by Elle A. Rose
***
I was so engrossed in watching my past life, that I was not the first one to notice Judy moving. Now on her feet, she takes off towards the woods behind the house. Before I or Christopher can move, Olivia mentally grabs Judy and slams her face first into the ground. I can hear the side of her face crack under the pressure. I am surprised to say she did not cry out in pain from the impact. Looking at her, she reminds me of a dog on a leash that has wrapped itself around a tree, and cannot figure out why it can move no further. Instead of simply backtracking, it squirms and fights to be free of the tight hold it is in. So many thoughts are running through her head right now. Now she is wondering if Jackson is close by, and if he will come to her rescue. She is also wondering how I figured out she was taking lead to block her mind from ours. The most upsetting of all her thoughts is what their plans were for my family and me.
After separating Christopher from our group, Jackson was going to ambush him. I do believe they completely underestimated how strong Christopher really is. Once they did away with his body, Judy would have come back to us with some sob story, about how they were attacked and he died saving her life. After that, they figured she would have to lure Olivia and Isaac out on a “hunting trip”, which they would never come back from. Finally, they would deal with me. They hoped by then, they would have a few more Elders on their side. After cornering me, they would offer me a place with them, helping fight their battles, or they would kill me like the rest of my family. They know how strong I am, and figured my true side as a vampire would show-survival of the fittest-and I would see that they were the stronger allies, and it would only be in my best interest to join them, instead of being slaughtered like my worthless family.
I do believe until this moment, I have remained pretty calm, but something about her last thought has really gotten under my skin. She is purposely throwing jabs out there, just to make me mad. Although she is still being smashed into the ground, and I feel no danger to any of us right now, a slow and quiet warning growl slips through my lips. As my growl hits her ears, she stops thrashing about. Judy senses the end is near. She knows I am reading her mind. She thinks that I will be merciful and make this quick. She tries to make eye contact with Christopher-which must be hard, having half her face embedded in the grass and dirt. When she gets his attention, she spits. I can smell her blood, she must be bleeding from somewhere in her mouth.
All eyes are on Judy; however, hers remain on Christopher.
“I never loved you,” she growls. “You were nothing more than a pawn in the game, a game in which you and your rubbish family will lose. I was looking forward to nothing more than ending your life. When Jackson ends your life, I want you to see my face. I want you to know that it was all a lie. Every time you touched me, you made my skin crawl. Nothing would have made me happier than to stick a fiery stake through your heart!”
I guess Sarah was right about her temper flaring. Olivia must be applying more pressure, because I hear Judy give a mental scream, but no real sound has left her lips. At the same time, I do believe I just heard Christopher’s heart skip a beat. It could be considered not beating at all, since our hearts beat so slowly. I listen closer and it starts pumping again.
Until now, I thought I could handle this. In some ways this scene has played out kind of slow. Nothing like I would have imagined. So far, all I have done is watched how Judy, in some ways has had a hand in changing my life, without showing an ounce of remorse. And the fact that she was sent in to spy on our family, and to made plans to kill my loved ones has upset me. But her telling my brother he was nothing more than a toy to her, and hearing his heart skip a beat. No, no, I cannot, and will not stand for that. Striking like a cobra, I move to where Judy is, and jerk her from the ground with one quick movement. I hear Olivia give a small cry behind me. I think I moved too fast, and she did not have time to take her mental hold from Judy before I ripped her from the ground. I will have to apologize to her once I am finished with this mutt.
My left hand clenches Judy by the front of her shirt, as I bring my right hand forward with as much force as possible. A loud crunch echoes around us from the impact of my fist. More blood begins to flow from her mouth. Judy finally cries out loud while trying to claw and scratch at me. Not wanting her vile blood on my person, I throw her to the ground, and with one swift kick, I launch the mutt over ninety feet across the backyard. Each of us anticipates where she is going to land, as Isaac, Christopher and I set off in that direction. Being the fastest out of the family, I beat them there. I snatch her from the ground by her leg, and swing her body into the tree next to me. With a sharp crack, the tree begins to fall over. In my attempt to fling her body into the broken tree trunk, Judy manages to kick me in the face. She is able to put more force into the kick than I expected, and as I stubble backwards, she slips from my grasp. It appears that her right leg is broken by the way she is trying to run away.
