Darkest Whispers (Eternal Shadows Book 2)

by Kate Martin

  “You can’t be here.” Her eyes flicked up towards the sun.

  “I won’t stay long. I just want to explain.”

  “Go away.”

  “Sara, it’s still me. I haven’t changed. Not really.”

  “If—if you don’t go. I’ll scream.” She pressed back against the chair, her face blanched and her breathing so erratic that just hearing it made me tired.

  I decided to cut to the chase. “Sara, did you tell anyone about me?”

  Her gaze dropped from my face and lingered instead on her cup. She swirled the whipped cream with her straw.

  “Sara? Please. Did you tell anyone?”

  Her answer was so soft, so very nearly silent, I doubted I ever would have heard it had I not been a vampire. “No.”

  That one little word sent electric shocks of happiness through me. It meant everything. It meant that deep down, beneath all the fear and distress, Sara still believed in me. It meant I had a hope of restoring our friendship.

  “Really? No one? Not even your parents?”

  “I wasn’t even sure it was you when I woke up. I told myself I had imagined it. A nightmare.”

  “I really wish it had been.”

  “But it wasn’t a nightmare.” She looked straight at me, her eyes suddenly dark and her expression cold and hard. “It was real. You’re here, and you’re one of those . . . those things. And you want me to keep your secret.”

  Hope flew back out the window. “Sara, I swear to you, I am not like those things. You know that.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said, her words scraping past her teeth. Her gaze wandered left, and when it snapped back to me I knew she had seen Rhys. “And what about him? I suppose he’s one of them too.”

  “Sara, I’ll leave you alone. You never need to see me again, but just please, please, promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

  Three times her cup turned atop the metal table before she answered. “Fine. I’ll keep your secret, but only because you were my friend for so long. But, now . . . now you’re just a monster, in the guise of my best friend. I don’t want to see you again. If there are any traces of Kassandra left in you, you’ll do that for me.”

  My heart broke.

  Leaving my cup behind, I backed away. “All right.” Tears made my voice come out wobbly. “I can do that for you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry things are the way they are. Thank you for keeping my secret. Love you.”

  I tore myself away from her and pushed through the sea of people and chairs until I was safely wrapped in Rhys’s arms. With my face buried in his chest, I fought not to cry.

  He held me tightly, and slipped us both away from the shop. The next street over with its dinner restaurants and lunch spots wasn’t nearly as busy.

  He stroked my hair and kissed my head. “I’m sorry.”

  “She hates me.” I sounded as miserable as I felt.

  “You did what you came to do. And she doesn’t hate you. If she did, she wouldn’t have agreed to not tell. Give her time. Think of how you would feel if the situation were reversed.”

  I wiped at my nose with the back of my hand. “I hate when people say stuff like that.”

  “Well, it’s true. Her world has been turned upside down by creatures she thought were myth. They attacked her in her own home, and she knows she is a prime source of food. It’s like being a mouse in a room full of cats. Only the cats all look like mice.”

  “What about me? Doesn’t she think my life sucks now?”

  “I heard what she said. At the moment, she doesn’t think you’re you anymore.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “She’ll come around. We’re going to make this all right. We’ll eliminate the VFO, we’ll stop them from making any more cariosus, and we will give the humans back their world. We’ll disappear.”

  “And that will make her like me again?”

  “She’s just scared, Kassandra.”

  I held him tighter, wishing I could simply meld into him. Better than finding a hole to climb into. I couldn’t help but think, yet again, how the only good thing about my damned new life was him.

  “I don’t want to go home. Take me somewhere else.”

  He kissed the top of my head again. “You’ve got it.”

  Chapter Eight: For The Present

  We sat in the woods. In “our spot,” as I liked to think of it. This was where Rhys had first kissed me, where we had passed the sixpence over our fingers and talked for hours. I pretended I didn’t have a best friend who hated me.

  Leaning back against Rhys’s chest, I waited impatiently for the sun to set. It would mean the day was over, done, gone. I didn’t have to be in it any more. The night could be my day now, since I was a creature of the night, and so I would have a blank page to start with again.

  I so very dearly wanted this page to have nothing bad written on it.

  Rubbing the sixpence like a worry stone, I closed my eyes and exhaled, doing my best to leave everything behind.

  Rhys sat with his back against a tree, he stroked my hair. “Are you feeling better?”

  “I’m going to tell myself I am.” I had no desire to get anywhere near a mirror. I feared what I looked like after all my sniveling. Regardless, I pulled myself up out of mope-mode, rubbed at my face until it hurt, then looked at Rhys and smiled. “Hi.”

  He looked anything but convinced by my act.

  I couldn’t help but think of my first days as a vampire, when I had railed against my new existence, just as Sara did now. I counted those first days as some of the worst in my life. I had fought Rhys to the best of my ability and only cooperated later in the hopes of learning how to end it all. I never could have imagined I was staring fate in the face.

  “I’m sorry I was so terrible to you,” I said.

  “What are you talking about? When?”

  “When you turned me.”

