Eternal Shadows (25 page)

“Computer geek.”

“Specialist.”

“How come I didn’t know this?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t come up I guess. You behave yourself and don’t go all over the internet collecting viruses.”

I laughed when he adjusted his glasses as he said that. It just made him look more the part of the stereotypical geek I had in my head. “Go me.”

“I’ll see you later, Kassandra.”

“Good luck, Super Geek.”

“I’m real glad I told you that now.”

“Hey, sometimes I wish I was a super computer geek.” I rinsed the soap down the drain then turned off the water. “All I can manage is
to turn it on, surf the web.”

“Simpleton.”

“Geek.”

“I’m leaving now.”

I waved at his back. “Bye, Warren! I’ll crash my computer later so you don’t get bored.”

He made a rude gesture at me with his hand over his shoulder. I was so shocked I doubled over, hysterical.

Then the scent of fresh earth rolled by, and I forgot everything else. I hadn’t seen him since we left school yesterday. I almost slipped on the kitchen floor trying to get out so quickly. But I’d timed myself correctly. I entered the hall at exactly the same moment when he started to pass the kitchen.

My heart thumped.

“Hi,” I said, drinking him in. He still looked good in jeans. Just as good as he had those first days when he’d had to throw me over his shoulder in order to gain even a smidgen of my cooperation. Maybe I could get him to do that again…

“Kassandra.” He spoke my name like he’d only just realized who I was. It was my first hint that something was wrong. That line marred his perfect forehead again.

“Are you okay?” I stepped closer, reaching up to try to smooth that line away. “I’m in a better mood now. I promise.”

He let me touch him, but didn’t otherwise react. He just stared at me. “I’m glad.”

I smiled, hoping it would make the tension in his face disappear. My fingers weren’t doing anything. “In a few days my grades will be posted online. We’ll know my fate.”

“I’m sure you did fine.” His voice was strained, flat. I took a second look, a careful look at him. Pain lingered behind his eyes.

“Are you all right?”

He took my hand and removed it from his face. “I don’t feel well.”

“Oh.” Odd. I didn’t think vampires could get sick. “Do you want to lie down or something?”

“I’m going outside for some fresh air.”

“Want company?”

“No.”

If I hadn’t already died, I would have in that moment. My dead heart crumbled. “Oh. Okay.”

Grief merged with the pain in his eyes. He gently touched my cheek. “It has nothing to do with you, Kassandra. I just need some time alone.”

I felt only minutely better. I’d never seen him like this. It was almost worse than when he’d been in pain that night we’d met Malachi. At least then I knew who to blame.

He placed a chaste kiss on my forehead, and I could feel his teeth clench behind his lips. Then
he moved past me, his hand sliding down my cheek and across my neck until no contact remained. He moved less gracefully than normal down the hall and out the front door.

I wanted to die.

Whatever Cordoba had triggered in me the night before had left me scared and off balance. I had hoped to find Rhys and gain that feeling of safety he always gave me. But apparently something had gone wrong for him, too, and it appeared he didn’t need my comfort like I needed his. Now I was alone, with nothing to distract me from my own unwanted thoughts. Warren was busy fixing Madge’s computer, I had no idea where Millie had gotten to. Cade had left with Aurelia and I didn’t think they’d—

I hadn’t noticed it before. Aurelia’s scent trailed up the stairs, and Cade’s wove towards the back of the house. They’d returned. That meant things to learn. Stories to distract me. News on whether or not the council would meet.

And if I asked nicely, Cade would beat the crap out of me in the guise of training. That would certainly keep my mind off undesired things. I sprang down the hall, following the scent of steel and fire.

I’d slid around the corner, nearly taking my eye out on a corner when the voices stopped me short. The argument reached me in harsh whispers, but the speakers weren’t quiet enough to keep their heated discussion a secret from me. I could hear them clearly through the study door.

“I don’t see why everyone is still walking on eggshells around them both. Enough is enough.”

“You know full well why.” I’d never heard Millie speak to her sister in that tone before. “They deserve a fresh start.”

“Well, it’s not working,” Madge snapped back. “Have you seen Rhys this morning? Everything triggers it now. He’s in constant pain. Julius should put an end to it.”

“But Kassandra—”

“Kassandra is remembering. I can sense it. And so can Cade. He noticed the moment he got back last night.”

There was a light pause. “Is that true?” Millie asked.

