There was no way I would ever get used to the blood connection. I tried to push him away. If I concentrated hard enough, it seemed like I could push it down at least a little, like applying pressure to a bleeding wound.
I was putting so much effort into trying to shut Gabriel out that I ran into Thomas’s back when he stopped.
“Oof! Uh, I’m sorry,” I said, blushing.
“No big deal, Red. I know you do not like the dark, but we need some room. I’m with you, Inola’s over there inside the greenhouse, and Gabriel and a few others are patrolling the woods. It may not feel like it, but you are safe right now.”
“Does Jasmina know what happened?” I asked.
“Yes. Because of these events, she is no longer in the coma sleep. She has chosen a natural one to escape from her pain; waking her will be easier now. Permission was given to the entire coven to kill Elias on sight. If he is foolish enough to come nearby after we had to clean up his mess, he will meet an unpleasant end indeed. Right now dozens of members of Violet Memory are scouring Lystelle and nearby cities in search of him.”
I kicked the ground. “But he won’t be found, will he?”
Thomas’s eyes were very open and honest. “Probably not,” he answered softly.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “All this happened in a matter of hours? Geez.”
“Well, not exactly. Don’t be alarmed, but you have been asleep for two days. Your mind was exhausted even though you were healed, and we had to give you an IV to keep you hydrated.”
I looked down at the needle mark on my hand I hadn’t noticed before. I sighed.
“Whatever. I’m awake now and ready to learn how to stake vampires.” I knew I had to stay busy, or all I would think about was that man dying in front of me. There was enough guilt inside my heart to last a thousand lifetimes.
Thomas rubbed the wood between his hands. “You sound a little too enthusiastic. You’re not going to try to kill me, are you?”
I smiled a little. “No, Thomas. If I killed you, who would make food for me?”
He laughed lightly and tossed me the stake. “That will do, I suppose. Now to state the obvious, you are human. That means the odds of you surviving a vampire attack is maybe one in a hundred. Your reflexes are simply too slow compared to ours. With a regular stake, your best chance is to let them get uncomfortably close to you.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, trying not to remember Elias’s breath on my cheek. “That strategy doesn’t work very well.”
“I said it was your best chance, not a guarantee. The regular stake is going to be your last resort, anyway. Now once they are close enough, you are going to have to be as quick as you can and use every ounce of strength possible. We are going to try a few exercises minus the strength part, so try to aim the stake over my heart. I’m trusting you, Kara. Don’t try to kill me.”
I looked over at the greenhouse. Inola stood beside the doorway, her fingers clutched together. Her vibrant eyes never left me.
I put more pressure on the invisible wound, trying to drown out Gabriel. He was running through the woods, and I could feel his intention. He knew he couldn’t kill Elias, but that wouldn’t stop him from inflicting as much pain on Elias as possible if he found him.
I shivered at the amount of anger coursing through Gabriel. It bled into me and fueled my resolve. I nodded at Thomas.
Thomas blurred and disappeared. I looked around, but it was too late. He was behind me, his head near my neck.
“You’re dead. Try again.”
Once again he blurred, this time tripping me up and crouching over me. “Dead,” he said casually.
Gabriel’s anger became so strong my temples throbbed. I got up and wiped the dirt off my jeans. “I’m not hurt,” I muttered to him, more because he was distracting me than to reassure him.
Thomas looked over at Inola. I knew without asking that they were silently communicating; I could only imagine how deep their blood connection went.
He studied me. “Inola is worried I am taking it too far. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “I highly doubt Elias will take it easy on me, so I don’t expect you to.”
“Then prepare yourself.”
I dug my feet into the ground as Thomas ran. He sprinted around the greenhouse and jumped onto the top of it. He then jumped down and came toward me, but he was simply too fast. I had the stake raised, but it only reached Thomas’s lower stomach as he bent his head toward my neck.
“That was a little better,” he assured me, stepping back.
“But not enough,” I disagreed. The pressure on the wound had lifted during the encounter, and I suddenly saw the woods through Gabriel’s eyes.
