Born Dark

by H G Lynch

  “Sober? Well, you’d better be. Brandon’s on edge as it is, without you showing up to a meeting totally plastered,” Ricky warned. There went Reid’s contingency plan. Could this day get any worse?

  The Tree

  “So, I don’t think the witches are going to be much trouble, but just in case, we need to stay low. These girls aren’t like the vamp-loving witches from up North. They will burn us on the spot if they find out what we are.” Brandon was leaning with his elbows on his knees, looking as serious as ever in the flickering firelight. The dim, dusty room always had that faintly eerie feeling. Shadows danced on the stone walls, and the place practically screamed stereotype vamp-den. Reid loved it because of that.

  “And, great leader, just how did you obtain this information?” Reid snickered, and Brandon glanced at Perry.

  “Perry came across them on his bike the other night, on the edge of the forest. They were casting protective spells, sharpening stakes. It leads me to believe they might be vampire hunters, probably got a tip from one of the other witches that have passed through.” Brandon sent Perry a nod, and Ricky looked worried. Reid snorted, but his friends knew he was taking this seriously. Despite his mocking demeanour, Reid always took supernatural business as seriously as Brandon did. He just didn’t show it.

  “OK, so do we have a game plan in case we get caught? Or are we just going to wait around like sitting ducks?” Reid raised a brow. He was itching for a fight; it’d been too long since he’d had a real fight, and he had a lot to get out of his system.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Reid. But if we lay low while the witches are in town, we won’t get caught, so it won’t matter.” Brandon’s voice had that ‘I’m-warning-you-Reid-don’t-mess-up’ tone again, and Reid sighed. He heard that tone on a weekly basis, and he wondered if Brandon would ever loosen up.

  “Meeting adjourned?” Ricky asked with a grin. Uh-oh. If official business was over, it was time for the Laugh-at-Reid session. Was it too late to back out now? He wondered.

  “Yeah. I think that’s it. What’s up with you, Kee? You’re grinning like a mad man.” Brandon lightened up quickly once the real business was out of the way. It wasn’t often Ricky said anything when they were down here. Secretly, Reid thought Kee was a bit creeped out by the mysterious, cobweb-dusted meeting den.

  “Well, maybe Reid would like to tell you himself?” Ricky turned his excited aqua gaze on Reid, brows raised expectantly. Reid glared at him, sighed, and hung his head.

  “Reid?” Perry sounded confused and, as Reid looked up at him through his blonde hair, his voice matched his expression. That wasn’t anything new though; Perry often looked confused. He wasn’t precisely the brightest of the bunch.

  “Come on Reid, You can’t keep going the way you have been. Not anymore,” Ricky encouraged smugly. Reid was going to have to remember to put jelly in Ricky’s pillow later. Or maybe a dead rat.

  “Kee, what’re you talking about? He obviously isn’t going to tell us, whatever it is,” Brandon sighed. Ricky chuckled, clearly enjoying this much more than he should‘ve been in Reid’s opinion, and Reid lifted his head to give the brunette boy a warning glare. Ricky ignored it.

  “Reid Ashton is having…” Ricky paused for dramatic effect, so that the only noise in the hallowed stone room was the crackling of the fire and Reid’s own heartbeat. “Girl troubles.” Ricky finished dramatically, grinning. Reid kept his head down, hearing Brandon and Perry gasp mockingly, and then laugh.

  “Seriously? What kind of troubles? Have all the girls finally banded together against you, or did you just lose your mojo?” Perry chortled. Ricky laughed harder, and Brandon was quite likely to have a brain aneurysm. Great, Reid thought bitterly, Now Brandon lightens up. At the same time, he was mentally kicking himself. Why the hell had he told Ricky? Why hadn’t he kept his damn mouth shut like he should’ve? Maybe he was losing his mind. The idea did have a certain appeal.

  “Oh no. It’s not like that. I’m talking about how Reid-” Ricky started, chuckles dimming but not dying away just yet. Reid decided he’d had enough. He didn’t want the others to know; he’d deal with it on his own. He got to his feet abruptly.

  “-Is leaving now! And, Kee, you might want to remember we share a room.” It wasn’t even a concealed threat, and Reid smacked the boy in the side of the head as he stormed past, heading for the narrow staircase. Brandon, who was closest to the stairs, cut him off. He stuck out an arm to block his way and Reid vaguely considered ripping his arm off.

