A Fall of Silver (The Redemption Series)

by Amy Corwin

  Glancing at him, her eyes looked startled as if she’d forgotten his presence. “They were on an expedition involving Toltecs. I remember that much. Gran helped me write a report on the Toltecs for school. She said my mom and dad were chasing after them and that’s why they were gone, because they were in the middle of Mexico, digging up Toltec ruins.”

  “I’m sorry.” He rubbed her shoulder. When she remained silent, staring sightlessly at the television’s blank screen, he asked, “Did you go looking for them? Is that how you got that scar on your neck?”

  “What? Yes—no, not exactly. That had nothing to do with my parents. I made a mistake.” She tried to push him away as if he embodied yet another mistake she didn’t want to make. “Then Gran died from a heart attack. I was almost nineteen. I told you this already.” She tried to laugh. “Anyway, I tried to find my parents. I got as far as Mexico City and that was that. This young couple, Carol and Carlos, asked me to join them for dinner. I was alone in a strange place and I was glad for their company. They seemed so nice, so normal. You know how it is. Anyway, they got me my first beer, said it would make me an adult, and damn if it didn’t. I grew up fast in Mexico City. Learned a lot. Like the fact that vampires exist and they make promises only to break them.” She swallowed. “They promised me a way out over and over again until I learned not to trust them…or anyone.”

  A cold breeze rifled the hairs on the back of his neck. “Are they the ones you killed?”

  “I had to! They—they hurt me. I was dying. I had to kill them before they killed me. First Carol, then Carlos—I had to kill both of them. So even if I die now, I won’t become a vampire. Their blood is ash in my mouth,” she quoted the vampire expression for finality as if she knew it well. Too well.

  “I’m sorry—”

  She cut him off. “And you absolve me from my sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen?”

  “If you’re looking for pity, or absolution, you’re talking to the wrong man.”

  She studied him, her eyes burning with dreadful expectation, as if she waited for a sign that he saw her as a pathetic object worthy only of contempt, or worse, pity.

  His face felt frozen as he struggled to keep his expression neutral. Pity would do neither of them any good, though it was difficult not to react to the horror of her story. She sat quietly next to him, waiting and watching him while she decided what more, if anything, to say.

  “They taught me a valuable lesson,” she said in a hoarse voice. “They taught me that only fools trust a vampire’s word. You can’t negotiate with the undead; they have no souls, no honor. They just agree and rip your neck out anyway while they laugh at your stupidity.”

  “There are good people and bad ones everywhere—”

  “Don’t hand me excuses and that feel-good crap! There are no good vampires. That’s an oxymoron. They’re evil, pure evil, all of them. That’s why you have to eliminate them. You can’t discuss it. You just have to kill them and be done with it.”

  “They deserve a second chance. Everyone deserves that much. What of those who only became a vampire by mistake? An error in judgment—”

  “Like my error? Is that the kind of error you mean?” she asked bitterly.

  “No—”

  “Then I was right, wasn’t I? You think I murdered them for no reason, wouldn’t give them the chance they deserved! Isn’t that it? I should never have tried to defend myself. I should’ve just lain back and enjoyed it! That’s what a nice girl would do, isn’t it?” Her voice rose in near-hysterical anger as her burning eyes challenged him to deny the truth of her words.

  “That’s not what I meant. I’m not blaming you.”

  “Isn’t that big of you! You don’t blame me for trying to survive. Nice. Thanks.”

  “I wasn’t speaking of the two vampires who hurt you. But there are others who may have made a simple error—”

  “Yeah, right. The only error in judgment a vampire ever makes is their decision to go to Hell and drag everyone down there with them.” Her voice cracked and she gulped to hold back a sob.

  The ache in his gut increased. If she honestly felt that way, how would she react when she discovered what he’d been? How would she feel about his bad decisions and the mistakes he made four hundred years ago?