I was awestruck that the world could be so clear and defined. Everything was beautiful, even the dirt. Gabriel was running, but I could see everything as if he were standing still. The leaves gleamed like his eyes in the moonlight. Water droplets clung to the greenery like small crystals.
I tugged on Thomas’s jacket. “Do it again! Now!”
This time, Thomas didn’t blur. Even though he was going incomprehensibly fast, my eyes were able to follow and see every step he took clearly. He was approaching me from the side as he ran, but I was ready. His eyes widened when the tip of the stake rested against his heart.
“Now you’re dead!” I exclaimed gleefully. Inola chuckled nearby.
Thomas took the stake. “You cheated, didn’t you?”
I wasn’t going to even try to deny it—I too amazed. “Is this how you see all the time? This is awesome!” I tilted my head back and looked up at the sky. There were a lot of clouds, but I could see through them. The stars that weren’t behind the clouds were even more vibrant.
“Whoa! There are purple stars? And that one is green! And that one—”
Pain. Indescribable, fiery pain. My eyes dimmed back to their normal state and widened as my hands clawed at my throat. I dropped to my knees.
“Kara?” Thomas’s voice was distant, as if he were talking through water. Inola was suddenly by my side.
“Gabriel!” I moaned inside my head.
Whirlwinds of emotions, his and mine, evaporated amidst the pain, and I knew he was racing through the woods to get to me. I could scarcely breathe. I fell forward, my hands encircling my throat. Raging fire seared the inside of my neck.
Inola’s words were a universe away. “Kara, it’s not your pain! You are feeling Gabriel’s thirst! Try to distance yourself from him!”
Blood. Every cell in my body cried for relief. Deep-rooted instinct that shouldn’t exist in me knew what was needed to end it.
“Blood,” I choked out.
“That won’t help you,” Thomas said heatedly. “It is not your pain.”
Not my pain? This wasn’t thirst. . . . This was absolute torture. I screamed. I was no longer fully aware of my surroundings, but somehow those green eyes penetrated the fire that had replaced my world, and I thought I felt his arms cradling me. It was nearly impossible, but I managed to communicate what I knew was the only way.
“Bite me!” I exclaimed to him inside my mind.
His emotions were somehow as strong as the fire. “Kara . . .”
“Do it!”
I didn’t even feel his fangs, but I knew exactly when my blood entered him. Immediately, the pain subsided, like breathing air after living for eternity underwater.
I could focus enough now to see reality. Thomas and Inola lingered worriedly in the background as Gabriel leaned over me, his fangs embedded inside the soft skin of my left wrist. His eyes were burning embers that never left my face, and I couldn’t bring myself to look away from them. I gasped as another wave of relief washed over me, and I breathed deeply as the relief shifted to something I couldn’t even describe. Euphoria. Bliss. Thomas and Inola blurred and disappeared when I gasped again.
This closeness. Feeling like this, melded to another, it was something I’d never dreamed I would feel. A
nd with another human, it was something that couldn’t be felt. Had this not happened to me, would a part of my heart been forever alone? Would I have ever known anything even remotely close to this if I hadn’t met Gabriel?
My thoughts mystified Gabriel, and it was hard for both of us to concentrate. Especially me. His body could process things so much faster than my own, yet I could feel him urging me to concentrate on his memories rather than our emotions.
“I will show you the rest, but you have to help me,” he whispered inside my head.
I tried, and with his help, we were able to control the connection more. The emotional aspect didn’t go away and was still extremely palpable, but the enigmatic storm of our hearts allowed our memories to take center stage.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t his memory that surfaced first. Ice replaced the dimming fire in our throats as we watched my past self sob on my bed, my head buried in Tassy’s white fur. Pain shot through the both of us at the gut-wrenching cries that came out of my mouth.
Gabriel’s words were extremely soft. “The night you found out your mother and father . . .”
I turned away from the doorway we stood in. “I can’t relive this again.”
