Crave (12 page)
Authors: Karen E. Taylor
“The sun.” I shivered. “I remember the sun. I wanted to sleep in the sun.”
“But that would have killed you.”
I shivered again and hugged my arms to myself. “That, if I remember correctly,” I gave him a rueful smile, “was the whole point.”
“But why would you want to kill yourself? I thought you were happy with me; thought you loved me.” Shock and hurt showed in his eyes and I reached a hand up to touch his cheek.
“Oh, I am happy, Mitch, and I do love you. But it wasn't me, you see, who wanted to sleep in the sun. It was someone else.”
“Someone else?” Mitch's voice rose in anger now, not at me, I knew, but in frustration and fear. “It would damn well've been you anyway, if I hadn't been here.”
“That could be.” I fell silent for a while, staring at the closed drapes, remembering the purifying pain of the vision with both dread and desire. “Thank you.”
Stripping off my clothes, I walked over to the bed and pulled the covers down. “I'm tired, let's sleep.”
“You sleep.” He walked out of the bedroom and came back with one of the chairs from the sitting area. He placed it square in front of the window, then sat himself in it emphatically. “I'll watch.”
“There's no need, my love, everything is over now.”
“I'll watch anyway.”
I stripped off my clothes and crawled between the coolness of the sheets. Just as I was drifting off, I heard his soft question.
“Who was it, Deirdre?”
“I don't know,” I mumbled, falling into a blissfully dreamless state. “I don't know.”
Chapter 14
S
ometime during the day, I became aware that Mitch finally lay sleeping next to me. I woke and looked over at him, pulling the covers down to study his transformed body, something that I had been avoiding since his change. I remembered standing in front of the mirror with him in this room, comparing the difference between his mortal body and my supposedly perfected one. Then his skin had color and texture and scars. I'd lain in bed with him, tracing the welts and tracks of past injuries, listening to his brief descriptions of how they'd occurred. I'd loved his scars, loved the stories they'd told about the truth of him. I'd loved his humanity.
ometime during the day, I became aware that Mitch finally lay sleeping next to me. I woke and looked over at him, pulling the covers down to study his transformed body, something that I had been avoiding since his change. I remembered standing in front of the mirror with him in this room, comparing the difference between his mortal body and my supposedly perfected one. Then his skin had color and texture and scars. I'd lain in bed with him, tracing the welts and tracks of past injuries, listening to his brief descriptions of how they'd occurred. I'd loved his scars, loved the stories they'd told about the truth of him. I'd loved his humanity.
Now his skin glowed with the same translucency as my own and our glorious contrasts were gone, wiped away. I had singlehandedly destroyed his past. A tear rolled down my cheek, but I ignored it and closed my eyes, placing my hand softly on his chest, imagining the feel of him as he was before. He stirred in his sleep and I moved away, got up from the bed, and picked up the shirt he'd left draped over the chair. I put it on and quietly closing the door behind me, left the room.
I walked over to the bar and pulled out a bottle of red wineânot as good a vintage as I'd stocked when I lived here, but it would do. I opened it, poured myself a glass, and carried both glass and bottle to the couch where I curled up, my legs tucked underneath me. As the afternoon waned, I drank and I thought.
Mostly I thought about Mitch. I had expected to feel guilt at his transformation. I'd introduced him to a life I'd always loathed. But what I hadn't expected was his ready adaptation to the life. It was not that I loved him less, I reasoned, but that he had changed. I longed for someone in whom I could confide and realized with a flash of loneliness that I had few friends, that my closest ties were to Mitch. And he was a vampire.
Draining my glass, I poured another. There lay the problemâas much as I'd like to deny the fact, Mitch
was
a vampire. And, ridiculous as it was, in my mind, vampires were to be held at a distance; they should be feared and hated, not loved. “Damn,” I said softly to myself, “this is getting me nowhere. I don't even know where I want to go.”
was
a vampire. And, ridiculous as it was, in my mind, vampires were to be held at a distance; they should be feared and hated, not loved. “Damn,” I said softly to myself, “this is getting me nowhere. I don't even know where I want to go.”
