“He’ll forgive me,” I called before the wavering pink fog disappeared in the distance. “He’ll see one day that I died because I love him.”
“And he’ll think you a fool,” she said, and the wild wind ceased like a breath held, the trees standing suddenly and unnervingly still, all the energy leaving the circle of the Stone with the goddess of all life.
I sat down heavily on the barky floor and cupped my hand firmly, cutting the blood flow from my wrist to my fingertips. I couldn’t straighten the bone, having arched it so far into a crippled mess that even the thought of moving it caused too much agony.
Lilith was right about one thing: how would I explain a permanent wedding band to my ex-husband?
I didn’t even need to ask what he’d say about it. When I told him why I wore it—that I refused to be with Jason for the sake of saving my people—he’d call me selfish and tell me I needed to grow up. He’d hate me even more than he did now.
In the distance, the pattering of four heavy feet, or paws, caught my attention, and the familiar bark of an old friend sent a small pang of relief through my chest. I exhaled, flopping flat onto my back against the ground as Petey came charging toward me like he’d escaped a scene from a Lassie movie. He immediately attended to my sore finger, cooling the burned skin with his wet, kind-of soothing tongue.
“I really did pick the wrong person to piss off this time,” I said, slowly easing the grip around my wrist.
Petey sat back on his haunches then and looked to all four paths around the clearing.
“She’s gone, Petey. She stormed off in a huff.”
One little muscle above his left eye moved as if he was arching a brow.
“I know. Like great-great grandmother, like… well—” I sat up with a bit of a heave. “You get what I mean. Guess I inherited that from her.”
The dog whimpered a little, licking his chops again, his eyes on my finger.
“She branded me,” I explained, holding it up. “I kinda told her to go shove this Jason business up her… forest.” I studied the new Mark, turning my hand at angles, noting the intricate details of the fine scroll on closer inspection, how it formed a more solid black band from further away. “I’m not sure this one’s coming off, Petey.”
He groaned, flopping down heavily on his belly, his snout landing in my lap. I rubbed his head with my good hand, quietly contemplating ways I could hide this black band.
“That’ll be the last thing he wants to hear out of my mouth right now, don’t you think?”
Petey looked up at me with questioning blue eyes.
“Right. You’re not a mind-reader,” I reminded myself out loud. “I was just thinking that David won’t take too kindly to the idea that I’ll never stop loving him. But I’ll be damned if I really care what anyone else thinks about that—even him.”
I studied the dog to see what he thought, but he just sat up, his tongue hanging out over his wet white fur.
“Come on then, Petey.” I stood up stiffly and clumsily, stumbling a bit with the uneven weight in my midsection, and patted my leg. “I’m going inside for a hot bath and some time outside my own head. Let’s see if I can’t soak this ring off.”
He followed, brushing up against my leg as he passed, nearly knocking me off the path.
* * *
By the time I reached my bathroom, turned on the faucet and stood back waiting for the tub to fill, I didn’t feel like soaking in all my worries. Besides, Petey kept scratching at the door outside, whimpering, so I flicked the water off and left the bathroom behind.
“I need to find a way to cover this.” I showed him my finger again. “Any ideas?”
His inquisitive blue eyes looked through mine, not so much at them, and I wished I could just read his mind. He didn’t move to show me what I should do, didn’t even follow me when I walked over to the jewelry box on the pretty white dresser and took a seat on the stool. He just sat there, watching me.
I combed through trinkets and jewels, searching for something that wouldn’t look either like an engagement ring or a wedding band. “Too sparkly. Too big. Too wedding-ish. Ooh!” I held up a small silverish band with an oval stone on it. “Mood ring. I mean, it’s cheap and silly, but no one will think anything of it—or they’ll just think I’m wearing it as a warning for when I’m about to erupt.”
Petey just groaned and turned away.
“What?” I said, slipping it on. It covered the blackness nicely, but the skin was still quite raw and tender. “Do you have a problem with me hiding this?”
He sat by my door and lifted his heavy paw to make his request known.
“You wanna go out?”
No response.
“So now you’re not talking to me?”
No response.
“Fine.” I stood up, closing my jewelry box. “But if this is your way of saying Lilith was right, then I have to say I disagree.”
Petey’s nostrils flared with a puff of air.
“Just go.” I opened the door for him. “I don’t need your opinion.”
He looked at me as if to say, “Then you shouldn’t have asked” and trotted off down the corridor. But when he got to the end, he stopped and turned around, barking once loudly.
“What?” I said, tucking my hand behind my back. “You want me to come now?”
He started off again. So I shut my door behind me and followed the moody white beast down the halls.
Sheets of rain came down outside the window, blackening the halls and swathing the lands in a gray cloud. I couldn’t see the driveway or the statue of Lilith in the front yard below, nor did I notice the stairs at the end of the hall as they came upon me. Petey darted in front of my legs quickly to stop me from falling.
“Sorry,” I said, grabbing the handrail. “I was off with the fairies.”
Petey groaned.
I followed his sweeping tail down to the second floor, then after taking a right, watched him curve the corner into the library.
“Why are you taking me in here, Petey?”