  Could he honestly have a relationship with her without telling her who he really was? What he’d been for hundreds of years? Given her background, he could not continue to hide his past from her, despite the promises he had made. Bitterly, he realized he’d already been breaking vows right and left. First he left the priesthood, and now he was preparing to reveal a secret he was sworn to protect.

  “No. I’ve known some who made the decision rashly, foolishly, when they were too young to know what they were doing,” he said slowly. “Perhaps they later regretted their decision, or became vampires by accident.”

  “And I know the tooth fairy personally. Oh, and she became a fairy by accident, too. Just one of those weird things that seems to happen for no reason.”

  “It does happen,” he ground out. “And under some circumstances, it’s possible to get a second chance—”

  She tore away from him and jumped to her feet. “It’s not possible to get a second chance! There’s only death and pain and betrayal until you can’t take it anymore, until you have to kill everyone just to make it stop! There are no second chances.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. Her face twisted as if in pain as she massaged the back of her neck.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Peachy-keen. I can’t believe you’re so blind. You don’t understand anything!”

  “I know this: I know I had a second chance.” His guts liquefied. He’d said it.

  “You! What? You didn’t like being a priest, so you decided to quit? To have a second chance at fucking some woman before your dick shrivels up? That kind of a second chance?” Her fury flowed around him, incinerating everything it touched.

  Instinctively, he knew most of her anger was focused inward, but her words still cut him like so many small razors. She couldn’t forgive herself for her perceived naivety in trusting a pair of vampires, and she’d never forgive someone like him.

  He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder and forced her to sit. She tried to shrug him off but her knees wobbled and finally she collapsed next to him. The terrible pain and vulnerability she tried so desperately to hide was agonizingly clear on her face.

  “No.” He coughed to clear his throat. “You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes. I was young once, four hundred years ago. Young and stupid enough to want to be young forever.”

  “What?” She turned toward him, her eyes wide and tormented. “What? Four hundred years? You—you’re a fucking vampire?”

  “I was a vampire. I gave it up. For Lent.” His mouth quirked.

  She stared at him, clearly wanting to rip his face off. Then his words sunk in. He could see her expression morph through confusion and anger. She choked on a sound that started as a scream of rage and metamorphosed into a laugh. Emotions rippled over her features in uncontrollable waves: another half-scream, half-laugh caught in her throat.

  “You gave it up? You can’t—”

  “Perhaps not for Lent, per se. Although I only missed it by a few days as it turned out. And you’ll be pleased to know the experience was painful. Very painful. Even you would’ve been delighted at the amount of pain involved.”

  “What pain? How….” Clearly suspicious, she let her sentence dangle, too confused to finish.

  “I saved Father Donatello’s life.” He flushed, embarrassed by the claim. “He was visiting a friend at the National Cathedral in D.C. and they invited him to join them, ringing the changes—”

  “The what?”

  “Ringing bells in a certain pattern—they were bell ringers. The cathedral has one of the few bell towers in the United States. Anyway, he wandered off to take a
break and somehow managed to trip and fall through a window. He was never sure how. I saw him fall and got a wild hair, thought I was superman, I guess. So I tried to catch him. Not one of my more graceful moments. I did save his life, but I got impaled on the wrought iron fence for my efforts. Died. Got the T shirt. A scar, too. Want to compare?”

  This time, she laughed outright. “No.” A blush rose over her pale cheeks as she eyed him, her gaze drifting down to his chest. “Well, yes.”

  He grinned as he unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his chest. Just below and to the right of the left nipple was a puckered, white scar. As she examined his flesh, her flush deepened until she glanced away.

  “You’re human? Really?” Her eyes flickered as she looked at the sunshine streaming through the windows behind them.

  Well, duh.

  “Yes. Again. And not to be too smug about it, in a sort of state of grace. Or as the Cardinal likes to call me, a recidivist.”