  “What brought this on?” He sounded so honestly surprised, so sadly concerned. Then he shifted, and I could practically feel his thoughts catch up with mine. “You had every right. I took your life.”

  His expression held a collection of emotions I couldn’t quite understand. I ran my fingers over the lines of his face as though I could smooth it all away. “You were just doing your job.”

  “And you were just defending your mortality.”

  “But now, knowing who you are, I’m sorry I tormented you.”

  He smiled and laughed lightly. “I hate to break it to you, but you weren’t actually all that bad. I’ve seen far worse.”

  I went through a quick run-down in my head. Cade, Millie and Madge had all been invited into this life. They wouldn’t have been resentful. I questioned Rhys with my silence.

  “Me,” he said.

  “You?” The word slipped from my lips, surprising me as much as his answer.

  “Yes, me.”

  Not wanting to ask him to recount everything, I snuggled against him once more, leaning my head back against his shoulder so I could think. His fingers returned to my hair, but he didn’t say anything else.

  Cade had brought Rhys to the General only days before his wedding to Bryn. When he awoke from his own turning, Bryn was the first thing on his mind. When he’d had the strength to see her again, to resist the bloodlust, she was dying of a terrible illness.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine his anger. But Rhys and the General were so close now; like father and son. I couldn’t imagine Rhys feeling anything but admiration for him.

  I lifted my head again and looked at him. “Did you hate him?”

  “Oh yes. And I carried on much longer than you did.”

  “How long?”

  “Oh, twenty or thirty years. At the least.”

  “You don’t know exactly?”

  He shrugged beneath me. “The years begin to blur together after a while. You lose track of time. I can give you the exact number of years before I entertained the idea of immortality being useful, but even after that I gave Julius and Aurelia a
hard time.”

  “What made you think immortality would be useful?”

  He reached up and ran his finger over the sixpence. “I learned about past lives, and reincarnation.”

  He learned that he could see Bryn again. However, I knew what began then; a quest that would last nearly five-hundred years, and bring him almost nothing but heartache. I didn’t want him to think about those things. “So what made you change your mind? About the General? You certainly don’t hate him now.”

  “I’m not sure exactly. It was as if one day I just grew up. I understood the patience he’d had with me, and the trust he’d shown me even though I had done nothing but cause him aggravation. I appreciated what he had done for me, and what he wanted for me. He earned my respect, I suppose.”

  “And even with all your carrying on, he still thought you were the perfect initiate?”

  “I guess he knew me better than I knew myself.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, closing my eyes and reaching back to play with Rhys’s hair, “let’s hope we have the same luck with me.”

  When we returned home, the General was locked in the study with Aurelia and Cade. Despite Rhys’s careful inquisition as what was going on, Madge refused to give any indication. Isaac’s presence at her side lent weight to her conviction.

  My heart, which hadn’t beat on any kind of regular basis in some time, hammered against my chest about once every ten seconds—or every time I let myself think about Rhys, and the plans he had no idea I had been making in the last hour. I wanted to forget everything else that had happened. I wanted to feel happy, safe, and content.

  Standing in front of the mirror that ran the length of the wall beside the sink, I ran my brush through my hair for something like the two-hundredth time. My pajamas—simple purple cotton and nothing to think twice about—lay on the counter waiting to be put on. I pulled the shirt over my head, stepped into the shorts, ran a hand through my hair and walked out of the bathroom and into my bedroom where I knew he would be waiting.

  I was kinda sorta, maybe a little bit hoping something would happen tonight.

  He peered at me over the book he had been reading, sitting at my desk. “I was beginning to get worried. You never take so long.”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes a girl just needs a few extra minutes.” I sauntered over to him and wrapped my arms around his neck, giving him a long, and rather unchaste kiss.

  He set the book aside and pulled me onto his lap, tucking my hair behind both ears, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones. I leaned in and kissed him again.

  “How alone do you think we are?” I said casually.

  “We’re alone in this room, certainly. Madge and Isaac went down the front walk while you were in the bathroom. Haven’t heard from Millie, and I assume Julius and the others are still holed up in the study.”

  Of course. So, in other words—not alone at all. “I feel like someone’s always watching us.”

  “In our world, someone usually is.” Regret coated his tone.

  “Yeah, but that’s only because everyone has supersonic hearing,” I teased, wanting to keep the mood light. “I doubt anyone wants to hear half of what they end up hearing.”

  He laughed lightly. “You have no idea the truth of that statement.”

  “I’m sure I’ll find out. I have all the time in the world now.”

  “True again.” He wasn’t smiling any more.

  Dammit. I took his face in my hands and kissed him hard, as though I could will everything else away by the sheer force of my lips. “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you.” Every time he said it he sounded as though he couldn’t believe it. Like he couldn’t grasp the very concept of being able to say the words and have them heard. I wanted so badly to erase the pain of five hundred years of longing.

  “Aren’t you tired?” he asked, even as he lowered his face to my neck, setting his lips gently against the hollow of my throat.