My eyes darted over the shelves from the floor to the ceiling, scanning the tables, chairs and finally landing on the white dog coming out from a small cleft in the wall, carrying a book between his teeth.
I squatted down, the eerie chill in here more prominent closer to the ground, taking a quick glance over my shoulder for Eve; but she wasn’t here—or wasn’t to be seen. “What you got there, boy?”
The dog dropped his small leather-bound book into my open palm and sat down.
On the cover, embossed rather than written, were symbols in the ancient language. I knew enough words now to make out that it had something to do with Marks, but the rune resembled the English translation of ‘brands’. “Brands?” I asked the dog. “As in buying the best quality shoes, or like what you do to a cow?”
His mouth seemed to move up into a smile, his pink gums revealing themselves.
“Right.” I nodded. “Cow.”
We settled down together in a snuggle on the two-seat sofa beneath the curling stairwell to the upper library floor, and I flipped the book open to the first page. It was old, soft, with yellowing pages and that ancient smell that books printed before the eighteen hundreds seemed to have. I could remember at least six times in my childhood when I’d been upset or angry about something, and my dad would tuck me in and kiss me goodnight, but before he’d leave the room he’d turn around with a huge smile and hold up a copy of a book that smelled just like this. I didn’t understand the words or phrases, being that it was written so long ago, but I liked the sound of his voice, its rhythm and the deep undertone of calm as he’d read me into the lowest level of consciousness.
“Okay,” I said, wrapping my arm around Petey. “Let’s see what these pages have to say about cows.”
* * *
The book slipped from my hand and hit the ground before I realized I’d drifted off. I sat upright on the leather seat and looked over to the roaring fire between the giant win
dows. Petey was there, sound asleep in the orange glow, while the rain outside blasted against the glass window panes.
“Must not be a very interesting book.”
I looked around me, up, then down, and finally over to the squeak of leather across the room. Arthur leaned forward in the big armchair so I could see him, his feet propped up on the stool, a book in his hands.
“Actually, it was,” I said, bending to pick it up. “I’m just tired.”
“It’s barely dinner time.” He looked at his watch.
“I know.” I walked over and slumped into the armchair opposite him, kicking off my shoes to rest my bare foot on Petey. He groaned but didn’t move. “What you reading?”
He showed me the cover. “A journal of mine—from a long time ago.”
“Oh. Wow.” I considered the book more carefully then. “Why’re you reading that?”
“Looking for something.”
“What?”
“A memory.”
“What memory?”
“I seem to remember something about a scar. Ah-ha,” he said, tapping the page. “Here it is. Vampirie,” he read, “tossed his shirt into the fire, and I noticed then, for the first time, something I’d never seen on an immortal before—a scar. Shaped like a moon, just under his breastbone.”
“Wow.” I slid forward on the chair. “How did he get a scar?”
“He told me once it was in childhood—before he turned. A horse shoe, if my memory serves me.”
I sat back then and tried to think if I’d ever seen a moon-shaped scar on anyone’s chest. “My dad never swam without a shirt. In fact”—my eyes narrowed with thought—“I never actually saw him swim.”
Arthur frowned, closing his book to rub his eyes with his fingertip. “Well, that’s not much help then, is it?”
“I wish I’d paid more attention to the people in my life. But I’m sure I’d remember a scar like that.”
“I’m sure you would.” He stood up, offering me the journal. “Perhaps you’d like to see if there’s anything else in here that will give you a clue.”
“Thanks.” I took the book and held it to my chest.
Arthur’s eyes moved straight to my new mood ring. “Does that serve as a warning to any in the radius of your emotional blasts?”
I smiled down at it. “In all honesty,” I said, thinking something up as I spoke. “My finger felt bare without my wedding band.”
His familiar hand patted my shoulder softly, his blue, David-like eyes crinkling in the corners. “I’m sure it will turn up sooner or later.”
He walked away then before the words could slip from my lips that David forbade me to wear it—that it was missing now after I wore it to the funeral, but that I wouldn’t dare put it on even if I knew where it was.
I sat in silence for a moment, just looking at Arthur’s journal, thinking about my dad, while the ticking of the old grandfather clock and the howling shriek of wind through rain seemed to make space in my mind for thoughts to travel freely—bouncing around and finding the spurs of conclusion easily.
And an idea formed, my phone coming out of my pocket, a number dialed before I’d thought it through.
“Ara, how are you? I was just thinking about you,” Vicki practically squealed.
“I’m great. Really great actually. I was ringing to ask you a really weird question.”
“Okay,” she said, but she didn’t sound worried. “Shoot.”
“Did Dad ever have any scars?”
“Scars?” she asked. “Only that one. But it faded so much over time that I never really noticed it in the end.”
“What scar?” I asked, my heart dancing around with my baby in my belly.
“On his chest,” she said. “I think it was his right, no left, no right side.”
“What… I mean… was it moon-shaped?”
“Um, no.” She went quiet. “I mean, maybe. I guess it was. But it was kind of upside-down.”
“But it was a moon shape?” I asked, my lungs moving suddenly up into my throat.
Petey sat up, cocking his head at me.