  “I sure wouldn’t call it a state of grace. You’re working your way down to Hell for a second time, if you ask me.” Her tone was light enough, but the cold edge made him wonder what she hated most, him or the negotiations he led?

  “Then it’s a relief God is unlikely to be asking you,” he replied, slipping into the lilting, Irish cadence of his childhood.

  “Isn’t it, though?” she asked sweetly before rising to stroll toward the kitchen.

  He followed, bemused and unsure if he’d been the fool this time to admit his deepest secret to a woman who hated vampires. If she decided to reveal it to one of the undead, she could destroy any chances they had to find forgiveness and a second chance. The vampires would be doomed forever without hope of salvation.

  His heart thudded in a too-tight chest.

  What had he done?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Her stomach twisted as Quicksilver tried to understand Kethan’s story, but her mind kept replaying her own past and the mistakes she had made. After her parents left, she’d never really fit in anywhere, not in school and not now and certainly not after she changed and became Quicksilver.

  She was a loner because she’d always felt alone and now, she seriously wondered if her efforts to survive had pushed her over the edge into madness.

  I should’ve done the world a favor and accepted it all, everything Carlos and Carol did. I should’ve died. I must have deserved it. Maybe that’s why my parents left and stopped writing. They knew I’d grow up to be a psycho who’d put her own survival ahead of everything—and everyone—else.

  Her hands clenched, the nails biting into the soft flesh of her palms. The pain didn’t stop her from hearing Kethan’s voice repeating in an endless loop inside her head. If she’d been less selfish, a better person, she’d have talked to the vampire pair and convinced them to let her go. They’d be alive today, basking in the moonlight, and picking at chicken mole, mole poblano, in a quaint café in Mexico City as they waited for their next victim.

  Kethan was that good by comparison, so good that he’d somehow become human again. A fucking, living miracle. How he must despise her, maybe even hate her, knowing that if he’d met her while he was a vampire, she’d have killed him. There’d have been no state of grace, and Father Donatello would have died because there would have been no Kethan Hilliard to save him.

  It is what it is, she thought. All she could do was try to protect Father Donatello now and get away from Kethan before she lost what was left of her soul. And heart.

  “How’re we going to get Father Donatello back?” she asked, trying to work free of the self-loathing quagmire enmeshing her. She could save the priest, she knew it. And if something happened to her, well, perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad.

  If only Kethan hadn’t told her he’d been a vampire…her mind seized up considering the concept, stalling like his useless car.

  Good God, how is that possible? He’d been impaled—did that mean he died and had risen again as a human? It was what he said, but the concept seemed unbelievable.

  Kethan interrupted her thoughts as he followed her to the staircase, “We need to meet with Martyn Sutton. This evening, if possible. He may know where to look or give us a lead.”

  She forced herself to concentrate and pushed his admission about his past out of her mind. The unsettling information didn’t make sense. She needed time alone to consider it and Kethan seemed unlikely to grant her that time at the moment. After glancing at him over her shoulder, she focused on Father Donatello’s plight and the possibility that Martyn Sutton had kidnapped him. Those two things at least made sense.

  “But you can’t trust him,” she said.

  “We’re going to have to trust someone. Right now, we’ve got nothing.” His voice grew grim. “And I doubt whoever kidnapped Father Donatello will ask for ransom. I just hope he’s still alive.”

  “You think someone hoped to make Martyn look bad? Another vampire?”

  His eyes glinted with cynical amusement. “You’re learning. Off-hand, I’d say someone wants to make you mad enough to kill Sutton.”

  “I don’t need to be mad to want to do that, although I have the feeling you wouldn’t approve.”

  “And you’d be correct.” He smiled at her, clearly trying to reduce the tension flooding the hallway. “So let’s meet with him and see what he knows.”

  “Are you’re going to give me back my weapons?” She needed those whips. She had to have them before she faced another vampire.

  The whips were freedom. Control. Life.

  “We’re not going to kill anyone, including Martyn Sutton.”