  “Wait, Reid. Is this about Ember?” The dark-haired boy had sobered quickly, his mouth now set in a concerned yet attentive frown. Tell him? Break his arm? The latter sounded like a much better idea. Reid sighed.

  “Yeah. It’s about Ember…” Reid whirled so he could address everyone in the room at once, knowing he’d never live this down after he said it. “I like her. I actually like the girl. She’s different. There. You happy now? I said it!” Reid flung out his arms in a frustrated, exasperated gesture. Nobody laughed this time, and Reid shook his head tiredly. “Can I go now? I need to go punch a tree or something,” he groaned.

  “Just a sec… there has to be more to it than that, otherwise Ricky wouldn’t have brought it up and you wouldn’t have admitted it,” Brandon said analytically, searching Reid’s face. When Reid didn’t answer, Kee spoke up.

  “He doesn’t know how to deal with it. Unrequited infatuation isn’t something Reid is used to.” Brandon and Perry nodded in agreement with what Ricky said, and all eyes turned back to Reid. This is going to be a long night, Reid thought to himself, retiring to his perching spot back in the corner. The others took their seats too.

  “OK, so… you want to know what you should do? Well, you could try acting like a human being for once?” Perry grinned.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not human am I? That’s part of the problem. I don’t know how to be close to a human and keep the secret. She’s going to find out somehow. She’s a lot more perceptive than any other girl I’ve ever met,” Reid muttered, feeling ashamed that he was having this conversation. It was an injury to his pride just to feel this way, let alone tell his friends about it.

  “That’s ‘cause every other girl you’ve met has either been drunk, or just too desperate to take your clothes off to notice anything else,” Perry chuckled, but Brandon made a thoughtful noise.

  “I can see your problem. But first you need to establish some sort of non-hostile relationship. She needs to not hate you to start with. And, like I said earlier, we all need to lie low. Stick with that, and you won’t need to deal with the vampire-human struggle for a while,” Brandon said sensibly, shrugging. The firelight cast strange patterns on his face, darkening his eyes to make him look older and wiser than he was. It irritated Reid.

  “Non-hostile? That won’t be so easy. Ember is… vicious. And she seems to know just which buttons to push to piss me off,” he explained dully.

  “Just try. And who knows? Maybe you’ll discover your humanity.” Brandon grinned suddenly.

  “And maybe he’ll corrupt her, feed on her and then get over it.” Perry was less optimistic, striking at what he knew was more Reid’s nature. Reid almost chuckled himself, seeing the likelihood in Perry’s perspective.

  After all, he was still Reid Ashton, infamous man-whore and wild card. Plus, it wasn’t like Ember was one of those prissy, controlling, make-their-man-a-slave girls. She had a wild side of her own; it was just more refined than his. Maybe this could work. Or maybe it would blow up in his face. He figured it was a fifty-fifty shot.

  Ember

  Two days passed in the blink of an eye with nothing of consequence happening. It had given Ember time to think, and now that she had, she realised she’d been an absolute idiot. She’d fallen for Reid’s charm.

  She was sitting in the skate park, at quarter past eight in the evening, and staring blankly at her skateboard on the ground. She wasn’t sure why she’d come; she’d established with hers
elf yesterday that Reid was messing with her. He hadn’t given up his games at all, he’d just found a new way to play them. He was going for the honest-lies approach: act like a nice guy, tell her what she wants to hear, and then laugh at her behind her back because she believes your act.

  “Bullshit,” she hissed to herself out-loud, throwing her skateboard as far as she could. Her voice echoed and her skateboard skittered across the concrete ground. The darkening sky overhead was littered with stars, and a cool wind blew loose strands of hair around her face. She pushed them back impatiently, staring out at the humped shapes of shadowy concrete ramps and the surrounding expanse of grass, grey as cement in the dim light. Lamp posts along the street behind her were starting to flicker on.

  Damn it, Reid is such an asshole! She’d actually believed him when he’d said he thought of her as a friend. She’d let the horse-riding expedition get to her, make her trusting and soft. “Stupid, hot asshole!” she muttered to the ground before sighing and heading slowly toward her bashed board.

