quicksand of nostalgia, I stared at him, taking in his aged skin—the way his eyes crinkled on the edges and how he was just starting to spring greys around his ears. He looked good as an older man, and I wanted to believe for a moment, just one moment, that a few decades from now I would sit beside a much older and more wrinkled version of him and whisper a fond farewell, knowing I’d meet him in Heaven. I would never really want that kind of mortal life, but I wanted to know, just for one breath, how that would feel.

  “Ara?” He stepped fully into the room, his green eyes filling with concern. “What’s wrong, my love?”

  I offered a forced smile. “I’m just feeling nostalgic.”

  “Is this because Elora’s staying in Australia for their summer?” he asked with a laugh, moving across the room to take my slightly aged hand.

  “She’s too young to be away from home for so long—”

  “She’s not away from home,” he said, brushing it off like it didn’t break his heart too, when I knew it did. “She’s with Mike and Em. She’s having fun—as kids are supposed to.”