The note from Larry was lying on the end table where Mitch must have left it. I stretched over the couch and picked it up, opened the envelope and read it again. When I'd first seen it, I'd assumed it was a death threat. Vague and deceptive like its writer, the ominous words that finished it were chosen with care to impart a certain meaning. And yet, with the vision I'd had, I wondered now if it wasn't a suicide note, if the soul I had witnessed in the sun hadn't been him. Had I been the one to be confined to that hellhole in the Cadre depths, I knew I would do almost anything to avoid being caught and reimprisoned. Even up to causing my own death.
So was Larry dead? I tried to reach out into the city and touch his mind. We are tied together, I thought, I should be able to find him. But I felt nothing except my own sadness, my own weariness with life. I put the letter away and held the envelope up to my cheek as if this touch would give me some answers.
I was trapped, here in this city, where I had never intended to be again. I longed for the years and months I had spent in England. Even the time I'd been without Mitch now seemed idyllic, when my only worries were what sort of profit the pub was pulling in and when my next meal would walk in the door. I laughed briefly and wondered if I should call Pete. Maybe the sound of his voice, cheerful and normal, would dispel the clouds that seemed to be gathering around us.
Mentally, I added the extra hours to the clock; the pub would be full now, the dart players would be arguing and the pints of ale flowing steadily. If I closed my eyes I could almost hear them, Pete's thick accent cutting through the other voices, calling greetings to regulars and strangers alike. With a smile, I picked up the phone and dialed the number of the pub.
I let the phone ring twenty times before I hung up, shaking my head. It was too early for them to have closed, especially on a Friday evening, unless Pete had somewhere to go and no one to cover for him. It hadn't been that long since we'd left; he would hardly have had time to arrange for a replacement for me by now.
I put my hand to the receiver and jumped when it rang. “Hello?”
“Deirdre, it's Victor. I thought when you didn't return to your rooms that you might be there. Is Mitch with you?” His voice sounded cold and distant, angry.
“Yes, he's here. Is there a problem?”
“I need to see you, both of you, as soon as you can get here.”
I looked at the clock again. “We'll be there in two hours. What's happening?”
“Larry Martin. All of the Cadre house members received odd letters from him, all different, revealing facts about them that he should not have known. But all similar in that they were death threats. He must be stopped.”
“Yes. I received one, too. But what if he is already dead?” My words were tentative, testing the waters of this theory. “Suicide.”
“Dead?” Victor seemed lightened by the words. “Suicide? Can you verify this?”
“No.” And because I wasn't sure myself, my voice quavered just a bit.
“Then how can you say he may be dead?”
“I felt something.”
Victor laughed, a cold, hard-sounding laugh. “You felt something? Deirdre, I have all of the house leaders incensed, calling for blood, in some cases your blood, and I'm supposed to tell them you felt something? He has threatened our very existence. You must understand this is serious business. You and Mitch were brought here to do a job. If that job is not done, there will be serious repercussions.”
“Victor,” I began, but he cut me off.
“No, I will not listen to your persuasions or your excuses any longer. You were to have killed Larry Martin and you brought him back for judgment instead. That was acceptable in a way and would have been workable, but then you got involved where you should not have. And you released himâaccidentally, or so you say.” His sarcastic emphasis on those last words caused me to shiver and his distrust of me echoed from every word he spoke. “He is your creation, Deirdre, and your responsibility. And you will be held liable for his crimes should you not be able to stop him. This is not a game we play here. I advise you not to rely on blood ties and sympathies to extricate yourself from this situation. You miraculously avoided punishment for Max's death, but I assure you the Cadre will not be as lenient this time. And we will not be toyed with.”
Had Victor not been so angry, I would have laughed at his pompousness. As it was, I began to shake, feeling the full impact of his words. If Larry were not found and brought to justice, I would pay for his sins, trapped for centuries in the airless glass booths of the Cadre. I drew in a deep breath in anticipation of that incarceration. And knew then that Larry was not dead, he could not be dead. He had engineered this situation, deliberately and with malice, with the very personal intent to make me suffer. I could almost hear his laughter.
“Deirdre? Do you understand? If any member of the Cadre is harmed by Larry Martin and you do not bring him to justice, you alone will be held responsible. The ghost of Max Hunter will not save you now. And neither will I.”