Gabriel took my hand, and the memory faded as soon as we made contact. A new one emerged, one of Miles and me at my kitchen table.
Miles pointed to the paper in front of me. “Ok, now for this problem, you have to find the fourth partial sum.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Can’t we be done for tonight? I’ve worked all day, and I’m exhausted.”
Miles pushed his glasses up his nose. “Kara, the exam is on Monday. You need to be ready. I can do your homework for you, but I can’t cheat in class and do the test for you.”
“Honestly, Miles, I don’t really care about a math exam right now.”
He went pale, as if I had said something sacrilegious. “But this is your future! This exam is worth half of your grade, and colleges—”
I pointed to Grandma’s room. “That, Miles, is my future. Right in there. I have a responsibility, and there is nothing I can do about it.”
The picture changed to one of Lila pulling up in her dark blue Mustang. She got out and waved to me as I stood on the sidewalk. Her black hair was pinned back, her body clothed in a beautiful dress the color of starlight.
“Hello!” Lila called. Her face fell when she saw that I was wearing my pajamas. “You are not coming, are you?”
I shook my head woodenly. “I couldn’t get Nancy to stay tonight. I’m sorry. I know how much this recital means to you.”
Lila smiled, but I saw through the façade. “It’s ok. Family comes first.”
My past self looked down. “You are my family, too. You know that, right?”
The memory vanished. Then it was just Gabriel and me, alone in our personal, black void—the very center of our minds.
I faced away from him. I felt tears pool inside my physical eyes, eyes that still were locked with his back in the real world. “No one ever said anything, but after my parents died, it drove a wedge between me and my friends. They were very supportive, always there for me. But . . . I was on a different scale of reality than them. They had their future, and I had bills and Grandma. And I was no longer the Kara they’d grown up with. I was bitter and distant. After graduation, we drifted apart even more. . . .”
He touched my shoulder lightly. My eyes widened as I realized I had poured my heart out willingly to him. A weight seemed to lift itself away from me. For so long I had wanted to talk to someone, but there had been no one who could understand. . . .
The black void was swallowed by little Gabriel spying on Lucy and Elias in a field. The teenagers were laughing and having a picnic while Gabriel watched jealously.
“The year is 1748 in North Carolina,” Gabriel told me, his voice slightly rough. “My family and I lived on a small farm with only enough crops to support us. Elias’s father bought the farm next to ours. The idea was to have Lucy and Elias marry so we could combine our farms for mutual advantage. As you can see, the two of them were more than happy to oblige.”
Lucy was leaning on Elias, laughing so hard her face was red. I swallowed uneasily at the contentment on Elias’s face; it was so different from the calm cruelty I had become accustomed to seeing.
“But they are not married yet. They only look about twelve or thirteen,” I observed.
“You are correct.”
Elias got up and went toward the tall grass where little Gabriel hid. Gabriel shot up defensively, but Elias beckoned to him.
“You can join us, Gabriel. No need to spy.” Elias’s words were not unkind or overly inviting; he sounded how any boy his age would sound when interrupted with their crush.
Lucy pushed her black curls away from her face. “Yes, dearest Gabriel. Please join us.”
Gabriel flinched when Elias clapped him on the back. The boy sat down next to his sister and leaned on her shoulder.
Lucy sighed happily and wrapped her arms around Gabriel. “Isn’t this nice? Gabriel, as soon as Elias and I marry, you can come and live with us. Elias is already working on our house; we’ll live on his father’s farm. Won’t that be just grand?”
Gabriel nodded. “Yes. As long as I get to stay with you, Lucy.”
I went closer and studied Elias’s eyes. I could see no darkness in them.
“He is just a normal boy,” I said.
“As of now,” Gabriel replied.
The memory disappeared, and Gabriel and I were back inside the black void.
“So what happened?” I inquired.