Isaac comes up behind me quickly. Judy notices his approach too, and picks up a huge piece of wood and runs head long towards Isaac. He has miss judged her speed as the wood pierces his chest. Isaac lets out a loud yelp before falling to the ground. My attention is quickly diverted from Isaac who is attempting to pull out the relatively large piece of wood from his chest, to Christopher. He must have taken a different route. Coming up from behind Judy, he grabs her and slams her back to the ground. She cries out again, and tries to move; however, she is only burying herself further into the dirt. Christopher lifts her again, and begins to drag her back toward the house. As I start to follow, I listen to his thoughts. Ah, I see. He wants to bring her back to the house to interrogate her for more information. This is pointless, she has given us all the information she is planning on giving up. Still, I follow him. As we enter the clearing of my backyard, Judy is still thrashing under his death grip. Although he has her by the ankles, she is still able to sit up, and glare at Christopher.
“Christopher, you’re such an idiot! What really made you think I could love you? What woman will ever love you? Even your precious little Amber doesn’t want you.”
I can still see the pain engraved in my brother’s face. I cannot take this anymore. She will not continue to hurt him. There is no use for her. My breathing is coming quicker now. I am having trouble seeing straight. I storm over, and once again remove Judy from the ground, and from Christopher’s grasp. I can see the terror in her eyes. Good.
I need to calm down. I want to enjoy this. I want to kill her very slowly, yet, I do not know if this will be possible. I feel the darkness surrounding me. I take a few breaths to try to calm down. I do not want the darkness to take over me. I do not want Judy’s life to end so easily. My hands encircle her neck, and I hone in on her face. I want to be able to watch each emotion play out on her face as I kill her. The darkness is rushing in now. It must be held back, so I take another deep breath. It is not working. I no longer see the backyard or my family. I only see Judy and her wretched body, that I am about to break into little pieces. Yes, that is it. I am going to break and re-break ever last one of her bones. I am going to crush and re-crush her skull until the bones are no longer able to heal. I feel my hand tighten around her scrawny neck.
Gazing at her face I…I noticed that something is wrong. Judy’s eyes have changed, and it seems like they are now bulging out of their sockets. A barely audible gasps slips between her lips. What changed? The darkness has started to recede, allowing my senses to slowly take back over. I let my sight pan-out, away from Judy’s face. Her body is slowly, starting to slump in my grasp. Widening my sight even more, I find Christopher standing behind Judy. He is holding something in his hand. The scent of Judy’s woodsy blood has hit me like a ton of bricks. I start to stumble back away from the smell. The object in Christopher’s hand stops me mid-step. Slowly replaying what happened as I started to enter the darkness, I see that I was so preoccupied making plans to mutilate Judy’s body that I missed Christopher come from behind, and pierce
his hand through her back. My eyes search Christopher again, and I spot him holding Judy’s heart in his hand. He too has done his homework. I read his mind, and he also had some qualms about who Judy was. He may have cared for her, but he wanted to be prepared for this day-the day where he would have to rip her heart out.
From the shed, Isaac walks over and reaches for the no longer beating heart in Christopher’s hand. In his other hand, he holds a blowtorch. I keep the blowtorch in the tool shed for those days I feel like working on projects. He must have retrieved it during the altercation. Since Isaac was able to read our thoughts, he knew it would be best to burn Judy’s non-beating heart. Stories have been told about werewolves coming back to life, and we all know that unless a vampire’s heart is set on fire, or they are decapitated and left to burn in the sun, they will definitely come back to life. Isaac takes the heart from Christopher’s hand and throws it to the ground. With a small spark, the blowtorch comes to life and sets the heart and grass around it ablaze. Seeing there is no fight left in Judy, I let her body slip from my hands and drop with a light thud to the ground.
The backyard gives an eerie sense of déjà vu as I take inventory. Was it not just a few years ago that I was in the same situation? In a backyard, fighting for someone I loved. There are some similarities; however, I am grateful for the differences. I turn my attention back to my family. Isaac is holding Olivia with gentle hands. She has an awful headache. I feel bad that I am the one who caused it. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking before grabbing her like that, I hope this helps.” Going into her mind, I look for the part that is in the most pain and slowly numb the senses around it.
“Thank you, my dear. I know you meant no harm.”
