Ascension (29 page)

One morning, he's swimming the beach again when I go down for a morning walk.

"Hello, Eve," he says, emerging from the waves and he's so attractive he looks like some god of beauty born in the foam like Venus. "I thought I'd find you here."

"Are you going to be cryptic again and get me all confused? Not tell me how you know me?"

"Probably," he says and grins, his smile lopsided. I can't help but smile back and he makes this little sound in his throat and closes his eyes for a moment. I see the strange marking again, and can't stop myself from asking about it.

"What is it?" I ask as he dries off, pointing to the mark on his back. "Is it a scar?"

"Of a kind, I suppose."

"What's it from?"

He pulls on his sweater.

"Does it matter?"

I'm silent for a few moments, fighting my desire to know, to understand. It's more important for me to have him as a friend so I shake my head.

"No."

"Good," he says. "I'd rather not talk about it. Let's just say that I did something that cost me far more than I anticipated."

I say nothing more about it. Instead, we walk along the beach and I look for the perfect shell to use for a little project I've been working on. I'm making jewellery for my foster mother's birthday, and want the perfect shell for a bracelet.

"What are you looking for?" he asks as I kneel down and pick up one after another empty shell.

"I thought you knew everything."

I glance up and he's grinning. I grin back and the smile falls from his face and it's replaced by something like need.

"Something for my foster mother," I say, glancing away from that naked expression, wondering if I'm misreading him. "I'm making her a present for her birthday."

He kneels down beside me and helps sort through the pile of bivalves and mollusc shells that have collected against a rocky outcropping on the beach. He holds one up – the white shell a smooth spiral, the lip of the shell a beautiful translucent pink nacre like that on a pearl oyster.

"Here," he says, holding it up in the sun so that it shines. "What about this one?"

"It's perfect," I whisper. "So beautiful."

He puts it in my hand and closes my fingers around it with his.

"Like you."

I look at his face, in his so-blue eyes, checking to see if he's teasing me, but he isn't smiling. I think he's going to lean in and kiss me, and he briefly moves closer. I close my eyes, waiting, but then he stops as if thinking better of it.

I open my eyes only to see him pull away, kicking myself mentally for being such a silly female, my cheeks hot.

We walk along the beach, and he finally speaks as if to break the awkward silence.

"How did your time lapse photography work out?"

"Other than clouds moving in at the end, great," I say, forcing a smile to hide my blush. "I'm using a video editor to put it together. Now I just have to choose the music."

"What are you thinking of using? For music?”

I shrug. “Something serene. I’m thinking Debussy. I’ve only just started playing again after the coma. Maybe
Reverie
.”

“It’s a beautiful piece,” he says. “I'd like to see it when it's done."

I nod. "Sure."

"Would you like to look at stars tonight?" he says as we walk
on
a little further. "I have a nice telescope. We could set it up and take a few good long-exposure pictures. I've taken
some
of the Large Magellanic Cloud before that turned out pretty well."

I smile at him, glad we've moved beyond the silliness of a few moments ago.

"That sounds nice."

"Come down here once it's full dark. Say around 10:30."

The sun comes out and the brightness bothers me. A headache strikes out of the blue and I stop and rub my forehead, grimacing.

"Are you OK?" he takes my hand, squeezing. I frown, uncertain what I think about his forwardness. He's beautiful and nice but I only just met him.

I nod and pull my hand away, reaching into a pocket in my sweater to find my sunglasses.

"Just the injury," I say, slipping the sunglasses on. "I'm extremely light sensitive. It's a lot better now."

"What will you do when you recover fully?" he says, staring at me from under a frown. "Will you leave
Ipswich
?"

"Yes," I say, and we start walking again. "Probably go back to university. I'm in pre-med, just finishing my last year of my Bachelor of Science."

"And when you're done? What field of medicine?"

I shrug. "Probably do a PhD and do medical research," I say. "My mother did medical research."

He nods his head slowly.

"It's a way to keep her with you, I suppose."

"I barely remember her,” I say. “She was murdered."

"Did they find her killer?”

I shake my head.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

“No, it’s still cold. Some freak who’d been stalking her, I guess.”

He shakes his head, his face sad and we part, me taking the path up to the cottage and him walking the beach towards his own place.

I go back to the cottage and wonder what tonight will bring. I don't think I'm wrong to assume he's attracted to me and is seeking me out. It sends a little thrill to my belly.

CHAPTER 27

"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."

George Bernard Shaw

I meet him down at the beach
where he has a flashlight covered in a red sock and his telescope set up on a tripod.

"I was worried you wouldn't come," he says. He shows me the telescope, explaining how he's set it up so that it takes a series of long-exposure images of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Then he leads me to a large blanket that he's laid out on the grassy part of the beach closer to the cliffs. He sits down on the blanket and hands me a pair of binoculars.

"Take these," he says. "I have another set. You can see quite a bit of detail with them."