Gabriel’s eyes were bright glass. “They were so in love. I didn’t realize it until after I turned myself, but their love was so deep because they were Eternals. And one day, when Elias and Lucy were both fourteen, Elias’s family was murdered—his father, his mother, and his younger brother. It looked as if they had been attacked by a pack of some wild animals. Some blamed the Native Americans, but the murder was never solved by the humans, and Elias’s body was the only one not found. Everyone believed him dead, including Lucy and myself.”
“It was a vampire, wasn’t it?” I guessed.
“Yes. A female vampire by the name of Grace. She was the leader of a coven who thrived on . . . forbidden pleasures. I will spare you what details I can. She was a sadist who killed families, always sparing the one she thought most desirable. She made Elias watch as she killed his parents, and then she Controlled him to kill his own brother. After that, she took him to her coven. She would Control her victims and involve them in sexual, tortuous acts of other humans. For five years she kept Elias human, keeping him under Control and making him do unspeakable things, and having unspeakable things done to him as well.”
I shivered in my physical body. The pain of the thirst was gone, but I still needed the whole story. I nodded once to Gabriel, and his fangs sank in deeper, transporting our minds to a small cottage by a lake.
“After Elias’s supposed death, Lucy became a shell of herself. She was still the gentle soul I treasured, but there was never life inside her eyes again. And then Lucy overheard our father and brothers talking about killing me—Lucy and I ran away within the hour. We stayed with various families, doing as much work as possible, and then we met a carpenter named Jeshua. He was a kind man who became my employer, and he showed me his trade while Lucy sold the clothes and blankets she sewed. Jeshua was nice enough to let us stay on his land in the lake cottage.”
The leaves around the cottage turned red and orange, and then frost and snow colored the ground. I watched the seasons change as Gabriel and Lucy lived their lives. Lucy sitting by the window, tirelessly sewing in the moonlight while Gabriel brought in firewood. Gabriel down by the lake, fishing with a small net while Lucy milked a goat tied to a tree. Gabriel repairing the roof as Lucy planted a small garden.
Their life looked simple, but peaceful. And I saw exactly what Gabriel meant. Lucy remained kind, always smiling at Gabriel whenever she saw him, but her ey
es were glazed and tired. I heard her crying in her sleep at night, and I watched as Gabriel stared at the ceiling helplessly.
“She could have had anyone she desired. And I blamed myself, thought I was keeping her from more. She confessed to me she would never love again, that her heart only belonged to Elias. She told me as long as she had me, she didn’t need anyone else anyway. And then . . .”
Gabriel, looking around fourteen now, was coming back to the cottage. He was drenched in sweat and covered with wood shavings. He stopped and looked at the cottage quizzically.
“I knew before even going inside that something was wrong. She always kept a candle burning in the windowsill at night until I got home. That night, there was no candle.”
Gabriel ran to the cottage and threw open the door, hastily disappearing inside. “Lucy? Lucy? Where are you? Answer me, Lucy!” He came back out onto the porch, and I gasped at the look on his face.
I knew that look. The look of someone who had lost everything.
“LUCY!” he screamed into the night.
Gabriel’s pain seeped into me. “She was gone. No sign of a struggle or anything. She was just gone.”
The seasons starting changing again, and Gabriel aged before my eyes. Fifteen. Sixteen. Always working, never stopping.
“But where did she go? She wouldn’t just leave you like that,” I said quietly.
Gabriel remained silent as we watched his memory age to seventeen, then eighteen. And then I knew my answer was finally coming. Gabriel came home just like that night, covered in sweat and wood shavings. He stopped and stared at the cottage. Stared at the candle burning in the windowsill.
We followed Gabriel’s past self into the house. Lucy sat in a rocking chair in the corner, and my heart sank when I saw her eyes.
“L-Lucy?” Gabriel gasped. He fell to his knees.
Lucy had been beautiful as a human, but vampirism had amplified her features to pure perfection. Although her face was streaked with tears, she was stunning, like a pale angel in a white nightgown. Her eyes were bright emeralds that glowed in the candlelight.
Rapid Pulse (Violet Memory Book 1) Page 12