  “Who’s a stupid, hot asshole?” The voice came from right behind her. She gasped and jumped in surprise, her hands flying to her chest.

  “Jesus, Reid! Don’t sneak up on me like that! You’ll give me a heart attack!” Ember battled the blush trying to colour her face. He really didn’t need to know she thought he was hot; it would only make him more arrogant.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he grinned, winking at her so that she felt a flutter in her ribs.

  “No. I didn’t,” Ember replied simply, sounding cool and calm. She wasn’t. She was frankly amazed he was here, but then again, he probably had to come and laugh at her for showing up. Convoluted plan. Maybe Reid wasn’t that smart… or that dumb, rather?

  Having just confused herself, and feeling the puzzled look on her face, Ember grabbed up her skateboard and made to leave. So what if he’d shown up? She’d known this was a bad idea to start with, and now, she just wanted to leave before she made a fool of herself.

  “Hey, not leaving yet are you? I just got here.” Reid held up a skateboard of his own. It had a pretty cool deck, with a flaming skull printed onto the underside.

  Ember muttered appreciatively, “Ace deck.”

  Reid looked faintly surprised for a second and then proceeded to snatch her board from her hand. “Hey! Give me my board back, idiot!” She dived for it but he whirled it away faster than she could blink. He held up the skateboard, examining it, and snorted derisively.

  “‘Vampires do it better’? Seriously?” He mocked, reading the bleeding red words on the underside of her board. But there was something curious in his voice that Ember couldn’t identify, an edge to his tone.

  “Yeah, so I like vampires. Considering you stole my books before, I thought you just might have figured that one out.” OK, so she hadn’t actually expected him to take a glance at the titles of her books while he’d been snatching them.

  “Hmm,” said Reid, dropping her board and heading for the top of the biggest straight ramp.

  Ember retrieved her abused skateboard and sighed, unsure whether or not she should leave. Part of her told her she didn’t want to be here with him, but another part was curious. For some reason, she thought of the kiss at the stables on Monday. With that memory, a confusing array of emotions arose: Anger, lust, hatred, longing. In the end, the jumble just gave her the urge to slap the blonde boy flying down the ramp. And a headache. She also was developing a headache.

  “Wait, come on, don’t leave!” the blonde in question yelled to her, whizzing down and around the quarter-pipe. He skidded to a stop three feet in front of her, blocking her way out. “I haven’t even done anything…” He held out his arms in a helpless gesture, tilting his head so his hair fell in his eyes. She just arched a brow, quirking her lips.

  “Yet,” he amended, sounding sheepish. She got the impression he had more to say, but he was making an effort to keep his mouth shut. Those blue eyes were wide and pleading, drawing her in. He knew just how to pull on a girl’s heartstrings.

  Eventually, Ember sighed, her mind too boggled with contrasting emotions and ideas and unnecessary thoughts that she wished would go away, to deal with an argument. Of course, Reid grinned, having won again. Maybe I’d have better luck dealing with him if I was blind, Ember thought wryly.

  Half an hour later, they were both sitting atop the half-pipe, having what was almost a real conversation. It was darker now, the street lights casting pools of yellow illumination on the street. Nobody was around, except the odd passer-by too keen on getting home to notice the two teenagers in the skate park. Occasionally a car would go by, headlights sweeping across the skate park and uncovering the darkened ramps for a flash.

  “So, you’ve really never been drunk?” Reid asked with raised brows. Ember had no idea how they’d gotten on to this topic; she’d let the discussion run away with her.

  “Nope,” she replied simply, leaning her head back to look at the misting clouds coasting across the dark sky. A chilly August breeze tickled her neck.

  “Why not?” he persisted. For some reason, her personal life seemed to be of great interest to him. He’d already asked her what she wanted to do when she left school, what other hobbies she had, and whether or not she was seeing anyone. That last question had caught her off guard and she’d been startled into answering truthfully. Of course, she told herself he didn’t mean anything by it. He was probably just trying to make her uncomfortable.

  Reid was sitting on his skateboard, legs dangling over the edge of the curved ramp, gloved hands planted on the metal under them as he leaned back. Ember gave him a sidelong glance. His profile was pale and serene in the dimness, shadows hovering over his fair skin like bruises.