“Ara?” she said. “Are you okay? Why are you asking this, anyway, what’s—”
“No reason.” I quickly composed myself. “I was just… I just remembered someone having a scar like that when I was little. I just wanted to know if it was my dad.”
“Oh, well, yes it was, I guess. And… how are you coping?”
“I’m okay. I mean, I’m not. I miss him like crazy,” I said, opening the door then to a very long conversation about the town’s memorial and the assembly the school held to farewell him. And all the while, my hands shook and my mind fought to focus. When she hung up, I’d worked myself into such a frenzy that my steps toward dinner in the Great Hall ended on the two-seater again, Arthur’s journal the only thing I had to hug as I sobbed myself to sleep, so confused I just didn’t know what to do other than to shut down.
* * *
“Ara.”
Soft, firm fingertips combed through my hair, leaving a gentle tickle behind and waking me slightly but sending me deeper into sleep at the same time.
“Ara?”
“Mm?” I opened one eye.
“Wake up, sweetheart. You’re having a bad dream.”
I took one look at those gentle green eyes and covered my mouth, a helpless whimper bursting into my hand. “When did you get back?”
“Just now.” David scooped my head and shoulders up and sat down under them, resting me back down on his lap. “What’s happened? Everyone said you weren’t at dinner tonight.”
“My dad, David. He had a scar—” I made a moon shape under my rib. “He was a vampire.”
“You had a dream?” he asked.
I nodded, wiping each streaming line of tears as they collected on my cheeks with the others.
“Aw, Ara, if I had one wish for you, it’d be that your dad really had been a vampire.”
“But Vampirie had a scar,” I muttered. “The same one.”
“Shh,” David said softly. “You’re not making any sense, my love. Just go to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I didn’t want to close my eyes, but under David’s silken touch, one fingertip slowly tracing the contours of my cheek, my nose and making my teeth tingle as he passed over the dimple under my lip, I was given no choice. I drifted softly away, my ear against his cool denim jeans, listening to the sound of his blood moving rigidly through his veins.
He was bonier than usual, his body giving him away for the starvation he’d clearly inflicted on himself lately. I wondered why he wasn’t eating—what madness had led him to betray his own needs so severely the evidence was blatant. He smelled nice, though. Not of that lovely orange-chocolate smell, but of a rich, kind of vibrant and spicy cologne. One I wasn’t familiar with.
“David?” I muttered, slipping my hand between my ear and his leg to block out the sound of his flowing blood a little.
“What?”
“You make me hungry.”
“Shh.”
I drew one last long breath of him and let myself drift back off again, David making himself comfortable too, sinking down a little lower in the chair. But just as I slipped past the veil of consciousness, David lifted my hand from beside his leg and ran a finger over my mood-ring, waking me a little. If he moved it enough to see what was under it, questions would follow. And answers would be required. And I couldn’t tell him anything about what was in my heart just yet. I just wasn’t ready.
“Hey,” Jase said softly.
David dropped my hand. “Hey.”
“She okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, readjusting slightly where my cheekbone dug into him. I took the break in the moment to hide my ring hand under my ribs. “She was crying in her sleep.”
Jason’s palm fell like a warm, soothing hug against my arm, rubbing gently up and down. “Want me to take her up to bed?”
“No. I’ll take her up soon.”
“Okay.”
Jason stood back. I kept my eyes closed, lost half way between wake and sleep, but I could feel every move he made—my mind mapping it out like my eyes were open. “I’m gonna go blast another few shots at Pepper’s memory while she’s sleeping then. She doesn’t fight me as much if she doesn’t know I’m there.”
“Okay.” David laughed lightly. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’m gonna need it. And…” he paused. “If I break through the barrier on this one, in a few hours I can start going farther back—maybe back to before she was turned. Then…” His voice trailed off to nothing.
“Then what?”
In the silence, I pictured Jase shrugging. “Ara could make her human again.”
The muscles in David’s legs stiffened. “I never… I just never even thought of that.”
“Well, it’s an option now. But it’s up to you.”
“No,” David said. “It’s up to Pepper. It’s her life.”
“She’s sixteen, David. Put her out of her misery—send her back to school to grow up a bit. Maybe look at turning her back in a few years.”
David’s fingers moved absently down my spine, tracing little circles that kept me in the foggy realm of sleep. “Okay. Erase everything then, and we’ll turn her human when we’re sure she can’t even remember the era she was born.”
“Going that far back is dangerous, David. She could end up needing full rehabilitation—learning to walk and talk all over again.”
“Then we’ll send her to rehab,” he said coldly. “She’ll survive. But if we ever want to turn her vampire again, we gotta be sure she won’t remember she was ever one before.”
“Right,” Jason said in a knowing tone. “Good point.”
David’s hand landed softly but heavily on my hip then. “One more thing.”
“Yo.”
Tension rose like a physical force around the boys in the silence that hovered. I wanted to open an eye and see if they were talking via mind-link, but then David opened his mouth. “Have you told her about the offer?”
“The IVRS one?”
“Mm.”
“Not yet,” Jase said, but I could hear the excitement in his voice and even the smile he was wearing. “I didn’t wanna tell her over the phone.”
Echoes & Silence Part 1 Page 26