“Yes.” Cade’s voice sounded deeply masculine against the twins’ melodic sopranos. “Aurelia sensed it as well. Kassandra is aware of something.”

“She did have that dream…but she hasn’t said anything else to me,” Millie said. She sounded hurt.

Madge scoffed. “That doesn’t mean anything. You may have forged a friendship with her, Mil, but we’re still the bad guys in her story. We destroyed her human life. It will take years before she trusts you like you want her to.”

“You don’t know her like I do.”

“Suit yourself. Regardless, I say it’s time to tell them.”

“You don’t get to make that decision.”

“Julius loves Rhys more than he loves the blood in his body. If Cordoba would stop monopolizing his attention for more than two seconds he would see the state Rhys is in and he would end it.”

“Julius did what he did for a reason,” Cade said. “Don’t forget that.”

“Like any of us could,” Madge snarled. “Millie and I only saw the results, and that was terrible enough. You were there, you know the truth of it all.”

“And Rhys is better off not remembering.”

“But she’s here now!” Something crashed as Madge yelled. “It shouldn’t matter anymore!”

Millie shushed her sister. “Quiet. She might hear you.”

“Let her hear me! She deserves to know the truth!”

I couldn’t take it anymore. With such a perfect opening, and with the blood burning in my veins, I all but threw myself at the door. It swung open with such force I heard a snap when it hit the side wall, and it didn’t swing back. Millie stared at me like a deer in headlights. Cade watched me as though he had expected me, and Madge looked indignant.

“Kassandra,” Millie began, visibly searching for the perfect thing to say. “Did you…? How much did you hear?”

“Enough,” I said. “I’ve been getting weird flashes. I didn’t tell you because I thought they might just be dreams, and because if they weren’t, then based on an earlier discussion, it seemed Aurelia would be the best one to go to. But that’s all moot now, right? I’m tired of always being on the outside of the loop. So tell me. Tell me what the hell is going on.”

Chapter Twenty-One: A Piece of the Past

I knew then what people meant when they said they saw red.

Cade walked past me and grabbed the door. He pulled it free of the wall and shut it. I spared one short glance for the gaping hole the other side of the knob had put in the sheetrock. Oh well.

When they all remained silent, I turned on Madge. “What’s wrong, Madge? You sounded so eager to tell me everything and now you have nothing to say?”

“You have the right to know, but that doesn’t mean I am the proper one to tell you.”

“Then who is?”

Millie answered me. “Cade knows more than Madge and I do. We weren’t alive when most of it happened.”

“All right.” I spun on my heel until I faced Cade. I made it clear I was waiting.

He gestured to a chair. “Why don’t you sit. It’s a long story.”

“I’m fine standing.” Some of my resolve had slipped and I found myself a tad bit fidgety. I couldn’t be sure I’d be able to maintain my stone face if I sat. “Get talking. Why am I having weird flashes and what’s wrong with Rhys?”

Millie maintained a reasonable distance. “May I ask you something first? It may help us tell the story in a more meaningful way.”

“Sure.”

“What are these flashes you’re having?”

“Just one flash, really. The others were dreams. The first was a while ago. I saw Rhys in old fashioned clothes, outside in a field. Then a few nights ago, I had this really long dream. Rhys and, well, I don’t know if it was me or not. It didn’t really feel like me, and Rhys used a different name. We were in a field, and there were sheep, and he asked the girl—me—to marry him. Then last night I got this
flash.” I shuddered at the memory. “There was blood and some terrible smell, almost like decay. I can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be.”

Millie nodded vaguely. “And in that long dream, what name did he use?”

“Bryn.” My jealousy for her flared.

Madge dropped into one of the large leather chairs that sat in the far corner. “I told you so.”

Millie glared at her. “Don’t be so glad to be right.”

“Can I get an explanation now?” Any longer and I’d walk out the door knowing nothing. Ignorance was bliss. Bliss sounded good right about now.

“Your dreams are memories,” Cade said. “Aurelia told you she sensed in you the ability to remember and detect past lives. You are in the beginning stages of remembering your own.”

“My past lives?”

“Yes.”

“So…what? Rhys and I…”

“Have met before. Yes.” He answered me so simply, as though giving me the answer to a math question.

“Oh.” My knees felt like they had been filled with Jell-O and I got lightheaded, despite my lack of need for breathing. Cade took me by the elbow and guided me to the closest chair. I sank into it.