  “Not so much.” I buried my fingers in his hair. “Right now all I need is you.”

  “All I need is you. I don’t see why I should have to pretend to want anything else.”

  “Eva, this decision is not something you should make lightly.” Rhys looked the very definition of a gentleman in his expensive suit. His hair combed meticulously, with not a strand out of place.

  “What have I made light of? I have thought on this for some time now and I am decided. I want you, and to have that I must forfeit my mortal life. I have no problem doing so.” My skirts swished around my legs as I turned abruptly and headed out of the extravagant library. The air shifted and I knew Rhys would appear out of thin air in front of me an instant before he did so.

  “I think you don’t understand what you are truly agreeing to,” he said, arms stiff, with fists at his side as though he were resisting the urge to shake some sense into me.

  But I—Eva—was far too skilled at dealing with stubborn men. “What would you like me to explain to you in order to put your soul at ease? Should I tell you that I understand that I will have to survive on the blood of humans? That I will need to bite and drink from a living being on a daily basis? I am fully aware of the troubles sunlight will cause me, as well as the extensive changes I will undergo concerning my senses, strength and speed. I will have to adhere to not only human laws, but those of the vampires as well.” I stepped closer to him, leaving nothing more than a scant breadth of air between us. “I have done my research, and I have come to my conclusion.”

  Rhys looked positively tormented. “Eva—”

  “Don’t you want to spend eternity with me?”

  He closed his eyes and the tension in his body increased so that it looked as though he might burst. “I have always wanted to spend my life with you. I wanted to marry you, provide for you, give you a family. I wanted to grow old and be buried beside you.”

  I took his face in my gloved hands and kissed those tense and drawn lips. “Rhys, my love, some of those things are lost to us, but not all. We can be together. We can live our lives, and we can have far more than just one lifetime together. Perhaps the trade is unfair, but it is the only trade we can make. I am willing. Are you?”

  His expression was that of a man facing a blazing fire that could only possibly consume him. “You are asking me to take your life.”

  “No. I am asking you to give it to me. We are entitled to our happiness, Rhys. You have waited far too long. And as for my human life, well, I have had far more of them than you, I am content.”

  He breathed, and the tension ran from his body with the air he had no need for. He nodded, and I smiled.

  “Now,” I said, pulling the gloves from my hands and replacing them on his face so that my bare flesh could touch his. “Ask me.”

  He opened his eyes and met my gaze. While the uncertainty still lingered there, a joy that could light even the darkest night had grown behind it. “Evangeline McKinney, will you be my wife?”

  “Yes.” I kissed him again, long and hard. “But you will have to catch me first.” I slipped from his embrace and started to saunter backwards down the long hallway.

  Rhys grumbled and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Eva, do not taunt a vampire like that. I have not hunted in some time.”

  “Well then, what better prize than a long awaited bride? I am more than capable of slaking your thirst.”

  The memory left me just as suddenly as it had arrived. My hands clutched Rhys’s shirt and he had his arms wrapped tightly around me, the only thing keeping me upright

  “Kassandra.” The sound of his voice grounded me to reality a little more. I let go of his shirt with one hand and touched his face, assuring myself he was really there. His hair was its normal casual mess again, and the tee-shirt was a far cry from the expensive suit. I leaned my forehead against his shoulder, working at separating the details of the memory from the current moment.

  “Kassandra,” he said again, “are you all right?”

  “That was weird.”
r />   “A memory?”

  “Yes. I guess something I said triggered it.”

  “You went ashen.”

  I realized suddenly why he held me so tightly, why his voice sounded strained and nervous. He was afraid I had remembered a death, or something worse.

  At least this time I could put him at ease. “It was the night you and Eva decided to get married.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It just caught me by surprise, that’s all. It wasn’t the memory itself or anything like that.”

  “I’m glad.”

  So was I, but Eva’s last comment had run along the same lines as that which I had planned for myself—and the memory wasn’t dispelling like they normally did. Her feelings—my feelings—were still as strong as if they hadn’t been over a hundred years old. Without losing sight of reality, I could remember things that had come afterwards. The pop of undone buttons, and pull of laces, and the slide of fabric along shoulders.

  I shifted in his lap and resumed the kissing that had been interrupted. To my delight, Rhys joined right in. His hands delved into my hair even as I pressed myself firmly against him. Eva supplied me with memories of the hard plains of Rhys’s chest, and I slipped my hand under his shirt, feeling and tracing every line of muscle and flesh while my lips left his mouth and traveled along his jaw and throat. The past blended with the now, and I had goosebumps.

  “Kassandra.” I wasn’t positive, but he sounded almost hesitant. He looked up at me from the bed, golden and perfect from a summer outside and half a millennia of preservation. I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted him in that very moment.

  When I had trailed kisses clear down his throat, my hands exploring his stomach and approaching the waist of his pants, he grabbed me suddenly by the shoulders, and in an instant I was flat on my back on the bed, Rhys on top of me. Only his face didn’t carry the expression I had been hoping for, or remembered. He looked terrified.