My sight shifts to Isaac’s ruined shirt. His wound is completely healed. I can only imagine what Judy was thinking when she attempted to stake him. I wonder if Jackson had been completely honest with her about how to kill a vampire. Grateful that both my parents are okay, I turn my attention to my brother. He is standing next to where Isaac burned the heart. There is nothing left to the muscle, except for the burnt brown smoking grass, and the smell of burning moss. I walk over to Christopher, and try to put my hand on his back. Before my hand is able to touch his shoulder, he jerks away.
“Do not touch me!”
His voice lashes out like a whip and my ears ring from the close proximity. I can also hear it echo off in the distance. I should not be surprised by his reaction. Still, it stings to hear such hatred in his voice. “Christopher, what do you want me to say? I’m sorry? Didn’t you want to know the truth? Would you have believed me, if I had told you what I knew?” His shoulders droop and I can see the fight leaving him. It twists my insides up to see him in this amount of pain.
“You’re right, Amber. Then again, you’re always right. I wouldn’t have listened to you, if you would have told me she was only sent here to destroy our family. I guess in some ways I was blind to the fact that she really didn’t love me. That maybe I wasn’t good enough for her. Hell, I’m really starting to think I’m not good enough for anyone.”
I cringe at his words. I know they were meant for me.
Without thinking, I step forward again to touch him, and he pulls back.
“Amber, please stop. Look, thank you, Olivia, Isaac, Amber. Thank you, but I-I think I need some time to think.”
I completely understand where he is coming from, but he should not be alone. Olivia’s thoughts scream in my head. She cannot cope with him leaving right now, not after everything that has happened. They are just getting me back and the thought of losing another one of her children will break her heart. “Christopher, don’t go.” I take another step closer. I would touch him, but I am worried that may only set him off. I hope the look on my face can convey how I really feel. “I know you want some space, but please don’t leave us.” This is not what he wants to hear.
“What do you mean, ‘don’t go’? So what, because this isn’t about you, because this isn’t an Ammberrr moment, an Ammberrrr life problem, I should just suck it up and stay here? Why Amber, why, tell me why I should stay? I have no one, nothing left. There is nothing keeping me here.”
“You’re right, Christopher, I have been selfish. Stepping away from you and Isaac and Olivia for all this time was wrong of me. I know that now. Please don’t leave. We need you. You’ll break Olivia’s heart like I did. I know you are better than that.”
Christopher’s head cocks to the side as his eyes rake over me.
“You really think I’m that naïve? Oh, poor Olivia, she will not go on without Christopher. Nice try, Amber. Maybe you should use that little mind reading thing of yours and see how much you hurt her by disowning her for all those years.”
“Christopher, I don’t want to fight with you. I love you and I need you here too. I want to be there for you.”
A little smirk appears and disappears from his face so quickly, I am questioning if I really saw it.
“So you love me, Amber, and you will miss me? Ha! Don’t make me laugh. We all know how you feel about me. Hell, we all know how you feel about the whole family. You never wanted to be a part of this. To this day you try so hard to fit in with the humans.”
He stops talking. Whatever he was about to say, he has decided to not say it. He is right, though. I have fought to be everything other than what or who I should be. I try to think clearly as I take a deep breath. I may need to take more than one. I do not know how to keep him here, to keep him in the family. I fear if he leaves now, we may never see him again. There is only one thing I can say to keep him here. To show him how much I do love him. “We can try; you and me.” I am guessing no one was expecting me to say that. I hear Olivia suck in a sharp breath and Isaac moves even closer to her. Even the look on Christopher’s face is filled with shock.
Once again, he recovers quickly.
“What do you mean we can try? Really, Amber? Are you really willing to stoop that low? Is it not bad enough that my heart went up in flames with Judy’s?”
My hand goes up to stop him mid-sentence. “Isn’t that want you wanted, a relationship? I’m not trying to hurt you.” His glare has become dangerous, and moving like the speed of light, he closes the small gap between us.
“Why now? Why after one hundred ninety-four years, ten months, seven weeks, twenty-three days, one hour, fifteen minutes and fifty-two seconds have you decided to be with me?”
I was not expecting him to be that exact with the count. I guess he has been keeping better track of this than I have. I am speechless.
“Tell me, Amber. I need to know. Tell Me!”
“Because, Christopher, I-I love you. I have always loved you.”
Although this is not what I want in life, I know that it is for the best. I do love him. He has been by my side since day one. He may upset me at times and we fight constantly, but I owe him this. I need to make this right.