“Bryn grew up with Rhys in Ireland. They fell in love and Rhys asked her to marry him,” he said. “They were set to be married within a week’s time. It was the summer of 1533, Henry VIII sat on the throne and Anne Boleyn was pregnant with her first child. Julius had gone to England to inquire after the truth of the king’s nature, and decided to tour Ireland while he was in the area. He came across Rhys and decided he would be his initiate. He sent me to acquire Rhys three nights before his wedding.”

“What?” How could the general do that to him? Take him away from everything just when it was within his grasp. Take him away from the woman he wanted to spend his life with. I remembered what Bryn—what I—had thought when Rhys had finally proposed. All she’d ever wanted, so close. Her dream, her life with Rhys.

“We did not know at the time,” Cade said, clearly to assure me of their innocence in that matter. “After Julius turned Rhys, and once Rhys had completed the change and woke, Bryn was the first thing on his mind. He demanded to know where she was and if she was safe. We assured him she was. He wanted to see her, but you know well the thirst of someone newly-turned, and without the benefit of being able to draw blood from humans easily, human sources were a necessity. We kept Rhys isolated until we were sure he could control himself. Then I took him into town at night so he could see Bryn. His family and hers both thought him either dead or runaway. Bryn believed neither. We heard her praying at her window, asking for his safe return.

“We left town that night without making contact. I asked Rhys if he wanted Bryn changed as well, but he refused. He hated what he had become, and wouldn’t damn her to the same fate. He believed she would be better off living her human life without him.”

“But something happened,” I said. I could hear it in the tone of Cade’s voice. “Something went wrong.”

“It happened quickly. Such things were common back then. An outbreak of the sweating sickness hit their town, and Bryn fell ill.”

I had to ask. Had to, even though I knew the end of this story. Not through memories, but through the sheer knowledge that given the results, there could be no other outcome. I understood the flash I’d had now. “Why didn’t he change her then? Turning her into a vampire would have saved her, wouldn’t it?”

“If we had known early enough, yes. But we did not. Rhys couldn’t bring himself to see her. He was afraid that one night he would give in and go to her, and then he’d never be able to leave. He knew he couldn’t stay with her, and he’d already decided she would never become what he had. So he stayed away. But on the eve of our departure back to England, Rhys allowed himself one last glimpse, and that is when we learned of what had happened. Bryn was too far gone for us to be of any help. Her body was wasted and weak. Turning can heal illness, but it cannot repair the body. You have seen that with the scars that some of us carry. When I explained that to Rhys, he went crazy with grief. He snuck into Bryn’s room and sat with her throughout the night. He’s never told me of what transpired between them, but Bryn was dead by morning.”

I dug the fingers of my shaking hands into my knees. It wasn’t fair. That should never have happened to them. The general should have kept his nose out of it. But then, would Bryn have died anyway and left Rhys a widower? Would Rhys have caught the same sickness?

Someday, I would remember. I didn’t know if I wanted to.

“So then what happened?” My voice startled me. I hadn’t really meant to ask that. I feared the answer. I kept my eyes trained on my hands. Not trusting myself to make eye contact with anyone.

“Rhys came out of the house on his own the next morning,” Cade told me. “He was grief-stricken, as was expected, but seemed otherwise at peace with the situation. He returned with me to Julius and we traveled to England. Aurelia spoke to him about the existence of past lives and I know that gave him some hope for a time. He searched for Bryn now and then, hoping to encounter her in another life. And he did find her once, I remember how strong his conviction was, but she had already been married and was pregnant with her first child. Since she appeared happy, he let her be.”

“And when was that?” I asked, simply wanting guidelines for anything else that might come to me.

Cade was silent for a sho
rt moment. I dared to look up at him and saw him watching me, thinking hard before he gave me an answer. “Somewhere around 1680. I don’t know the exact year. We were in France.”

I nodded and lowered my head again. I couldn’t imagine what it would have taken to find the one you were searching for with someone else, happy with someone else, and leaving them to continue their life without you. How much of Rhys had died when he made that decision? Or, had he grown stronger? I had no way of knowing. The Rhys I knew had no knowledge of his human life, no memory of Bryn.

“Why can’t Rhys remember his human life?”

“The next piece of the story explains that,” Cade said. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Yes.” No. Please, no. Just make this all go away.

