Always (30 page)

“
I don’t need to just yet.” He squeezed my shoulders. “I’ll get you home first.”

“
Marcus?”

“
Yeah?”

“
Will I ever get better?”

“
You will, Claudia. This was your first time. It was expected.”

“
You knew I was going to kill that man?”

“
It does happen from time to time.”

We walked along in silence back to the house. How easily Marcus accepted the fact that I had just killed someone. Was that what he expected me to turn into? Did I have any choice?

Like two shadows, we stole back into the house and up to our room. None of the servants woke up. “Will you be okay here by yourself?”

“
Yes.”

“
Claudia…”

“
I’m okay, Marcus. You go.” I smiled tightly up at him. “Just hurry back.” Our lips met briefly before he left. I barely saw him go.

I walked slowly to the window and flung it open wide. With a courage I never had before, I stepped out onto the high roof. I perched expertly on the ledge and hung my feet over.

I couldn’t see the stars; the clouds were too thick. The snow had picked up and blanketed the entire city, but I didn’t feel cold at all. My heart hammered in my chest, but the rhythm was all wrong. Nothing would ever be the same.

Somewhere in the city, three vampires roamed for their next victim. And somewhere in the city a man was dead. I had killed him. Now I was a monster, too.

Chapter
Thirty-One

It was hard to sleep that night. Marcus came home and found me still on the roof. He didn’t say anything about the tears on my lashes. He sat beside me and didn’t say anything.

Time seemed to move differently with my new senses. There was much about the world that I simply never noticed before, like the sound the snow made when it hit the ground; I never realized it made a sound at all.

“
How can you stand it?” I asked him after a long silence.

“
You get used to it.”

“
It’s just so…”

“
Beautiful?”

“
Scary.” The word drifted out into the night, touching everything it passed.

“
What are you afraid of?”

“
Do you remember that first night we were together?” I knew he did; I saw the whole night replay in his head, but I waited for him to speak.

“
I do.”

“
Do you remember when we talked about the stars?”

“
Yes.”

“
You told me that they made you feel small.” I tilted my face up to see the tiny bursts of light, visible now through the parting clouds. They seemed so much brighter now, but no closer.

“
Do they make you feel small now?”

“
Everything does. It’s like…” I let my words trail away. I knew he could hear every one of my thoughts as if they were his own, but he waited while I sorted through them for myself. “It’s like the world just got so much bigger; like it’s swallowing me up.”

“
It’s not any bigger, Claudia, you can just see more of it now.”

“
I can see everything,” I whispered.

“
What do you see?”

I heard his words, I even understood them, but I didn’t answer him. I closed my eyes softly–listening to the sounds of the city. It may have been the middle of the night, but the city was far from sleeping.

“
Lady Greene’s three month old son is having a hard time sleeping.”

“
Three new teeth.”

“
The young maid over at the Sharene’s isn’t sleeping either.”

“
Just started seeing the stable man over on 42
^nd
street.”

My eyes popped open and I turned sharply to see him. “How do you know?”

“
I listen.”

I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. “How old are you, Marcus?”

“
I told you before how old I was.”

“
Tell me again.”

“
Just over a thousand years.”

My breath caught sharply in my throat, but the cold didn’t burn my chest. “That’s a long time.”

His eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled. “Indeed.”

“
What do you notice?”

“
I notice everything.”

I forced my breath out so I could watch it freeze in the frigid air. I smiled in wonder at the shapes the streaks of air created. “And does it make you feel small, Marcus?”

“
The whole world?” He stopped smiling when he realized that I was serious. “Nah,” he began tracing lines in the light snow built up on the rooftop. “I don’t feel small. I’ve come to terms with what I am.”

“
How?”

“
I’ve had a lot of time.” I watched his fingers moving along the roof, heard the scraping noise of the snow moving under them.

“
I feel lost, like I’m not…me anymore.”

“
I guess you’re kind of not–you.”

“
Guess not,” I mumbled. I took a deep breath through my nose. “So, how was your…um, hunt?”

“
It was good.” His finger continued to make lines in the snow. “There’s a lot of fresh blood in London–on the streets. It’s easy.”

Was he trying to repulse me? Was he trying to make me afraid? “Oh.”

“
It is something you get used to. Not all of us live for the thrill of the hunt. Some merely do what we have to do to survive.”

Survival.

That was what my life would be like from now on. I could feel it all the way throughout my body. The word echoed through Marcus’s thoughts. He had been consumed by it for so long.

“
Until all of your humanity is gone.”

I heard the words in my head as loudly as if he had spoken them out loud. I didn’t dare look at him. It was hard to see Marcus now through my new eyes. He was no longer the man I had fallen in love with.