“So you love me, huh?”
His finger trails down the side of my arm, lightly brushing my skin. If I was still human, I would have goose bumps from the airiness of the touch.
“Tell me then, Miss Amber, until now, why have you been too good to give me the time of day? If I say yes, if I say I want you, can you really envision us together? Can you really picture me on top of you? Do you really see me between those pretty tight thighs of yours?”
I hear Isaac give a low growl. “That’s enough! Christopher, there is no need to dis...”
“SHUT UP, SHUP UP, SHUT UP, ISAAC! I do not want to hear anything from you! I’m talking to your precious Amber.”
Christopher’s eyes have started to glow red with anger.
I understand he is hurting. I keep telling myself this, it is a chant going on inside my head. I am also telling myself that he deserves some happiness. Looking into his red tinted eyes, I try to picture our future. I try to envision us holding hands as we wander through the woods. I try to imagine rolling over in bed and being greeted by his
face. Or pulling him closer to me and whispering, “I love you”, in his ear just before kissing him passionately on the lips. However, slowly this picture of him is dissolving. My biological brothers’ faces, first, James’s and then William’s, are slowly replacing his face. It takes everything in me not to shudder at this image. I am thankful Christopher cannot read minds like I can. I am also thankful that my mind blocked is formally in place. I do not want to hurt him anymore. I will not hurt him anymore. The feeling I have-this sibling relationship, will have to be put aside. It is for the best, for him, for me, and for the whole family. I know he will try his best to make me happy.
Taking a deep breath, I turn and look Christopher straight in the eyes. I do not need to turn and meet my parents’ gaze. There is nothing they can do. My mind is made up. I close my eyes, and exhale; however, this time I will not be feeling that last teardrop escape from my eyes. That life has come and gone. Swallowing, I begin to move my lips slowly, “Yes, we can make this relationship work.” There is complete silence around us. It seems as if I am standing in a soundproof room, yet, we are still in my backyard. Opening my eyes, I can see Christopher staring at me. There is a look of sadness on his face. Before I can speak, he drops the hand that was resting on my shoulder. His eyes also slowly leave my face as he glances toward the ground.
Taking a step away from me, he blows out what seems to be all of the air in his lungs.
“I’m sorry, Amber. I love you too much to make you that unhappy for the rest of our un-natural lives.” He then faces Olivia and Isaac. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been easy to live with. If you will excuse me, I just need some time.”
He does not wait for an answer as he turns to leave. Before he is able to get too far, he stops. He hears the same thing we all do.
It is the ringing of a phone-a phone that I carry with me at all times-a phone that is used for one use and one use only. Lance. I have to say that I am pleased the phone went unharmed with all of the excitement today. But I am worried about what Lance could need. Why he is calling me? I have not spoken to him since his mother’s wake. I promised myself the day I left Lance the letter, I would not seek out and read his mind. I wonder if after all these years, if I could still find his mind out of all the other psyches that I have become familiar with. Maybe I should find his thoughts and take a peek inside before answering the phone. Opening my mind, I try to find his. I search for his bluish-gray tint that represents his thoughts. I find nothing; perhaps it has been too long.
The phone is on the third ring, I must answer it. “Hello?”
“Hello, umm, hi.”
Hmm, this is a woman’s voice. Not what I expected to hear on the other end. Somehow her voice sounds familiar. She clears her throat and speaks again.
“I’m looking for, Amber Harris.”
“Yes, this is she.” My family has moved in closer to hear the conversation.
“Oh, umm, yes, well, this is Maddie, I mean Madeline Grayson, Lance’s wife. I, well, he umm, made me promise to call you, and tell you that I knew everything.”
“I’m sorry I do not understand what you mean. Where’s Lance? May I talk to him?”
“That’s why I’m calling. Lance passed away this morning.”
Acknowledgments
This book would not be possible without the support of my friends and family. Many thanks to Marie Farruggia and all the time you put into helping bring Amber to life. Much love to my mother Chrystal Martin, my husband Rick, and my best friend Jen. Thank you for listening to all the crazy ideas running through my head, and all the support you have given me. To my Barnes and Noble Creative Writing Group, Thanks for keeping the ideas flowing. Most of all I would like to thank Andrea, Krystina, Jenn, Cheryl, Helen, and Michelle, your feedback has been invaluable to this book. And Amanda, thank you for your help with the book cover.