  “Yet.” If they rescued Father Donatello, she’d kill whoever was responsible, but there was no need to mention that.

  “Ever.”

  “Even if Sutton asks us to so he can attain this State of Grace of yours?”

  “He doesn’t know about that. No one does.” His eyes seemed to stare through her, inspecting every thought stumbling through her mind. “If a vampire learns that it is possible, no salvation can occur. I’m trusting you with that information.”

  You trust me? How? How can you trust me? I’m crazy and even you must know that. Her hands shook as panic gripped her. “It’s a secret? Your secret?”

  “Yes. And it must be remain a secret.” His expression was calm, certain.

  He trusted her.

  Her skin flushed, effervescent with heat. The thought that he trusted her was too much to bear, and it both exhilarated and frightened her. She didn’t want his trust, the responsibility of his confession, or the fear that she could slip and reveal it to someone.

  Worse, she didn’t want the connection a shared secret implied, the respect and the liking, because when he knew her and discovered the truth, she’d see the disappointment in his eyes.

  Then the hard, evil side of her reminded her that perhaps it would be good if he did figure out who she was. People who feared her left her alone, and she was glad. She could deal with terror: she knew the way it tasted and how it felt. She had been lovers with terror for years.

  Ultimately, fear didn’t hurt as much or as deeply as people.

  “Why did you tell me?” she asked in a whisper.

  “You trusted me with your past, your secrets. I could do no less.”

  The late afternoon sun blazed through the windows. The light haloed him with a nimbus of fire like a medieval saint painted in gold. She blinked and the illusion was gone, leaving his face in shadows. All she could see was the blue blaze of his eyes from within shadowed hollows.

  “You asked me.” Why had she revealed so much?

  He took a step forward and touched her shoulder, gently, tentatively. “I wanted to understand you.”

  “Why? What’s there to understand? Why bother?”

  “I know you won’t believe this, at least not right now, but you’re worth the trouble.” His hand cradled her neck.

  Heart pounding, she stilled. She wanted to touch him and pull him against her so much it almost took her breath way
. She wanted to stop thinking and just feel the warmth of his skin under her hands. For once, she wanted to feel truly safe.

  “Right. Well, we agree on the trouble part.” She held her breath, waiting for his response.

  His thumb caressed the soft underside of her jaw before tilting up her chin. She stared into his eyes, wanting him and his stupid cinnamon rolls, wanting to finally find a place where she belonged.

  This is crazy. I’ll hurt him, and I can’t bear the thought.

  She was growing too close to him, too close to a man who courted the enemy, who had once been the enemy. But she couldn’t push him away. The muscles in her body trembled, and she waited, aching for him. How much simpler it would be if she could just stop thinking, no decisions to make: helpless, submissive and docile.

  He could be the one. The one she could trust. Her heart ached.

  A cruel voice whispered that she hadn’t told him everything, hadn’t revealed precisely how much of a fool she had been. The vampires in Mexico City had listened to her pleas and showed teary sympathy, claiming the other had forced her—or him—to treat her with such cruelty. Each one had promised her freedom in exchange for trust. Then each had let her go, only to recapture her just when she thought she was free.

  Hope can only survive a few such games before it burns away in the flames of madness: an insanity that fueled her frenzy of hatred and fear.

  She’d never be free of them. They had destroyed her naivety and sympathy along with her ability to trust. She could feel their destructive influence bubbling and steaming like a vat of poison brewing within her whenever she thought of the vampires holding Father Donatello. Her head throbbed with tension and hatred.

  She couldn’t control the anger much longer. The sharp-clawed, feral beast crouched, waiting for fear to flush it out into the open and charge anything standing nearby. To kill.

  To protect the innocent, she added, desperately clinging to a thin thread of decency.

  If Kethan knew how she felt, he wouldn’t be standing so close or gazing at her with such hunger.

  “Quicksilver,” he whispered her name, his eyes flaring.