There was more to him than ever before. I had always known there was something different about Marcus. When I was only guessing, it had been mysterious and it drew me in with the compulsion to figure him out. Now that I knew he was a monster, I shied away from seeing the real him.

“
How many vampires are there in the world?”

“
More than you would think,” he took a deep breath. “At the end of the war…”

“
What war?”

“
The immortal war. The two brothers, Vladimir and Vance, gathered their armies and fought for three months.”

“
Were they the first vampires?”

“
Sort of. Their guards created all the other vampires– including my family.”

“
How many?”

“
Thousands.” My mouth fell open in shock. “But by the end of the war, there were less than 500 warriors left alive. Both brothers had fallen as well as one of Vladimir’s guards.”

“
And Silango is…?”

“
Silango and Ossian are left in Vladimir’s guard; Vance’s three guards are sworn to protect Kiera.”

“
Silango and Ossian answer to Lady Neleh?”

“
Not really. They fear her because she has the guard, but…”

“
I thought you said they belonged to Kiera.”

“
She…didn’t want them. She ordered them to obey Neleh.”

“
Oh.”

“
Silango answers to no one.”

“
But he controls you?”

He nodded slowly. “All the Letrell brothers. He created us–and Ryan.”

“
Ryan?”

“
Yes, the same man who was outside of your window the night we first met. Silango sent him to deliver a message, but he got…distracted.”

“
And you saved me from him.”

“
That was the plan.”

“
Did Silango send him to bring you to London?”

“
Yes. Me and my brother, Rueben.”

Things were starting to make so much more sense now. They were all vampires. That’s why Ryan was so fast. All of Marcus’s brothers were also vampires, I realized.

“
Do you think your brothers will like me?” I asked.

“
They will.” He shrugged, half laughing at my awkward question.

“
How do you know?”

“
I just…um,” he shrugged and clicked his tongue, “I just know.”

“
Do you think they’ll be angry because you changed me?” I looked down, suddenly interested in my intertwined fingers.

I didn’t hear him move, but I was aware of the pressure of his body against mine. “Hey,” he put his hand on my arm.

I looked up at the soft blue in his eyes. With my new sight, they looked like rings of Safire that had been set ablaze. The color spun around the dark black pupils, sucking me into their depths. What else could possibly matter? “Yeah?” My voice was barely a whisper.

He turned away from me so that I was able to hear and understand what he was saying to me. The wind picked up, throwing his hair around his chiseled jaw line. In that moment, I could see the warrior he had once been.

“
For years, we traveled from place to place, convinced that we would never love. Achilles had tried it and it didn’t turn out well for him.”

My mouth drew down into a frown. I had seen Achilles in Marcus’s memories right after we bonded. Achilles was in love with Elizabeth. What did he mean that things didn’t work out well? “But I thought he and Elizabeth…?”

“
Yeah,” he nodded, “They are–now.”

“
So, they weren’t always?”

“
No. We didn’t think we could love. We had been created to fight. It’s all we knew.”

It was hard for me to see the world Marcus saw. I wished I could see his memories again. “And then Kiera found you guys.”

“
Or we found her.” His tongue darted out to moisten his lips. “She wanted us all to find what she and Damien have.”

There was a sudden rage that he couldn’t hide. “You don’t like Kiera?”

“
I do,” he nodded. “I just don’t like what they have.” He tried to laugh.

“
You don’t like love?”

He smiled into the falling snow, but when he turned to me, he was serious again. “I love you, Claudia.”

“
I love you, too.”

“
I’m sorry I did this to you.” I couldn’t tell him that it was okay, that I didn’t mind. He would know I was lying.

“
I’m glad I’m with you, Marcus.”

“
I want you to meet Paris,” he said suddenly. “He’s going to love you.”

“
Paris is your true brother?”

“
Twin brother.” His eyes got wide.

“
Then he must be extremely handsome,” I teased.

“
Just don’t tell him that.”

“
Where is he now?”

“
I haven’t spoken to him for a while, but I would guess he’s at Blakesly House.”

“
What is Blakesly House again?”

“
Where all the Letrell’s live–our true home.”

“
Will we go there?”

“
We all meet up there once a year, so yes, we will go there eventually. You’ll meet all my brothers.”

The snow began to come down in a heavier curtain, but I barely felt it. I wasn’t cold at al,l even though I didn’t have a jacket on. The night had grown quieter while we sat there listening to it.

“
It will get easier, Claudia,” Marcus promised.

“
I’m never going to be like you.”

“
You don’t have to be.”

“
I’m never going to enjoy hunting. I never want to do that again.”