  “Because I like my brain cells,” she answered smartly, smirking at the sky. Reid chuckled at that, and they descended into silence, aside from the chirp of crickets in the grass nearby. It wasn’t an awkward silence really, just… unusual. Ember tried not to look at him.

  “OK, so what about the other aspects of your social life?” Reid asked suddenly, sounding truly curious. There was something specific he wanted to ask about, she could tell.

  “Such as?” Ember enquired cautiously. Reid hesitated, considering whether or not to say it, probably. But, being Reid, he took the chance.

  “Sex life. I mean, have you-”

  Ember cut him off sharply, “That is none of your business!” She emphasised her indignant offence at his question by slapping his arm. She hated that she could feel heat in her face, burning like flames. She turned away with a hiss, glowering across the grass beyond them. The field of grey-green disappeared into blackness beyond the reaching fingers of the streetlights.

  “Huh. I’ll take that as a ‘No’ then,” Reid muttered, not at all smug like she’d expected, but sort of gentle. As if he found it interesting, if not entirely unsurprising. Yet, there was a set to his jaw that made her think he was internally ridiculing her. Ember turned and made to shove him down the ramp, but he caught her wrists surprisingly easily. Twisted half-way to face him, she scowled, trying to yank her wrists back. It was a futile effort on her part. “Whoa, chill. I wasn’t mocking you. But I would like to know why you haven’t…?” He left the sentence hanging. She gritted her teeth and tried again to pull her wrists free.

  “Let go of me,” she hissed, hearing her heart beating in her ears. She didn’t like being so close to him; close enough to see the lighter and darker strands in his hair even in the dim lighting, close enough to smell that odd, delicious spiced-apple scent that always surrounded him.

  “Come on, it’s an innocent enough question. Answer me and I’ll let you go.” Reid insisted, attempting to use his looks to influence her again, batting his lashes innocently and making his mouth into an irresistible pout. Luckily, she was too mortified for it to take effect. As she continued to struggle against him, he pulled her toward him until her could wrap both arms around her to keep her still. Ember was sure she’d start
hyperventilating any minute now; she was too wrought up and they were far too close. Her heart was going a mile a minute.

  “Let go of me!” she commanded again, in a clear voice this time, ceasing her wriggling.

  “I will if you answer me.” Reid was just impossibly stubborn. Ember looked for an escape, testing how tight his hold on her was, estimating how long it would take him to react if she made a dive for the ramp’s edge. But somehow, she knew she wasn’t getting out of his grip without some serious weaponry.

  She sighed. “I hate you, you know that? I don’t even know why the hell I showed up here tonight. I figured you were just messing with me again. I didn’t even expect you to show up,” she grumbled, uncomfortable with being close enough to him to hear his even breathing, to feel his breath in her hair.

  “Well, I guess subconsciously you must’ve expected me to show up, or else you wouldn’t be here.” It was a surprisingly insightful thing for Reid to say, and she was speechless for just a moment, but then he ruined it. “So, spill. Why?” he added. For all his persistence, Ember had to wonder why he was so keen to know.

  She wanted so badly to slap him across the face right then. Couldn’t he just leave it alone? What did it matter to him why she wasn’t a slut like every other girl he’d known? “Just because. A lot of reasons. Not the right guy, not the right situation. Not to mention, I hate romance…” Ember mumbled quickly, hoping her voice was careless and nonchalant. Unfortunately her voice shook a little and she took a shuddering breath to calm herself. “Let go now.” She aimed her elbow for his ribs but he changed his grip on her, turning her to face him fully, grasping her upper arms.

  His face was just inches from hers and she could feel his cool breath on her lips. His blue eyes were dark and intent on hers, reflecting light from the street lamps until she could swear his eyes shone. “I think you’re just nervous. Maybe you just need the right…experience…to encourage you…” He almost whispered the words, his soft breath washing across her face, intoxicating her. She felt herself leaning toward him, helpless to break the spell he was casting. Her eyes slid shut and her lips parted, she could taste his cool breath on her tongue. Tingles were running down her spine, and shivers raised the hairs on her arms. There wasn’t anything she wanted more in the world, in that moment, than to kiss Reid… until her phone buzzed against her leg, jolting her like an electric shock.