I join him and we lie on the blanket, binoculars in hand, the sound of the surf in the distance and crickets chirping in the long grass. We stare up at the stars and he tells me all about them, naming them, reciting their type and age and class as if he's reading directly from a text.

"That's Kepler's Nova," he says, pointing up into the sky towards the constellation of Ophiuchus. "It's a supernova remnant about twenty-thousand light years from us. The last supernova visible in our galaxy. That's Barnard's Star," he says, moving his hand to another star. "One of the closest stars to Earth. There's another supernova in the Southern Hemisphere, but we can't see it so far north. Eta Carina. It's already gone off, but we won't see the explosion for years. When we do, it'll light up the night sky in the south. It'll be something to witness. I plan to be there when its light finally arrives."

"How do you know it's gone off?"

He says nothing in reply, just points elsewhere in the sky and describes the nebula at the end of Orion's belt.

"Is astronomy one of your areas of research?"

He's silent for a while before answering.

"No. I've just had a lot of time to study it and learn."

"You're not that much older than me," I say, my voice chiding.

He just smiles.

I watch him for a moment longer and then turn back to the sky, acutely aware of him lying next to me. I want so much just to take his hand and squeeze it, but I'm not going to repeat the earlier silliness.

He has a map and
a
flashlight covered in a red sock to protect our eyes
. H
e points to
the map
to show me the path the space station takes over the earth's surface. After a while, he turns over on his side and watches me
. I
t's strange for I've only now just realized I can see him perfectly in the darkness, his skin silvery gray, looking like a cemetery angel in the moonlight. Finally, he reaches out and runs his finger over my cheek and I wait but he doesn't kiss me. Instead, he keeps his fingers on my cheek, his touch cool and dry.

Part of me feels sad that he doesn't kiss me for something's been growing inside of me – a feeling that I want more from him than just walks on the beach, passing time in a comfortable silence, the stillness broken only when something of note comes up. I want him to lie on top of me and kiss me, my pulse quickening and my body warming at the thought. I wonder if I'll ever meet someone and fall in love. The
n
he pulls his hand away before rolling onto his back once more.

He sighs heavily and I turn back to the sky and the vast emptiness of space.

In about an hour, after he tells me all about the main stars and constellations, most of which I already know, it's time for me to leave. It's getting late, and he hasn't said anything or done anything to make me think he wants to kiss me or more.

I point up to the cottage. "I better get back. My parents go to bed early and I don't want to disrupt things."

"Thank you for joining me. I enjoyed having company for this. It's usually a very solitary pastime."

I smile and after a bit of an awkward moment, start up the path to the cottage.

We meet in town one afternoon at the music store. That Saturday Michel shows up, and I see his reflection in a picture against the wall. He stands silently behind me and listens to me play a Bach prelude, but his presence causes me to falter and I stop and turn to him.

"Don't stop because of me," he says and motioned for me to continue. "Play something. Play your most favorite piece. The one that breaks your heart."

 
I turn back and hold my hands over the keys but something stops me, for my most favorite piece is also the one that hurts the most. It's the one piece my father loved more than anything and I'd been learning it when my mother died. Playing it brings back so many memories.

Michel comes up behind me, bending over me, his cheek next to mine, his hands covering mine on the keyboard.

"Just play it," he says softly, his mouth next to my ear. "Even if it makes you sad. I want to feel what it's like to play so beautifully."

I take in a deep breath and play the first bars of the Chopin,
Ballade No. 1
.
The opening starts slowly enough and he's able to keep his hands on mine, but as the piece grows more intense, the tempo rising, he can only keep his fingers touching the backs of my hands as they move across the keys. Then, during the slow movement, he's once more able to lay his fingers over mine. As I play, memories of the year before my mother's death and my time studying piano in
Budapest
fill me with melancholy.

"So beautiful," he whispers when I finish as far as I can go. I can feel his lips against my cheek as he speaks. "That alone makes all of this worth it."

I turn and his lips press against my neck, brushing my skin like the kiss I've been desiring.

"Worth what?" I say, closing my eyes, imagining his arms around me.

But he doesn't reply. Instead, he removes his hands from mine and leaves me sitting at the piano, trailing one hand over my shoulder as he walks away. He stops at the door, the knob in his hand.

"I have to go," he says, leaving without another word.
 

The weather turns rainy and cold as a storm system moves in. On Sunday, I don't see him down at the beach. Instead of meeting him as I expected, I walk the shore alone, dressed in a rain slicker and rubber boots, feeling like an exile. I think back to the other night watching stars, and the day we found the seashell, and how close he seemed to kissing me. How he didn't. Sadness wells up inside of me as I wander along the coast, cursing myself. I barely know him, but I want more than anything to kiss him – and more.
 