“I understand, Victor. Believe me, I understand.” I hung up the phone and turned around to see Mitch standing in the doorway of the bedroom.
He came over to me and wrapped his arms around me. “I heard everything,” he said, “you don't need to repeat a word.”
“Mitch,” I said, “I won't let them put me in their cage.”
“I know, Deirdre, I know,” he smoothed my hair in a gentle gesture. “They won't put you in any cage. I won't allow it. We'll find that bastard and we'll kill him. Or we'll tear the whole Cadre down and scatter their fucking ashes over the city.”
“But,” my voice got softer, sadder, “you're one of them now.”
He held me out at arm's length and stared at me for a long time, speaking my name softly. His eyes, which had always held a compelling intensity, now shone unnaturally; their effect seemed to be multiplied tenfold by his new vampiric nature. And the emotions of which they spoke were so strong they would have been terrifying, except that the strongest of these was love for me. Mitch pulled me deep into himself as if our souls had been merged.
Our souls
were
merged. I felt my body flow into nothingness, all physical sensations faded, and there was nothing left in the world but Mitch, his eyes and his love. And they held me as my grasp on the material world faltered and drifted, dissipating into a mist. A momentary panic flooded my mind and my disembodied voice called his name.
were
merged. I felt my body flow into nothingness, all physical sensations faded, and there was nothing left in the world but Mitch, his eyes and his love. And they held me as my grasp on the material world faltered and drifted, dissipating into a mist. A momentary panic flooded my mind and my disembodied voice called his name.
His answer to my distress flowed around me, flowed into me. He came to me and we were one; one in a nothingness that was everything, drifting and entwining, folding into one another. It was a union beyond anything I had ever experienced, beyond the enraptured bond of feeding, beyond the imperfect unity of sex, beyond even the compelling call of a dead soul. It simply was. And in its existence it was perfect.
I became Mitch and he became me and
we were one.
There was no other way to describe the feeling. We had become a hybrid creature, a blending of all that we both were. The inner doubts and fears that we each hid were revealed and channeled back and forth between usâthey were swallowed and digested and fed back in almost incomprehensible forms of reassurance and love. I found strengths within him barely untapped. I found insecurities that I would never have expected to have existed. And they were also mine.
we were one.
There was no other way to describe the feeling. We had become a hybrid creature, a blending of all that we both were. The inner doubts and fears that we each hid were revealed and channeled back and forth between usâthey were swallowed and digested and fed back in almost incomprehensible forms of reassurance and love. I found strengths within him barely untapped. I found insecurities that I would never have expected to have existed. And they were also mine.
“You fear me?” It was not a vocal comment and it did not come solely from my mind.
“No longer, my love.”
Then there was laughter and joy, flowing through the particles that had once been our bodies. And love so strong it threatened to be overwhelming in its intensity. But the threat did not matter; we would never be alone again. Unless we should die.
“Then we must not die,” came the united thought. “We will not die.”
“But we must still go back. We must make it all right.”
It was the sadness of that thought, the cruelness of having to leave this perfected unity that brought us both back down to earth, trapping us once more within imperfect bodies. I felt an indescribable coldness wrap around my being and I was torn apart from him, thrown back into the shell of skin and bones and blood.
Â
I was the first to solidify back into material flesh. I watched as he began to materialize, the mist that contained his soul sluggishly re-forming, gelling. His eyes glowed as if from nothingness, then his face grew apparent, his hawklike nose, his strong mouth and chin. His torso came next, and his legs. Until finally Mitch stood in front of me again. He reached out to me and I fell into his familiar arms. We both shivered then moved apart.
We stood, facing one another, not touching. After a while we found the strength to meet each other's eyes and smile.
Then I began to laugh and so did he. Shaking our heads at all of the misconceptions we'd held between the two of us.
“I only tried so hard to be the perfect vampire to make you proud of me,” he said, his voice raspy and low.
“I know, my love.” I faltered slightly. Words were so difficult to form. “I know. But I don't want you to be the perfect vampire, I just want you to be Mitch.”
He nodded, “I know that now. And I'll not let you down.”
“You could never let me down, Mitch.”
He reached over and rubbed my shoulders. “I won't. Now, let's go get the bastards.”
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