“It was 1887, we were in New York, and Rhys hadn’t found Bryn again in the two hundred years that had passed. He’d begun to think he had imagined her. Or at least, that he had imagined finding her in France. Then the general and his family—Rhys and I were both pretending to be the sons of Julius and Aurelia at the time—were invited to a party held by one of the wealthiest men in the city.
Rhys recognized his daughter immediately, even though she held no physical resemblance to Bryn in any way. She was quick witted and smart. Headstrong, was the way her father put it. Evangeline McKinney was beautiful and, because of her willingness to be vocal about her opinion, that was her father’s only selling point. No one liked a woman with an opinion back then. But Rhys did. And he was determined not to lose her again.

“He befriended her, courted her. Julius made sure to maintain a solid friendship with her father. When Eva had fallen as deeply in love with Rhys as he had already been with her, Rhys revealed himself to her for what he really was.”

I choked on the breath I had just taken. “You mean he told her he was a vampire?”

“Showed her, actually.”

“How?”

“I wasn’t there, but Eva told me later that he warned her, then carefully, without killing his victim, fed in front of her.”

Holy crap.

“And she didn’t mind?” Hope began to rise in my chest, but I squelched it. This story had no chance of having any sort of happy ending.

“Understandably she avoided him for a few days while she thought it over, but in the end, no, she did not mind. In fact, she asked to be turned so as to stay with him.”

“And the general agreed?”

“Of course. He wasn’t going to keep Rhys from her again. We set a wedding date so everything would be proper and legal. The plan was to marry them, then move away from the city so she could be turned without suspicion from her family.”

Cade stopped. I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat then prompted him. “Keep going, Cade. I need to know.” I realized the truth of that as I said it. I needed to know what had happened in the past. Needed to know, and needed to learn from it, so I could ensure that it never happened again.

“Eva wanted a spring wedding.” Cade moved across the room, walking behind the bar and pulling out a bottle. I could smell the blood. He poured a glass while he continued the story. “Since it was March, and the ground was still covered in snow, we set the wedding date for late April, hoping the weather would change in that time. We considered waiting longer, but the Vampiric Freedom Organization was making itself known in the city and Julius did not want to remain there much longer. At the time, the VFO was small, a nuisance really. No one thought much of them and intended to just let them kill themselves off. In any case, Julius wanted no part of it. Cordoba had lost Malachi and the others to the Organization about one hundred years prior and I think in truth Julius was a bit worried about running into someone he had once considered family.

“So we waited and planned. Rhys and Eva spent every waking moment together. But then the riots started, and the killings. The VFO were trying to make their position known and the Alliance had no choice but to issue orders. All Freedom members were to be killed on sight. It was the first signs of the civil war that continues today. The VFO started targeting Alliance members, leaders in particular. Julius received a number of threats, as did the rest of us. Rhys was ambushed on his way home from the theater with Eva one night. He killed them all when they attacked. It made him a target in his own right. After that he became rather vocal in the fight against the VFO.” He stopped and took a drink. I shook as I waited in the thick silence for him to continue.

“We were grateful when the date for the wedding finally arrived. Julius had us all packed and ready to leave the moment their vows had been said. But when Aurelia went to Eva’s father’s house that morning to help her prepare and get dressed, Eva was missing. We looked all over the city for her, distracting Rhys for as long as we could. But when it came time for the wedding to begin, we had no choice but to tell him. He all but tore the city apart looking for her after that.

“We didn’t find her until the next morning.”

I clutched at my chest where the pain had been growing steadily. Millie came and placed a hand on my shoulder, the other rubbed my back soothingly. I didn’t want to know, but the rational part of my brain, the part that worked on overdrive to save my sanity, argued that by knowing it would perhaps make the remembering less traumatic later. Advanced warning. Besides, this was the answer to all my questions. The end of this story explained Rhys’s pain.

“How?” I asked, my voice hitching with the tears I desperately held back. Millie wrapped her arms around my shoulders and set her head on mine. I was grateful for her presence. I grounded myself in her.

“They left her in the street outside the theater where Rhys had killed the vampires who had attacked them all those weeks before. She still wore the white nightdress she had worn in preparation for the wedding. The dress had been a gift from Aurelia. It was the best way we had to identify her. They’d torn her to pieces. Ripped her face to unrecognizable shreds.”

I lost myself in a haze of shock. Though my eyes were open, I saw nothing. I could feel Millie there, still holding me, but aside from that I had no connection to the real world.

When sound and light returned, Millie was kissing my head, stroking my hair, speaking to me in soothing tones. My face was soaked with tears and my throat burned. I wiped at my face and forced myself to breathe.