I climb on the boulders that lead up to the main road but slip on the slick surface of the rocks, my usual sure-footedness gone. I fall between two larger boulders, my ankle twisting as I land badly. I crack my face on one bolder and my lip instantly inflates, the blood dripping down from a cut to my bottom lip. I struggle out from the boulder and sit on the sand, holding my ankle, trying to staunch the flow of blood from my mouth with a sleeve. The rain drips down my face, and a thin bloody stream of it stains the sand on which I sit.

Hot tears sting the corners of my eyes. They aren't from the pain but from disappointment. Then, arms reach down and lift me and I crane my head to see who it is.

Michel, his face dark, a frown creasing his brow.

"What are you doing out here in this weather?" he says, his voice stern. His hair is soaked and his eyelashes clumped together. "Why are you climbing these rocks? It's too slippery."

He sits me on a boulder in the shelter of an overhang against one of the larger hills, its base worn away from the tides.

"I can look after myself," I say, pulling away from him, angry that he's treating me like a child.

"I know you can," he says and tilting my face up. "Me more than anyone," he says, examining my bloody lip. "Oh,
damn
…"

I see his face change as he leans closer, his eyes becoming red, his pupils dilating, and he kisses me, taking my bottom lip in his mouth and I swear he's after my blood, licking the blood from my cut, sucking my lip …

"What are you doing?" I gasp and try to pull away. There's blood on his lips, and he turns his back to me.

"Look at me!" I say but he shakes his head and holds his hand out, stopping me from coming around to look at his face.

When he grabs my hand, my fear evaporates and I just wait. In a moment, he turns back and he looks normal once more, except of course, for being very pale. He runs his fingers over my lip and the pain dissipates. Next, he bends down and removes my boot and sock, cradling my foot in his hands. As he holds my ankle, I touch my lip – the blood's gone, the swelling deflated, almost back to normal. His hands on my ankle feel soothing, and soon, the pain's gone. He twists my ankle back and forth, glancing up at me.

"Does it hurt this way?"

I shake my head.

"How about now?"

"No," I say. "It's better." I move my ankle in a circle but there's no pain. "How did you do that?"

He replaces my sock and boot and stands but doesn't answer.

"You really should know better than to climb among the rocks when it's raining. What's got into you?"

"I like the rain." I stand up, testing my weight on the ankle, unwilling to concede anything. "Why were you here?"

"Looking for you. I had a feeling you'd be out wandering around, nature girl that you are."

The rain really starts to fall heavily, the wind whipping the drops against my face, soaking my hair beneath the hood.

"What
are
you?" I say, frowning.

"You should go home," he says, ignoring my question. "The weather's too bad to be out."

"Nonsense." I start walking the beach. "It's invigorating."

I glance back and he's still standing where he found me. I turn and keep walking, wondering if he'll follow me.
Hoping
.

He doesn't.

I want to return to him, but something stops me. I don't want to appear too interested in him. When I turn back again, he's nowhere to be seen.

Disappointment floods through me and I regret being so stubborn. I wonder what it is I saw when he turned away – why his eyes seemed so red. It must have been just my eyes blurring from the rain.

That night, I drea
m of him. It's a strange dream
of him with my lip in his mouth, my blood on his lips
. I
n my dream he's a vampire but one with huge black wings like some kind of fallen angel. He comes to me through an open window, lying with me on the bed in my room at the cottage, his arms wrapped around me, his wings covering us, his lips on my neck, and he's filling me up, lying between my thighs. I feel the short sharp pain as he bites me but the pleasure is so intense that I come in my sleep, waking up alone in bed, my body still spasming. I reach up and feel my neck but there's nothing there and I think I’m such a freak that I dream about having sex with a vampire.

In the morning, I notice the marks on my neck, and stand at the mirror in the bathroom and lean in close to examine them. From a distance, they look like a couple of freckles, nothing more, but when I get my foster father's magnifying glass and look more closely, the edges are rough, like a bite. There are clearly teeth marks and then my blood feels as if it has turned to ice.

That wasn't a dream.

Is he a
vampire
? That’s crazy…

How does he go out during the day?

Why does he have wings?

That afternoon, I find him on the beach, waiting for me in the shelter of an outcropping of rocks near the pathway.

He smiles when he sees me.

"There you are," he says, holding out a piece of beach glass. "Look what I found."

I'm in no mood to look at it.

"I have a bite mark on my neck."

His smile dies and he glances away. He throws the piece of beach glass in the water a few yards away.

I pull my long braid out of the way, arching my neck to the side.

He shrugs. "I don't see anything."

He's lying.

"You didn't even look." He knows about the mark because he put it there. I'm certain of it. "You bit me," I say plainly. "Last night. It's almost all healed. You’re a vampire."

He leaves the shelter of the rock outcropping, walking along the surf, his strides long, fast enough to keep just ahead of me.

"You must have been dreaming."

"You
bit
me," I say again, hurrying to keep up. "I know it."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

That hurts and I quit following him.

"No," I say. "It's a bite." I dig my nails into my palms to control my emotions.
 
"What are you? How can you be out in the daylight?"